Avalon  derives from a Celtic concept expressed through the Welsh word Afallen meaning apple tree: a universal, mythological theme for a sometime paradisial, inner state. Most people are familiar with the idea of Avalon as the island to which King Arthur was taken to be healed of his wounds after his last battle. But Avalon also encompasses an entire mythos in which lie many other facets of the "Matter of Britain":

   But the Mysteries of Avalon are by no means exclusively "Celtic."

Since prehistoric times, the British folk soul has both borrowed from and informed other mythologies and cultures. The great mystery religions of the ancient Middle East provide but one example of this. The Avalon tradition, as it has developed through the centuries, is a drawing together of many and diverse sacred threads embodied in all the great mystery traditions of the west, from Angelic to Faery, from Arthurian to "Atlantean," from Celtic to ancient Egyptian. 

 Accordingly, our work encompasses both the pagan and Judeo-Christian mysteries, that is, the mysteries of the Great Goddess and the good earth, as well as the Christian ethos and the mythos of the Holy Grail, which in itself also incorporates motifs from mystical Islam. We seek to make this universality clear in both our own practice and in the instruction of our students.

The apparent gathering together of many of those threads in the ancient southwest of England has created a tendency for Avalon to be solely associated with Glastonbury. As the historical focus of the happy collision of so many mystery traditions in one location, Glastonbury certainly enshrines a unique spiritual history. Ancient spirituality has hung in the airs of the place from the early Bronze Age through the Romano-Celtic epoch. This carried through in its fostering of British Christianity and the subsequent pagan-Christian hybrid of the Arthurian and Grail myths.
 

Consequently Glastonbury has become the place where the British folk soul, and the folk souls of more recent nations that sprang from it, have very often felt closest to their spiritual roots. Down the centuries, a succession of priests and priestesses, saints, mystics and teachers, both pagan and Christian, have nurtured those roots and endowed Glastonbury with the title of "the holiest earthe in England."

In the early twentieth century, Glastonbury experienced an influx of people who have since been called Avalonians, among them such celebrated esotericists as Dion Fortune, William Sharp, Wellesley Tudor Pole, and Frederick Bligh Bond. Bond was himself influenced by a medieval Company of Avalon, a group of seemingly discarnate monks from Glastonbury Abbey. Through automatic writing, they revealed to him the esoteric secrets hidden within its archaeology. It is from the work of William Sharp, Bligh Bond, and especially Dion Fortune, that this present Company of Avalon has evolved. Both Mike Harris and Steve Blamires, as initiates of this present lodge, stand in direct esoteric descent from the magical fraternity, The Society of the Inner Light, founded by Dion Fortune at Glastonbury.

Whilst The Company of Avalon attributes due reverence to both Glastonbury and earlier  �Celtic� expression of this concept in the ancient west, it is the timeless, yet currently relevant, understanding of Avalon as an inner state which we seek to mediate, rather than specific times or places in its illustrious history.