Landing in Wonderland
We've been on European soil for a few weeks now. We've just passed through Bugarach and Rennes-le-Château, where we went through initiations so that we could arrive at our next destination with our hearts wide open: Glastonbury. Some time ago we had received the message to begin the teachings. We knew that the place of transmission would be important, both for us and for the participants. What better place to start than the mythical land of Avalon?
So be it, and on 24 October we landed in Glastonbury, wonderland, centre of the world and of the heart chakra of our planet. It was dark when we arrived and, for once, we were ill-prepared. We didn't download the offline map to find our way. We'd given priority to accident insurance rather than GPS... After a few hours going round in circles and asking for help from the only 'people' we passed in the street, a gnome and a wizard, we gave up the cosy bed we'd booked and decided to sleep in the car, parked just down from the Tor, a little outside the centre of Glastonbury. It was an energetic first night, with dreams of past lives lived there, despite only 5 hours of sleep in a damp car. We woke up in great shape. Our stay got off to a good start.
We venture into the town centre, which looks like a village of gnomes in broad daylight: there are more esoteric shops than 'normal' ones. All the buildings are painted in different colours. There are decorations with magnificent murals, precious stones encrusted in the walls, and so on. The people are friendly, welcoming and different, without naming that difference...
That same evening, we went for a pint of lager at the George & Pilgrim pub and immersed ourselves in the local colour. Our eyes feast, we're surrounded by women with long silver-grey hair dressed in purple or black velvet dresses, 'typical' young Englishmen in football shirts having a drink with a guy who looks like a mummy (bandages included) sitting on a throne and the waiter could be the graveyard keeper straight out of a Tim Burton film. During the evening I treat myself to a session with a psychic who does consultations in the bar (and who, contrary to her folkloric look, was very impressive in terms of feeling).
We said to ourselves "If one day we decide to make a film about ghosts, this bar would be the perfect setting". We hadn't even finished the sentence when we discovered an article on the wall about a tourist who had visited the bar and taken a selfie with a ghost in the photo. This ghost may be one of the monks who lived in Glastonbury Abbey. He still makes the underground journey through the tunnel that links the abbey with the pub?
Who needs to see or read Harry Potter when you can go to Glastonbury?
The Earth Heart Chakra
Like the human heart, this place is the energy engine for an entire organism that we call "the earth". From this centre, energy is sent, as if by heartbeat, to all the other places in the world, thanks to energy lines which, like arteries, pass through this point "0" and spread out over the earth. There is, for example, the line that links Glastonbury to Lake Titicaca (the first destination on our journey), to Mount Kailas-Tibet (the antipode of one of our last destinations - the Elqui Valley in Chile) and Uluru in Australia. Like the heart that pumps blood through the arteries and sends it to all parts of the body, Glastonbury sends pulses of energy through the 'ley' lines, also called 'dragon lines' or 'sound lines' by the aborigines, to all corners of the world.
Glastonbury is unique in that it represents unity and unifies opposites (like the human heart), paying homage to the complementary nature of the 2 poles of existence. It is the meeting place of the 2 sides of our dualistic reality and all the expressions of this duality. "Nothing is impossible here". The slogan seems to be "live and let live". To each his own truth. As illustrated by the fact that here, for centuries, the Christian religion has coexisted peacefully with Celtic rites and traditions. Here we celebrate and honour gods and goddesses, the holy trinity of man-woman-child. Mary Magdalene is said to have passed through here, as is Anna, the grandmother of Jesus. The Holy Family is celebrated by pagans, as Arthur and Guinevere are by Christians. Here, we celebrate Easter and Beltaine, All Saints and Samhain, Christmas and Yul. Perhaps the finest example of this unity between religions, beliefs and traditions is Brigid or Saint Bridget, Celtic goddess, one of the Tuatha de Danan, protector of sacred springs and poetry, later sanctified by the Catholic Church and now celebrated and honoured by pagans and Christians alike. Every year, her feast day heralds the imminent end of winter and the beginning of spring. Last year, on the first of February, we organised a ritual in Brigid's honour to celebrate Imbolc, which for us heralded the end of our life in Belgium and the start of our journey around the world.
The history of Catholicism in Glastonbury is apparently more harmonious than in other parts of the world and is by no means a classic story of the repression of traditional rites. Rather, it is a story of integration and (re)conciliation. King Arthur is not the enemy of Jesus, because their quest for justice and truth was the same, and Mary Magdalene and Guinevere are both expressions of the sacred feminine. I feel that the energy of the place demands this tolerance and collaboration. All the abbots of the abbey have been interested in the history of this land and the myths, legends and customs that have formed the unique melting pot that is Glastonbury. Arthur's presumed grave is located on the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey. Below the main altar, a large hollow oak trunk with 2 skeletons inside and a stone with the inscription Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia (here is buried the famous King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon) were found.
Although the church has tried on several occasions to distance itself from anything mythical, from nature spirits or the supernatural, at Glastonbury it has never succeeded in doing so. An episode in the history of the abbey illustrates this point well: in 1908 Frederick Bligh Bond was engaged by the Diocesan Foundation of Bath and Wells as Master of Excavations at Glastonbury Abbey to study and discover the nature and purpose of the ruins in the abbey grounds. The diocesan foundation had just acquired the abbey grounds and the abbey had been abandoned for centuries since Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and killed the last abbot on the Tor.
To the delight of the Foundation, Frederick Bligh Bond did a remarkable job and quickly discovered the position and use of the various buildings. The enthusiasm of the diocesan foundation was tempered somewhat when he published his book "Gates of remembrance" in 1919, in which he revealed that all this archaeological information came from working with a medium who received clear indications from the spirits of deceased monks and abbots.
This dual pagan-Christian heritage can also be seen on the Tor at Glastonbury. The Tor is a natural mountain with 7 terraces surrounding it, made by men and used during Celtic festivals and rites. On the Tor is St Michaels Tower, the only surviving part of a church that was built on the summit.
From the Tor there are magnificent views over the Glastonbury landscape and the Somerset plains, which are awash in a sea of fog almost every evening, adding to the mystical and mysterious air that Glastonbury naturally has. It is thought that the origin of the word Glastonbury comes from glass + borough, which makes us think of Ynis Witrin, the mythical island of glass that is home to elves and fairies and which veils itself in fog to hide its secrets from the gaze of those who do not have an open heart. Glastonbury used to be surrounded by water, and was therefore an island surrounded by mirrors (or water). It was thanks to the Abbey's drainage work that the marshes and estuaries around Glastonbury became arable and habitable.
When you watch the fog shroud Glastonbury every day, it's not hard to see where this association will come from. Ynis Withrin would be another name for Avalon (Isle of Apples), the mythical land of King Arthur.
Glastonbury, compass of the world
The first time we decided to climb the Tor was on the evening of Samhain (Halloween). We were following up on a message we'd received a few weeks earlier. Samhain is the zero point between the season of light and the season of darkness. We're moving from a way of life that expresses itself a lot on the outside to a way of life that's experienced mainly on the inside. This time of year invites us to make peace with our shadows and accept the dualistic nature of our existence. It's one of the moments that shows the give-and-take dynamic in life, the back-and-forth of life's energy as the cosmic wheel turns. It's a pas-sage where the veils between different worlds fall away, as well as the veils we create around ourselves.
If the heart is the meeting point of all the dimensions in the body: inside/outside, up/down, past/future, masculine/feminine, the Tor is the Glastonbury Tor. It can be seen as the compass of the world, the axis or needle that points the way to the right path, the path of the heart, and gives us access to all the different dimensions that exist in the universe, just by entering our inner temple.
Once we arrive on the Tor, we notice that we're not alone. Many local people have come to honour the place, to pay their respects, even if some of them aren't quite sure what. Some have come to celebrate Halloween, because they are convinced that the Tor is the gateway to the world of fairies and they hope to catch a glimpse of them. Whatever the reason for their presence, the important thing is that people are always interested in the energetic places here and always come to visit them at key moments.
We look for a place on the Tor, in their midst, and connect with the place. Immediately we feel a very powerful energy enter through our feet and rise throughout our bodies, right up to our heads. The energy is so powerful that we even feel a headache, before everything calms down and the energy is redistributed throughout the body.
This energy opens up the light channel in one go and opens up our whole being before we can, in turn, give our energy to the place. The light is switched on and becomes bright, and I relive all the stages of the journey and all the sensations I experienced in the different places I visited. It's very special, as if the Tor were 'downloading' the information I carry within me. You can compare it to a USB key that transmits its data to a computer. That's how I experienced it, like a data reset, and I realised that in future I'm going to return to Glastonbury from time to time to reset all the data I've accumulated within myself, to redistribute it to the planet from the heart of the earth and to begin a new phase of the journey, a new stage of life.
Once the transmission is complete, we look up and in the distance Wearyall Hill catches our eye. Wearyall Hill, another mythical site in Glastonbury. According to oral tradition, this is the place where Joseph of Arimathea arrived at Glastonbury with the Grail containing the blood of Christ. On this mount he struck his walking stick on the ground and on this very spot grew the sacred hawthorn. Sacred because, unlike all other Hawthorns, this one flowers twice a year: once in spring as usual and again in winter. There are still a few Hawthorns that have been grafted from this first Sacred Hawthorn, including two that are now in the gardens of the church of Saint John the Baptist in the centre of Glastonbury.
Let's move forward a few days to allow us to complete the alchemical transmission on balance and harmony. We return to the Tor a second time to discover that this is the moment of the alignment of Venus and Mars. A gift from the heavens, a mirror of the dynamics of Glastonbury above our heads and a fine confirmation of our choice of venue for the first course. What's below is like what's above, and this truth is clearly visible in the Glastonbury landscape: the constellations are imprinted in nature, sometimes with the help of humans. What is important is not the origin of the zodiac, but that it makes Glastonbury, and the land around it, a great temple to the stars and shows that the stars mirror the dynamics of the earth. As on all the high places of human civilisation, the earth-sky link is well established and Michael's tower on the Tor acts as the arrow of the clock and indicates the movement of the cosmos.
The 12 constellations are imprinted on the landscape of Glastonbury. Let's take a closer look at the Aquarius constellation, of which the Tor and the town centre are a part. Aquarius represents unity and is represented by the figure of the phoenix or the eagle in the zodiac, the symbolism of the 2 birds being in phase with the idea of spiritual maturity and self-realisation. When we follow the beak of the Aquarian eagle, we arrive at the 2 sacred springs: the red spring and the white spring. The 2 springs used to flow together, meeting where Wellhouse Lane is now. Today, however, they are divided and each flows on its own side of the landscape.
The key to moving on to a new stage in human evolution is therefore effectively inscribed in the constellation of Aquarius and the places that represent it in Glastonbury: the masculine and feminine are complementary, the 2 dynamics together feeding the cosmic wheel and thus stimulating the flow of life.
As the landscape suggests, we are not living in a sphere of conflicting duality, but in a complementary reality. This cosmic truth was well known to all harmonious civilisations, and we are in the process of regaining awareness of it. In Latin America, this balance is represented by the moon and the sun or gold and silver (sacred statues were always made in pairs to honour this harmonious duality). In the Eastern tradition, this balance is represented by the Yin and Yang dynamic, In the Celtic and Druidic tradition, this dynamic is represented by the cyclical aspect of the wheel of life, in the origins of Christianity it is the balance between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, in Egypt it is Isis-Osiris and in the land of Avalon it is the King of Arthur who only succeeded in keeping the peace by finding a balance with his feminine counterpart: Guinevere and by marrying into the Christian tradition. There is no opposition here, only complementarity. In the logic of the planetary evolution we are undergoing, the 2 sources will one day meet again and flow together again, thus representing the harmony rediscovered on earth.
The symbol chosen to represent the Chalice Well, the feminine spring, is the Vesica Pisces: the meeting of 2 circles, 2 different principles (masculine-feminine, spirit-body, matter-spirit, sky-earth, shadow-light) and the unity or meeting of the 2 in the middle. The Holy Trinity: man-woman-child or principle 1 and principle 2 (its mirror) meet in the middle to create the third element. The vesica pisces is surrounded by a circle representing our world or the universe. The duality that exists within unity and gives rise to unity, etc. etc. The infinite fractal.
This symbol is then pierced in the middle by an arrow, which represents Michael's sword or King Arthur's Excalibur, the sword of truth, the middle way that puts things back in their right place. It's the axis or needle that points to the right path, the path of the heart, and gives access to all the other dimensions that exist in the universe.
It's the last day of our stay in Glastonbury and Jean-Baptiste and I find ourselves in the garden of Chalice Well, the red spring. It was the restoration of a sacred spring 4 years ago that triggered the beginning of our life mission. Then it was our druidic union, and the druid's transmission that helped us prepare for the wedding, which sealed our common direction. It's the path of harmony that we've chosen, and showing and demonstrating the different ways to bring about harmony is part of our life path.
7 months ago, we began our journey with the organisation of the Imbolc ritual, which was supported by Brigid's energy, and since then we've travelled through Beltaine and Lughnasad to arrive in Glastonbury at Samhain time, to rediscover Brigid's energy in the Celtic lands.
Here, with stars in our eyes and filled with the wonder we've experienced over the last few days, we realise that the first cycle of our alchemical journey has just come to an end and that a new cycle is beginning, towards new adventures and new horizons.
