Lughnasadh Celebrated throughout Seasons of Life
By C. Austin
The forest clings closely as you walk. A heavy canopy of
hazel, hawthorn, oak and ash blanket the woodland path that you and
your party are walking. It is summer's end and you have been
walking this direction for a week. On your way, you have seen
other families making their way along the circuitous trails that lead
to the great hill.
Hearing voices nearby you notice the underbrush is thinning.
You pause with your companions, shifting loads as you approach a
forest clearing. Reaching the clearing your group stops,
amazed once again at the sight before you.
The camp you have entered covers fully 8.5 hectares, the turf is
velvety and the air is sweet. Children and dogs run before you
and the smell of many cooking fires is pleasing to your hungry
stomach. Locating an empty spot, two of your companions go
about setting up your campsite for your two-week stay as you and the
others begin the enjoyable task of walking the camp, seeking out old
friends, making new acquaintances and hearing the news.
Beyond the edge of the camp the great hill falls away to an
expansive view northward. Seeing the panorama is like nothing
you experience anywhere else. The view seems to stretch beyond
where you will ever step, it must be the whole of existence.
Life in the cloistered forest does not afford such views.
Three concentric rings of bank and ditch nest within each other to
form the camp itself. The banks and ditches are discontinuous
so that people and animals can easily walk here and there.
Those assembled are peaceful farmers and forest dwellers, there is no
need for defensive structures here.
You have gathered here, these tribes and family groups, to celebrate
the harvest festival. You have brought pottery shards and a
carved chalk figure to deposit in the ditch later during the
ceremonies. Others have brought tools of flint, bone, worked
stone and rich soil from their settlements to lay within the ditches
as offerings to the Great Mother.
With sorrow, you remember your good friend who has brought the skull
and long bones of his infant daughter who passed away during the
winter. It will be a great comfort to her parents to lay her
beside the sacred cattle skull in the ditch that borders on the
wilderness. She will return to her Earth Mother there.
A friend of yours hails you from outside the southeast section of
the ditch. Upon reaching the area, you both fall silent in
reverence. This is the old place, where people generations
before worshipped and left their traces in clusters of pits, some of
which have items deposited in them just like the ones you are going to
leave during the ceremonies. There is an ancient burial site
and what looks like the remains of a small structure - that is
all. No one remembers these people, but their activity on the
hill, and the memories of all those who came after them have made the
great hill the sacred place that it is today...
One thousand years later, the distant relatives of our traveler are
finishing the construction of a monument that will one day be known as
"The Sanctuary." It is about 2500 BC and a time of great activity in
the Avebury region.
An elderly man stops working for a moment and gazes up toward
Windmill Hill. Some of the pottery that he is burying within
the Sanctuary came from that great old hill and the people who
gathered there for many seasons before his time. As he
reflects, he realizes that this monument he and others are working on
will be like Windmill Hill. Pilgrims will gather there just as they
did at Windmill Hill, to perform their seasonal ceremonies, to feast
and share the joys and sorrows of life.
Behind the elderly man is a group of younger people erecting oak
timbers in sets of post holes. The timbers they are erecting
will create a beautiful open-air pavilion. Plans are underway
to build two stone circles beyond the timber pavilion as well.
From his spot at the Sanctuary, the old man can see West and East
Kennet long barrows, Silbury Hill and the ancient great hill, Windmill
Hill. Two great sarsen stone avenues connect the sites and the
region has finally become a unified landscape - a sacred geography of
places that holds the memories and spirits of generations of his
people...
Over five thousand years later, the great forests of Avebury are
gone. The wind sweeps over a predominantly agricultural area,
the great monuments of the early and late Neolithic have
fallen. Some have disappeared to ground, others destroyed and
still others reconstructed and poured over to tell us what they can of
their now silent builders.
Dating from approximately 3700 BC, Windmill Hill was one of the
earliest monuments of the Avebury complex. Initial traces
included a human burial, clusters of pits and post holes and a
square earthwork. Windmill Hill is thought to have been the site of
regional seasonal gatherings, where the community could propitiate the
Goddess and celebrate life and death.
Windmill Hill is known as a "causewayed"camp because of the breaks
in the bank and ditches that allowed for people and animals to enter
and leave the area. The outer, middle and inner ditch are about 2.1
metres, 1.4 metres and .95 metre in depth, respectively.
Quantities of material excavated from the banks and ditches of
Windmill Hill give us a microcosmic picture of life in the
Neolithic. An infant skull was excavated from the outer bank
of the camp, where it had lain nestled by the skull of a cow.
The ox-goddess figured prominently in European Neolithic
imagery. The sacred nature of the ox lived on after the
Neolithic age and sacred cows, white heifers and cattle with animistic
qualities survive in Celtic mythology and other world traditions.
The Sanctuary, located south-east of the Avebury henge on Overton
Hill echoes the existence of its monumental neighbors. Material from
Windmill Hill was deliberately interred at the Sanctuary. The
overall diameter of 40 metres of the Sanctuary is approximately the
same as the diameter of both the primary mound and the finished
plateau atop Silbury Hill. Looking beyond Avebury, the
Sanctuary has the same approximate diameter of Woodhenge and the
Southern Circle at Durrington Walls, two contemporary, but not local
timber circles.
The Sanctuary is considered a "monument in motion."
Sections of the six concentric timber rings were occasionally replaced
- some almost as soon as they were erected. The dynamic nature
of the wooden shrine marks it as a place of important seasonal or
annual ritual, possibly marking the harvest festival just as was done
a thousand years earlier at Windmill Hill.
Two additional concentric rings of stone were added to the
Sanctuary grounds just after the timber structure were completed, the
stones served to connect the site to West Kennet avenue, a stone
palisade that led to the Avebury henge.
The form of nested concentric rings found at the Sanctuary repeats
itself in the Avebury henge, Windmill Hill and in the diameters of the
two mounds that lie within the final third mound at Silbury.
One can only speculate on the clear importance of this design -
perhaps intended as a regenerative pattern, the connection of this
world with the Other, or the Neolithic eye through which one views,
and is viewed by one's deity. Farmers pulled down the last
great sarsen stones of the outer two circles of the Sanctuary in the
1700's. Today, low concrete slabs mark the position of the six
inner timber circles and the two outer stone circles. It is
admittedly not easy to envisage the grandeur that once stood on the
site.
Though there are more wonders to explore, it is here that our
travels through the rich tapestry of Avebury conclude. Perhaps
our journey into the past might rekindle an interest in shaping a
future that is less fragmented, less hurried and more connected.
I finished this article on the summer solstice as the sun reached
its apogee and my sundial turned toward Lugnasadh. Enjoy your
days reader, relish the coming harvest as so many have before
you. Thank you for joining me, a joyous Lugnasadh to you.
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