GLASTONBURY'S LANDSCAPE SWAN AND THE MYSTERIES OF CYGNUS: THE KEY TO 2012
An Article by Andrew Collins
Standing on the slopes of Wearyall Hill, next to Glastonbury's Holy Thorn, gazing out across the sprawling sight of the busy town, with its tall medieval church towers, might not immediately conjure the image of a great white swan, gliding its way across the open waters of the Bristol Channel. You could also be excused for not realising that you were situated on the head of this great bird effigy, its long snake-like neck defined by a descending hill ridge between here and both Chalice Hill and the Tor, which, together with high ground as far north as Edmund Hill and as far south as Edgarley, form its expanding wings and body, as well as the shape of a passenger in the form of an 'old crone' (see below). This is the terrestrial swan effigy, approximately 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) in length and 2.75 kilometres (1.7 miles) in width, envisioned within the Glastonbury landscape by well-known Goddess devotee, expert and writer Kathy Jones.(1)
The Cult of Brigid
Kathy, herself a resident of the town, writes that Glastonbury's landscape
swan is an expression of the Goddess, who rides on the back of the bird.
She is the Cailleach, the crone-like 'old woman' of Irish and Scottish
folklore, once thought to rule the winter months from Samhain to Beltane
(or from Lugnasadh to Imbolc). She is the dark side of Brigid, Brigit
or Bride, the triple-aspected goddess, and later Christian saint, who
ruled the other half of the year, and whose avian form is that of the
white swan. Brigid's worship in Glastonbury was crystallized as early
as the fifth century by incoming Irish settlers with the foundation
of a St Bride's spring, close to a St Bride's chapel, once located on
an elevated plateau known as the Beckery, or Bride's Mound. This lies
just south-west of Wearyall Hill, and although both chapel and holy
spring have now both disappeared, the Beckery has become a centre for
veneration of Brigid in her various forms.(2)
Glastonbury's terrestrial swan effigy, whether purely a work of nature or sculpted by ancient hands, might easily have been seen as an expression of a pagan goddess, possibly a form of Brigid, venerated hereabouts prior to the receding of the Bristol Channel to its current position over 14 miles away some 2,000 years ago. Glastonbury artist and writer Yuri Leitch has investigated the presence of the cult of Brigid around the Bristol Channel and notes that its river, the mighty Severn, was sacred to a water goddess named Sabrina. In the ancient Romano British language her name can be broken down as meaning 'san', i.e. sacred or holy, and 'bree', a putative form of the name Brigid (Britain itself might take its name from Brigantia, the Romano-British form of Brigid venerated in the north of England by the fierce war-like tribe known as the Brigantes).
In addition to this, the oldest form of the place-name Bristol is Brigstow, 'Brig's town', honouring Brigid once more, while the Bristol Channel's Welsh coast is rife with Brigid place-names, such as St Bride's Head, a promontory in South Glamorgan. Nearby is a large natural harbour serving the ancient port of Swansea, the 'swan's sea', providing yet another link with the cult of Brigid and, perhaps, Glastonbury's terrestrial swan.
Finally, there is the evidence now emerging from an archaeological site in Cornwall on the Bristol Channel's north coast of a Brigid cult that venerated the swan as late as the mid-seventeenth century. By a disused holy well on the banks of a river at Saveock archaeologists have uncovered a large number of earthen pits lined with swan feathers and containing the remains of birds, including chickens and cockerels, as well as a large number of hen's eggs, crystals and quartz stones. Marie Jefferis of the Saveock Water Archaeology unit, responsible for excavations here since 2001, believes that the pits relate in some way to a local cult of Brigid. In her words: 'There seems to be several connections with Brigit linking to the Saveock pits. The swan, whose feathers have been found in the majority of pits, is dedicated to Brigit.'
The Glastonbury Zodiac
Thus there is good reason to conclude that Glastonbury's terrestrial
swan can be linked with the cult of Brigid, both in antiquity and in
modern times. Yet might there be other reasons for its placement upon
the hallowed landscape of Glastonbury, once seen as an entrance to the
Celtic Otherworld? Might it serve some higher function that has so far
eluded us? The initial key to furthering this mystery lies in the fact
that, whether by chance or design, the landscape swan is situated within
the so-called Glastonbury zodiac. This is the alleged great circle of
landscape effigies some 19 kilometres (12 miles) across, formed by natural
hills, ancient trackways, field boundaries and river courses, and enhanced
by local place-names and related folklore. Its discoverer in the early
1920s was the artist and sculptor Katherine Maltwood, who lived just
outside of the town. She was commissioned by publishers John M Watkins
to illustrate a new edition of the medieval Grail romance Perlesvaus,
otherwise known as 'The High History of the Grail', written c. 1210.
This appears to feature Glastonbury Tor, although scholarly opinions
are divided, while a statement at the end of the book speaks of the
work being penned by someone familiar with Glastonbury Abbey, most probably
a monk.
Mrs Maltwood began looking at local Ordnance Survey maps, searching for geographical features and place-names that might conjure ideas, when she began seeing landscape effigies - first a lion around Somerton, then a giant composed of Dundon Beacon and nearby Lollover Hill, and finally out around Athelney a 'Girt Dog', noted in local folklore. This convinced her that the heavens were mirrored on the ground, and that she might have uncovered evidence of a prehistoric terrestrial zodiac. She looked and found a number of other effigies personifying the twelve zodiacal constellations, and wrote up her findings in a book entitled A Guide to Glastonbury's Temple of the Stars, first published in 1934.(3) Although little, if any evidence exists, to confirm the Glastonbury zodiac's greater antiquity, it exudes a psychic resonance, as I have realised myself over the past 25 years. Each 'sign', or house, reveals itself on a psychic level, and its genius loci can be interacted with during vision quests, and from experience I would say that this telluric inspiration has been available to mental sympathy for several thousand years at least.(4)
Glastonbury' swan effigy straddles two signs of the zodiac. One is Aquarius, defined by Katherine Maltwood as a bird identified by her as a Graeco-Egyptian Phoenix, a symbol of rebirth, defined by hills and high ground surrounding the Tor, which forms its curled head and beak. The other sign is Pisces, particularly Wearyall Hill, which was seen by her as one of two twin fish effigies. These two zodiac houses cover the periods between, respectively, 22 January to 21 February (Aquarius) and 22 February to 21 March (Pisces). The former embraces the feast of Brigid, 1 February, as well as the season that migrating swans journey north to their breeding grounds in Iceland and the Arctic regions.
The Swan as Psychopomp
This connection between Brigid's feast day, swans and annual bird migrations
might also prove important for Glastonbury's own swan effigy, for across
Europe the swan was primarily seen as a psychopomp, a soul-carrier,
escorting human souls to and from the place of the afterlife. In fact,
in the Scottish Western Isles it was believed as recently as the twentieth
century that swans migrating northwards, 'north beyond the north wind',
were responsible for carrying the souls of those who had died over the
winter months.(5) The connection between swans and death is very ancient
indeed, for swans' wings have been found beneath the burial of a child
lying next to the skeleton of a woman, probably his mother, at the 7,000-year-old
Vadbaek cemetery in Denmark, while swan pendants have repeatedly been
found in Upper Palaeolithic grave sites in Siberia, which date to c.
13,000 BCE. So, is Glastonbury's swan effigy to be seen as a soul-carrier,
taking the deceased beyond the land of the living to the Celtic Otherworld,
envisioned as an Island of the Dead existing in the Western Sea? Glastonbury
was originally called Ynys Witrin, meaning the Glass Isle, a place synonymous
with such an otherworldly location.
It is well to recall that until Roman times, Glastonbury, or more precisely its hills and higher ground, were elevated islands in the Bristol Channel, and thus the swan link would have been in keeping with its watery placement. Quite simply, Glastonbury could easily have been seen as a great swan upon the misty waters that led to an ethereal Otherworld, where the souls of the deceased entered the afterlife.
Cygnus and the Cosmic Axis
The matter can be taken further. Glastonbury's terrestrial swan is the
reflection of a constellation in its own right. A quick glance at a
star chart makes it clear that only one asterism (star group) is implied,
and this is Cygnus, the swan, which falls in both Aquarius and Capricorn,
where it appears to be flying down the Milky Way towards Sagittarius,
one of the twelve zodiacal constellations through which the sun passes
over the course of a year. Known also as the Northern Cross, the stars
of Cygnus are located at the commencement of the Great Rift, a dark
nebulous region created by dust clouds, that for a short distance cuts
the Milky Way in two, like a river splitting into two branches (which
in ancient Mesopotamian religious art was the symbol for the god Ea,
or Enki, who might well have been the prototype for the Aquarius figure
of Greek zodiacal art, who is shown as a man pouring water from a pitcher).
Indeed, symbolically the Milky Way has universally been seen as a road
or river along which the dead must pass in order to reach the afterlife,
often either as a soul-bird or within a celestial boat. Cygnus's identification
as a celestial swan was a mystery even by classical times, with various
legends created to account for this connection. However, in all likelihood,
it derives this identity because it was located at the northern-most
reaches of the Milky Way, towards which migrating swans were seen to
journey each spring.
Around the world, Cygnus was once seen as the entrance and exit to the sky-world, making it a candidate for the original location of heaven, which before the rise of Christianity was often seen as existing in the extreme north, and accessed via the Pole Star and north-south meridian line, which splits the heavens in two along its longitudinal zenith. This cosmic axis of the Northern Hemisphere was seen as linked with the axis mundi, or centre point (omphalos in Greek) of the terrestrial world, via a sky-pole, which has featured extensively in shamanic practices across Europe and Asia. Indeed, the Tungus reindeer shamans of Siberia constructed sky-poles topped by swans, up which they were meant to climb in order to reach the sky-world.
Very similar religious ideas are behind the manufacture of totem poles in Native American tradition, which were often topped by a cosmic bird. In North America Cygnus was identified as an asterism known as either the Cross Star, Bird Foot or Turkey Foot, seen as the point of access to the sky-world, which could be reached either via the sky-pole, synonymous with the north-south meridian line, or the Milky Way. Both routes worked just as well as each other in the Native American worldview of the cosmos. Bird effigy mounds, such as Eagle Mound at Great Circle, Newark, Ohio, and Rock Eagle Mound in Putnam County, Georgia, were aligned some 2,000 years ago to face the sun at dawn on the summer solstice. However, just two hours prior to sunrise the Milky Way would have been seen towering upwards from the very same position on the horizon, allowing a direct astral passage for either the shaman or the dead to reach the sky-world. Bird effigy mounds constructed by early Native American cultures such as the Hopewell and Woodland Indians have been identified by at least one archaeoastronomer with the stars of Cygnus.(6)
Interestingly, Cygnus occupied the position of the northern celestial pole, or Pole Star, from 16,000-13,000 BCE, which is why it is shown in Upper Palaeolithic cave art as early as 15,000 BCE as a bird on a pole in the famous cave at Lascaux in southern France. It is also why the recently discovered, 11,500-year-old megalithic complex at Gobekli Tepe in southeast Turkey, which is now being hailed as the oldest temple in the world and the site of biblical Eden, bears sight-lines towards Deneb, Cygnus's brightest star. Moreover, Cygnus features in key alignments at the Avebury megalithic complex in Wiltshire, as well as at Wayland Smithy in Berkshire, at Callanish in the Scottish Western Isles, and at Newgrange in Ireland's Boyne Valley. According to Irish earth mysteries researchers Anthony Murphy and Richard Moore of mythicalireland.com, Newgrange's well-known passage grave has an interior shaped like the Cygnus constellation. What is more, it was the 'palace' of the legendary hero Angus mac Og (or Aonghus mac an Og), who takes the form of a swan to marry his swan-maiden lover Caer Ibormeith ('Yew Berry'), while Newgrange's famous midwinter sun alignment comes each year from the direction of a smaller passage grave known as Fourknocks, the entrance chamber of which the two men found to be aligned precisely to the rising of Deneb, c. 3100 BC.(7)
Cygnus and the Cosmic Mother
More significantly, Newgrange's associations with Cygnus can help identify
Brigid as an expression of the Cosmic Mother in the form of both the
Milky Way and the stars of Cygnus. Angus's mother is the goddess Bóann,
personification of the River Boyne, which takes its name from Bó
Finne, the Bright Cow. Boann's name also means 'Bright Cow', reflected
in the Gaelic for Milky Way, which is Bealach na B Finne, the 'Way of
the Bright Cow'. Thus it can be said that the River Boyne was seen as
a terrestrial representation of the Milky Way, as well as the expression
of the goddess Bóann. Her son was Angus, whose epithet 'mac Og',
means 'of Og, or 'of the sun', suggesting that he is the sun born of
the Milky Way's Great Rift.
In Egyptian mythology, the sky-goddess Nut is said to nightly swallow the sun, and then give birth to it each morning from between her thighs. Egyptologist Dr Ronald Wells has identified Nut as a personification of the Milky Way, with her thighs and vulva - from which the new sun was born - marked by the commencement of the Great Rift in the vicinity of the Cygnus stars. He has written that in 3500 BC, when Egyptian myth and ritual began, ceremonies would have celebrated the annual rebirth of the sun at the time of the winter solstice, when Cygnus hung low in the eastern sky. A very similar scenario might have existed at Newgrange c. 3200-3000 BC, when the passage grave was built to let in the first rays of the midwinter sun.
In India, the goddess Saraswati, whose vehicle is the swan-goose hamsa, was the personification of the Saraswati river, which once flowed from the vicinity of Mount Kailash in Tibet through northern and western India to empty into the Arabian Sea. Both the goddess and the river - which before it dried up in around 2000 BC was more sacred than the Ganges - are both seen as reflections of the Milky Way, making Saraswati a Cosmic Mother like Bóann in Ireland and Nut in ancient Egypt. No surprise then that in Vedic astronomy hamsa is identified with the stars of Cygnus.
The idea that the Cosmic Mother, personified as the Milky Way, was once seen as having given birth to the sun at the time of the solstice might be very ancient indeed. In the Chauvet cave in southern France, discovered as recently as 1994, an abstract 'goddess', showing only her swollen thighs and turkey-like legs, gives the visual impression of the Milky Way's Great Rift, and thus the Cygnus constellation as the Goddess's vulva, which is abstractly depicted in Palaeolithic rock art as three upward pointing lines, known as the bird's foot symbol. It was as the Bird's Foot or Turkey Foot asterism that Cygnus was known among Native American tribes, and also seemingly in the Near East. More significantly, the bird's foot symbol was the so-called 'mark' of Brigid, which people searched for in hearths on her feast day. The picture in the Chauvet cave is painted and accentuated by the rock itself, and is thought to be as much as 30,000 years old. If correct, then it suggests that the veneration of the Milky Way and Cygnus as expressions of the Cosmic Mother is at least this old, and thus one of the oldest religious traditions anywhere in the world.
Bringing us back to Glastonbury is the fact that among the peoples of the Scottish Western Isles, Bride and not Bóann was said to have been the mother of the solar hero Angus mac Og. Early Christian legend makes Brigid the milk maid at the stable in Bethlehem where Jesus was born, and it is in this form that she is seen in a carved relief on Glastonbury Tor's St Michael's Tower. This guise of Brigid, along with her connection with Bóann and her avian form as the swan, all make it clear that she too is an expression of the Milky Way as the Cosmic Mother, with the stars of Cygnus, the swan as her chief avatar or totem (the other being the snake). In Ireland Brigid gained the title 'Mary of the Gaels', through her role as Divine Mother to the Irish people, while some legends even went so far as naming her the mother of Jesus, a claim that must have been abhorrent to some Christians. Yet such an assertion can be put down to the fact that as the Cosmic Mother she was seen to have given birth each year to the new sun in the form of Angus mac Og, a name which, according to Murphy and Moore can also be translated as 'Angus, son of the virgin'. This, along with the fact that in Christian tradition, the Milky Way, or Via Lactea, was seen as 'the Road to the Virgin Mary in Heaven', helps explain why Brigid became synonymous with Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Thus we can understand why Cygnus in the ancient mindset was universally associated with cosmic creation, or cosmic life and death. The north was the direction of the Primal Cause, as well as the location of heaven, the sky-world, viewed as the place of the afterlife, from which life came, and would ultimately return in death. In addition to this there is now good reason to suspect that Cygnus might have played an altogether different role in human evolution.
The Cosmic Ray Mystery
Around 35,000-40,000 years ago, and again some 17,000-14,000 years ago,
when religion had its birth in the deep caves of Western Europe, there
is considerable evidence of a massive increase of cosmic rays reaching
Earth. Well-known astronomer and science writer Carl Sagan wrote in
1973 that in some past age incoming cosmic rays from a neutron star
affected human DNA, the building blocks of life, causing germ line mutations
that were enough to initiate unexpected jumps in evolution. It is an
idea that has gained some respect among mainstream geneticists today.
By far the best source for these cosmic rays is a suspected black hole or neutron star binary system in the constellation of Cygnus, known as Cygnus X-3. In the 1980s particle detectors deep underground around the world began detecting the decay of incoming cosmic rays from this stellar source. So inexplicable were these strange sub-atomic particles, resonating at some of the highest energy levels ever detected in the universe, that they were quickly dubbed 'cygnets', meaning 'children of the swan'. This amazing data led to controversial claims that Cygnus X-3 was the first identified cosmic particle accelerator in the galaxy.
Then in 2000, NASA announced that Cygnus X-3 was the galaxy's first blazar, a collapsed star producing twins particle jets of superheated ionized gas along its line of axis. These stretch out for ten or even hundreds of light years into space, an are held together by magnetic sheaths that combine to produce powerful emissions in a variety of frequency ranges within the electro-magnetic spectrum, including x-ray, infrared, radio and gamma rays. This is not uncommon in so-called compact stars, like black holes or neutron stars, but what makes one a blazar is the angle of direction of its jets, for the label is only applied if one is pointing straight at the Earth, which is the unique case with Cygnus X-3. This means that we are looking straight down the barrel of the most dangerous cosmic cannon in the galaxy, and have been, according to astrophysicists, for anything up to 700,000 years. The significance of this is that such jets might well be responsible for increased levels of cosmic rays reached the Earth. More importantly, recent findings by Japanese and Chinese scientists using data from a facility in Tibet have shown that there is even today a huge excess of high energy cosmic rays coming from a point in the Cygnus constellation, close to the astronomical coordinates of Cygnus X-3.
This staggering scenario might well explain why our ancestors came to recognize the celestial swan as so important to their religious mindset, since there is every reason to conclude that ancient shamans who achieved altered states of consciousness in deep caves, most obviously using hallucinogens, somehow became aware of the effect Cygnus was having on their lives. Uniquely, they would have been able to see the disintegration underground of the cygnet particles, through a process known as Cherenkov radiation, which allows decaying cosmic rays to be seen as flashes of white or blue-white light as they pass through the viscous part of the eye.
Such 'visions' in total darkness would have increased and decreased in accordance with the presence overhead of Cygnus, enabling the Palaeolithic shamans eventually to synchronize their underworld activities with its cosmic ray cycle, and thus identify it as the source of origin of these profound experiences. Moreover, the appearance of these seemingly objective flashes in the eyes might additionally have been seen as manifestations of divine light, triggering more complex connections with the mysteries of Cygnus through contact with supernatural entities and the attainment of otherworldly knowledge and wisdom. This scenario might well have led our ancestors to learn what science is now confirming today - that life came from the stars. Indeed, the modern theory of panspermia, literally 'life everywhere', proposes that the most primitive forms of life probably arrived on this planet having hitched a ride either on a comet, meteor or asteroid.
In my opinion, this communion with the great unknown in deep cave settings led the ancients to celebrate the idea that we were star-stuff by teaching that the sun was periodically reborn from between the thighs of the Cosmic Mother, symbolised by the Milky Way's Great Rift and the Cygnus constellation. This event was most probably seen to occur at the time of the winter solstice, the shortest day in the year.
The Swan at Sunset
One matter remains to be considered with respect to Glastonbury's landscape
swan - its orientation towards the horizon. It flies south-west at an
azimuth bearing of approximately 245 degrees east of north. This aims
it towards the setting sun on two specific days in the year. The first
is 8 February, which is just three days adrift from the cross-quarter
day that falls exactly half-way between the winter solstice and the
spring equinox - 5 February in the modern calendar. Thus the terrestrial
swan targets very closely the point in the year marked by the feast
of Brigid, as well as the time when migrating swans begin to return
to their breeding grounds in the north. It also makes sense of the effigy's
placement in the Aquarius figure of the Glastonbury zodiac, which reflects
the period of the year between 21 January and 22 February.
The other sunset to which the Glastonbury swan targets is 4 November, just one day adrift from the ancient cross-quarter day that falls between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice - 5 November in the modern calendar. This was the original date of what became the Celtic festival of the dead, known as Samhain, remembered today as Hallowe'en, 31 October; All Saints Day, 1 November; All Soul's Day or the Day of the Dead, 2 November, as well as Guy Fawkes' Night, 5 November. It was at this time that the veils dividing the worlds were said to be thin, allowing the souls of the dead to return to the land of the living. What is more, the nights were said to be alive with witches, demons and spirits, who rode invisibly on the winds.
More significant to this debate is that the November cross-quarter day marks the time when migrating swans, as well as greylag geese, return from their breeding grounds in the north. Were these birds seen as bringing souls back to the world of the living? Of interest here is that in the Baltic countries it was the swan and not the stork that brought babies into the world. Another possibility is that the swans' return marked a time when the living were once again vulnerable to unexpected death, since the birds were now present to take away the souls of the departed, the reason why lanterns were lit at this time to ward off evil spirits.
Time of the Cailleach
The eerie cacophony made during the nights around Samhain by incoming
whooper and trumpeter swans as they fly overhead, might easily have
been interpreted as witches, spirits and demons abroad. From such fears
arose the familiar image of a witch seated on a goose, which is very
much associated with ancient and more modern Samhain celebrations. Such
images helped inspire Kathy Jones to conclude that the Glastonbury swan
effigy was being ridden by the Cailleach, the old crone goddess, who
was in some respects the role model for the cackling witch, whose influence
was feared the most at Samhain. Originally, the Cailleach, known in
England as Black Annis, would have been equated with the dreaded keeper
of the charnel area, where in Neolithic times bodies would have been
denuded and the soul released during the process of excarnation by scavenger
birds, such as rooks, crows and ravens. These ritual beliefs were once
practised at Avebury, one of Britain's ancient centres for the cult
of death and rebirth. Its main axis through the centre of the two inner
circles targeted the setting of Deneb, Cygnus's brightest star, at the
time of the monument's construction c. 3000-2500 BC, while the incised
head and curled neck of a swan appear on Stone 25S in the Kennet Avenue,
close to where migrating swans would gather during the winter, either
around the base of Silbury Hill, or on the nearby Kennet River.
Another feast day that has its roots in the November cross quarter day, and thus the Celtic festival of Samhain, is Martinmas, 11 November, once seen as the beginning of winter. Ageing oxen were slaughtered and lanterns lit to ward off evil spirits. What is more, swan or goose feasts traditionally took place at Martinmas, and in some European countries the birds were ritually sacrificed and offered up in the name of St Martin of Tours (316-397), after whom Martinmas is named. Even though some feeble story links geese to the saint, it is quite clear that the swan and goose feasts have a pagan origin that predates the spread of Christianity across Europe.
So we can say that regardless of whether Glastonbury's landscape swan is merely a natural feature, or was in any way sculpted or merely recognised as symbolically potent by our ancestors, its orientation towards the sunset enables it to exude the spiritual potency of both Brigid at the time of her feast date in February, and also the Cailleach at her most potent time around Samhain. Interestingly, the same orientation of 245 degrees azimuth is found at the passage grave of Dowth in Ireland's Boyne Valley. Along with another passage grave at nearby Knowth, Dowth and nearby Newgrange form a triad of passage tombs on the River Boyne, all of which reflect different aspects of a Neolithic worldview.
Like Glastonbury's swan, Dowth is aligned to the two sunsets that mark the arrival and return of migratory swans from and to their breeding grounds in the north. Swans since time immemorial have settled in the water-logged meadows of the Boyne Valley, and it was their presence, along with the tale of Angus mac Og, whose legendary 'palace' was Newgrange, that set Irish researchers Anthony Murphy and Richard Moore on their own quest to understand the monument's relationship to the stars of Cygnus. Very similar religious influences concerning the cult of the swan would seem to have been present among the Neolithic peoples of Avebury in southwest England, and arguably also at Glastonbury in Somerset, which I believe was a prehistoric centre for the cult of the dead, as well as a Celtic otherworld, and an access point into the afterlife via the Milky Way.
Stand on Glastonbury's Wearyall Hill, the swan effigy's serpentine neck and head, after sunset on the eve of the November cross-quarter day and you will see something quite spectacular indeed. For at around eight o'clock the Milky Way stands erect on the south-western horizon, exactly where the sun has set three and a half hours beforehand. If we were better able to see this splendour above the constant glow of modern street lighting we would see the Great Rift cutting a swathe through the centre of the Milky Way and opening out just above the horizon. Follow the line of the Great Rift and it takes you straight to Cygnus, the sign of the celestial soul-bird and vulva of the Cosmic Mother, its brightest star Deneb visible in the eastern sky at an elevation of around 68 degrees. This beautiful image in the night sky confirms that in Britain and Ireland at least, the pathway to the stars was accessible at the time of the November cross-quarter day from a position on the horizon where the sun had earlier set. In Glastonbury this access point to the sky-world, where the souls of the deceased live in eternal bliss, is emphasized by the precise orientation of the great swan effigy. Yet this astronomical spectacle now brings to mind an important spiritual nexus that in less than six years time almost all of us are scheduled to experience.
The Key to 2012
At dawn on the winter solstice 2012 - the Maya's 13-Baktun cycle of
their Long Count calendar ends having run a course that is meant to
have begun in 3114 BCE. On this day the old sun of the previous age
ceases to be, and the new sun is born at a position on the horizon that
corresponds visually with Galactic Center, located in the heart of Sagittarius.
For many, this will be an important moment in human history, marking
a rising awareness of cosmic consciousness and an accelerated rate of
human evolution. There is talk of special children being incarnated
at this time to initiate this ongoing process. They have been given
titles such as the Star Children or Indigo Children, and by all accounts
they have increased awareness of spiritual issues, and show behavioural
patterns that mark them out as evolved souls; many also report apparent
alien contact experiences from an extremely young age.
If cosmic rays from the Cygnus region did accelerate human evolution in Upper Palaeolithic times, leading to the establishment of a sky-religion based around the concept of the Milky Way as the Cosmic Mother, as the source of life and death on Earth, might the Cygnus region be playing some role in the corridor of events surrounding 2012? Do its cosmic rays still exude their influence on us today?
When the new sun of 21 December 2012 aligns with Galactic Center, it is born via the Cosmic Mother's 'birth tube' or 'birth canal', the Milky Way's Great Rift, identified by Egyptologist Dr Ronald Wells as the womb and vulva of the sky-goddess Nut. Thus, in line with ancient beliefs and practices from places as far away as Ireland and Egypt, the new sun of 2012 is born from Cygnus, the womb and vulva of the Cosmic Mother, something the Maya are unlikely to have been unaware of when they chose this date as the culmination point of their 13-Baktun cycle. So the fact that Glastonbury's landscape swan exudes these arcane mysteries of religion, which are arguably as much as 30,000 years old, calls for a celebration in the Isle of Avalon on 21 December 2012 unlike anything ever seen before, and I propose that it starts at Samhain, the time of the Cailleach, the force of death and renewal. I suggest the 4 November - the eve of both the cross-quarter day and Guy Fawkes' Day - which for all of us now becomes Glastonbury's Cygnus Day according to the flight of its terrestrial swan.
Notes and References
1. See Kathy Jones' booklet The Goddess in Glastonbury, Ariadne Publications,
Glastonbury, 1996. See also the Kathy Jones website at www.kathyjones.co.uk.
2. For further information on Bride's Mound, Glastonbury, visit Friends
of the Bride's Mound website at www.friendsofbridesmound.com.
3. For more on Katherine Maltwood and her Glastonbury zodiac go to Yuri
Leitch's website by clicking here.
4. For a full account of my work with the Glastonbury zodiac between
1983 an 1990 see Paul Weston's upcoming book Avalonian Aeon. Details
of publication available in 2007.
5. Email communication from Eileen Buchanan, dated 20 October 2004.
This knowledge was given to her by family members on her mother's side,
who were born and raised in Argyll and the Inner Hebrides.
6. Thaddeus M Cowan, 'Effigy Mounds and Stellar Representation: A Comparison
of Old World and New World Alignment Schemes', in Aveni, Archaeoastronomy
in Pre-Columbian America, 1975, p. 233.
7. See 'The Cygnus Enigma' by Anthony Murphy and Richard Moore on www.mythicalireland.com,
and also their book Island of the Setting Sun - In Search of Ireland's
Ancient Astronomers, 2006.
All other Notes and References are to be found in Andrew Collins's book THE CYGNUS MYSTERY (Watkins, 2006), which fully expounds many of the themes explored in this article. To buy THE CYGNUS MYSTERY click here.
Thanks to Sue Collins, Rodney Hale,
Kathy Jones, Yuri Leitch, Anthony Murphy, Geoff Stray and Paul Weston
for their help in the preparation of this article.