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You are designing a ritual to be enacted around a standing stone. The ritual includes three constituent parts:
What does a standing stone do?
Raised in 2021, the Bull Stone stands at Sweetwood Temenos, a pagan land sanctuary in southwestern Witchconsin's legendary Driftless Area. Born in the bed of an inland ocean, old before dinosaurs walked the Earth, the six-foot, one ton slab of karst limestone is the standing stone that I know best.
So what does the Bull Stone do?
Its long axis aligns with the Sun, pointing to the places on the horizon where the Sun rises and sets on the day of the Winter Solstice.
Its short axis aligns with Earth: with both a notch on the southern horizon, some two miles distant, where two ridges come together and, to the north, with the sanctuary's Grand Circle.
What does a standing stone do? Easily told.
A worshiper crowns a standing stone with a wreath of flowers.
A worshiper sets a pewter unicorn on top of a standing stone.
Which of these two is the worthy offering?
Here's how you determine worthiness: focus. Does the offering enhance, or does it detract? To rephrase: what do you see first?
When you approach the standing stone crowned with the wreath, you see the standing stone. In fact, your appreciation of said stone is enhanced by knowing that someone else has venerated the Stone by giving it a gift.
When, however, you approach the standing stone with the unicorn statue sitting on top, you don't even see the standing stone. Because the human eye is drawn to the anomalous, what you see first is the unicorn. The stupid little geegaw has reduced the Stone to mere platform.
The wreath stays.
The unicorn, though, has got to go.
(The lone exception to the rule against setting something on top of a standing stone that I know of: When you sacrifice to a standing stone, it is acceptable to leave the severed head of the sacrificed animal on top of the Stone. This, by tradition, is counted as an enhancement, if a terrible one.)
It's the heart of pagan worship to treat the icon as you would treat a person. To crown someone with flowers is an act of honoring.
To put a pewter unicorn on someone's head is not even to be thought of.
A Visit to Pagan Island
A row of standing stones runs along the spine of the long, narrow river island.
In the dream, I'm in Wales, visiting the old Selene farm in Carmarthenshire, which during the 70s and early 80s was home to the Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland. It was from these good folks that I learned ritual and how to think in Pagan. It was in this soil that my pagan roots first grew deep.
The river in the dream, though, is clearly the Mississippi, along whose banks I now live. In the logic of dreams, the meaning is clear enough.
When we finally manage to get out to the island—did we swim? boat? teleport?—we discover something very interesting indeed. The long row of standing stones that line the island's ridge are not raised stones. These stones are a part of the island itself, living rock rearing to the sky, grown here like the trees themselves.
In the dream, I think of the immemorial sanctity of river islands. I remember the self-manifest lingams of India, most sacred of all lingams. These are self-manifest standing stones, most powerful of all.
We link hands and begin to dance. Down along the full row we dance, weaving in and out of the standing stones as we go.
