ALUNA TEMPLE MAGAZINE Edition No3 'INITIATIONS' | Page 19

When I was ten I had a vision there, of a Lady, and an apple light. She told me that
everything would be well, that everything would be wonderful. That it had been wonderful
and it would be again.
And I knew right the way through my body that she was speaking the truth.
I went on to study Arthurian Myth at college, and to weave the stories into my own modern
versions, inspired by my own experiences of growing up in Thatcher’s Britain. For what drew me
to the myth cycle was the activism inherent in the stories. Of the magic being in the power
of changing the status quo into something that served the highest good of all.

That the sacred is all about what we will stand up for, what we will fight for, in our
own way. For we are the stories that we tell about ourselves, and we need to
change the story.
In 2000 I found my way back to Glastonbury and the walls of the narrow mind view, and the small
life lived safely, began to dissolve.

I began a healing journey to embrace the unique body I have chosen for this
lifetime and transformed from an always ill, always injured person terrified of
being disliked into, well, myself.
Into a woman in touch with her body and her emotions.
Even when they hurt. A woman who can stand up for
what she believes in.
Who can speak her truth, even when her voice shakes.
Even when that leads to being shouted at, in the street,
or in front of my child, and not die of shame.
For I have discovered, finally, that I have nothing to be

ashamed about.
ART © Melissa Shemanna

So it is both an initiation of returning to myself, and a returning to life.
And also to stand here, called to be here, in this place, which is at one time both two places and
magical for two reasons. The magic of having been loved by its people. The magic of having been
re-member, re-turned to by waves of people who have come and fallen in love with Avalon. Who
have walked Her track ways and reawakened the Her landscape.
Here there is a map, or a beginning of a map, of how to find our way back. And our way
forward. To rediscover the magic of possibility. Of how to remember, and to see, that we
live in Paradise. Every day.

Because in the end it all comes back to the Land. Comes back to the glorious landscapes,
the hills and valleys, of Glastonbury Avalon. The vibrant, singing Land with its different tastes and
hues that are so close to the everyday here.
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