<BODY>
<H1><A HREF="gpt-02-glaston.html">Glastonbury</A></H1>
<P><I>Glastonbury, in the county of Somerset in South Western England, has been a place of sanctity
and pilgrimage for at least several thousand years.</I></P>
<P>Glastonbury Tor ('the Tor') with its single tower, dominates the area, sticking up well above
the flat Somerset Levels, which are at, or a bit below, sea level.</P>
<P>It is not clear when the Glastonbury area was first occupied. The Sweet Track (dated exactly to 3806 BCE) is
the oldest marsh walkway known. It's not far from Meare, a former island NW of Glastonbury. The
first people we know occupied <I>Ynys Witrin</I>, or the Isle of Glass or 'seeing', were the Celtic Druids. But Glastonbury Tor is prominent to the extent that, when people first occupied the area at least 12,000 years ago, they will have come here.</P>
<P>It is said that Glastonbury (at that time a small cluster of islands rising above the submerged
Somerset Levels) was the location of one of three Druidic perpetual choirs. The other two were
said to be on the islands of Anglesey (north west Wales, where the Druids made their last stand
against the Romans), and Iona (further north, off Mull on the west coast of Scotland, where St Columba
brought Catholicism to Scotland, though Celtic Christianity had existed for some centuries beforehand). These eternal choirs made music twenty-four hours a day, three
hundred and sixty five days a year. They literally enchanted the land.</P>
<P>According to tradition, in 37 AD, Joseph of Arimathaea, an Essene who provided Christ with his
tomb and protected him during his mission, came here after the crucifixion as a refugee. He set
foot onto <I>Ynys Witrin </I>on Wearyall Hill, where he planted his Jerusalem Thorn staff and
rested his feet from the long journey. The staff took root, and it is said that a scion of that
tree still grows on Wearyall Hill to this day.</P>
<P>Joseph and his twelve acolytes founded and built the world's first purpose-built Christian church
here – on the site of the oldest part of the Abbey at the western end. Hence that the Orthodox church recognises Glastonbury as 'primary in the West'. Rome doesn't agree.</P>
</BODY>
<!-- Start eXTReMe Non Public Tracker Code
Login: avalon23
Help: http://www.extremetracking.com/
Installation instructions:
At two occasions in the code below you need to change "REPLACE"
to a Page ID for the page you add this code to. The Page ID can
only be lower case characters, may only contain numeric (0-9) and
alphabetic (a-z) and has to be between 2 minimum and 8 characters
maximum. No underscores, no spaces, no special characters! -->
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript1.2"><!--
EXs=screen;EXw=EXs.width;navigator.appName!="Netscape"?
EXb=EXs.colorDepth:EXb=EXs.pixelDepth;//-->
</script><script type="text/javascript"><!--
navigator.javaEnabled()==1?EXjv="y":EXjv="n";
EXd=document;EXw?"":EXw="na";EXb?"":EXb="na";
EXd.write("<img src=http://nht-2.extreme-dm.com",
"/n2.g?login=avalon23&pid=gptglasta&auto=y&",
"jv="+EXjv+"&j=y&srw="+EXw+"&srb="+EXb+"&",
"l="+escape(EXd.referrer)+" height=1 width=1>");//-->
</script><noscript><img height="1" width="1" alt=""
src="http://nht-2.extreme-dm.com/n2.g?login=avalon23&pid=gptglasta&j=n&jv=n&auto=y"/>
</noscript>
<!-- End eXTReMe Non Public Tracker Code -->