Since this is the first one, I suppose you need a bit of an introduction. Reading through this post, it’s a bit scattergun on topics. But life is a bit like that, isn’t it? I promise that future posts will be more focussed. In future, there might even be ‘seven ways to…’ lists like on clickbait headlines. Anyway, this is the first of a series of my own, personal experiences of the ongoing disaster we call the Anthropocene. I am doing this really to bear witness but I hope some of these thoughts/experiences might prove useful to someone, somewhere. At least, if you feel like you’re losing your sanity in an era of climate breakdown, it might be some comfort to know that you’re not alone….
I think I finally despaired after the Glastonbury conversation.
This was the outcome of an ongoing process of psychic disintegration. A convergence of inner and outer turmoil.
By May 2022, just prior to my Glastonbury visit, my life felt as if it was fraying at the edges. A relationship that had been very important to me had ended. My father had developed some significant health concerns, with highly uncertain outcomes. My writing ‘career’ was in tatters: for an extended period, I’d been working very hard on two book projects which, frankly, had bombed. The clincher, the end point of a run of demoralising incidents, had been a pretty negative review of one of the projects in the BSFA magazine.
Forty-eight hours before leaving for Glastonbury, I developed fairly severe food poisoning. For a day I lay on the couch, zombified before Netflix, feeling utterly drained, physically, psychically spiritually. I wondered what the hell I was doing with my life.
Breakdown
But the world, too, was fraying at the edges. The previous November, at the global climate conference, COP26, global leaders had demonstrated fairly decisively that in practical terms they were willing to let the world burn. Jonathon Pie’s satirical short film on COP26 captured this situation fairly well, especially the bit where George Monbiot and Pie discuss systemic collapse over a pint. Monbiot, without exaggeration, describes our situation as a “planetary death spiral.” Meanwhile, outside COP26, Greta Thunberg sang, “You can shove your climate crisis up your arse!”
Many environmentally aware people began to despair after the COP meeting. Shortly before Christmas, I’d attended an online meeting where we were invited to discuss our feelings on the state of the Earth after COP26. It seems that many felt that we were in last chance saloon, and were anticipating collapse. I was also affected by the words of the advocate of small farm futures, Chris Smaje. Smaje had been involved in climate protesting and had visited COP26. His conclusion: we know now that governments will not step up, so it’s “not too late, but it’s over.” The global political impasse over climate change did, he thought, suggest that it was now down to “us, the people” to address the problem.” But he also concluded that “none of ‘us’ really knows how to do that.”
And the UK had the warmest New Year’s on record: 16.3 degrees celsius in London, a handful of days after the winter solstice. The clock was clearly ticking.
This reality had been feeding a creeping, personal paralysis for months. At times, it had taken all my energy to go to work and keep at least basically functional. I had also fallen into a pattern of going to bed probably too early, partly because of a sense of exhaustion but also to avoid negative emotions. I’d been anaesthetising myself by gawping at TV. I had, if I’m honest, lost hope, and part of me was waiting for the end to come.
So in May 2022, I went to Glastonbury. Feeling a little spaced out post-illness on the train, I made it to King’s Cross, staggered over to Paddington and by mid afternoon had arrived at Bristol Temple Meads. Then a bus journey over the Mendip hills — a region of national beauty according to Google Maps — and an arrival at Premier Inn on the edge of town.
My nominal motivation was to attend the Megalithomania conference, an annual conference on prehistoric megaliths that happily mixes unorthodox with mainstream ideas.
But in truth, I had other, stronger motivations for the visit. Very often, I’ve found myself drawn to sacred places during times of need. Sacred places have, in my experience, healing qualities. And I was in desperate need for some kind of healing.
Tor
Glastonbury Tor was visible from the inn. One of the first things I did was go for a run, heading straight for the prominent hill. The roadside vegetation was lush, and smelt of late spring. A road sign announced one’s arrival at the ‘Isle of Avalon,’ an idea that seemed out of place on an A road through an industrial estate. (Avalon or Availon — the vale of apples — is where, according to the 15th century writer Malory, King Arthur and Guinevere were buried.)
Then I was breathless by the time I reached the summit of the Tor. The summit affords a splendid, 360 degree view of the mostly flat Somerset landscape, with a view to the Bristol Channel to the North. The Tor is 518 feet (158 m) in elevation, and crowned by the roofless tower that once belonged to the Church of St. Michael. According to Wikipedia, the original wooden church was destroyed by an Earthquake in 1275. The replacement stone church was built in the 14th century.
There are many stories and ideas about the Tor and its spiritual or mystical significance. I’m not really sure whether these ideas have any merit as literal truth, but I can see their intuitive appeal. And the Tor certainly feels like a place of power when you are standing on top of it.
Certainly it’s a good spot to take a broader perspective, and the run would become an everyday ritual while I was staying at Glastonbury. Other people thought so, too: I regularly encountered pilgrims at the summit, including devotees of Krishna consciousness and on another day a robed group performing an arcane ritual in the shadow of the tower.
In prehistoric times, the Glastonbury landscape was flooded, marshy, — a ‘brackish lagoon’ according to Geoffrey Ashe (Ashe, 1957)— and the Tor stood like a beacon. There were nearby lake village settlements here before the Romans came, so the Tor might have had some ritual significance for millennia. But no-one really knows.
There is some evidence that Glastonbury was one of the earliest Christian centres of Britain — although distinguishing fact from fiction here is a murky process. According to Treharne (1967), many of the legends of a very early Christian settlement were 12th century inventions, intended to boost the prestige of the monastery. But the myths themselves have become an integral part of the Glastonbury experience.
And it’s a sobering thought that the Somerset levels might be flooded once more in the not-too-distance future, due to climate breakdown and sea-level rise. So the Tor might be an island once again.
Megalithomania
The next day, I walked into town to attend the conference. This was in the town hall, next to the entrance to the Abbey grounds. Megalithomania was subtitled ‘what were the ancients up to?’ I’d wanted to go after watching some of their YouTube archive of talks over Christmas. These featured a mix of mainstream and (very) alternative perspectives on the prehistoric past, with an emphasis on megaliths. The conference had been named after a book of the same name by John Michell, which chronicled the powerful effect that prehistoric megaliths had had on some people since the seventeenth century.
Several of the talks were very entertaining. I especially liked Peter Knight and Sue Wallace discussing their adventures at various prehistoric sights around the country. Theirs was a mythic and imaginative approach, although I probably wouldn’t have the courage to wander ‘sky-clad’ across a rocky moor in the early spring. I also enjoyed Tom Bree’s talk on ancient measurements, although Ralph Ellis’ claim that Stonehenge might be many thousands of years older than mainstream archeology suggests did stretch my boggle threshold somewhat.
One of the highlights of the conference was the lecture on Stonehenge by Timothy Darvill, Professor of Archeology at Bournemouth University. He feels that the most developed version of Stonehenge — the circle of trilithons — might have been erected as a solar temple, part of a solar cult that has spread across Europe, just possibly due to an Egyptian influence (Darvill, 2022). The general idea is that the new cult swept through Europe displacing older belief systems that might have been more centred around the Moon. I find this new chapter in prehistory astonishing.
During the lunch hour, I wandered up Glastonbury High street, past St. John the Baptist’s church. A street artist had chalked a depiction of Klaus Schwab, who at the World Economic forum in 2020 had infamously pronounced that “you will own nothing and you will be happy. “ This was intended as a utopian prediction, but it has been interpreted in a rather more sinister terms by various people in the counterculture.
Also opposite the church were street performers and some homeless people who were chatting fairly amiably to some police officers. Afterwards, I had a chance to dip into the various esoteric bookshops along the High Street.
Healing Spaces
After Megalithomania, I visited the Abbey grounds. Glastonbury Abbey had its heyday in the 12th century, and was vast. It was one of the ecclesiastic centres of Europe. That ended with Henry VIII in the sixteenth century, and the dissolution of the monasteries. The ruins, however, remain impressive. There was also an orchard, which was in full blossom when I visited. Sitting in the orchard, the epithet of Avalon felt apt.
I also saw the site of the alleged grave of Arthur and Guinevere, which was discovered around 1191, along with an inscription that read “here lies buried the renowned King Arthur, with Guinevere his second wife, in the Isle of Avalon” (Treharne, 1967). The inscription at least seems to have been a medieval hoax, intended to increase the prestige of the Abbey.
Later, I had the chance to visit the Chalice well gardens at the foot of the Tor. These gardens, too, are tranquil, healing places and I ended up meditating there for a bit. By Tuesday, I’d gained some of the necessary mental space.
Place is important for this process. I have an abiding interest in psychogeography — the way that places resonate with the human imagination. In a way, when you visit somewhere like Glastonbury, you’re going to two places at once. One place is literally real: a physical Tor, the physical ruins of the Abbey and its orchard, the streams and pools that issue from the spring under the Chalice Well gardens. But you also enter an imaginative landscape of story, memory, rumour and myth. When people inhabit a land, the imaginative and physical landscapes interact in their consciousness, and this is often especially evident at sacred sites like Glastonbury. One is aware of a layered history of idea, fancy and desire: and this history has a power of its own.
Meaning
For some reason, I have found sites like Glastonbury good places to recover a sense of meaning in life. I think this is due to several factors. Sacred sights often feel a little bit apart from the world. Places like Cathedrals and temples also often contain a strong sense of calm. Borrowing a metaphor from Doctor Who, they operate a little like Zero Rooms — a space that is inherently simple and cuts off external interference. Within such spaces, healing is facilitated.
Mental suffering, especially intense mental suffering, often throws up questions of meaning and purpose. In a trough, essentially spiritual questions become central. For me severe depression has also been accompanied — or maybe even embodied — by a strong sense of meaningless and disconnection. So for me, engaging with at least some kind of spiritual sense has been crucial for recovery. This is because I can’t live with that pervasive sense of meaninglessness.
For me, meaning is bound up with a sense of connection. Connection to the land and the planet, connection to other people, connection to the universe. Conversely, depression is bound up with an intense sense of isolation. When I become depressed, any sense of connection is severed. I drift desolate on an icy, dark sea, isolated from any sense of connection or meaning. But there exist places that can restore that sense of connection, and enable healing.
Maybe the world needs healing right now. Perhaps that is impossible: maybe the wounds cut too deep. Maybe we are fated to destroy ourselves. But while pockets of sanity exist — especially within ourselves — such healing remains a possibility.
Glastonbury was in some ways strange and disorienting. But ultimately, I felt some recovery of that inner calm crucial for healing. But the problems that had plagued me especially since COP26 hadn’t gone away. Neither, of course, were they personal to me, as I was about to discover.
Continued in Part 2
References
Ashe, G. (1957). King Arthur’s Avalon. Book Club Associates.
Darvill, T. (2022). Keeping time at Stonehenge. Antiquity, 96 (386), 319-335. doi:10.15184/aqy.2022.5
Treharne, R.F. (1967). The Glastonbury Legends. Cresset.