n the far south-west of the British Isles, situated between the sea of the
Bristol Channel and two low ranges of hills called the Mendips and the Poldens, there lies
an enchanted area of land. It is an area that generates and guards a powerful magic. The
county that contains this land is Somerset and the geographical designation of this sacred
place has come to be known as the Isle of Avalon.
This romantic and mysterious tract of country has a long historical pedigree,
stretching back over countless millennia into eras of strange dreams and endless mystical
revelations. Human beings who come to Avalon strong in the disciplines of the Old
Knowledge are strangely transformed. They are fused into a form of cosmic consciousness
that reflects the patterns of esoteric memory that are shaped into the very landscape
itself. The focal point for the area and its arcane forces is Glastonbury, both the name
of a town and the symbol of a great and holy mystery.
The roots of this mystery have nothing to do with Christianity, which came late
to the area, first as an inheritor, then as a usurper, finally as a destroyer. They are
found through a synthesis of pagan ritual and natural, magical intuition, and they are so
old, deep and strong as to be inviolable to all forms of fleeting desecration. The key to
the secrets of Glastonbury and the whole Avalonian complex lies within the contours of the
landscape.
Once this is realized the pattern assumes its correct perspective and balances into a
satisfying coherence: magic and mysticism form a delicate equilibrial harmony that
fluctuates between microcosm and macrocosm. This of course needs some elucidation. As in
most tales of esoteric complexity, it is best to begin at the beginning, for the whole
panorama is more important and beautiful at its start than in its later misunderstood
manifestations.
The aura that surrounds the Isle of Avalon radiates a potent vibration, a vibration
first stemming from the personalities and skills of those human beings who came to its
environs during the so-called prehistoric days. Millennia before the advent of the Celtic
Druids (c.500s BC) there existed at Glastonbury a race of men who shaped the whole terrain
to form certain mystical and astrological patterns. In the mid-1920s these patterns were
rediscovered through the single-minded researches of a brilliantly intuitive woman,
Katharine Maltwood. Mrs Maltwood was a student of the Arthurian mysteries and Grail
legends (both integrally woven into Glastonbury’s later history) and she made her
redis- covery while studying large-scale maps of the countryside around Glastonbury Tor.
The Tor is a 522ft high mound that dominates the town of Glastonbury, which is built
upon and around its lower slopes. The hill is strongly pyramidal in shape and has upon its
green slopes the remnants of a seven-tiered labyrinth, while its summit is crowned with
the ruined tower of a fourteenth century church. The Tor and its attendant companion,
Chalice Hill, will be discussed later, but they are relevant here because they make up
part of the Aquarian effigy in that stupendous group of prehistoric monuments known as the
Glastonbury Zodiac.
It was this example of ancient technology and magic that Mrs Maltwood found laid out
upon the ground in giant forms, revealed only to those minds fired with the spirit of
mystical revelation. She published several books on the subject (including an aerial
survey) and the true proportions of this beautiful earth sculpture were made graphically
apparent. The Glastonbury Zodiac is one of those great ’hidden works’ that lies
at the roots of all countries’ lore and religion, blending physical and metaphysical
into a divine coherence.
The form of this terrestrial zodiac, as Mrs Maltwood (and countless later researchers)
have uncovered it, is circular with a circumference of thirty miles. Some of the effigies
are two or three miles long (eg. Leo, Sagittarius and Pisces) and they are all shaped
geomantically from natural features of the land. The effigies are delineated by hills,
earthworks, mounds, artificial water courses, old roads, footpaths, streams, and rivers.
Notwithstanding this, they all tally with the appropriate star constellations that shine
in the sky above them. In other words there was an organically real, natural formation of
topographical features forming the basic outlines of the astrological signs which were
adapted by shaping through geomancy to make the finished effigies realizable.
Both mystically and physically the earth was moulded to conform to the harmonies of the
terrestrial and celestial energy patterns. The grand design is fully apparent only at
heights of 20,000 feet and it is obvious that an elevated form of spiritual technology was
used to create it. An aerial perspective would have been essential to the logistics of the
scheme. The date of this supreme achievement of antiquity is obscure. Some researchers
push it as far back as the Atlantean era (10,000 BC) while others, with reference to such
works as the Dendarah Zodiac from Egypt, date it to 7000-8000 BC. Mrs Maltwood suggested
2700 BC as a recognition point.
Whatever the date of its initial shaping, the Glastonbury Zodiac set a permanent
mystical mark on this area of the British Isles that was the fountainhead for all that
followed. The later legends of the Round Table, giants, Arthurian quests for revelation
and the secrets of a lost coherence and sanctity, all stem from the memory of this great
work carved upon the face of Somerset by men of a forgotten era. They linked earth with
heaven in a direct cosmological unity that created the harmony of a now-vanished Golden
Age.
With the permanent sanctity of the Glastonbury area secured by the zodiacal figures, it
follows that down through the centuries men would be drawn to its lingering atmosphere of
magical potency. Sometime around 2000 BC a race of astronomer-priests came to Glastonbury
and erected various earthworks and standing stones within the precincts of the
Zodiac’s hallowed ground. Legend recounts that they constructed some form of stone
monument upon the summit of the Tor and that lines of single, free-standing menhirs were
laid out on the surrounding slopes of adjacent hills.
Recent work by Professor Alexander Thom, the foremost living expert on megalithic
geometry, has shown that the men of 2000 BC were capable of creating complex structures in
earth and stone that reflected precise mathematical, geometrical, astronomical and
astrological knowledge. Professor Thom, a laconic Scotsman who was Professor of
Engineering Science at Oxford, has examined the Glastonbury landscape and reached the
conclusion that it was laid out to form a lunar observatory where eclipses could be
predicted with great accuracy. He has computed that the positions of the stones fixed the
declinational and azimuthal passing points of the moon as it rose and set behind the Black
Mountains of distant Wales.
This exact knowledge shows that the human beings who lived and worked at Glastonbury,
at least in 2000 BC, had high cultural standards that must have been inherited from
earlier people, handed down as a mystical-scientific system from a time when the two were
co-terminous, not hopelessly fragmented as they are today.
Professor Thom’s detailed analysis of Glastonbury’s megalithic complexities
are fascinating. He has produced significant data to the effect that the hills around the
Tor were definite sighting points for long range observation into Wales. The moon’s
inclination of orbit as it passed behind various peaks of the Black Mountains was
meticulously noted by the Glastonbury megalithic astronomers. Its major standstill point
and even the complex perturbation wobble could all be worked out from stone observatories
strategically placed upon the slopes of the Isle of Avalon. Writing in the book
Glastonbury: A Study in Pattems (RILKO, 1969), Professor Thom states:
On the higher ground in and around Glastonbury the earlier Ordnance Survey showed about
30 ’stones’ but there is not much at present to show that these were Megalithic.
A line of 5 stones is shown passing through the point 51003900 on the NationaI Grid at an
azimuth of about 298 degrees. If it can be shown that this line is clear (or rather was
clear) locally to the West then with the far horizon altitude of -0, 2, it shows a
declination of +16’4. We find this delination at many Megalithic sites. It is that of
the Sun at May Day and Lammas, two important days in the Megalithic calendar.
Evidence that the orientational line giving a declination of +16’4 was clear about
2000 BC has recently been forthcoming. Climatologists and botanists studying the
ecological conditions of the Bronze Age are now generally agreed that there was less
afforestation than was once presumed and the atmosphere was free of all pollution,
allowing sharper definition for the human eye.
The sacred connotations of Chalice Hill have always been indicative of hidden or buried
treasure, even in their Christian manifestation (Grail or Chalice buried there) and this
again is significant. Hidden treasures in or on hills are commonly found in numerous West
Country myths. It is possible to interpret some of these myths in an astronomical context,
as the work of Kenneth Knight shows, so it is not improbable that a stone observatory was
once situated upon the carefully rounded summit of the Tor’s nearest neighbour.
At the foot of Chalice Hill lies the chalybeate spring named by the Christians as
Chalice Well, the elaborate cover of which is carved with the major religious symbol of
the Vesica Piscis. This curving, fish-like symbol forms the spring-point of religious
architecture and it is used in the geometrical construction of all the more significant
buildings of antiquity, including major prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge and Avebury.
Chalice Well is more than a healing spring, however. Its sides are carefully constructed
from great slabs of stone in the non-mortared style of masonry known as cyclopean.
The bold megalithic construction of these stones was said by the archaeologist Sir
Flinders Petrie to be of ancient Egyptian influence, while most modern researchers date it
to at least the Bronze Age (2000 BC). Behind the central shaft, the stones form a
perfectly polygonal chamber, and it is thought that ritual and sacrifice were carried out
here at the correct seasonal times. Some authorities suspect that a willing victim was
placed within the chamber, which was then quickly flooded from the main spring via a
sluice. There are precedents for this in various European cultures in the Bronze and Iron
Ages.
That eminent astro-archaeologist, Sir Norman Lockyer pointed out that Chalice Well has
been found (by measurements he carried out on midsummer day) to be orientated towards the
summer solstice sunrise. This was (and is) a precise time of fervent religious celebration
and ritual sacrifice in all lands.
Another ancient geomantic monument that has many odd, mystical connotations is the huge
linear earthwork and ditch known as Ponter’s Ball. It lies to the south-east of
Glastonbury Tor on raised ground between what were once marshes, and it is nearly one mile
long running exactly from marsh edge to marsh edge. Ponter’s Ball neatly straddles
the narrow isthmus of land that links the Isle of Avalon with the main high ground
[Pennard Hill] that rises eastward towards Shepton Mallet. The monument is so constructed
that it seems to form an outward-facing boundary to the Sacred Isle and this is where its
age and purpose become of great interest to the student of Glastonbury lore.
There are two interpretations of Ponter’s Ball, one strictly orthodox in form, the
other of a more speculative nature, but both are highly complementary when they are
studied comparatively. Even in the eyes of conventional historians, Ponter’s Ball
marks the outer boundary limit of a tremendous sacred enclosure. These earthwork
enclosures, known as temenos, are found on the fringes of all the noteworthy pagan
sanctuaries and the fact that the ditch of Ponter’s Ball is dug on its eastern side
(away from the Tor) enhances the possibility that the ridge was indeed a temenos of
considerable importance.
The earthen bank has spread a good deal over the centuries but is still thirty feet
across and twelve feet high in places. The deep eastern ditch is now heavily silted up but
its depth must once have been comparable to the mighty trenches that surrounded the stones
and mounds of Avebury and Stonehenge. The whole structure could never have been purely
defensive, for any reasonably intelligent invading army could have simply outflanked it.
The precise dating of Ponter’s Ball is still somewhat ambiguous. That tenacious
Somerset archaeologist, Dr Arthur Bulleid, excavated beneath the bank early this century
and uncovered Iron Age pottery shards which he dated to about the third century BC. These
finds at least secure the reputation of the Glastonbury area as a Celtic Avalon, but do
not necessarily mean that the Celts who left their culinary expertise as a calling card
actually erected the mound. The ditch also threw up shards of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries AD, but no one suggests the edifice was built by the industrious monks of the
then thriving community at Glastonbury Abbey.
Because of its size and careful geomantic positioning it is more reasonable to set
Ponter’s Ball in the Bronze Age or earlier, for adaptation by succeeding cultures is
one of the key aspects of understanding the mystique of all the famous ancient sites,
particularly the stones and earthworks. It is this adaptive aspect that brings us to the
more speculative answer to the riddle of this old straight embankment. Research into the
mysteries of the Glastonbury Zodiac has found that the long, single horn that graces the
head of the Capricorn effigy is perfectly delineated by the earthy orientational line of
Ponter’s Ball.
Locally the earthwork has been alternatively termed the ’Golden Coffin’, and
it is in December (Capricorn’s time) that the sun symbolically dies at the winter
solstice. The link with the sun is important because Ponter’s Ball is thought by some
researchers to be a corruption of Pontes Bel or Baal, meaning the ’bridge of the
sun’; Bel being a Celtic name for the sungod and Baal being a millennia-earlier term
for the perpetually regenerating life force symbolized by the golden sun. If the
elongated, grassy embankment was originally the horn of the goat effigy among the
Glastonbury Giants, it is obvious that its later adaptation as a Bronze Age or Celtic
temenos line would be perfectly in keeping with a form of ritually handed-on religious
continuity.
The cultural ebb and flow around the Isle of Avalon has been spectacular to say the
least, but it begins to appear that however socially diverse the incoming populations
might have been, they always inherited the geomantic magic that lay in immortal stasis,
graven into the landscape around them. When the Bronze Age religio-scientific civilization
waned, it was gradually replaced by the fiercer social patterns of the Iron Age (800 BC).
With the mass arrival of the Celtic warriors into the lagoons and hillsides around the Tor
(c. 500 BC) recorded history begins.
Because of its vast antiquity and constantly preserved religious sanctity the
Glastonbury area continued to attract, and incidentally mystically adapt, numerous tribes
and cultures. Lake villages have been excavated at Meare and Godney (both only a few miles
from the Tor) and the workmanship of the jewelled ornaments and terracotta utensils used
in these villages again shows a high level of technological and artistic achievement. The
warrior Celts received guidance, both religious and philosophical, from the Druid
priesthood and here many see the first codification of certain rituals and practices akin
to natural witchcraft (wicca). It is the Druids who were thought to have laid out the
turf-banked maze, traces of which can still be seen winding up the steep face of the Tor.
This seven-tiered processional path denotes the sacred importance of the Tor to the
Glastonbury mystical schema and it is time to look at this artificially adapted mound in
some detail.
If the Zodiac is the key to the whole Avalonian complex., then the Tor is the locus,
the focal point, of the inner Glastonbury power centre. In Celtic myth the entrance to the
land of the dead, known as Avalon, was always a high hill surrounded by water. It was also
linked to Caer Sidi, the Fairies’ glass mountain or spiral castle, where the
supernatural power inherent in death met the natural energies that blended from
terrestrial and cosmic interaction. Glastonbury in the Iron Age made a perfect Avalon. The
low-lying levels between the Tor and the sea would have been largely under water, with
numerous ranges of hills and large, grass-grown mounds rising from the shiny surfaces of
interlinked lagoons. In Celtic mythology, Avalloc or Avallach was a deity associated with
guardianship of the underworld (Avalon) and here the etymology of the name clarifies a
little.
The Tor would have made a natural centre of worship, especially if a ruined stone
temple then existed upon its summit. The sharply angled sides of this hill are shaped into
a series of rounded steps, rather like the step pyramid at Saqqara, Egypt, and this is the
legacy of the geomancers who created the whole zodiacal pattern millennia before. The name
Glastonbury is thought to stem from the old British words Ynys-witrin, which mean Isle of
Glass (ie. Caer Sidi, the glass mountain), the Tor dominating the whole of the high ground
that rose above the waters in the form of an elongated, tree-clad island.
The ritual importance of the Tor lingered long in local memory and a church dedicated
to that fearsome slayer of the pagan dragon, St Michael, was first built on the summit in
the twelfth century. Traces of the megalithic stones that preceded it can allegedly be
seen in the foundations of the subsequent church’s remaining tower. The main body of
this church was thrown down by a severe earthquake in the thirteenth century.
Legend again has it that fragments of the original prehistoric stones were also used to
hallow the foundations of the nearby abbey. The Fairy king, Gwynn ap Nudd, Lord of Annwn
and sometime leader of the Wild Hunt, a cosmic manifestation that is universal throughout
European mythology, was a localized Tor spirit. He was said to have a palace on the summit
from where he rode out with magic dogs and spectral warriors on his regular collection of
souls. Obviously a daunting spectacle to those not attuned to cosmic consciousness.
Another key event that linked the Tor to ancient ritual was the famous Tor Fair. The
fair was held on the second Monday in September and it encompassed horse, sheep and cattle
trading as well as drinking, games and general merrymaking. In 1127 King Henry I granted a
charter to the abbot and monks of Glastonbury to hold the fair at the church of St Michael
on the Tor. But the event was immeasurably older than this because the charter mentions
that for two days the festivities had to take place at the site of the
’original’ fair. This in fact was on the lower western slopes of the Tor’s
east-west axis, and just above the field used there still remain the large, broken
fragments of an old megalith.
This is a power stone that activates erratically early in the morning and late at
night. Its power has been personally verified by the author, its manifestation being
rather like a mild electric current running through the palms of the hands and spiralling
up the arms. On the twenty-five-inch Ordnance Survey map this still very active stone is
marked and named, significantly enough, as the Living Rock!
The Tor Fair was a major local festival and in its earliest days the records state it
lasted at least a fortnight. In 1850 the fair was removed to a site nearer the town, in
fact to a large field behind an old public house which is called the Fairfield Tavern
today [now called the King Arthur, on Benedict Street]. Although the date now varies
between September and October this true festival of the people is celebrated in
Glastonbury even now. Its earliest recorded mention is in a Saxon edict of King Ine; the
Celtic observance and the broken stone seem satisfyingly to locate a Bronze Age
perspective.
Two other points can quickly be mentioned. First, the old fairs of England were often
located near or utilized mazes, and the labyrinth on the Tor is now an established fact.
Second, the axis of the Tor (on which the power stone directly lies) is orientated on a
major ley line that runs across Britain from St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, through St
Michael’s, Burrow Mump, the Tor, Avebury circle, Ogbourne St George, and countless
other minor sites linked to the dragon and his saintly slayer. Glastonbury Tor is the
predominant earthwork along this straight line of mainly elevated holy sites.
This sacred hill is recognized as a vast repository for both free-flowing psychic power
and symbolic psychological stability, a realized unity between life and death. Its
brooding strength radiates a dual purpose: generation of direct magical forces and
reconciliation between the many states of consciousness that fertilize the basic impulses
of human metaphysical perception. As the architect and psychic Bligh Bond realized, it is
indeed a ’hill of vision’.
Haunted by spirits, the abode of fairies and demons, the Tor casts an awe-inspiring
’shadow of heaven’ across the surface of the earth. Fairy fairs or gatherings
are always cropping up in folklore and there is a large body of tales recounting the
adventures of farmers, cowherds, milkmaids, etc., who come upon these events by accident.
The Fairy fairs were held at certain sites that were traditional to the ’good
people’, a well-known West Country venue being that near Pitminster in southern
Somerset. At these seasonal fairs the Fairies danced, sang, ate, drank and sold livestock
just like any normal human gathering. The sites are all adjacent to either mazes, mounds,
stones, hill-forts or earthworks, and the later human fairs at such places were probably
another directly inherited esoteric tradition.
The Tor fair, linked as it was to a maze and megalithic stones, not to mention the
hill’s association with Gwynn the Fairy king, culturally fits into its magically
topographical surroundings in a completely satisfying manner. The memory of Fairy fairs at
places of proven historical importance magnifies the magical and ritual aspects of the
sites themselves and sets them firmly in the context of a carefully applied geomancy.
The supernatural Pitminster Fair actually manifested itself on the slopes of Black Down
Hill, situated between the villages of Pitminster and Chestonford near Taunton, and this
hill still bears traces of ancient barrows and earthworks. The Fairies who frequented this
fair were described as being of ’man-like’ stature, and the most common sighting
by mortals was at the crucial time of the midsummer festival. A significant time if one
thinks of the antique summer solstice celebrations, recognized even now by the numerous
adherents of what is sometimes termed the Old Religion.
Trezidder Lane, near St Levan, Cornwall, is also remembered as the site of a seasonal
Fairy fair. This lane is part of a ley orientation as well as being surrounded by numbers
of standing stones, cromlechs and barrows in its immediate environment of the
megalith-packed Penwith peninsula. There are no definite connections in folklore between
the Tor fair and the Fairies (except that the fair’s oldest site was on the slopes of
Gwynn ap Nudd’s Caer Sidi, or Fairy Mountain). But when the maze and the megaliths
are blended into the pattern, the importance of this hallowed mound is made physically
clear in a historical yet decidedly geomythic frame of reference.
The maze on the Tor and the rituals of the Druids mark the end of Glastonbury’s
organically spiritual purity. The long interregnum since then has been led first by the
Christians, then by the ’reality-trip’ materialists, and now by the
neo-Christian cults that proliferate there today. When Christianity first tentatively
approached Glastonbury during the first century AD, it came in the form of thinly
disguised pagan legend; eg. the tales of Joseph of Arimathea, the planting of his staff on
Wearyall Hill, the burying of the grail/chalice containing Jesus’ blood on Chalice
Hill, etc.
The embryonic Christian ethos was forced to embrace much pagan ritual to survive, so
strongly were the old ways of thought and worship planted in the brains and souls of the
people. The Joseph of Arimathea legend is remarkable both for its tenacity in local memory
and its weaving together of various pagan/Christian themes. In the Glastonbury region, 17
March was always celebrated as St Joseph of Arimathea’s Day and a church in Langport
(All Saints) has a stained glass window depicting the aged saint on his way to founding
the first Christian church in Britain. The absorption of fertility themes is seen in the
tale of Joseph’s thorn staff (the thorn was a foremost symbol of pagan magic and
mythology), his carrying of the Holy Grail, and in the little-known rhyme associated with
St Joseph’s Day itself. This rhyming couplet carries a simple incantational force
ideal for oral chanting:
If Saint Joseph’s day is clear, We shall get a fertile year.
The famous thorn still grows at Glastonbury, and it burgeons forth on at least three
religious sites. There is a large tree in the parish churchyard of St John’s on the
High Street. Another tree lies in the Abbey grounds, and a small bush is in the original
place on the upper slopes of Wearyall Hill (the Pisces effigy in the Glastonbury Zodiac).
This thorn is a genuine Levantine variety, and is a freak hawthorn or applewort. It
actually stems from the Near East and only flourishes in the immediate vicinity of
Glastonbury.
Its botanical name is Crataegus oxyacantha. Normally it cannot be struck, only budded.
It flowers around 5 January (old Christmas Day) and blossoms are still sent to the
reigning monarch in a continuation of a truly old tradition of magical and ritual
recognisance. The legend that Joseph of Arimathea was sent by St Philip to bring the
Gospel to Britain is well-established in local folk-lore but has little extant historical
documentation. The complexities of its origin are too involved for any elaboration here,
but there seems to be a lot of circumstantial evidence in favour.
This peripatetic ’uncle’ to Jesus was supposed to have left the Holy Land
sometime after 60 AD and to have ended up at Wearyall Hill (for the thorn-planting
miracle) in 63/64 AD. The local king, Arviragus, supposedly gave Joseph and his followers
twelve hides of land around Glastonbury and they then built the first temple to the new
religion in the British Isles. The building was circular and from its alchemical fluidity
of dimension great magic grew. In the author’s opinion, it must have replaced a pagan
shrine of even greater cosmic efficacy, for it was established early Christian practice to
build churches, etc., on the sites of those potent monuments to past religious devotion.
One of the most important geomantic aspects of the Joseph legends lies in the journey
(quest) made by the man and his twelve disciples across the Somerset landscape. Most of
the myths state that final landfall was made in the vicinity of what is now Bridgwater Bay
[12 miles W of Glastonbury] (after a disastrous excursion into Wales) and that from there
the small band was ’called’ across the marshes to the looming majesty of
Avalon’s holy Tor.
As if this was not enough for intuitive geomantic divination there is an almost unknown
reading of the legend peculiar to the area around Crewkerne [20m SW of Glastonbury]. This
reading is quite specific in its imagery. The old folk-tale was collected by K. J. Watson
and told afresh in his locally famous work The I.egend of Crewkerne. The story was
actually printed in full in the Somerset County Herald of 1920. In essence the myth
relates how Joseph and his disciples were led to a straight track that marched across
country following a route of antique ancestry, a route originally used by Phoenician tin
traders. This old straight track was marked by small grassy mounds (barrows?) and in one
place ran directly through an earthwork known as Cunnygar.
Every five miles the pilgrims rested and one of their number thrust his staff into the
ground to sanctify the line and mark the way. At certain unspecified points they erected
crosses and on one hill Joseph set the Holy Grail on a standing stone; its light blazed
out, illuminating all the surrounding woodlands. When they finally reached Wearyall Hill
only Joseph retained his staff which, when thrust into the ground, burst forth as an
instantly flowering thorn tree. It was then recognized as a mystical reconciliation
between the magic of the old gods and the miracles of the new. That briefly is the Legend
of Crewkerne; all the facts are exactly as given in the tale, only the richness of writing
has been of necessity removed.
The ritualistic perambulation of Joseph and his people bears much relevance for
students of ley hunting and even has metrological overtones in the placing of the staves
at five-mile intervals. It is interesting that Joseph planted his staff on Wearyall Hill,
not the Tor. As stated above, Wearyall is part of the triple Piscean effigies in the
Zodiac and it must be noted that the sign of the fish was one of the first Christian
symbols linked to the magic of the Vesica Piscis.
Equally fascinating is the knowledge that with the inception of Christianity, the world
entered the zodiacal age of Pisces, an age now in the process of violently dying from
self- inflicted wounds induced through spiritual treason. By planting his staff on such a
geomantically and astrologically apt spot, Joseph of Arimathea was recognizing the
zodiacal signature that permanently sealed the sanctity of the whole Glastonbury land-
scape. Even if the legend is not strictly ’true’ it has a symbolic, metaphysical
strength that transcends physical reality and reaches directly towards an understanding of
Glastonbury’s more ethereal cosmic correspondence.
The area has always been seen to have a zodiacal or heavenly ambience, linking the
stars with their patterns reflected on the earth. The star-like aura of the Zodiac
lingered in Christian consciousness in a variety of ways, few of them really overt. The
mystical dimensions of the great Abbey incorporate certain zodiacal/astronomical
symbolisms in their numerology and the east-west line of orientation, which forms the
Abbey’s main axial alignment, is part of a major ley line that links Glastonbury with
Stonehenge (a solar and lunar temple) and Canterbury Cathedral (site of another megalithic
astronomical observatory).
A certain subtle corroboration is found in a suitably mysterious passage
contained in the history of the Abbey, written by William of Malmesbury in the twelfth
century. William was a famous scholar and historian of mixed Norman/Saxon descent. He was
a native of Somerset and his books are models of well-marshalled facts, succinct
clarification and good historical judgement. In his definitive work on the subject, De
Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae, William of Malmesbury includes the following short
passage:
This church, then, is certainly the oldest I know in Engtand, and from this
circumstance derives its name (vetusta ecclesia)... In the pavement may be seen on every
side stones designedly inlaid in triangles and squares and figured with lead, under which,
if I believe some sacred enigma to be contained, I do no injustice to rely on.
This guarded statement was obviously designed to protect William from any charges of
heresy, a continuously favourite pastime among the squabbling clerics of
’full-steam’ Christianity. The passage refers to a mosaic pattern that was drawn
into the stones of the St Mary Chapel (originally St Joseph’s Chapel, for Arimathea),
a building of great mystical importance that marked the site of the original foundation by
the Christians of the early first century AD. This pattern must have been a direct
reflection of esoteric Christianity and it seems to have enshrined a memory of the overall
geomantic schema that dictated the correspondences between the Abbey’s dimensions and
the surrounding design of zodiacal, prehistoric and Celtic landscape geometry, i.e.
effigies, mounds, stones, leys, etc.
The continuous psychic reminiscence of the above surfaced again during the early years
of this century through the researches and archaeological work conducted at the Abbey
ruins by Frederick Bligh Bond. This erratic Bristol architect and mystic made some
astounding cabbalistic discoveries during the course of his excavations, tying the
dimensions of the building into numerous explicit interpretations of ancient science,
mathematics and astronomy. The technique of automatic writing was employed by Bligh Bond
(to the hysterical disapproval of the dry ecclesiasts) and ‘contact’ with a
fifteenth century brother of the Abbey led to a passage in Bligh Bond’s book Gate of
Remembrance that bears a remarkable resemblance to the words of William of Malmesbury. If
Bligh Bond’s findings are valid the zodiacal aspects are here totally proven from an
apparently unimpeachable source! The astrally-contacted brother stated:
That which the brethren of old handed down to us, we followed, ever building on their
plan. As we have said, our Abbey was a message in ye stones. In ye foundations and ye
distances be a mystery - the mystery of our faith, which ye have forgotten and we also in
ye latter days.
All ye measurements were marked plain on ye slabbes in Mary’s Chappel, and ye have
estroyed them. So it was recorded, as they who builded and they who came after knew
aforehand where they should build. But these things are overpast and of no value now. The
spirit was lost and with the loss of the spirit the body decayed and was of no use to
(us).
There was the Body of Christ, and round him would have been the Four Ways. Two were
builded and no more. In ye floor of ye Mary Chappel was ye Zodiac, that all might see and
understand the mystery. In ye midst of ye chappel he was laid; and the Cross of Hym who
was our Example and Exemplar.
Braineton, he didde much, for he was Geomancer to ye Abbey of olde tyme.
Glastonbury’s early links with Christianity are always of an ambiguous nature,
with many of the saints and mystics associated with the area showing marked undertones of
strange powers, origins and practices. For instance there is a tale tha the Irish St
Bridget came to Glastonbury around 488 AD and that she passed some years in meditation on
the ‘island of Beckery’ [just off the Glastonbury island], where there was an
earlier chapel dedicated to St Mary Magdalene. When St Bridget returned to Ireland she
left the ancient chapel with her name and certain personal relics - her wallet, her rosary
and her oak staff. These then became imbued with miraculous powers. The ‘island’
of Beckery is located due west of the Tor and is a low, mounded ridge lying near the
gently meandering River Brue. It has always been associated with religious magic, and
Arthurian myth states that the great king had a potent vision of the Holy Grail in its
tiny chapel. St Bridget was reputed to possess many powers over natural things: it was
said that ‘animals and birds obeyed her call’ and that she could work miracles
with milk and butter that paralelled Christ’s feeding of the five thousand. The
legends of Beckery remain, but alas, all traces of the chapel (and much of the mound
itself) have been systematically destroyed by the relentless march of progress and
industry over the last couple of centuries.
The Bridget legends are particularly interesting when it is remembered that St Bridget
was the Christian incarnation of the mighty pagan fertility goddess Bride. The cult of
Bride or Brigantia was solidly tied to childbirth, sacred wells, crops and the vegetation
cycle throughout pagan Ireland, England and western Scotland. The goddess was also
guardian of the hearth fires, which linked her symbolically to that life-giving furnace,
the sun. Those British sacred centres that are situated on mounds or hills are usually
connected with some form of sun ritual, be they pagan, Christian, or intermediary through
the Culdees and the heretical Gnostics. The obvious fact that St Bridget was
‘Bride’ Christianized reveals yet again the new religion’s debt to the
centuries of complex worship that had developed at Glastonbury in a more natural and
all-embracing manner – in fact, via a vast pagan cult that fulfilled every psychic,
religious and ecological need through its ever-changing, but ever constant pantheon of
archetypal gods and goddesses. These prime elemental forces are always symbolic of highly
practical applications of a strange but realizable power. It is a power that is
miraculously in tune with the rhythms and energy flows inherent throughout nature; a power
that links stones and stars, earth and heaven, man and cosmos. It is the unifying power of
a holistically geomantic magic – the living pulsations of the spirits in and around
the earth.
After Joseph the Arthurian mythos became entwined in the pattern, for the quest for the
Grail stemmed subconsciously from the memory of Glastonbury’s earlier marvels, back
to thorn magic, the maze on the Tor and the Great Round Table of the Zodiac itself. The
Arthurian knights traced the barbed but sacred paths toward achievement of the Grail, and
the hidden symbolism of this is self-evident in the light of what is written above. At the
summit of the Tor the achievement of the Grail is still possible for the dedicated and
spiritually enlightened seeker.
In this brief study of Glastonbury folk-lore and legendary history, we have discovered,
hidden deep at its roots, the poetically coded messages that have filtered down from the
lost eras. They have manifested themselves through the constantly recurring patterns of
myth, magic and the intuitive insight that once illumined the minds of the ancient seers.
From this insight, handed down through the generations as oral tradition and written
wisdom, couched in poetry, ritual, music and prose, the geomantically active
’presence’ in the British Isles is enshrined and perpetuated as a regenerative
dream in the consciousness of men. The highly developed intuitive sciences of the past
pose a perpetual enigma to the closed minds of our own era, which resound with empty
materialist bravado. This results in the constant decrying of the sacred mysteries as a
desperate defence mechanism against ultimate truth. When these mysteries are approached
with an open mind, strong in its understanding of the psychic realities of psychological
and metaphysical interaction, the veils of the mysteries can be lifted, and the natural
structure of the ancient world can be revealed in bright patterns that illumine the soul
and transform the basic contours of human consciousness. The esoteric tradition native to
the British Isles was carefully preserved by the various mystical orders who succeeded the
megalithic and Bronze Age wizards, to be finally codified in incantation, ritual and
poetry by the ancient order of Druids. They then transmitted much of it to the early
Christians who gradually replaced them at the beginning of the last astrological age. In
this way, there was preserved into modern times some of the vital magical heritage so
carefully developed by the giants of the past, which is so essential now to our
understanding and resurrection of a nearly ruined world.
It can safely be assumed that the Glastonbury region is one of the holiest centres on
the face of the earth because so many religions and cultures have met and meshed around
its fields and streams. The true Glastonbury atmosphere, embracing zodiac (astrology),
maze (psychology) and Grail (cosmology) is defiantly universal, never dogmatic or
parochial. These triadic images symbolize respectively heavenly glory, earthly complexity
and a linking gateway to the wonders of the Higher Worlds. They all combine to form a
psychic representation of the Cosmic Temple on earth and this is physically realised in
the landscape geomancy around the Isle of Avalon, with Glastonbury Abbey and the Tor as
the key sites.
The strengths of the Avalonian mythos remain because they are based on the energies and
harmonies contained within the original structure of Creation. Something vibrant and
beautiful watches over the hills of Glastonbury, for this section of the English landscape
is the Dream of the Gods made real.
Avalon &
Shalott 
G
