The Glastonbury Chance
Jan. 12th, 2020 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootIt's a strange magic: if you are in/around the West Country, you get one chance to move to Glastonbury, and if you take it and stay, you may become amazing... Or you might turn into a right nutter. Or both.
I got my chance many decades ago, and went. I had a couple of very profound spiritual experiences, and other experiences less enlightening. When I first arrived, the buzz was that one of the local hare krishnas had been beheaded by a chum in the temple. This was in the late 70s/early 80s, and Glastonbury was trapped, lost somewhere between a Roger Dean album cover and the Punk revolution. Tofu was being concocted in all sorts of hideous ways at the local vegetarian restaurant. Pagan/goddess artworks were fresh and new. Star Child Incense was already doing very well, and the magic of the hills around was a palpable thing.
But drugs were everywhere, and there was an undercurrent of crazy of course. I didn't stay, leaving Glastonbury to come to Edinburgh for the first time, where there were again, drugs and an undercurrent of crazy. Welcome to 70s Britain!
With hindsight, if I had stayed I could have been very successful in the businesses of the place, but mine was never a business mind. I might have become someone extraordinary, someone earthy but luminous like the poet, but that's unlikely as he has a lot of patience and understanding, qualities I never possessed. No, I think I would have fallen down the rabbit hole of head-banging pseudo-spirituality with added chiffon and cardboard antlers. I almost did anyway.
There's great spiritual truth to be found in such an environment, but you need wisdom to find it, and wisdom is precisely what is lacking from many of these belief systems.
Why this train of thought?
Someone who considers herself a priestess decided to large up her enmity of Adele yesterday, loudly, angrily. She might be justified, I don't know. But the pathos of anyone shouting their fury at a corpse across the internet was just... Well, I wrote about it here last night, and deleted it, because I couldn't pinpoint my feelings accurately. Thing is, it's so weak, so impotent. I realise this because I too have been a loud fool in my time, and you have to go through it to get over it.
But the hothouse atmosphere of the alternative spirituality scene in Glastonbury isn't great for self-awareness or for cooling the maddened.
I don't regret leaving.
I got my chance many decades ago, and went. I had a couple of very profound spiritual experiences, and other experiences less enlightening. When I first arrived, the buzz was that one of the local hare krishnas had been beheaded by a chum in the temple. This was in the late 70s/early 80s, and Glastonbury was trapped, lost somewhere between a Roger Dean album cover and the Punk revolution. Tofu was being concocted in all sorts of hideous ways at the local vegetarian restaurant. Pagan/goddess artworks were fresh and new. Star Child Incense was already doing very well, and the magic of the hills around was a palpable thing.
But drugs were everywhere, and there was an undercurrent of crazy of course. I didn't stay, leaving Glastonbury to come to Edinburgh for the first time, where there were again, drugs and an undercurrent of crazy. Welcome to 70s Britain!
With hindsight, if I had stayed I could have been very successful in the businesses of the place, but mine was never a business mind. I might have become someone extraordinary, someone earthy but luminous like the poet, but that's unlikely as he has a lot of patience and understanding, qualities I never possessed. No, I think I would have fallen down the rabbit hole of head-banging pseudo-spirituality with added chiffon and cardboard antlers. I almost did anyway.
There's great spiritual truth to be found in such an environment, but you need wisdom to find it, and wisdom is precisely what is lacking from many of these belief systems.
Why this train of thought?
Someone who considers herself a priestess decided to large up her enmity of Adele yesterday, loudly, angrily. She might be justified, I don't know. But the pathos of anyone shouting their fury at a corpse across the internet was just... Well, I wrote about it here last night, and deleted it, because I couldn't pinpoint my feelings accurately. Thing is, it's so weak, so impotent. I realise this because I too have been a loud fool in my time, and you have to go through it to get over it.
But the hothouse atmosphere of the alternative spirituality scene in Glastonbury isn't great for self-awareness or for cooling the maddened.
I don't regret leaving.
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Date: 2020-01-14 10:05 am (UTC)Heh. It was a lot of fun! Definitely a different Adele though!
As an aside, if you ever want to check out on the adventures of someone like me but definitely not me in the world of TV Psychics, keep your eye out online for a book called 'Do Not Lick The Phones' by Britney Bronte.
It's reasonable though immature writing - but then BB seems to have been very naive - and it deals with the New Age rather than Old Magics, but as the latter bled into the former, it might make you smile.