Earth and Water Gates of Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars.

In Chapter II, THE EARTH SIGN, VIRGO, of ‘A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars’, Katherine Maltwood has the following to say in regards to Earth and Water Gates of ‘the Temple’.

Gates On the Sun’s Path

“Bab Cary is (though she later changed this to ‘may be’) the Virgin’s Gate on the Fosse Way. As gates play an important part in traditions of the Temple, three land gates, and three water gates, that lie within a radius of three and a half miles from the centre at Butleigh, are here suggested.

The early British road along the hills of Mendip, that crosses the Fosse Way at Beacon Hill, sends a branch road to West Pennard, there to enter the earth sign Capricornus; this constellation was called ‘The Gate of the Gods.’

Westwards, the third land entrance would have been by the Polden Hills, on the road along Walton Hill to Taurus.

The Scorpion water gate on the river Brue was called Lydford, it was the gate of death next to the gate of life in Virgo.

The second water gate lower down the Brue was the most famous, it was by Pomparles Bridge at the entrance to King Fisherman’s Castle, in Pisces.

The third was on the Cary river called Somerton Gate.

But perhaps the original entrance to the Kingdom of Logres was by the River Parrett, where the effigy of the great Dog guards the junction with the old course of the Cary. Large ships could navigate the entire outline of the under part of this ‘shining hound,‘ swept along on the flood of the tidal bore. “Messire Gawain seeth the entrance of the gateway foul and horrible like as it had been hell.” High History. Branch 2. Title 3.

Bab is the Arab’s word for gate, and it is remarkable that this original place name by the Fosse Way should remain, close to where Virgo’s hand, holding out her bouquet of corn, breaks the typical straightness of that highway; this divergence exactly marks the centre of the month of September in correspondence with the degrees on the modern planisphere.”

– Katherine Emma Maltwood

The Girt Dog of Langport guards the Gates of the Temple and Cancer is the Gates. Note Westerngate and Middlegate Roads on the head of the Cancer effigy. Note also, KEMs Eridanus (River) effigy between the two. Could this be the third/Cancer Water Gate???

The following maps also shows a bit of the Eridanus River looking effigy. Unfortunately the surround O.S. Sheet which would contain the rest of the effigy are nowhere to be found.

KEM’s O.S. Sheets 62 SE & 72 SW showing what appears to be parts of an Eridanus River effigy overlaying the Girt Dog of Langport.