We have deliberately allowed the devil not to have his thistled acre, but full run of the country. That fallow was much needed, and we can see the benefit in brighter air, a surge in fledgling numbers and less broken bodies on the roads. As an antidote to hubris, we perhaps all needed to see a world without humans. The great Cornish festivals in Padstow and Helston did not resound to Napoleonic drum and brass band, the streets undanced on Flora Day, the Dragon and the Devil not expelled. But others have brought in the May. Nature has incredible powers of renewal; yet we are not foolish enough to believe that this respite marks an end to the insult. For us it is a time of quiet listening and the small actions of restitution within our power. 

We granted ourselves a handful of long walks in the last long eight weeks, up the river valleys, over stepping stones and on to some tucked away sites. We surprised a great barred buzzard, who lifted a metre and a half of wingspan into an endless effortless gyre, and crawled through a hole in the blackthorn hedge – to navigate past a great Celtic bull wedged in his neolithic cot – to get to the stones we sought.

Finally the restrictions have eased, allowing us access to more of the land, so we followed the great scythe of Mount's Bay, into the maze of lanes of our sister peninsula and, ultimately, the storm wall of the tin coast. It is rare in our small paradise to not suffer under a weight of tourists; the newest industry is beauty, and, in its way, as destructive as the dead blood of tin and arsenic which bittered the Atlantic cauldron and poisoned the mermaids. We found the necropolis on the cliff edge, dredged out from the mine tailings by Borlase the younger, and though empty as a skull, it maintains its long gaze towards the setting sun.  

But I have rushed ahead, past the massy weight of the Blind Fiddler, who peeks over the hedgerow, bearded with lichen, and then onto a lay-by drowsy with dust. Sunk in bluebells and following tumbling drunk red-tailed bumblebees, clacked at by stonechats from under their black hats, we made our way to one of the most sacred sites in the West. 

Boscawen-Un is the prettiest circle you could imagine, nineteen stones with a central leader raked at a sundial angle by treasure hunters’ spades some centuries back. Though off-angle to the heavens, those axe heads on the central stone are now thought to be feet, and the nubs above, breasts. The complex runs to the metonic clock, aligns with the midsummer moon, to which the single quartz in the granite bezel attests. St Buryan’s church looks on with the distant disapproval of its late solar saviour, himself pinned to a Celtic chariot wheel. Here they held the first modern Gorsedh, sky-blue thinking that a dead language would speak again, whilst the Giant, London, gorged itself on the prettiest villages. Here come the witches by night, here come the dread travellers, the antiquarians, the ufonauts, the neopagans, the hikers, the wild campers, the dog walkers with their tossed knotted shit-bags. 

Out of time, and out of reach from tourism with the pandemic, we had it to ourselves. It was not a time to invoke garbled god-names. The opportunity to be uninterrupted meant crow work to be done, the careful wriggling out of the gaudy things that the idiots have left in a tide that has paused, in part, for the past eight weeks. That is the ritual that I perform most at these sites, that and quiet contemplation. 

May they never return. 

At the first gate, carved in stone no less, are the basic rules: No fires, no digging holes, no offerings, no damage to plants or the environment. But the sheer spiritual entitlement of many visitors means that those can be ignored.

May they never return. 

I am still furious, and so here is my autopsy report from half an hour of crow work. This is an archaeology of ignorance, of the new agers, neopagans and witches who know better than the land. The polite signs are ignored or overlooked, they do not work, there are only two sets of actions that will: the patient removal of debris by groups and individuals, and the cursing of all the items found on site. I know many of you do this already. But let us continue to underline the message in our communities: leave no trace at sacred sites. 

Autopsy report

Dead weight: 1014 grammes

Bluebells, torn flowers, assorted sticks
Foreign rose and thorn stems
Wooden stick, bird headed, black with stippled yellow and bands, with organic residue, ritually broken (?)
Further wooden objects, with yellow and blue paint
Clouties, nylon × 4
Red fuse wire circlet. Fuse wire, fucking plastic coated fuse wire
Conkers, horse chestnut
Paraffin wax tea light, half burned
Paper spell fragment, sticky taped to forked stick ‘stang’
Terracotta pixie head (hung from a nearby thorn tree)
Assorted broken jewellery: wooden bracelet, wooden beads, woven bracelet, heart earring, buttons, pinhead sized turquoise beads
Dog tag, ‘Gollop’ with phone number
Nylon ivy leaf detached from a neopagan headdress
Purple nylon mojo bag with dripped wax
Rune stone marked with Sowilo
Bird token, handmade, stamped
Flat hammered lamella, un-inscribed
Potsherds, various, modern
Seashells, predominantly mussel and limpet
Human hair and organic matter
Brigid’s cross pendant, silver-coloured metal
Stone, with painted heart
Crystals: quartz, rose quartz, labradorite, amethyst, and various tumble stones
£2.23 in loose change, comprising 1 × £1, 5 × 2p, 1 × 50p, 1 × 10p, 2 × 20p 8 × 1p, 3 × 5p. All modern issue
One foreign coin: Barbados quarter

Actions

All items removed. 

Organic and spell material, burned with muttered curse.
Coins, washed in vinegar and given to charity.
Stones, pebbles and shells returned to local beaches.
Made objects destroyed with sledgehammer and treated as defixiones for ritual disposal.
Crystals submerged in running water and exorcised with salt, then given to be ground to sand by the sea.

I understand that these actions are an inevitable part of human ritual behaviour, of an impulse towards the sacred, but you are not listening to the land or its custodians. I am out here doing crow work in all weathers, and you may not like the result.

May they never return.