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The Glastonbury Goddess Temple
In 2001, The Glastonbury Tales chronicled the search by Kathy Jones and a group of Goddess-loving women for a place to establish a permanent Temple to the Goddess in Glastonbury. The film ended with the women celebrating the finding of a suitable site within The Glastonbury Experience off Glastonbury High Street.
The idea of a permanent temple originally developed alongside the Glastonbury Goddess Conference, an annual event since 1996. At the time of the conference, a temporary Goddess Temple would be set up. Then they started to create temporary shrines in borrowed premises in Glastonbury at significant points on the 8-fold calendar generally observed by contemporary Pagans. After a few years of setting up and dismantling such shrines, their aim became to have a place where people could go all year round to honour the Goddess.
The Glastonbury Goddess Temple opened at Imbolc (February 21) 2002, in the premises formerly occupied by the Library of Avalon. Kathy Jones freely admits that actually running a temple fulltime is rather different from and considerably more demanding than erecting the temporary shrines! At present the Goddess Temple relies for funding on the Friends of the Temple, who make an annual donation in support of the temple, Temple Madrons who give monthly standing orders donations, and individuals who might make one-off donations when visiting the temple. There is a rota of Temple Melissas, volunteers who are in attendance when it is open, to look after the space, perform ceremonies, talk to visitors, etc. In the summer they try to keep the temple open 4 days a week (Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday) for prayer, ceremony, mediation and worship, and for 3-4 days around the time of every festival (such as Imbloc, Beltane, Lammas and Samhain, etc.) the temple is open and ceremonies are performed. The temple is particularly busy at the time of the Goddess Conference, when ‘Goddess-loving women and men from all over the world come together’. At other times the temple tends to be open 2 days a week (although they would like it to be more) and in autumn 2003 a series of talks on different Goddesses was held one evening each month.
On 18th June in the summer of 2003, the Goddess Temple in Glastonbury became the first Goddess Temple to be officially registered as a Place of Worship in Britain. In addition to the financial benefits of no longer having to pay business rates on the premises, it will be also possible to hold weddings there (with a Registrar in attendance). Kathy believes that having an officially registered ‘British indigenous Goddess Temple’ is immensely significant, and she hopes that others will be inspired by the Glastonbury Goddess Temple to start their own temples throughout the UK. Ultimately, the aim is to have a purpose built Goddess Temple in the landscape of Glastonbury.
Kathy really enjoys being in the temple, and ‘seeing the effect on people of coming into the presence of the Goddess’. Keeping the temple going may be hard work and challenging, but, she claims, ‘It feels great!’.