7.Maltwood’s Interpretation of Glastonbury

A The Background: Watson, Ley Lines and the English Network

Maltwood’s interpretation of Glastonbury and its surrounding landscape in terms of Zodiacal cosmography represents another example of the conception of landscape in cosmographic terms which also demonstrates a metaphysical as well as an artistic significance. The cultural background to which Maltwood’s work belongs is represented by the development of a neopagan tradition in Western thought related to the conception of a pattern of alignment, known as ley lines, that links various monuments in the English countryside developed by Alfred Watson and later interpreted as representing, across the centuries, the recognition of terretial patterns of energy by English builders.

Three sites are perceived as central points of this energy matrix:Glastonbury, Stonehenge and Avebury8.

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8 Watkins’ seminal work on the subject is Alfred Watkins The Old Straight Track(London: Sphere Books,1984)first published in 1925.Adrian Ivakhiv, Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona (Bloomington: Indiana UP,2001)explores the neopagan movement from an incisive historical, phenomenological and hermeneutic perspective as well as from the standpoint of an analytical participant