Her pagan roots

Let’s hear it for Stonehenge in our post-Christian age (common era, you know):

“It means a lot to us … being British and following our pagan roots,” said Victoria Campbell, who sported a pair of white angel’s wings and had a mass of multicolored flowers in her hair.

The 29-year-old Londoner, who works in the finance industry, also said that “getting away from the city” was a major draw.

She was celebrating the solstice in an all-night party.  With her and others was

Gina Pratt, a 43-year-old housewife and a self-described witch, [who] said being inside the circle as the sun came up gave her “a kind of a grounding feeling (of) being in touch with the earth again, and the air we breathe.”

Is this what Browning meant when he wrote

Oh, to be in England

Now that April’s there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England – now!

I doubt it, but probably not

Pratt, who wore a cape of crushed red velvet and wielded an amethyst-tipped wand [and] said the event gave rise to conflicting emotions.

“It makes you feel small and insignificant … but it makes you feel like you’re here for a reason.”

For more of Browning, go here.

For more about Stonehenge, scroll down in this same Christian Science Monitor article.

For more about the summer solstice, look out the window.