Dion Fortune - Glastonbury: Avalon of the Heart

Books by Dion Fortune

Occult Study

Machinery of the Mind

The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage

Psychology of the Servant Problem

The Soya Bean

Esoteric Orders and their Work

The Problem of Purity

Sane Occultism

Training and Work of an Initiate

Mystical Meditations on the Collects

Spiritualism in the Light of Occult Science

Through the Gates of Death

Psychic Self-Defense

GlastonburyAvalon of the Heart

The Mystical Qabalah

Practical Occultism in Daily Life

The Cosmic Doctrine

Applied Magic

Aspects of Occultism

The Magical Battle Britain

Occult Fiction

The Demon Lover

The Secrets of Dr Taverner

Goat-Foot God

The Winged Bull

The Sea Priestess

Moon Magic

First published in 2000 by

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Copyright 1995, 2000 Society of Inner Light, London

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser. Reviewers may quote brief passages. Material quoted in this book may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright owner. First published in 1930. Revised edition first published in 1995 by SIL Trading Ltd., London.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fortune, Dion.

[Glastonbury]

GlastonburyAvalon of the heart / Dion Fortune

p. cm.

Originally published : Glastonbury / Dion Fortune. Welling-borough : Antiquarian, 1986.

ISBN 1-57863-157-2 (pbk : alk. paper)

1. Glastonbury (England)Antiquities. 2. Christian antiquitiesEnglandGlastonbury. 3. OccultismEnglandGlastonbury. 4. Avalon (Legendary place). 5. Glastonbury Abbey. I. Title.

DA690.G45 F67 2000

936.2'38dc21 99-055714

08 07 06 05 04 03

14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

Printed in the United States of America / BJ

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

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There are many different roads leading to our English Jerusalem, the holiest erthe in Englande. We can approach it by the high-road of history, which leads through a rich country, for there is hardly a phase in the spiritual story of the race in which Glastonbury has played no part. Its influence twines like a golden thread through the story of our islands. Wherever mystical forces make themselves felt in our national life, the voice of Glastonbury is heard; never dominating, but always influencing.

Or we can come to Glastonbury by the upland path of legend. In and out twine the ancient folk-stories, full of deep spiritual significance to those whose hearts are tuned to their key. Arthur and his knights come and go. The Graal shines in the night sky above the Tor. The saints live their quaintly beautiful lives amid its meadows. The poetry of the soul writes itself at Glastonbury.

And there is a third way to Glastonbury, one of the secret Green Roads of the soul - the Mystic Way that leads through the Hidden Door into a land known only to the eye of vision. This is Avalon of the Heart to those who love her.

The Mystic Avalon lives her hidden life, invisible save to those who have the key of the gates of vision. The quiet West Country world goes its way. Seed-time and harvest fail not, nor her inexhaustible wells. The pink foam of spring washes over her apple-orchards in its flood; the silver mists of autumn turn her water-meadows once again to a Lake of Wonder. Legend and history and the vision of the heart blend in the building of the Mystical Avalon.

It is to this Avalon of the heart the pilgrims still go. Some in bands, knowing what they seek. Some alone, with the staff of vision in their hands, awaiting what may come to meet them on this holy ground. None go away as they came. Here the veil that hides the Unseen is thin. Here the invisible tides flow strongly; here indeed rests the foot of Jacob's Ladder whereby the souls of men may come and go between the inner and outer planes.

Glastonbury is a gateway to the Unseen. It has been a holy place and pilgrim-way from time immemorial, and to this day it sends its ancient call into the heart of the race it guards, and still we answer to the inner voice.

She is all beauty, our English Jerusalem. The paths that lead to her are ways of loveliness and pilgrimages of the soul. The long road from London spans the breadth of England and leads from one world to another. The narrow and difficult streets of the city give place to the Great West Road-a name magical in its very syllables, and magical too in its great undulating breadth for those who have eyes to see. It turns off from the heavy traffic of Chiswick, lifts to a bridge, and London is left behind. Wide sky stretches over its sunlit, wind-swept spaces, and so broad is it that cloud-shadows skim its surface and it has a horizon of its own. The traffic is swift-moving and silent. We are in another world-a new world, the world that is just dawning over the eastern hills of civilization.

The road leads for a time through the flat valley-bottom of the Thames. Elms are its trees, and the country is unlovely with the marshalled utility of market-gardens, sad because they are falling on decay, for the tide of houses is sweeping over them, and no one cares to tend the worn-out trees when next year's crop may never be gathered.

Soon, however, the country changes; the clay of the valley-bottom gives place to the sand of the Hampshire barrens; birch and fir replace the sordid elms, and we are in a wild and wide land, beautiful as only barren places are beautiful. Heather and gorse climb the rolling slopes and the road runs like a ribbon between them. Here were no ancient rights to make tortuous the public way. No one cared for the sandy barrens so they were left in their beauty and freedom. The memories of the land are haunted by highway-men and heavy coaches. The traffic of the south-west went this way. The Great Bath Road lies to the north, and serves another people.

The barrens give way to oaks and rich farming land again, and the first of the Westland signs is seen-a wall, topped with a miniature roof of thatch, or of pantiles blotched with lichen. Hereabouts they build great walls of rammed mud, which stand well so long as the wet can be kept from them; hence the quaint little roofs with their projecting eaves winding along beside the road.

Soon we come to the dividing of the ways. One road keeps its course through the rich lowlands, and the other climbs the heights towards the uplands of England's greatest plain. If we are going to Glastonbury we choose the upland way, and presently the fields give place to the wide, bare turf of the chalk, and dark, sinister bunches of juniper tell us that we are on the Plain.

Take two twigs of the juniper tree.

Cross them. Cross them. Cross them.

Look in the coals of the fire of Azrael!

says the old rune. The dark influences of the juniper overflow the road as the scattered clumps thicken on the slopes. It is indeed the tree of the Dark Angel and the Old Gods.

On this road there still rests the shadow of the Old Gods and the ir terror. Nature seems so near, and man so much in her power. Primitive man had his townships here; none other has ever dared to meet Nature face to face in this, her place of power. Sheep graze its turf, but no man disturbs its subsoil.