The Isle of Avalon

Another part of my English Heritage, where I love to spend time, lies in its West Country. This place has left its mark on me, and I hear it calling me back, over and over. I go, but I've never been sorry that I answered the call. Chalice Well Gardens has something mystical and magickal about it. It's like stepping back in time as the ancient powers draw you in... an inexplicable feeling... I could never relate it to you. All I know is that for some reason and in some time warp, I belong there. I know I've been there before, many moons ago. I wrote my feelings in a poem, called Finding My Inner Self, which you can also find on these hubs, and which might give you some idea of what Glastonbury held for me from times long past....

In the far south-west of the British Isles, situated between the Bristol Channel and two low ranges of hills called the Mendips and the Poldens, lies an enchanted area of land. It is an area that generates and guards a powerful magick. The county 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. The name Glastonbury reveals that it belongs to at least the seventh century, for it means 'The Fort of the Descendants of Glast'. Glast was a military commander in high favour with King Arthur when he was fighting his twelve great battles against the heathen. Glastonbury is both the name of a town and the symbol of a great and holy mystery.

Once this is realised, the pattern assumes its correct perspective and balances into a satisfying coherence: magick 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 (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 rediscovery 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, are relevant here because they make up part of the Aquarian effigy in that stupendous group of prehistoric monuments known as the Glastonbury Zodiac.

With a population, today, of nearly 10,000 people, it was, historically, the site of a medieval abbey, significant owing to traditions telling of the visit of Jesus and Joseph of Arimathaea and of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere being buried there. It was a sacred centre from the Megalithic period, four to five thousand years ago.

Situated on what once was an island called Avalon, it is overlooked by Glastonbury Tor.

The Abbey

Glastonbury Abbey's origins really are lost in the mists of time. No religious foundation in England's history carries us so far back as that of Glastonbury.

Long before the Saxons (the English) came to this country - far back in the days of British princelings... Christian missionaries built a little wattle church in Avalon. Whether that was in the second or third century or later, nobody can really tell, so perhaps naturally, the date was eventually put back to the first century.

The church was old in the time of St. Paulinus, Archbishop of York, in the early seventh century, and he cased it with wood and lead.

It is said that, from the first year of the same century, 601, a grant was made by a King of Damnonia (Devon) of the land called Ynyswitrin to the 'old church'. An abbot named Worgret, head of the community and the charter, says the king's name was Gwrgan, to the closest the ancient writing can be read after so many years. Some hundred years later, 700 or so, King Ina gives a charter and builds what was then considered a great church, to the east of the old one.

By this time we are well into the Saxon period, and there has been no word of devastation of the place by heathen Saxons. They were Christianised before they took over this part of the country. Thus Glastonbury passed intact from British to English hands, the only foundation which did so. Various additions were made over the years with the dimensions of the additions set down very precisely by the chroniclers of the Abbey.

Glastonbury was so sacred a resort in those centuries that the great lights of the Celtic Church would be likely visitors to it, and if traditions of this class are not fairly to be called fabulous, some, which crystallised later, are.

Firstly, it is said that twelve disciples of the Apostles, (Apostle Philip being named), were sent from Gaul to Britain in AD 63. They came to Avalon, and King Arviragus and his successors granted them lands which came to be known as the Twelve Hides of Glastonbury. It was they who, at the bidding of the Archangel Gabriel, built the Old Church. The twelve died in the course of time, and the place remained desolate until, in AD 166, King Lucius (first Christian king of Britain), by his missionaries Phagan and Deruvian, established another twelve, whose succession was not interrupted until St. Patrick, visiting the place in 433, set up a regular monastic life there.

All this time, there had been no mention of Joseph of Arimathea. It seems that his name was first introduced into the story in the thirteenth century by a deliberate borrowing from French romances. Certainly William of Malmesbury, in the twelfth century, knows nothing of him, though the story was written into the text of his book about the Antiquity of Glastonbury. Nor was it a true Glastonbury legend that he brought with him the Holy Grail. In the romances he is connected with this mystic vessel, but no Glastonbury author ever pretended that the Grail was in the keeping of the Abbey. What Joseph was supposed to have brought was a pair of cruets, containing a relic of the Holy Blood and of the sweat of our Lord. These cruets which he carries, appear in the picture of him in the fifteenth-century glass in the east window of Langport Church, and there is frequent mention of them in the late days of the Abbey.

Wearyall Hill, the Glastonbury Thorn, and Chalice Well are all somewhat late additions to the Glastonbury mythology. Chalice Well, in particular, appears to be a modern sophistication of the name Chalke or Calke Well.

The first allusion to the legend of the Thorn is possibly a pictorial one, on the seal of the Abbey, where, on one side, the Virgin, standing between St Katherine and St Margaret, holds the Child on her right arm and a flowering bush in her left hand. This seal has been assigned to the thirteenth or fourteenth century and Glastonbury Abbey is, without doubt, the oldest Christian sanctuary in England.

There is much beautiful detail in the building, though the Purbeck marble shafts have all been made away with, leaving the relics dreadfully meagre. A more or less perfect chapel in the north is said to be that of St Thomas of Canterbury. The outside of the south aisle of the nave tells us more about the cloisters, for they were attached to this wall.

The only really intact building is the very pretty abbot's kitchen, which should by all means be entered, and the fine effigy of an Abbot, and the many fragments of tiles and carving which are stored there, inspected.

One of the Glastonbury's boasts was that it preserved the bones of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. A Welsh bard spread the tale of Arthur's death and burial at Avalon, and was insistent with the Abbot that search should be made for the relics, but the spot indicated by the bard was not searched until some time later and the bodies discovered at a depth of sixteen feet. A leaden cross inscribed, 'Hic Iacet sepultus inclytus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia', 'Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon with Guinevere his second wife'served to identify the relics, which lay in the trunk of a hollowed oak. Queen Guinevere's flaxen hair was there to be seen, but fell into dust when touched. The bones of Arthur were of gigantic size.

Once found, they were given a foremost place among the sacred treasures of Glastonbury and on the visit of Edward I in 1278, they were transferred to a prominent place before the high altar, and there... apparently in a tomb of black marble... they remained until the Dissolution. It seems strange that no interest whatever was shown in their preservation at that time.

That bones were indeed found in 1191 we can hardly doubt, but it was not an ancient belief that Arthur was buried in any tomb.

"A grave there is for Mark, a grave for Gwythur, a grave for Gwgawn of the Ruddy Sword; not wise the thought - a grave for Arthur", says a Welsh poet as old at least as the twelfth century, and one cannot help noting that the date of discovery, 1191, falls at a time when the monks were in a dire straits for funds for rebuilding their church, that so important an addition to the prestige of the place as would be conferred by Arthur's relics would have been most opportune. The identification of the bodies depended, so far as we can see, on the leaden plate.

It has been in suggested that the discovery was engineered from headquarters in order to put an end to the belief in a future return of Arthur, and to British national aspirations which were prejudicial to the reigning dynasty. If that was the hope, it failed. "The Britons believe yet," (a generation later), "that Arthur is alive and dwelleth in Avalon with the fairest of all elves, and ever yet the Britons look for Arthur's coming."

Glast remained as a kind of overlord in his ancestral estates after Arthur's burial, and his descendants maintained his name and fame, so that when, more than a hundred years later, the Saxons had become Christians and occupied Avalon, they not only called the town Glaston, but Kin Kenwalch gave special honour to the Abbey, confirming it, in 670, in the possession of the 'adjacent islands'. These were the islands in which Patrick's companions had lived, in Irish fashion, as anchorets. As these answered to the description given by Posidonius, they help us to recognise in Avalon, the Isle of Ictis.

Avalon's Mystery Traditions

There's something about the land of Avalon which makes it slightly shimmer, as if the subtle energies and perceptions of the inner worlds or the imagination permeate the physical fabric of this place and the life that goes on here.

The veils between the worlds are thin here, opening doors of deepened perception. This seems to have existed since the beginning of time.

Glastonbury has a rich history, yet within it there are mysteries, sagas and ethereal traditions which, though often lacking the kind of proof to satisfy the modern rational, sceptical mind, nevertheless have a reality of their own. These mystery traditions variously infer that Glastonbury was a remnant of the Atlantean civilisation, settled by Sumerians who laid out a vast landscape zodiac here, a centre of teaching and initiation in ancient times, a place of the Goddess and Goddess traditions, the site of a classical Cretan labrynth of the Tor, visited by Jesus as a young man, later settled by the refugee Joseph of Arimathaea and twelve acolytes, bringing the Holy Grail and founding one of the world's earliest proto-Christian settlement, the burial place of King Arthur and Guinevere and the resting place of many saints, and, in recent times, a few have called Glastonbury the heart chakra of the planet.

Sceptics pass these off as falsities, the money-raising claims of medieval monks or the dreams of new-age mystics, yet there is something to these traditions. This century, the challenge is to establish a new relationship and dialogue between proven history and myths and traditions. The scepticism of the twentieth century has been excessive and excluded too much... and Glastonbury is one of those places where this has had big effects

Legends

Jesus in Glastonbury

Popular legend claims that Joseph of Arimathaea, during his metal business dealings in Roman occupied Somerset and Cornwall, brought the boy Jesus with him on several of his trips. The Cornish Celts claim that Joseph left Jesus, by divine order, at the druidic college at Place on the Roseland peninsula, in Cornwall. Several pictographs dated to 500AD on the arched door of the Saxon and Norman Church, in the township of Place, Cornwall, depict the young Jesus arriving and receiving instruction.

After Christ's crucifixion in 33AD, Joseph of Arimathaea sought refuge in the British Isles with his family and a small entourage of family and believers. Some claim St. Mary was among this group, after whom the sacred and powerful Lady Chapel in Glastonbury Abbey is named, in honour.

Joseph of Arimathaea

Legend has it that Joseph of Arimathaea carried with him a staff made from an Israeli hawthorn tree, which he thrust into the moist ground at his camp site on Wearyall Hill. The staff took root within days, which Joseph interpreted as a sign from God to stay here and establish his home and church. In 37AD, he established the first Christian church in Glastonbury and today, descendants of the Holy Thorn can still be seen growing on Wearyall Hill and around the Tor, flowering twice a year, at Christmas and Easter times. This characteristic distinguishes the trees as Israeli or Palestinian as English varieties of the hawthorn only bloom once a year, and never at Christmas.

As with the Chalice Hill and the Tor, Wearyall Hill was an island in the great tidal lake of Avalon, fifteen hundred years ago. The Michael Line runs freely along its base and up to the Holy Thorn, where an impressive spiral fountains upward and also turns at a sharp angle towards the Abbey, precisely at the Holy Thorn. The remains of an ancient church have been discovered on the Hill, which are thought to be the initial location of Joseph's Waddle Church.

Joseph is also reputed to have brought with him a precious relic, a chalice from which the twelve disciples drank at the last supper and in which Joseph collected the blood of Christ at His Crucifixion. This became the legendary Holy Grail, proliferated in Arthurian legend, symbolic as man's eternal quest for perfection. Joseph is said to have buried the Grail near the Chalice Well and in so doing, the Well ran red, signifying the healing blood of Christ.

The Blue Chalice

There are fascinating connections between the Chalice Well, Glastonbury, The Holy Grail and the arc of the covenant. In the early nineteen hundreds, a chalice was found in Bridie's Well in Glastonbury and determined by the British Museum to be consistent with Syrian or Middle Eastern artifacts from the period 100BC-300AD.

Today the Blue Chalice is stored in a protected chamber, in St. Michael Retreat House, within the grounds of Chalice Well Gardens and many reputed clairvoyants and psychics laud the chalice, claiming it to be connected to Christ. Others claim it to have terristrial origins, but all believe it emits a strong vibratory field.

Isle of Avalon Camelot

The Chalice Well and Holy Grail became centrepoints of the Arthurian Legends.

Arthur's legends also claim his birth place to have been Tintagel Castle, on the nearby rugged coast of Cornwall, Camelot, at Cadbury Mound near Glastonbury, his deathbed hours, at the Tor, near the Chalice Well and his burial, at Glastonbury Abbey. King Arthur's grave sit is marked with a plaque at the Abbey ruins.

The Arthurian Myth and Legends are well known but what is less known is the actual existence of King Arthur in Glastonbury, Cornwall and eastern Wales. His story has been so sensationally projected in books and films that, to the general masses, he is merely a wonderful legend. It is much more... Arthur lived and was a Christ consciousness. The written works which came centuries later were a channelled symbolism of the sojourn and trinity of man in the three-dimensional plane.

The actual legends of Arthur are symbolic truths which do not trace his life story verbatim but served as a metaphoric treatise on the struggles of man searching for the truth. The symbology of Arthurian Legend reveals a slightly different aspect of the story of the Christos hologram, mirroring that of Jesus Christ. Subtle correlations include the twelve Knights of the Round Table, symbolic of the twelve Disciples, and Guinevere being tempted with the forbidden fruit, as Eve was, in the Garden of Eden. These are but two of the dozens of subtle correlations which mirror the story of Jesus Christ.

Of course, if you've ever been to Glastonbury, you'll probably know the feeling I get when I'm there. I so wish I could explain it, but I can't... it's like a deep inner secret that doesn't ever want to be told. All I know is that the feeling will live within me, forever.