The Chalice Well

Here you will find a place of beauty, peace, and healing. Pilgrims of all kinds have come to this special place from time immemorial. The waters of this holy well are known for their healing effect and for its connection with the Earth Mother, by dint of its red waters (signifying menstrual blood).

There are many special places to visit in this garden. The wellhead is at the top of the garden. The first spot you reach when you enter at the bottom of the garden is the vesica pisces shaped pool water water flowing into it through a series of flow forms.

Vesica Pisces

The vesica pisces is a sacred geometrical symbol in which the circumference of one circle passes through the centre of another identical circle. The bit in the middle is the vesica. Geometrically, this is the basis for establishing the sacred proportions of the Golden Mean. Extend one end of the vesica and you get a fish – the symbol in Roman times that you were a Christian.

The top half of the vesica made the Gothic arch used in medieval church-building. Many ancient stone circles in Britain were laid out using a the same mathematical principle.

The Vesica Yew

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.

King Arthur's Courtyard

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 shallow, but in the nineteenth century it was deeper, allowing for total immersion. The courtyard is now a fine place of quiet contemplation, with the sound of falling water creating a soothing background. If you want to sense fairies, this is the place – but you must quieten yourself and go within to do so.

The Lion's Head

The Chalice Well nestles at the base of Glastonbury Tor. You can see the tower of the Tor through the trees from the Well. Higher up from King Arthur's Court is the Lion's Head, where you 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.

The Holy Thorn

The tree above the Lion's Head is a scion of the Holy Thorn tree (Crateagus Monogyna Praecox) that Joseph of Arimathæa brought from the Holy Land. The Holy Thorn is what remains of his staff, 1,900 years later! This species normally lives in Lebanon.

The Holy Thorn flowers around the time of the former Christmas festival in early January. It sprouts berries and flowers at the same time. It is as if both birth and death, flower and fruit, can happen at the same moment. Birth lies within death – transformation. There are several Holy Thorns around Glastonbury, the best-known being on Wearyall Hill and in the Abbey.

Just a short stroll above the Lion's Head is the goal of our pilgrimage, the Chalice Well itself.

The Well Head

The vesica pisces on the lid of Chalice Well was designed by the excavator of Glastonbury Abbey, Frederick Bligh Bond, resident archaeologist of Glastonbury Abbey around 1910. It was given to the Chalice Well as a thanks-offering for peace in 1919, at the end of World War One, by friends of the Well and of Glastonbury. It symbolises the interlocking of the male and female, the light and dark – a favourite Glastonbury theme. The Chalice Well Trust carries on this philosophy today, and the gardens are open to individuals of all spiritual paths.

The waters

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 every day, filling several man-made, room-sized subterranean chambers.

For millennia, both Christians, pagans and followers of many other spiritual paths from many lands have come to this holy place to seek healing, new vision and renewal. Come visit the garden yourself, taste the water and take time to be in the silence and enjoy the beauty.

Click here to visit the Chalice Well website

This is but one of the sacred places on the Isle of Glass where you can truly experience the spirit of Glastonbury. Another is at Bride's Mound...