Glastonbury Pilgrims' Trail | Chalice Well

<BODY> <H1><A HREF="gpt-04-chaly.html">Chalice Well</A></H1> <P>Here you will find a place of beauty, peace, and healing. Spiritual pilgrims of all kinds have come to this special place from time immemorial. The waters of this holy well are known for its healing effect and for its connection with the Earth Mother, by dint of its red waters (signifying menstrual blood). </P> <P>This is a visual visit up through the garden to the Chalice Well, known locally as the Red Spring or the Blood Spring. There are so many special places to visit in this garden. Here are some of the high points along the way. Welcome again to the garden and the Chalice Well! May you find what you seek here.</P> <P>The wellhead is at the top of the garden. The first spot you reach when you enter at the bottom of the garden is this <I>vesica pisces</I> shaped pool that has Chalice Well water flowing in to it through a series of flow forms. The <I>vesica pisces</I> is a sacred geometrical symbol in which the circumference of one circle goes through the centre of another identical circle. The bit in the middle is the <I>vesica</I>. Geometrically, this is the basis for establishing the sacred proportions of the Golden Mean.</P> <H3>Vesica Pisces</H3> <P>The <I>Vesica Pisces</I> is the sacred geometrical figure of the last two thousand years. Extend one end of the <I>Vesica</I> and you get a fish  the symbol in Roman times that you were a Christian. The top half of the <I>Vesica</I> made the Gothic arch used in medieval church-building. It is a symbol that comes up again and again in these gardens.</P> <BR> <P>The <I>Vesica</I> is not only sacred to Christians. It is an important symbol for many spiritual paths. Many ancient stone circles in Britain were laid out using a similar mathematical principle.</P> <H3>The Vesica Yew</H3> <P>Just up the hill from the Vesica Pool, on the right next to a door in the wall, is an old yew tree that has grown apart at the base and then grown together again about six feet higher up. This vulvic shape is sacred to the Goddess, and many visitors see these waters as her blood spring.</P> <H3><B><I>King Arthur's Courtyard</H3> <P>The next area of the garden is called King Arthur's courtyard. It has long been a place of healing. The bathing pool is nowadays a shallow one, but in the nineteenth century it was much deeper, allowing for total immersion in the waters. The courtyard is now a fine place of quiet contemplation, with the sound of the falling water creating a soothing background. If you want to sense fairies, this is the place  but you must quieten yourself down and go within to do so.</P> <H3>The Lion's Head under Glastonbury Tor</H3> <P>The Chalice Well is nestled at the base of the Glastonbury Tor. You can see the tower of the Tor through the trees from the Well. Higher up the gardens from King Arthur's Court is the Lion's Head, where pilgrims are welcome to drink of these waters. It is always a place of special prayers and personal ceremony. When you drink this water it soaks right through you, washing out parts of you that other waters do not.</P> <P>The tree above and to the left of the Lion's Head is a holy thorn, scion of the Holy Thorn Tree (<I>Crateagus Monogyna Praecox</I>) that Joseph of Arimathaea brought from the Holy Land. Tradition has it that, when he arrived in Glastonbury and stood on Wearyall Hill, his staff sprouted branches and leaves, causing him to decide to stay here. The Holy Thorn is what remains of his staff, 1,900 years later! This species normally lives in Lebanon.</P> <P>It is a rather special thorn because it flowers around the time of the former Christmas festival in early January. It also sprouts berries and flowers at the same time. There are several Holy Thorns around Glastonbury, the best known being on Wearyall Hill and in the Abbey, close to the site of the first church he and his acolytes built.</P> <P>Holy Thorn with both Blossoms and Berries</P> <P>It is as if both birth and death, flower and fruit, can happen at the same moment. Birth lies within death  transformation. This garden is a place of transformation, one of Glastonbury's main energy-centres. When you come here, you leave changed.</P> <P>Just a short stroll above the Lion's Head is the goal of our pilgrimage, the Chalice Well itself.</P> <P>The <I>vesica pisces</I> on the lid of Chalice Well was designed by the excavator of Glastonbury Abbey, Frederick Bligh Bond, resident archaeologist of Glastonbury Abbey in the early 1900s. It was given to the Chalice Well as a thanks-offering for Peace in 1919, at the end of World War One, by friends and lovers of the Well and of Glastonbury. It was an ideal symbol for Universal Peace, representing every type of thought, Eastern and Western among them. It also symbolises the interlocking of the male and the female, the light and the dark  a favourite Glastonbury theme. The Chalice Well Trust carries on this philosophy today, and the gardens are open to individuals of <I>all</I> spiritual paths. The <I>vesica pisces</I> clearly symbolises this.</P> <P>The waters of the Chalice Well have never been known to fail. It was the only source that kept on working consistently through the drought of 1921-22 and recent droughts in the early 1990s. Under Bligh Bond's lid, 25,000 gallons of water gush upwards to the surface of the Earth every day, filling several human-built room-sized subterranean chambers.</P> <P>For millennia, both Christians and Pagans (as well as followers of many other spiritual paths from other lands) have come to this holy place to seek healing, new visions and renewal. Come visit the garden yourself, taste the water, and take time to be in the silence and enjoy the beauty. </P> </BODY>  <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript1.2"> </script><script type="text/javascript"> </script><noscript><img height="1" width="1" alt="" src="http://nht-2.extreme-dm.com/n2.g?login=avalon23&pid=gptchaly&j=n&jv=n&auto=y"/> </noscript>