Who Lies Buried in the Abbey...
(The Mystery of Glastonbury)
The thing about it is, that the first time I went to Glastonbury ten years ago, I really had no idea what it was all about. We stayed with a friend called Arthur, funnily enough, who took us to see the falcons at the Abbey. We sat in Margaret’s Chapel. Arthur was a lovely chap who had moved to Glastonbury in the aftermath of a divorce. Not from Guinevere. I vaguely remember taking in the grave of Arthur and Guinevere, but at the time it seemed too far fetched to really believe. Our other friend Toby lives in Glastonbury too, but only when he’s not in Mount Shasta, Prague or Rostrevor. Lucky sod. So the Abbey to me, then, was a very intriguing ruin, but I knew little about it and was far more focussed on catching up with old friends in Shepton Mallet where there was a sort of therapeutic farm, and where I became engaged to someone who was introduced to me by a dear old friend. It was a hasty dream, a thing that can happen in Glastonbury, which is really a bit dreamy and not exactly the place you’d go to get a career on track. It seems to operate in the mythic, where timelines cross and tangle. Anyway the fiancé said he was going to build me a chapel in Shepton Mallet to get us married in, so I thought that was a great idea, but that’s a story for another time.
When Arthur took us to the Chalice Wells, I also had no idea what that was about, nor that the Wells were associated with the Grail, but I loved the sound of the trickling water and the air of ancient magic. I found the well covers extremly beautiful, with their over lapping of the inner and outer worlds designed by the mystic architect and archaeologist Frederick Bligh Bond in 1919.
Bond was responsible for the major excavations at Glastonbury Abbey, which he located by means of automatic writing (might be called ‘channeling’ now by New Agers). When they discovered his method for locating excavations, despite the fact that he had been correct, they swipted the Abbey keys from him, a thing from which he never recovered. On the Chalice Wells lid, the overlapping of the inner and outer worlds is a Vesica Piscis which is a shape arranged so that the lens is placed vertically, depicts a halo or aureola, symbolic of divine glory. It may be a depiction of the vulva, symbolic of femininity and fertility. There is also a sword, possibly Excalibur, which bisects the two interlocking circles “typical of many early diagrams.. the rendering of spiritual truth by means of the purest, most intellectual system of imagery conceieved by the mind, truth which is ‘aeonial’ or eternal, of which geometry is the best interpreter, since it can figure for us with remarkable suggestiveness those formative principles upon which the Father has built his Creation, principles which shall endure when heaven and earth have died." Bligh Bond) The foliage in the Well lid foliage is the Glastonbury Thorn, said to have been planted at the Abbey by Joseph of Aramithea in the year dot, or so. Nobody really knows. One of the great mysteries of Glastonbury, the Queen of England (or the King), takes a branch of it each year for their Christmas pudding. Try doing that and you’ll get your hand chopped off. Joseph of Aramithea, fabled founder of Glastonbury, and bringer of Christianity to England. Supposedly.
Glastonbury is a sort of nerve-point in cosmology. It is where Christianity and Paganism meet. And yet, there is no great clash of worlds. Nothing as dramatic as Simon Magus (father of Gnositicism, the most ‘heretical’ movement of the early Christian cetnuries) Gnosticism may have been an attempt to fuse Christiantiy with pagan magic and mystery cults through Secret Widsdom. Spell weaving, numerology, spirit conjuring. Simon Magus went to Rome and challenged Peter to a contest in wonder-working.
Celts clung to the sort of practices that Simon did and they were keen to keep druidism. This is where the early Gnositicism, the Secret Widsom gets entangled with the Secret Church. Two Mystery schools collide. Johannine Christianity placed great emphasis on the teachings of Jesus and his apostle John. They seem to have professed to be on God’s side against devil worishippers but their own methods were not canonically approved. Extracting omens from jewels and the flight of birds, their Catholic ritual was ‘contaminated’ with occultism, claiming them to be a method of healing.
There are many legends around Simon Magus, the first Gnostic, who fell headlong from the empty air claiming that as the Son he could ascend to the Father by flying, and, having been lifted up by his magical arts. Peter knelt down and prayed the Lord, and to overcome the magician’s flight. ‘Then did Peter set him down like a prisoner from the lofty heights, and dashing him down with a steep fall onto a stone, broke his legs; and this, as a reproach of what he had done, so that he who had just tried to fly could suddenly no longer walk, and he that had taken on wings lost the use of his feet.” (The Fall of Simon Magus, by Benozzo Gozzoli, 1461-2). So, it seems Peter by his own magic paralysed the poor magician. Not very nice.
Simon Magus is also said to have set up an altar and on it placed a tablernacle shaped like a house with a cross on the front like a clock fact in the figure of the Tetragram. ‘his costume was a long robe of vermillion chasmere, waist girt with a red and white cord. He wore a cloak cut away on the chest to show a cross upside down and his ring is a symoblic circle of pure gold, bearing the image of a serpent whose heart is attached by a chain to a miniature ring sealing the snakes of its jaws.’ Interesting attire.
The Roman Catholics did not really know what to do about these kinds of practices in early Christianity. They had not the erudition to drag into the open these practices. The demented and as far as I am concerned, evil witch hunts came later. In any case it seems that these practices were concealed, most of all by their practitioners, out of necessity. They didn’t go about flouting them. But Simon Magus may have been trying to prove a point. Clearly he was, actually. However, the Celtic Church did not attempt to conceal its idiosyncracies and strange liturgies. The Irish priests prayed with their arms outsretched. Scotsmen fasted on certains days, and abolished public penance for sin. In fact when Roman bishops came to Wales, the Welsh made them fast for forty days and refused to eat with them at all and scoured their dishes after meals . the Celtic Church was monastic and not of dioceses. The office of the Abbot conferred power, not the Bishop. The Celtic Church was full of Irish scholarly monks who taught in monastic schols, and right up to the tenth and perhaps even the twelfth century Glastonbury Abbey had Irish monks. St Patrick had apparently sorted them out…
The true religion remains concealed. Surely, as with the Cathars, there was no choice. To risk exposure was to risk being exterminated. The word heretic was hurled around violently. Always the Romans took offense and subsequently took violent action against it. It is for this reason I’ve never been enamoured with the Roman Catholic church, there is simply to much violence in its inability to embrace any interpretations of God and Christ, other than its own.
But Glastonbury holds mysteries that could, if exposed, unravel all that dogma. Take for instance the fact that many who live there, do so because they are intrigued by those very mysteries, some believing that Mary Magdalene is buried here in the Abbey. Which brings us to the feminine divine aspect of worship that has always been prominent in Glastonbury. In a more Eastern mode, the Glastonbury monks prayed to the Blessed Virgin'; she was in their very liturgy. It was at Glastonbury that Arthur revered the Virgin Mother. After his victories by 540 AD a new church was built there in her honour. Glastonbury is the first home in Britain of the Virgin’s cult. ‘Our Lady St Mary of Glastonbury’. You might say how could a church in the 4th, 5th or 6th Century have been dedicated to Mary but Arthur’s Britain may have been steeped in Byzantine mariolatry . It might explain why there is so much ‘Goddess’ worship in Glastonbury today.
The mysteries at Glastonbury did not start with the Abbey, nor did they start with anything Christian. Glastonbury was once an island (Avalon) and the people of that island buried their dead on the island under the Tor with cermony. It is the Island of Glass. Tales of the fey and the dead were thick as fog at Glastonbury and Gwyn ap Nudd, Lord of Annwn (Hades) had an invisible palace inside the Tor where he stayed with Wild Hunstmen. Celts believed in the Hills of the Dead and Islands of the Dead. King Gwyn mustered ghosts on the Glass island that had a passage to the other world. In the fourth century a few hermits gathered on the Isle and chose to worship there to banish the demons by building the Old Church. St Patrick came along some time in the 5th Century to make them a better organised community, since he figured he’d sorted out the Irish by this time. The good old Welshman who’d been captured in Wales by Irish slave owners. The irony of it. He retired to Glastonbury in where he was Abbot until he died somewhere not too far from there. You see, he wasn’t an Irishman at all.
Arthur , a Romanised Dumnonian , (Dumnonia is the Latinised name for the Brythonic Kingdom in Sub Roman Britain, 4th-8th C CE in SW England- Devon, Cornwall and Somerset) possible avatar of a Celtic God, brilliant in cavarly warfare rose to the rank of King and head of his knights, died in Somereset fighting a chief who made a pact with their enem. He asked to be buired in Glastonbury Abbey because it was near and sacred and because it was an eminent burial ground. But in secret. To the Welsh came the beliefs that Arthur had gone to Avalon and would return and that he was buried at Glastonbury. Was Arthur a Christian? His ghostly presence at Glastonbury made him a myth, a friend of King Gwyn, a Wild Huntsman, a Harrower of Hades. He is said to be buried there in the Abbey, with his beloved Guinevere.
Perhaps this extract from the novel I’m currently writing, ‘The King of the North Wind’ will better explain what I’m on about. It brings to life the 12th century fascination with Arthur and Guinevere, as Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II and Marie de Champagne, (Eleanors’ daughter by Louis VII of France, her first husband, patroness of writers who birthed the stories of Lancelot, Arthur and Guinevere, and who may herself have written Lays of that ilk.)
In this scene, Henry II is with his wayward eldest and crowned son, Young King Henry, who is only interested in getting back to France to do Tournaments, while Henry has dragged him to Glastonbury with Bishop Hugh of Avalon to visit the grave of Arthur and Guinevere (which in fact had not yet been excavated, but was after Henry’s death in 1189. He and Eleanor had come on pilgrimmage to the Abbey many times in the mid 1100s)
Extract:
The arches of the Glastonbury rose like trees in a forest, only taller and with chevrons and diamonds and perfect faces set in stone, for eternity. The light came through the clerestory, so that the nave was filled with a dusty, golden light and the coloured glass windows shone like rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Hugh’s swan waddled up the aisle, and the monks came to greet him, beaming, flapping their arms. They told him of swarms of pilgrims who were coming from Ireland, to take cures from Brigid’s relics in Beckery. They prayed the wrath of the Normans would be sent to hell.
“But father, they are grieved at the loss of their lands.’
“Are they indeed. But you are from Ireland, I hear. Aren’t you brother Brendan? Now, bring your King to Arthur’s grave and don’t utter another word.”
“We don’t know where it is, the grave. They haven’t been dug up.”
“But they will. And they say it’s down there by the orchards.”
“It isn’t there. I’d know if it was. That’s by the kitchen garden. That’s the way to Avalon.”
“And you know, do you, where Avalon is?”
“I believe it would be up that way.”
“Look, just bring the King to the approximate spot, and tell him that’s where you think it is.”
Brother Brendan looked irritated. He resented the idea of his monks being brought to Hugh of Lincoln’s charter house. Not while these people marauded in his lands and while pilgrims came in droves to see Brigid’s relics nearby in Beckery, known as little Ireland. She’d left her necklace, her bag, her embroidery needles there. Pilgrims from Ireland kissed them, and miracles occurred. Brother Brendan did not relish giving his monks to the arrogant Frankman with his swan, which had even shat on the pews. He wiped the white excrement from the wooden pew with his sleeve, resentfully.
The Young King was taken by Brother Luke to see the relic of a piece of wood from the Last Supper table. These were kept in the Lady Chapel.
“Touch it, my lord.”
No sooner had the Young King touched it than Brother Luke pushed him on to view a piece of the pillar at which Christ had been scourged.
“But how do we know, Brother, that it is as they say?”
“It is because it is and a holy relic is not to be doubted. Joseph of Aramathea came here to the Isle of Avalon and founded the very first Christian Church. It cannot be otherwise, with a blessing as great as that.”
“I see. And what is this, Brother?”
They stood before a rag, kept in a wooden box.
“It is the very garment in which Herod caused Him to be clothed.’
Young Henry leaned down to touch it.
“That one, my prince, must not be touched. Here, here we have the very sponges from which Christ was given wine mixed with myth and vinegar mingled with gall to drink.’
“I see.”
“And pieces of His cross, and a stone from where it stood, and a part of the the hole in which it was fixed.”
And there was a thorn from the crown of thorns, and there were six fragments of the Holy Sepulchre. While a little crowd of monks that had now gathered around swooned and gasped, the Young King moved quietly to the Chapter House, where he took out the letter that his mother’s handmaid had so deftly thrust at him, quick as a sparrow. He would not forget her green eyes quickly, nor the flame he’d seen in her golden red hair. Opaque, with green eyes. Like a human owl, he thought. The note was from his mother.
Henry has sent for a legate to have us divorce from each other. But we both know he will lose Aquitaine if he does this. He is as rash as ever. I cannot be in captivity at Sarum. You must help me. At Southampton, Friar John will bring pigeons in cages from Sarum dovecote where The wine merchant Chevalier from La Rochelle will bring them to Poitiers. There, Marie will wait for them. She will send them home with news of her love courts, and all that I am banished from. I cannot bear it, my dear young Henry, to be apart from you all, locked up at Sarum where the wind howls and the rain pours and the ravens scream.
He stuffed it into his tunic, as his father came in, slamming the door behind him. He liked that his mother called him dear young Henry, and decided he must help her. Brother Luke found him in the Chapter House and pressed a piece of the Cross onto his forehead.
“Very well.” said the Young King, “Christ bled on that wood.”
“Oh he did my Lord Prince, for our sins.”
Henry marched over, and grabbed the wood and pressed it into his forehead so hard that it left a mark.
“Like that, Henry. That’s how you do it. You make it look as if it is a piece of driftwood.”
“I am not so desperate to purge myself of sin.”
“Well, you should be.”
“You need a mirror, father.”
“A mirror is not something I possess. But I believe your mother has a few from the East.”
Henry spun on his heels, giving his son a sharp nod to follow as he marched out the Abbey doors to Joseph of Arimathea’s Holy Thorn tree, where there was a group of monks waiting for him. Hugh was standing outside on the grass, looking sombre, holding his swan in his arms.
“This”, said Hugh, “is where Arthur is buried with his Guinevere.”
Young Henry stared at the indistinguishable grass around him, unmoved. King Henry stood on it as if he owned it.
“It might be. We don’t know yet.”
“Bledri the Welsh bard told me that Arthur and Guinevere lie sixteen feet beneath the earth in an oak casket.”
“I have heard that Guinevere’s hair is still intact, and that their bones are of a great size.” said Hugh.
“Across their oak casket lies a lead cross which has “here lies buried the renowned King Arthur with Guinevere, his second wife, in the isle of Avalon.” Written upon it. “
“How do you know that, father?” said the Young King.
“Have I not told you, Bledri. He came to my court. He was the keeper of the Castle of Abersafwy, a latemeri who negotiated with invaders. Like us! He was the best of Welshman. During the Welsh revolt we gave him the castle of Robert Courtemayn.”
“It is he that brought Y Seint Greal, that holy tale to our courts. They say he even met Merlin.”
“Was he was a seer?” said William the Marshal.
“He must have been.” said Henry. “I am instructing the monks to start to dig for their bones. We will find the great Arthur and Guinevere, and the pilgrims will come in hoards from across the land and waters.”
“Sounds very promising.” said Brother Luke, smiling obsequiously, rubbing his hands together.
“Not from Ireland, Your Highness.” said brother Brendan, who had just joined them.
“And why not?” said Henry
‘"They come for Brigid’s relics at Beckery for cures. They do not see Arthur as their King.”
“To the most holy place on the islands. The Irish are always looking for something.” Growled Henry.
“I would have said the Normans were, too.” said Brother Brendan with a scowl.
“Tread carefully, Brother.” said Hugh.
“We have our own Kings.” Brother Brendan puffed up his chest, and walked away into the Abbey, his eyes watering with rage. Hugh tutted. His swan jumped down from his arms onto the grave of Arthur and Guinevere. Henry and William Marshal spoke of recruiting Glastonbury knights for Joanna’s passage to Italy. Fitzstephen, who would escort Eleanor from Sarum to Winchester, had already collected scutage fees from them, in the form of many horses. Henry had decided to rebuild Glastonbury from the revenues, after he had paid for Joanna’s dowry.
There was a sudden sound of hooves on the road, and William gripped his sword. A man jumped down from his horse that had torn into the Monk’s cemetery where he tied the horse to a birch tree and walked hastily over to the party by Joseph’s thorn tree where he took off his helmet and bowed to the King. William the Marshal took in the length and gait of the man as he approachd them.
“Your Highness. I bring sad tidings.”
“Well, speak. Catch your breath.”
“I am sent by de Clifford Castle. Rosamund has passed away at Godstow nunnery from an unknown illness.”
Henry stared at the man, as if he must be mad. He stepped back, then turned around. It was like a blow to the chest. Whatever the Irish monk had said faded into the shadow of his loss. His eyes had welled up, they all saw it. Henry dropped his head, and paid the messenger a coin. He walked back into the Abbey, fell on his knees and wept. Hugh watched him from the aisle, and blessed him quietly , but also judged him for loving a young woman who was not his wife. The Young King took his chance to discuss upcoming tournaments with William and plotted his escape to Aquitaine.
The Tor towered from its hill in the distance, and the sound of the red and white springs at the Chalice Wells trickled quietly and steadily down the roads. Henry raged. As Guinevere betrayed Arthur, so Eleanor had betrayed him. She should be banished to the Abbey.
Les proz e les vassals
Souvent entre piez de chevals
Kar ja li coard nI chasront
'The Brave and the valiant
Are always to be found between the hooves of horses
For never will cowards fall down there.’
–Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal
© Siofra O’Donovan, 2023
There are far more mysteries to Glastonbury than this. There is the secret of the Holy Grail, and the great mystery of Mary Magdalene. All of this is for another blog…
I really enjoyed reading, I visit Glastonbury couple of times a month your podcast will add more to the visits
Thank you
Loved this! I always hated the commercialism of the Glastonbury Festival and often wondered why the land owner would allow such horrors on his land! However, the 'real' Glastonbury really comes to life in your writings and inspires me to read more. I read recently that Jesus would accompany Joseph of Arimathea on his trips to the UK, often learning from the Druids whilst in Glastonbury. This timeline in history is so intriguing with so many peoples and their beliefs and cultures vying for power. I am looking forward to reading about Mary Magdalene too.