The GLASTONBURY EXPERIENCE

(© Argante – Arc’Hant Afallon Alarch)
 

In summertime when the day breaks early, if you live in Glastonbury you sometimes get the feeling that something tangible floats in the air looking for a place to land on. It is perhaps the enchantment, the magic of those places dancing along the deserted town streets, on the bright green fields, up the hills and around the wells…still trying to show itself. Sometimes it takes on the terrifying aspect of Rejection…and becomes Glastonbury Experience.

The GLASTONBURY EXPERIENCE is exactly the sharp rejection, the sense of deception, of absolute emptiness that overcomes you when you get near the Tor. A wall. A wall made of what you least wish for, a wall made of your worst inner fears. You sense you are being rejected, refused, you feel you cannot see beyond, you are really not capable, it is all a dream, an illusion, and even though it were different, you are not worthy of it. A wall which, if you pass it through, unveils the Avalon you are looking for. It’s almost like writing the pages of a cheap fantasy novel….. yet what you experience, what awakens in the Wayfarer is something physical, tangible. And it only happens to those who go there with the aim to carry on on the Wayfarer Path. Not on the Wiccan Path, on the witch’s, the Buddhist or the Christian Path. No. The GLASTONBURY EXPERIENCE catches at the throat of those who walk along the Path of the Lady of Avalon, of the Lady in that guise. For every Path has its trials, specific, distinctive, trials which personify the essence of that peculiar Path.

Not knowing how to pierce the mists, not being able to gain access to the Isle, not seeing the enchantment behind reality and getting discarded, is the concern of he or she who walks the Path of Avalon.

In different ways it is the concern of every traveler, bur the GLASTONBURY EXPERIENCE  belongs to she who walks the wave …of the Mists.  This experience is something tangible which a lot of people have gone through and go through again each time they get there. We find that wall again, find the rejection again and often, thanks to the Goddess, find  the strength to go beyond and see what really hides behind every corner on this Path. The mists are the materialization of our own inner loss. The GLASTONBURY EXPERIENCE is something similar. In those places emotions change rapidly, it’s like being skinless, we realize that the masks we wear every day, the appearances and the barriers behind which we hide and feel safe, fall down, relentlessly fall down…

Those who were lucky enough to go through such an experience cannot deny it represents one of the Great First Initiation of  he and she who walks the Paths of the Isle of Avalon. You are reborn to a new awareness, through fear and concern. You find yourself a lost child searching for the Island …that exists. You find yourself a wayfarer who has lost her way and then found it again.

A further leap up in the Search.

Glastonbury is a place where many ways, many lives, many worlds meet up. One can get there with a precise aim, following one’s own Search, or be attracted with no apparent reason. But generally speaking, whoever spends a few hours on the meadows and up the hills in Somerset  during the mild windy days of June, or in the dark and cold months of autumn, cannot help being subdued by the atmosphere. I do not know what it is. But it is there. You feel it on your skin. And it changes you. It looks like time skips by in a different way, slow and eternal as the bubbling of the icy waters of the Chalice Well.  The silence and the wind on the Hill are deafening, the Sight opens over the immensity of the horizon and you happen to feel so lonely with yourself, with your fears, with the wounds you carry inside yourself.

Sometimes the GLASTONBURY EXPERIENCE  starts days ahead of the journey, especially for those who go to Avalon with a purpose. And then it happens we dream of lands never seen but deeply familiar, that maybe we won’t be able to find in present day Glastonbury but which call to us from the abyss of time. Many occurrences may happen that will discourage us, many unforeseen circumstances, maybe we will feel like we would give up the trip. Some feel physically sick, or feel vaguely uneasy. But when at last we reach the top of the Tor, and our mind opens on boundless blue skies or our senses get lost in the embrace of the fog, when we savour the peace of the Chalice Well Gardens and kneel down to listen to the wellspring’s timeless tales, then we know, in our blood and bones, that Avalon lives behind our doubts and uncertainties, behind the fears and trifles of everyday living.

Traduzione a cura di Abigail_derwen