RE: A Walk Around Glastonbury Abbey

[litguru]

If King Arthur and his wife are buried here, then in all likelihood Merlin also visited the abbey to pay his respect or whisk them off to Avalon. 😄

Comments

[riverflows]

Yep, something like that - except isn't that Gandalf?

And Glastonbury IS meant to be Avalon...

Have you ever read TH White's The Once and Future King? It's a beautiful book and I've always adored it.

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

[litguru]

I was hoping you wouldn't notice it was Gandalf, I couldn't find a nice one of Merlin :D

I thought Avalon was supposed to be a mythical realm of sorts and didn't have a specific place, but you're right!

I haven't read White's book. That's a great passage. I'm glad you got to experience some of the mythic places of the legends. 👑

[riverflows]

It's a gorgeous, gorgeous book - you must read it.

It's all about how they started to interwine the myth of Arthur and Avalon etc with place - Glastonbury just one of the places.

But let me show you this photo - it's an artist photo so I'll just give you the link

https://colin-rayner.pixels.com/featured/glastonbury-tor-above-the-fog-colin-rayner.html

No wonder people imagine the tor as avalon - the somerset levels are pretty flat and marshy and very wet in the winter. It's easy to imagine it as Avalon.

But then, the church were just doing their propaganda thang to bring in the gold and prove how amazing the place was. Joseph of Arimathea apparently threw his staff in the ground and lo - a thorn tree grew. Of course it's bollocks. But hey, it got some funding for the monastry and the patronage of pilgrims flocking to see it.

[litguru]

What a crazy place with all the intrigue of an Arthurian legend.

It's easy to imagine it as Avalon.

That is how I would imagine it, and I could see how story tellers would be inspired by it, especially in the olden days before mass media.