The Isle of AvalonGlastonbury, England

History of GlastonburyGlastonbury is a former island (actually a peninsula) which was surrounded by sea in very ancient times, followed by the rivers, pools and marshes of wetlands. The marshes around Glastonbury were partially drained during medieval times, and properly drained around 200 years ago.

Glastonbury has been regarded as a sacred place since humans first arrived in the area (at least 10,000 BCE), by dint of its strange, anomalous hill, the Tor. In Megalithic times (perhaps around 2500-2000 BCE) the sides of the Tor were modified with banks to form either a

three-dimensional labyrinth or a series of layers representing perhaps different levels of consciousness and reality. The first small settlements were located at Wick Hollow (top of Bove Town) and near the Chalice Well - the permanent population might have been only 50ish people, but in Megalithic times this will still have been significant.

In Celtic Iron Age times (500 BCE to around 100 CE) the ‘island’ was a Druid centre, a place of learning and the location of one of Britain’s three ‘perpetual choirs’. It presumably held high status, giving rise to the misty tradition that Jesus visited here, and the more substantial tradition that Joseph of Arimathaea and some followers came here as refugees after the crucifixion, to found the first proto-Christian church here. This church was upgraded by St Patrick of Ireland into a monastery, which grew in size and stature during medieval times, to become by the 1100s one of Europe’s greater pilgrimage places and centres of learning. The abbey was destroyed in the 1500s for political reasons and, since then, over the centuries, Glastonbury has been a magnet for spiritually-oriented and creative people, especially from 1900 onwards.

History of Glastonbury .. . .. . .. . .2

Attractions in Glastonbury . .. . .3

Glastonbury Events .. . .. . .. . .. . .4

Glastonbury Museums & Tours 5

Pictures of Glastonbury . .. . .. . .6

Glastonbury’s Sacred Places . .. . .7

Vacation Packages . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .8

The Isle of AvalonTABLE OF CONTENTS

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Attractions in Glastonbury

The Who’d A Thought It Inn... Situated in the heart of the unique and mystical market town of Glastonbury. A truly traditional public house that serves Real Ales, and an excellent selection of wines. We serve restaurant quality meals (booking advisable) with a wide range of choice on a well thought out menu that is served in a warm and friendly atmosphere. Simply the best place to eat in town! the Who’d A Thought It Inn is a perfect choice for a romantic weekend or a business trip or simply stay with us and explore the mystical isle of Avalon.

When the current chapel, Saint Maragret’s was built in 1444, its predecessor, built around the 1070s, had been there 350 years. Little is known about this earliest period - many records were probably destroyed in the great abbey fire of 1184 or during the dissolution of the monasteries. The chapel had been endowed by St Margaret of Scotland and built during the Abbey expansion

under the first Norman abbot, Thurstan, during the 1070s-80s.

Wookie Hole is an amusement park located 5 miles outside of Glastonbury.The have many attractions such as Monster Hill, Life Sized Dinosaurs, Victorian Penny Arcade, Magical Mirror Maze, Cave Museuem, and a Fairy Garden. Drinks, snacks, hot and cold meals available in the Big Top Restaurant on site. Britain’s most spectacular caves and the home of the infamous Witch of Wookey. The new Wookey Hole Experience is bursting an explosive mix of history, mystery & fun.

The Isle of Avalon King Arthur in Glastonbury

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Glastonbury Abbey is one of the best supported sites for King Arthur, being the legendary location for Arthur and Guinevere’s burial tomb, because it may have held a specific grave marker linking King Arthur to the Abbey. In 1191, the monks at Glastonbury Abbey claimed to have found the grave of King Arthur. On the stone burial was an inlaid lead cross with the inscription, Hic iacet sepultus inclitus rex Arturius in insula Avallonis (“Here lies the famous King Arthur, buried on the Island of Avalon”). The claim was not taken seriously until 1278 when Henry II ordered the grave to be exhumed. A man’s body was found with a cracked skull from a heavy blow. A female skeleton was next to it, as well as the original lead cross. The remains were transported to the main Abbey church, but all signs of the bodies and cross mysteriously disappeared.

Glastonbury Events

The Isle of Avalon

Glastonbury Festival is the largest greenfield music and performing arts festival in the world and a template for all the festivals that have come after it. The difference is that Glastonbury has all the best aspects of being at a Festival in one astonishing bundle. Coming to Glastonbury involves a fair amount of travel, and probably a queue to get in but, when you get past these impediments, you enter a huge tented city, a mini-state under canvas. British law still applies, but the rules of society are a bit different, a little bit freer. Everyone is here to have a wild time in their own way.

Glastonbury Goddess Conference n Glastonbury, England, will honor “The Great Abundant Life-giving Mother.” The main conference will be July 31 to August 5, with fringe events beginning July 29 and ending with a Lammas ceremony August 6. The conference begins with registration and an apple—themed celebration late afternoon, July 31, in Glastonbury Town Hall. The celebration will include wall hangings by Thalia Brown and Willow Roe, and Goddess icon banners by Lydia Ruyle. There will also be exhibits of other Goddess art and crafts.

The Glastonbury Symposium is a great week-end conference like the Alternative View conference that discusses mysteries, truth and new frontiers which investigates the signs of our times. It meets annually in the Town Hall of Glastonbury. The July 2010 symposium discussed crop circles, the environment, liberty issues, 2012, earth mysteries, new science, metaphysics,consciousness studies, UFOs and alternative health. This year 2012 is the Symposium’s twentieth year!

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The Druids in Glastonbury

Glastonbury was a major religious center long before the time of King

Arthur or Joseph of Arimathea. The Druids utilized the Tor from

2500 BC as an initiation center for priests. Megalithic Age remains

dating from 5,000 BC reveals Glastonbury as the site of a massive

astrological calendar combining a stone circle, with solar and lunar alignments, (atop the Tor) and a

land carved zodiac map, ten miles in diameter. Druid priests and

society considered Glastonbury their ‘holy mecca’. Understandably

so. Complete with temples, stone circles, fertility sites and a sacred

Goddess center, druid high priests and high priestesses were trained, initiated and centered at the Tor

and Chalice Well. The Chalice wellspring was considered to be the earth source for the Goddess, Gaia.

Her red waters were sacred and used for healing.

Glastonbury Museums & Tours

The Isle of Avalon

GOTHIC IMAGE TOURSof Ancient Britiain and Ireland“The Ancient Isle of Avalon”

Come and enjoy the special atmosphere of Glastonbury, the Ancient Avalon, the New Jerusalem and England’s ‘Holyest Earthe’. Glastonbury is a place of magical and natural enchantment. We offer tours to the hills, holy wells and ruins of this ancient and sacred Isle of Avalon. On our journey we explore and discover the immense prehistory of the area: the ancient Goddess, the megalith builders, the Glastonbury Zodiac, the Celts and Druids, the early Christians, the Arthurian traditions and the flowering of medieval art and architecture.

Gothic Image Tours7 High Street, Glastonbury, Somerset

BA6 9DP, UKtel: +44 (0)1458 831281

e-mail: tours@gothicimage.co.uk

GLASTONBURY ABBEY VISITOR’S CENTER

The Visitor’s Centre with its award winning Museum, featuring a model of the Abbey as it might have looked in 1539, together with a display of the town; a Children’s Display and the magnificent 16th century Othery Cope is an excellent place to visit on its own, or if the weather is poor.

The Abbey Gatehouse, Magdalene St. Glastonbury, Somerset BA6 9EL

+44 (0)1458 832267info@glastonburyabbey.com

SOMERST RURAL LIFE MUSEUMOpen 10:00am to 5:00pm

The Somerset Rural Life Museum is based in Glastonbury. In the Abbey Farmhouse the social and domestic life of Victorian Somerset is described in reconstructed rooms and there is a lively events programme as well as regular temporary exhibitions. There is also a tea room and museum shop. The magnificent fourteenth-century Abbey Barn is the centrepiece of the museum. The barn and the farm buildings surrounding the courtyard contain displays and tools used in local rural activities such as mud horse fishing, peat digging and cider making.

Abbey Farm,Chilkwell Street, Glastonbury,

BA6 8DB.Generalenquiries@somerset.gov.uk

Joseph of Armithea in Glastonbury

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Joseph of Armithea reputedly carried with him a staff made from an Israeli hawthorn tree. Legend claims Joseph thrust his staff into the moist ground at his campsite in Glastonbury Isle on Wearyall Hill. Within days it took root. This he interpreted as a sign from God to stay here and establish his home and church. He established the first Christian church in Glastonbury in 37 AD. The descendents of the Glastonbury Thorn tree still grow on Wearyall Hill and near the Tor. This particular variety of hawthorn blossoms twice annually at Christmas and at Easter, as do varieties of hawthorn found only in Palestine and Israel. Interestingly, no indigenous English varieties of hawthorns bloom at Christmas time. Joseph is also said to have buried the grail near the Chalice Well, and in so doing the well flowed red, signifying the healing blood of Christ.

Pictures of Glastonbury

The Isle of AvalonChalice Well History

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There are fascinating connections between the Chalice Well,

Glastonbury, the ‘Holy Grail’ and the arc of the covenant. In the early 1900’s a chalice was found in Bridies well in

Glastonbury and determined by the British museum to be

‘consistent with’Syrian or middle eastern artifacts from the period

of 100 BC to 300 AD. There is an incredible sequence of events

that led to the discovery of the Blue Chalice. The ‘blue chalice’

received great notoriety & became the topic of global interest and

study.. Today it is stored in a protected chamber of the ‘St.

Michael Retreat House’ on the grounds of the Chalice Well

Gardens. Members of the Chalice Well Trust are able to request

appointments to see and on rare occasions hold the chalice, under

the guidance of the Well Trustees.

Glastonbury’s Sacred Places

The Isle of Avalon

The Chalice WellThe Chalice Well, at the centre of the traditional site of the mythic Isle of Avalon, is among the best known and most loved holy wells in Britain. Archaeology has shown that prehistoric peoples used the spring, and for the last 2000 years, the site has been in continuous use, for drinking and for healing.

The TorThe Tor has been associated with the name Avalon, and identified with King Arthur, since the alleged discovery of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere’s neatly labelled coffins in 1191, recounted by Gerald of Wales.[8] Modern archaeology has revealed several sub-Roman structures.

Wearyall Hilllocated outside Glastonbury, England, near Glastonbury Tor. It was believed to be the site of the Holy Thorn, a thorn tree reputed to have sprung up when Joseph of Arimathea planted his staff into the ground on the hill.

White SpringIt is said that the White Spring was an entrance to a system of caves beneath the Tor and the Underworld of the Celtic tradition. This Underworld was the home of Gwyn ap Nudd, King of the Fairies and Lord of Anwnn.

Gog and MagogThey formed part of an avenue leading toward the Tor, and legend has extended it even further. The trees are said to be more than two thousand years old.

Grave of King Arthur In 1189, Glastonbury monks, discovered the graves of Arthur and his bride. The log coffin had been buried quite deep, at around 16 feet down. A stone slab cover had been found at the seven foot level, and attached to its underside was an oddly shaped cross with a latin inscription on it, naming the occupants of the coffin as the renowned King Arthur and his queen, Guinevere.

Glastonbury Abbey The Glastonbury Abbey was once the jeweled crown of English cathedrals. Magnificent in architecture and the center of Christian pilgrimages, the Glastonbury Abbey held a prominent and sacred position in the Christian world. Still today revered as holy grounds, the Abbey Ruins are the site of the first Christian Church in

History of the Tor

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Glastonbury Tor is the remains of a great three-dimensional neolithic labyrinth, a ceremonial way dedicated to the ancient British Goddess. In early-medieval times there was a small monks’ retreat on top of the Tor, founded probably in the time of St Patrick in the mid-400s. This was followed in the early 1100s by a chapel, St Michael de Torre. This was destroyed in a powerful earthquake in 1275 and rebuilt in the early 1300s. The tower is all that remains today. Centuries of legends and folklore have gathered around this Tor. In their various ways, these tales all demonstrate one thing – that the Tor is a place where the veil between the worlds is thin. Strange experiences here are usually interpreted according to the beliefs of the times. An otherworldly being met on the Tor might be called a fairy in one century, a nature spirit in another and ET in more recent years.

Vacation Packages

The Isle of Avalon

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Grail Quest Druid Ways Mideavel Times

Freemason Architecture in Glastonbury

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Christian Freemasons came along centuries later and built churches

(using sacred geometry) on the exact religious sites situated along the leylines vortexes chosen by the

earthwise Druid Shamen eons before. They were aware of the

amplified spiritual energy of these vortex sites, and chose them with

intuitive intent for construction of the great cathedrals. The

amplified leyline energy flowing in these British cathedrals built

along the Michael Leyline is simply magnificent, and must be

experienced! Several cathedrals actually have the leyline

channeled symmetrical down exact center aisle of the structure. The energy is curved into circular

patterns inside the brilliantly designed cathedral domes and

circulates inside throughout the vaulted ceilings.