Avebury Magic
Now more than four years old, the images reproduced on this page offer glimpses of revived collective enjoyment at the neolithic site of Avebury in Wiltshire. Though publicly overshadowed by massive reportage of Stonehenge struggles and celebrations of the last two decades, Avebury also has re-emerged as a significant focus for earth and season based activity. The summer solstice draws large numbers of people from around Britain and further afield. Music and dance are at the heart of these events where collective involvement and individual expression are evident in equal measure. Elsewhere on this site (click here) there is an account of the midsummer eve 2003 Avebury gathering and some personal thoughts on recent shifts in the character of that annual festivity.
The images here relate to the Avebury millennium gathering. Celebrants moved from the initial focus of the Red Lion pub (the only alcohol purveyor known to operate within a Neolithic sacred site) and gathered in the area of the two inner stone circles. No one took money at an “entrance” and no one felt the urge to even try to impose order. Equally absent was the cultural form of elevated stage and any apparent notion of being entertained. The situation was the people present and their preferred mode of involvement in that place at that time. Self-identified druids mingled with others of less obvious and perhaps less precisely defined allegiance. While young people took the lead as far as music is concerned, people of all imaginable ages were present, though the composition remains overwhelmingly white.
The common ground, it seemed to me, was recognition of the yearly cycle (the winter solstice was only beginning to recede) and a yearning for a less abstracted, less programmed and formatted, more exploratory form of life.
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The “orbs” that appear in some of the photos can be explained in several ways, for controversy surrounds such photographic anomalies. Often they are imaged in old churches and other sacred or unusual sites. They are interpreted as angels or disembodied spirits, as UFO-related manifestations, as soon-to-reincarnate bodhissatvas (enlightened beings who have made a conscious decision to remain within the realm of suffering to work toward the liberation of every sentient being). Others explain them (away?) as aberrations caused by moisture, by inner-camera reflections, by tiny airborne particles or insects flying close to the camera lens. There are both allegations of gullibility and reverential communication networks dedicated to spiritual interpretation of the orbs.
Certainly, neither before nor since this sequence have they appeared on other photos by myself. In addition, while I did not visually see or mentally imagine glowing spheres as such that night, the orbs more generally seemed a familiar component of the situation as I remembered it on seeing the developed film a few days later. They were unexpected but also curiously unsurprising. Along with drumbeats there was a persistent brightness and there was an ethereal magic in the night. There was “all around, kaleidoscope of colours.” I remember, while looking up at stars above a stone, recalling Bob Dylan’s “…but for the sky there are no fences facing…” Hopefully, if you were not there, the images will still convey some of this.
David Binns, 14th July 2004
