Among the Glastonbury pagans

England is a mystical place, and its epicentre is Glastonbury, known by its pagan residents as Avalon, the mythical island of the Arthurian legend. It has sacred springs, the supposed tomb of King Arthur, the Tor and ruined tower, proximity to Stonehenge and now a thriving, sprawling community of pagans, with dozens of denominations from druid to water-witch.

Once dismissible as mere woo-woo fringe, paganism has become a religious force that demands serious consideration for the simple fact that it is the fastest-growing religion in Britain. In the 2021 Census, 74,000 people in the UK referred to themselves as pagans, up from 57,000 in 2011, with a further 13,000 people calling themselves Wicca. But this is a fraction of the full number, since pagans aren’t the types who have much truck with government form-filling. They do, however, embrace social media, where ritualistic accounts can command millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram. 

To explore the weirdness of Britain’s new religious landscape in the run-up to the major pagan festival of Halloween (Samhain) I went to Somerset, to feel the rub of the the contemporary shamanic heartlands of Glastonbury against the thousand-year-old centre of Christianity in Wells, just seven miles apart.