The Solstice of the Great Bear by Byron Ballard

The following story is about peace on an environmental scale and draws on the history of my spiritual path as both a Wiccan and a modern Pagan. It is an excerpt from a longer performance piece called “The Solstice of the Great Bear”, that grew out of my play “The Burning Times: a Study of the Continuing Inquisition”.

It was then I saw him, in the shadow of the stones, a deeper shadow. Sometimes the Old Gods appear among the great stones and at first I thought I was being given a vision. I made myself very still and watched. My granddam had told me that in days gone by, the Goddess herself would appear with her serving women. Or the ghosts of heroes would be seen wandering lost and along among the stones, their long swords heavy in their hands.

So I waited, holding the bowl against my chest and trying not to move. The shadow crept from the westerly stones toward the north. It was low and long and moved slowly. I knew it was one thing--but what thing was it? Not a villager or a cow or a pig. The darkness of it flowed past the wooden pole and stopped at the altar. Then it seemed to shift itself and it rose up so that it stood like a man. I thought it was a man then, a stranger from Wales or the North, come to say his prayers in the old way. It happens sometimes even now that a family wearing ragged clothes will appear in the village and ask to sit among the stones. They are foreigners to be sure, Cornish or even Irish, and their eyes are grey and far-seeing.

The moon was above me now, whiter than the hills. A cloud of snow rose as the shadow slapped its hands on the altar and I guessed what it was. The bear stood, swaying, its paws covered with the snow from the stone. As I crept nearer, I could hear its snuffling. It was eating the apples that are always left at the circle from the final harvest. The bear had a dainty way about it, taking one pippin at a time and mashing it in the great maw of its mouth.

Now, in those days, I was sometimes a fearful child. So I don’t know what gave me the fire to step into that ring of stone with a creature I’d never seen. I came as far as the eastern upright and leaned against it, somehow feeling safe to have the stones between myself and the bear. I smelt the apples, sweet on the air. I head the little sounds the bear made, the chewing and swallowing. I even smelt the bear, a dark and old smell, like the straw at the blacksmith’s.

The sounds changed then and I froze where I was. What was it doing? I heard a bump and a thud, muffled by the snow. The sounds went away from me and then came back. Away and back, again and again. I screwed up my courage and leaned around the side to look inside.

There in the circle, under the eye of the wide moon, the bear was dancing the ring. I know it sounds daft but I swear by holly and oak that it’s true. I watched it shuffle from north to west to south to east and back again to the north. At each great stone, it rose on its hind legs and turned its body in an arc. Then shuffled on again. Graceful but slow, like a shy maiden on the village green. Round and round, widdershins, dancing the ring under the solstice moon.

Who knows how long it would have danced, alone in that holy place? But my hands were so cold that the bowl fell from my grip and rolled away from me. The bear stopped then, reared itself up and looked at me and at the moon. He turned once to the altar and once more to me and then he was gone, away to the west. His tracks deep in the new snow. I watched him go until he disappeared in the Old Forest.

Since that time, I’ve seen a tame dancing bear at St. Ives. Some foreigner had it on a rope and dressed it in a cap and breeches. But it wasn’t the same. That bear came from some foreign place and it was small and crabbed and moved as though its paws were sore. It was a sad sight and made me shake my head that a man could so mistreat a beast. We are the worst of the animals, never forget it. We’ve lost the knack of getting on with the rest of the creatures and somehow think we’re the best of them. But we’re not. We’re as lost and alone as those knights among the stones. Perhaps if we spent more time dancing the ring and less time minding our neighbors’ business and being his judge and jury, we might remember that we are animals, too. Like the snake and the toad and the bear. All part of the same world, all children of one Mother.

Byron Ballard
Asheville's Village Witch
www.citizen-times.com/villagewitch