Glastonbury

be very easy to see Glastonbury as no more than a ready focus for all the overactive imaginations of English (and other) eccentrics. In the Gothic Image, a bookshop specialising in myths, magic and Magoggery, they estimate some eight hundred titles directly concerned with Glastonbury and her myths (compared with around a thousand primarily concerned with Arthur). (That was in the 1990s. The numbers are probably much higher now, in 2020.)

One school finds zodiacal representations in the twelve hills you can see locally (if you look carefully); another concentrates on Glastonbury's claim to being the earliest Christian community, others deal with the Legend (?) of the Holy Grail, the miraculous powers of the red-tinged water from chalice Well or the focussing powers of the converging ley-lines. Cynicism is easy.

But the confusion of evidence, theories, speculations, visions and lies shouldn't blind you to the power of this place.

After a sober and calm examination of the evidence; it's mutual inconsistencies, its wild leaps of logic, its fervent proslytising, its almost complete lack of scientific rigour, I am forced to come to the conclusion that all of them are true.

If Glastonbury Tor is nothing else, it is the Earth standing up and demanding attention, rising enigmatically above our petty human pursuits and encouraging us to look upwards. If there never was an Arthur, if the Holy Thorn were brought here in a glob of birdshit, if there never were any gods, spirits, witches or secret messages from the cosmos - then this would still be a holy place.

Capital of the New Age

And did those feet...?