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Stonehenge was not originally
built by the Druids; no one seems
to know for sure who or why it was built, though it may have
been an ancient observatory.
The historically
rich and lore loaded Great Britain holds yet another tradition:
that the boy Jesus lived there for a time. Sandwiched between
the Roman invasion and King Author tales of the Grail quest
lies a persistent tradition that Jesus, members of his disciple
group and family, at one time or another, stayed in the various
places in or near Glastonbury.
Joseph
of Arimathea(the man who was later given Jesus’s body
and laid it in the tomb) figures significantly in these traditions,
of which there are at least four. Summarizing them, Joseph
of Arimathea was a tin merchant who had mining interests in
the Glastonbury region of England. He took the boy Jesus with
him on at least one of his trips to the British Isles. They
traveled by ship and arrived in southwestern England. From
there, Joseph toured the mines in Cornwall and Somerset County
where Jesus learned how to extract the tin and purge it from
its ore. An old saying emerging from Priddy, a mining village
in the Mendip Hills of Somerset county is: “As sure
as Our Lord was at Priddy...”
What did Jesus do while in England besides learn the tin trade?
Writings dated around A.D. 550 by Taliesin, the Prince-Bard
Druid may suggest Jesus began an early teaching ministry:
“Christ, the Word from the beginning, was from the beginning
our teacher, and we never lost His teaching.” Though
these words could imply something more spiritual than the
earthbound boy Jesus imparting Knowledge to the Druids, Jesus
Christ, nevertheless, had a profound impact on the future
of Druidism.
40 miles distant from Glastonbury is Stonehenge. This ancient
cluster of mysterious, upright granite rock forms is thought
to have been an important center of Druidism. Not much is
known about the true Druidic faith, however. Most of their
teachings were forgotten as they were first conquered by the
Romans and then became ideologically absorbed into Christianity.
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