Is there a Portal on Glastonbury Tor?
The small Somerset town of Glastonbury, like its sister centre the Hebridean Isle of Iona, has enjoyed a celebrity status for some time now. Still a Mecca for those seeking spiritual insight, magic or other worldly dimensionality and, of course, host to the most famous and enduring music festival of them all. So how did it all come about, this self nominating of exceptionalness, a special place in England above most all others?
| Part of the answer lies with those naughty monks of the Abbey who in 1191 declared that they had found the bones of King Arthur and his Queen Guinevere – or phonetic ‘Queen of Air’ as the alchemical phonetic of the (Dan) Green Language prefer to call her. Given that these figures are more fantasy than real, we can confidently surmise that they didn’t really find such bones at all, but it didn’t stop them relocating and burying them in the Abbey’s chancery in 1278 in front of reigning and certainly for real King Edward and his Queen Eleanor at the time. This little incident added to the forthcoming consolidation of Grail Romance that was bolstered by equal assertions that no less than Jesus’ uncle Joseph (he of Arimathea) had arrived at Glastonbury bringing with him the Holy thorn legend upon Wearyall Hill. People, apparently, aren’t all weary of this tale.
Only recently Glastonbury Abbey have now added to their tourist literature that legend says Joseph also brought the youngster Jesus here and they built an old wattle church now buried underneath the existing Mary chapel. Tying in anything loosely Jesus-like with Arthur – possibly greedily claiming both legendary figures – spawned the Grail stuff even more and so, hey presto, Glastonbury conceals the Grail, no less, down Chalice Well. Well, many thousands of us have popped our head down there in the hope that it could be that simple. No Grail – obviously, not, that simple. |
Glastonbury Abbey claims both Jesus and King Arthur
Many people are unaware of a fine book that was written in 1932 by a fellow called John Cowper Powys (1872-19630) a Derbyshire born author and lecturer who passed away before Glastonbury really took off big time. The book was called ‘A Glastonbury Romance’ and for many hits the nail on the head as valid and timelessly today as it did then. Described as ‘an epic novel of terrific cumulative force and lyrical intensity’ the work weaving the ancient with the modern probes the effect of this mystical and spiritual history upon the residents of the town. The longest undivided novel in English, the 1120 pages book muses over the possibilities upon the table – not Arthur’s Round one entirely – that Glastonbury could become a place of pilgrimage, just as easily an experimental socialist commune, or simpler still, a modern industrial town.
Well, today it appears to be a nation divided, with standardised Christians on the one hand and the new age (surely Old age by now) mystics. It certainly reaps the tourist benefits from either side, with the historical Jesus figure stuck in the middle owing to Glastonbury being the first point of Christianity in England and, of course, the lad’s cup so sought after by those on a Quest. John Michel’s 1972 book ‘City of Revelation’ mapping out the sacred geometry of Glastonbury Abbey seemed to contribute to both camps.
‘A Glastonbury Romance’
Back in 1970 the first ever Glasto festival only drew 1,500 attendants but today it draws some 180,000 over three days, praise the endurance of farmer Micheal Eavis who once declared during the 90s that he made a 3m clear profit each year. Unavoidably, the festival and its original association with travellers and hippies and their drug habits have left a scar in the town and modern day sociology will bear out that it harbours more than its fair share of drug addicts and alcoholics. A lot of the hippies stayed and still stay. It reminds one a little of how in 1978 hordes of Scotland football fans went to the World Cup in Argentina and, running out of money, simply didn’t come back, hence the abundance of Scottish surnames in many families in towns near Cordoba!
There is another facet and feature caught up in the tug of war of Christianity and the mystical within Glastonbury with both sides vying for its ownership and it is that pyramidical shaped natural hill the Tor which also has a dependency on legend and myth for its celebrity status. Modern day magicians and Pagans complicate things even a bit further by introducing a schism amongst their occultists informing us that the energy harnessed upon the Tor can be utilised for either good or bad. You can just imagine a patient line of queuing and at odds sorcerers awaiting their turn! It’s equally funny and serious then, in this respect, when in 2005 a Dalek, those lunatic pepper-pot enemy of the time travelling fictional Dr Who, was stolen from an exhibition staged at nearby Wookey Hole Caves and deposited at the top of the Tor as if to claim it as its territory on behalf of malefaction. A manifestation brought about by the Collective Unconscious perhaps?
The Negative Tor – a cosmic icon lays claim
Two years later the South face of the Tower was covered in paint and graffiti by sympathisers of the voluntary run organisation Fathers4Justice. Negativity struck again when in 2010 the Holy Thorn was vandalised, hacked down leaving only its roots, the most likely culprits acting on behalf of those owed money by the owner of the land upon which the Thorn bloomed, having been sent to prison bankrupt owing the same figure as Michael Eavis’ annual profit. Another deficit came the following April when the Glastonbury Anglican Annual Pilgrimage, whereby 2,000 visit and ascend the Tor, and has been running since 1924, was scrapped due to soaring petrol costs, its future now in doubt.
High up on the Tor stands the Christian claim to the hill , the tower the remnants of a St Michaels church destroyed by an earthquake in 1275, the symbol of the Christian Prince of Peace meant to supplant all previous Pagan, and earlier Druidic, ownership of their own sacred hill. Should we ask, would the Christian god have destroyed his own church by his own act? Oh well. The most famous legend concerning the Tor, upon whom many a visitors have had a variety of weird experiences, is that in its ‘faery hill’ aspect it conceals the entrance to the underworld kingdom of Gwyn Ap Nudd, this beginning to touch on the hypothesis that Glastonbury is dimensional, which will please the many who claim UFO sightings there, including one previous Mayor of the town who one night witnessed what he himself called a ‘spaceship’ when he saw a reddish orange light appear above the Tor before sinking into the summit, more akin faerie activity than UFO. However, the suggestion that the Gwyn Ap Nudd legend is a reminiscence of a long forgotten potential dimensional opening based on the hill, currently referred to as a ‘portal’, may indeed be Glastonbury’s best bet for a genuine claim of the paranormal. With this is mind, or possibly Mind, although any such portal would be ancient, an interesting photo was taken only five years back by a local resident on one of his many daily walks.
Glastonbury Tor, Entrance to another dimension?
On February 2007 at precisely 4.33pm on a bright day Mike Chenery was walking up Orchard Lane when his attention was drawn to the fact that all the singing birds that were about had suddenly stopped their song. This stillness and suspension is reminiscent of what occurs at the time of a solar eclipse when birds become temporarily disorientated. He was then at a gate that provides a vantage point view of one of the un-arched sides of the tower. Casually looking up at the top of the desolate Tor he saw a dazzling white ‘something’ that, in his own words, ‘glided’ a short distance from within the tower.
At first it showed itself as linear, long and very narrow, but then moved its perspective to face his direction as he stood watching it from his distance and in doing so it widened rather like at first being a door seen sideways on and then full frontal. As he always carries a camera with him on his regular and numerous jaunts and excursions, he only just found the time to take a picture on his digital camera and then the apparition that had only lasted seconds, simply ‘popped off’! Kinder critics will naturally say that the photo shows some blemish associated either internally or externally with his camera, harsh cynics living in their left brain hemisphere all their life will and have inevitably harangued him with cries of ‘Photoshop!’ The photograph nevertheless remains intriguingly genuine and has never been exposed as fake. It wouldn’t be either, if, by absolute chance and serendipity, Mike has been presented with an authentic pic of a portal briefly opening, and it is as simple as that. Check out his ‘The Spectre on Glastonbury Tor’ on YouTube.
A Portal opens? (alongside)
Enlargement (Copyright Mike Chenery)
I have related some of my own Tor experiences in an earlier World Mysteries feature ‘Glastonbury Tor – Did a Portal open on 26/02/07?’ that date back as far as 1984 whereupon my first ascension – at 11.30 at night October 30th – I was met within moments with a silent silver flash only feet above my head, soon after followed by a brief bombardment on each slope by what I can best describe as grey ping-pong balls! I have visited the Tor many times since, in all seasons and all times of day, but from 2005-2011 I found myself unable to ascend beyond a specific point, actually ‘stuck’ and unable to go any further, filled with an immense and unaccountable fear wanting me to turn back, this being perhaps the most puzzling episode of my life to date. In July 2010 a lady correspondent sent me a still night image taken from the webcam which defies cries of conventional camera flare to show a strange insignia at precisely the spot I would get stuck, the correspondent unaware of it being my troublesome location.
to read the rest of the article, go to the source: http://blog.world-mysteries.com/mystic-places/is-there-a-portal-on-glastonbury-tor/