A new story begins

Journeying to the shores of Avalon

Avebury has been my spiritual home for the best part of fifty years. I was hand-fasted there to my late wife, Gill, on the winter solstice, and to my wife, Gabrielle, on the summer solstice, five years ago.

For reasons I do not yet understand the energy of the place has not been working its old magic on me recently and I have become enchanted by the intense power of another place of pilgrimage and power, Glastonbury. 

As much as anything it has been the music of the place that enchants me. They say it was music and sacred chanting which bound ancient communities together. Singing leads to enchantment and magical power. 

I heard  music called "The shores of Avalon" on my visit to Glastonbury in April this year and have been playing it ever since. It seems only fitting to make the first part of this weblog resonate with the music. Accordingly, I share the lyrics with you at the start of it. If you wish to be enchanted you may also like to listen to the music with the words.

You can listen to the music on this link: Shores of Avalon songs  Be brave my loves.

The shores of Avalon  by Tina Malia

Be brave my love

The time has come

To cross the Tintagel sea 

The fragrant air, the apple blossoms

Have all been beckoning

And there we’ll stand

Looking out upon the world that we’ve known

All fear will be gone

When we reach the shores of Avalon

You’ll be greeted there

By maidens fair

With eyes of the royal sea

In the garden they will braid your hair

With violets and rosemary

And there we’ll stand

Looking out upon the world that we’ve known

All fear will be gone

When we reach the shores of Avalon

Feel the wind on your face

As we cross the stormy sea

Close your eyes, don’t look back

There’s nothing left to see

The other night you came to me

Like an angel you appeared

And we climbed the endless sky

And held each other near

And there we’ll stand

Looking out upon the world that we’ve known

All fear will be gone

When we reach the shores of Avalon

Be brave my love...

Lyrics © BOUNDLESS LIGHT

Written by: TINA MALIA

Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind

My tale  begins, not at Avebury or even in Glastonbury, but at that other centre of the Arthurian Grail story, Tintagel. 

"The time has come 

To cross the Tintagel sea "

The Tintagel sea

King Arthur fought his last battle, the battle of Camlan, where he is fatally wounded, just inland from Tintagel, in North Cornwall. He is carried to his ship, and is sailed away to the summer isles, the land of Annwyn, which is the underworld. This journey is also thought to be a journey to the isle of Avalon, or Glastonbury. 

From Tintagel, the journey west would go to Ireland, to the setting sun, the land of the blessed, where the departed souls find rest. But the song takes us North East and inland to Glastonbury. It has been about ten thousand years since Glastonbury was a true island in the sea. but as the sea retreated it has became surrounded by marshes for a very long time. It returned briefly to being an inland sea during the floods two years ago.

I drove to Tintagel on a Grail Quest eighteen months ago at Samhain, all hallows eve. It is therefore fitting that I begin my Glastonbury story with that journey back from Cornwall.

I found my grail of renewal back then at the cauldron of the beautiful waterfall there. That will be told in another story, but no story of Glastonbury should begin without the Holy Grail.

The Grail of St Nectan's glen

Sometimes I still have glimpses of the Grail, but now it is time for me to consider my "journey across that Tintagel sea". 

I have reached the age of retirement. My faculties are fading, and contemplation of inner and outer worlds is what I shall increasingly be engaged in.

I journeyed back to Glastonbury by road, but the song describes the journey of Arthur, the dying mythic King of Britain to the land of Avalon, which is the land of the underworld, the place where spirits travel to after they die. (It also refers to a long journey that the dead take in the process of transformation that must be undertaken). 

My older daughter's mother, Angela, invited me to Glastonbury on the winter solstice of the millennium, 2000, where she was reading the Celtic Book of the Dead, and preparing herself for the journey she was on  towards  her own death, 6 months later. 

I am reminded of Shakespeare's Prospero in the Tempest, when he says "and my every third thought shall be of death," once he has solved his life problems through his magical tempest arts.

"I just wanted to see you settled," said my mother a few hours before she died. I was soon to marry Gill, but my own daughters are far from their own marriages. I have no art that might help that happen, except perhaps to undo the hold of the Father image over them.

Tintagel cliffs

These cliffs remind me of the dream I had the night my mother died. I was trying to helm a yacht that contained her, hidden down below decks. Twice I turned the boat's head away from the lee shore onto which the storm was driving it, but the third time it would not turn and I surrendered to the wind and the rocks. I woke to a telephone call  saying she had died while sleeping in her arm chair.

Boscastle headland, north of Tintagel 

There is no real harbour at Tintagel. Arthur might have done better setting off from the little harbour in Boscastle past this inlet and dragon mouth.

The fragrant air, the apple blossoms

Have all been beckoning 

Apple blossoms in my garden above the grave of my dog, Sophie.

The apple tree in dazzling blossom in the Chalice Well gardens in Glastonbury

In the garden they will braid your hair with violets and rosemary

This beautiful Brazilian witch stands under the brilliant white blossoms on the apple tree in the gardens of the Red Spring in Glastonbury. She had travelled from London for Beltane

And there we’ll stand 

Looking out upon the world that we’ve known 

When it all comes down to dust, from where shall we look upon the world we have known?

You’ll be greeted there 
By maidens fair 
With eyes of the royal sea 

Maidens on procession at Beltane in Glastonbury

It was on my visit to Glastonbury a while before Beltane that I stayed at Beracha House, which was built by the mystic Dione Fortune, just below the white stream. That night I had a very intense dream where I visited my dead wife, Gill, who was living with her boys in a house in Cheltenham, a house which I felt was some kind of place of rehabilitation. (She died from alcohol poisoning).

The other night you came to me 

Like an angel you appeared 

And we climbed the endless sky 

And held each other near 

It was this dream more than anything which set this story in motion. I shall post this first episode on the seventh anniversary of her death.

And there we’ll stand 
Looking out upon the world that we’ve known 
All fear will be gone 
When we reach the shores of Avalon 

One of the most powerful parts of this song is the phrase "All fear will be gone." I have had many things to fear in life over 65 years. But since I went away to boarding school as a child I have not permitted myself to feel any of that fear. Reaching Avalon there seems to me to be the prospect of all that fear really being gone rather than suppressed and somatised. 

Inspired and full of hope I returned home to Witney and started to learn the violin, picking up the old battered violin case I inherited from Gill. 

and so we reach the shores of Avalon, the foot of the Tor.