THE FAERY TRADITION IN ARTHURIAN LEGEND
Talk
by Gareth Knight at 2nd Dion Fortune seminar,
the Assembly Rooms, Glastonbury, 1st September 2007
When we met
last year we talked about Dion Fortune’s early work on Glastonbury – Avalon
of the Heart. A book in which she cast her net wide.
“Two traditions meet in Avalon,” she wrote, “the ancient faith of
the Britons and the creed of Christ.”
And
that is just the bare bones of it. In pursuit of these traditions she brought in
strands that include Merlin, the Graal, Joseph of Arimathea, the old gods upon
the Tor, even the lost continent of Atlantis. Indeed, she went on to say: “one
cannot help being reminded of the super-circus which had three rings all going
on at once, and the poor little boy who became permanently cross-eyed in his
endeavours not to miss anything.”
Well
I do not want anyone to stagger away from here any more cross eyed than they
need. So I propose to concentrate on just one of these rings, the Faery ring if
you like! Or more specifically the Faery element in Arthurian tradition.
I
first became aware of the importance of the Faery element in Arthurian legend
through a script that was produced by Dion Fortune in 1941/2 and elaborated by
her successor Margaret Lumley Brown in the 1950’s. This script was known as The
Arthurian Formula and it formed a focus for the advanced work of the
Fraternity of the Inner Light for more than twenty years.
Something
of its contents I was able to incorporate in The Secret Tradition in
Arthurian Legend in 1983 but I am glad to say that, thanks to Thoth
Publications, The Arthurian Formula itself is now available to all. It is
the final volume in a ten year project of Thoth, the Society of the Inner Light
and myself, to bring unpublished writings of Dion Fortune into the public
domain.
Although
this last one, I have to say, is
likely to be the most challenging to readers. It was never intended for the
general public, but was a document for private study by Dion Fortune’s close
associates. So it is a far cry from the gentle ambiance of Avalon of the
Heart. It plunges straight in to what I might call the Well of Deep Memory.
Not simply to roots in Celtic myth and legend, but further in and further back
– to mythopoeic strata that extend far into pre-history and ultimately to that
ever recurring dream of ancient civilisations and the dawning of human
consciousness.
Dion
Fortune and Margaret Lumley Brown were adept at reaching this level by esoteric
means, although it has also been done in the sphere of creative writing. In this respect the prime example that comes to mind is J.R.R.
Tolkien, whose evocations of Middle Earth, Numenor and the rest under the cloak
of fantasy literature run close to much that occultists have come up with
independently.
There
is also a great deal of Faery lore in Tolkien, not only in The Lord of the
Rings and The Silmarillion but in his monograph On Fairy Stories and
his long short story Smith of Wotton Major. And the reason why he, above
all fantasy writers, hit these deep levels was, in my view, because he was
passionately committed to recreate a lost mythology. And furthermore, as a
philologist, he went to it in the deepest possible way,
through the avenue of language itself. That is to say he invented an
Elvish language and orthography, after which an Elven mythology almost began to
write itself.
So
we are dealing with deep, deep matters here. In some respects it is like an
archaeological dig through layers of group consciousness. At a site moreover
that is not neatly stratified, but has been dug over, plundered, and generally
messed about with just like any physical archaeological site might be.
And
just as archaeologists may be hard put to
interpret the significance of what they find, so we can have the same problem in
the legendary field.
Let
us take the case of Merlin. According to the legends that have come down to us
he was conceived in a somewhat unusual manner, having a virgin mother and no
discernible father. The Arthurian Formula suggests that he may thus have
been a Theosophical Manu of some kind, his conception having taken place perhaps
between an Atlantean temple priestess and a powerful Fire Elemental or even an
angelic Lord of Flame.
On
the other hand, the pious Robert de Boron writing in the early 13th
century could not countenance the apparently blasphemous thought of what
appeared to be a virgin birth, even if conceived in the womb of a nun. Thus the
Otherworldly father had to be cast in the role of an incubus demon, sent by the
Devil – whose nefarious plans however were thwarted by the innocent virtue of
the pregnant holy maiden under direction of her confessor. Thus the youthful
Merlin was diverted from being a false prophet and confirmed his holy
credentials by upstaging the magicians of the usurper Vortigern.
The
point I wish to make is, that there is not likely to be any “one and only true”
interpretation for various events in the panorama of Arthurian legends. We each
of us bring to them our own stock of preconceptions. And who is to say which of
us is right?
Indeed
it is possible for different interpretations, even apparently contradictory
ones, to be correct at their own level. There are different levels of meaning,
and they make their presence felt in different human generations. And for
whatever reason, it is the Faery element in Arthurian tradition that seems to be
coming to the fore these days.
In
Dion Fortune’s contribution to The Arthurian Formula King Arthur
himself is reckoned to have had close relationships with Faery women. And this
goes beyond receiving the sword Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, even though
a directly Freudian take on this symbolism might see it as some kind of sexual
initiation, to say nothing of Morgan le Fay`s later high jinks with the
scabbard.
And
there is certainly a dalliance with one of his half-sisters, either Morgan or
Morgawse according to which line of tradition one chooses to take. The
Arthurian Formula favours Morgan in this respect, who has strong faery
connections. She was, after all, known as “le Fay” and was married to Uriens
of Gore, reckoned by some to be a faery king. Indeed the faery connection
extends to her son Yvain, or Owein, who eventually met his faery bride at a
magic fountain and after various adventures became king over her faery lands.
Anyhow,
by whichever sister, Arthur incestuously fathered Mordred, which eventually
brought about his own downfall and that of his kingdom and of the Round Table
fellowship. Thus, according to The Arthurian Formula, confounding Merlin’s
original great and cunning plan to found a dynasty of priest kings and queens in
Logres, somewhat after the Ancient Egyptian fashion.
According
to this account, Merlin looked upon the selective breeding of humans much as
humans today look upon the selective breeding of cattle, dogs or horses. And the
New Age he envisaged must be realised as being quite an old age by now, even if
it had come to pass. Although I suppose the concept of constitutional monarchy
is a latter day survival of its assumptions.
Thus
Merlin arranged the birth of Arthur from the mating of Uther Pendragon, the
current ancient British ruler of the land, and Ygraine of Tintagel, living in
the far south west, who, The Arthurian Formula suggests, was of the blood
line of the old Atlantean priest kings. Their child Arthur would then be wed to
Guenevere, the daughter of King Leodegrance of Cameliard, keeper of the Round
Table, bringing with her the Round Table as her dowry.
There
is a certain star lore and magic at work behind much of this. Leodegrance, the
Great Lion, suggesting the constellation Leo; and Arthur what we now call the
Great Bear, or indeed Arthur’s Wain; the Pendragon the constellation of the
Dragon that coils around the northern celestial pole; with the Round Table as
the surrounding zodiac itself. A life’s work in itself to follow all that up I
suspect!
However,
The Arthurian Formula follows a more human level of interpretation,
suggesting that Arthur and Guenevere’s son and heir would, in the original
scheme of things, have been the Grail winner – in other words, Galahad. Whilst
Galahad in turn, when he became king, would have wed the daughter of Lancelot of
the Lake and the Grail castle maiden, Elaine of Carbonek. Thus establishing a
ruling dynasty with a unique mixture of blood lines. Or, as we might prefer to call it today, inherited genes. With ancient
British, Atlantean, Faery and Grail connections.
If
all this seems to be like the convoluted plot of some kind of cosmic soap opera,
bear in mind that it is a meld of ancient traditions that is being taught here,
in the guise of a dynastic parable.
As
Anna Kingsford, the greatly underrated pioneer of modern western esotericism was
wont to teach, many of the characters to be found in the Bible were intended to
be understood as archetypal or spiritual principles – not historical persons.
Much the same may be applied to aspects of Arthurian legend.
But
to return to the scenario of a dysfunctional royal marriage at Camelot, if
Arthur preferred the company of faery ladies, Guenevere found her consolation in
Lancelot, and as a consequence no royal crown prince Galahad could be born.
Thus
Merlin had to devise a Plan B, and with a typical bit of Merlin type magic.
Although Lancelot remained devoted to the Queen, with a crafty bit of magical
shape shifting, he was induced to have a one night stand with the Grail maiden,
Elaine of Carbonek. The realisation of the experience drove him mad for a while
but by this means the soul of Galahad was able to be born.
But having displaced his intended bride in the very womb of
his mother, he was doomed to a lonely life. And he was brought up, a paragon of
dedicated virginity at the Grail Castle, before turning up at Arthur’s court
to undertake the Grail Quest. Only once he had won the Grail, both he and it
were spirited off to the inner holy land of Sarras,
never to be seen again. And presumably we all still live in the
consequent Waste Land.
But
put this in terms of movements and traditions rather than personalities and we
have a body of doctrine that suggests that a mis-use of relationships between
the human and faery kingdoms aborted the full flowering of both Round Table and
Grail traditions. As a result, a monkish veneer has been grafted onto much of
it, such as the unlikely story of Lancelot and Guenevere repenting of their sins
and ending their days in the religious life, as monk and nun respectively.
But
that is not the whole story, for there are other lines of interpretation we can
follow, particularly with regard to Guenevere.
It
has come to the minds of certain respected academics, such as Professors
Webster, Nitze and Cross to try to account for the number of times that Queen
Guenevere has been abducted – which amounts to no less than fourteen!
Even
allowing for a possible element of duplication this does seem to be excessive!
It has indeed been remarked upon by a number of other
commentators, with the general concensus that it probably derives from a
Celtic version of the Persephone myth. That Guenevere is a representative of the
Spring Maiden who is carried off to the Underworld for six months each year by
the Winter King.
Now
this interpretation may well be valid at one particular level, but there are
elements that suggest it is not the whole story. For one thing, Guenevere does
not appear to fit this goddess archetype terribly well. And so it has been
suggested that a more likely explanation might well be that Queen Guenevere was
not a human queen at all - but a Faery!
Startling
as this premise may sound, once it is accepted much else falls into place. For
example, the usual translation of the name Guenevere as “white shadow” or
“white phantom” does not describe a pale ineffectual human being but a
shining faery. An accurate description of how the white light of the faery world
shines bright and clear through the physical form which she, and others of her
kind, must adopt if they are to exist within the human dimension. A consequence
of the tradition of faery blood being a radiant white as opposed to the more
sluggish human red.
And
why was she fetched from her father’s house to Camelot by Lancelot? Was it
because he was a knight who already had one foot in the faery world through his
fostership by the Lady of the Lake, who had seized him as a child? What is more,
if she were a faery princess, she might well have been already betrothed to a
faery lord. In which case her abductions might well be attempts by the Faery
world to get her back.
Indeed
we can see in all of this a startling parallel with the situation in The
Immortal Hour, based upon the ancient Irish myth that inspired Rutland
Boughton and Fiona McLeod. There it is Etain who is a faery who finds herself a
queen in the human world, married to the human king Eochaid the High King of
Ireland, and who is eventually taken back to Faeryland by her faery husband
Midir.
However,
whilst professional Arthurian scholars may be content to leave things there, as
an academic hypothesis, if this contention is true it raises profound esoteric
issues that reverberate through the whole of Arthurian tradition.
For
if Guenevere is a faery amongst humans, and married to the human King Arthur,
the relationship between human and faery realms lies at the very core of the
Arthurian stories. Their marriage bridges two different worlds of reality in a
way that effects both kingdoms of human and faery. Thus many of the Arthurian
stories can be looked upon as the record of attempts to explore and heal the
relationship between the two races which inhabit the earth, faery and human.
Some
of these issues, and more besides, have been taken up by Wendy Berg, in a book
entitled Red Tree, White Tree, which is in course of production by Thoth
Publications and I recommend you look to out for it. In the meantime you can
find a summary of it as an Appendix to The Arthurian Formula, or
serialised in the latest two issues of The Inner Light Journal. [Spring
and Summer 2007].
Taking
this line of thought a little further it has occurred to me that it may not only
have been Queen Guenevere or the Lady of the Lake or the likes of Morgan le Fay
who are representative of the world of Faery in Arthurian legend. Time and again
we find it is a maiden who lures a knight out onto a quest, often guiding him in
the way, overseeing his various tests, and being quite sharp tongued about it
too on occasion. And as to the nature of these quests, whatever the apparent
reason for them, (rescuing a damsel in distress or whatever), there are common
elements within them that suggest they are adventures into Faeryland. That is to
say, the quest is a form of initiation into Faeryland.
With
this in mind I began a close analysis of the works of the first Arthurian
romancer, Chrétien de Troyes. In long verse romances he covered the stories of
Erec, of Yvain, of Lancelot, and of the Graal, the
last being a double length feature in which Gawain as well as Perceval appears
as a Grail hero.
What
is clearly evident from Chrétien’s romances is that there was amongst the
French aristocracy for whom he wrote, still
a quite widely held belief in Faery. And whilst he prides himself with being
something of a sophisticated 12th century man of the world, a bit
above really believing in such things, nonetheless he and his audience are
fascinated by it all. And so it is all still there, thinly covered by a
naturalistic veneer.
Even
though the stories may be ostensibly concerned with promoting ideals of
chivalrous and courtly behaviour, at a relatively barbarous time when such
virtues were eminently needed, nonetheless the faeries keep popping out of the
woodwork – or out of the green wood that is the Forest of Broceliande.
Let
us take his first Arthurian romance, that of Erec and Enide, which may be more
familiar to some of you as Geraint and Enid in The Mabinogion. There
is a great deal to suggest, although it is never explicitly stated, that Enide
herself is a faery.
She
is the daughter of an hospitable host, an archetypal figure with a beautiful
daughter who is invariably found on the outer margins of Faeryland, and who
often provides the hero with arms or horse for his quest, and in this case with
his daughter Enide. Having been proven the most beautiful woman in the land,
when Erec eventually takes her to Arthur’s court, she is the very essence an
Otherworldly figure – fabulously gorgeous, in clothes of an ancient cut, all
of them white, the faery colour, with a hawk upon her wrist, and riding a
remarkable steed,
And
as Caitlín Matthews has perceptively shown in her work on the Mabinogion version,
in Arthur and the Sovereignty of Britain, Enide is no less than a
surrogate for the Queen herself. But if Guenevere is in fact a Faery, what is
more likely than for her surrogate to be one too?
Yet
all this is just the prologue to the main part of the romance, when Erec, stung
by the accusation that he is so besotted by Enide that he has forgotten how to
fight, drags her off in a series of wild adventures, to prove himself very much
the macho hero.
But
on a closer reading he is by no means the dominating character that one might
think. On the contrary all the initiative comes from her. By a series of
feminine wiles it is she who provokes him into going off into
these adventures, and they are plainly into the Otherworld.
First
off there is a battle at a ford, the usual border between two worlds. Then comes
a meeting up with an hospitable host in the form of a squire who feeds them and
puts them up at an inn. This is followed by the need for Erec to fight off a
lord who fancies Enide for himself, in what seems to me the typical reaction a
faery lord might have in seeing one of his own kind being dragged around
Faeryland by a human adventurer.
Then
follows a testing confrontation with a diminutive but very powerful opponent
Guivret le Petit, who appears to be a king of faery kings and contrives for
their fight to become a draw. There is then the option for Erec to befriend and
stay with the little king or alternatively to return to Arthur’s court, which
is currently encamped in the forest. But he is drawn to an ever deeper
Otherworldly test and adventure, when, after a confrontation with primitive
giants he apparently dies and meets with the Count of Limors, a thinly disguised
figure of Death, whom he overcomes and presumably his own physical mortality.
After
this he is fitted to go on to the supreme test of fighting a faery guardian in
an enchanted garden, and to blow a horn that hangs from an apple tree that
disperses all evil enchantment – to universal joy. Then nothing remains but to
be done but to go cross the sea to Brittany to undergo a double coronation, with
Enide as his queen, to rule jointly over their lands. An epitome of a faery and
human royal alliance.
That
is just the first of Chrétien’s
romances. I could go on, as indeed I intend to do, in the book I am currently
writing, entitled The Faery Gates of Avalon.
However
the stuff is all there for you to read for yourselves, and all you need is to be
alert to what is of otherworldly origin in tales that have been partly
secularised, where they have not been ecclesiasticised, by later writers.
So
bear in mind that in the stories of the Knights of the Round Table, it may well
be the ladies who are at least as important as the knights, of whom they are the
awakeners, the initiators, the testers, the guides, and faery companions.
And
in a strange way this also has a bearing upon the legends of the Grail. The
point being that the Grail hallows, like King Arthur’s sword and its scabbard,
originated in the faery world. Excalibur was a gift to Arthur from the Lady of
the Lake and to her it had to be returned before he could be taken to Avalon in
the faery barge to be cured of his grievous wound. Similarly the Grail hallows
originate in a mysterious castle that is hard to find, that is capable of
appearing and disappearing, upon the other side of a river bordering a lake.
Percival,
whose original Grail was a dish, never did find it in Chrétien’s original
tale. Whilst Gawain’s quest for other hallows, according to Chrétien, led
into obvious faery realms involving a chess board castle, an apparently
malevolent maiden who tests him in diverse ways, a remarkable ferryman who takes
him to an island, and a castle of maidens or female ancestors, ruled by none
other than his maternal grandmother, Ygraine, where further tests await him to
see if he is fit to be their guardian.
All
this is not to gainsay the relevance of the Christianisation of the Grail into a
chalice or a cup of the Last Supper, and its being spirited off to Sarras,
apparently the inner side of the Holy Land, in the Ship of Solomon. For when, in
another body of legend, Joseph of Arimathea comes to Glastonbury, was he
returning the Grail hallows to the place whence they had originated? Indeed what is the significance of his cruets of white and
red? Ostensibly they are from the body of the Saviour. But are they also
emblematic of faery as well as human blood?
And
is there a talismanic connection with the waters that run red and white between
the Tor and Chalice Hill?
Who
knows?
One
does not often come upon an association of the Faery world with the Christian,
although when Dion Fortune and her friends experienced a remarkable contact on
the Tor at Whitsun in 1926, (the one that brought them the Chant of the Elements
that begins: The Wind and the Fire work on the hill -
the Wind and the Fire work on the hill - and so on), it concluded
with a very strangely Christian evocation:
Awaken and
come, awaken and come, awaken and come.
Come from
the depths of your Elemental Being and lighten our darkness.
Come in the
name of the White Christ and the Hosts of the Elements.
Come at our
bidding and serve with us the One Name above all Names,
the Lover
of men and of the Elemental Peoples.
The Great
Name – of JEHOSHUA – JESUS.
He who said
as he descended into the Underworld:
There shall
be no night where my people are –
And the
night shall be as day in the light of the eternal fire –
And there
shall be peace where my people are –
The peace
of the heights above the winds.
And there
shall be purity.
Fire and
Air – Fire and Air –
For Power to serve the Master.
Who
is this White Christ they mention? Is it their vision of the Second Person of
the Trinity at the time of the Incarnation?
I don’t know. But it is enough to stretch the parameters of belief of
orthodox Christian and traditional neo-pagan alike.
And
it gives point to Dion Fortune’s remark that I quoted at the beginning, that “Two
traditions meet in Avalon, the ancient faith of the Britons and the creed of
Christ.”
So
let us also recall what she also said about the little boy and the super-circus.
It is all a very challenging spectacle.
And
if, like a knight of Arthurian legend, you should think about undertaking a
personal quest into this territory beyond the material veil, or seek a Faery to
guide you there, you must be prepared to be tested and surprised, and try to
take in all that you may meet.
Even
at the cost of ending up cross eyed. Whether you end up contemplating the Cross
of the Elemental Kingdoms, or the Cross of Christ. Or that which partakes of
them both, the Cross of Christian Rosencreutz, in a tangle of roses of red and
of white.
Perhaps
however the best way forward is to seek a particular cross roads, that can be
found in vision, where roads from north and south and east and west, not
forgetting the above and below, meet in what has been described as a Well of
Light. And here I can do no better than to refer you to a recent book by
R.J.Stewart of the same name, [The Well of Light, R J Stewart
Books www.rjstewart.net including CD] which
will give you all the directions you need for getting there.
There,
where roses of red and of white may be seen to bloom, is the focus for a way of
healing the wounded relationship between the human race and the planet.
Where faery healing becomes earth healing, as well as a highly transformative
and deeply rewarding personal spiritual path. And it comes about by cultivating
a working relationship with the inner forces of the land or region in which you
live. So what more important to think about than in our meeting today at
Glastonbury?
In all of this I have tried to show you how the Arthurian legends, as
part of what has been called “The Matter of Britain” may play a part. This
depends of course on our reading them aright. Which may well be the case if we
do so in the spirit of a well tested prayer and invocation:
“With
us is the Grace of the Shining Ones in the Mystery of Earth Light. Peace to all
Signs and Shadows, Radiant Light to all Ways of Darkness, and the Living One of
Light, Secret Unknown, Forever.”
©Gareth Knight 2007.