Litha 2008 (Summer Solstice) - Report and Photos (Cross Post

Joined : 08 Jan 2008 Posts : 28

Below is a link to a report and photos from my Summer Solstice celebrations. They started with a visit to Avebury a week before the public Solstice event. The following Wednesday it was down to the White Spring for a Full Moon/Solstice evening, although due to local issues the event was cancelled and so I held my own small event further up the road for the other disappointed visitors. On the morning of the public Solstice I was on Glastonbury Tor with the Western Order of Druids. Then I had a busy weekend being the photographer at a Glastonbury conference. The following Tuesday I was at a two hour sunrise event with the Druid Network at Stonehenge. I returned there at the weekend with the Dorset Grove on the Saturday and the Dolmen Grove on the Sunday. The report includes four embedded videos at the time of writing and one or two more should be added by the end of the week. Overall a real manic season and not long now until the next event!

http://www.handswithenergy.co.uk/events/litha2008

The link below didn't get the normal publicity at the time. 20 May was St. Lucifer’s Day, a full moon and the first day in office of the new Bard of Glastonbury. I visited the White Spring and then went down to Bride's Mound where the new entrance was being opened with bardic performances, ritual and feasting.

http://www.handswithenergy.co.uk/events/lucifer2008

Best wishes,

Matthew

Joined : 07 Jan 2008 Posts : 471 Location : Wiltshire

Matthew, I've had a quick look at your links, its after midnight and I should really go to bed.

Your photographs are of high quality and are interesting (as always) but I have to say that it feels like way too much information - I can't do them justice because there is too much of it.

Joined : 18 Jan 2008 Posts : 154

I was waiting for you to tell us what you did for Solstice - I had a feeling you'd be doing another epic tour of as many pagan events as poss! (The equivalent of a pagan pub crawl?)

Haven't time to check it all out yet, but will do so later hopefully.

Hi all - my broadband is playing up again. I've had no connection for 24 hours now. I'm doing this in the library but half the page elements are missing - don't know why. Avatars are shown ok but all the icons are shown as missing pics, with a little red X in a box...

Joined : 08 Jan 2008 Posts : 28

> I had a feeling you'd be doing another epic tour of as many pagan events as poss!

Currently putting my feet up. On a couple of days it was debatable whether it was even worth going to bed, so early was the alarm clock set for lol!

I don't understand why you were at Avebury a week early?
And why was the spring closed at Glastonbury?
PeteG

Joined : 08 Jan 2008 Posts : 28

Hi Pete. In order to fit everything in inevitably some things have to be run on other days. Just like I went to Stonehenge on private visits after the Solstice. Originally I had hatched a plan to park a few miles away and then cycle to Avebury on the actual solstice. The Cauldron people normally celebrate the Solstices and Equinoxes at Avebury - following the main Gordsedd events run by Rollo or Arthur. They decided to come a week early because it would have been hard to run their event on the Solstice because of the transport and crowd problems and the way they run their ritual with a table and loads of bits and pieces. With this event becoming available I decided to drop the main Solstice event in Avebury and go to a conference instead. So I was maximising my attendance at events. As to the White Spring, it is run by volunteers and there have been loads of trouble in Wellhouse Lane recently with groups of people who meet to the right of the building - with fires and general chaos. There's only so much crap volunteers will put up with. On that day the two people that would have run the event didn't feel they could do so. Once I found this out I laid on a small circle for the disappointed visitors as described.

Matthew

Thanks Matthew.
Do you think it would ever be possilbe for all the druid/pagan groups to get together and celebrate the same thing on the same day together?
If not, why?
PeteG

Joined : 08 Jan 2008 Posts : 28

Definitely not Pete. There are ever more wars between people and groups. I've suffered several nasty personal attacks this week alone.

Joined : 07 Jan 2008 Posts : 471 Location : Wiltshire

Peace!