A Pilgrimage for Peace in the Glastonbury Zodiac
Dear Friends
On 3rd August 2025, I am offering a pilgrimage for peace in the Glastonbury Zodiac, to mark a rare planetary alignment called a Grand Sextile. This planetary configuration compromises two interlocking grand trine aspect paterns, which form a six-pointed star alignment (allowing for a ‘generous’ 10˚ orb). As shown in the chart below, there are seven planets involved: a grand fire trine between the Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Aries, Mercury in Leo and the Moon in Sagittarius, intersects with a grand trine (within a 5˚ orb) between Pluto at 2˚ Aquarius, Uranus at 0˚ Gemini and Mars at 27˚ Virgo. Grand sextiles only happen very occasionally, and resonate with a particularly harmonious energy, and even though Mars is not quite playing ball (being still in Virgo, and not quite giving us a grand air trine), I think it is still very much worthy of our attention. Being that the moon is involved in this configuration, the alignment only remains in place for a few hours on 3rd August, and so I have chosen this day to offer a pilgrimage which takes in the peace dove of Glastonbury’s landscape star temple.
What is the Glastonbury Zodiac?
The Glastonbury Zodiac is an extraordinary artefact of visionary geography, comprising a circle of zodiacal effigies spread majestically around an eleven mile circle in the Somerset countryside. It is guarded by a thirteenth figure out to the west in Langport, a ‘Girt Dog’, reminding us of canine figures like Anubis, Cerberus or Dormath, who protect the entrance to the Underworld. It was originally discovered in the 1920s by Katharine Maltwood, a well-known artist, sculptor and esotericist, who originally named it ‘Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars’.
The Zodiac can be traced on an ordnance survey map, sculpted in the landscape partly by Nature’s own hand in her rivers and hills, with roads, trackways and field boundaries also delineating the figures. Numerous names, such as Wagg (on the dog’s tail) and Fisher’s Hill on the Pisces figure, mesh together with local legends, spookily conforming to the zodiacal pattern with remarkably coherent examples of synchronicity, adding mystery and intrigue to the scheme. This imaginal landscape seems to speak to us through images and symbols that are deeply woven into the collective psyche, remembered through the twelve ceremonial gateways of the year, gifting us with a sacred landscape temenos of enormous poetic strength.
The Mysteries at the Centre of the Zodiac
There are many mysteries that lie at the centre of the star temple. There is an enigmatic woodland called Park Wood on the edge of Butleigh, protected in legend by a dragon, where Maltwood located the northern constellation of Draco at the centre of the zodiac. Maltwood often spoke of Egyptian mysteries being linked to these lands, and even perceived in the shape of Park Wood the white hedjet crown of Upper Egypt. Also in Butleigh, she identified ‘the enclosure of the Sun’ a triangular pattern, connected to the wing of a dove, which carries a peace message in its mouth. Three rays of light emanate from the enclosure of the Sun triangle, at Butleigh Cross, and these extend westward to bathe the divine child (Gemini figure at Compton Dundon) in light.
A Glastonbury Zodiac Pilgrimage for Peace
I have been leading pilgrimages in the Glastonbury Zodiac for many years, and to mark this occasion of the Grand Sextile alignment on the afternoon of Sunday 3rd August, I have conceived a ‘Pilgrimage for Peace’ from the tail of the Leo figure at Kingweston, through the dove of Libra at Barton St David, concluding at the ‘Enclosure of the Sun’ at Butleigh. It feels appropriate to start the walk from the Leo figure, as the Sun will be in Leo on that day. The tail itself is marked in the land as an equilateral triangle, and we will walk this triangle to begin our journey, and it will stand for one of the grand trine alignments in the chart of the day. We will then walk from there to Barton St David church, which marks one corner of the peace message that the dove carries in its beak. Mary Caine, author of ‘The Glastonbury Zodiac’, modified Maltwood’s original represenation of the dove, and named it as the Libra figure of the Zodiac (see image below). In both representations, the peace message is marked by a square on the map, and we will walk this square before entering the figure of the dove, and walking across one of its wings toward the village of Butleigh.
On the tip of the dove’s wing we will come upon a lovely ancient spring, where we can offer up our prayers for peace, reconciliation and renewal. From there we will approach the second triangular formation, the ‘enclosure of the Sun’, where we find two more springs, and from which emanate the three rays of light, which Maltwood envisaged as a representation of the ‘awen’ in the land. So we shall begin and end our pligrimage by walking two equilateral triangular patterns that are highly symbolically significant in the Glastonbury Zodiac, and which remakably mirror the two grand trine alignments in the sky on 3rd August that form the Grand Sextile configuration!
We will conclude our walk in the late afternoon / early evening at Avalon Permaculture Gardens (which lies on one of the points of the enclosure of the Sun triangle) and will gather for a fire there, and an early evening meal, where we can share insights and inspirations from our pilgrimage.
with love & blessings
John