THE MYSTERIES OF AVALON: APPENDIX IV

JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA AND ST. COLLEN OF GLASTONBURY: A CHRISTIANIZATION OF SACRED TREES?

Anyone who has studied the lore associated with Glastonbury knows that the Biblical Joseph of Arimathea and Saint Collen are both placed at this most holy of sites.  Sometimes (erroneously) identified with King Arthur’s Avalon, the isle of “Apple trees”, Glastonbury may well be the most famous sanctuary in all of Britain.

Joseph is best known for his Holy Thorn, and ancient tree said to have its origin in the former’s planted staff.  Saint Collen, whose name means “Hazel (tree)”, is actually from Llangollen in northern Wales, but was for some reason brought into connection with Gwyn son of Nudd, styled the lord of the pagan underworld, whose entrance was upon the Tor.  It is Collen who is said to have banished Gwyn from the Tor by employing holy water.

Why was Collen connected with Glastonbury?  I think the answer to this question is fairly simple and straight-forward.  The Irish counterpart of Gwyn is the famous Fionn mac Cumhail.  We have a story of this hero bathing in a lake and being transformed into an old man.  He is given a drink from a golden cup and restored to his youthful figure by none other than the fairy king Cuilenn or Cullen (“Holly tree”) of the sidh of Slieve Gullion in Co. Armagh.  The teller of the St. Collen tale was certainly drawing on this Irish story when he concocted the Glastonbury Tor episode.

A question which is not so simple or straight-forward has to do with why a hazel (= Collen, substituted for Cuilenn/Cullen) was placed at Glastonbury to begin with, and why the Holy Thorn is also there as a second sacred tree.  My solution to this riddle has to do with the presence at the Tor of an early nemeton or sacred grove, and the substitution of Joseph of Arimathea for an earlier pagan goddess who may have presided over the place.

In French romance, Meleagant of Glastonbury stands in for the Melwas of the Life of St. Gildas.  His father is said to be one Bademagus (and variants), thought to derive from the Baeddan made the father of Melwas in the Welsh ‘Culhwch and Olwen”.  I have before suggested that the actual origin of Bademagus is the Latin Badonicus, i.e. ‘Badon’, the site of a famous Arthurian battle.  Bademagus/Badonicus is, then, a substitute for the Baeddan of the Welsh sources. Baeddan is the diminutive of Welsh baedd, ‘boar”, and means “Little Boar”.  We are reminded that Bademagus is the last person to have heard Merlin speak from within his grave, a possible reflection of Merlin’s association with the pig in the early Welsh poetry.  A legend of the founding of Bath has Bladud follow swine to the hot springs there.

Why is this important?  Because Badon is the British form of the English name Bath, and this last place-name is recorded not only for Bath in Somerset, not far from Glastonbury, but for Buxton in Derbyshire.  Buxton, during the Roman period, was called Aquae Arnemetia, the “Waters of [the goddess who is] next to/across from the sacred grove.”  Bath had its own water goddess, namely Sulis, identified by the Romans with Minerva.

In my opinion, the ‘Arimathea’ epithet of the Biblical Joseph is here merely a clumsy substitute for Ar(n)emetia of the Bath that is Buxton.  If so, this would mean there was a tradition at some point, even if due to a relocation, that Arnemetia maintained a sacred grove at Glastonbury, one which included not only the Holy Thorn but also a hazel wood.  The hazel tree is known to have been quite sacred to the Celtic peoples.  In fact, among the Irish, hazels of wisdom are more than once placed at sacred wells and at the sources of divine rivers.

As Arnemetia was the goddess who also presided over the thermal waters at Buxton, it may not be a coincidence that Glastonbury is noted for its Chalice Well.  This ancient natural spring with its reddish water is linked in story to Joseph and the Holy Grail in which he caught the blood of Christ during the Crucifixion.

It is, therefore, distinctly possible that the Chalice Well originally belonged to Arnemetia and was only later co-opted by the Christian-approved Joseph of Arimathea.