The Myths and Legends of Glastonbury Tor

The British Isles are studded with atmospheric ancient landmarks but few are as enigmatic as Glastonbury Tor in Somerset. Dominating the surrounding landscape and topped by the lonely ruined tower of St Michael’s church, it has been a tourist attraction and a site of pilgrimage for centuries. It is little wonder that the Tor has developed a reputation for mystical energies and has become a treasure trove of myths and legends.

Gateway to the Underworld

“Tor” is derived from the Welsh word Twr, meaning simply “heap,” and some of the earliest legends attached to the mound are derived from Somerset’s celtic days. In Welsh mythology, Glastonbury Tor was believed to be hollow and concealed the gateway to Annwn, a fairy kingdom ruled by Gwyn Ap Nudd.

 

 

The warrior and chieftain of the other world also appeared in Arthurian legend. Sometimes he was an antagonist, as in the abduction of his rival Gwythyr’s sister, while in other tales he became an ally, such as during the hunt for the ferocious wild boar Twrch Trwyth. As time went on, Gwyn also became associated with a variation of the Wild Hunt legend, riding out from his domain every Samhain with his phantom hounds to collect human souls. As with many similar myths, witnessing the hunting party is a portent of doom.

While Gwyn ap Nudd’s connection to the Tor may date back to the late 11th Century, the idea that the hill is hollow appears to date to a 16th Century tale in which a hermit called St Collen is invited inside by Gwynn. Initially resisting, Collen eventually ventures inside to find a castle where Gwynn awaits with a splendid banquet. Accepting snacks from fairies is rarely a good idea in old myths, and luckily Collen resisted the temptation. He dispelled the vision by sprinkling his holy water about and reappearing on top of the tor.

Rumours of caverns inside the Tor have persisted over the centuries, with stories detailing the remains of a druid’s temple and subterranean tunnels leading to nearby Glastonbury Abbey. In some folktales, intrepid people who have dared to enter the Tor have lost their minds, or else found that many years have passed when they emerge.

 

 

The Tor’s link to the druids can still be found above ground today on the Dragon’s Path, a 3D labyrinth that wends its way up across the seven man-made ledges carved into the side of the hill. These terraces, which are more visible if you check it out on Google Maps, may date back to Iron Age agriculture, but became known as an initiation rite for budding druids. They believed the path followed the course of underground springs, and it is also suggested that there are some natural cavities within the Tor. The sacred waters of the White Spring flows from under the hill and has also become a pilgrimage site.

King Arthur

Glastonbury Tor has long held connections to King Arthur. Not far from the Welsh border, its old name Ynys Afallon translates to Island of Apples or, more intriguingly, the Isle of Avalon. This has led many scholars to believe it is the physical location of Avalon from Arthurian legend. This is supported by the fact that the low country surrounding the Tor were once marshlands before they were drained and turned into farmland in the 18th Century. In other words, it would have looked like an island rising above the waters back in the day.

The ancient myth is derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historie Regum Britannie from 1136, a fictional account of the kings of Britain. He described Avalon as the place where Excalibur was forged, and later as the refuge where King Arthur was taken after he was gravely wounded in the Battle of Camlann at Tintagel in Cornwall.

 

 

In some versions, Arthur was able to recuperate after his sorceress sister Morgan le Fey worked her magic on him. In others, the wounds were fatal and he passed away on the mystical island. Some say he is buried on Glastonbury Tor and will rise again when the people of Britain need him most.

These fantastical tales may have at least a tenuous connection with reality. In 1191, Gerald of Wales wrote that the tomb of King Arthur and his wife Guinevere had been unearthed at Glastonbury Abbey. While there were other contemporary accounts that supported this claim, skeptics suggest that it was in fact a hoax perpetrated by monks of the Abbey in order to drum up funds for reconstruction after a devastating fire in 1184. Unfortunately, there is no way of telling – the remains were kept at the Abbey for three centuries but were lost forever when the site was razed during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.

The Holy Grail

As Monty Python fans well know, the most famous quest undertaken by King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table was the search for the Holy Grail. There are many versions of the tale, but the most well-known comes from Sir Thomas Mallory’s 15th-Century Le Morte D’Arthur (Death of Arthur). In Mallory’s version, a vision of the Grail appeared before the knights at Camelot and it was foretold that Sir Galahad, a descendent of Joseph of Arimathea, would be the one who succeeds in finding it. Sir Gawain declares that he’s got it covered and heads out with 150 other knights and the story follows their various adventures. The prophecy is fulfilled as Galahad, known for his chastity and piety, is the only knight worthy of claiming the Grail before he ascends to Heaven.

Glastonbury Tor has long been identified as the resting place of the Holy Grail, a suspicion that was boosted when the Nanteos Cup was discovered nearby in 1878. Rumour had it that the broken hardwood chalice possessed magical qualities and was carved from the One True Cross, although it was later determined that it was carved from wych elm in Britain during the Middle Ages.

 

 

If you’re not up on your grail lore, you might be wondering why Jesus’s juice glass (to quote The Fisher King) would find itself under a hill in England. Saint Joseph of Arimithea was a wealthy man and a disciple of Jesus who took charge of Christ’s burial after the crucifixion, and later tales suggest that he brought the Grail with him on his journey to England and buried it on Glastonbury Tor.

During his travels, it is said that Joseph founded the first church in the British Isles. He planted his staff in the ground near Glastonbury Tor and it miraculously turned into a tree, giving him a sign that it was a suitable site. A rudimentary wattle church was reputedly built where Glastonbury Abbey sits today, marking the spot where Christianity began staking a claim over celtic sacred sites. Supporters of this theory point out that the original Glastonbury thorn tree, burned as a relic during the English Civil War, was not native to Britain and originated in the Middle East.

An intriguing tale related to Joseph of Arimathea is that Jesus accompanied him to England in his youth. This provided the inspiration for Wiiliam Blake’s poem “And did those feet in ancient time.” Contrary to popular belief, it was written as a preface to Milton: A Poem in Two Books, rather than Blake’s larger illuminated epic Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion. Written in 1804, the poem wasn’t a huge hit during Blake’s lifetime but captured the nation’s imagination when its words were set to music by SIr Hubert Parry in 1916 as “Jerusalem.” Sir Edward Elgar re-scored it six years later to become the stirring hymn we know today, and now it is a mainstay of the Last Night of the Proms. The lyrics begin:

 

And did those feet in ancient time,

Walk upon England’s mountains green,

And was the holy Lamb of God

On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

 

Did Jesus stroll through our idyllic pastures and perhaps even climb Glastonbury Tor itself? The short answer is probably not, but the connection between Jesus, St. Joseph and the Holy Grail is seen as a useful metaphor by some religious scholars for how Christianity came to British shores and flourished, as if from a seed planted in England’s green and pleasant land.

Glastonbury Zodiac and Ley Lines

Glastonbury Tor and Stonehenge, around 40 miles away on Salisbury Plain, are both said to be major hubs of a network of ley lines that criss-cross the British Isles. Indeed, the powerful confluence of mystical energies that flow through this part of England are said to make Glastonbury and nearby Shaftesbury the planet’s heart chakra, lying on the globe-spanning Rainbow Serpent ley line that originates at Uluru in Australia.

The concept of ley lines was devised by businessman and enthusiast Alfred Watkins in the 1920s. His idea was that neolithic inhabitants of the British Isles would mark significant points on the landscape as a way of finding their way around. He identified a series of straight lines that appeared to pass through hamlets and villages with “ley” in their name, the Saxon word for forest clearing, and dubbed them ley lines. By his definition, you needed a minimum of four good viewpoints to create a ley.

Ley lines took on more mystical connotations in the 1950s and 1960s as people began to take more interest in ufology and the supernatural, particularly after John Mitchell’s influential book The View Over Atlantis suggested that ley lines were in fact channelling mystical and / or earth energies.

 

 

Mitchell identified the St Michael line, which can be traced from St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall to the abbey at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, passing through the two key sites of The Mump in Burrowbridge, Somerset, and Glastonbury Tor. Mitchell claimed that both hills, which have ruined churches on their summit, were artificially altered so that their axes aligned. This takes on spiritual significance as the alignment is said to follow that of the May Day sunrise and that ancient people Beltane lit beacons along the St Michael line to celebrate it. An alternative theory is that the line marks the transition of the sun on May the 8th, or St Michael’s Day.

The line is variously known as the St Michael/Mary alignment due to a second more tenuous line that weaves close to the more clearly defined set of points along the St Michael line, crossing over at certain places. Other ley lines, such as the Tintagel & Jersey line, are said to intersect with it along the way.

The notion of ley lines may sound fanciful to some, but the Glastonbury Zodiac is even more contentious. The theory goes that a series of topographical features depicting signs of the zodiac surround Glastonbury with the Tor representing a phallus in the centre. Supposedly, if you overlay a planisphere with the area, the signs on the landscape all roughly align with their constellation’s position in the cosmos.

This was first put forward by globe-trotting sculptor Katherine Maltwood, who drew upon Arthurian texts to outline the theory. King Arthur himself is said to be represented by the Sagittarius figure of the Glastonbury Zodiac, and the geographical feature was the true round table of the legendary monarch. Furthermore, she speculated that the Arthur had equivalents in Phoenican and Persian myth and has a “middle eastern” look, and that the Zodiac was first constructed by members of a Babylonian cult some time around 2700 B.C. 

 

Skeptics among us may pooh-pooh ideas of myths and mystical energies, but it is impossible not to feel a little tingle of magic when you stand atop Glastonbury Tor and gaze out across the fields and hedgerows. It’s a place where you can get a tangible sense of history surging through the ground beneath your feet and almost hear the voices of our ancestors carried on the breeze. Are these feelings just part of the excitement of being here, on this legendary site, savouring such a splendid view? Or are you tapping into something more esoteric and cosmic?