Avebury winter solstice

Midwinter and druids: WideWorld investigates

Most people in this country have heard of Stonehenge and know at least a little about its status as a Mecca for modern pagans. But the village of Avebury - an hour’s drive north of Stonehenge, across Salisbury Plain and towards the slightly less picturesque town of Swindon – is perhaps less well-known. This is despite the fact that it has a larger stone circle (the village sits inside the henge), is situated within a World Heritage site that incorporates a host of other ancient treasures including Silbury Hill and the West Kennet Long Barrow and attracts thousands of tourists from around the globe every year.

I would be biased: I lived in Avebury for eight years from the age of 15 and much of my teenage school holidays were spent falling in love - if only from afar - with various long-haired hippies - but nonetheless I have always preferred it to Stonehenge and found it slightly less precious and regulated while still incredibly magical.

Each year hoards of druids - the pre-Celtic order of pagans whose spiritual tradition stretches back thousands of years - (as well as the odd nu-raver searching for an excuse for a party of course) descend upon Avebury for the two main events in the pagan calendar: the summer and winter solstice ceremonies.

The latter marks the festival of Midwinter, celebrating the shortest day of the year and the longest night, boasting more than 12 hours of darkness. According to druids, the solstice is a specific astronomical moment that occurs anywhere between 20 - 23 December. Three days later, between 23-26 December, they claim it is possible, without technological help, to see along the horizon that the sun is rising nearer to the east and starting its cycle towards the longest day of the year: the summer solstice in mid-June.

The druids celebrate the start of the longest day, which, this year, was 8.03am on Monday 21st December. So at half seven myself and a few others armed ourselves with several layers of clothes and a mug of brew each, stomped out into the freezing cold and shuffled our way up an icy Avebury High Street towards the stones.

We arrived at the centre of the circle with a good 20 minutes to spare before sunrise and our fingers and toes were already verging on frostbitten as temperatures in Avebury earlier this week sank to around -5°. Stamping our feet and shivering, we edged closer to a group of 40 others – a mixture of druids, tourists and some locals – and listened as chief druid Terry welcomed the sun’s rebirth in a series of chants uttered three times a few minutes before the official sunrise.

Unfortunately it was too cloudy to see the sun come up, see it light up the ‘burning bush’ the Chief Druid, Terry Dobney had told me about previously, or see its rays perfectly aligned with the cluster of stones around which we stood. Nonetheless, we took part in the chanting and singing and then, when our noses and ears had all but dropped off, we trudged back through the snow to an Aga and a large fry-up.

WideWorld caught up with Terry Dobney, arch-druid and keeper of the stones at Avebury, to find out more about druidism and the winter solstice.

Terry, you’ve been a druid for around 50 years. What prompted you to explore the Druid faith and how did you become keeper of the stones?

I was on my way to Scout camp when I was a young boy and the bus stopped to let us stretch our legs at Silbury Hill, a pagan burial mound near the Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire. I remember being fascinated by it and wondering about the belief system that caused such a monument to be built. I was the biggest of the boy scouts and also the cheekiest, and I spent the rest of the day plaguing our leader with questions about, essentially, druidism, although I didn’t know that was what it was at the time. I was doing confirmation classes then and was being taught the Christian faith - obviously none of my teachers could answer any of my questions so I resolved to find it all out for myself.

From then on I started coming to Avebury, learning about what the ancients druids had believed in and observing for myself  how the layout of the stone circle fitted in exactly with the alignment of the moon and the sun at various times of the year. There has been so little written about Druidism that modern druids arrive at their belief through all sorts of different routes - there is no standard procedure for becoming a druid and no one druid has the same story to tell. For me, it was about rigorous studying of the patterns of nature and the ancient monuments that have been constructed to worship this - I certainly came up with dirt in my fingernails!

From around the mid-1980s I became well-known in Avebury and the summer and winter solstice celebrations in particular were starting to attract lots of people who had been banned from Stonehenge after the police riots. These groups of druids, pagans, wiccans and general hippies on the Glastonbury trail would set up camp in the Avebury car park and cause a lot of trouble: drugs, noise, litter - you name it. In the late 1990s I bought a house in the village and was appointed arch-druid and keeper of the stones to replace a friend who had occupied this role in previous years. My job was to exert a bit more control over the gatherings, so I started liaising with all the groups that visited Avebury, as well as the local police, the National Trust, English Heritage and the parish council and improving the local people’s opinions about the druids who descended on their village each year! I also started the Sacred Sites Forum, which meets monthly to discuss issues such as parking and camping for the travellers. The ceremonies are becoming increasingly popular - particularly summer solstice: ten years ago only about 40 druids would turn up. Now, we have around 2,000 people every year.

What is the spiritual significance of the winter solstice for modern druids?

Contrary to popular belief, midwinter is a more joyous time than midsummer for druids. At winter solstice we celebrate the birth of the new sun; from that time onwards the days are getting longer, we are getting closer to the sun and we are approaching summer. It is a time of rebirth and most of druid tradition stems from this perspective. Summer solstice is actually a sad time, because the sun shifts in the sky and the days start getting shorter by one minute per day. But essentially, all we are doing at each ceremony is honouring the natural earth cycle. The winter solstice ceremony begins the night before the longest day, with chanting, drumming, fire-juggling performances, poetry and other festivities. Then, at first light, we walk to a part of the stone circle called the Sanctuary where you can see the first rays of the sun hit the top of a small stone obelisk in the centre. At the right moment the sun comes along the top of part of the henge and lights up a nearby hedge so that it literally looks like a ‘burning bush’! It’s quite a spectacular sight.

What is the appeal of druidism and has it changed over the years? Are you concerned that the celebrations at Avebury will become more regulated in the future?

The great thing with druidism is that there are no hard and fast rules and no guidelines for how you should be, and it is based on a highly practical and oral belief system. If people want structured paganism they normally become Wiccan, which practices an orderly and more ritualistic type of spirituality.

It’s not easy to become a chief druid, though, and this is where it is more ordered. It takes 21 years all in all: seven for initiation, seven to become a bard and learn poetry and performance skills for the ceremonies and another seven to learn about all the ancient sites. A good druid will be able to accurately tell the time with nothing but a stick in the ground and the sun and the moon. One of the great failings of the age in which we live is that we use the Gregorian calendar, even when this really isn’t the best way of connecting with the patterns and rhythms of the universe.

In any case, druids are always learning, discussing and trying to reach a consensus on things - something that is reflected in the collective noun for a group of druids - you call it a ‘dispute’!

I don’t believe druidism as a faith is really changing - it has always been a flexible and accommodating belief system. But certainly Avebury, and Stonehenge, will become more regulated. That’s no bad thing though - it needs to be protected.