Avalonian Mystery Traditions

The Angel of Glastonbury

by Palden Jenkins

Mystical-magical people in Glastonbury, each in their own way, recognise an energy, an overriding presence – thought of by some as the 'Angel' or 'Goddess' of Glastonbury. Visiting the town has a strangely stimulating and changeful effect on the human spirit. The isle is like a repository of archetypal imagery, an evolving akashic tapestry, a centre of intensity, operating in its own reality-bubble.

Visitors find their emergent truths mirrored in their experiences, and they are surreptitiously drawn into an elastic, dimensional and paradoxical reality which is deeply educational and life-enhancing. Glastonbury has a very specific flavour – in my experience, the only places with a similar energy-flavour are the island of Iona in Scotland and Jerusalem in the Holy Land.

It is a place of transformation, a place for making deep decisions, for experiencing truth and illusion, for crossing thresholds and for seeing things afresh. Some people studiously avoid the place, or they get mysteriously repelled, while others get irresistibly sucked in, whether by choice or 'by chance'. Normality as most people know it doesn't operate here. Glastonbury's place-energy obliges us to yield to the experience of swimming in a much larger, more mysterious reality.

Subtle energy-dynamics are magnified and amplified here, as if the veils between reality-levels are unusually permeable – especially at 'high times'. That's what has drawn many people here over the centuries – there's a certain intensity which, when it 'peaks' and thrums, is very special. It's a light-and-dark, heaven-and-hell kind of place, where the best and the worst can come into view. It has a fluxing energy too, encouraging change, awareness and inner elasticity.

Some locals refer to 'the Angel of Glastonbury', because there is something individualistic and intelligent about the above-mentioned forces and characteristics of the place. Different people respond differently to it and put different conributions into it - after all, Glastonbury is not a place just for getting and receiving, but also for giving and contributing. Another characteristic of the Angel is that it seems to conceal itself - it influences us through the backdoor of our lives.