Team First Light! I’ve got some news for you -- something to while away the time while you wait for our publication in May.
If you’re going to be in or even near Cheshire next month, there’s a real treat available on March 12th. Professor Ronald Hutton, one of our contributors -- and who is an authority on British folklore, pre-Christian religion and contemporary Paganism -- will be giving a talk on Britain’s Pagan Heritage at Terra Nova School, Jodrell Bank, at 3.00 pm that day -- and event sponsored by The Blackden Trust.
And Alan will be there to introduce him. The two first met around the fire of a restored Iron Age hut in Dorset ten years ago and have been talking around the fire in the chimney of the Tudor Old Medicine House in Blackden on and off ever since. At the moment, they are wondering why the men that built the railway bridges between Sandbach and Wilmslow in 1840 carved the outlines of hands and shoes in the coping stones. (Yes, really. I've seen them.)
In the lecture, Ronald Hutton will show that Britain has one of the richest, most complex and most inspiring heritages of monuments and texts left by pre-Christian religions of any country in Europe. He will answer the questions of why that is, and why that heritage matters; and what difficulties and opportunities it poses for us in the modern world.
Now, I’ll let you into a little secret. Two of them, in fact. That meeting between Ronald and Alan? Well, I was there. It was my first visit to the Ancient Technology Centre (isn’t that a great name?) in Dorset; I watched how fire was made, from the spark of friction; and I saw the spark between Alan and Ronald! That was some years ago now, but one of the reasons it stays so clearly in my mind was that it was the first time I heard Ronald speak, the first time I found myself thinking (as I have quite a few times since), oh, heck, I wish I’d gone to Bristol to study history so I could hear this all the time. Professor Hutton is a spellbinding talker, that I promise you.
Tickets are £10. What a bargain! Click here for the events page of The Blackden Trust, and magick yourself to Cheshire for what is bound to be a spellbinding event.