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Exploring Glastonbury

MARLBOROUGH, July 21, 2008 - Ah, Glastonbury!  What a delightful day this was.  The weather was nearly perfect.  We made sure of that.  I told my compatriots in the van (left) that we must all manifest nice and sunny day for today.  And that there must be no wavering of faith when we do it.  And so it came to pass. 

This was the part of the trip that I was looking forward to the most.  I have read so much about Glastonbury, especially in the context of the early Christian history, and later the Knights of Templar, the Holy Grail etc.  And now, after a little less than two hours' drive from Marlborough, we were about to experience it...

I recognized the Glastonbury Cathedral (St. John the Baptist church - right) from the pictures as soon as we entered this quaint little town in southwestern England.  But before we went into the church, we had to make a pitstop after two hours of travel.  And we did even that in a historic setting.  The hotel you are seeing on the left dates back to 1452.  You can just imagine how many brawls and bar

fights took place in its rooms.  This is where I also learned for the first time that Glastonbury was once an island called Avalon.  I first learned that from the inscription on the wall of that old hotel (right).

A long time ago, the low lying marshy area around it was under water.  Later in the day, I went to the Glastonbury library where the helpful staff shared with me their knowledge of history and showed me the map (left). The blue highlight on it was mine, illustrating the sea water that once reached this deep inland (about 10-12 miles from where the sea shore is today).  Glastonbury's city center looks very English but the shops and the people in it are "all Sedona."  By that, I mean the New Age book stores, crystal shops, tattoo and psychic reading places, and even a YinYang shop (right).  Heather, my Sedona shaman friend, suggested the shop should be renamed YinYangBob - to match the name of this web site. :-)

When we finally did make it into the church of St. John the Baptist, we have found its interior to be as beautiful as its external appearance.  Particularly outstanding were the stained glass windows.  Of those, the one in the middle left shot (and right) is the most famous.  That's where the story is told of Joseph of Armathea's visit to Glastonbury in circa 66AD.  He was Mary Magdalene's uncle.  Where he put his staff down into the ground (at today's Wearyall Hill) a tree sprung out that blooms every Christmas even today, a legend goes (read the sign on the right).

But it was the Glastonbury Abbey (above), about which I had not known very much until now, that I found the most enchanting.  I spent hours on its grounds, meditating and contemplating its rich and often violent history.

This is, for example, where King Arthur and his wife Queen Guinevere were buried (circa 542AD).  The couple and Sir Lancelot (the Queen's lover) form the most celebrated love-triangle in European literature.  This is where many of England's celebrated Abbots lived and served between the sixth and the 16th century.

Glastonbury is also said to have been visited by St. Patrick in 433AD (yes, the one of Eire) and by St. David in 563AD.

At the height of the church power, the Abbots lived the life of a king.  They were almost as rich and powerful as any king of England.  That ended in 1539 when Hency VIII and the knights around him came up with trumped up charges against the last Abbot of the Glastonbury Abbey.  They did it because they wanted the gold and the riches the Abbey had in order to raise an army, preparing for a war against France.  Henry VIII had divorced his wife, the daughter of the king of Spain, which caused a wrath not just of Spain, but of the Pope and the entire Catholic world.  So Henry's emissaries condemned the poor abbot to be drawn and quartered.  Whereupon they proceeded to plunder and destroy this beautiful church, one of the most magnificent examples of the early Christian architecture.  The latter story was told to me by this humble knave (left), who turned out to be a very knowledgeable scholar of the British history.

I traded tales with him by telling him about the Izedis or Yezidis or Yazidis, the oldest tribe on this planet known to man.  The Yazidis believed that the Peacock Angel (Malak Taus) started the life on this earth, and that he first landed in their homeland, which is in today's northern Iraq (see "Pilgrimage to Lalesh [Beyta Lalesh]" video and the picture of an 85-year old Yeziti - left; doesn't he look like an Inka?).  Their name originates from Yazid (645-685AD, Damascus, Syria).  But they were labeled as Satan worshippers and are persecuted by their Arabic and Kurdish neighbors even to this day. 

There are ancient temples in Lalesh (right) that reminded me of the Abbot's kitchen in Glastonbury Abbey (above left).  Not only does it go to show us how well the abbots lived, but it is also a reminder of possible interconnections between the Christianity and other ancient sects.

Just how well the abbots lived can be also seen from this short video clip I made at the Abbot's Kitchen...

Glastonbury Abbey: Abbot's Kitchen (July 21, 2008) (2:17 mins)

After the visit to the Abbey, we climbed a steep hill known as Torr...

...that we first saw from the road into Glastonbury this morning.  Just how steep you can see from the shots taken on the way up.  Even though I had just climbed up and down from the 16,300 ft elevations in the Andes, I struggled a bit, as the injury to my left knee that I sustained on my last day in Peru still seems to be a bit of a nag.  But it was nothing that would stop me from making it to the top of Torr and back.

The views from Torr are pretty spectacular, as you can see from the above shots.  And no, I am not just talking about that blonde in the middle left shot. The Torr is believed to be a doorway to the Lower World.  It is a place where many of the world's lay and energy lines intersect (see the right map).  But I will always remember it as a place that is as windy as cold as some of Peruvian mountains, even though it is only 580 ft tall.  Heather held a brief ceremony for us, and tried to get us to travel to the Lower world from within that tower atop the Torr.  Some people said they had experienced amazing journeys.  But I never even made it out of the chimney, I told Heather afterward.  I was struggling to keep my cap on against the powerful wind, hang on to my poncho and was mindful of a freezing butt, sitting on cold stones.  So the only journey I took was one down the hill and into the warm sunshine of Glastonbury, which I did right after our ceremony.

Back in town, at the entrance to the Chalice Well (middle two shots), I found again both beauty (flowers) and serenity (lush ground).  Chalice Well is a spring whose water runs red (because of high iron content).  Which is why, according to the legend, it symbolized the blood of Christ.

Here are a few more views of the lush grounds and beautiful flowers around the Chalice Well.

We finished the day in Glastonbury with dinner at this pub with beautiful flowers (left) and indecent pictures in the restrooms (middle).  The dinner was full of jokes and laughs.  But the last laugh was reserved for the shingle of a chiropractor across the street.  "McMoney" is how I read his name.  "MakeMoney" is how someone else saw it.  So I thought I'd save it for my chiropractor friend back in Scottsdale. :-)

And that's all she wrote from this Monday, July 21, in Wiltshire, England.

Love  Light

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