Stonehenge, Trigger Warnings, and the Hierophant
snowflakes, orange dye, and a quote by Judi Dench
(tw: discussion of sexual assault and abuse)
On June 19, just before the Summer Solstice, members of Just Stop Oil threw orange-dyed cornflour at Stonehenge as a way of demanding that the next UK government end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Okay, I’m being flippant.
The truth is, I had a very angry draft of this essay planned and almost finished, and then as I reached the conclusion and looked back at what I’d written, I realised that all of the perfunctory disclaimers I’d put in were true: this issue is complicated.
In the first flush of outrage about what had happened, and seeing so many other people in the pagan and witchy community talking about this, my feeling about the matter was: it’s a shocking thing that this happened, but it’s an even more shocking thing that this had to happen. I don’t understand people who clutch their pearls and use this as an excuse to write off JSO as idiots and extremists—as though having extreme feelings about our dying planet is a bad thing.
I still stand by that.
But as I was writing out my anger, I kept coming back to my initial thought, which was how the Hierophant card tied into all of this. And as I read back what I’d written, I realised I wasn’t actually paying attention to what the Hierophant had to say. I was soap-boxing without listening because of my own personal feelings, not just about what happened at Stonehenge, but also about a theme that the Hierophant presents, which is this:
Ideas vs Individuals.
It’s fitting that the Hierophant card so often shows a Pope because there aren’t many places where the conflict between the Individual and a Greater Idea is so obvious as in religion.
My childhood was full of stories of the martyrs. The Free Presbyterians could not get enough of stories of the Killing Times, and I heard the accounts of the two Margarets, Tyndale, Latimer, Ridley, Jim Elliot, and the Ten Boom family over and over again.
These were people who gave their lives for their faith. The Kingdom of Heaven was bigger than them, and there was nothing more powerful than dying in the name of Jesus.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. It is sweet and noble to die for one’s country.
The Idea — staying true to one’s Christian faith — was bigger than the Individual. It was more important than life, more important than death. It was worth anything to know that the Idea was secure and infallible.
My pondering about martyrs made me think of another common conversation in my online circles: trigger warnings.
Whenever this topic comes up, there are always people who insist that trigger warnings shouldn’t be used. It’s not even that they see trigger warnings as unnecessary; they see them as actively damaging the arts. How can you be moved by a story if you know what’s coming? The point of art is to move, to shock, to create emotion in its viewers. Trigger warnings are neutering powerful stories and rendering art impotent.
“Theatre needs to be alive and in the present. It’s the shock, it’s the unexpected, that’s what makes the theatre so exciting.” —Ralph Fiennes
“I can see why [trigger warnings] exist, but if you’re that sensitive, don’t go to the theatre, because you could be very shocked. Where is the surprise of seeing and understanding it in your own way?” —Judi Dench
At one point in my life, I would have agreed with that line of thinking, but now, whenever I think about trigger warnings, I think about Downton Abbey Season 4 Episode 3.
Even if you’ve never watched Downton Abbey, you probably have an idea of it through reputation. It’s soapy, it’s fluffy, it’s “oh no! our heroine has been jilted at the altar because their fiancee found out they did an indiscretion!” Bad things happen in the show, but they’re the Bad Things of a TV show. Downton Abbey is so removed from real life that none of its drama feels particularly threatening or hard-hitting, and that’s the point of it — it’s a cosy period show about rich privileged people doing rich and privileged things.
Until Season 4 Episode 3, when one of the most inoffensive and mild-mannered characters in the entire cast gets brutally raped by a visiting stranger’s valet.
It was a controversial storytelling decision when it happened, not just because it felt like the old “eh, the show’s kind of sagging, time to throw in some rape to make things interesting again” contrivance, but also because that kind of thing didn’t happen in Downton.
I stopped watching the show not long after this, so I don’t know how the rest of it progressed, but when I watched it, Downton’s drama was secret love children, having to downsize the east wing, the footman is in love with the kitchen maid, maybe a car accident or two if Julian Fellowes was feeling spicy. This kind of real-life trauma didn’t happen in Downton, so this episode came completely out of left field.
In a delicious twist of fate, when I watched this episode, I was in the throes of recovering from my own experience of abuse, which I had yet to tell anyone about. I was watching Downton Abbey for my usual slice of period fluffiness. I could cope with someone Tragically Dying In Childbirth or Tragically Dying In An Automobile Accident or Tragically Going Down With The Titanic, but I didn’t expect to suddenly hear Anna’s panicked, desperate screams as she tried to fight off her attacker and the terrible aftermath of her begging Mrs Hughes not to tell anyone about what happened.
I was tuning in to escape reality, not lean into it, and if I’d known what was in store, I wouldn’t have watched that episode that night.
So when people talk about trigger warnings pulling the teeth of art that is meant to startle and surprise and move, when they bemoan how sensitive we are these days, how the point of storytelling is to make you feel something, what I hear is that for those folk, Art Trumps People.
The Story Is More Important Than The Audience.
The Idea Is Greater Than The Individual.
So when it comes to Stonehenge, where is the Idea?
Is Stonehenge and its sacred status the Idea, and everyone living on Earth the Individual?
Is the planet the Idea, and Stonehenge the Individual?
The Hierophant talks about the structures and ideas and hierarchies that we hold dear. It questions the line between the individual and the system. It asks us to think about when those structures serve us and when they don’t. When we should roll with the status quo and when we need to tear it down.
I don’t know where the line between Idea and Individual is in this situation. I feel like prioritising a sacred space over the sacred people who call this rock their home is a shortsighted foolishness, but I also feel like disregarding the importance of the Idea—which is often the only thing that makes this existence tolerable—is a bad move in another direction.
So I don’t know.
The only thing I do know is that Stonehenge is currently under threat from greater forces than Just Stop Oil and more immediate damage than dyed cornflour. The Stonehenge Alliance is currently campaigning against plans to widen the motorway where it passes by the stones. If the proposed changes are made, it will see a rise in carbon emissions, harm the nesting sites of local birds, and damage the archeological landscape of this historic site.
Check out the Stonehenge Alliance website and sign their petition to stop this proposal.
Absolutely nailing it as always!