It's a cold and windy winter solstice, and I'm in one of the best places in the world to celebrate it
Avebury henge, in Wiltshire.
It's basically Stonehenge's lesser known cousin. And I reckon it's better.
If you believe the new agers, then Avebury, this whole site-
It's enourmous by the way, it's many times the size of Stonehenge. Enourmous earthworks, three stone circles.
This is the center of a swirl of energy highways, Ley Lines as they're known.
In the 1920's a man called Alfred Watkins brought out a book called "The Old Straight Track".
The idea that there were dead straight tracks running across Britain that ancient peoples would follow.
In the 1970's that got mixed up with a whole load of "New Age" beliefs.
By someone called John Michell.
He came up with the idea of Ley Lines. Mystical energy highways that spread across Britain, and presumably the world.
Thing is, if you look at the data, if you look at where the Ley Lines actually are, you can see the patterns.
You can see points in a line, and the Ley Lines following them.
Well... you can.
But also if you just put a hundred random dots down on a map, mathematically you can also draw lines between them.
You can also find Ley Lines between Woolworths stores, as mathematician Matt Parker did.
Or between old red telephone boxes. Since Britain has thousands and thousands of scheduled ancient monuments.
But, well this is still a site of great spiritual significance.
As I've wandered around there've been a lot of new age pagans around.
Some drumming, some just smoking pot, and a couple just kinda putting their heads to the stones.
This is why this place is better than Stonehenge. Stonehenge, you can't get close to the stones, except on special days.
You certainly can never touch them.
But here, well
These stones have been torn down and put back up a couple of times by various branches of Christianity and paganism that've come through.
Someone has build a villiage in the middle of the standing stones and run a road through it.
There are some that've just been replaced with small markers to show where evidence says a stone once was.
No one really complains that the Sistine Chapel is restored every now and then.
I don't think we should complain that these stones have been restored either.
This is a very real way of having some kind of connection to the ancient humans who were here
four and a half, maybe five thousand years ago, and
who put these stones up for...
Well. We'll never know what reason
and if that means we get a little bit of new age beliefs...
Well, I can't really begrudge that.
Happy winter solstice.
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