An Avalon Reader: Part Three
Journeying deep into the heart of Glastonbury & Avalon, through 23 essential books
Welcome to the third part (of four) of An Avalon Reader; in no particular order, a list of 23 essential books on the topic of Glastonbury & Avalon.
In this post we’ll look at Glastonbury’s role in the emergence and evolution of Britain’s countercultural and New Age movements, book-ended by a distinctly New Age assessment of Glastonbury’s geomagickal purpose, and another far more sober, scholarly overview. In between is a compelling argument for Glastonbury as a purposefully-constructed stellar and solar temple.
As mentioned previously, all these works function as foundational texts for readers of Avalon Working. However, you don’t need to have read any of these for Avalon Working to make sense, but they will certainly inform and enrich the reader’s understanding.
Free State: Glastonbury’s alternative community, 1970 to 2000 and Beyond by Bruce Garrard (Unique Publications)
Bruce Garrard is a firm fixture in the Glastonbury community, having lived in the town to a greater or lesser extent since 1973. In that time he: set up an independent publishing outfit, became active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, coordinated the Green Movement’s first ‘Green Field’ at Glastonbury Festival, became a director of The Big Green Gathering off-grid festival, contributed to the free Glastonbury magazine The Oracle, and generally documented the activities of Glastonbury’s alternative community. This is the topic of his book Free State, which provides a fascinating glimpse into the ‘hippy invasion’, and the various scenes, initiatives, groups and communities involved in forging the unique Glastonian spirit. Garrard was at the heart of all this, his book constituting an account from someone who was in the eye of the storm throughout the decades.
However, to quote from a different source – a Guardian article from 20th December 1969 – we can gain a snapshot of Glastonbury’s status in that pivotal decade:
Glastonbury has had a remarkable year. Hundreds of young people … have hitch-hiked and tramped into town from all over Britain, Europe and even America since March, looking for ‘vibrations’. The arrival of the pilgrims … has led to paroxysms of righteous horror from some of the town elders.
This snippet records the point at which Glastonbury became a focal-point for the nascent New Age movement, attracting a riotous countercultural mix of hippies, mystics, activists, spirituals, freaks, drop-outs, environmentalists, acid casualties, travellers and occultists, all pursuing their own highly individualised spiritual quests but homothetically drawn to the Holy Island’s uncanny anthroposophy.
Garrard’s other publications also merit investigation, including accounts of the Stonehenge free festival throughout the 1980s, and the story of Greenlands Farm, now Paddington Farm.
See Glastonbury Stories for recollections of the town and the festival from the 1960s and 70s.
Glastonbury: Myth & Archaeology by Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts (The History Press)
Both authors of the sober, scholarly analysis of Glastonbury as a place of historical importance, are archaeologists. In fact, both participated in the excavations of the Tor in 1966-69, the findings from which are detailed in this book. Other topics covered include: Glastonbury’s unique topography, geology and resources; the etymology of its various names; the evidence for changes in cult and settlement from prehistory to the medieval era; the abbey and its influence in shaping the Avalonian mythopoetic process, and the status of the present town and community. While it is refreshing to read an academic assessment of the Glastonbury phenomenon, the authors are perhaps too sceptical and dismissive of its legendarium, regarding it as a mainly medieval confection undertaken for pecuniary, political or prestige motives.
A related book deserving of special mention is Luri Leitch’s The Pagan Temple of Glastonbury Tor, which expands on topics covered in Myth & Archaeology. It examines in detail the archaeological evidence for a Romano-British pagan temple upon the summit of Glastonbury Tor.
Voyage to Avalon: The Magick of Glastonbury - Heart Chakra of the World by Robert Coon (R Coon)
If an antidote to Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts’s academic scepticism is needed, this is it. Robert Coon’s extraordinary ‘New Age’ vision places Glastonbury at the literal and metaphorical heart of an subtle planetary network comprising a total of 156 Earth Chakras (12 original Chakras plus 144 additionally propagated Chakras), part of a greater pattern of two energy paths or ley arteries encircling the earth, interweaving in a double helix and formed by a female rainbow serpent and a male winged feathered serpent. The complex system includes 52 further ‘Chakra Gates’ and 72 so-called ‘Bonded Pairs’ - esoteric partnerships between the 144 additionally propagated Chakras.
Coon’s book focusses on Glastonbury in particular, which is designated the Heart Chakra in the planetary system - a state of affairs echoing Dion Fortune’s assertion that Avalon is the heart and guardian of Albion. But more broadly, Coon’s work multiplexes Thelemic teachings, Kabbala, Atlantis myths, The Holy Graal, earth mysteries, Drudism, eastern spiritual philosophies, the Age of Aquarius and all manner of New Age tropes into a fascinating but inscrutable system of cosmic evolution, and the possibility of physical immortality, all becoming revealed via a galactic timetable (echoing Blavatsky’s program of mysteries and revelations encoded in the precessional cycle of 25,868 years.) Whether or not you can accept any of Coon’s assertions, they are hard to ignore, especially in the context of Glastonbury as a place of emergence, initiation and spiritual evolution.
The Star Temple of Avalon: Glastonbury's Ancient Observatory Revealed by Nicholas Mann and Philippa Glasson (The Temple Publications)
This compelling book argues for the Holy Island of Glastonbury as a place of ancient sanctity and, especially, through its topographical orientations and alignments, a solar and stellar observatory. According to this theory, Edmund Hill, one of Glastonbury’s four hills, is surmounted by a man-made mound, originally conceived as a Neolithic viewing platform. From Edmund Hill, at winter solstice dawn, the rising sun appears to roll up the steep northern flank of the Tor; the sun’s ascent, at an angle of 26°, is matched by the angle of the slope of the Tor. The winter solstice sun reaches its zenith over Chalice Hill and sets behind the outer flank of Wearyall Hill. In the Neolithic, the path of the sun’s rise was lower. Mann and Glasson suggest that the Tor’s terraces were cut in order to observe the top rim of the sun during its thirty-minute ascent to the Tor’s summit. A similar transit applies to the moon. At the lowest point of its 18.6 year cycle of lunar standstills, the moon would have risen along the spine of the Tor and grazed the top of Chalice Hill, before setting over Wearyall Hill. Also in the Neolithic, the heliacal rising of Sirius followed the same ascent.
I discuss these and other solar and stellar phenomena in Avalon Working; for those who have read the book, the importance of Sirius in Glastonbury’s geomythology will already be understood.
The New Age in Glastonbury - The Construction of Religious Movements by Ruth Prince and David Riches (Berghahn Books)
This book is the product of an anthropological study of the Glastonbury community conducted in the early 1990s, specifically examining the characteristics of the so-called New Age movement. Prince focusses her ethnography on the themes of individualism and holism, and characterises these communities as comprising a bricolage of spiritualism, self-development, holistic medicine, alternative therapies and environmentalism, all marshalled in the pursuit of ultimately liberating the higher, inner self. Recognising that Glastonbury is a major centre for communities of this type, she also observes how it has developed its own rules and modes of behaviour existing apart from, and sometimes in opposition to, the pre-existing cultures of mainstream society. Covering topics such as: work, health, child-rearing, gender, conflict, social relations and spirituality, Prince situates the Glastonbury community in the context of a wider tradition of Utopianist movements (which essentially boils down to the desire to create a better society than the incumbent.)