Good morning. I bought a curious book yesterday on a topic which has fascinated me since being a schoolboy at Woodroffe. It is a book about unexplained mysteries (I have many such books in my collection), and within its pages is a curious article about archaeology, spirituality and "heresy" at Glastonbury Abbey.
An architect by the name of Frederick Bond was assigned the task of excavating the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, and in doing so he faced what seemed like an impossible task. Much of the structure and many outbuildings were destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries during the time of King Henry the eighth, coupled with the weathered ruins of time meant that precious few of the structures still remain.
Founded in the fifth century by Saint Patrick before he departed Albion on his mission to convert Ireland to Christianity, the site has long since been associated with the legend of King Arthur (early sixth century). A popular place of pilgrimage, the ruined site had very few clues as to where the precise layout of the structures were.
Frederick Bond was a 43-year old leading expert on Gothic architecture, and his task was time-critical, in identifying the whereabouts of the old wall-sections. Long before the days of satellite archaeology, he would need some assistance from somewhere else, information, to lead him to where he would need to dig. Being an open-minded fellow, Frederick Bond decided to go straight to the horse's mouth for the information he required. An esoteric and mysterious man, Frederick got in touch with John Bartlett, and decided to contact the spirits of the Abbey's ancestors in the form of automatic writing, transmitted to him while in a trance-like state. In November 1907, Bartlett made contact with a disembodied spirit, whom guided his pen through a series of notes and illustrations outlining detailed plans of the Abbey, and putting together the otherwise disparate jigsaw puzzle for the location of the hidden foundations of the Abbey.
The messages from the spirit-world flowed effortlessly from his pen, coming from the spirit of a sixteenth century monk, John Bryant, whom spoke on behalf of the curators of the Abbey, which he described as "The Company of Avalon".
In reviewing the evidence from conventional scientific, literary and archaeological research methods, the spirits plans were at variance with the normal research Frederick had done. Two years later, when the excavation went ahead, Bond had to make a choice: to go with science, or have faith in the spirits of the underworld. He decided to go with the directions given to him, through Bartlett, and his disembodied spiritual instructions from Bryant,
In the first few weeks of archaeological excavation, working to the master plan of the departed monk, Bond's team found the following: wall-sections, towers, doorways and fragments of stained-glass windows, Fearful of the ridicule from his colleagues (fellow archaeologists), and also his Christian paymasters, Bond modestly put amazing finds down to factual research and inspired guesswork.
A decade later, Frederick Bond decided to come clean, and reveal the source of his esoteric archaeology in a book The Gate of Remembrance. Following its publication, Bond's reputation was torn to shreds by other archaeologists and the Church authorities, whom ridiculed him and banned him from ever setting foot on the Abbey grounds again [respectively].
It just goes to show, that if one is open-minded, and uses methods which are not conventional or scientific, both the archaeological community and the Established ecclesiastical authority will heap shame and scorn upon an archaeologist - or at least it did in the early twentieth century. I am unsure if times have changed at all.
Brown, G. (1999) The World's Greatest Mysteries, Octopus Publishing, London, pp.97-99.
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