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Around 1920, Katharine Maltwood (1878-1961) gets intrigued by the idea that the story of King Arthur and especially the journeys of his knights might be reflected in the landscape around Glastonbury (ancient Avalon). She gets the inspiration for this idea after reading “The High History of the Holy Graal”. A translation by Sebastian Evans of “Perlesvaus”, also called “Li Hauz Livres du Graal" (The High History of the Holy Grail), an Old French Arthurian romance dating to the first decade of the 13th century. Katharine realises that the landscape on which the story was taken place, was the local landscape of the Somerset levels, much of it around Glastonbury itself. She obtains maps of the region and visits the area to see for herself. Then one day, in a flash of recognition, she observes how the river Cary forms part of the outline of a lion. It is a turning point in the life of Katharine Maltwood. |
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Katharine Maltwood keeps studying maps, and, because a friend hints her that she perhaps is
looking at a zodiac laid out in the landscape, a new adventure starts for Katharine,
which would eventually lead to what is now known as ‘The Glastonbury Zodiac’. In 1935
Katharine publishes anonymously “A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of Stars”,
making the Glastonbury Zodiac known to the world.
The story has always intrigued me, especially after reading the beautiful book “Signs & Secrets of the Glastonbury Zodiac”, written by the members of the so called ‘Maltwood Moot’ and edited by Yuri Leitch. In this book, Leitch makes an interesting observation. Referring to Katharine Maltwood’s “A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of Stars”, he notes how one sentence just stands by itself, like a key to a puzzle, making Leitch remark: “Katharine then delivers her first blatant clue, an enigmatic statement about some local landscape geometry, then she says nothing more about it as if she were deliberately daring the reader to look deeper into the mystery for themselves; she writes: ‘Alfred’s Fort at Athelney and Camelot Castle of South Cadbury are both eleven miles from the Isle of Avalon.’ ‘Alfred’s Fort’ is an affectionate term for Burrowbridge Mump. ‘Camelot Castle’ is the Iron Age hill-fort of South Cadbury, and of course, by ‘Isle of Avalon’ she means Glastonbury Tor.” Yuri calls this triangle ‘Maltwood’s Triangle’ and it is this triangle that caught my attention. I had already noted that the Michael Alignment, uncovered by John Michell, defines ‘squaring the circle’ (based on equal surface areas) in the Somerset landscape with a near 100% accuracy. |
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Since one side of the so called Maltwood’s Triangle, the stretch between Burrowbridge Mump and the Tor in Glastonbury, is part of the Michael Alignment, I felt the strong urge to have a closer look at this triangle. |
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To my surprise (or perhaps not), the angle formed by the line Burrowbridge Mump – Glastonbury Tor and the line Glastonbury Tor – Cadbury is exactly the correct one to define squaring the circle based on equal perimeter and circumference. But there is more. Since the square (and the whole system) is rotated about 10 degrees, we have arrived at a situation where the direction of the winter solstice sunrise (21 December) as seen from the Tor, exactly defines squaring the circle based on equal surface areas. |
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This is truly a striking series of curious coincidences. © Bert Janssen, 2018 In his book 'the Organizing Principle' Bert Janssen elaborates on this situation and many others of comparable quality... |
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Please join me on my and lets investigate!
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