Signs& secrets promo 2013

avalon ian Æon

avalon ian Æonp u b l i c a t i o n s

ISBN 978-0-9557696-3-4

SIGNS & SECR ETSOF THE

GLASTONBURY ZODIACis an anthology created by a diverse group of

multi-talented enthusiasts, inspired by the classic, Anthony Roberts-edited compilation,

Glastonbury: Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem.As above, so below.

“Our land is the image of heaven.” Corpus Hermeticum. Asclepius.

A psychogeographical Arthurian Grail extravaganza.

FeaturesInvestigations into a mysterious past, intimations of an inspirational future.

History, poetry, magic, mysticism, myth, music, art. Astrological gnosis. Personal transformation.

Includes Previously unpublished article by Katharine Maltwood,

discoverer of the Somerset terrestrial zodiac.Incredible roots of Andrew Collins’ Giza cave discovery in his

visionary star temple quest.The revelation of the Melkarth landscape alignment,

and its relationship to Glastonbury.Sumptuous illustrations, maps and diagrams,

by artist-researcher Yuri Leitch.

Honours the lineageJohn Dee, Frederick Bligh Bond, Mary Caine,

Elizabeth Leader, Oliver Reiser, Robert Coon and others.

www.facebook.com/AvalonianAeonPublications

£24.99

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From the Publisher

This anthology celebrates the diversity of its contributors and their perspectives. There is no ‘house style’ or policy on what the so-called Glastonbury Zodiac can be said to be, or not be. All information has been submitted in good faith but the

Publisher cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies of fact. To respect the integrity of individual styles, which in turn are an expression of the

personalities of the authors, minimal editing has been imposed.

* * *

Dedication page v

List of Illustrations viii

Acknowledgements xii

Foreword - Paul Weston xiv

Introduction - Yuri Leitch 1

h i s t o r y

1 Katharine Maltwood and the Origins of the Glastonbury Zodiac - Anthony Thorley 7

2 Somerset Before Somerset Was - Alan Royce 27

3 Langport’s Royal Secret: The Rose, the Portcullis and the Katherine Wheel - Shirley Whitton 33

4 The Maltwood Legend: Tragedy and Hope - Hank Harrison 51

5 Mary Caine - Shirley Whitton 59

6 The Secret of the Lord: Elizabeth Leader and the Glastonbury Zodiac - Tim & Sophie Knock 69

7 Anthony Roberts - Jan Roberts & Shirley Whitton 77

8 Robert Coon and Oliver Reiser: Elliptical Navigations towards the Omega Point and World Sensorium - Paul Weston 81

9 Aegypt: the Star Temple and the Giza Plateau. The work of Andrew Collins - Paul Weston 91


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M y s t e r y

10 Maltwood’s Triangle, the Michael Line and the Parallelogram - Yuri Leitch 109

11 The Discovery of the Melkarth Line - Yuri Leitch 119

12 The Pre-Maltwood Zodiacs of Glastonbury - Alan Royce 147

13 Bligh Bond’s Rose Stone Vigil - Alan Royce 159

14 The Mystery of the High History - Paul Weston 169

15 The Lamb of Street, Somerset - Katharine Maltwood 183

16 Katharine Maltwood’s ‘The Lamb of Street’: A Commentary - Anthony Thorley 185

17 The John Dee Enigma - Yuri Leitch 191

18 Star Map on the Earth - Loné Bang 201

19 Gwena: Goddess of the Summer Lands - Yuri Leitch 211

20 The Faery Initiations of the Thirteen Dreamers and the Fairy Oath of Friendship - Coleston Brown 221

i n s p i r a t i o n

21 The Zodiac Memory Theatre - John Wadsworth 233

22 Sacred Song of the Landscape - Bahli Mans-Morris 245

23 ‘She Who Whispers Your Name’ - Casey Jon 253

24 The Somerset Star Temple: The Return to Holy Land - Emma Stow 259

25 Composing the Glastonbury Zodiac - Francesca LaFae 269

26 A Journey of Healing in the Glastonbury Zodiac - Vicki Burke 277

27 The Gateway to the Temple of the Stars: The Royal Secret and the Guardian Hound - David Hatfield 287

28 Weaving Heaven and Earth - Celia Thomas 295

29 Astro-Aligments of Avalon: Pisces - Gail Cornwell 299

30 Sacred Springs, Wells and Prayer Ribbons - Beth Heatley 305

31 Contemplating Zodiacal Dreamtime - Anthony Thorley 309

List of Contributors 329



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L I S T O F I L L U S T R A T I O N S

Most of the illustrations were supplied to our designer, Bernard Chandler, in full colour. Bernard had to convert each image to black and white, adjusting tone and contrast to bring out the best of each picture – 122 images, a great task.

AbbreviationsWikiCommons – images from Wikimedia Commons are ‘free use’, which means that they

are public domain and copyright free (image titles given in this book may not be the same titles as given on the Wikimedia Commons website – file names change).

NikkiSanders – Nikki Sanders was once the warden of Chilton Priory (she is now retired). In 2001 she gave Yuri Leitch a number of photographs that she had acquired during her own research into Katharine Maltwood.

Royce&Leitch – illustrations and diagrams drawn by Alan Royce (often on café napkins), shaded, enhanced and text-embedded by Yuri Leitch.

Katharine Maltwood’s Temple of the Stars and the Three Drops of Blood upon the centre of the Table of the Graal – drawing by Yuri Leitch page xiii

Katharine Maltwood – Nikki Sanders 3Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky – Wiki Commons 8Orion and the Zodiac Ecliptic – drawing by Yuri Leitch 14Katharine Maltwood and her hospital staff, circa 1915 – Nikki Sanders 18Katharine Maltwood, by Nico Jungman, 1905 – Wiki Commons 21Detail of Katharine Maltwood’s Arthurian Map – endpiece from the 1929 edition of

The High History of the Holy Graal, published by J. M. Dent 23Map of Celtic Somerset – Royce & Leitch 29The Sign of the Langport Arms – photograph by Yuri Leitch 34Arms of Edward IV on The George & Pilgrim, Glastonbury – photograph by Yuri Leitch 34The Beaufort Family Tree – drawing by Yuri Leitch 35Margaret Beaufort – photograph by Yuri Leitch 42Elizabeth Woodville – Wiki Commons 44Katharine Maltwood’s Magna Mater, sculpted in 1910 – Wiki Commons 52Inside Katharine Maltwood’s Hospital, circa 1915 – Nikki Sanders 53The Entrance to the Tower of Chilton Priory – photograph by Yuri Leitch 54A Casting of ‘Magna Mater’, still in situ, in the tower of Chilton Priory –

photograph by Yuri Leitch 56The Kingston Zodiac – by Mary Caine 60Glastonbury Tor – drawing by Mary Caine 65Mary Caine – Shirley Whitton’s archive 67



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The Great Hound of the River Parrett – by Elizabeth Leader page 71Elizabeth Leader at Chalice Well – Tim & Sophie Knock archive 73Elizabeth Leader in 1973 – Hank Harrison archive 76Glastonbury: Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem – Jan Roberts, Zodiac House 78Aquarian Phoenix – drawing by Chandira, from Avalonian Aeon by Paul Weston 87Map of Planetary Chakra system – Copyright Robert Coon 89

Knight of Danbury Robert de St. Clere – drawing by Yuri Leitch, from Avalonian Aeon by Paul Weston 93

St. Mary’s Chapel Geometry – drawing by Bernard Chandler, from an original by Bernard G, from Avalonian Aeon by Paul Weston 95

Original Diagram by Bernard G, from his Notebook – Andrew Collins archive, from Avalonian Aeon by Paul Weston 97

Priest and Cosmocrator at the entrance to the Giza Crystal Chambers – drawing by Yuri Leitch from an original by Bernard G, from Avalonian Aeon by Paul Weston 100

Giza Crystal Chambers Plan – drawing by Bernard Chandler, from an original by Bernard G, from Avalonian Aeon by Paul Weston 101

‘The Three Pillars of Light’, circa 1944 – drawing by Katharine Maltwood 110‘Maltwood’s Triangle’ – drawing by Yuri Leitch 111The St. Michael Line evolved from Maltwood’s Triangle – drawing by Yuri Leitch 111The Somerset Parallelogram – drawing by Yuri Leitch 113The Fire Signs at Stoke-sub-Hamdon church – photograph by Yuri Leitch 114Hood Family Coat of Arms, Butleigh church – photograph by Yuri Leitch 115The Head of Templecombe – photograph by Yuri Leitch 116Knights Templar Zodiac Cross – drawing by Yuri Leitch 116Dr John Dee’s Birth Chart – Wiki Commons 117The Full Enclosure – drawing by Yuri Leitch 117Detail of William Hole’s map of Somerset, from Drayton’s ‘Poly-Olbion’ –

Wiki Commons 121The Effigy of Libra – drawing by Yuri Leitch 124The Spring at Druly Hill - source of the River Brue – photograph by Yuri Leitch 125Tree of Life, Hornblotton church – photograph by Yuri Leitch 126Moses Striking the Rock, Hornblotton Church – photograph by Yuri Leitch 127Maltwood’s Equinox Line – drawing by Yuri Leitch 128Cover of the Temple of the Stars, First Edition – photographed by Yuri Leitch,

with geometric lines superimposed by Yuri Leitch 129King Alfred’s Tower, near Stourhead – Wiki Commons 130Nymph of the Grotto, Stourhead – photograph by Yuri Leitch 131Theseus and the Labyrinth – drawing by Yuri Leitch 132Bahli Mans-Morris at Stourhead – photograph by Yuri Leitch 133

Bow-shot – drawing by Yuri Leitch 134The Melkarth Line – drawing by Yuri Leitch 137

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William Stradling’s quote about the Observatory at Chilton Priory – photograph by Yuri Leitch page 139

Park Wood and the ‘Finger of God’ – drawing by Katharine Maltwood, Hank Harrison archive 141

Firebird (unfinished) – painting by Yuri Leitch 144Mercury and Rosmerta – drawing by Alan Royce 147Sacred Valley of the Dobunnic Cult – Royce & Leitch 148The Dobunnic Cauldron – Royce & Leitch 149Dobunnic Coin and Jupiter Column – drawing by Alan Royce 150Temple Locations around the Somerset Levels – Royce & Leitch 150The Augur’s Compass – Royce & Leitch 151The Pitney Villa Mosaic – Royce & Leitch 152The Virtues and the Zodiac – Royce & Leitch 153The Blue Bowl Pilgrimage Route – Royce & Leitch 154Several Ways to Read the Layout of the Blue Bowl Pilgrimage Route – Royce & Leitch 154Bligh Bond’s ‘Laura’ – Royce & Leitch 155The Royal Stars at Dawn on 12th September – Royce & Leitch 155All Three Zodiacs Interlaced – Royce & Leitch 156The Two Heaver Descriptions – Royce & Leitch 157The Wall Sculpture ‘Avallon’ by Katharine Maltwood, Chilton Priory –

photograph by Yuri Leitch 161The Golden Dawn Tarot Attributes – drawing by Alan Royce 162A Mithraic Tauroctony – Wiki Commons 162Moses and the Brazen Serpent, Hornblotton Church – photograph by Yuri Leitch 163Saxon Rood Cross – Wiki Commons 163Saxon Rood Cross as Royal Star Cross – Royce & Leitch 163The Chalice Well Lid as a Zodiac – Royce & Leitch 164The Holy Grail by Katharine Maltwood, 1922 – photograph by Anthony Thorley 165Katharine Maltwood’s Avallon Wall Sculpture, Chilton Priory –

photograph by Yuri Leitch 165The Jewel of the 18th Degree of Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite

Freemasonry – Wiki Commons 166The Stars at Dawn on 13th September 1924 – drawing by Alan Royce 167Mysterium Artorius – painting by Yuri Leitch, based on the original

frontispiece for the 1898 version of The High History of the Holy Graal 169Henry de Blois, in the British Museum – Wiki Commons 177The Lamb of Street – created by Anthony Thorley 184Joseph of Arimathea by William Blake – Wiki Commons 188Elias Ashmole – Wiki Commons 193Edward Kelley, a Magician – Wiki Commons 194Stained Glass Window of St. Dunstan – Wiki Commons 195



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Dr John Dee – Wiki Commons page 200The Twelve Houses of the Star Temple – drawing by Yuri Leitch 202Scorpionic Pew-End in Alford Church – photograph by Yuri Leitch 206The Claw and the Dove – drawing by Yuri Leitch 208Tyto Alba – drawing by Yuri Leitch 212Blodeuwedd – painting by Yuri Leitch 218Fairy Dream-Weaver – drawing by Jessie Skillen 224The Effigy of Leo – drawing by Yuri Leitch 238Zodiac Wizard’s Cloak – John Wadsworth’s archive 243All Women – photograph by Casey Jon 246Bahli – photograph by Celia Thomas 248Seer – photograph by Bodhi Maia 258The Chalice Well lid – photograph by Wiki Commons 260The Hood Monument – photograph by Yuri Leitch 263Members of the Maltwood Moot at the Great Yew in Park Wood –

photograph by Yuri Leitch 266King Arthur Meets Lady Guinevere, by Arthur Pyle – Wiki Commons 270Queen Guinevere’s Maying, by John Collier – Wiki Commons 271Camelot, by Gustave Doré – Wiki Commons 273Aquarius – drawing by Yuri Leitch 280Members of the Maltwood Moot, Lammas 2010 – photograph by Yuri Leitch 284Vicki Burke – Vicki Burke archive 286The Glastonbury Zodiac – drawing by Yuri Leitch 288The Girt Dog’s Head – drawing by Yuri Leitch 289The Hanging Chapel and Masonic Lodge, Langport – photograph by Yuri Leitch 290David Hatfield’s Roundhouse, Wagg Drove – photograph by David Hatfield 293Mary and Child, Stained Glass Window, St. Mary Magdalene’s Church,

Keinton Mandeville – photograph by Yuri Leitch 295St. Mary Magdalene’s Church, Keinton Mandeville – photograph by Yuri Leitch 296Rose Window in St. Mary Magdalene’s Church, Keinton Mandeville –

photograph by Yuri Leitch 297Glastonbury Tor within a Vesica-Piscis – Gail Cornwell archive 299Pisces and the Equinoxes – Gail Cornwell archive 300Mercator’s Pisces – Wiki Commons 301Wearyall Hill and the Tor Vesica-Piscis – Gail Cornwell archive 302The Queen Beech – photograph by Yuri Leitch 308The Head of the Girt Dog of Langport – composite photograph by Katharine Maltwood 312

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Katharine Maltwood’s Temple of the Stars and the Three Drops of Blood upon the centre of the Table of the Graal.



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F O R E W O R D

The first meeting of the Maltwood Moot, convened by Yuri Leitch and dedicated to all matters pertaining to the controversial topic of the

Glastonbury Zodiac, occurred in January 2010. It soon became apparent that the combination of diverse people and subject matter was generating excitement and the feeling of something significant buzzing in the airwaves. It wasn’t long before the idea of an anthology was born and a lot of writing began. The project went through some interesting phases and seemed complete and ready for publication by 2011 but the process stalled. I put it out of my mind as I had to give attention to my own writing and had virtually forgotten it when I met Yuri in the street in autumn 2012. I asked him in passing about the anthology and learnt that it was still in suspended animation. Circumstances had considerably changed for me. My mother, Iris Weston, had died earlier in the year and the complexities of house-selling and probate had just been completed, leaving me in a position to affirm that I could publish the work. For me personally, it would be a wonder-ful way to help transmute the powerful emotions associated with her departure, and have something surprising, new, and wonderful, to further remember her by.

As a result of this, the project was revitalised and took a fuller form than originally envisaged. It was decided to honour all of the main contributors to the subject of the Glastonbury Zodiac. Essays by myself, featuring the work of Robert Coon, Oliver Reiser, and Andrew Collins are now included. The template of the anthology was always the Anthony Roberts-edited Glastonbury: Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem, first published back in 1977. It is wonderful to have a contribution from his wife, Janet, who had a piece in that work herself, honouring her late husband. It has been a great pleasure to bring in Bernard Chandler to work on production and layout. His extensive experience and artistic sensibilities have been a perfect complement for Yuri Leitch to work with, maximised as he was with a plethora of illustrations and diagrams.

This project was conceived in a spirit of inclusiveness, whereby sober research and visionary effusions would feature together as an indication of the incredible spectrum of response the landscape configurations have inspired.

After a number of wonderful meetings, including fine times in the heart of the star temple at Park Wood, and much outpouring of expansive ideas into written form, the Maltwood Moot has finally manifested Signs & Secrets of the Glastonbury Zodiac.

Paul Weston. Glastonbury.

New Moon in Capricorn. January, 11th 2013.



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Yuri Leitch

Of sacred temples – there was once a time when even the great pyramids of Egypt were nothing more than a

vision in someone’s mind.

elcome to the first anthology created by the Maltwood Moot. Here is a unique and inspiring collection of thought-provoking essays; brain food packed with goodness. Drawn together by a passionate love for sacred landscape, a deep appreciation of the wonders of life and the beauty of mystery,

the Maltwood Moot is a maverick collective of intellectuals, dreamers, historians, artists, established authors, as yet unknown armchair enthusiasts, mystics and musicians.

A fascinating discovery was made, between the First and Second World Wars, by an enigmatic visionary, within the beautiful mist-laden landscape of the Summer Lands. Katharine Emma Maltwood’s Temple of the Stars, now familiarised as the Glastonbury Zodiac, has been inspiring and intriguing people ever since. Some people believe absolutely in its solid reality whilst others dismiss it as Katharine’s eccentric invention. The truth is it does not matter. Whether you believe it to be thousands of years old or a twentieth-century delusion, the Glastonbury Zodiac exists now and it isn’t going to go away.

Books have been written about it, films have been made, conferences and lectures have been given and, for more than eighty years, ever-growing numbers of pilgrims and tourists have been visiting Glastonbury each year to walk upon its sacred soil. Even if it is just an invention, this enigma is already an antique. If nothing more than the dream of an imaginative mind, it stands proud as a visionary work of pure genius, unequalled in its glorious audacity. This vision is immense. Nature in all her beauty: soft rolling hills, secret little woods, ruined and active churches, snaking rivers and mysterious weirs, hidden footbridges, ancient hill forts, and the heavens mirrored on the ground in figures greater than the naked eye can perceive. Swans, deer, badgers, cows, dragonflies, butterflies, bumblebees, wild flowers, nature reserves, annoying midges and mud! It is Paradise.

The truth is that there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that this vision is not just Katharine’s invention. Meaningful curiosities that support her discovery pre-date her own lifetime. There is a long tradition of strange things going on in the Somerset landscape: Romano-British temples upon hill-tops aligned with seasonal astronomical events; medieval church builders erecting St. Michael churches across the land in a seemingly straight line; and, over the centuries, different occultists and mystics casting their own vision of magic upon the land.

The essays presented to you here express a variety of thoughts and insights, ideas, revelations, discoveries, facts and ponderings. Coming from such a rich range of sources, some

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essays inevitably contradict others – as is only right. The Maltwood Moot is a collective of free-thinking individuals and there is no dogma to which we are bound; we are supportive friends and that is all that really matters. Some of us believe that the Elizabethan astrologer, Dr John Dee, knew about the Glastonbury Zodiac and others do not. Some of us believe that Joseph of Arimathea brought Christianity to Glastonbury in the first century whilst others disagree. Within these pages many passionately argued, contentious, and sometimes contradictory ideas are to be found. The true pilgrim’s path is one of self-discovery and only you, dear reader, can choose which path through the woods to walk. Enjoy the journey.

‘All magic is based on the law of sympathy – that is, the assumption that things act on one another at a distance because of their being secretly linked together by invisible bonds which would account for the laying out of the star effigies on earth. I have no doubt, when conceived, this Paradise Garden was indeed heaven on earth; even now, those who understand its import cannot but be filled with wonder, awe and reverence, for it is the cradle of the Holy Grail, the inspiration of true knighthood, “a magic casement opening on the foam of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn”.’

Katharine Emma Maltwood

The Enchantments of Britain

Katharine Maltwood was a magical lady, literally, an occultist and a mystic. She was very charismatic. She was the inspiration for an esoteric novel(The House of Fulfilment by Lily Adams Beck) and she consciously used her London studio as a temple/shrine to inspire higher consciousness within her audience. She was well read and intelligent; her books are jam-packed with many references to ancient Mystery Traditions and their revivalism. She used symbolism from Druidic, Theosophical, Masonic, Mithraic, Babylonian, Egyptian, Old Testament and many other traditions. She wove all of these influences together and veiled these esoteric concepts inside the garments of Arthurian Romance. Her Temple of the Stars conceals brilliant, complex geometry; as well as many other things. To dismiss her Zodiac, without admiring her genius, is to throw the baby out with the bath water – and in so doing, to deliberately ignore great Art, Vision, Culture, Inspiration, Magic and Wonder.

May this book help you to make a profound connection with our sacred land. Essay Thirty, ‘Sacred Springs, Wells and Prayer Ribbons’ by Beth Heatley, although not directly referenced to Glastonbury or the Zodiac, is specifically included to guide the reader into the symbiotic process of self and environmental healing. Enjoy these essays, written by brave souls who have been happy to throw caution to the wind and to dive into the weir of all possibilities.

Be inspired.

Yuri Leitch, Glastonbury, 2012



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Katharine Maltwood.

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atharine emma maltwood (1878–1961), artist, sculptor and mystical scholar, made no public statement about her discovery of the Glastonbury Zodiac before 1935, when she anonymously published A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars.1 Two years later, using the name K. E. Maltwood, she broke her anonymity and in 1937

published the Air View Supplement to her Guide.2 However, many sources report her working on the Somerset Zodiac in the 1920s, so two questions must be asked: when did Maltwood actually first discover the Glastonbury Zodiac? And what factors led to that discovery?

Although a number of intriguing sources – evidence from stories of West Country saints, local history, legends and folklore – point to the possibility of a landscape zodiac in Somerset, there is no published account regarding the certain existence of landscape zodiacs before 1888, when Madame Blavatsky first described their existence in The Secret Doctrine.3 So we can say that in the absence of any earlier descriptions than 1888, the concept of a landscape zodiac has to be considered a modern idea.4

However, before turning to the thoughts and contribution of Madame Blavatsky, it is useful to clarify a consistently recurring misrepresentation regarding Elizabeth I’s astrologer, the infamous Dr John Dee (1527–1609). It was the late Anthony Roberts (1940–1990), writer, esotericist and committed Glastonian, who first quoted an account of Dr Dee which appeared in a biography of Dee by Richard Deacon in 1968.5 Deacon seems to indicate that the Glastonbury Zodiac was known in the sixteenth century, informing us that ‘[c]ertainly there is evidence that Dee mapped some of the zodiacal effigies in this district, though the puzzle is how he found the key or code to locate them’.6

1 Anonymous (Katharine Emma Maltwood), A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars (John M. Watkins, London: 1935).

2 Maltwood, K. E., Air View Supplement to A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars (John M. Watkins, London: 1937). 3 Blavatsky, H. P., The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy (Theosophical University

Press, Pasadena, California: 1974 [1888]). 4 The concept of the landscape zodiac may be a modern idea, but many of the zodiacs themselves have

convincing features which suggest centuries of coherent development before their modern recognition. The basis for this accumulating coherence and evidence for an apparent early presence of zodiacal features in the landscape are issues being addressed by the author in his current postgraduate research.

5 Roberts, A., Atlantean Traditions of Ancient Britain (Unicorn Bookshop, Camarthen: 1974) p.15 6 Deacon, R., John Dee: Scientist, Geographer, Astrologer and Secret Agent to Elizabeth I (Frederick Muller,

London: 1968) p.174

Anthony Thorley

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Deacon then tells us that Dee had himself made a map of the district on which he had noted that:

The starres which agree with their reproductions on the ground do lye onlie on the celestial path of the Sonne, moon and planets, with the notable exception of Orion and Hercules… all the greater starres of Sagittarius fall in the hinde quarters of the horse, while Altair, Tarazed and Alschain from Aquilla do fall on its cheste… thus is astrologie and astronomie carefullie and exactly married and measured in a scientific reproduction of the heavens which shews that the ancients understode all which today the lerned know to be factes 7

Identification of Dee’s map or the actual source of his words has proved to be elusive. The late Mary Caine (1916–2008) pursued the basis of the quotation through correspondence with Deacon, but no original documentary evidence was ever forthcoming, and as she never received satisfactory answers to her queries, she came to the conclusion that the map did not exist and that the quotation was a hoax,8 although it continues to be referenced in respected books.9 Invention does seem to be the most likely explanation as the words ‘all the greater starres of Sagittarius fall on the hinde quarters of the horse, while Altair, Tarazed and Alschain from Aquilla do fall on its cheste’ seem unerringly to echo Katharine Maltwood’s original 1935 account, which, although long out of print, was accessible to Deacon in the 1964 reprint.10 Maltwood’s actual words are: ‘All the greater stars of Sagittarius fall on the hind quarters of the horse. On its chest fall Altair, Tarazed and Alschain from Aquila…’ 11 Why Deacon, whose book was otherwise unconnected with landscape zodiacs, should apparently plagiarise Maltwood and create this clumsy pastiche of sixteenth-century literary style in order to link Dr Dee to the Glastonbury Zodiac must remain to this day one of the many unsolved mysteries of zodiac studies.

In 1877, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), the indefatigable driving force

7 Deacon, R., John Dee, pp.131–132 8 Caine, M., Pers. Comm. Conversation with the author on 30.3.01. 9 For example in Mann, N. R., The Isle of Avalon: Sacred Mysteries of Arthur and Glastonbury (Green Magic,

London: 2001) pp.94–95 10 Maltwood, K. E., A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars (James Clarke, London: 1964). 11 Maltwood, K. E., A Guide (1935) p.10

Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.


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and primary energy behind the founding of Theosophy,12 presented to the world Isis Unveiled, her huge two-volume account of the role of ancient mystery traditions in the development, past, present and future, of mankind.13

In this first major outing of her radical ideas, Blavatsky dismays the critical reader, as she appears to pursue her subject with encyclopaedic erudition but actually displays less a reasoned analysis and more of a constructive conflation of ideas that justify the means to present her conclusions. Nonetheless, however critically we might view her output nearly a century and a half later, we cannot deny her creative drive in raising many new ideas and connections, flawed though they might be. In this vast work, there are only a few references to astrology and the zodiac, and she tends to take a rather understated and reserved position on these subjects, as if she privately acknowledges their universal importance but is also holding the most inner mysteries and significance of these areas close to her chest: the enduring esoteric!

12 The Theosophical Society was co-founded by Blavatsky in 1875. 13 Blavatsky, H. P., Isis Unveiled: A Master-key of the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and

Theology (J. W. Bouton, New York: 1887 [1877]).


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Alan Royce

strange title, you may say, but I will explain. Somerset derives from the Saxon name Someresaetas, meaning Summer Settlers (People of the Summer Lands), yet

our interest is in a time before any Saxon had set foot on these moors and hills. While Jesus lived in far off Judea these lands had their own life, and it is this life I

want to outline in preparation for the ideas put forth in this book.How can we picture this Somerset that was not Somerset in the time of Christ? Let’s just

take it layer by layer. First, the basis of it all:

T H E L A N D

The higher areas were laid out much as they are now, but the rivers and the coastline were noticeably different. Much of the land was tidal creeks and salt marsh, and the river courses were primarily natural, unmodified by man. Some land was being reclaimed in various places for settlement, but this was not a major feature of the landscape. The large area of raised peat bog between Wedmore and the Poldens, from Burtle to Meare, forced the River Brue to flow north towards the Bleadney Gap to join the Axe, which at that time was a tidal estuary called Isca (Fish). This early Brue was sluggish and meandering, and flooded seasonally, surrounding the Glastonbury peninsula with shallow lakes. Glastonbury is from Saxon, Glaestinges-burg, ‘the ditched and palisaded enclosure of the people of Glaest’. Glaest may be a clan name but is more likely to be a reference to the winter lakes derived from Glas, meaning, blue/green/shiny.

Settlements tended to be small and dispersed, and sited where they could make best use of the different resources around them – places within walking distance of good water-sources, raised land for small fields, access to the moors for winter fishing and bird-catching, and summer pasturage when the floods had subsided. Timber came from the woods on otherwise unusable slopes and from the water-loving willow and alder on the wetland edges.

The area as a whole was remarkably fertile and productive and probably supported quite a large population with ease.

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L I F E

The way of life was reasonably peaceful and not vastly different in technology from village life in the Middle Ages. However, social structure was probably based around extended families and relatives, and perhaps slaves, all living in hedged compounds with roundhouses, granaries, cattle pens and the like. This might have been more reminiscent of a Zulu kraal than an English village.

Laid over this mesh of basic settlements, connecting tracks and cattle droves were larger structures. Some parts of the Levels, for instance, may have been a royal hunting preserve, complete with ditched and banked assembly enclosures dedicated to the winter hunting god Cunomaglos (Prince Hound or Prince of Hounds – linked by the Romans to their Apollo) at the entry points on its boundaries. Places like Glastonbury, Dundon Beacon, Lamyatt and Brean Down seem to have been border shrines, the former representing the two tribes in the area, the latter defining the ends of the Mendips as another great royal hunting preserve and a metal trade route.

Roman-style temple buildings were added to these sites some time after the Roman invasion, although not always exactly on the original sacred enclosure. At Lamyatt, for example, the original site is a simple banked area to the northwest.

The ditched and banked enclosures on hills that we now call ‘hill-forts’ were by no means just that. Some were certainly defended spaces (important perhaps to minor kings), although they were just as likely to guard grain-stores or valuable herds of cattle as serve as fortresses. Many were more religious in function, defined precincts of a certain god or goddess perhaps, or places where folk assembled for particular seasonal rites which might be combined with games, fairs and political councils. Also, as with the Sidhe, the royal courts moved from enclosure to enclosure through the year, partly for reasons of religion, and in part so as not to overly deplete any one area. There were no towns as such (towns were a continental idea which were only just beginning to cross the Channel further east), merely stable sites at which a temporary township might be set up when desired, almost like a modern music festival.


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Map of Celtic Somerset.


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T H E R O S E , T H E P O R T C U L L I S A N D T H E K A T H E R I N E W H E E L

Shirley Whitton

‘Yet men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesus into another place [sic], and men say that he shall come

again…I will not say it shall be so, but rather will I say that here in this world he changed his life. But many men say there is written upon his tomb this verse:

“Hic jacet Arturus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus.”’

o wrote sir thomas malory in his famous work, Le Morte d’Arthur, written around the year 1470 and published later by William Caxton. But is Arthur really buried in Glastonbury or are the thousands of pilgrims who come each year in search of him merely perpetuating a myth created by medieval kings who

chose to claim him as their own? It is an intriguing fact that, even today, every first-born son of an English monarch is likely to have Arthur in his name. Equally fascinating, though less well-known however, is their line of descent from a seed sewn in Somerset soil several centuries ago.

A few miles to the south-west of Glastonbury lies the mellow old town of Langport. The guidebooks tell us it is the gateway to the Somerset Levels, but Langport is far more than that. It is a town of many secrets, a place where two worlds meet. On the sign of the Langport Arms (shielded and protected by a portcullis) is an unusual but lovely representation of the five-petalled Tudor Rose created by England’s first Tudor king, Henry VII, to celebrate his victory over Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, bringing to an end the turbulent era in English history now known as the Wars of the Roses. The Tudor Rose encompasses the triumph of Henry’s red dragon over Richard’s white boar as well as the union of the two warring houses of York and Lancaster (represented by the white and red roses respectively), but why is it here in a remote corner of the Somerset Levels? Its colour symbolism – the blending of the white and the red – hides yet another rose, the so-called ‘rose of alchemy’, born of the sacred bonding of the Red King with the White Queen, an ideal which underpinned Henry’s subsequent marriage to Elizabeth of York. Without her dowry, the powerful legacy left by her father, Edward IV (Richard’s elder brother and England’s first Yorkist king),

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he would have been unable to unite the two warring Houses and claim his title as England’s next ‘Once and Future King’.1

Carved into the outer wall of the fifteenth- century George and Pilgrim Inn at Glastonbury is Edward’s coat of arms, supported by the Black Bull of Clare (representing his Plantagenet line from Edward III) together with the White Lion of Mortimer (his descent from the Welsh Princes) topped by a sunburst with his White Rose of York blooming at the side. The inn was founded during Edward’s reign to shelter weary pilgrims who had travelled many miles to Glastonbury, then a major pilgrimage centre. At the slipper chapel (now called Jacoby Cottage), their worn-out shoes were exchanged for a pair of soft felt slippers to ease their way as they paid homage, not just to their God, but to that other great king, Arthur himself, said to have been buried within the confines of the Abbey walls. There are many versions of the supposed inscription on his grave, but perhaps the most famous is Sir Thomas Malory’s: Hic jacet Arturus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus – ‘Here lies Arthur, King once and King to be’. Much of the speculation surrounding his legend has been inspired by Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, written under Edward’s gaze and fostering a now-familiar image of the ancient Sun King that seems to have preserved him forever against the backdrop of the Middle Ages.

The only English monarch ever to have lost and regained his throne, Edward was a generous patron of Glastonbury Abbey. He set up his court as a new Camelot and adopted Arthur as a role model, but his twenty-two-year reign (1461–1483) has been overshadowed by the bitter battles he fought to achieve it and eclipsed by the might of the Tudor dynasty that followed it. After the defeat of his successor and younger brother, Richard III, the White Rose of York and the Red Rose of Lancaster were fused into the now

familiar Tudor Rose which became the emblem of England. A truly alchemical rose, however, is said to be red within and white without, and Henry chose to reverse this process, creating a rose that is white within and red without and the story of how this came about is hidden behind the portcullis that jealously guards his Tudor Rose on the sign of the Langport Arms.

The sign of the Langport Arms.

Arms of Edward iv on the front of the George and Pilgrim, Glastonbury.


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Hank Harrison

ny discussion of k. e. maltwood must cover several points if there is ever to be a chance of agreement. First, we can all agree Maltwood was a genius and

a bit eccentric, but we also need to discuss her extraordinary set of circumstances, her marriage, and her societal position as a liberated woman in an era when the

majority of women were still not allowed to vote.Secondly, we need to discuss her husband, John Maltwood, because in all my years

covering the Maltwood research I have never heard anything but clichés about him. When I first began looking into the Maltwoods I was fortunate enough to speak to several people who knew more about them than most. I was privileged to interview Janette Jackson (who had known Katharine Maltwood) in her flat in Hammersmith, and I was more than gratified to join RILKO [Research Into Lost Knowledge Organisation] and speak to Elizabeth Leader on several occasions over a full decade. These conversations were taped. After I began work in Glastonbury I met and interviewed Mary Caine, and finally I was fortunate enough to meet a woman who once worked as a housekeeper for the Maltwoods. All of these women had nothing but nice things to say about Mrs Maltwood but they were not all so supportive of her husband and all of them, to one degree or another, claimed John’s chauvinism was oppressive. This is in contrast to the comments found on-line in support of the Maltwood Museum and Library at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, so after long inner debate I must assume the truth lies somewhere between. Thirdly we need to discuss the impact of Katharine’s extraordinary discoveries and how they have played out now that we are over one decade into the 21st century; that is, nearly a full century after her initial discoveries were made.

Katharine and John Maltwood are well covered in Wikipedia and elsewhere, but hardly anyone understood Katharine’s true degree of enlightenment or, conversely, her deep sadness… or perhaps I should refer to her emotional state, especially before her death, and her sense of alienation and loneliness.

The fabulous portrait of her as a young woman by Nico Jungman, a Dutch painter who became a British citizen and close friend in the Arts and Crafts movement, shows us how she looked in 1896 when she astonished her peers with her personality and beauty at the Slade School at the University of London, where she studied sculpture and was known as Katharine Sapsworth, the daughter of a wealthy leather merchant with offices near the Tanners Guild.Like most students of that first New Age, she was enthralled with Buddhism, yoga, Theosophy

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and above all Egyptianism in the wake of the Tut discoveries, and all of these things inspired her art. But also like most Victorian women, a good marriage was important to her.

The Maltwoods had no children and we have very few details regarding just how Katharine met her husband, but there may have been an element of Masonic prearrangement to it through her father’s contacts in the tanning industry. The official story goes that they were childhood sweethearts and that they carried on a ‘whirlwind romance’, ending in a small wedding witnessed by her father and her mother on April 2nd 1901, but all was not as it seems.


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Shirley Whitton

n the 15th of february 2008, in the charming old Norman church of St. Nicholas at Thames Ditton in Surrey, a group of people gathered to say goodbye to an old friend, Mary Caine, who had died at the end of January aged 91.Mary is best known for her books, The Glastonbury Zodiac: Key to the

Mysteries of Britain, in which she built on the pioneering work of Katharine Maltwood; Celtic Saints and the Glastonbury Zodiac; and of course The Kingston Zodiac, the corresponding landscape temple which she herself so uniquely identified.

Slightly larger (at some sixteen miles across), the zodiacal constellations fall on Kingston’s earthly effigies in much the same way as Glastonbury’s and, as Mary always said, ‘similar coincidences still attend those who search within it’. Her home town of Kingston sits at the hub of this great wheel and Mary (who had built up an intimate relationship with its contours over many years) was always most at home within its boundaries. The Zodiac itself, she believed, was the graphic illustration of the divine laws, its pattern secretly implied in both the Old and New Testaments. ‘Are these zodiacs not the thumbprint of the Creator?’ she wrote; ‘as with all great art, the very style betrays the artist.’

And she too had her own unique style. A gifted artist and inspiring teacher, she could also write – moreover she was a storyteller in the true bardic tradition. Wonderful tales are woven into the pages of her books, books that are alive with the wisdom, the wit and the charm that made her such a joy to be with. I picked up an early version of The Kingston Zodiac in 1978, its year of publication, and I have it still although it was to be many more years before I got to know her really well.

‘A zodiac around Kingston – too much!’ she remarked at the outset. ‘Can it compare with Glastonbury as a Mecca for Grail questers? Long-haired idealists don’t play guitars in Richmond Park or wash their jeans in Coombe Springs.’ Well, some of us did actually – and years later a few long-haired relics from that bygone era (still trying to adjust to the modern world) were more than keen to rediscover that landscape with Mary (now in her eighties) at the helm. Her little ‘Zodiac Group’ (the reforming of an earlier one) began in 2002 after Sue Sheridan, then chairman of The Gatekeeper Trust, had invited Mary to speak at their spring conference: As Above So Below: Zodiacs in the Landscape. ‘She spoke with such lucidity, giving us expert information on a subject about which she was not only passionate, but to which she had devoted her life,’ said Sue. I myself was especially interested to hear her

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describe how she had first heard of the idea of a zodiac around Glastonbury in 1961 and, fascinated, had written immediately to Mrs Maltwood, who by then had moved to Canada. A few months later she received a letter from Maltwood’s husband informing her that his wife had died at almost exactly the time Mary had written. ‘It seemed like fate,’ she said, knowing she had to take up the baton and carry on with the work (though Mary has always been diffident about her own discoveries, saying always that she was using information gleaned by others).


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Bibliogr aphy

Caine, M., The Glastonbury Zodiac – Key to the Mysteries of Britain. 25 Kingston Hill, Surrey, 1978.

Caine, M., Celtic Saints and the Glastonbury Zodiac. Capal Bann, 1998.

Caine, M., The Kingston Zodiac. Capal Bann, 2000.

DVDs of the Glastonbury and Kingston Zodiacs are available from the Gatekeeper Trust (Email: [email protected]).


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E L I Z A B E T H L E A D E R A N D T H E G L A S T O N B U R Y Z O D I A C

Tim & Sophie Knock

lizabeth leader was recently described (by Anthony Thorley, no less), as the third of the ‘three great ladies of the Glastonbury Zodiac’. Though nothing like as well known as Katharine Maltwood and Mary Caine, Elizabeth dedicated the best part of 70 years of her life to the subject and was greatly respected in esoteric circles.

Elizabeth was born in Somerset on 1st May 1908. She grew up immersed in local folklore, and, having been introduced to the idea of the Zodiac by an article in The Lady magazine, studied Glastonbury and specifically the Glastonbury Zodiac right up until her death in the summer of 1998. She was convinced that Mrs Maltwood had rediscovered one of Britain’s great treasures and that further study of the Zodiac was vital and would prove most rewarding.

Along with her personal esoteric studies, Elizabeth was instrumental in setting up the Research Into Lost Knowledge Organisation (RILKO) in 1969, an organisation providing an influential platform for the dissemination of hidden knowledge incorporated in myth and legend, number and geometry, art and music, and she remained an active RILKO member for the rest of her life.

On a personal level, we first met Elizabeth in 1996, shortly after our own initiation into the energies of Avalon (but that’s another story). We were told about her by a friend who had attended one of her infrequent talks, and calling her out of the blue, she immediately invited us over. At that time we were living in London and Elizabeth was based in a small (and somewhat decrepit) flat in Chelsea, which she shared with her small Yorkshire Terrier called Pepper (and soon known affectionately to us as the Stink Pig). She was a striking lady, with sharply piercing blue eyes, a wonderful shock of spiky, white hair and a gently eccentric, playful demeanour. Meeting her, it was easy to imagine that she was part of a long line of druids, witches, magicians, and mystics helping to keep safe the esoteric secrets of this land through the ages.

We quickly became firm friends and regular visitors to her flat each Tuesday afternoon, with a definite sense that Elizabeth was passing on some of her valuable information and wisdom to us. Over tea and biscuits, she would range across a variety of subjects from recent radio plays to the theatre of her youth, with us constantly trying to bring her back to more overtly spiritual matters – and especially to the mysteries of Glastonbury. On this, she was rarely disappointing. Well read, intellectually rigorous, a (to coin her own phrase) ‘careful worker’ – the afternoons would race by and we would leave inspired with fresh ideas and a renewed sense of connection and purpose.

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a n t h o n y r o b e r t s

Jan Roberts & Shirley Whitton

n 1969 Anthony Roberts founded Zodiac House Publications in collaboration with his wife Jan. In 1976 under the name of Zodiac House, he published Glastonbury: Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem, an anthology of the landscape geomancy around Glastonbury. This very influential book of essays was taken up by the large publishing house Rider &

Company in 1978, and has been an enigmatic presence in Glastonbury bookshops ever since. 1978 was also the year that Tony’s close spiritual friend Mary Caine published her Glastonbury Zodiac, Key to the Mysteries of Britain.

Anthony offered up his anthology as a ‘beginning... a mystical tool for the individual seeker’. Amongst its twelve contributors, each putting forward their own suggestions as to why Glastonbury possesses such a magical potency, were Mary herself, Tony’s wife Jan and other visionary notables such as John Michell and Nigel Pennick plus an afterword by Colin Wilson. Mary wrote specifically about Katharine Maltwood’s Glastonbury Zodiac, describing it as ‘the secret source of Avalon’s mystique... the bubbling fount of all the Glastonbury legends’.

Mary and Tony were trailblazers, opening the way for new generations of seekers prepared to carry on the work. Signs & Secrets of the Glastonbury Zodiac is just one step in that direction and is the first anthology (thirty-four years later) to follow Anthony’s original.

Shirley Whitton

J A N R O B E R T S E x P L A I N S H O W T H E F I R S T G L A S T O N B U R Y A N T H O L O G Y B E G A N

In 1972 the phone rang at our flat in Fulham. It was Mary Caine who wanted to know all about my husband, Anthony Roberts. She was very direct and I asked her her business. “Atlantean” was her reply. Many years later she told me that she had heard me tell Tony, “You’ve got a right one here!” and of course he had, but so had she. She had heard about Tony’s Atlantean Traditions in Ancient Britain and she came round immediately, spiritually interrogated us and bought all his booklets. She did not leave our flat for hours. She and Tony burned with ancient remembrance, arguing out ideas and interpretations that made sense only to them.

We visited her at her Kingston Hill house where great ‘eureka’ moments followed after copious amounts of home-made wine tastings had been the order of the afternoon, followed by sing-songs round the grand piano.

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r o b e r t c o o n & o l i v e r r e i s n e r : e l l i p t i c a l n a v i g a t i o n s

Paul Weston

n ‘voyage to avalon’ Robert Coon described himself as ‘an immortalist philosopher who has been initiated into all major World Religions and has unified Cabalistic Invocation, ley-line and earth chakra research, and astrology into the Magickal Art of Celestial Alchemy.’ His visionary work has placed the Somerset star temple

within a global mystical context, providing a perspective that has been hugely influential in terms of how Glastonbury is seen as a sacred site and an acceptance of the bewildering blend of influences it seems to comfortably accommodate.

Coon is a lineal descendent of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, famously visited by an angelic being named Moroni who led him to uncover inscribed tablets. By some mystical process Smith was able to decipher the script and thereby create the Book of Mormon. It told the wild tale of the lost tribes of Israel going walkabout and crossing the Atlantic to settle in the Americas. Much scorn has been heaped on the idea but it seems to broadcast across the psychic airwaves in a manner suggestive of a weird truth.

This family heritage proved useful on July 1st 1967, at the peak of the Summer of Love, when Robert Coon was living in Boulder, Colorado. In Voyage to Avalon he recalled how, just after midnight, ‘a Physically Immortal human from the Realm of Shambhala instantly and fully materialised within my room. He was not a shimmering vision, but rather a rock solid, Clear human being as real as you or me. This man wore a white robe, held a wooden staff in one hand, had long white hair and beard. He looked incredibly ancient – yet had the radiant Flesh of Eternal Youth.’ This being was none other than the Prophet Elijah, who has apparently also manifested as Merlin, Hermes Trismegistus, and Enoch.

Coon affirmed that this event served to initiate him into the Melchizedek Priesthood. He was also allegedly empowered to reactivate Aleister Crowley’s magickal order, the AA (Argenteum Astrum), which he referred to as the Omega Point Foundation.

An enormous cosmic download was communicated that was to be released to the world in astrologically determined stages over the coming decades until 1993. What rapidly developed was a vision of the birth of the Aquarian Age from a location in Southern England. The “global heart chakra” would open there and an “Omega Point” be activated that would lead to the

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unfolding of the Planetary New Jerusalem and the widespread attainment of physical immortality! Within a few months Robert had narrowed it down to the specific location of Glastonbury, a place that he had never visited. The big event there was scheduled for 1984, seventeen years in the future. There was much to be accomplished in the interim.

Robert Coon’s work was astrologically determined to an exceptional extent. He attached considerable importance to what he called the Melchizedek cycle. This is a twelve-year phase relating to Jupiter that begins with the one-year period that the planet is in Aries. In recent years these have been, 1963, ’75, ’87, ’99, and 2011. It would be a major inner cycle in the unfolding of his global magick. He came to believe that his work had been partly set up in 1963 when the Melchizedek immortals, Coon’s version of the Secret Chiefs, conferred to set up three astrologically determined events at Mount Shasta. These triple culminations of Pluto-Uranus in Virgo conjunctions ‘activated the New Age movement in California’.


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T H E W O R K O F A N D R E W C O L L I N S

Paul Weston

he somerset star temple has inspired some remarkable inner journeys and processes. Admittedly far from consensus co-ordinates and resisting historical and archaeological investigation, it could at least be characterised as a potent psychogeographical zone. We can grant poets and mystics the indulgence

of finding results satisfactory to them in its multitudinous aethyrs but are always aware of its tenuous nature. Has anyone ever been directly led to something tangible by it? Something to give us pause for thought? I believe the answer is yes and the particular result in question and the path leading to it is in fact mind-bendingly spectacular.

Historical mysteries author Andrew Collins has produced a large corpus of distinct work that has been controversial and often well received. From the Ashes of Angels, Gods of Eden, Gateway to Atlantis, The Cygnus Mystery, and Beneath the Pyramids represent just some of his output. It is the last named that concerns us here.

In Beneath the Pyramids Collins recounted his rediscovery of a cave system, forgotten by modern archaeologists, underneath the Giza plateau. It was the culmination of a decades-long interest in the subject of the fabled Hall of Records, an interest fully engaged whilst in the middle of a unique journey around the Glastonbury Zodiac during the 1980s.

Collins was one of the originators of what he termed Psychic Questing. Historical mysteries, usually with a mystical magical component of some kind, were investigated through taking psychics out into the landscape and being open to all manner of intuitive processes. There was a conscious suspension of disbelief in order to work with information from trance states, dreams, omens, synchronicities, and so on. If historical research could show that some of the material was accurate, and none of the details necessarily inaccurate, then it was considered acceptable to take a gamble and work with it. The most controversial aspect of questing concerned the apparent retrieval of physical artefacts from concealed locations as detailed in Collins’ cult classics works The Black Alchemist and The Seventh Sword.

In early 1983 a number of clues from different psychics and a visionary experience of his own drew Andrew Collins’ attention towards the area around Glastonbury and in particular a place named Kingweston, which he discovered was situated in the vicinity of the Leo effigy in the terrestrial Zodiac. Engaging with the clues and visiting the location triggered what appeared to be a past-life saga in which Collins had been a medieval knight on a kind of Grail Quest.

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The twelve zodiacal spheres and central point were coloured gold by ochre tiles. The outer circle in which the spheres were set was red terracotta as was the Maltese cross and cardinal point triangles. Beaten lead lines marked the geometry of the design. Somehow the whole thing was to be perceived as in motion. Each part of the levels of geometrical design was revolving. The Maltese cross was moving at one speed, the triangles from the square at another. A series of colours was produced by this that came to form one colour. The colours also had sound correlations.

Robert de St. Clere and Phillip de Clara Vallis had travelled together to Somerset in September 1285 and this prompted their apparent modern reincarnations to visit Glastonbury for the first time together at the same time of year in 1984, almost 700 years later.

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St. Mary’s Chapel geometry.


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M a l t w o o d ’ s t r i a n g l e : t h e M i c h a e l l i n e a n d t h e p a r a l l e l o g r a M

Yuri Leitch

t is my intention with this essay to explain some of the deliberately concealed landscape secrets hidden within Katharine Maltwood’s A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars. In the Introduction to her first book, Katharine made it quite clear that her readers should be looking for hidden meanings within her skilfully

constructed paragraphs:

‘…these ancient landmarks should reveal more than one lost secret.’

The above statement is followed shortly afterwards by a line within a quote from The High History of the Holy Graal:

‘…for the secret things of the sacrament ought none to tell openly…’

These subliminal statements should have been enough to kick the reader’s subconscious mind into alertness and expectation of treasures waiting to be found. A little later on she writes:

‘This world being unworthy, the Graal was said to be removed, yet not hidden, for it is always discernible by any one worthy or qualified to see it.’

Katharine then delivers her first blatant clue, an enigmatic statement about some local landscape geometry, then she says nothing more about it as if she were deliberately daring the reader to look deeper into the mystery for themselves; she writes:

‘Alfred’s Fort at Athelney and Camelot Castle of South Cadbury are both eleven miles from the Isle of Avalon.’

‘Alfred’s Fort’ is an affectionate term for Burrowbridge Mump, which is the nose of the Girt Dog of Langport. The Girt Dog is a landscape effigy, five miles long from nose to tail, that guards the Glastonbury Zodiac. ‘Camelot Castle’ is the Iron Age hill-fort of South Cadbury, and of course, by ‘Isle of Avalon’ she means Glastonbury Tor. Each location is a prominent hill in the Somerset landscape – I refer to this as ‘Maltwood’s Triangle’.

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The Three Pillars of Light by Katharine Maltwood, circa 1944.

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Katharine knew that anyone with an inquisitive mind, looking at the geometric pattern of this triangle in the landscape, would be tempted to look further into it and to play around with it to see what else they could find. If you draw a straight line from Burrowbridge Mump (where there is a ruined church of St. Michael) to Glastonbury Tor (where there is another ruined church of St. Michael) and continue that line onwards, you come to the church of the village of Stoke St. Michael. Three Saint Michael churches in a row! And the distance between Glastonbury Tor and Stoke St. Michael is exactly the same as the distance between the Mump and the Tor. What are the chances of that happening by accident?

If you project this alignment southward, from Stoke St. Michael through St. Michael’s tower on Glastonbury Tor to the ruined church of St. Michael on Burrowbridge Mump and onwards, it arrives at a place called Creech Saint Michael! This amazing alignment of Michael churches continues all the way down to St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall.


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Yuri Leitch

S A C R E D W A T E R

ater is sacred; it is unique. It holds memory and it is the very source of life on earth. Take water out of any living thing and all that you are left with is dust. The human body is about seventy percent water and can survive only a few days without it. The water that we drink today is the same water that

the dinosaurs drank – perpetually recycled by Nature herself since the beginning of life on our beautiful, watery planet. It is Earth’s water that connects all living things and it is our very real, symbiotic, empathic memory-connection to all of our ancestors and cultural histories – a direct connection to Spirit – and we contaminate it, to our own sickness and sorrow.

At the second Maltwood Moot (which took place at Butleigh Church Hall, August 2010) some of the Moot members decided to start working with the sacred waters of the Glastonbury Zodiac landscape.

There is a wonderful film-clip called Hopi Prophecy that is very easy to find on the popular website YouTube. In this clip a Hopi elder explains, in a very gentle and simple way, that:

‘… before white man came here we could drink water anywhere, any lake or any stream. Now, since white man came here, we cannot drink water anywhere; white man forgot that water is sacred.’

White man did indeed forget that water is sacred and yet the knowledge of the sanctity of water was held within some of Europe’s oldest stories. Many people are familiar with the stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and of their greatest adventure, to find the Holy Grail. Some people are aware that the reason the knights are seeking the Grail is to restore the land, which had become a barren wasteland. Few people know the story of how the land became the wasteland – of how the land died because it was forgotten that water is sacred.

The very first story about the Holy Grail is Perceval le Conte du Graal, written by Chrétien de Troyes in the 12th century. In the very early 13th century a lengthy poem now known as The Elucidation was written by an unknown writer, as a prologue to Chrétien’s Grail romance. The Elucidation explains that originally, throughout the land, there were many Maidens of the Wells. These enchanting, faerie-like women were the site guardians of all of the sacred springs and wells. Across the land, any traveller, pilgrim or knight could visit the local Well

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T H E W A T E R S O F T H E G L A S T O N B U R Y Z O D I A C

The Glastonbury Zodiac encompasses a great many water features, the actual number of springs and wells being far too numerous to describe here. Many of these natural springs feed into little brooks and streams which in turn create wonderful landscape features like pools and waterfalls.

There are three main rivers that help to create the landscape effigies of the Star Temple. The River Parrett is responsible for defining the great length of the Girt Dog of Langport. The River Cary winds its way through Virgo and then defines the greater length of Leo before flowing into the Somerset Levels – around the Orion giant of Compton Dundon and the great Ship of the Heavens. After leaving the Zodiac the River Cary eventually joins up with the River Parrett before flowing out to sea.

The River Brue enters the Zodiac at Alford (Scorpio) and then flows through East and West Lydfords (Libra) before defining the east wing of the great Dove (Ursa Major). The Dove’s wing-tip touches the third eye of the Archer (Sagittarius) at the beautiful and very energetic weir of Baltonsborough Flights. After crashing into the Flights the Brue then flows onwards through Butleigh Moor. The mysterious earthwork Ponter’s Ball, the great single horn of Capricorn, dips into the ancient estuary of the River Brue before the river skirts around the south of Glastonbury, below the Tor (Aquarius). Finally, this magical river crashes violently into another weir before bending its way around Wearyall Hill (Pisces) then heading away through the Moors Adventurous and into the Sabrina Sea. Water carries memory and the Brue is the only river that can take you to Glastonbury/Avalon – if you see Arthur being taken by boat to Avalon, to be healed of his fatal wounds, then it was the River Brue that carried him.

Detail of William Hole’s map of Somerset, showing the rivers Tone, Parrett, Cary and Brue. From Drayton’s Poly-Olbion.


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Two days later I was in the Blue Note café in Glastonbury talking to my knowledgeable friend Alan Royce. Our conversation, as usual, flipped between Romano-British Glastonbury and its role in pre-Christian times, surrounded by many pagan temples; the River Brue and the sanctity of water; the mirror realities of inner worlds and outer worlds; and Sub Rosa and Katharine Maltwood’s Temple of the Stars – an average Glastonbury breakfast over mushrooms and eggs. I told Alan about Hornblotton church and my idea about Aaron’s Hill. Although Aaron’s Hill wasn’t the actual source of the Brue it was one of the primary springs that helped to create the Brue – and there was a well there (according to the map). Also, right by Aaron’s Hill was the enigmatic tower that dominates the landscape – King Alfred’s Tower. As I got ready to leave the café I told Alan that I was going home, ‘to play with the maps’; it was then that Alan made one of those throw-away statements that changes everything: ‘Why not draw a line from King Alfred’s Tower to Hornblotton church and see what you get?’

K A T H A R I N E M A L T W O O D ’ S E Q U I N O x L I N E

The line was everything. I was gob-smacked. I had spent more than fifteen years investigating the Glastonbury Zodiac and I was very aware that there were secrets in Katharine Maltwood’s writings – relating to things way beyond the confines of the Zodiac territory. From her writings, for instance, came the knowledge of the St. Michael ley-line that runs across the country from St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall to the Norfolk coast – and the enigmatic Somerset Parallelogram (see my essay Maltwood’s Triangle, the Michael Line and the Parallelogram in this anthology). The line drawn from King Alfred’s Tower to Hornblotton church passes right through Bruton church (named after the River Brue) before passing through Hornblotton church and then continuing right through the third eye of the Sagittarius-Archer effigy; then right through the centre of the Zodiac at Park Wood, Butleigh, and then, most amazingly of all, smack-bang on target into the very bull’s-eye of Katharine’s Taurus the Bull effigy!


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On the 30th January 2011 we held our third Maltwood Moot. I gave my first presentation about the discovery of the Melkarth Line. The talk created a great deal of interest, especially as Anthony Thorley’s research had revealed that Katharine Maltwood had been living right next door to Stourhead, in Stavordale Priory, in 1916. Before she even moved to Chilton Priory she was living within easy walking distance of King Alfred’s Tower. I felt sure there was a bigger story here than Katharine simply moving to Somerset and just happening to discover a landscape zodiac, the central column of which just happened to lead to King Alfred’s Tower – but a great deal more research would be required to understand this mystery. It was decided at the third moot that we would have our first group outing, in May, to Stourhead.

We went to Stourhead at Beltane because of the Temple of Flora – the ancient feast of Flora, Floralia, took place around the beginning of May. It was a fascinating day and we were able to go into the manor house and look at all the paintings and walk around inside the Temple of Hercules. Six months on from giving worth to the source of the Brue at Samhain we were consciously interacting with the ‘Nymph of the grot’ in the Venus Cave and enjoying the beauty of the demi-paradise of Stourhead, the modern day Silva Magna, Great Forest.


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Alan Royce

his is a summary of indications we have found over the years, of some kind of local tradition employing land zodiacs in the vicinity of Glastonbury. None of this material is totally conclusive or definitive, but has enough coherence that I felt it worthwhile offering to other researchers who might be able to take it further.

What follows is an expansion of a talk I gave at the Maltwood Moot, 29th January, 2010, at the George and Pilgrim, Glastonbury, with more detail, prettier pictures and a bibliography. I will follow the same general format but I am going to insert a new section before Roman and Christian to introduce a layer of work which interests me personally.

L A Y E R O N E The Dobunnic Wheel of the Year, approximately 500bce to ad43

According to Stephen Yeates the heart of the Dobunnic religion was set in the circular valley north of Gloucester, a natural feature which may have been represented by the Vessel portrayed next to the tribal mother on Roman period reliefs.

The tribal father in this system was portrayed as Mercury, which seems to reflect two things. First, that his nature reminded the Romans of their version of Hermes – messenger of Hades and god of wealth, travel, theft and transitions in general. Second, that the Celtic Mercury was an ancestral guarantor of tribal sovereignty and his function had been taken over by the Numen of the Emperor and was thus more fittingly represented by a Roman god of similar qualities. The high status (royal?) burials of the Dobunni seem to have been concentrated around the Birdlip area.

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These burials are curious in that they are interred with vessels over their heads. Yeates claims this as a sign of their being nourished in the otherworld. I suggest that they might reflect the symbolism of the plates within the Gundestrup Cauldron, where a Big God with an equine hair-style and warrior costume dips a Little God into what seems to be a tall bucket or barrel. This ritual dunking seems to correspond to the area of Aquarius in the zodiac (probably the full moon in Aquarius, as the soldiering game took place in summer as a rule). As can be seen, the circular valley burials correspond quite well to the cauldron layout.

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This layout can be interpreted in several ways. Here are a few examples:

The zodiacal layout is overtly stated in the papers of the Order of the Table Round, into which Wellesley Tudor Pole was initiated by Neville Meakin circa 1910–12. This order was linked to Robert Felkin’s offshoot of the Golden Dawn and to Rudolf Steiner’s early work

The Blue Bowl pilgrimage route.


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rederick bligh bond was doing archaeology at Glaston Abbey from 1907. He mixed conventional and psychic methods during this time and several of his finds were suggested by automatic writings. Around 1914 he noted a mysterious rose incense odour in the Abbey but little came of it at that time.

Bond used several psychics in his work (including the young Dion Fortune) and in 1923/4 Hester Dowden sent him a whole ‘Gospel of Philip’ in which reference was made to several hidden treasures. Bond made plans to recruit dowsers to find them.

The most important of these was a cup bearing a special stone. This stone was said to be the congealed blood and waters from Christ’s spear-wound on the cross, collected by Joseph of Arimathea in a cup, miraculously transformed and carried ‘in his bosom’ to Glaston.

Bond edited these texts into a series of Glastonbury Scripts which tell the story and end with a poem inviting the reader to take part in a vigil around a red rose on the night of 12th September.

Lovers of Glaston: Britain’s sons and daughtersThink of that evening, when we first beheld her:

Hold ye it sacred: even as we held it:Keep ye our Vigil: Watch ye by the Rose!

Or on the hilltop; or within your chamber;That night ye call the Twelfth Night of September;

Link ye with Us, in Memory Eternal,That night we hold in Recollection True.

When comes that Day on which we kept our Vigil;Rise ye betimes, in early light of morning;

Hold ye your fast unbroken till the noontide:Then, like as we did, take your simple meal.

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Eat then and drink no more until the evening:This be in memory of our last day’s journey;

Then, with the evening, when the shadows gather;Close after sunset, to your chamber go.

Pray ye to Christ, for welfare of His Chosen:Pray that the Father’s Will may be accomplished:

Pray that the Glory may return to Glaston:Heart of Worship: our Jerusalem.

Take ye nor food, nor drink, into your chamber;But one red Rose, in memory of our Watching:

Just a red rose, full perfect in her flow’ring,Mindful of us who to Britain brought the ROSE.

Sit ye and look, in stedfast contemplation;Bow ye and breathe the Incense of her fragrance:

Trace in her thorns, the nails wherewith they pierced HimTrace ye His Wounds in the blood-red petals Five.

Pray that the Rose again may be discovered;Brought from the secret place where She abideth:

Healer of Nations: Faith’s Regeneration:Herald of Kingship, and of Victory.

The poem, as you can see, restates a notion, developed in the main body of the scripts, that the ‘Rose Miraculous’ is an idea revealed in material form in keeping with the needs of the times. One part of these needs was a return of the ‘glory of Glaston’, the spiritual aura (perfume equals breath equals spirit) that made it a centre for national worship in medieval times, in order to give a national centre for the tide of spiritual regeneration sought by many after the terrible trauma of the World War I. The goal of the poem, then, is clear enough. The date it mentions, however, was something of a mystery.

Bond and his inner circle, though, obviously took all this seriously, taking on monastic names and meeting in Glaston to enact this vigil from 1924 to the start of World War II.

So, I wondered what all this might mean. How to find out? Was it a saint’s day? All seemed minor or irrelevant. Was it related to Bond’s Masonic interests? Bond was a member of Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, a Rosicrucian research order open to Master Masons. The inner structure of this order is very similar to that of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and we might guess that its orally transmitted practices are also similar. Is our date significant in this context?

The best I could find was that 12th September fits one of the cusps in the Golden Dawn’s Sidereal Zodiac, which takes the Royal Star, Regulus in Leo, as its starting point.


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Paul Weston

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Mysterium Artorius – painting by Yuri Leitch, based on the original frontispiece for the 1898 version of

The High History of the Holy Graal.


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This article is a significantly expanded version of a piece on Perlesvaus that has appeared in slightly variant forms in two of my works, Avalonian Aeon and Mysterium Artorius. As well as hoping to interest the reader in the bizarre medieval tale, I also seek to acknowledge Hank Harrison, who has been immersed in the mystery for a lot longer than I have and whose stimulating work has been unjustly neglected. Quotations are taken from the Sebastian Evans translation, an edition known to polarise opinions but one for which I have considerable affection.

atharine maltwood’s presentation of her Glastonbury Zodiac work is comprehensively rooted in the medieval Grail Romance Perlesvaus, more generally known as The High History of the Holy Graal. The text therefore represents fundamental source material that needs to be examined in order to

assess the veracity of the terrestrial Zodiac concept. At the end of the story, it’s stated that ‘the Latin from whence this History was drawn into

Romance, was taken in the Isle of Avalon, in a holy house of religion that standeth at the head of the Moors Adventurous, there where King Arthur and Queen Guenevere lie’. This is an obvious reference to Glastonbury Abbey and implies that those words at least must have been written following the alleged discovery of Arthur’s grave in 1190/91. It could be, however, that with the story being so well-known, Glastonbury was invoked in the way that Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain talked of ancient documents he had used, or Wolfram von Eschenbach in Parzival boasted of esoteric sources in Spain. They may be stylistic devices to gain credibility.

Written in French by an unknown author, Perlesvaus takes up the general Grail story where Chrétien de Troyes left off; his Conte del Graal has generally been considered as the earliest telling of the tale. A number of continuations sprang from his work. Characters, motifs, and plot details in Perlesvaus refer back to Chrétien de Troyes and a few other early Grail Romances. The author demonstrates wide reading and knowledge of the existing literature.

Some critics believe that the text was written in the decade 1200–1210; a date as late as 1250 has also been suggested. Therefore it is difficult to determine whether it comes before or after the important works of Robert de Borron and the Queste Del Saint Graal, and what its level of originality may be; which work first mentions certain themes may perhaps only be of interest to scholars.

When it comes to potential sites for the narrative, a landmark quite likely to be Glastonbury Tor is described, but so are features of Tintagel, which is clearly mentioned as a location. Some have found details suggestive of Pembrokeshire, possibly taken from the Descriptio Cambriae of Giraldus Cambrensis, written about 1188. One theory bases the author on the borders of Wales and Shropshire. Another hints that he may have been a monk in the Priory of Bassaleg near Newport, founded in 1110 by Robert de Haga and his wife Gudreda as a cell to Glastonbury. There are many allusions to Wales and Welsh customs in the story. All distances except one are measured in Welsh leagues. Two Welsh knights who become hermits are the last to find the Grail castle. Hermits remained common in Wales later than in the England of the Norman Conquest. There’s also a case to be made for the author coming from what today would be Belgium. An early copy was in the possession of the Lord of Cambrin in Flanders.

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Whoever did write it, and wherever they were based, they clearly had access to Welsh Celtic mythological material. Perlesvaus is permeated by it, perhaps more extensively than any other Grail Romance. Despite that, it’s also more militantly and crusadingly Christian than the other works of the time. Arabs are brutally killed with great relish, as are pagans and any other resisters of the new law of Christ.

Regardless of the issues over the dating of the text, there are a number of significant elements in the story that are unique. The Grail changes form. It is clearly stated that it has five aspects, each manifesting amidst the usual light and fragrance. These are: crowned king crucified; child; a man wearing a crown of thorns, bleeding from the forehead, palms, feet and side; the fourth form is unspecified; the fifth is a chalice.

The Fisher King actually dies, a detail at odds with the standard version of the Grail story, where his healing is of paramount importance. Also, following the usual narrative, Perceval failed to ask the correct question when being in the presence of a strange Grail feast but rectifies this later. In Perlesvaus however, this is accomplished not by getting a second chance to ask the proper question but by taking the Grail castle by force of arms. Arthur and Guenevere have a son named Lohot; their union is usually portrayed as childless. Lohot is murdered, and in another unique development, Guenevere subsequently dies of grief.

Alongside Perceval, Gawain and Lancelot feature as major characters of the Quest. Arthur is also involved and can be seen as making up a fourfold grouping of heroes, but his adventures are proportionately less than the other three, who move through a recurring landscape of castles, chapels, forests and meadows, meeting a bewildering sequence of maidens, hermits, knights, kings, deceitful dwarves and the occasional demonic giant.

A number of obvious themes and motifs recur throughout the story. The name Perlesvaus itself is explained as meaning essentially ‘Perceval the disinherited’. Rightfully-held land is repeatedly stolen and heroically regained throughout the story by a number of characters. There are complex webs of family relationships and blood feuds. Instances of withheld and mistaken identity constantly move the plot along. The central character, Perceval himself, changes his shield and apparel, going unrecognised in the close company of members of his own family, such as his sister, his uncle, the Fisher King, and knights he has previously met, Gawain and Lancelot. Perceval often mysteriously refrains from identifying himself in these situations. Characters ask the names of others and are sometimes refused the information. Quite why this is never gets explained.

To modern sensibilities, it is an extremely odd story. According to the great Arthurian scholar Roger Sherman Loomis, ‘the author seems at times deranged’, demonstrating ‘savage vindictiveness’ and ‘a taste for the gruesome’. Norma Lorre Goodrich went even further, referring to him as ‘a psychopath like the filthy Marquis de Sade’. Nonetheless, both these authors and other critics have praised the imagination and skill therein.

The strangeness is apparent quite early on in the narrative. Arthur has been languishing in a Fisher King-type manner. The land has suffered, his knights have departed and great deeds have been neglected. He manages to recover and convenes a great gathering at Cardueil on the feast of St. John, which is at midsummer. Gawain and Lancelot are unable to appear, but five hundred knights attend in a vivid scene. ‘The sun shone through the windows everywhere amidst the hall that was strown of flowers and rushes and sweet herbs and gave out smell like as had it been sprinkled of balm.’


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Katharine Maltwood

nside the outlined effigy of aries, on the Somerset Zodiac, between Marshals Elm and the old windmill tower on Walton Hill is, or was, a confirmatory image of another lamb! It was during the first Great War, when the other effigies were being photographed by the RAF as practice work in aerial photography, that this smaller

and second lamb was discovered.I have never written about it as I looked upon it as of minor importance, and probably of a

much later date than the layout of the Zodiac, and built in order to keep up an old custom or superstition at an annual fair, as is suggested by The High History of the Holy Graal, Branch 20, Title 13 and Branch 33, Title 4. Remembering that the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table are acting the parts of the Signs of the Zodiac, we can picture Lancelot the Lion lying down with the Lamb, but not being the proper sacrifice in the Aries effigy, for it was Sir Gawain who was playing the part of the Lamb Ram – ‘If that Messire Gawain were in fear, little marvel was it, for he thought that his end was come, Meliot espied him bound to an iron staple with cords about the body on all sides so that he might not move.’

Since the sacrifice of the redemptive lamb is still being adhered to in many parts of the world today amongst primitive peoples, it is quite likely that it took place on New Year’s Day on this particular spot, next to Peck Flour Mill.

Now, this lamb wears the typical Mithraic high pointed hat, which the great Hercules or archer wears, and which is depicted on the Sagittarius [carving] in the Stoke-sub-Hamden Church relief. Its forelegs are bent forwards in lamb-like pose but it stands on its hind legs.

When we examined the field at the time the outline was discovered, no crops could be grown on it as it was entirely littered with large and small stones, quite unlike the well cultivated land all around it. We concluded that the earthwork image had been completely demolished by Christian fanatics, but that the farmers had done nothing since to cultivate it.

Unfortunately, from the archaeological standpoint, recent air views show hardly any trace of the outline, and crops of some kind have been planted, but I have several photos taken by Aerofilms Ltd. some years ago that show this smaller lamb quite clearly and thus prove that there was indeed a tradition of the first great effigy Lamb Ram here, up to Mithraic or even Templar times [around] 1190ad for a lamb was the insignia of the Knights Templar, who were the keepers of the Holy Grail, and ‘theirs was the religion of nature’.

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k a t h a r i n e M a l t w o o d ’ s “ t h e l a M b o f s t r e e t ” - a c o M M e n t a r y

Anthony Thorley

n the maltwood archive, situated in the McPherson Library at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada, are a number of undated typewritten drafts of short articles planned or presented for publication, all alluding in some way to the Glastonbury Zodiac and its promotion as a subject for serious study.1

The undated short piece, The Lamb of Street, Somerset 2 is one such article, single-space typed with mistakes acknowledged, variable spelling and pencilled improvements all on a single sheet of quarto paper. It is difficult to know whether it was meant for eventual publication or simply as a note to Katharine for herself.

It is also difficult to date, but similar pieces on the same typewriter in the Victoria Archive were written in Canada after 1945 and in the early 1950s, and the reference to the ‘first Great War’ would seem to imply that there has been a second war, now over, and that would place the document as being written after 1945.3

The reporting of a second smaller ‘lamb ram’, as she terms it, within the larger Aries figure near Street, is clearly an important and intriguing issue for Maltwood to share, and is most interesting to Maltwood scholars nearly a century later as it provides refinement to Aries as the first sign of the traditional astrological zodiac.

Maltwood first saw the outline of this smaller lamb on an aerial photograph taken by the RAF between 1914 and 1918,4 when apparently they were photographing the Zodiacal effigies for practice! Maltwood makes no reference in her published papers, and only two references in her unpublished material, to this privy relationship with the RAF in Somerset.5 We may not be surprised however at her influence, as she moved in privileged circles in London,

1 The author wishes to thank the staff of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, for their generous assistance when he worked on the Maltwood Archive in May 2007.

2 Published for the first time in this current volume of essays. 3 But see Note 12 for a possible date after 1950. 4 Strictly speaking, the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was the main military air service for most of the 1914–1918

War. The RFC became the RAF on April 1st 1918, eight months before the end of the war. Maltwood probably referred to the RAF for convenience rather than suggesting that the photo practice only took place in the last months of the war.

5 See a more detailed discussion of this subject in my essay ‘Katharine Maltwood and the Origins of the Glastonbury Zodiac’.

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Yuri Leitch

t has often been stated that Katharine Maltwood rediscovered the Glaston-bury Zodiac, that it had actually been found, long before her, by the Elizabethan astrologer, Dr John Dee. The evidence for John Dee’s connection with the Temple of the Stars is very questionable, but it is also very interesting. I thought that this Moot

anthology would be a great opportunity to shine a light upon this mystery and to offer up the evidence for the readers to make up their own minds for themselves.

The evidence comes from just one source, a biography written by Richard Deacon, John Dee: Scientist, Geographer, Astrologer, and Secret Agent to Elizabeth I, published by Frederick Muller Ltd. in 1968. In this biography (which is very well written and worth getting hold of) there are a number of references to the Temple of the Stars. Here is the first:

‘There is a hint of financial difficulties in a letter Dee sent to Lord Burghley in 1574, in which he asked for a licence to search for treasure. In the summer of that year he had been in Radnorshire, the home of his ancestors, where he seems to have been doing some genealogical research as well as visiting ancient churches and sites of ruined castles. Later he went to Glastonbury which he believed to be “a veritable threashor howse of all that is most miraculous, scientific and worthie of the closest attention in the arts, lerning and mechanicall construtions of our forebears”. This visit may well have touched off his enthusiasm for treasure-hunting, for he paid great attention to Glastonbury and the complex Temple of the Stars in that vicinity. On 3 October he wrote to Burghley requesting for “Letters Patent to permit me to search for Threasor Trove and retain it for my use”.’

It is well known that John Dee was passionately active in acquiring lost knowledge. The father of Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, had shut down all of the Catholic abbeys and monasteries in defiance of the Pope – an act known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This dissolution did not happen overnight, it took five years, 1536–1541. Glastonbury Abbey was terminated with the hanging of Abbot Whiting in 1539. All over the country abbey libraries were left to damp, ruin and theft. In 1556 John Dee (just 29 years old) presented plans to Mary I to salvage all the books and manuscripts and to create a National Library. His request fell on deaf ears so he set to salvaging and creating a library of his own. His letter to Lord Burghley, requesting the right to hunt treasure, is a known fact.

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B R I N G I N G T H E C O N S T E L L A T I O N S B A C K I N T O T H E C I R C L E

Loné Bang

‘It is possible to localise the Arthurian Grail Legends by means of photographs taken from the air in conjunction with good Ordnance Survey maps of the district between Somerset and Glastonbury, because in this neighbourhood of the Lake Villages there are prehistoric earthworks and artificial watercourses which have at last given up Merlin’s secret.

Looking down upon them from the air with the aid of these maps, it can be seen that they delineate enormous effigies resembling Zodiacal creatures arranged in a circle. As we shall find, they differ very little from the constellation figures, and the corresponding stars fall within their boundaries.’ [Author’s emphasis]

Katharine Maltwood

ow therein lies a slight digression from the truth, as Katharine Maltwood herself was well aware of, because she does in other parts of the book mention star-falls not falling in their rightful effigies. But then again, is the effigy presently attributed to every sign the correct effigy?

When I first started questioning this I felt conscious of the controversy I might ignite, as nobody else seemed to discuss the findings of this great lady. And I myself have a lot of respect for her work – it is excellent, and without it we might never have noticed this magical creation in the landscape.

However, I came to see the Glastonbury Zodiac as a work in progress and gradually other people turned up with new theories. Nothing is really taken away; it is more a matter of adding to. I am convinced there is much more to be found, analysed and understood out there. Coming from the point of view of an astrologer, it soon became obvious to me that there are a couple of flaws in the perfect picture of the star map. Cancer and Libra are not at all where they are supposed to be. Gemini is slightly far to the south. Katharine Maltwood knew this, but she came up with theories to explain the displacement, though to my mind her own words reveal a slight confusion.

I myself have found it inconceivable that the people who went to so much trouble creating the Glastonbury Zodiac, and who drew down the figures of each constellation so correctly in their rightful places, would then have made a mistake with two signs, or decided to misplace them in relation to the rest of the Zodiac. Why should they do that? Katharine Maltwood

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and Mary Caine have both gone to great lengths to fit every effigy into the circle of the Zodiac, though in her first book Katharine Maltwood clearly expresses that this is a star map, a Map of the Heavens. And therefore this star map consists of more effigies and more constellations than belongs to the zodiac. I have attempted to put what we know and have discovered into its rightful connection, thereby changing a few of the attributions. I have done this on the basis of tracing the star-falls of each constellation, ancient star maps and mythology.

There are numerous constellations in the sky; only a few of us today know and can recognise more than a fraction of these. The constellations known to be part of the zodiac are the ones in a circular band around the Equator, which the Sun passes directly through during the year – or most likely, the Ancients would have observed the Full Moon in the same path but of course opposite to the Sun. Only the initiated few would have had the training to know the bigger picture of astronomy, about opposites of Sun and Moon signs, and what would appear above the horizon next.

If we put the Celestial Pole in the centre, it is possible to map all of the stars in either the Northern or the Southern hemisphere within the circle of the Celestial Equator, and we could continue a bit further than that, though the visuals would become wider and wider the further we moved away from the centre, and would appear distorted. If we want to look at the astrological influence of a certain starsign/sunsign, we don’t have to limit it to looking only at the constellation at the periphery but, rather like a gateau, we can slice it all into segments. And this is what we have to work with if we want to expand our understanding of these separate areas.

The Twelve Houses of the Star Temple.


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‘King Arthur obtained his Round Table of the Stars through his marriage with the pagan Guenievre.’

Katharine Maltwood, Temple of the Stars

‘The Round Table was constructed, not without great significance, upon the advice of Merlin. By its name the Round Table is meant to signify the

round world and round canopy of the planets and the elements in the firmament, where are to be seen the stars and many other things.’

La Queste del Saint Graal

enus, planet earth’s most beautiful sister, shining brightly at dawn and dusk. She is both the light-bringing morning star and the night-bringing evening star. She is our crepuscular queen of heaven and goddess of fearless, unconditional love.

Although in actuality a planet, as perceived from Earth she is The Star that shines and moves the most uniquely in the sky. She is the hope and promise of true love to all. She is the queen of every hive and the genius loci of the inner garden of all our souls – the Queen of Hearts that resides at the centre of all of us.

Still today, in this twenty-first century, the word for the planet Venus in modern Welsh is ‘Gwener’. She is the white rose (Gwena means ‘white’). This Celtic Venus is the original goddess behind King Arthur’s queen, Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere, Guenevere). Thinly veiled beneath Guinevere, Venus is also concealed within many other Venus/Rose/Love/Flower goddesses:

O T H E R G W E N S‘Gwen’dolena ~ wife of Merlin‘Gwen’dydd ~ sister of Merlin

Bran‘wen’ ~ the Venus of the Northern SeaOl‘wen’ ~ beautiful daughter of the Summer King

O T H E R V E N U S / R O S E / L O V E / F L O W E R G O D D E S S E SBlodeuwedd ~ wife of the Summer King (lover of the Winter King)

Creiddylad ~ object of desire fought over by the Winter and Summer Kings

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Blodeuwedd.

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Coleston Brown

n the first few weeks following the publication of my book Secrets of a Faery Landscape: new light on the Glastonbury Zodiac (Green Fire Publications, in May 2012), I had a series of powerful dreams apparently generated by my magical connections to the land around Glastonbury, Somerset. These dreams came in the form of a magical

journey and culminated in a final dream in which I was given, almost word for word, a Faery Oath of Friendship. These dream journeys and ritual oath have since become an important component of my magicospiritual practice. I have shared them with a number of people who have remarked on their regenerative, inspirational effects. It occurs to me that others might also benefit from this work. However, before setting out the gist of these visions and the Faery Oath, I first present an overview of the dynamics involved in Faery Initiation; the following includes material adapted from my aforementioned book.

S T A R S , L A N D S C A P E A N D F A E R Y I N I T I A T I O N

The stars and landscape are closely bound up with Faery Initiation. Faery Initiation is an experience of personal regeneration and rebirth that arises from a direct relationship with the landscape and the presences and powers within it.

Certain Celtic traditions tell how Faery presences descended from the stars into the earth. These traditions are reflected in later Christianized tales such as that in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, where the hermit Trevrizent tells how the Grail was written in the stars and how it was brought down to earth by ‘neutral angels’ (Book 9). We have here a theme or motif that is well-documented worldwide – the descent of sacred mysteries from the celestial region, the OverRealm, which is the spiritual zone associated with powers and presences in their most primal expression.

All over the world, imposing or important landforms are commonly associated with deities, heroes and other sacred presences who are also connected to constellations, stars, planets, moon, sunrise, sunset, and so on. The transforming effect of these presences and landforms on the health and harmony of the people and creatures that live in the surrounding landscape is undeniable.

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t h e z o d i a c M e M o r y t h e a t r e

John Wadsworth

n a letter to his brother in 1817, the poet John Keats wrote that in order to achieve greatness in life and especially in literature and art, one should be possessed of what he called ‘negative capability’. That is, “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”1 This capability

that Keats grapples with in poems such as Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn grants a special authority to the truths found in imagination and it demands a willingness to dance with ambiguity in the pursuit of wisdom. Anyone attempting to understand a phenomenon as mysterious and compelling as The Glastonbury Zodiac had better be possessed of it!

It is March 2010, and a small band of creatively-minded folk are standing on top of Burrow Mump, on the nose of the guardian dog of The Glastonbury Zodiac. This canine landscape figure was considered by its discoverer Katharine Maltwood to be a representation on the ground of the constellation of Canis Major in the Somerset landscape, a few miles to the south-west of the main Zodiac wheel.2

It is our custom each year to begin The Alchemical Journey by visiting this enigmatic hill, an unlikely protrusion that rises suddenly out of the flat Somerset Levels. We have come here to honour the dog and to ritually ask for his/her permission and companionship as we prepare ourselves for a year-long pilgrimage into this Zodiac temple of the stars – as I stand there clutching a map in one hand and scratching my head with the other, I find myself yet again in a state of wonder at the poetic strangeness of what we are doing.

Let me put you in the picture about The Alchemical Journey.3 It is designed as a voyage of imaginative self-discovery; a unique experience of zodiacal dreaming that unfolds over twelve months, in line with the seasonal and astrological rhythm of the year. It begins at the Spring Equinox when the sun enters the first sign, Aries. Thereafter, each month, our intrepid group meet for a whole weekend, and invite one of the twelve archetypal energies of the Zodiac to enchant our imaginations, as we learn to experience the perspective of each astrological sign in turn. We do this through a range of activities, embodying each sign through music and movement, guided imagery, myth and mystery play, and, importantly, through our ritual

1 See for example, http://www.mrbauld.com/negcap.html 2 See: Maltwood, Katharine, A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars, (Cambridge: Clark, 1982),

pp.95–101. 3 For more information on The Alchemical Journey, see: http://www.thealchemicaljourney.co.uk

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sojourns into the landscape figures of the Glastonbury Zodiac. The journey is facilitated by myself and Anthony Thorley, and together we guide people safely and poetically around the zodiac via the twelve portals of the landscape temple, a process that seems to be profoundly life-changing for those who engage with it.

We have struggled at times to find ways of classifying what we are doing on The Alchemical Journey for it doesn’t easily fit in any of the boxes that currently exist. It involves astrology, but is not an astrology course; it clearly brings in aspects of self-realisation, though I shudder at the thought of defining it as a self-development programme as it does not rely upon replicable techniques of self-development, and really doesn’t like being referred to as a programme! Furthermore, it does not rely on psychology as a model – in fact we have been careful to keep modern psychological concepts out of it as much as possible. Too much conceptual analysis, we have found, can stifle the richly creative process that unfolds for our participants over the course of a weekend. I would call it soul work, though, and it certainly involves a strong element of pilgrimage. So I suppose you could call it a more-than-astrological, more-than-self-development, more-than-psychological pilgrimage of soul discovery! We have chosen to call it an alchemical or imaginal journey, and in this essay I will attempt to clarify what I mean by this.

T H E Z O D I A C A S A S O U R C E O F S Y N C H R O N I C I T Y A N D C R E A T I V I T Y

So here we are on day one of our adventure, surveying the Somerset Levels, where a dog appears sprawled across five miles of flat, low-lying land, its sensitive, alert nose raised about eighty metres above the ground. There is a ruined church on its peak dedicated to St. Michael, in a perfect alignment with over a dozen other notable sites with Michael dedications stretching across the country, which mark out the well-known St. Michael ley line.4 Being on the dog’s nose, we naturally sniff the air in anticipation of the zodiacal treasure hunt that we are embarking on! As we do, we find ourselves playfully embodying a quality of doggyness, making endless canine puns, attracting dogs to us as we walk; several appear as we ascend the hill, one of which bears a striking similarity to the one on the map! Ever since Katharine Maltwood identified this Girt Dog of Langport, it has become almost impossible not to see it marked out by the roads, rivers and field boundaries that comprise its shape. It is in exactly the right place, where a folk tradition of a dog exists, mapped more-or-less accurately onto the ground from its constellation in the sky – and it faithfully guards our Zodiac, just as Cerberus and Anubis guarded the gates of the Underworld in the Greek and Egyptian traditions.

The synchronicities that people experience on our journeys into the Zodiac are abundant and far too numerous to list here. Many are very personal and particular to an individual’s situation, others we have been able to appreciate collectively. For example, on our first group trip into the Aries figure in 2009, walking along the main thoroughfare in Street – the reverted head of the lamb – we were all mesmerised by the synchronicities we found in the names of

4 See for example: Michell, John, New Light on the Ancient Mystery of Glastonbury (Glastonbury: Gothic Image, 1990), pp. 40–49.


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the shops and businesses. Noticing how the high street actually demarcates the boundary between the Aries figure and one of the Piscean fish, we realized that on the Aries side of the street there are a number of lambswool shops and no less than ten hairdressers (Aries rules the head), while the Pisces side is populated by a number of Clarks shoe shops and the old shoe factory (Pisces rules the feet). The history of Street plays along beautifully with our game, too. On the map, the fish seems to be leaping, like the fabled salmon of inspiration, out of the lamb’s head, not unlike the inspired idea that James Clark had one day in 1825 whilst working at the tannery among the sheepskin rugs. “Slippers!” exclaimed the budding entrepreneur in true Aries style, and so it was that the Clarks sheepskin slipper was born!

Here are a few other examples. Just prior to the Cancer weekend, Anthony and I had the extraordinary good fortune to meet a passionate Zodiac hunter who invited our group to visit a recently uncapped spring for an unforgettable experience on her farm in Littleton; a spring that just happens to be the source of the irrigation canals that define the Cancerian ship. On our Sagittarius walk we discovered a bizarre arrow-shaped gravestone in the churchyard, and on a separate visit to Baltonsborough Flights, the gushing weir on the archer figure’s third eye point,5 we marvelled at a sunset which loosed arrows of fire across the sky, refracted through the clouds. In Capricorn we found our path blocked by an authoritarian landowner, a Saturnian type who had taken it upon himself to police the entrance to Ponter’s Ball, the goat’s horn.

The churches we encounter on our pilgrimages are always rich sources of correspondence, too. There is St. David in the Libran dove, who just happens to be the patron saint of doves. The church at Walton on the Aries figure has stained glass representations of Jesus as the good shepherd, and one of Abraham sacrificing a ram in place of his son Isaac. It also has a font with a paschal lamb carved onto one side of it, with a dove, symbol of Aries’ opposite sign Libra on the other side. Hornblotton church in the Scorpio figure has a mural which recounts the quite obscure, highly Scorpionic story of Moses and the brass serpent. Michael’s tower on top of Glastonbury Tor has an eagle carved on it, reflecting the eagle or phoenix that Katharine Maltwood identified as the Aquarian landscape figure. And so it goes on.

These synchronicities undoubtedly provide a meaningful context for the transformational experiences that we each have as we journey in-the-round, and each new revelation strengthens the web of enchantment. One of the most striking things I have noticed is the way that the journey seems to re-invigorate people’s creativity, and how often this inspires them to create something that expresses their newfound love for the zodiac! During the Cancer weekend in June 2009, whilst sitting by the sacred well in Littleton (referred to above), my wife Colette had the sudden inspiration to create a large glass tile mosaic of the Glastonbury Zodiac. Although she had never attempted an artistic creation on such a scale before, she has persevered, and it is now close to completion. Colette also discovered a love (and a considerable talent) for creating altarpieces, and for the past year she has lovingly crafted the most extraordinary zodiac altars for the course. Another participant became suddenly inspired to make masks for each of the signs, which we now use regularly in our work. Maggie has gone on to create masks of other kinds, which can be bought on Glastonbury High Sreet.

5 In 1991, Serena Roney-Dougal published an article in The Glastonbury Zodiac Companion (Issue 2, 1991) identifying the third eye points on the figures, and how many of these are water features.


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Bahli Mans-Morris

Arianrhod speaks:I am fire, earth, air and water

I am fine mistI am the twisting tree

that grows onthe green hill

of the mountain sideI am the rock and the mountain

I am the moatThe drawbridgeThe dawn birdcalling calling

The drawn skinvibrating

the song of the bloodI am Blood Woman

I am the Song

I am all womenAll women

I am soft skinSleek fur

Hot panting breathFingers of ice

that would cut outyour soul

I am the windThe spear in the hand of the warrior

The warrior’s heartI am the new born

In the tunnel of birthI am the birth

I am Blood Mother

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They sayI weave fate with my spindle

It is not trueI am Fate

I stalk thosewho have blood yet still in their veins

who are willingto pay

not turn asideThose who would call me

know my Gift.

Arianrhod calls the Zodiac into being with her song. She is Dark Mother, dark matter, dark flow of the Universe, Kali, creatrix of all that is, she is the Birth. She is Blood Mother.

It is She that creates the stars of the Zodiac, it is she that is the elements from which matter is formed; She is earth, air, fire and water. She is the rocks, the trees, the animals, the humans that make up the symbols and matter of the Zodiac. She is the White Lady of the Moors that rises at dawn when the sun warms the earth. She is white mist.

She is the white mist of the wild white rose blossoms that adorn the holy, twisting, spiralling hawthorn tree that stands on the green hill where she planted her spindle in an age now passing; an age where the spindle was used to spin wool, to weave tapestries of beauty; tapestries that told of the hidden Mysteries of the magical land of legend.

All Women by Casey Jon.


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Today she weaves new webs of wonder, whereby her children can all speak one to another, that nothing may be hidden, that all may know Her. She is Spider Woman.She is the Oracle who speaks to her people. She tells of the past, present and future. It is through the Glastonbury Star Temple that She speaks. It is all here, her-story of what has happened from the beginning of our planet; our world. She weaves with us our patterns as we live today. She is the initiator of our path through life. She is the prophet of our future.

Excerpt from Bahli’s divinatory oracle The Ladies

Bahli was a woman who experienced life and the Glastonbury Zodiac on many different levels. She spent a great many years, and had wonderful, exciting adventures, exploring the Glastonbury Zodiac landscape. She had the ability to soar on the wind currents and keep eagles company but also to swim in the great depths with the salmon. It was this scope of understanding that gave her the ability to see and interpret the multi-layered Zodiac. It was during her years of discovery that she came to hear the call of ‘The Ladies’, of which the above poem is just a small taster.

Bahli felt that the Glastonbury Zodiac embodied a huge depth of learning and wisdom and she began to develop it into a divinatory system that is both inspirational and deeply soul-affirming. She adored working on and around the sacred landscape of the Glastonbury Zodiac and I’m sure we’ll hear her whisper on the wind, as we also travel around the Zodiac and discover the delights and initiations that the land has to offer us.

Bahli passed over to the next world during the Autumn Equinox of 2011. The passage that follows is a snippet of her writings that express very well her love of both the Glastonbury Zodiac landscape and the Divinatory/Oracle system that she developed. ‘The Ladies’ are now in the hands of Bahli’s daughter Casey Jon, and will manifest as a Glastonbury Zodiac Oracle in years to come.


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Casey Jon

I will speak of pathwaysthat flow and wynde

through my land.My words they will whisper

through the wynd in the trees.The foxes they watch

with their wylde amber eyes,waiting for the flame to awaken in yours.

And the doeshe dances

through the depths of the woods,

shining her beauty to those that can see.

The owl she sings, of songs

now lost,and calls her lament

of times once known,when the land was rich

with love so sweetand the rivers ran bright

with the wisdom of truth.

My waters run deep, as deep as your soul,

and wynde through your veinsas they flow through my streams.

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t h e s o M e r s e t s t a r t e M p l e

T H E R E T U R N T O H O L Y L A N D : T H E R E A W A K E N I N G O F R E V E R E N C E

A N D A D V E N T U R E T H R O U G H T H E A C T O F P I L G R I M A G E

Emma Stow

Long before the first church was built, Glastonbury was held sacred.

ooking into the meaning of Glastonbury as a sacred site leads to a cascade of connections and coincidences, layers of history and myth. But it all began with an extraordinary hill, surging up from the surrounding flatlands and two converging springs. Before you know anything about Glastonbury you get the feeling that you

are on hallowed ground. Even if you didn’t know that the Tor is a site of converging leylines you would be aware of its power as it soars majestically and also that of the meeting springs and the Chalice well at its feet, now within a Garden that holds and contains the purity and peace of the holy well.

The ancients were using the land to understand their connection to the celestial processes, to read meaning into their lives. People who could understand astronomy without the aid of technology did so through observation and calculation. They saw themselves as interacting with the course of creation. The observatories that they built with stone circles or used by augmenting naturally occurring hills like Glastonbury Tor were for the purposes of recording the movements of the Sun and Moon and stars. This was for very practical reasons like helping to predict the weather and to signal important timings like sowing and harvesting. But the observatories were also means of honouring these celestial movements. For them, their own human presence and will at the Winter Solstice would ensure that the Sun would be born again so there was an interactive relationship with Man and his Universe. They saw locations as sacred which symbolized and actively held these connections, and sought to anchor them further with structures and ritual that would honour and magnify them.

It is Glastonbury and sacred land as a means of transformation and connection that is such a gift to us and what interests me most about the Glastonbury Zodiac. As Dion Fortune wrote in Avalon of the Heart, ‘None go away as they came.’ And this too is the effect of pilgrimage as a journey of revelation and transformation and experience of reverence.

The key to understanding Glastonbury and the Somerset Star Temple as a sacred site is in the vesica piscis, the symbol now adorning the lid of the Chalice Well where two circles join forming a central vesica. This is the symbol of divine communion. Placed on the well it demarcates the elemental gateway between water and earth, water and air – the gateway

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where healing waters emerge from the underground, bringing with them purity, memory and truth, blessing the land and the sky. The stones which form the Chalice Well are known to be made out of the same stone as those at Stonehenge. These stones were used because of their ability to attune to celestial resonances so that the holy healing waters pouring from earth were fittingly contained and channelled by stone that would attune the water to the stars.

So through the vesica piscis we can understand how the natural features of this land symbolize points of communication between elements, between heaven and earth, between space and time. The vesica piscis is how we see the land of Glastonbury as a nexus and as such a gateway between worlds and between ages. The Tor itself even forms the shape of a vesica which you can see very clearly from aerial photographs. As such a prominent hill it connects the earth world with the heavens (as the Chalice Well connects the water with the Earth) and also by its positioning in relation to the stars, planets and solstices. Nicolas Mann and Philippa Glasson explain this role of Glastonbury as an ancient observatory in The Star Temple of Avalon. In relation to the vesica piscis they write about Amerigo Vespucci as having named the Southern Cross constellation which aligns to Chalice Hill as the ‘Mandorla’(Almond), perceiving it as a vesica.

The powerful and active Tor situated next to the springs and Well (the sword and the cup) connect the male and the female as does the meeting of the white and red springs; and the alignment of both to the Winter Solstice connects space (location) with time (the time when the Sun ‘stands still’). Many sacred sites are aligned to the solstices as pivotal moments, gateways of time where the channel between the earth world and the heavenly world is opened.

In paintings, Christ and the saints were depicted within the vesica as they were the communicators of the divine uniting God with Man. This is the meaning of the vesica piscis; the fusing of principles, divine communion at the heart of all creation.

So it is as a vesica piscis that I understand the Glastonbury Zodiac. Two circles – one, the zodiac circle made of stars in the heavens and the other its terrestrial counterpart made of figures in the earth. The vesica piscis offers a way of understanding the purpose of the Star Temple as part of the quest of Man to bring heaven to earth.

The Chalice Well lid.


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Francesca LaFae

My personal journey into the landscape of the Zodiac began in 2008 when I bought a copy of Mary Caine’s book.

was living in wiltshire but had been working weekends in Glastonbury, in a shop, for about two years. I felt a connection to the place, soaked up some of the many myths and legends surrounding it, felt there was something there for me to learn (connected to the land) but unsure exactly what. I had heard of the Zodiac, knew

basically what it was, but hadn’t done any research or reading about it. When I started reading Mary Caine’s book I felt a surge of excitement, one of those moments that gives me a prod to say, pay attention – this is a piece of the puzzle.

I had a friend visiting who is a composer and music producer. He was thinking about starting a new project and I found myself saying, “How about producing an album based on the Glastonbury Zodiac?” Where that came from I had no idea – I had been learning to play hammered dulcimer for about eighteen months, and I think my idea was to use that in a small way in the album, and collaborate on the feel of it. He just said, “Yes”.

However, he became involved in other projects, I went through a difficult period, becoming quite shut down, and the idea was shelved. It never crossed my mind to embark on the composition myself. Then one day whilst practising the dulcimer, I started just idly improvising and suddenly I was playing almost a complete melody, one I had never heard or played before, and I knew it was a Zodiac melody – Sagittarius. I was seeing a series of images, the shape of the figure, stars, and Arthur – he was predominating, leading me into the landscape and the journey.

I don’t write music, particularly for the dulcimer – I have always played it by ear and learning the patterns on the strings. Suddenly I had a piece of music I had played once and was likely to forget as I had no way of recording it. Tentatively I tried playing it again, and it flowed through me once more, adding a few extra notes and phrases. I kept playing, intrigued, amazed, feeling it as much as hearing it, and all the time images of Arthur riding out at the head of his knights, banners bravely waving, Arthur dancing with his lady, holding court around the table, betrayed, wounded, dying, and all with dignity and awareness of his role to play in this archetypal unfolding.

As I played I heard full orchestration accompanying me, the melody wove through me and I knew I had to somehow bring this forward and tell the story in sound – to say I was somewhat overwhelmed was an understatement; I have never composed anything before despite

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being passionate about music all my life. I don’t consider myself a particularly accomplished musician although I can get by on several instruments. I have no recording facilities but there was no doubt this is what I had to do, to somehow paint a picture of this mysterious Zodiac in sound, produce something that would evoke the feeling and correspondences contained in the landscape.

I practised the Sagittarius piece, Arthur’s song in my mind; it stayed with me and became more or less finished in basic composition. I looked at Mary Caine’s book again, and was fascinated by the way she suggested English history fitted into the Zodiac.

I was trying by this point not to read too much about the Zodiac, because I felt I wanted mainly to allow the music to unfold as little influenced by other people’s theories as possible – but once I had the piece it was interesting to delve a little deeper, to see what matched what I was getting from the music.

When I read that Sagittarius was connected to Charles II, that too made sense; the mixture of gaiety and tragedy surrounding his court, as it did Arthur’s. I felt I wanted to convey the sense of a good man who did not ask to rule but did his best to do so wisely. Who maybe trusted too much, but never forsook his dignity. Who tried to create a shining example of what mankind could aspire to – the Sun King riding lightly across the land to be defeated and unhorsed at last, to be swallowed up once more.

Another melody then emerged, much the same way as the first, and what I was seeing this time was Elizabeth I dancing a Volta – Elizabeth, Guinevere, maiden, mother, crone – Virgo. This melody had strength and energy, a sense of power. I found it very difficult to play and learn (I still struggle with it!); there was a complexity that to me mirrored the complexity of Woman herself, through all her ages and emotional landscapes. She was Queen, Goddess, anima, the earth itself, giving life and protecting all, and dancing her way through the stars.


King Arthur Meets Lady Guinevere, by Arthur Pyle.

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Vicki Burke

y relationship with the Glastonbury Zodiac has been only a recent affair, and in fact up until two years ago I was not even aware of its existence. As I look back, however, I am able to see how things in my life conspired to bring me to this amazing place.

Born and raised in Bristol as Jewish, I soon became – like the rest of my family – an atheist. Yet I was always looking for something more, and in 1998, after having followed many paths that led to as many dead ends, I finally found a door I could happily step through. My awakening, as I call it, took me on a journey that enabled me to see the universe in a whole new way and naturally drew me towards wanting to work as a healer.

Seven years earlier, my grandmother had died and I was left sufficient funds to buy myself a house. In that same year, 1991, I was diagnosed with asthma. So whatever work I have done with healing, healing myself was the starting point. Ever since, healing my asthma and its many root causes has been my main focus. The healing methods have taken many forms, but whatever avenues I found myself investigating, I always came back to the same one: sound healing.

Music has always been my world; I have taught and played the saxophone for nearly thirty years, and so to combine these two wonderful aspects of my life – music and healing – seemed both fitting and joyous.

In 2001 I was gifted a beautiful energy clearing which removed a creative block. Suddenly, songs started pouring out of me in great abundance, usually whilst in the shower or dreaming. This was a huge revelation to me, and as time passes, the more I think about it, the more the instantaneous removal of this block seems like a miracle. Up until the time of the clearing, I wasn’t aware in the slightest that I had a block, but within a few days the joy and the humour in the songs and ideas that were being downloaded were evident – and uplifting. It was the humour I found most surprising.

Since the saxophone didn’t sit easily with my healing and more contemplative style of life, in 2003 I bought a harp and spent the next five years writing and performing my songs, and exploring sound healing with my exciting new instrument.

Uranus, planet of great change astrologically, had a powerful part to play in what happened next. Uranus takes eighty-five years to orbit the sun, so at this age we experience what is termed our Uranus return. At the age of forty-two, halfway through this journey, we experience our Uranus opposition. In astrology, any opposition can create great tension, resulting in what can be a very significant time in our life.

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However, in 2008 I was completely unaware of any of this. In early March, however, on the basis that I would play the harp for meditations and sing my songs where appropriate, I was invited to join an extraordinary astrological course called The Alchemical Journey, at its commencement in Aries later that month.

Inspired brainchild of gifted astrologer John Wadsworth, The Alchemical Journey is a cycle of twelve workshops, each one taking place during the appropriate sign of the zodiac, through the entire Wheel of the Year. Only in its second year at the time, the course has since grown in partnership with Anthony Thorley, an inspiring authority on the relationship between ‘stars and stones’, including the amazing phenomenon of the Glastonbury Zodiac. Guided contemplative walks in the appropriate sign of this great landscape zodiac, whose massive effigies are outlined by features such as rivers and woods, paths, tracks and field boundaries, have since become an integral part of each workshop.

However, it wasn’t until we reached Aquarius, the last sign but one in the Wheel of the Year, that we began walking the Glastonbury Zodiac with Anthony. The subtle energy at work that day drew me so powerfully into the magic of that part of the landscape that I’ve barely been able to draw breath since. Having moved home five years ago to within half an hour of the Zodiac, whenever I step into its domain the synchronicities that come up are so many and so incredible that I’ve felt the need to write them down. Each is in an astrological format, with one synchronistic story for each month.

The following story is, not surprisingly, part of my Aquarius chapter, but also has passages taken from Virgo, considered by some to be ruled by Chiron, the wounded healer.

Back in 2000, soon after I began my healing journey, I attempted some channelling. Using a pendulum, I found that when it came to asking my higher self for ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers, it was – and still is – a very powerful tool that also seems to have a sense of humour. I also tried an alphabetic system, using the pendulum to spell out words, letter by letter. You can imagine that this could be a particularly slow and laborious method, and, after a couple of years, my lack of patience and confidence put an end to it.

The last time I gave this system a try was sometime in 2002. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I was almost goading my spirit guides, whom I affectionately call ‘them upstairs’, and asked if they would give me something I had never heard of before. Previously, whenever I channelled anything, I always tended to doubt from where it had come, thinking I may have just created the words myself and projected them through my pendulum. So here I was asking for proof that I wasn’t just ‘making it all up’. I started swinging the pendulum. What I wrote down, letter by letter, was ‘red alpha waves’.

Red alpha waves. What did that mean to me at the time? Well, I’d heard of alpha waves but didn’t know what they were, and I’d never heard of them being put together with a colour before. So with one eyebrow raised, I left it at that. As I do with anything I encounter and cannot make sense of at the time, I put the information into storage until a possible time when something might come along to help me. Then I put my channelling with the alphabet system back into its box, where it has remained ever since.

Six years passed. At the end of 2008, three-quarters of the way through my Alchemical Journey course, I began formulating a new project, an astrological musical journey called Keys to the Golden City.


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David Anthony Hatfield, aka the Gnaughty Gnome

D I S C O V E R I N G T H E G I R T D O G O F L A N G P O R T

For fifteen years I have lived in Wagg Drove, on the tail of the Girt Dog of Langport, Somerset, during which time much has been revealed to me. What follows is a fair measure of what I have learned, although I have left out a little for you to find on your own quest in The Shire. This piece was originally prepared as a presentation I gave in Eddington Village Hall several years ago.

Welcome to Wagg! Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin!

o unveil before you a great secret that has been hidden in the land for thousands of years is a great privilege. This is the Enchantment of Britain; no less than the Temple of the Stars or the Glastonbury Giants, better known today as the Glastonbury Zodiac, which has been referred to by many

great thinkers, some say including Nostradamus and Dr John Dee.Re-discovered in the mid-1920s by artist and sculptress Katharine E. Maltwood, the

Glastonbury Zodiac is part of the largest megalithic/Neolithic earthworks on the planet. Some people believe it to be secret knowledge that was guarded by druid elders of Ancient Britain. Here in Somerset, also known as Avalon, hidden in the land and sculpted by numerous rivers, streams, trackways, ditches, lanes, earthworks, ponds and woods, is a circle of earth effigies lying in a zodiac circle ten miles wide, with the centre in Park Wood, Butleigh. The first zodiac signs to be discovered by Mrs Maltwood were the Lion of Royal Somerton (Sumer Town) and, at Compton Dundon, the Christ-like Gemini twin, whose heart is marked by the two-thousand-year-old yew tree in Saint Andrew’s churchyard.

The twelve giant zodiac signs, which also represent King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table and zodiac symbols of Ancient Egypt, are in their relevant order. They are to scale, and all face west. Village and road names relate to the correct signs and when a planisphere of the heavens is overlaid on an Ordnance Survey map, the various constellations correspond beautifully. Seen from the air they are remarkably easy to pick out, despite considerable development.

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As we move forward in the twenty-first century, the secrets of the land are beginning to reveal themselves. Thousands of people from all over the world now come to Glastonbury, not only to visit the Tor, the Abbey and the extraordinary town, but the wonders of the countryside around it, which is apparently being earmarked as a world heritage site of immense importance. In my opinion this whole area is nothing less than a focus for heaven on earth.

This sacred and magical Arthurian Kingdom of Avalon and Logres has an ancient Royal Charter that has never been revoked, making it a very special area that is potentially above the laws of Britain and a sanctuary of Peace. The gateway to this sacred land is Langport; hence the Beaufort portcullis logo of Langport that is shared by the Houses of Parliament, whose portcullis is protected by dogs. Langport is also protected by a dog. Down the ages, through the mists of time, this dog has been called the Girt Dog of Langport.


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Celia Thomas

he glastonbury zodiac has impacted on my life since 1975; however, it was upon my return to live in the area during the mid-90s that I became consciously aware of working directly with it through following my inner guidance. The illuminating results of these excursions lead me into the awareness that I was

interacting within a template of consciousness, a landscape where myth, symbol and personal experience would often merge into, what seems to me, a holographic reality.

One particular journey stands out in my mind due to the sequence of events, which resulted in an unexpected conclusion.

P A R T 1 – P I L G R I M A G E T O V I R G O

I was at home on the afternoon of Saturday 22nd March 1997 when I began to feel a pull to go to the Virgo part of the Glastonbury Zodiac. There was no obvious reason why I should have been drawn there that day, but by consulting my Ephemeris, noticed that the moon was currently in that sign. I knew to trust these inner prompts, so duly set off to Keinton Mandeville, heading for the church of Mary Magdalene. This felt to be the obvious entry point for me into Virgo as I had encountered Mary Magdalene in different forms over the years on my initiatory journey to the Goddess. I was fortunate to arrive just as the church was about to be locked, but the woman with the key kindly let me in. The previous time I’d been there reconstruction was underway around the altar and all the paving stones had been lifted. This time my eyes were met with a wonderful deep blue carpet and wrought iron work painted in gold and blue. It was simple but stunning, and felt to my inner world a perfect expression of the Goddess Isis.

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Mary and Child,St. Mary Magdalene’s church,

Keinton Mandeville.


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a s t r o - a l i g n M e n t s o f a v a l o n : p i s c e s

Gail Cornwell

here is a magical landscape in the southwest of England that sounds so fantastic any mention of it brings wonder to the faces of people I have told. This landscape is now called the Glastonbury Zodiac, in Somerset. You might have heard it called Arthur’s Round Table; an incredible table of measurement and time,

so large it defies reason, for some.A cut diamond has the ability to project brilliant light. What then if a landscape was cut to

project brilliant light, like a jewel in a crown? This is the best way I can describe Glastonbury and the surrounding villages and towns of Somerset. What is the jewel in this earthly crown? The crown is the grail landscape, itself an enigma. The ancient Welsh bards speak of this land as old when Greece was young, and they also describe Arthur’s role as The Noah.

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Glastonbury Tor within a Vesica Piscis.


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The Glastonbury Zodiac is passionately debated, imagined and discussed. I found out about this ancient planisphere-correct landscape in England after living in Israel and Egypt for a couple of years, exploring ancient temples and sites.

I saw a picture of the lid of the Chalice Well showing a Vesica Piscis in wrought iron; I was curious to know why my favorite symbol was at Glastonbury. I looked for and soon discovered a huge Vesica Piscis in the landscape around the Tor. I decided to explore and reveal this landscape using satellite images from space. This archeo-astronomy work shows a great Vesica Pisces in the correct situation for the sunrises and the equinoxes and confirms more and more the existence of a complex and artistically beautiful Zodiacal Ark, more ancient than we can imagine.

The illustration below of Pisces shows a timeline in the sky between 1817 and 2180. The correct year 2160 is the approximate location of the Holy Thorn on Wearyall Hill, if this sky map by Geoffrey Cornelius from the Starlore Handbook is translated to the ground. The Zodiac on the ground allows for precession, as there is a third fish at the ear of Aries. This fish faces the sunset and could have been a symbol or marker for the new age of Pisces, from the old age of Aries the Lamb of God.

The stars of Pisces are placed as the twelfth constellation in the Zodiac, which traditionally runs from Aries to Pisces. If you have binoculars or a telescope and like to look at the stars, Markab, the head of the first fish, can be found near Andromeda, our nearest galaxy. Mirach is the westernmost main star in the second fish of Pisces and due to precession will become the marker star for the future spring equinox.

The movement of the March equinox point at zero degrees Aries backwards through the fixed stars over 28,868 years, caused by the

Earth’s rotation of its polar axis. These dates show the conjunctions of zero degrees Aries with the stars of Pisces.

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s a c r e d s p r i n g s , w e l l s a n d p r a y e r r i b b o n s

Beth Heatley

henever approaching a sacred site, particularly those associated with water such as springs and wells, there is always something different or special about the place. It’s a feeling, something intangible. This is nothing new, as people have intuitively felt this throughout the centuries into

aeons past. It is this sense of the sacred and otherworldly that draws people time and time again. Usually there is a tree nearby, an oak, hawthorn or ash for example, that is associated with the well or spring. It is here that votive offerings or ribbons are tied to the tree. Prayers and wishes are given to the spirit of the place, the local nature spirit, Celtic saint or goddess. Yet today, do we really know or understand what it is we’re doing at these sacred sites? Has the essence of our offerings changed? Does it matter?

In Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland, where much of our Celtic heritage is sourced, trees found near wells or sacred sites are called Clootie Trees (Cloutie or Cloughtie in Cornwall). These are places of pilgrimage, especially for healing purposes. In days past, pilgrims would tear a piece of cloth from their clothing and tie the rag onto the tree. As part of the healing ritual, the torn-off rag would have been dipped into the holy waters of the spring or well, and then placed onto the part of the body that required healing. After, prayers were said and imbued into the cloth. It was then tied onto the Clootie Tree. As the rag deteriorated and decayed by being exposed to the elements, the ailment would disappear with healing taking place. Note that there was no expectation of a quick-fix cure, unlike today’s world where we have become impatient with ailments.

The difference between this centuries-old tradition and modern times lies in the materials used, intent, and desire or ego. Even just less than fifty years ago what you wore was expensive and valuable. Clothes were limited and precious. To tear a strip of cloth from your petticoat, jacket or shirt meant a great deal. Through this act you were giving something of yourself to Spirit or Goddess, something valuable. A thousand years ago many only had the clothes they stood in, yet were still prepared to give from that place to show their devotion, commitment and intent.

Similarly, in distant parts of the world, shamanistic peoples followed this tradition, from the Americas to India and Tibet. Tibetan Shamans, pre-dating Buddhism, used prayer flags in healing ceremonies. Today we find prayer flags strung along mountain peaks in the Himalayas as a continuation of these older practices. Now seen mainly as a Buddhist practice in the East, these prayer flags are used to promote peace, compassion, strength and wisdom.

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c o n t e M p l a t i n g z o d i a c a l d r e a M t i M e

Anthony Thorley

he year 2017 marks the centenary of the discovery of the Glastonbury Zodiac by Katharine Maltwood. It is also more than twenty-five years since I started researching into landscape zodiacs in England, so perhaps this is a good time to take stock and contemplate what I feel reasonably confident I can currently say and

share about this perennial mystery. I should really say mysteries, because over forty zodiacs have been described in the English countryside alone since 1917, but for the sake of brevity I shall confine myself to the first one ever recognised, the Glastonbury Zodiac, or as Katharine Maltwood always designated it: Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars.

First let me say that Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars is very real, and it is here to stay. Since Maltwood first published her first full map of the Zodiac in 1935, countless people, published and anonymous, have walked its fields, lanes and riverbanks and have trodden the pilgrim’s path exploring the mysteries of its giant images; so whatever the nature of its original provenance, conscious usage and ongoing research since 1917 have strengthened the impression and sense of its reality. As the decades have slid by, layer upon layer of additional knowledge and increasingly deeper insights have been grafted onto, or found within, the template of the twelve astrological signs of the Zodiac and the additional thirteenth effigy that is in the form of the Girt Dog of Langport. Today the subject of the Zodiac has an enduring and very profound appeal: witness the wide variety and richly heartfelt accounts that make up the contributions to this book. There it is evident that none of the writers has been able to avoid the magical touch of the Zodiac itself.

Perhaps the first person ever to experience that magical touch was of course Maltwood herself – and as we read elsewhere in this book, she set down that life-changing personal epiphany of discovering the Leo figure at Somerton several times in her writings. What is important about this powerful personal event is that sometime in the months following, around the end of World War I, Maltwood identified all the figures of her Temple of the Stars as zodiacal effigies carrying additional Arthurian significance. Before Maltwood’s discovery of the whole frame of the Zodiac and the Guardian Dog on the earth of Somerset, to the best of our knowledge, no one in written history had ever reported or clearly hinted at the existence of a complete Zodiac in this part of England. To further strengthen this assertion of Maltwood being the first zodiac ‘discoverer’, there is no evidence from any of the other English landscape zodiacs (all of which postdate 1917) of any written or oral history of their existence pre-dating

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the moment of their modern discovery. So in that sense landscape zodiacs are a modern phenomenon.

Now this is usually the point where sceptics and the academics come crashing in.1 As landscape zodiacs are modern and there is no evidence of prior history, they argue, these zodiacs cannot be ancient, and therefore they are fundamentally projections of a fevered or fabulous imagination in the minds of their discoverers. Anyone with imagination can look at the myriad lines on a county map and through psychological projection, conscious or unconscious, through hope, through sheer luck or simply through dogged determination, can find the outline of a recognisable dog (or whatever) in the landscape. Richard Muir, a sometime professor of geography, writing in this sceptical mode in 1981, tells us he spent a short two hours outlining a delightful teddy bear on the map between Glastonbury and Wells.2 Additionally, he added folklore and a patina of history around King Arthur as Artos the Bear and even a dash of Welsh ‘Winnie the Pooh’.3 This is very amusing to read, and on the face of it seems a devastatingly effective argument, pointedly ridiculing all those who take landscape zodiacs seriously. Of course, those of us contributing to this book do take landscape zodiacs seriously and we have a whole mass of experience, history and factual evidence which makes Professor Muir’s playful dismissal all the more wanting and superficial. Let us review some of that evidence.

First, consider the matter of psychological projection. Certainly it is possible to discover the effigy of an animal in the myriad lines on a landscape, like seeing castles in the coals of a fire or butterflies in the pattern of a Rorschach test. However, an exercise to find a specific animal form on any part of any landscape is more difficult, unless you take the street plan of a crowded cityscape or suburb such as, for example, London’s Croydon, where the density of names, shapes and associations allows you to find anything you wish for. In the sparsely-populated Somerset countryside, however, the matter of projecting twelve or thirteen effigies in the appropriate astronomical and astrological order in an approximate circle eleven miles across is more difficult.

I remember some years ago I was working on a presumed landscape zodiac in Wiltshire with a like-minded researcher. We sensed the presence of a circular zodiac some seventeen miles in diameter. For nearly three years we hunted (and no doubt strongly exercised our powers of psychological projection) for animal effigies in the field and on the map, but none could be clearly and convincingly seen. Eventually the zodiac crystallised in a different format: no animal effigies but rather strict 30-degree sections making up the circle, sections full of revealing history which illuminated the zodiacal nature of the whole.

Psychological projection can logically explain the outline of an effigy – even two or three – but thirteen all in the right place on the map is more problematic. Such a pattern can still happen by chance, but the odds of such a process happening in this way are huge. Maltwood

1 See for example, Ivakhiv, A., Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001) pp.112–113; Rhatz, P. and L. Watts, Glastonbury: Myth and Archaeology (Stroud: Tempus, 2003) p.63.

2 Muir, R., Riddles in the British Landscape (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981) pp.127–128. 3 Williamson, T. and L. Bellamy, Ley Lines in Question (Kingswood: World’s Work, 1983) pp.169–170.


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sensed this herself and tried to put a statistic on it in her Air View Supplement of 1937.4

In addition to the outline of the effigy or effigies are all the aspects of history, folklore, legends and modern happenings which are found to relate to each zodiacal sign in an extraordinarily rich and apposite way. Finally, there is the fascinating evidence of changing place-names across history which only when recognised in the twentieth century seem to confirm the form or name of the specific effigy. Thus there is so much more relevant and associated material making up each specific sign of the zodiac than simply the shape of the effigy, and it is the depth and detail of this additional associated and interconnected material that make landscape zodiacs so fascinating. It is as if all the information which coincidentally and identifiably relates to a zodiacal sign – place-names, history, legends and the personal experiences of the researcher – all connect together, or cohere, into a recognisable whole, not only in space and place, but sometimes through changing history and across time. I have called this process of associative glue Informational Coherence. And I would contend that on its own, psychological projection cannot explain the complexities of Informational Coherence.

One could examine any of the thirteen images of the Glastonbury Zodiac to make this point and so explore Informational Coherence, but I will briefly restrict my considerations to the richness of just one of them, the thirteenth effigy, the Girt Dog of Langport. Some five miles long, this huge figure in the approximate position of Canis Major (the Great Dog constellation) acts as the traditional guardian dog of the Zodiacal circle and may have first been recognised in the seventeenth-century Somerset wassailing carol:

The Girt Dog of Langport he burnt its long tailAnd this is the night we go singing wassail.5

This wassailing carol dates from some two hundred years before Maltwood described the Dog around 1917, and suggests that the girt (meaning great or tethered) Dog may have been known for centuries. However, one explanation for the venerability of this carol is that it refers not to a dog effigy in the landscape but to the tradition of the Danes (known as the black dogs or wolves) being defeated by Alfred in 878 at nearby Edington. Another story I was told some years ago by a local resident was that in the distant past the heraldic arms of the ancient town of Langport had been supported by two greyhound dogs. Further research has shown this tale to be unlikely, but it may reflect the ownership of the Manor of Langport by the influential Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, in the fifteenth century – great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, tireless Lancastrian and mother of the first Tudor king, Henry VII. This formidable lady inherited the heraldic tradition of the greyhound both from her great-grandfather and from the designation of the White Greyhound to the title and honour of Richmond. Henry VII replaced the English lion with a white greyhound on the royal coat of arms and so it remained until King James I. So there are strong historical canine associations in the Langport area long before the image of a dog was recognised by Maltwood.

4 Maltwood reported odds of 479 million to 1! See Maltwood, K. E., Air View Supplement to A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars (London: John M. Watkins, 1937) p.3.

5 ‘Somerset Wassail Carol, No. 32’ Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964) p.64. A variant of the carol is ‘The Black Dog of Langport has burnt his long tail.’


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L I S T O F C O N T R I B U T O R S

LonéBang was born in Denmark and came to Somerset and Glastonbury in 1988. She studied Astrology in Copenhagen with the best of Danish astrologers. In Somerset she has researched the Glastonbury Zodiac as well as other sacred landscapes, megalithic temples, alignments, cosmology and mythology and continues to do so – from Norse, Celtic, Native American and other traditions. She is involved in the protection of sacred landscapes in England and Denmark. She is currently attending the University of Copenhagen, studying Archaeology.www.zodiactours.co.ukwww.whitestarastrology.co.uk

ColestonBrown is a writer living in the west of Ireland. He is committed to practising and sharing insights and practical knowledge of the Magical Way and the Faery Tradition. He is the author of five books including Secrets of a Faery Landscape: new light on the Glastonbury Zodiac (illustrated by Jessie Skillen) and is presently involved in producing a cd entitled Initiations of the Thirteen Dreamers and the Oath of Faery Friendship (forthcoming later in 2013 from Green Fire publications). www.magicalways.com

VickiBurke began her life as a saxophonist and music teacher. In 2000 she discovered the world of healing and synchronicity, unlocking her talents as a harpist and singer-songwriter. In 2008 Vicki was introduced to Astrology. Delving into the Glastonbury Zodiac she discovered the joys its synchronicities brought her. Developing her project Keys to the Golden City – a Musical Journey around the Cosmos as a performance and then as meditation sound workshops, she has now turned her hand to writing. www.keystothegoldencity.com

GailCornwell was born in England, and lived in Brighton until her 20s. Since then she has travelled the world extensively in search of secret and sacred cities including Japan, Korea, Africa, Mexico and Greece. She also lived for 18 months in Israel, Egypt and the Sinai desert. Gail currently lives in Canada, and has an interest in archaeo-astronomy, and all things ancient. This has led her to investigate Glastonbury and to write a book and website. Her work reveals the Glastonbury Zodiac and its many secrets from space.www.secretsofthegraillandscape.com

HankHarrison was born in California in 1941. He has had a passionate interest in the Glastonbury Zodiac since he first read about it in 1970. In the February of 1971 he was able to visit the Maltwood Museum in Canada and then later that same year – as manager of the folk/blues/rock band The Grateful Dead playing live at the second Glastonbury Festival – he was able to walk around the Temple of the Stars for the very first time: this sacred landscape grabbed him and never let him go. In 1974 Hank began studying Renaissance and Medieval History at the Warburg Institute, London, under Dame Francis Yates. During the 1970s he also became good friends with many of the earlier generation of Glastonbury Zodiac


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researchers, including John Michell, Mary Caine, Elizabeth Leader and Anthony Roberts. Under Hank’s management of The Grateful Dead (and the encouragement of John Michell), the band donated a very substantial amount of finance to help create RILKO – The Research Into Lost Knowledge Organisation. Hank lives on a ranch in California and is currently publishing his lifelong research into King Arthur and the Grail mythos.www.hankharrison.com

DavidHatfield (along with his alter ego The Gnaughty Gnome) arrived to live in Wagg in 1996 and in that same year discovered that he was living on the tail of The Girt Dog of Langport. From then on the magic started and a story began to unfold. David received vast amounts of information regarding the Glastonbury Zodiac and our Galactic Heritage, culminating in a manuscript called The Glastonbury Grail. The writing continues on in another manuscript called The Magical and Alchemical Diary and Gnosis of The Gnaughty Gnome, The Dragon Clan, Camelot Restored and the Return of The Queen of Orion, and The Sirian Kings and Christ Consciousness. The Diary documents a synchronic saga, with a detailed description of every day, all the way from August 2005. David believes that the Glastonbury Zodiac will shortly become the enlightenment of humanity.www.changingworld.co.uk

BethHeatley originally trained as a midwife and psychotherapist after taking a degree in Psychology. Over the past fifteen years she has developed interests in Jungian psychology and the deeper esoteric mysteries. A Druid (member of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids since 1999), she nurtures a close connection with the Glastonbury landscape. Glastonbury became her home in 2007 after she moved from Cornwall, kicking and screaming. She awaits further instruction!

CaseyJon has lived on the slopes of Glastonbury Tor surrounded by the wylde woods for many years now. Sometimes she’s a mum, a wife and a friend but mostly she’s distracted and enchanted by the magical wildness that is her wood and her garden. The wells and springs of the Glastonbury Zodiac hold a special place in her heart and she’s often found caring for and listening to them, lost amongst the faery realm that surrounds her.www.wildheartceramics.co.uk

Tim & Sophie Knock: Tim is the Creative Director at Spirit Earth Productions, a Glastonbury-based video production company, as well as a freelance film-maker and musician. He also co-ordinates the Peace Dome, a universal sacred space using sound and geometry, which is centred on the Hiroshima Peace Flame. Sophie is a Flower Essence Producer and Practitioner of Wild Medicine Essences. She runs Co-creating with Nature Retreats, is a Trustee of Chalice Well and is studying Homeopathy and a Herbal Medicine Masters Degree. www.timknock.comwww.wildmedicine.co.uk

Francesca LaFae describes herself as ‘An eccentric recluse that lives with wolves, writes words and creates music’. To hear a sample of her music seek ‘Dulcimer at Spiritvisions’ on YouTube.www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2Tk4CS6870


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YuriLeitch is an artist, author and Chen Style taiji instructor. He has lived in Glastonbury since January 2001. Arthurian, Celtic and Ancient mythologies inspire most of his activities. 2007 saw the publication of his first book Gwyn, Ancient God of Glastonbury and Key to the Glastonbury Zodiac. He is currently working on a series of booklets with Alan Royce, Pagan Glastonbury. He is also writing a detailed biography about Katharine Maltwood, as well as planning his first art exhibition – The Wild Would.www.yurileitch.co.uk

BahliMans-Morris was one of life’s genuine Seers; she listened to the silence of the rose and heard wonders. Her joy and fascination with the Glastonbury Zodiac brought her many adventures, deep friendships and led to the development of her inspired Divinatory/Oracle Cards, The Ladies. Her journey with the Zodiac landscape started many years ago, bringing her to Glastonbury and finally leading to her living in the centre of it all, Butleigh. Her greatest joy was to be surrounded by all the magic of the great Star Temple.

JanRoberts studied music before becoming seriously interested in the Earth Mysteries; especially those around the Glastonbury area. She has had articles published in local newspapers and magazines detailing ley-lines and other terrestrial enigmas. As well as running two Montessori schools Jan helped her husband, Anthony Roberts, produce and distribute their joint-venture Zodiac House publications – famous for the celebrated anthology Glastonbury: Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem. Jan still lives in Somerset.

AlanRoyce was brought up in the pagan countryside of Essex. Moulded by the socialist struggles of the 1970s; skimmed the edge of the Western esoteric tradition; became a Baha’i on a trip to north Wales; and moved to Glaston to get married in 1995. He helped in the rediscovery and reordering of the Chalice Well archives. He has written for the Avalon Magazine on local history and various esoteric subjects and does ongoing work with the spirits of the land. He is currently working on Pagan Glastonbury with Yuri Leitch and planning his own book on Mithraic symbolism and inner alchemy.

EmmaStow A lifelong interest in astrology led Emma to become a professional astrologer in 2001, following her earlier years as a singer-songwriter. She developed her own system of intuitive practice – Star Soul Astrology – following her first visit to the Glastonbury Zodiac in 2006. This visit was a life-changing experience that sparked her interest in Sacred Sites and in star-landscape connections. She runs the annual Star Path Pilgrimage to Glastonbury and other walks in the Glastonbury Zodiac as well as teaching astrology, and writing and speaking in the UK and abroad.www.emmastowastrology.co.uk

CeliaThomas says, ‘As a Priestess of Isis, I hold the energy of Isis of Avalon, a Lyceum of the Fellowship of Isis here in Glastonbury, working with the inner mysteries. I offer Soul Journeys which draw on the rich and magical landscape to provide pilgrimages for insight and healing, with the aim of bringing together inner and outer landscapes. I also offer support to others on their inner journey as a soul friend, offering counsel, guidance and healing’.


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AnthonyThorley is a retired psychiatrist who has been researching landscape energies, traditions and history for over thirty years. He has recently edited a book, Legendary London and the Spirit of Place, and is slowly writing a book about Masonic influences in the development of eighteenth-century Bath entitled Sacred City, Secret City. He is currently pursuing a PhD on Landscape Zodiacs at the University of Wales, Trinity St. David, where he teaches Sacred Geography. With his wife Celia Gunn he runs pilgrimages which explore earth-sky correspondence, and together with astrologer John Wadsworth he co-facilitates the workshop programme The Alchemical Journey. www.earthskywalk.com www.thealchemicaljourney.co.uk.

JohnWadsworth has worked as a professional astrologer since 1992. He runs a school of astrology in Glastonbury and is also founder of The Alchemical Journey, a contemporary zodiac mystery school held each month in the different landscape signs of the Glastonbury Zodiac. John holds an MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology from Bath Spa University. www.kairosastrology.co.ukwww.thealchemicaljourney.co.uk

PaulWeston is the author of Mysterium Artorius, Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus, and Avalonian Aeon. His current writing projects include Aquarian Phoenix, and Dion Fortune and the Aeon of Michael. Having majored in Comparative Religion for a Combined Arts degree (which involved a dissertation on Nazi Occultism later incorporated into one of his books), Paul went on to work for the Scientology-influenced Institute of Hypnosis and Parapsychology before becoming completely absorbed into the Glastonbury matrix. A frequent lecturer, he has described himself in his books as a Psychic Questing, Reiki, Crowley, Mother Meera, Fellowship of Isis, Adi Da, Druid, Osho, Psychogeographical, Gurdjieff, Anthony Robbins-firewalking, Kriya Yoga, UFOlogical, Avalon of the Heart kind of guy. He affirms the 2012 gnosis.www.paulwestonglastonbury.comwww.avalonianaeon.comwww.aleistercrowley666.co.ukwww.mysteriumartorius.co.ukwww.avalonianaeon.blogspot.comhttp://www.blogtalkradio.com/paul-weston1www.facebook.com/AvalonianAeonPublications

ShirleyWhitton was a war-time baby and she developed a love of the landscape growing up in Surrey and Lincolnshire in the 1940s and ’50s. The 1960s brought a career in television (working for the BBC), travel and new horizons. After retirement she published several books and articles and began a close friendship with her neighbour Mary Caine, which lasted until Mary’s death in 2008; together they explored the Mysteries, and Mary’s respect for Katharine Maltwood inspired Shirley to carry on the Work, which she continues to do.


avalon ian Æon


ISBN 978-0-9557696-3-4

SIGNS & SECR ETSOF THE

GLASTONBURY ZODIACis an anthology created by a diverse group of

multi-talented enthusiasts, inspired by the classic, Anthony Roberts-edited compilation,

Glastonbury: Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem.As above, so below.

“Our land is the image of heaven.” Corpus Hermeticum. Asclepius.

A psychogeographical Arthurian Grail extravaganza.

FeaturesInvestigations into a mysterious past, intimations of an inspirational future.

History, poetry, magic, mysticism, myth, music, art. Astrological gnosis. Personal transformation.

Includes Previously unpublished article by Katharine Maltwood,

discoverer of the Somerset terrestrial zodiac.Incredible roots of Andrew Collins’ Giza cave discovery in his

visionary star temple quest.The revelation of the Melkarth landscape alignment,

and its relationship to Glastonbury.Sumptuous illustrations, maps and diagrams,

by artist-researcher Yuri Leitch.

Honours the lineageJohn Dee, Frederick Bligh Bond, Mary Caine,

Elizabeth Leader, Oliver Reiser, Robert Coon and others.

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£24.99

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Signs& secrets promo 2013

Education

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