Upon hearing the word ‘Glastonbury’, what do you think of?

Tents and flags? Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll? The largest open-air music festival in the world? If so, you’re not alone.

Most people think that Glastonbury is just a festival, when it is, in fact, a spiritual haven (oh, and, fun fact, Glastonbury the festival isn’t even in Glastonbury itself, but Pilton, a small village 6 miles east of Glastonbury)!

Located in the county of Somerset in Southwest England, Glastonbury is a very small town populated by fewer than 9000 people (to put it into perspective, Doncaster, where I am from, is populated by approximately 308,000 people).

Although Glastonbury is small in size, it’s big in energy.

Considered to be the heart chakra of the world and an entrance point into higher dimensions, Glastonbury has a magnetism far in excess of its small size.

Every shop on Glastonbury High Street boasts some variation of spiritualism. Whether you’re browsing inside Man, Myth and Magik for some new incense sticks, finding new books to add to your ‘to-be-read pile’ in The Speaking Tree, or going vegan sweet treat hunting in the Chocolate Love Temple, there is something in Glastonbury for everyone.

What’s more, once you’ve finished mooching around the shops, if you venture a little further away, you will come across some of the most magical sites in Britain.

There’s Glastonbury Abbey, one of the earliest churches in England. Glastonbury Tor, a place that has been a spiritual magnet for centuries. And, of course, there’s Chalice Well (pictured below).

As a World Peace Garden, Chalice Well invites visitors of all faiths and beliefs to come together in shared acknowledgment of the sacred and divine that transcends borders and differences.

We invite all people, whatever their spiritual path, religious belief, age, or gender, to honour and celebrate nature and our part in the continuing evolution of this unique and beautiful planet; in peace, unity, and co-creation with all life on Earth.

How beautiful.

‘Many paths, one source.’

This sense of oneness is the lasting impression of Glastonbury that I have, too. What causes such energy to reside in the small English town, however, is a highly debated topic. One theory is that it is due to the ley-lines* upon which the town is built.

* Ley-lines = invisible lines of spiritual or magnetic energy believed to connect significant or ancient sites.

Ley-lines are said to maintain the spiritual integrity of Britain, carrying with them an aura of mystery and magic. It is because of such energy that explains how ancient people chose where to build structures like Stonehenge and Glastonbury Tor. They chose to build upon areas where the lines intersected or aligned, hence why Glastonbury Abbey, for example, is aligned to Stonehenge, despite the latter having been built three millennia prior to the former.

The intersectional nature of ley lines exists as the antithesis to the increasingly materialistic nature of our world.

Only when people can understand ley lines and their ability to reach that which consumerism simply cannot touch, harmony and balance, will people experience the interconnectedness of all life. Until then, we will all remain as hamsters on a wheel, chasing an ever-elusive destination, blind to what exists beyond the illusion.

If only people could see beyond the illusion, however, there would be no more untimely deaths.

(In an attempt to ‘de-paganise’ Stonehenge in the fourteenth century by pulling the stones down, a man was crushed to death.)

There would be no more senseless destruction.

(A few centuries later, people set fire to the stones before pouring cold water over them to create weaknesses that would allow them to break them apart with sledgehammers.)

There would be no more us versus them.

If only people could see beyond the illusion(s), there would, finally, be peace on earth.