I listen to the Wicker Man album on repeat as I journey north for a Pagan Pride march through Nottingham city centre, anticipating the aesthetics I hope will surround me when I finally arrive. I am not disappointed. The men shroud themselves in long robes and carry staffs, while the women wear long, flowing gowns, their heads crowned in flower garlands and animal horns.
‘We are pagan. We are proud!’ I join in the chant as we parade in a long snake a hundred metres long and five abreast. Passers-by display a spectrum of emotions at the spectacle – from looks of unreserved delight to bewildered stares – probably wondering why these strange fairy-tale folk are parading through their unassuming town.
In 2010 the journalist Melanie Phillips wrote an article in the Daily Mail entitled ‘Druids as an official religion? Stones of Praise here we come’. The commentary is openly mocking and talks of her anger at the prospect of paganism being recognised by the National Charity Commission. ‘Someone tell me this is a joke,’ she says, before going on to call Druidry a ‘cult’ and a bunch of ‘totally barking mumbo-jumbo’.
What she doesn’t acknowledge is that Christianity – ‘the bedrock creed of this country’ as she affectionately terms it – is predated by paganism. Christianity was a foreign religion, brought in and imposed on the country by the Romans, who reported the indigenous religion of this country as Druidry.
The original pagans had little organised religion per se, but generally adhered to a collection of beliefs including a reverence for nature and a pantheistic view on divinity. These days the word pagan typically refers to a person who worships nature, the elements, the seasons and the natural cycle of life and death, represented by the associated gods and goddesses inherent in the natural world. The modern pagan movement, known as neopaganism, is believed to be the fastest-growing religion in Britain, and it has been estimated that there are around 250,000 practising pagans in the country today.
The rousing chanting snake grows in volume as our rally progresses, and I get quite carried away by the whole affair. In fact, by the time we reach our final destination, the festival itself, I have pretty much convinced myself that I am pagan, and I am proud.
The venue of the festival is a large park, now packed full of stalls selling floaty dresses, books, horns, staffs, robes, trinkets, pottery, dragon ornaments, bunches of dried herbs, psychic readings, wings and incense. I peel off to wind my way around the stalls, talking to people and taking photos. I feel a little out of place in my black shorts and woollen top, and decide to buy a green, elven-looking dress to change into, my subterfuge ushering in a renewed sense of confidence.
Underneath a giant oak tree, Kerry, a full-time pagan priest, delivers a talk about priesting in the modern world to a group of around fifty.
‘I think of myself as the Vicar of Dibley of the pagan world,’ she says. ‘I make tea and give hugs.’
Kerry performs public rituals, handfastings (pagan weddings), naming ceremonies (pagan christenings), passing-on ceremonies (pagan funerals), and hospital and prison visits.
‘We go into schools sometimes too,’ she says, ‘for multi-faith assemblies, and we always get all of the attention because of our robes. The kids stare at us, wide-eyed, thinking we’re from Harry Potter.’
She explains that pagan priests are also known as Druids, a name derived from the educated and professionals among the pre-historic tribal Celtic people of Britain. Modern Druids (Neo-Druids) are modelled on these ancient Celtic priests, wearing the same white robes as depicted in the accounts of Cicero, Pliny and Julius Caesar.
One such Druid is Damh the Bard, a famous pagan musician who had kindly agreed to a Skype interview with me the previous weekend.
His friendly face stares back at me from my computer screen, smiling eyes framed by the archetypal cascading grey hair. He is sitting in the office of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids – OBOD – an organisation with a membership upwards of 19,000, for which he is a global ambassador. With an average of 44,000 downloads of its monthly podcast at the time of interview, official membership of OBOD is growing by about ninety heads a month.
The office behind his wizardly face is disappointingly normal-looking. Strewn with piles of paper and coffee mugs, with a modern bookshelf and a round clock, it looks nothing like Dumbledore’s office, which feels like a real missed opportunity.
Damh (born Dave Smith) explains that he initially found the occult through heavy-metal music, Ozzy Osbourne and the like: ‘I guess I’m the reason they put those warning stickers on CDs,’ he laughs. He first found the pagan traditions via studying magic, before moving onto Wicca, folklore and Druidry. His life had always been about music, poetry and art, so in 1994, when he received the intro booklets for OBOD, and they started to talk about ‘the bard’, it all clicked for him.
I realise I have no idea what his organisation does, so I ask him about the benefits of joining.
‘Well, anyone can call themselves a Druid,’ he admits, ‘but there is so much information out there, you can become very confused, like you are clawing your way through a blackberry bush. So OBOD is a teaching order. The course isn’t academic – it’s experiential. The idea is to get people out of their houses and into the woods, doing stuff.’
I can’t help but picture Eglantine Price from Bedknobs and Broomsticks poring over her course material from the Correspondence College of Witchcraft. I think about the old book that all the spells come from and wonder if OBOD is the same.
‘Where does the knowledge for the course come from?’
‘A number of sources,’ he says. ‘One is archaeology, so whenever there is a new finding at a site, it can influence what we do now. Another is the writing from classical sources like Julius Caesar and Siculus. But the biggest influences are the old stories and poems.’
He takes a sip of his tea. ‘The way we like to explain it is with the metaphor of a restaurant. Some people like a menu, with ready-made options as choices, like Islam or Christianity; they are “religions of the book” and come fully formed and delivered to them. But pagan religions are so fragmented – we don’t have a book, we have nature and stories – so we like to think of ourselves as being in the kitchen, and all the learnings are like ingredients, so we can make our own dinner. For me, that’s what makes paganism so vibrant and relevant, and for some people that makes it fake and made-up.’
This analogy makes sense to me, but I can’t yet decide which camp would work best for me. I have always considered myself a spiritual tourist, but I wonder whether this is just another symptom of my FOMO: walking down the aisle of a spirituality supermarket and struggling to choose from all the options. Like when you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet and end up with a bit of everything because you can’t decide on one dish. I can tell you from experience that pizza, spaghetti and sweet-and-sour chicken does not work well together; sometimes I just need the chef to make these decisions for me.
‘Do you have a daily practice?’ I ask.
‘Yes, because you can get swept along with technology and everyday life,’ he says, gesturing at his computer. ‘I need my daily dose of remembering what I am doing. So every morning when I wake up, I go out into my garden and offer a prayer to the four directions and a blessing on my day ahead. It’s short, but it’s grounding.’
I could do that, I think. ‘Is there anything else that makes your life different to a non-pagan?’ I cross my fingers for some kind of magical powers.
He laughs, ‘Well, I’ve been working in the OBOD office since December 1998, and my music is directed towards the pagan community, so I haven’t existed outside of this bubble for years. I don’t know what’s normal for everyone else any more.’ He gives another big belly laugh. ‘Some pagans are vegetarian; some aren’t. Most eat ethically, so if they do eat meat, they will make sure they know how it’s sourced.’
Dammit. So I would probably have to become a vegetarian. I recall the endless lentils at Findhorn and decide this probably isn’t the religion for me.
‘I have been a vegetarian in the past,’ he says, ‘after watching a film called Earthlings, which is a film everyone should watch if they eat meat.’
I desperately want to ask about human sacrifice, so I opt for a more subtle and cowardly version of the question. ‘What was the response in the community to the Wicker Man film?’
‘Weirdly enough, it is positive,’ he says. ‘It contains a lot of lore. And, in their hearts, apart from the human sacrifice bit, most pagans would love to live on Summerisle, to be part of a permanent community whose underlying principles are a belief in magic and a love of nature. It’s just the final burning of the Wicker Man that’s a bit of a bummer.’
The interview comes to an end, and Damh signs off with a cool ‘see you along the road sometime’. As soon as he disappears from my screen, I watch Earthlings online. Holy shit. Suddenly the lentils don’t seem so bad.
The pagan year is represented as a wheel, divided into eight significant festivals: the four seasons, the spring and autumn equinoxes (with equal days of light and dark), the winter solstice (celebrating the shortest day), and the summer solstice (celebrating the longest day). And where do you go to celebrate the summer solstice with the pagans? To Stonehenge, of course.
Although surprisingly little can be confirmed about their heritage, other than that they are thought to have been erected about 2500 BC (and holes have been found nearby that may have held stones which are dated to 7500 BC), many pagans claim the site as a spiritual home. Probably because they sit in the middle of the densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, offering a meaningful place of connection with our ancient ancestors.
I arrive at Stonehenge campsite on 21 June and immediately get stuck into a conversation with ‘Jamie, Jamie Brown’, a fifty-five-year-old surf instructor from Australia. After having a heart attack last year, Jamie became acutely aware of his mortality and decided to save for a three-month trip to tick things off his bucket list.
‘I just thought I’d come over and poke around a bit, ya know, Lucy,’ he tells me, in his Aussie drawl. ‘I don’t really have a plan. Just to meet some good people and see some great stuff.’
Spending the night at Stonehenge over the summer solstice is now the seventh most popular bucket-list entry in the world, another great example of the human obsession with ticking things off a list.
I explain to Jamie why I am here. ‘Then you’ll wanna talk to King Arthur,’ he says. Luckily, I had already been in contact with this legend and arranged to interview him later that evening in exchange for a can of cider.
Arthur, born John Rothwell, was a biker and general odd-jobs man until one night, in a squat, his friend told him that he was in fact not John Rothwell, but a modern-day reincarnation of King Arthur. After realising his friend was right, John changed his name to Arthur Pendragon the following week. The first group of people to accept Arthur were the Druids, raising him as an ‘Honorary Pendragon’ in the Glastonbury Order of Druids.
His first battle in this order was to release Stonehenge from its shackles. The site had been fenced off to the public since 1977 due to concerns around preservation, provoking outrage in the community, who felt that their right to practise their ancient religion in a place that is sacred to them had been compromised. And so began a decade of protests from Arthur and his loyal ‘Warband’.
Regularly returning to the site, Arthur was arrested and imprisoned every year between 1990 and 2000 for ‘challenging the legality of their exclusion zone’ (attempting to break in). He took on the British government in the European Court of Human Rights, pleading his religious right to worship at Stonehenge as a Druid. After continued negotiation between the authorities and the Druids, it was agreed that, from the year 2000, Stonehenge would be open to the public for the summer and winter solstices, and the autumn and spring equinoxes.
I arrive at the stones at around 11 p.m. to find the place packed with 36,000 revellers. Strewn with litter and hawker vans selling burgers, the place looks more like a festival than the spiritual sanctuary I had been expecting.
I step over the sleeping bodies and squeeze through the throngs in the middle of the giant stone formation to arrive at the Heel Stone, my pre-arranged meeting point with the king.
‘Hi, Arthur, I’m Lucy.’
He looks at me with piercing eyes, his wizardly white hair held in place by a thin silver crown. He wears a tabard bearing a red dragon over a white robe, his sword – Excalibur – sheathed at his waist.
‘What did I say to you in the email?’ he says to me in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.
‘To bring you cider,’ I say, handing him a can of Thatchers Gold.
‘That’ll do.’ He opens it and takes a swig.
‘I have been relentlessly fighting for peace for the last twenty years,’ he begins unprompted, as if giving this speech for the hundredth time. ‘At the moment I’m fighting the “English Heretics” to return the remains of the ancestors they dug out of the ground, instead of putting them in a display cabinet in their visitor centre. I gather signatures every day. I’m a right pain in the neck!’ he says, laughing. ‘But I’ll win in the end. I always do.’
It’s true – he has been remarkably successful, even when it came to securing his right to legally carry Excalibur in public, and to wear a crown in his passport photo (for ‘religious reasons’).
Arthur sees himself as a true knight of the Round Table, put on this planet for a reason: to fight the good fight. It is romantic, and I can see why anyone would revel in this sense of purpose.
‘What will you do when there is nothing left to fight for?’
He laughs in a high-pitched shrill. ‘I’ll leave!’ he says with a resigned shrug. ‘My work here will be done. I always say I fight for peace, and when we get it, I’m not interested any more. I’m outta here.’
I guess we all need something to fight for, a reason for our existence. With the decline of organised religion, in the UK at least, the thirst for purpose inherent in the human psyche searches desperately for another outlet. Something to fight for: Justice for Harambe, a favourite contestant on The X Factor, the right to be naked, the success of a beloved football team; desperately searching for meaning in a meaningless life.
Arthur looks back up at me. ‘Do you have any more cider?’
‘Yeah, I have another one back up in the circle. I’ll bring it down later,’ I reassure him.
A lady walks over. ‘Ah, there you are, Sue,’ Arthur perks up. He turns toward me. ‘This is Lucy. She is a writer.’ She takes this as her cue and leads me away from Arthur.
‘I am Arthur’s High Priestess,’ she tells me. ‘My full title is Dame Knight Commander of the Arthur Warband.’ She wears a long crimson cloak, her dark red hair covered by a black hat decorated with a garland of flowers.
‘I’ve followed Arthur for twenty years now,’ she says, ‘even visited him in prison.’
‘What was he inside for?’
‘Oh different things,’ she says. ‘Protests, drunk and disorderly…’
The king wanders back over and starts laughing. ‘I defended myself on that charge,’ he says. ‘Stood up and spoke. Wasn’t supposed to, but I just said, “You’ve got it all wrong – yes, I was drunk – but I am always disorderly.” That’s just me, ain’t it? Nothing to do with the booze!’ He bends double, his laugh like a machine gun.
‘He is the Lord of Misrule,’ Sue says, gazing at him affectionately.
Arthur decides to talk to me again, relaying his theory on the three different types of Druids.
‘First there are the elitist Druids who are pious, think they are better than anyone else and want to keep sacred places for themselves. Then there are the learned Druids, who spend decades studying the books and learning about all the different gods. Then there’s my lot, the warrior Druids, who are more intuitive, fight for peace and get their education from the world rather than books.’
People continually walk up to Arthur to say hello and introduce themselves. He is like a celebrity here. He engages with everyone in a kind and authentic manner, even the drugged-up teenagers who struggle to construct a sentence.
The night progresses, and I speak to a few more Druids, dotted irregularly among the sea of partygoers. Among the 36,000 people, the Druids are insignificant in number (fifty or so), with some now refusing to attend because they disapprove of what the event has become: a drug-infused festival, or a tick on a bucket list.
I keep accidentally stepping on passed-out people every time I want to get somewhere, and the floor is strewn with empty beer cans. I can’t help but yearn for something a bit more peaceful, a bit more spiritual.
I wander back over to see what Arthur makes of it all. ‘The pious Druids don’t like it,’ he says, ‘but I don’t mind at all. For lots of people, being here is just a cultural thing, like going to Times Square for New Year’s, but for pagans it’s a spiritual thing. We’re here for the rituals. Doesn’t bother me either way; we have our thing, and they have theirs, so everybody is happy.’
It is now four o’clock, and the sky is becoming lighter. Everybody stands to face the Heel Stone, their eyes glued to the horizon, waiting for the golden orb to make an appearance. The Druids begin their rituals and a big circle forms around them. Rollo Maughfling, the Archdruid of Glastonbury, stands up to lead the crowd in a chant against hunger and fracking, clinging to his crooked staff like an old wizard.
‘May there be peace in the south,’ he says – raising his hands as if doing an upright press-up.
He motions for us all to copy him; we do.
‘May there be peace in the north.’
‘May there be peace in the west.’
‘May there be peace in the east.’
His sentences come out in flurries, his wild silver hair and long beard blowing in the light morning breeze.
‘And most importantly,’ he says, pausing to assume his wisest face, ‘may there be peace throughout the world.’
A few minutes later the sun finally arrives to cries of jubilation from the crowd. I feel as if we are all rolling towards it, tipping closer and closer to the sun. It gives me a sense of connection with the earth and the natural order of things. Although that could also be the cider. The group behind me burst into a rendition of the ‘Circle of Life’.
After the sunrise, I go off to find Arthur, who has promised me a knighthood. I kneel before him in the middle of a large crowd while he unsheathes Excalibur. A man in full Druid tabard plays the drums at the head of the circle.
He places the flat of his sword lightly on my head. ‘Do you swear to speak the truth?’
‘Yes,’ I say, with false confidence.
He touches the sword on my right shoulder. ‘To honour your spoken word.’ He moves to my left shoulder. ‘To be just and fair in all your dealings.’ He begins reciting some words in a language I don’t understand as he repeats the action with Excalibur. When he gets back to my head, he pauses.
‘If I take your head off, it’s because you forgot the second cider!’
Shit. I did. I instinctively stand up and back away from the huge sword. Thankfully his face opens into a grin as he says, ‘Arise, Warrior Priestess…’ – giving me a bear hug as he completes my new title – ‘… the Ciderless!’