The Modern Antiquarian. Stone Circles, Ancient Sites, Neolithic Monuments, Ancient Monuments, Prehistoric Sites, Megalithic MysteriesThe Modern Antiquarian

Nine Ladies of Stanton Moor

Stone Circle

Fieldnotes

I haven't kept up with the plans to turn this amazing place into a quarry, but it seems from my experience that some so-called pagans are helping the process along.

I stayed there one full-moon night last year (around October), and the scene was wonderful for my first visit. There were naturally a bunch of other people there. Me and my friend Lee chatted to a few of them - they said they had met at a gay/bi pagan camp down south and were doing a ritual later on. They seemed cool, but we were tired and crashed before their ritual started.

Well, actually, before we got to sleep we were treated to the utterly bizarre spectacle of a large bunch of schoolkids being led around the circle by a few adults, singing really pagan-sounding nursery rhymes. They ended up doing the congo of onto the moonlit moor! Better education than I ever had...

Waking the next morning, Lee asked if I had heard anything during the night. Apart from the kids, no. He said he had heard what sounded like some sort of ritual, but it was interspersed with what sounded frighteningly like rocks being violently bashed together. I got up to look around, and sure enough, the few half-bricks and rocks that were scattered around the circle the night before were gone. A few of the circle's stones had had chunks hacked off, with the tell-tale compacted bumps of soft rock left by bricks or whatever being smashed on them. Fragments littered the floor.

We were incensed, but there was no sign of life in any of the many tents around. We had to leave early, and as we didn't want to shout blind abuse at sleeping people who may or may not have been responsible, we had to leave the arsehole culprits be. As far as I'm concerned, if they're out there seriously trying to mesh with the pagan levels of reality, and doing *this* to stone circles, they're cursing themselves anyway. Hope they have a really bad freak-out some day and wake up.

Object lesson: the outward appearance of funkitude often belies a nature as stupid as any lager lad.
Posted by gyrus
12th April 2000ce

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