Glastonbury Tor

The unusual conical shape of Glastonbury Tor emerges from the Avalonian landscape like the crouched back of some prehistoric animal. A lonely tower rises from the top of the mound, beckoning travelers.  Man-made terraces, painstakingly carved in a very distant past, add an aura of mystery to this already extraordinary place, a hallmark of Glastonbury.

The Tor Hill is one of the most recognizable landmarks on the map of sacred sites of England. Its fame is based on the configuration of powerful earth energies that spiral around the hill. It’s been referred to by many researches as a “vast electrical transformer” and a “generator and transmitter of earth energies.”

The Tor is like an energy vortex. As the dowser Hamish Miller has discovered, two earth currents of different polarities—which he dubbed Michael and Mary—weave in a courtship-like dance up the slopes to meet and “mate” on top of the hill, at the place where an ancient altar still stands.

The enigmatic ringed terraces coincide with the path of these energies. A survey of the Tor has shown that there are seven of the rings, which are joined in such a way as to form a continuous pathway towards the top of the hill. Which makes the Tor an actual three-dimensional labyrinth! The seven-layered labyrinth, the antiquarian John Michael points out, symbolized the classical Mysteries.

The solitary tower in the picture is all that remains from an old church destroyed in a 12th-century earthquake. The church was dedicated to St. Michael, the patron saint of high places and sacred hilltops, but also the initiator who has power over the underworld. According to ancient legends, the Tor was believed to be hallowed and to contain the entrance into the underworld in an underground cavern. Incidentally, modern speleologist have discovered caves under the Tor, which seems to confirm the legend of the hallow nature of the sacred hill.

And to top the list of extraordinary features of the Tor, the axis of the hill is algined with a ley line which also traverses the Glastonbury Abbey, then continues on its way to the megalithic site of Avebury.

From whichever point we look at the Tor—either energetically or symbolically—it is indisputable that this hill was a sacred place, an ancient center of initiation.

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