The Glastonbury Experience

[poliphilo]

St John's churchyard is the only green space In the centre of Glastonbury where you don't have to pay to go in. It's where the winos hang out. Glastonbury's winos are different from winos in other towns. They are counter-cultural winos. They're as loud as winos everywhere, only they dress as goths, hippies, fools for God.

There are a lot of social casualties in Glastonbury. Some came hoping to be healed. Others were broken by the town itself. Glastonbury is like Lourdes- a place that holds out promises it can hardly keep. There are all sorts of spiritualties on offer and any number of hucksters offering salvation for cash. The woman who hangs around the market place selling lucky white heather is a type of them all. Why not buy some lucky white heather? It's cheaper than most of the stuff in the high street shops. Mind you, scrumpy is cheap too- and packs the whallop of instant karma.

We drank scrumpy in the George and Pilgrims. It's cloudy and tastes deliciously of apples- and this particular brew went under the name of Hex. It puts a spell on you- the spell of apples- in Avalon the apple island.

Our friend Kath moved to Glastonbury about twenty years ago. She lived the dream- working for some women's spirituality outfit until it wore her down. Bad people come to Glastonbury, she says. Wherever there's need there'll be predators. She told us about the Native American shaman- a star of the woo-woo circuit- who comes over from the States every so often to gather himself a temporary harem of the needy and trusting. One time he raped a friend of Kath's and left her with herpes.

There's a labyrinth laid out in the grass of St. John's churchyard. You walk round and round and round until you come to a centre that isn't really a centre and then you keep on going until you come out again at the beginning. This is either a parable of the spiritual journey or an exercise in pure futility. But why not both.?

There used to be a building in Glastonbury that held everything together. Then Henry the VIII smacked it one with the ginormous hammer of the reformation and the fragments flew and spun. They are still flying and spinning. Glastonbury Abbey was a machine for generating myth. Whenever the Abbey was short of cash the monks would think up a new wonder to draw in the pilgrims. So they claimed an association with Joseph of Arimathea, St Bride, St Patrick, King Arthur. You wanted the Glastonbury experience? It was all here under one roof.  The monks were God's men and also hucksters. Walk round the abbey ruins and you can still feel the holiness. But it'll cost you £4.50 to get in.

The Tor is for free. I love the Tor. The wind blows free and the air is full of sparkles (copyright: Dion Fortune).  There was a wino up there  with his back to St. Michael's tower-  an old hippy, but younger than me I think, with iron grey hair and his bottle in the crook of his arm- gazing out over the landscape of dreams.

A landscape where, incidentally, Monmouth's army of west country labourers armed with pichtforks and scythes met King James's regulars in what came to be known as the Battle of Sedgemoor- and the slaughter was tremendous and one-sided and afterwards King James sent his man Jeffries,- hanging Judge Jeffries- down to conduct the bloody assizes- and every village was decorated with the danging, pitch-coated bodies of the rebels.

On our final evening- at kath's recommendation-  we went to the Rifleman's. The name say it all. It's a hoarse, masculine, cop a load of the tits on that sort of a place- the very antithesis of the Goddess centre we'd visited on the first day- where everything  is all floaty, chiffony, flower fairy woo-woo- a vision of the feminine that leaves out the hard labour. It didn't feel safe- The Rifleman's I mean. The Goddess centre, by contrast, felt all too safe. The sort of people who drink at the Rifleman's are the sort of people Judge Jeffries hung and coated in pitch. One of them roared out this joke you could hear from one end of the bar to the other. If you don't like filth look away now.

There were four men in a prison cell- an animal shagger, a sadist, a necrophiliac and a gay.

The animal shagger says, "If we had a cat in here I'd fuck it till it passed out

The sadist says. "Then I'd fuck it till it was dead.

The necrophiliac says, "Then I'd fuck it till I passed out.

And the gay man says, "Miaou!"

The Rifleman's sits in the very shadow of the Tor. You pass it on your way up. Or your way down. Whichever.

Comments

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Great post. I love the way you bring the history in. Great writing style.

Just as an aside, I'm interested to see you use the term "woo-woo". You're the first non-militant-atheist I've heard using the term.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I like the word woo-woo. It's expressive. I guess I use it affectionately.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I've sometimes found the baggage it carries difficult. While I believe there are a lot of chancers who take advantage of the sixth sense / ESP / whatever, I also know that it can be tremendously difficult to explain a sensory ability to people who haven't got it. I am uneasy at the contempt of some atheists who aren't biochemically disposed to psychic intuition.

I am not psychic myself, but in my case it is like perfect pitch. There are some people who even claim it doesn't exist, or come up with nonsense like "I don't have perfect pitch, but I always know what a B flat sounds like", which would imply you would also know what concert pitch A sounds like too!

And there's no damn way you can explain to anyone else how you know what A or C or F sound like. They sound like A or C or F and that's always how they sound. It's like trying to explain blue to someone who is blind since birth.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Having been a priest (of various kinds) I know how one has to use flummery to get people's attention. One dresses up, one speaks in a special kind of voice, one razzle-dazzles the audience.

I believe in the world of spirit. In fact I have no doubt it exists. But I think "woo woo" is a pretty good word for what those of us who act as intermediaries for spirit get up to. I doubt if there was ever a priest or a shaman or a guru- no matter how sincere or gifted- who wasn't also a bit of a charlatan.

And I also doubt whether there was ever a charlatan who didn't somewhere nurture a kernel of true experience.

Little something Thomas Hardy dashed off...

[jorrocks-j.livejournal.com]

"And now to God the Father", he ends,
And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:
Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,
And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.
Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door,
And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.

The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,
And a pupil of his in the Bible class,
Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,
Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile
And re-enact at the vestry-glass
Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show
That had moved the congregation so.

But I always thought Hardy was being a little smug. Moving an audience emotionally requires a very precise and knowing performance. Rehearsal is required, and satisfaction in a job well done does not make you a hypocrite.

--Skarl the Drummer

Re: Little something Thomas Hardy dashed off...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Been there, done that...

You're right, of course. Gandhi was a showman, Martin Luther King was a showman, Churchill was a showman. It doesn't detract from their achievements to acknowledge that.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Like ideealisme, I liked this post a lot, probably because the woo-woo folk give me a stomach ache. Or because I'm a lapsed hippie. I've heard woo-woo used to describe any of the more colorful believers in non-mainstream stuff.

Aren't there some folks who claim perfect pitch can be learned? I myself have pretty darned good relative pitch. Give me one note and I can sing just about any other note, but it's all one to me whether it's a 400 A or a 432 A.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'm a bit of a lapsed hippie myself. Or more like a fellow traveller. I liked what I understood the hippies to be about, but I never met a full blown hippie who didn't strike me as extremely silly.

I've no idea about perfect pitch. I'm the kid who was told to stand at the back of the choir and mime.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Lots of blind people over on the perfect pitch community in livejournal suggests the answer is yes. I suspect it has to be learned early on to really sink in. I don't actually know whether or not non-blind people can learn it, or people who go blind later in life.

I remember learning the note Middle C on the piano, I played the note again and again and it had a round, brown sound. Think I would have been about 8 or 9.

[oakmouse]

Synaesthesia is a trip, isn't it? I have it too, but not for sounds; in my case emotions have colors and textures. The Shetland fiddler and composer Tom Anderson had synaesthesia. He used to say that the key of F was silver, hence he wrote several tunes about silver water in the key of F.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

well I don't really have much of it - it's more a fleeting thing, hard to explain!

F as silver...ooo, that's odd!

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

No! It makes perfect sense. Ask any [French] horn player.

[oakmouse]

You know, you're right. And E flat is just the feeling for brass, which may be why the E-flat trumpet is my favorite brass instrument. Handel FTW! *g*

[oakmouse]

*nods* Mine can be very fleeting too. It's a weird thing.

F as silver makes sense to me because --- eh --- hard to verbalize, but it works as the color for the feeling of seawater, if you see what I mean. And seawater in the north so often does look silver, not blue at all.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Ooops, meant to say 442A, not 400A.

[oakmouse]

Perfect description of Glastonbury, warts and all. When the DH and I were there we found it to be jam-full of false spirituality and con artists cheek by jowl with sincerely spiritual people and wise folk. The contrast between the High street shops and the Chalice Well gardens, for instance, was quite instructive.

In addition to the Tor, we loved Wearyall Hill. It's hard to find the footpath that leads past the site of the original sacred thorn, because people who live in neighboring houses tend to park in front of the stile (can't blame them, really), but it's worth the hunt once one gets onto the ridge of the hill. Then on past the hill is Pomparles, a small Victorian remnant of the Pons Perilis. I tried to get himself to do his Monty Python imitation for the occasion, but there were workmen on the road and he was too embarrassed. *g*

We also got pixie-led when trying to find Gog and Magog; it was exhausting but in retrospect rather hilarious. They led us all the way round the foot of the Tor and dumped us at a bus stop just as the bus for the High Street arrived.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There are still many aspects of Glastonbury I haven't explored. I've never been up Wearyall hill for example. And on this trip to the top of the Tor Alice found us a path I never knew existed. I've been reading about Brides Hill at Beckery- supposedly the site of a women's college in the "Dark Ages"- and one of these days I'll go looking for it, but this visit was only for two days and we ran out of time.

[oakmouse]

*nods* There's a lot to the town that flies under the usual touristy radar. We were there for 8 days and ran out of time!

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I wasn't sure what to make of Glastonbury...

Too much faux paganism for my liking. I'm not quite sure how I'd know a real pagan, but I think they're kind of normal human beings, rather than being sandal-toting be-robed folk, who try to hard.

My pagan connection with Somerset took place at the Peat Moors Centre. That's where I felt the thread that instantly connected me with the past. Shame it's now closed.

Hope the Lake Village museum in Glastonbury itself is okay - the museum attendant told me their funding was in doubt when we visited in September. If you hear any news, please tell me!!!

It's the perry that had me hooked. Yum!!!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If Paganism wants to be taken seriously as a serious modern religion it needs to be comfortable with modern dress. Are the gods and goddesses stuck in the dark ages? Because if they are, they're not much use to us, are they?

I've never been to the Lake Village museum, I'm afraid. It's something I need to rectify.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

It's a pleasantly old fashioned museum. That's probably why it's in line for the proverbial chop. It's located in a little Tudor building right in the middle of Glastonbury - I could even post a picture of it some day... The top floor's dedicated to the Lake Village excavations.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I must have walked by many times without noticing it. On my next visit I'll keep my eyes open.

"It had all orchards in the rain..."

[jorrocks-j.livejournal.com]

"...to ease our old and modern pain.
But light she was and light for me
And who slept with Eternity?
Eternity is scarcely found
Until we're underneath the ground
Where thudding hooves will seldom sound.
Perhaps they will,
I do not know;
Let's play to win and place and show."

--Ernest Hemingway, "Across the Board," Paris, 1949

Re: "It had all orchards in the rain..."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Entirely true. Our present business is with time, not eternity...

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

A fine essay, sir.

Many thanks.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you

[shullie.livejournal.com]

*laughs*- your descriptions of Glastonbury are spot on. I have quiet a few friends who 'live' there - and they are a very mixed bag. I love going down to visit, though we have decided next time to stay just outside ( much cheaper). Indeed some friends who work in Glastonbury ( some people do) advised us if we ever thought of living down there NOT to actually live or say we lived in Glastonbury as when we went for a job, we would be very unlikely to get it as - well people from Glastonbury are not known for the 'punctuality'. Glastonbury and it inhabitants live in it's own time zone!

I find the place fascinating and the people who populate it even more - I like to people watch...though there have been times when I have been that it has had a very negative feeling- very strange.

Of course I don't 'look' like a Pagan - *laughs*

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Our friend Kath, who lives in Street, says that housing there is more expensive than housing in Glastonbury. This surprised me at first, but then Ailz pointed out that only "a certain type of person" would ever want to live in Glastonbury.

Apparently (again according to Kath) the very cheapest place to live round there is Shepton Malett. That's a town I've never visited, so I don't know why.