The View from Handscrabble Creek By Charles S. Clifton We moved into our new house at the Fall Equinox. We were sensitized to the date even if the chaos of moving precluded formal ritual. We watched the sun go down behind the western ridge as we drank beer among the chaos of cardboard boxes. Conveniently, it dropped right into an obvious notch formed by the Lewis Creek drainage. Unfortunately, we were away from home at Yule, so we could not determine a solstice sunrise or sunset point. But, the spring equinox and summer solstice are coming, and by then the ground will have softened enough that we can plant some sticks to start marking sight lines from whatever we chose as the Sacred Observation Spot. Right now, that looks like directly above the septic tank, but then we would not be good Pagans if we didn't respect the powers of earth, death and decay. One method for laying out a henge came originally from Frederick Adams, co-founder of a Pagan group called Feraferia that was most active in the Los Angeles area in the 1970's. It relies not on sunrise and sunset points, but on a polar alignment. First, mark the center of the circle with a stake. Using a line attached to that stake, mark the circumference. The overall diameter should be at least ten feet and preferably more. Dig a shallow ditch around the circumference of the circle, at least eight inches wide and deep, to represent the round river of the sacred year. Next, on the first clear night, drive a stake near the inside edge of the ditch in line with the center and the North Star. This stake marks the Yule Point. The following day, draw a diameter from the Yule Point through the center and make its endpoint the Midsummer Point. In a similar manner, Adams continued, mark off the East and West points. I assume that he meant to mark another diameter at right angles to the first. Finally, mark the midpoints between these cardinal points. All eight points should be permanently marked by posts or stone menhirs. In Adams' ritual language, you have then erected the temple of Great Nature, mandala of the sacred year, psycho-cosmic tuning dial of an eternal metamorphosis through perennial sacrament. Yes, you could look at a compass, and having determined from a topographic map the difference between magnetic and true north for your area, do it all in the day time. But I think the night observation of the Pole Star is crucial in starting the process of psychocosmic tuning. This tuning requires feet on the ground, eyes on the sky, and a feeling of connectedness at both ends. In addition, the polar alignment speaks to a long tradition within magickal religion, an underground stream, as a brilliant new book puts it, to the more common set of symbols associated with the Sun and the direction of East. In the Northern Hemisphere, the North is the quarter of darkness; this fact has often been seen as symbolizing the individualistic, esoteric spiritual path, sacred to the Old Gods. This association is just one reason that many covens place their altars in the north; the Craft is not a solar cult nor even always a lunar one. The book I referred to is Arktos, by Joscelyn Godwin, an outstanding historian of esoteric thought, and published recently in paperback (at $16.95) by Phanes Press. Its subtitle is The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival, although in fact, only two of eighteen chapters are concerned with the esoteric roots of Nazism. I recommend it. Henge-building, meanwhile, may even become a new form of yard art. Just before this last move, I noticed a circle of rocks about twenty feet across complete with foot high trilithons had appeared in the side yard of a house down the street from our former home in Canon City, Colorado. I was uncertain how to interpret it; my neighbor was not known to me as Pagan, but he and his wife did invite us to a Beltane (they called it that too) bonfire party with all kinds of good food and drink. He was wearing a black T-shirt with a picture of Stonehenge and the words Orthodox Druid. I think our hosts' outlook was more pan-Celtic folkloric than anything, but with a glass of Hennessy cognac in hand, I was not about to quibble over labels. Chas Clifton lives in the Wet Mountains of Southern Colorado. He edits Llewellyn Publications' Witchcraft Today series, which includes The Modern Craft Movement, Rites of Passage, and an anthology on Witchcraft and Shamanism. This syndicated article provided through the WPPA. | 
