I can't speak for Matt but because there is so little written history of paganism within the British Isles we rely on archaeology to understand our past, our sacred sites and also, in a way, ourselves. That doesn't mean to say we don't move forward or claim a lineage that doesn't exist. And archaeology moves forward too. For example, it's now thought that Stonehenge was probably a Winter Solstice site, but the modern pagan drumming up the sun gathering at the Summer Solstice is something modern paganism has well established.
In my experience most pagans are interested in archaeology, reading the landscape, and folklore. We look to these for clues to a past that we feel but don't always know how to express.
As has been said, no one knows what went on at Avebury, Stonehenge and the like so I can't really see any connection between them and modern Paganism. Avebury is my favourite place to visit and I find the whole area fascinating and am very interested in archaeology but am not a pagan. I don't see that Avebury is a sacred site - it is a very important site in world history, but don't understand why people who have no knowledge of what went on there can claim it as sacred to them. It may have been sacred to the people who lived there at the time but they are long gone.
Please Maeght, please do not make out that you are that ignorant, because I, for one, do not, for one second, believe it.
So you do not see it as a sacred site, your choice. It is a site that took generations, like Stonehenge, to build. What other use would there be for such an expenditure of labour?
You are entitled to poo-poo the idea that it is a sacred site, pagans do not. Modern pagans follow the old pagan ways as closely as we are able. The deities we follow are responsible for various aspects of life, nature, death - it did not matter whether the people were Celts, Norse, Egyptian, Greek, or Roman, each had its own pantheon.
Modern pagans, some, not all, Rhiannon, for instance follows an entirely different pagan path to my own, try to worship their deities in a manner that seems to fit the particular deity.
OK - I am the first to admit that we may well have got it entirely wrong in the way that we do things. The Christians left us SFA in the way of written records to follow, so we do our best.
We do not ask you to agree with what we do, we do not ask you to consider what we do to be "the right thing" - but it works for us! We do not ask for your (or anyone else's) support, all we ask is that you leave us to do our thing our way!
Regardless of the opinions of others, Stonehenge, Avebury and various other neolithic monuments, stone circles, henges, are held to be sacred sites by pagans.
Pagans do not, and will not, stop you visiting them, we just ask that you treat them with the same respect as Pagans would show visting Westminster Abbey. Have you ever heard of a bunch of drunken pagans entering a Christian church and pissing all over the altar? NO! So why should pagans tolerate drunken Christians and atheists pissing over the stones at Stonehenge and Avebury that pagans regard as just as sacred as the altar in St Pauls?
I really and truly do not give a tuppeny f**k what you think Stonehenge and Avebury are or are not, but until you can prove beyoind a shadow of a doubt that they are NOT what we think they are and treat them as such, we ask you show our sacred sites the same respect as you expect us to show to yours.
It is 0130, I am having one of my insomniac periods, three nights now, and I am a bit tetchy and the above is probably not as coherent as it might but heck, I am only a stupidly misguided pagan so what does it matter.
