Glastonbury, the legendary Avalon of Arthurian tradition. In the 21st century Glastonbury is world famous for its music festival which doesn’t actually take place in the town but a few miles away in Pilton. For the name Glastonbury holds magic! both real and commercial!
This small town is renowned as a centre of discussion for alterantive thinking for social, political, artistic and ecological issues.Its inhabitants range from ordinary workers in industry and agriculture often with a cultural divide between poets, hippies, crazies and the great unwashed! The beautiful local countryside contains those hedonists in a material and spiritual sense to complete the melting pot.
Of course this Glastonbury, this Avalon, Isle of Aples harbours the secrets and magic of the past. With blood red waters conjoining to clean white waters and sacred hawthorns sporting white flowers and red berries at Christmas we can understand the colours of England and with them the mysteries of Britannia.
For me it is the hub of Arthurian tradition with its tales of romance but also the questions of Sovreignty and the role of women, as the Lady to be sought and venerated. It is where Arthur is buried taken by the sisterhood of Queens, where Christianity blended with the old ways and paths, still alive today. And so I offer you my works of fiction inspired by this place and its inhabitatnts, both seen and unseen. Tales of Merlin and the fay, and ever silent, beckoning waters of the Levels and the Great Lake above and below.
Ladies of the Lake
The Lady of the Lake was the key fairy in empowering and protecting the Sovereigny of King Arthur King of all the Britons and Once and Future King, the Great Bear of the wheel of Sky and Earth.
A small workbook for anyone interested in the culture and ideas that prelude both the Celic Twighlight and the Romance of Arthurian Tradition. A skillful blend of fact and projections for those who wish to explore the world of the divine feminine.
Synopsis
A concise overview of the Legend of the Lady of the Lake. It has long been the view that the Lady was a title rather than a single entity. Here this view is related to twelve key women at the court of Camelot and Arthur. A suggestion is made that each solar year is attached to a spirit, energy flow or feeling for each season.
Each Lady is illustrated in full colour by the artist Stuart Littlejohn. The illustrations carefully integrate magical or Celtic symbols and elements that often chime with the pre Christian goddesses later incorporated into the Arthurian Cycle.
Each Lady, fairy or goddess speaks from each page endeavouring to draw you to her and what she represents in the spiritual dimension. Easy to self identify.
The thirteenth illustration is of Arianhrod the Celtic Welsh Goddess of fertility, rebirth and the weaving of cosmic time and fate. Arianrhod is linked both to the the moon and North star. She resides in the realm know as Caer Sidi which reflects the turning star wheel of the seasons, a revolving castle.
Each Lady is assigned a time of action corresponding to the astrological periods, assciated flowers and herbs, and totem aimals. Most interestingly a place where her personality and energy can be found in temenos of Avalon and the landscape.
Mention is made of the human sense of smell and the smell of the seasons and the colours refelected in the illustrations.
Paperback: 38 pages
Publisher: Fragrant Earth International Ltd
Language: English
ISBN 0-9543295-5-4
RRP: £7.50
To BUY now go to https://www.fragrantearth.com/Aromatherapy/books-and-training-guides/ladies-of-the-lake-book
Finding the Ladies of Avalon
An exploration of the times and charactres after the Romans had left Britian and the tribes had again become disunited. The new Christian religion was battling with the old ways and the old gods were fading. Avalon was at the centre of this passage and change and the Lady of the Lake embattled by new ideas. Those times were not so Dark and the age was of enlightenment before the Saxons came.
A book in two parts. The first sets the scene as it was in Artur’s day in and around Glastonbury, the daily life and routines. The divison between abbey and the town and the priestesses and the monks. All the old characters are found welded together in story. The second part is the ‘lost illuminated manuscript’ presented later to Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Synopsis
A visiting tourist intent on a spiritual quest to Glastonbury meets a mysterious stranger who transports her in dreamtime or reality to the 5th century. She sees the Great Grey Lake of Avalon with its marshes, carrs,crops, orchards, ponds and inlets. She meets the people of the land and understands the everyday humdrum of normal existence.
Her romatic view of those times are challenged by the characters she interacts with.The old religion of the time is is attacked by new Christian teaching but neither old or new are as she had thought them to be. Fear and dread of misfortune disease and hunger are part of everyday existence. There is water mud and raw nature.
Morgan le Fay and Merlin are set in juxta position yet both wanting the same outcome. The out of time visitor witnesses the court intrigues and rivalries between the Knights. She grasps the role played by the real women and their influence in the world of Camelot which increasingly, as the court moves to defend itself from barbarian Saxons, becomes Crist centric.
The old ways are cleverly overlayed by the priestess into a new Maryan centric where women are moved from the natural balance of mutual respect and the passion that conflagrates men to the ladies will, to submission by being unobtainable. Outwitted by the Monks philosophy compassionate love overlays passionate freedom and effectually the women of the priesthood become unobtainable, seperated, venerated as Virgin and child, untouchable as though walled to the compund of a garden. No longer can a priestess provide union with the divine as a new dimesion of sin is introduced to cut off mankind from nature made subservient to exploitation and control.
The traveller has to consider her own spiritual and moral values. In the process she has to decide what spirit means and whether real spirits exist masked by humans or taking over people as a means of communicating their ideas and will. Interacting with the Red and White springs she is forced to realise that energy exists independenly of the persona of the spirit world and that it flows through all living things like water.
Good and bad are seen not to be the same as right and wrong and that the luminaries of the day such as Bridget, later sainted, were very different people to what she had anticipated. Merlin was quite human yet had mastred a power unknown in the 21st century, yet he was not in control of this energy for it had a divine source that could be directed but not forced to a mans will, for like serpent it had two characters both male and fremale, it could shed its skin and shape shift.
The book concludes leaving our tourist knowing she was transported out of body, out of time but bewildered by her firm belief that others would not comprehend her experience as anything beyond a dream.
Paperback: 202 pages
Publisher: Shimran an imprint of Fitzrovia Press
Language: English
ISBN 0-9543295-5-4
RRP: £7.50
To BUY now go to https://www.fragrantearth.com/Aromatherapy/books-and-training-guides/finding-the-ladies-of-avalon OR https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fairies-Hollow-Hills-Jan-Kuśmirek/dp/1789554594/ref=sr_1_1?crid=38LY8PN41N27M&keywords=fairies+of+hollow+hills&qid=1650531113&sprefix=fairies+of+hollow+hills%2Caps%2C87&sr=8-1
Fairies of the Hollow Hills
A selection of the Fairy Folk who can be found hanging around in Glastonbury being part of the Fairy Court of the South West. A hilariously funny and amusing set of stories for older children and definitely for adults. Serious about fairies? This is for you because it is all aboutmostly true events, people and places!
There was a time when fairies were manifest and clear to see. That time is still here, for our time is as strange as ever was. This little book tells of people who have seen the Fay and you can journey to the places described when you visit in Avalon the famed Glastonbury. True you will need insight to discover meaning in my words for these tales have much to tell .
Synopsis
A set of related stories about a dragon, a unicorn and seven fairy folk, the places they inhabit and their adventures with humans.
Each traditional fairy chracterisation is based in the artistry of Nicola-Clare Lydon and Lynne Tansy from Tintagel, Cornwall.
Like Aesops fables each tale has a moral, a lesson and one can learn the character of fairy folk easily from this little book. It is sprinkled in double entendre and humour mixing the lampooning of local council policies with imaginary but relevant events. Each named place has its own energy and can be found readily from the storytelling.
Paperback: 64 pages
Publisher: New Generation Publishing
Language: English
ISBN 978-1-78955-459-5
RRP: £6.95
https://www.fragrantearth.com/the-fairies-of-the-hollow-hills?search=hollow%20hills
Jan Kuśmirek 