Disclaimer

It is my pleasure and privilege to share the precious words that are spoken at Chalice Well. I am told that an ‘official version’, will appear published on their website. When that happens I will let you know. Please note that my version is a transcription. Occasionally, words are missed because of background noise. If anyone has questions about the content, then  use the comments box below (this applies to all my material) or contact the speakers via the website above. I would encourage everyone to visit in person and experience the atmosphere for themselves. This advice applies particularly to those who feel marginalised by ‘normal’ society.

‘Chance’ meetings with others

Before launching into the full talk, I should add that at such meetings I have a policy of speaking to anyone and everyone who shows that slightest bit of openness, especially as there is almost 100% certainty that they will be on the same wavelength.

I take a particular interest in those who have attended for the first time. I have been coming here for years now, so it is quite interesting to see how Chalice Well strikes the newcomer.

Here is a summary of one of many such encounters. I’m not going to publish the talk in full, which lasted about 10 minutes.

The conversation started when a lady asked if she could sit next to me; I immediately detected a German accent. I asked if it was her first visit. She said that she’d been in the area for a few days, gone up the Tor, and was going to leave today, Monday, but by chance discovered that this event was going to happen. I said that she found out about it because she deserved to and she would be blessed by it. I said the image of the day would never leave her, and she agreed.

The conversation shifted to personal experiences in Glastonbury, with her describing the beauty of the sunrise, the celebrations, and the contrasting energies of the place—some areas feeling heavy, others lighter, especially around the High Street and crystal shops.

I suggested that the heavy energy was unresolved, not evil, and praised the sense of kindred spirits in the group.

She and her friend were both yoga teachers. She shared that the group had spent the weekend with a teacher visiting sacred places. The group discussed the importance of connecting with rhythms and ancestors.

I commented on the political turmoil in Germany, expressing embarrassment and the need to disconnect sometimes. I admitted it was not much better here in the UK. The conversation turned to travel plans, with her friend who had joined us mentioning a trip to London.

I offered philosophical advice about life, likening personal growth to climbing a hill and emphasising the importance of self-love and surrounding oneself with the right people. We reflected on the nature of friendship, the ease of connecting with those on the same wavelength, and when we develop spiritually, the inevitability of losing some friends while gaining others.

I noted cultural differences in thinking and humour, sharing anecdotes about yoga, relationships, and the political polarization in German society. The discussion ended with reflections on authenticity, the futility of trying to change others, and the value of simply being oneself, as illustrated by the metaphor, “The sun can’t try to shine; she just shines.”

I concluded by sharing their approach to life: telling jokes, writing, and treating everyone as a potential friend, making loneliness impossible.

The meeting closed with goodbyes and appreciation for the wisdom shared. I never got their names.

The meeting itself.

There are two ‘Silent Minute’ sounds every day, midday and three pm but its only at 12:00 on the wheel of the year days that there is a public meditation.  Twenty minutes before the event, a very good crowd had gathered, and I do recommend that people get there early to secure anything that could be described as a seat.

This is a summary of the opening remarks which can take place prior to the formal start when the midday bell rungs. 

Caroline Glazebrook

Welcome, it’s wonderful to have you here. If you have a phone, please switch it off or put it on silent, so we can connect more deeply with the energies around us — the vitality, the robins singing, and, we hope, the bell at midday. If the bell doesn’t sound, I’ll let you know so we can still pause for a minute’s silence.

Silence is especially meaningful at the Equinox, a time of stillness, tranquillity, and going within. Wellesley Tudor Pole often spoke about the importance of silence. One of my favourite things he said was that silence lets us offer our love and heart energy together, in goodwill and unity. He described angelic beings in the celestial realms, showering light and blessings to earth wherever they were needed. We don’t need to direct our energy — we simply offer it in service, in harmony.

That’s why the bell rings here twice a day, at midday and at three o’clock. Each time, it invites us to pause for a moment and reconnect. So when the bell sounds, we’ll share in that silence, and afterwards, we’ll welcome you properly to this gathering and the abundance all around us. Thank you all so much for coming.

Caroline continues after the midday bell:

Thank you, everyone. That was really lovely. And it’s really beautiful, because when I look up at the beautiful oak tree, I see all of you just bathed in sunlight. It’s you all look beautiful and luminous. And that is something that’s a real quality about today, the quality of the light. It really feels so clear, so fresh, so untangled by what has gone before. We had the Eclipse, second of the eclipses yesterday, a sense of what are we letting go of, and what are we welcoming in with this new space?

And so when we gathered this morning to dress the wellhead and receive the abundance that the well is so beautiful at offering. And these rich colours, this sense of beauty everywhere and always nourished by the flowing waters, this sense of continuous flow. And when we gather and celebrate these events like this, like the autumn Equinox, we are really honouring Mother Earth.

We are feeling the flow and the process of nature cycles, the way that something can be created, it can blossom, it can come to fruition and then gently fall away to make space for new, and in this time at the equinox, it’s really lovely just to reflect on what were you seeding six months ago at the Spring Equinox.

What were your dreams?
What were you thinking of creating or experiencing or receiving or sharing?
What have you allowed to mature and experience?
What has blessed you with more wisdom?
What things perhaps, have you actually let go of because you’ve realized that you’ve outgrown them?

When you take that time just to come into this inner stillness and feel where you are, all of the things that you have gained, all of the things that you have gently let go of and received even more. It is a beautiful sense of that harmony,  and Equinox is really about coming into inner harmony, inner stillness and inner peace, particularly in that pause,  particularly because this is the time of the harvest. It’s  the harvest festival, feeling of the abundance of nature, but also being ready for as the wheel turns to go into the quieter months, the inner stillness months of dreaming of being renourished as we move towards Samhain and then Winter Solstice.

So it’s really lovely that you all here. it’s gorgeous weather. We’ve had the robins singing to us all the time, and the colours are gorgeous. And I’d just like to thank Pegs for embodying autumn equinox in this amazing outfit. And thank you for being here. And also thank you Mark for being our tech sound guy. Very much appreciated.

And one thing I do want to share with you as well is that Alice Buckton, who was here before Wellesley Tudor pole, this incredible woman, this powerhouse of making things happen. She was a woman who believed very much in education for women. She also believed in fairness and justice. And she was somebody who began working with  around that time, last century, but working with an organization that only employed women to go and collect rent from really sad women who were disenfranchised and things instead of bullying men, she was very much at that time of ‘let’s make this fair’.

She was also somebody who started five minutes of silence during the time that Parliament was debating whether women should have the right to vote or not, and she got that five minutes going in all of the churches, even Westminster Abbey. So she was, she was really at the forefront of standing up for truth and justice and fairness and love.

So when she came to Chalice Well, she became this prolific playwright, and her plays were performed all over the world, and she wrote lots of poetry and and I would really like to share with you just a few lines from one of them, which was really about how seeing the divine and everything,  feeling the joyfulness of the abundance of nature, because it feels to me that it’s really emblematic of these energies that we are able to connect with here at the well,  “ I see the company of figures sainted for whom the picture of Earth was painted. To them, for canopy, the vault of heaven, the flowery Earth for carpet was given.”

Casey Jon

We welcome autumn equinox, when the Sun moves into Libra, the scales, the sign of balance, unity, peace and justice. Libra is ruled by the element of air, the very air that we breathe, that gives us our voice. At this time of transition, let us be reminded of the way we use our own voice. Do we use it to bless and bring beauty, to support justice and fairness. Do we have the courage to speak from our hearts? This still point of Equinox offers us the space to listen to our own inner voice and to choose how we will use our outer voice. Libra asks what our relationship is with our voice. Do we speak our truth, or do we hide ourselves?

Do we speak for those who are oppressed, or do we speak to freedom? The choice is ours. As we enter the beginning of these beautiful, deeper months, the waters of the land are beginning to cool. They have moved through the heat and the warmth of summer and the rains are becoming more frequent, and the waters more abundant in their flowing. Nature is finding her balance. May we also echo her balance and listen to our heart’s voice, letting this lead us onwards. And blessings on these beautiful, sacred waters.

Marion Brigantia

Thank you, Casey, that’s very beautiful, and also really ties in with what I was going to offer.

So in the Wheel of the Year, this is the autumn equinox. And we talk a lot about the seasonal part of this, but there’s also an archetypical part of this. And in the archetypical part, this is the season of the Queen or the sovereign. And I’ve been offering through the year thoughts about peace and with the sovereign, with the inner sovereign it’s really about the responsibility and the accountability of your actions and your words and to not just talk about things, but actually walk your talk.

And so I’ve been wondering about what to share this time, about practical peace. How do we how do we choose peace? And I came to a favorite of mine, Marshall Rosenberg, who is from  finance and communication. You might know him, and he wrote this poem. And I thought, this is very much what I would like to share. It’s like, how do you step in your sovereignty and choose and take responsibility for bringing peace into the world?

So I’d like to share an excerpt from the poem ‘From now on‘, from Marshall Rosenberg,

From now on, I choose to believe that the failure of our needs to be fulfilled results from insufficient dialogue and Creativity, rather than from scarcity.

From now on, I choose to openly reveal what is alive within me, even though others might not appreciate that gift.

From now on, I choose to empathetically connect with others so I can fully respect the unique and holy experience to be found in each person every moment.

From now on, I choose to dream my own dreams so that I can fully taste the mystical excitement of being human.

From now on, I choose to have my actions flow from the connection with nature, and to direct my attention where it supports this flow.

So in this season, maybe just feel in where you choose, choose your actions, in your words, to support the flow the love and the peace.

Sophie Knock

Thank you, Marion, that’s so inspiring and profound. And of course, Chalice Well is a World Peace Garden, and the peace pole was planted here nearly 20 years ago, so we were celebrating World Peace Day here yesterday. 

So, it’s Autumn Equinox, it’s Mabon, it’s Harvest Festival. (the holiday is a modern pagan festival of the Autumn Equinox, named after Mabon ap Modron, a figure from Welsh mythology representing youth and promise – Ed. comment)  It’s that time when our ancestors would gather and prepare food to see us through for the winter, when the hedgerows are full of all the berries and the nuts and the mushrooms in the fields. Here at Chalice Well,  we’ve had a bumper, bumper year in terms of apples. So it’s been a really abundant, wonderful year. It’s also the time not just for foods, but for medicine. So our ancestors as well as us will be, you know, looking to fill the pantry with the pickles and everything, but also the medicine cupboards as well.

Many of those berries, of course, are seeds too. So it’s also thinking about what we want to nurture within us. And it’s that time of year when the leaves are falling from the trees. So we’re just loving that colour, the sunshine, we are just absorbing it the extra vitamins. But just as the trees are are letting go of their leaves, we’re also thinking inside us, what we can let go of, what we can prune back to come into balance. We’re thinking about our roots and what we need to focus on to stabilize through these next few months.

The Anglo Saxons called it Hāliġmōnaþ, holy month, and at the end of the week now it’s Michaelmas and we’ve got a golden rose, here on the well dressing. This is when we made our Golden Rose essence, which is very much about protection and upliftment. But here in Glastonbury, we would have had the Tor Fair at this time, the goose fair, when all the geese would have been driven here, and there would have been feasts of goose to start us off in being seen through the winter. 

And of course, it’s also the time when Persephone went back into the underworld to be with her husband, Hades, for six months, and her mother, Demeter, went into mourning as the days start to get darker.

Wellesley Tudor Pole 1884-1968

So just before we go into our meditation for a few minutes of silence, I’d just like to read from the pamphlet God is Love, written by Wellesley Tudor Pole, who founded the Chalice Well Trust in the last year of his life.

“The more love we reflect and share with one another, the greater will be the supply available to us: a supply that is infinite, boundless, never failing and eternal. When the truth of this realisation is recognised and utilised we shall be on the first lap of the road leading to the arrival of “Heaven on Earth”.

So with all this beauty and abundance around us, I invite us to take a few minutes of silence and reflection and think about our lives and coming into balance. 

Alison Scobie gonged us out in grand style. After the silence, the ceremonies continued as follows: 

Thank you, Alison, that was a beautiful silence, everybody, thank you, and it feels so potent to all be gathered together at these times in the Wheel of the Year, just as our ancestors would have done, and to be gathered at a well like this, which is like a portal between the worlds, a holy well. 

So we’ve got some waters here, and it’s traditional for us to send our love and our light into these waters. We’re going to pour them into the well, but really for the healing of the waters of the land. From here they go through the streams, the rivers, into the oceans all around the world.

And at this time of Peace and balance, it’s just such a potent time to send our blessings for peace, for unity consciousness out into the waters, but also for the healing of the waters of the land, just for that raising of our consciousness and our gratitude, just for the beauty and the abundance that we have, and our love for our community, for everybody showing up and doing this work together, it is so powerful. So let’s do three Aums. Shall we pour the waters in and then we’ll do three Aums to send it out into the world with all of our blessings. 

That was so beautiful, so a very Happy Equinox to you all from this place, the heart center, the heart chakra, super potent, what we all do together here, lots of love and Equinox blessing to you happy Equinox!