This May Be the Most Magical Tour in Southern England-and It Takes You Back to the Days of King Arthur

"Standing in the middle of an open meadow fringed by unbothered sheep, Tor Webster bid us to form a circle and close our eyes. "I'm gonna do a little Glastonbury ceremony-nothing wacky, nothing weird," the mystic and guide behind Tor's Tours explained. "Well, my level of wacky and weird is probably beyond your level of wacky and weird.""

"That's par for the course for residents of Glastonbury, a town in the southern English county of Somerset and a magnet for spiritualists, witches, mediums, healers, and occult scholars from around the world. (Unless you run in those circles, you probably know it from its famous summer music festival.) The mystical gravitas of this place allegedly comes from the ley lines of ancient energy that converge at the Tor, the 520-foot-high, tower-crowned hill at the foot of which our prayer circle was standing."

"but I hadn't come all the way here-across the ocean and two hours south of London, passing Stonehenge on the way-to shop for spiritual enlightenment. The only purchasing I'd planned was chocolate-amaretti panettones, fir-scented candles, and other fancy Christmas gifts from the impeccably curated farm shop at the Newt, the luxurious country resort from Karen Roos and Koos Bekker, the owners of South Africa's legendary Babylonstoren."

Tor Webster led a prayer circle in a meadow near the Tor, asking participants to close their eyes and calling it a Glastonbury ceremony. Glastonbury attracts spiritualists, witches, mediums, healers, and occult scholars attracted to reputed ley lines converging at the Tor, a 520-foot, tower-crowned hill described as a vortex balancing heaven and earth. Webster called the area a "supernatural supermarket." The Newt, a 2,800-acre luxury country resort with a 17th-century Hapsden House and Royal Horticultural Society-approved gardens, opened in 2019 and has become a tourism driver for Somerset, offering hedge mazes, a cider cellar, and curated farm-shop goods.

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