Rollo Maughfling is the Archdruid of Stonehenge and Britain. [1] He is a long-time campaigner for the restoration of traditional rights of access to druidic sites, and respect for ancient druidic rituals. He is also a founder member of the Council of British Druid Orders. [2]
Rollo Maughfling was born in Cornwall, the son of an agricultural contractor and from an early age came into contact with Druidic culture, being taken to Druidic ceremonies from the age of four. His father was a close friend of the Archdruid and Grand Bard of Cornwall. Rollo was educated at Bryanston School [3] before leaving for London and becoming involved in the 1960s counter-culture publication The International Times as well as making friends with John Michell and encountering Alex Sanders. [4]
At the age of 16 Rollo left his school and home behind to move to London, becoming involved with the underground newspaper The International Times and establishing the Notting Hill Free School. In the early 70s he retreated to Glastonbury where he would spend the next seventeen years practising as a psychotherapist while developing interests in alternative medicine, Druidism and megalithic culture. [1]
Rollo became head of The Glastonbury Order of Druids in 1970, with a ceremony being made for the order to go public on Glastonbury Tor on May Day 1988. This was followed by another ceremony at Stonehenge during Summer Solstice of the same year. [5] As Archdruid of Glastonbury and England Rollo presides over seventeen different Druid orders representing some 15,000 Druids. He has described Druidry as "the nature religion of Albion" and considers animism and the spirits of trees to be important, particularly the oak. Rollo sometimes uses a primary chant of three vowels I-A-O to represent the three Druidic rays of light. [1]
In 1988 Rollo was approached by representatives of different Druid orders where he was officially ordained as Archdruid of Britain. A year later The Council of British Druid Orders was formed in an attempt to reclaim rights of access to Stonehenge. [1]
In 2009 Rollo was involved in efforts to rebury Charlie, a skeletal human remain on display at the National trust museum in Avebury. [6]
Rollo has continued to work for free and open access to Stonehenge through meetings involving the local council of Salisbury and other interested parties including other Druid groups and individuals, the National Trust, English Heritage and the police. As part of this effort he has also exercised influence over the traffic regulation enquiries for this area. [7] Rollo has led public demonstrations against a tunnel being built underneath the stones. [8] He has also been successful in efforts to fund an illuminated acoustic stage during open access. [9]
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones. Inside these are free-standing trilithons, two bulkier vertical sarsens joined by one lintel. The whole monument, now ruinous, is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred tumuli.
William Stukeley was an English antiquarian, physician and Anglican clergyman. A significant influence on the later development of archaeology, he pioneered the scholarly investigation of the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire. He published over twenty books on archaeology and other subjects during his lifetime.
Avebury is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in southwest England. One of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. It is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans.
A gorsedd is a community or meeting of modern-day bards. The word is of Welsh origin, meaning "throne". It is spelled gorsedh in Cornish and goursez in Breton.
Archdruid is the title used by the presiding official of the Gorsedd. The Archdruid presides over the most important ceremonies at the National Eisteddfod of Wales including the Crowning of the Bard, the award of the Prose Medal and the Chairing of the Bard. Although Iolo Morganwg was the first to preside over the Gorsedd when the National Eisteddfod came into being, his successor David Griffith, under the bardic name "Clwydfardd", was the first to be known by the official title "Archdruid".
The Stonehenge Free Festival was a British free festival from 1974 to 1984 held at the prehistoric monument Stonehenge in England during the month of June, and culminating with the summer solstice on or near 21 June. It emerged as the major free festival in the calendar after the violent suppression of the Windsor Free Festival in August 1974, with Wally Hope providing the impetus for its founding, and was itself violently suppressed in 1985 in the Battle of the Beanfield, with no free festival held at Stonehenge since although people have been allowed to gather at the stones again for the solstice since 1999.
The Battle of the Beanfield took place over several hours on 1 June 1985, when Wiltshire Police prevented The Peace Convoy, a convoy of several hundred New Age travellers, from setting up the 1985 Stonehenge Free Festival in Wiltshire, England. The police were enforcing a High Court injunction obtained by the authorities prohibiting the 1985 festival from taking place. Around 1,300 police officers took part in the operation against approximately 600 travellers.
The prehistoric monument of Stonehenge has long been studied for its possible connections with ancient astronomy. The site is aligned in the direction of the sunrise of the summer solstice and the sunset of the winter solstice. Archaeoastronomers have made a range of further claims about the site's connection to astronomy, its meaning, and its use.
This is a list of Stonehenge replicas and derivatives that seeks to collect all the non-ephemeral examples together. The fame of the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge in England has led to many efforts to recreate it, using a variety of different materials, around the world. Some have been carefully built as astronomically aligned models whilst others have been examples of artistic expression or tourist attractions.
Boscawen-Ûn is a Bronze Age stone circle close to St Buryan in Cornwall, UK. It consists of nineteen upright stones in an ellipse with another, leaning, middle stone just south of the centre. There is a west-facing gap in the circle, which may have formed an entrance. The elliptical circle has diameters 24.9 and 21.9 metres. It is located at grid reference SW412274.
Ellen Evert Hopman is an author of both fiction and non-fiction, an herbalist, a lay homeopath, a lecturer, and a Mental Health Counselor who lives and works in Western Massachusetts. She is the author of several books and audio tapes on Paganism and Druidry, and three novels. She is a certified writing teacher with Amherst Writers and Artists and a multiple recipient of the Golden Oak Award. She was formerly a Professor of Wortcunning at the Grey School of Wizardry, where she taught herbalism, Celtic Neopaganism, Celtic history and Celtic lore. She is a professional member of the American Herbalist Guild. and a member of the Grey Council of Mages and Sages. She has taught Druidry and herbalism in the United States, Scotland, Ireland and Canada, and has been a speaker and workshop leader at numerous Neopagan and New Age events, and a subject of articles in The New York Times.
Stonehenge has been the subject of many theories about its origin, ranging from the academic worlds of archaeology to explanations from mythology and the paranormal.
The Druid Order is a contemporary druidry fraternal order, founded in 1909 by George Watson MacGregor Reid in the United Kingdom. At various times it has also been known as The Ancient Druid Order, An Druidh Uileach Braithreachas, and The British Circle of the Universal Bond. Initiated members are called companions.
Arthur Uther Pendragon is a British eco-campaigner, Neo-Druid leader, media personality, and self-declared reincarnation of King Arthur, a name by which he is also known. Pendragon was the "battle chieftain" of the Council of British Druid Orders.
Bringing Back the Bluestones is a stage play by Derek Webb about a pressure group from Pembrokeshire campaigning to have the Stonehenge bluestones returned to Wales. It followed the fortunes of Roy Brown as he sets up the group, Carreg Las, and campaigns for the return of the stones to the Preseli Hills.
Owen Morgan, also known by his bardic name Morien was a Welsh journalist, and a writer of books on the subject of neo-druidism. Morgan developed the mythology of both Iolo Morganwg and Myfyr Morganwg, and his druidical writing is not taken seriously by historians.
Mike Pitts, is an English freelance journalist and archaeologist who specialises in the study of British prehistory. He is the author of several books on the subject, and is the editor of British Archaeology, the publication of the Council for British Archaeology.
Druidry, sometimes termed Druidism, is a modern spiritual or religious movement that promotes the cultivation of honorable relationships with the physical landscapes, flora, fauna, and diverse peoples of the world, as well as with nature deities, and spirits of nature and place. Theological beliefs among modern Druids are diverse; however, all modern Druids venerate the divine essence of nature.
The Council of British Druid Orders is a neo-pagan group established in 1989 which was originally formed to facilitate ceremonies at Stonehenge. The Council's founder, Tim Sebastion, used the title "Archdruid of Wiltshire, Chosen Chief of the Secular Order of Druids, Conservation Officer for the Council of British Druid Orders and Bard of the Gorsedd of Caer Abiri (Avebury)."
