Astrological Pilgrimage in the Glastonbury Zodiac
Walking the Landscape Temple of the Stars
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.
For many years, I have been guiding groups into this sacred temenos, inviting them into an experience of astrology as pilgrimage, being part of the enchantment of the landscape.
I offer two-day journeys through the twelve figures of the Glastonbury Zodiac, as well as an annual Milky Way pilgrimage that follows a particular pathway across the Temple of the Stars.
What is The Glastonbury Zodiac?
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, and how our destiny is tied to the land, the seasons, and the patterns of stars that are mirrored in the heavens.
How the landscape drew me here
Over the hundred years or so since its discovery, an eclectic group 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, as I found myself increasingly captivated by the idea of a living zodiac inscribed upon the earth.
While still living in Bristol, I had already conceived and begun The Alchemical Journey, a twelve-month voyage of imaginative self-discovery through the signs of the zodiac. And it was during 2007 that I invited my friend Anthony Thorley to present his research into the Glastonbury Zodiac. Anthony had spent many years exploring the Zodiac, and it was through him that I was properly introduced to its mysteries. He became my mentor in this work, sharing his profound knowledge of the landscape figures, their mythology and their pathways.
In the second year of The Alchemical Journey, Anthony and I joined forces, bringing the Glastonbury Zodiac into the heart of the experience. Thereafter, our year-long journeys around the zodiac included monthly pilgrimages into the landscape, entering each figure in its appropriate season and exploring the relationship between the astrological symbolism of the sign and the living world around us.
The journey itself was an invitation to engage with the zodiac as a turning wheel of life, a twelve-part story of emergence, growth, relationship, grief and loss, renewal and return. Through mythology, alchemical imagery, music and movement, storytelling and ritual, we explored the twelve archetypal perspectives of the zodiac, before taking ourselves into the landscape to encounter them on their own ground.
Over the years, this work has deepened my understanding of the Zodiac as a memory theatre of soul, a sacred landscape in which the archetypal images of astrology can become intimately connected with our own stories and experiences.
It also helped to shape the direction of my book Your Zodiac Soul, in which I describe the signs as twelve gateways to wholeness, each offering its own particular medicine. This approach continues to inform the pilgrimages I lead today.
“"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 CohenEntering the Living Zodiac
What truly compels me is the aliveness of astrological images: their ability to surprise us in the moment and reveal a level of meaning we hadn't previously considered. Meeting a lion, a ram or a pair of fish on their own ground.
Before entering the Zodiac, we spend some time preparing our imagination through entering into its myths and symbols, its gifts and shadow qualities, so that we have something to take with us as we walk. We learn to listen, to notice, and to leave room for the unexpected.
Aries brings us into the springtime urgency of beginning; Taurus invites us to inhabit the sensual world of the body; Gemini quickens the air with movement, language and exchange. Later in the wheel, Scorpio draws us into the darkening season, where fallen leaves return to the soil and the mysteries of loss and renewal make themselves felt. Each landscape carries its own mood, its own stories, its own way of awakening the imagination.
On my two-day Glastonbury Zodiac journeys, we visit all twelve figures, stopping at carefully chosen places of significance within each one. Some involve short walks, others a longer stretch along green lanes and charming footpaths. We take time in each place to pause and reflect.
I also draw on the practices in Your Zodiac Soul. We work with the birth chart placements of the people present, and a different mantra is offered for each planetary position that someone carries in their chart. You need not have studied astrology to take part. The pilgrimage is very accessible, and you will recognise the astrological themes through your own life experience, through the responses in your body, in your senses and your sensitivity to the seasons of life.
The Milky Way Pilgrimage
Alongside my journeys through the twelve signs, I lead an annual two-day pilgrimage following the Glastonbury Zodiac's Milky Way trail. This route was identified in 2000 by Anthony Thorley and Celia Gunn, who intuited a pathway through the landscape across the zodiac circle, mirroring the Milky Way as it crosses the belt of zodiac constellations in the heavens.
Beginning at Lamyatt Beacon near Bruton and ending at High Ham near Langport, it takes us roughly twenty-six miles across the Somerset countryside. Along the route are seven churches or sacred sites which we honour in relation to the seven traditional planets, making simple offerings or ceremonies as we journey.
The Milky Way has long been imagined as a pathway of souls, a river of stars between worlds. It has a meaningful correspondence with the Camino de Santiago, sometimes called the Via Lactea. In 2012, I walked the long route from the French Pyrenees to Santiago in north-west Spain. That journey changed my life, reawakening the poetry in my soul and anchoring me more fully in my heart.
I have now led the Glastonbury Milky Way journey for more than a decade, and each year it discloses something new. This pilgrimage has its own rhythm: two or three days of sustained walking along one sacred pathway.
Join the Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage begins when we set out with intention. Perhaps you are standing at a threshold in your life, seeking clarity about a choice, finding your way through grief, or simply longing to renew your relationship with the living earth. Perhaps it is enough to let the land work upon your imagination.
I welcome enquiries from groups wishing to arrange a private two-day Glastonbury Zodiac pilgrimage, and I also invite individual pilgrims to join my annual Milky Way walk when places are offered. The practical shape of each journey — including the walking involved — can be discussed in advance.
Above all, I invite you to come with curiosity, an open heart and a willingness to be surprised. What might the landscape have to say to you? And what prayer or intention would you bring to the path?
To enquire about a private group pilgrimage or the next Milky Way journey, please get in touch.
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