By Sandy Whitlow
“There are places where the veil is thin, where the land remembers what time forgets. Glastonbury is one of them.”
The town of Glastonbury, nestled in the heart of Somerset, England, is more than a dot on a map—it is a crossroads of myth, memory, and mystery. Cobblestone streets lead to stories older than the stones themselves, and every step hums with a sacred echo. I arrived with my camera, my journal, and a heart wide open, ready to listen to what the land had to say.
The Abbey: Echoes of a Forgotten Faith
The first time I walked beneath the arched remains of Glastonbury Abbey, I felt it—a silence that spoke volumes. Once a grand monastic site, now only its bones remain. Yet those bones breathe. Centuries ago, monks claimed this was the final resting place of King Arthur and Guinevere, a tale scoffed at by scholars but embraced by seekers.
As I stood near the supposed gravesite, I didn’t hear trumpets or swords. I heard mourning doves and wind through fractured stone. I imagined ancient footsteps—monks in procession, pilgrims on their knees, perhaps even a veiled priestess laying flowers no one dared question.
This is a place of endings and beginnings. Of Christian sanctity layered over pagan roots.
The Tor: A Spiral to the Sky
The climb to Glastonbury Tor is no small feat. The hill rises steeply, crowned with the solitary tower of St. Michael’s Church—a lone sentinel watching over the Somerset Levels.
Some say the Tor is the Isle of Avalon, the gateway to the Otherworld. Others believe it’s a former Druidic power site aligned with ley lines. Whatever the truth, climbing it felt like ascending into myth. Each step was a shedding of the mundane, until at the summit, the wind greeted me like an old friend.
I stood inside the tower’s hollow heart and stretched out my arms, whispering a prayer—not to a god or goddess, but to the land itself.
“Let me remember. Let me return.”
Below, mist curled around the fields like a living thing. Time didn’t seem to pass. It layered.
The Chalice Well: Where the Waters Run Red
At the foot of the Tor lies the Chalice Well, its iron-rich waters running red as blood, its gardens steeped in a hush that feels sacred. Pagan and Christian symbolism entwine here—the vesica piscis carved into the well lid, the lion’s head fountain, the sacred spring that never runs dry.
Legend says Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Grail here, and that it lies buried beneath the well. Others believe the water carries the healing spirit of the goddess. I cupped my hands and drank. Cool. Metallic. Alive.
Here, belief doesn’t matter. Presence does. I sat by the well and felt my heartbeat sync with the rhythm of dripping water, as if the earth were exhaling.
Pilgrimage, Not Tourism
Glastonbury isn’t a tourist destination. It’s a pilgrimage. A place where seekers come not to see, but to feel. To remember something they can’t quite name. I wandered the esoteric shops full of crystals and candles, yes—but I also lingered in quiet courtyards, in ivy-covered ruins, in silence.
I met others on their own journeys: a woman tracing her Welsh ancestry, a young man who came to “heal what the city broke,” an older couple looking for a place to scatter the ashes of their daughter, who loved Avalon before she ever set foot there.
We were strangers, but not. Glastonbury connects. Like a web spun through stone and soil and story.
Final Reflections: The Magic Beneath Your Feet
You don’t leave Glastonbury behind. You carry it with you. In your bones. In your dreams. In that quiet moment when the wind suddenly whispers your name and you find yourself listening for something ancient and wild.
There’s magic here—but it’s not the magic of spells and wands. It’s the magic of place, of presence, of remembering who we were before the world taught us to forget.
Some say Avalon is gone. I say it waits—just beneath the surface of those who know where to look.
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