Midsummer Memory

Some years ago, on 22 June, I was travelling in to work by train and reading The Times and came across a photo of the previous day's celebrations at Stonehenge. At the time I was interested in ritual (I still think that ritual is an important part of life too easily neglected) and I wondered if the Druids simply expressed in their ritual of Father Sun and Mother Earth something self-evident (that we depend on the Sun and the Earth) or whether they hypostatised them as deities as primitive man once did.

I tend to follow up on ideas and questions, and that led me to getting to know a prominent Druid, a lady of great personality and much style. After a long email exchange we met, I joined in some festivities at Stonehenge and other sites and wrote some pieces for one of the Druid magazines. The ritual at Stonehenge at midwinter, in the cold and dark among the standing stones, under a brilliant starry sky, was especially moving.

What I learned surprised, and later shocked me. The answer to my first question was a clear yes - and I found it surprising that so many people could regard our celestial neighbours as gods when the physics is available for all to know. They just ignored it. I am always slightly nonplussed by people who opt to ignore the discoveries of science. But it happens. Creationism depends on it, for example. In that case a powerful emotional commitment outweighs scientific knowledge. The most dramatic example of that I ever came across was an Astrophysicist I knew once who was also a believer in the biblical account of creation. For her, biblical authority was more important, carried more of an emotional investment, even than her vast knowledge of how the universe actually works. So if someone like that can be effected in that way, then I suppose I should not be surprised when others who are less well informed fall under the same spell.

But there was more. The ritual evoked the spirits of the four directions, and of the ancestors, and while the former seemed nebulous and mysterious (but somehow powerful) the latter were quite simply the dead still living in some other parallel life, walking about, clothed as normal (but normal for a Druid may not be what is normal for most of us) who could be called upon in various ways. Apart from the rather strange idea of bodiless spirits wearing ghostly clothes, which seemed just silly, and the breach of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, it was the seriousness with which all this was taken that most bothered me.

Finally, over a meal, my Druid friend revealed that she was a shape-shifter. I am in no doubt that this woman, to all appearances elegant, charming, and sane, really believed that she could go into the woods at night and adopt the shape of, say, a fox or an owl. Those that know me will not expect me to take that without comment. As politely as I could I said I thought that was crazy and completely unbelievable. The conversation moved on, the meal ended, we parted on good terms and I never saw or spoke to her again.

Unhappily the lady I was then married to was not so skeptical as I - she remained in touch with the Druid lady and consulted her about some issues in her life. She was persuaded to have Past Life Regression Therapy - in which the troubles of the present are understood and healed by discovering what lives the person had lived before. The actual treatment was never discussed, but I did gather that my wife had learned that in a past life she had been a deer. She, an educated person, a talented therapist employed by the NHS, took this on board. In retrospect it is not a surprise that her mental health deteriorated rapidly soon after.