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 Redruth, Cornwall in 1949. His father was an agricultural contractor. He came into contact with Druidic culture very early on in his life having 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 megalithic structure 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 and sunset on the winter 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. Born in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, as the son of a lawyer, Stukeley worked in his father's law business before attending Saint Benet's College, Cambridge. In 1709, he began studying medicine at St Thomas' Hospital, Southwark, before working as a general practitioner in Boston, Lincolnshire.
Avebury is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in south-west 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.
Durrington Walls is the site of a large Neolithic settlement and later henge enclosure located in the Stonehenge World Heritage Site in England. It lies 2 miles (3.2 km) north-east of Stonehenge in the parish of Durrington, just north of Amesbury in Wiltshire. The henge is the second-largest Late Neolithic palisaded enclosure known in the United Kingdom, after Hindwell in Wales.
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 Church of the Universal Bond, a religious group founded in Britain in the early twentieth century by George Watson MacGregor Reid, promoted socialist revolution, anti-imperialism and sun worship.
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, and its latitude in respect to the Great Pyramid and Equator is precisely defined by the silver ratio. 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.
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.
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.
C. Joshua Pollard is a British archaeologist who is a professor of archaeology at the University of Southampton. He gained his BA and PhD in archaeology from the Cardiff University, and is a specialist in the archaeology of the Neolithic period in the UK and north-west Europe, especially in relation to the study of depositional practices, monumentality, and landscape. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
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.
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)."
Gorsedd Cymru, or simply the Gorsedd or the Orsedd, is a society of Welsh-language poets, writers, musicians and others who have contributed to the Welsh language and to public life in Wales. Its aim is to honour such individuals and help develop and promote their fields in addition to maintaining relationships with other Celtic nations and Y Wladfa in Patagonia. The Gorsedd is most prominent at the National Eisteddfod of Wales where it is responsible for the main ceremonies held.
