priestess of avalon traditionOn my spiritual path I am training and working within the Avalonian tradition as founded by Kathy Jones.

Now, maybe it’s not a tradition that you’ve come across before, so I thought I would share a little about this tradition that I love so much.

The Goddess.

mother goddess chalice well avalonOur tradition is soley focused on Goddess. That is, we worship and work with the Divine Feminine in her expressions in the landscape. We don’t work with the Divine Masculine very often in this tradition – it’s just not what we are focused on – but if practitioners of the tradition want to work with the Divine masculine as well as their Avalonian Goddess stuff that is totally cool and encouraged.

We worship and work with Goddesses of the land of Avalon – that is, Britain – and goddesses associated with the Avalonian myths. So we work with British, Welsh, Celtic and Irish goddesses mainly.

Our Goddess is seen as a Quadruple Goddess – Maiden, Lover, Mother and Crone – and as an Elemental Goddess – Earth, Fire, Water and Air.

Our Wheel of the Year.

Our wheel of the year covers the 8 pagan festivals, like most pagan peeps, and features a place for each goddess archetype. It’s a little different than the usual:

Samhain – Crone – Northwest

Winter Solstice – Air – North

Imbolg – Maiden – Northeast

Spring Equinox – Fire – East

Beltaine – Lover – Southeast

Summer Solstice – Water – South

Lammas – Mother – Southwest

Autumn Equinox – Earth – West

And in the centre of the wheel, present in every station and at the heart of everything we do, is the Great Goddess, the Lady of Avalon. We call her Nolava, and she is the goddess of Divine Love, Magic, Mystery and Transformation. She’s the goddess of everything really, but she’s big on the divine love and the mysticism.

Our wheel of the year really is the basis of our tradition – it’s our home, our centre, our way of experiencing the Goddess in the world around us. It’s really based in our experience of climate and the land here in the UK, so the Goddesses reflect the seasons we have here.

In the Priestess of Avalon tradition, we work with the main Goddesses of the wheel in these directions, and it’s cool to do this no matter in the world you live. However, when the Avalonian tradition is taken overseas, often new Wheels of the Goddess are created in this tradition to honour the Goddesses of the country the people live in – Sweeden, Holland, Czech Republic – so the wheel is made relevant to and integrated with the landscape in which the practitioners live.

There are “set” goddesses associated with each season of the wheel – Bridget in Imbolg and Rhiannon at Beltaine, for example – but this doesn’t mean that we only acknowledge just the one face of these multifaceted goddesses, and never work with them in any other place or season. It just means we love them and wanted to make sure we honoured them in our tradition, and always included them in our travel around the wheel and whenever we call it in in ceremony.

Avalon

Our tradition is inspired by the myth of Avalon. It sees Glastonbury in Somerset, England, as a particular place where the energies of Avalon and of the Goddess are super strong and easily felt.

The tradition grew out of the Founder, Kathy Jones’ experiences living and connecting with the Goddess in Glastonbury Avalon, and is strongly rooted in the landscape and vibes of Glastonbury. This is why Glastonbury is the physical hub for this tradition.

However, Avalon is also an energetic place and frequency, that you can connect to from anywhere all over the world, so to follow the tradition you do not have to live in Glastonbury, or even in England.

Our Practice

The Avalonian tradition is an incredibly devotional path. It’s a Goddess Spirituality path, rather than a Pagan Path or a Witchcraft Path, and so it is different and the people in it are different.

The emphasis is on recognising, loving, working with and celebrating Goddess in our lives. We are quite simply Divine Junkies, and in this tradition we want a connection with Goddess, and that is what we look for in everything we do. We live our lives with Goddess by our sides.

The tradition is not a spell-casting tradition, though if practitioners want to cast spells and stuff that is OK. We are big on prayer and surrender to Goddess here.

We just LOVE Goddess. A LOT.

Creativity and Inclusivity

This is a path that is open to people of all genders and all walks of life. The Goddess is for everyone.

One of the most amazing things about this tradition is that it really emphasises the personal creativity of people within it. It doesn’t have a lot of set stuff (we have our Goddess and our Wheel of the Year),  and generally the tradition is really against creating dogmatic rituals and specific ways of doing stuff. If something gets stagnant, it changes.

The Goddess is in constant cycle and motion and so is our worship of her. Peeps are encouraged to be creative and celebrate and connect with the goddess in all sorts of ways.