Newly religious use

With the rediscovery and diffusion of classical literature after the Renaissance was an increasing interest in the Druids, are mentioned in ancient texts. Since the scientific exploration of the history was still in its infancy, Stonehenge has been assigned as pre-Roman temple of the Druids. This erroneous connection is still influential. In 1781 the Englishman Henry Hurle had founded a secret society called the "Ancient Order of Druids. Although the interest in Druids in the middle of the 19th Waning century, were incurred by the religious orders Communities persist. Their trips to Stonehenge always attracted and spectators. A striking example is the ceremony of the Ancient Order of Druids in August of 1905, when 700 members gathered at Stonehenge this order and ceremoniously received 256 candidates in their order. Today, the modern Druids are a part of the new religious landscape, especially the neo-paganism. They meet regularly at Stonehenge and then hold their ceremonies.

The summer solstice at Stonehenge in 1972 was the first time in Britain this time one of the popular "Free Festival" was organized. The Stonehenge Free Festival was held over the years, emerging as a leader, in 1984 estimated 70,000 visitors gathered at the stone circle and celebrated with live music and also with various Druidic and pagan rites, the solstice.

In 1985 it came before the festival, visitors to violent conflict with the police ( "battle of the Beanfield"), whereupon the police, forbade the festival at Stonehenge and the area, particularly to the solstices and the equinoxes for all visitors barred widely .
1998, small groups of neo-pagans have been (including druids again) left in the stone circle, and reached the turn of the millennium "Secular Order of Druids" by invoking the right of free exercise of religion, that the Assembly ban was lifted for Stonehenge.

Stonehenge in the esoteric
The amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins (1855-1935) introduced in the 20s of the 20th Century, a theory according to which the prehistoric megalithic monuments - including Stonehenge - by so-called ley lines, straight lines are interconnected. Watkins had in mind, however, to real pathways. The author John Michell (b. 1933) took up this argument, he pointed lines in his 1969 book The View Over Atlantis, but no more than means, but brought the ley lines in connection with Earth's magnetic force fields, and "power centers".

This view found in the following years, among the adherents of the esoteric until very recently it quickly many adherents. Thus Michell's thesis should be evidence that the prehistoric builders of Stonehenge and similar megalithic monuments still in perfect harmony with the universe lived and could intuitively centers such "lines of force" and "-" in which they will for example, built temples such as Stonehenge. Neither physicists, geologists, historians or archaeologists has found evidence for this view.