Katherine Maltwood

Throughout her childhood, she was reared to be an artist. She matriculated at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London (1896–97). Here, she studied sculpture.

She was fascinated by Buddhism, theosophy, Masonic rituals, Goddess Spirituality, and Egyptian culture.

She married a rich business man, who was said to have invented the Oxo cube, and together they travelled widely. These travels made the objects of her spiritual curiosity accessible and enabled her to understand their esoteric and hidden meanings. All of which inspired her artwork and writing.

In 1917, they purchased a summer house on the Polden hills, on the main road between Glastonbury and Bridgewater, and from then until 1938 they stayed there regularly. The house was an old priory with a curious Gothic tower and from this vantage point Katherine could look out over the countryside towards Glastonbury.

In 1925, she was commissioned to draw a map outlining the adventures of the Knights of King Arthur and the Holy Grail, a subject made popular by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

In 1929, she had a flash of inspiration seeing how her Arthurian map linked in with the land she saw before her around the Glastonbury Tor. She said that she saw the effigies of the zodiac in a huge circle on the fields of Somerset around Glastonbury — the very fields that the tales of King Arthur had transpired upon. She devoted the rest of her life to researching, writing, and publicizing what she termed the “Temple of the Stars.”

Her theory regarding the zodiac was a combination of Sumerian, theosophy, Masonry, Egyptosophy, Early Christianity, and Rosicrucianism.

She moved to Victoria, Canada, in 1938 with her husband because of her disillusionment with the state of Europe.

Patrick Benham includes Katherine as one of his First Avalonians, but she was active 10 years after the others we have mentioned in this paper, and played no part in working with them. Katherine was also different from the others in that her work was based upon non-Christian concepts whist the others were Christian with esoteric overtones.

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