Circle Cemetery

America's First National Pagan Burial Ground
Preserving Nature & Greening the End of Life
(608) 924-2216 * circle@circlesanctuary.org

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Circle Cemetery, established in 1995, is the first exclusively Green cemetery to be established in Wisconsin and one of the first in the United States. As with other Green or Conservation cemeteries, Circle Cemetery combines environmental preservation with placement of cremains and non-embalmed full body burials.

Located just north of Barneveld, Wisconsin, Circle Cemetery is 20 acres in size and includes woodlands, a restored prairie, and a forested ridgetop. The cemetery is part of the 200-acre Circle Sanctuary Nature Preserve, owned and operated since 1983 by Circle Sanctuary.

Circle Cemetery is the final resting place for remains of practitioners of a variety of forms of Nature religion, plus those of other faiths and philosophies. Although operated by Circle Sanctuary, an international non-profit Ecospirituality resource center and Wiccan church, it is not necessary to have been a member in order to be eligible for interment in the cemetery.

Recumbent granite markers with names, dates, and memorial messages are options for marking gravesites in some of the wooded areas of the cemetery. For natural burials, a body needs to be unembalmed and in a shroud, pine box, wicker casket, or other biodegradable container. Cremains can be scattered or interred in the woodlands of the cemetery, and can be scattered in the restored prairie.

Atop the wooded ridge of Circle Cemetery is Veterans Ridge that includes US Department of Veterans Affairs issued gravestones marking the interred cremains of Wiccan/Pagan veterans.

Circle Cemetery has several outdoor areas for memorial services and funerals, including a microlithic Stone Circle in an Oak grove atop a naturally occurring mound.

Circle Cemetery is open to visitors at a variety of events throughout the year, and at other times by advance arrangement.

For more information and to make arrangements for cremains placement, body burials, and memorial markers, please contact:

Selena Fox, Circle Cemetery Director
circle@circlesanctuary.org
(608) 924-2216
Circle Cemetery, PO Box 9, Barneveld, WI 53507