Glastonbury Zodiac Milky Way Pilgrimage

19-21 Sept 2025

Led by Astrologer & Pilgrim Guide John Wadsworth

Fee for Event: £295.00

Deposit (non-refundable): £95.00

This is a unique two-day pilgrimage following the Milky Way path across the Glastonbury Zodiac.  This pilgrimage route, which runs from Lamyatt Beacon (near Bruton) to High Ham (near Langport) follows the Milky Way path as it maps from the night sky onto the landscape of the Glastonbury Zodiac. Originally discovered by Anthony Thorley & Celia Gunn, this annual pilgrimage has been led by John Wadsworth since 2014.

The pilgrimage involves two days of walking, and we will have a 2-night camp set up at Avalon Permaculture Gardens in Butleigh, gathering there on Fri 19th September, where we will prepare ourselves for the walk and share delicious food together before taking transport to the start of the walk on Saturday morning.  Our camp is at the halfway point of the route, so we will arrive early evening on Saturday to be met with dinner and will share stories around the campfire!

"John's wisdom and poetic mastery is such a gift to witness and experience. He is impeccable with his gifts, connected to the entire group, and shows up with his full heart. Walking the zodiac through the landscape is one of the most sacred gifts - to feel and receive the land speaking celestial truths is quite profound.  Everyone walks away with a greater connection to self, Gaia, and the Cosmos." (Ameya Cohen)

Places are limited, and there is already a lot of interest, so if you would like to take part in this very unique and transformational journey on the Milky Way path of Somerset's enchanted zodiac landscape temple of the stars, please sign up here with a deposit payment.

What is Included

The full price of £295 includes the camping, taxi transport, all meals (dinner on Friday & Saturday evening, breakfast & lunches on Saturday & Sunday) & walk maps.

If you don’t want to camp, and would like to book accommodation, either at the venue itself, or at The Gatehouse, a nearby B&B, there are a few options available for a supplementary fee. All prices quoted are for two nights.

At The Venue (Avalon Permaculture Gardens, Butleigh):

• The Stable Bedroom: £70 single /£60 (per person) shared

• The Cabin: £76 single /£64 (per person) shared

• The Yurt: £80 single /£70 (per person) shared

You should bring your own bedding if you are taking one of these options, or you can choose to pay a further supplement of £12 cleaning fee.

At The Gatehouse B&B, Butleigh

• Single Room: £60

• Double Room (single occupancy): £100

• Double room (shared): £80 (per person)

These prices are inclusive of both nights.

Please let me know as soon as possible if you would like to reserve one of these.

Schedule for the Event

Venue Address: Avalon Permaculture Gardens, Barton Rd, Butleigh BA6 8TL

Arrival on Fri. 19th Sept: 4pm - 5.30pm (leave time to set up your tent if you are camping)

Programme:

Fri 19th Sept
6.00pm: Introductory talk on the Glastonbury Zodiac & Milky Way Route
7.30pm: Dinner
8.30pm: Sharing circle & intention setting around the campfire

Sat 7th Sept:
7.00am - 8.00am Breakfast
8.30am: Taxi transport to Lamyatt Beacon (for the start of the walk)
9.00am - 6.00pm: Day 1 of the Pilgrimage. Walk from Lamyatt Beacon to Avalon Permaculture Gardens, Butleigh
7.00pm: Dinner
8.00pm: Sharing circle & stories around the campfire

Sun 8th Sept
7.00am - 8.00am Breakfast
8.30am: Set out for day 2 of the pilgrimage. Butleigh to High Ham
5.30pm: Arrive at High Ham and take taxi transport back to Avalon Permaculture Gardens, Butleigh

Things to Bring:
- tent & bedding
- good walking shoes or boots
- waterproof clothing - a rain poncho is strongly recommended
- a small daypack to carry your lunch & water for the day
- walking poles or a stick (recommended)
- a notebook

There is parking at the venue. And there is space if you have a campervan, but please let me know so we can reserve that space for you.

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What is the Glastonbury Zodiac?

Glastonbury is a place of magic and mystery, where myth and history intertwine.  With its claim to be the ancient Isle of Avalon, the founding seat of Christianity and the heart chakra of the world, with its sacred springs, Grail legends and crossing leylines, Glastonbury is no ordinary place!  And since the 1920s, it has also been home to the landscape star temple, known to us as the Glastonbury Zodiac.  This extraordinary artefact of visionary geography comprises twelve zodiacal effigies spread majestically around an eleven mile circle in the Somerset countryside, 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.  

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. Was this zodiac somehow designed by astrologers and magicians of old?  Or is it, more likely, an example of the landscape speaking to us through images and symbols that are deeply woven into the collective psyche and remembered through the twelve ceremonial gateways of the year. However we may interpret it, we are indebted to the extraordinary imagination and esoteric insight of the Zodiac’s founder, Katharine Maltwood, (herself a renowned artist and sculptor) who has gifted us a temenos of enormous poetic strength.    

Katharine Maltwood considered her zodiac to be a representation of King Arthur’s own round table, “meant to signify the round world and round canopy of the planets and the elements in the firmament”, and it was through her quest to find evidence of the Grail legend in the landscape that she stumbled across the Zodiac in the first place.  Her “Temple of the Stars”, as she called it, maps the constellations of the ecliptic onto the ground in a way that they correlate with the actual star constellations.  The way I see it, the Glastonbury Zodiac offers a theatre of creative possibilities capable of activating deep memories.  It reminds us of how the soul is embodied in a more-than human world, our destiny is tied to the land, the seasons, and the patterns of stars that are mirrored in the heavens.  

Over the hundred years or so since its discovery, an eclectic form of mystery school adherents have been drawn to the Zodiac, and it was my own fascination with it that drew me here, as an astrologer, in 2008. With my friend and colleague, Anthony Thorley, I founded The Alchemical Journey, a twelve month programme which involved a monthly pilgrimage into the each of the twelve figures of the zodiac, walking the paths of each sign in their appropriate season, whilst in deep reflection on their astrological and mythological significance. So many people over the years have described how their experience of this has enabled them to heal or transform a particular aspect of their lives. 

(John Wadsworth)