Joanna Bogle on Glastonbury Tor

Auntie Joanna writes:

Glastonbury Tor is glorious on a breezy summer's day, with bright sunshine after rain, and huge blue skies, and the Somerset levels stretching out beneath us as we climbed.

The Tor is a tall hill, dominating the skyline of Glastonbury. Pilgrims come here, and have done for centuries. It's a place of mystery, and of faith.

Legend says that Joseph of Arimithea came here, when the small band of Christ's first followers left the Holy Land to spread the Faith everywhere after Pentecost. He planted his staff in the soil and after a time it took root, and grew - and certainly today a bush of Glastonbury Thorn, native to the Middle East, grows in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey.

There's more to the legend, too - some say that Christ himself came here, and stayed for a season, while on a trading trip with his uncle, during those "hidden years" of his early adult life before he started his public ministry and was working as a carpenter in Nazareth. This is the origin of the idea behind Blake's "Jerusalem": "And did those feet, in ancient time, walk upon England's mountains green..."

[More]

My Comments:
For more on the history/legends surrounding Glastonbury, I encourage you to read The Flowering Hawthorn by Hugh Ross Williamson, available from The Neumann Press.




UPDATE (23 August 2007)
Joanna's husband Jamie offers his insights on Glastonbury.