Journeying With Arthur
The initiate is one who can perceive this parallel world,
more real than our own, where “stones are sapphires and sand is gold dust,” but which lives invisibly for the profane, swallowed up in matter. Only the initiate can say
“Et in Arcadia ego—I live in Arcadia.”
…
Gerard de Sade, Le Secret des Cathars (trans. CM)
Answering the Call of Arthur
I first fell in love with Arthurian mythology when I read T. H. White’s incomparable Once and Future King (1952) at age fifteen. When I finished the book, I went straight to my local library and discovered they had a whole section devoted to Arthur. I read everything they had in stock and then ordered the books that called to me from the bibliographies within those. But as my knowledge and understanding of the material grew, I began to see that there was something more than history or myth at the heart of these stories. In that same year I began what became a second lifetime study into the esoteric and occult. I joined a secretive group who traced their origins to the Middle Ages and beyond, who taught me how to see with my inner eyes, and I began to read everything from Robert Graves’s White Goddess to A. E. Waite’s books about magic. And everywhere I looked, I found Arthur and the Grail.
It took a few more years of reading and study before I finally understood. I was being called to serve Arthur just as the Knights of the Round Table had done. Like them, I would go on a quest—seeking knowledge and wisdom and, of course, the Grail—discovering that the stories were much older than the elaborate and colorful tales of the medieval storytellers. I found that Arthur was older than many of the gods who had arrived with each successive wave of incomers into the land of Britain, and that his story was written in the stars as well as on the earth. The myths that surrounded him were ancient too. They were dark and powerful, and they spoke of love and honor and death—but above all they spoke of the land. Arthur, as I knew by this time, was one of the oldest guardians of the land—a Sleeping Lord (as he came to be called) who dreamed away the centuries, hidden within the earth, holding the energies of another time until called upon (as the legends said) to return in time of need.
Over the years I began to teach these mysteries, cautiously at first, then with increasing delight in the knowledge that others shared this path. I met my future wife, Caitlín, and discovered that she too had heard the call of Arthur, and that her knowledge of the older stories, those of the Celts, was equal or surpassing to mine in the medieval strand. Together we began to study the myths in even greater depth, collaborating on The Arthurian Tarot in 1990, developing this further in Hallowquest (1990, revised in 1997 and again in 2015). Together we studied with Gareth Knight (himself a student of Dion Fortune, whose work on the Arthurian mysteries was and is unsurpassed) and Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, within the aegis of the School of Light mystery school. In America we began to work with David Spangler, one of the most important visionary teachers of our time, and discovered that he, too, loved all things Arthurian.
It is part of the power of the Arthuriad that, being founded upon esoteric principles, it is unusually apposite for magical work. An example of this to which we were witness took place during a weekend workshop in 1982. In this, a tremendous pool of energy was built up, using the group consciousness of the fifty to sixty people present. When this energy had been allowed to create its own vortex of power, the magus leading the group proceeded to call the energies of Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, and Morgan from the inner realms. The immediacy and power of the response was total. The Arthurian archetypes were immediately present among the group and remained so for some time after. In a certain sense the Sleeping Lord was recalled from Avalon and sent forth again into the world to work for the restoration of the kingdom. Later, in further magical rites carried out by the same group and its affiliates, this work was continued and strengthened, both at actual sites with Arthurian associations, at further group meetings, and by individuals working alone. As Gareth mentioned in his foreword, Caitlín’s firsthand account adds further details:
The prophecy of the return of Arthur was fulfilled that night at the Camelot we had built; after a reading of Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur we invited back into our company the archetypes of the Round Table. We sat silently, for what seemed an age, invoking the personages with whom we had become so familiar throughout the weekend, sending them forth to intercede with the troubled world of our own times and inviting in those of our friends and family who might wish to share in our fellowship. It was truly an awesome and splendid thing that we did. The power that we invoked was both visible and perceptible in every sense: the candles on the altar shimmering with radiance greater than their own. None of us wanted to leave: we were gripped, not by fear, but by a longing to remain. Then one by one the company dispersed to bear into the world the substance of what we had experienced, to continue the work of the Round Table within our own sphere of life.
This work culminated in a large-scale ritual in 1987 intended to bring about the Restoration of the Courts of Joy, the deeply magical place in which the four hallows of the Grail myth—Cup, Spear, Stone, and Sword—were set once more at power points in the body of Logres, there to work actively for the healing of the land and those who dwell upon it (see chapter 17).
We have returned to Arthurian themes again and again, both in books and courses, especially our yearly “showcase” gathering around Christmas at Hawkwood College in Stroud, Gloucestershire. Here we have explored the Arthurian world in what has become an open mystery school, which brought a legion of talented people together. They have taught us as much as we have taught them, and over the years (more than forty now) we have been asked again and again if we would ever gather all the work we had produced in one place. We have, and this is it.
Twelve years ago, in 2004, we were invited to the USA to attend the first of an extraordinary gathering of writers and practitioners who walked the path of myth from every land. This was the first of the now-legendary Mythic Journeys events held in Atlanta. Here we found ourselves sharing breakfast with Robert Bly, lunch with Michael Mead, and dinner with Brian and Wendy Froud, Peter Beagle, and Ari Berk—all of whom shared our love of the myths and the mysteries. Among the younger people attending the event was Virginia Chandler, and we knew within five minutes of meeting her that we had met someone else who had heard the call of Arthur. We became, and have remained, good friends.
Virginia is herself a founding member of a magical guild, founded in 2008. The Fellowship of the Round Table is an Arthurian mysteries guild; through fellowship, meditation, ritual, and oracular study, they seek the enlightenment of the Grail.
When the universe arranged for this book to be commissioned, through a set of circumstances that can only happen when you are as deeply into the mysteries of Arthur as ourselves, it was clear that not only Caitlín (who has worked at my side all of this time and produced a formidable body of work that continues to fill me with awe) must contribute to this work, but also Virginia, who had been quietly assembling her own magical workbook, should be part of this enterprise.
So here it is, our book of Arthurian magic, a kind of grimoire in the medieval sense of a book of magical recipes and rituals. It is not exactly a system, in the way that the magical work of the Golden Dawn can be said to be, but it is intended to gather together as much of our inner work on the Arthurian myths as possible. The first part contains knowledge papers, gathered over the years and now woven into the mythos of the Arthuriad. These deal with the nuts and bolts of the mysteries—the who and how and why. The second part assembles a selection of rituals, meditations, and other types of work to create a course of study and practice and to bring alive the mysteries for us at every level. Finally, the third part, the Library, collects the names and qualities of people, places, and things that fill the vast landscape of the Arthuriad and adds information to aid seekers in finding their way through the Lands Adventurous. This name, given to the lands through which Arthur and his knights roved, is as good today as it was in the Middle Ages, and the lands themselves are as open to us as they were to Arthur’s knights.
But before we start, let’s take a brief look at the subject matter of this book: the extraordinary body of work (totaling thousands of pages and hundreds of books dating mostly from the period between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries) known as the Arthurian legends.
The Arthuriad
The Matter of Britain, as it has long been called (to distinguish it from the Matter of France, the legends of Charlemagne) has been recognized by many students of the mysteries as the basis of a set of teachings every bit as powerful as those of Egypt or the classical worlds of Greece and Rome. There is no obvious pattern, no precise formula to the texts, so that for many they remain no more than mere stories, however inspiring; but for those trained in the magical arts of the Western Mystery Tradition, they are much more: their secrets can be revealed, their codes unlocked, and their revelations enjoyed.
The history of the Arthurian legends is a long one, and this is not the place to go into this topic in depth; those wishing to know more are referred to the extensive lists of further reading at the back of this book. In the context of this exploration of the mystery teachings and the call of Arthur we shall, of course, draw extensively on the medieval literature, as well as older traditions stretching back hundreds of years earlier. It is our belief that these writings and the oral traditions that gave them birth were designed to contain a set of secret teachings, here referred to throughout as the Arthuriad. We have collectively and individually given a considerable part of our lives to the untangling of these mysteries. We have also, from the start, been privileged in being able to celebrate these mysteries in many ways, as individuals and with groups of like-minded people. Much of what you will find within these pages has grown out of that celebration, and we are indebted to all who came with us on this voyage of discovery, as well as to our own teachers, both inner and outer, who shared their wisdom and understanding of the Arthurian traditions with us.
Schools of Arthurian Magic
The Arthurian and Grail mysteries have played a part in the inner life of the West for a long time. From the moment that Robert De Boron wrote how Christ spoke to Joseph of Arimathea “holy words that are sweet and precious, gracious and full of pity, and rightly are they called secrets of the Grail”,1 he assured that seekers would desire to know these secrets. In many ways the idea behind the present book deals exactly with this idea: those who hear the call of Arthur also hear the call of the Grail, and this has been the way of the journey since the great romances of the Middle Ages were written.
At the time, when Grail fever was at its height and more and more texts dealing with the subject were being written, there came to be, perhaps inevitably, the idea of a secret hidden body of initiates who knew the inner mysteries of the Grail. The idea of the saintly “pure men” of the Albigensian Heresy possessing a physical object is unlikely to be true, but that the Cathars at least knew something of the inner truths expressed by the Grail is far more likely. The Templars, also widely believed to have possessed the Grail, may have guarded for a time the object known as the Mandylion, which many have associated with the famous Shroud of Turin or the Vernicle of Veronica. It has been noted that the description of the folded shroud, protected by a frame that shows only the face, is consistent with descriptions of the head in the dish found within the stories of the Grail.2 Whether the Templars actually possessed any secret knowledge is less easy to prove since so much calumny was directed at them at the time of their existence and actual documents relating to them are few and far between. However, modern Templar orders exist that claim the wisdom of Arthur and the Grail as part of their heritage:
It is a fundamental belief of the Templar tradition, a belief backed by long experience, that if the seeker after truth begins to work seriously on himself, he will start to radiate light on the inner levels…Every man and woman who is stirred by stories, legends or films of noble heroes is merely reacting to the promptings of the True Knight who sleeps within the heart…The task of awakening the True Knight within us is not an easy one. We will need first of all to look honestly at ourselves and then take the first steps with courage and determination. The spiritual impulses…will then certainly respond to the light of our aspiration and reveal to us that True Will which will guide us inevitably to the Grail.3
The truth of this statement chimes perfectly with the ideas of Arthurian chivalry that we shall explore in chapter 8, and it is to the awakening of the “True Knight” (man or woman) that much of the work outlined in this book is dedicated.
As well as contemporary Templar orders, modern Cathar movements have also made an appearance in recent times and have shown themselves to be founded very firmly in Grail spirituality. In particular, the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, founded by J. van Rijckenborgh and Catharose da Petri in 1952, has continued to disseminate ideas that reflect those of Arthurian chivalry and the Grail. A full account of this is to be found in The Treasure of Montségur by Walter Birks and R. A. Gilbert.4 A guiding light in its early days was Antonin Gadal, who later changed his name to Galaad after the greatest of the Grail knights and founded a center in the Pyrenees (also called Galaad) devoted to the restoration of Cathar ideals and (possibly) to the discovery of the Grail itself. His book Sur le Chemin du Saint-Graal makes fascinating reading and is full of insights into the inner meaning of the Grail mysteries.5
One of the Gadal’s associates for a time was an Irish writer on esotericism, Francis Rolt-Wheeler, who later made his own contribution to Grail literature in his book Mystic Gleams from the Holy Grail, in which he gave an account of the stories from a purely esoteric viewpoint, including some improvable connections and links with the past that nevertheless have a ring of truth about them.
The legend of the Holy Grail glows…with an inner light of esoterism (sic). Few, indeed, be those who have sought to follow the silver thread of Spiritual Initiation in this strange and mysterious cycle of miracle, of faerie, of chivalry, and of a super-sacrament. Consequently, in this mystical legend, there is a glimpse of the unknown; the reader may lose his way in a thicket of visions…This Way will lead us into the astral world and into the kingdoms of Faerie, where Merlin, the enchanter, serves as guide. Those who know how to read the book of nature will find the links of Celtic initiation in these sagas, and may even hear the tread of “the Lordly Ones.”6
Despite Rolt-Wheeler’s colorful style there is much in his book that reinforces the fascination with the inner mysteries of the Grail among modern esotericists.
Another source of inspiration into the Arthurian and Grail mysteries is the Rosicrucian movement, beginning in the seventeenth century from roots in the Renaissance and continuing into the present. More than one writer has seen the Rosicrucians as the inheritors of Grail material. In particular, Manly Palmer Hall, who founded the Philosophical Research Society in the United States in 1936, linked the mysterious group with the Grail, stating that
it is evident that the story of…the symbolic genealogy of the Grail Kings relate(s) to the descent of Schools or Orders of initiates. Titurel, (the Grail King), represents the ancient wisdom, and, like the mysterious Father C(hristian) R(ose) C(ross) is the personification of the Mystery Schools which serve the Shrine of Eternal Truth.7
The gathering of the Rosicrucians certainly resonates with the Pentecost meeting of the Round Table.
The prestigious Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was working with Arthurian archetypes as long ago as 1896, its founders recognizing the potential power of the legends and working with them extensively both as individuals and within their own temple traditions. After them, several offshoots, including the Stella Matutina, Dion Fortune’s Society of the Inner Light, and the Servants of the Light (see below), have all utilized the deeply mystical elements within the stories to form working magical systems.
A. E. Waite, himself one of the founding members of the Golden Dawn, first wrote of “a Secret School of the Grail” in his 1933 volume The Holy Grail: Its Legends and Symbolism.8 There he finds the presence of a mystical body of thought, almost without form but threading its way throughout the literature of the Arthuriad as in some way “a Grail behind the Grail.”
This he sees as emerging from the lost Celtic church, which he believed preserved a more ancient liturgy and belief system after the church of Rome had set its own theology in stone.
The presence of this…Secret Church is like that of angels unawares. In the outer courts there are those who are prepared for Regeneration and in the adyta there are those who have attained it: these are the holy assembly. It is the place of those who, after the birth of flesh, which is the birth of the will of man, have come to be born of God…It is the place of the Waters of Life, with the power to take freely. It is like the still, small voice: it is heard only in the midst of the heart’s silence, and there is no written word to tell us how its Rite is celebrated; but it is like a priesthood within the priesthood…There are no admissions—at least of the ceremonial kind—to the Holy Assembly: it is as if in the last resource a Candidate inducts himself. There is no Sodality, no Institution, no Order which throughout the Christian centuries has worked in silence…it is not a revelation but inherence…it does not come down: more correctly it draws up; but it also inheres.9
Echoing Waite’s words, other groups and individuals have continued to work along lines that assume the existence of such a mystery school. The Anthroposophical movement, founded by Rudolf Steiner and others as a breakaway from Theosophy in 1914, has had the Grail and Arthur at its heart from the beginning. Steiner himself wrote a considerable amount on the subject, which repays study, including this prophetic passage from his Outline of Occult Science:
The hidden knowledge flows, although quite unnoticed at the beginning, into the mode of thinking of the men of this period (i.e. the Middle Ages)…The “hidden knowledge” which from this side takes hold of mankind now and will take hold of it more and more in the future, may be called symbolically “the wisdom of the Grail…” The modern initiates may, therefore, also be called “initiates of the Grail”…The way into the supersensible worlds…leads to the “science of the Grail.” (Thus) the concealed knowledge of the Grail will be revealed; as an inner force it will permeate more and more the manifestations of human life…We see that the highest imaginable ideal of human revolution results from the knowledge of the Grail: the spiritualization that man acquires through his own efforts.10
During the 1930s and 1940s Christine Hartley and Charles Seymour worked together under the aegis of the Stella Matutina lodge of the Golden Dawn, forming a Merlin Temple and pursuing their studies of Arthurian archetypes and the Grail. A partial account of their work is to be found in two books: Dancers to the Gods by Alan Richardson11 and Ancient Magics for a New Age by Richardson and Geoff Hughes.12 The latter also includes a fascinating account of Hughes’s own contemporary work in the tradition of the Merlin Temple.
Other groups who have continued to work with the Grail and the Arthurian mysteries are Aurum Solis, or the Order of the Sacred Word, originally founded by Charles Kingold and George Stanton in 1897, and more recently continued by Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips, who have released some of the order’s papers in the form of a series of books published under the general title of The Magical Philosophy.13 For those wishing to understand the magical work upon which so much modern esotericism is based, these are essential reading.
In America, the Sangreal Sodality, founded by the British occultist William G. Gray, until recently operated a correspondence course based upon Gray’s extensive writings. These included a study of the background to the Western Inner Traditions and a series of ceremonials and sacraments loosely based on the Grail mysteries.14
These were not, of course, the first to explore the legends in this way. In particular we should mention A. E. Waite (1857–1942), whose books remain among the most thoroughgoing explorations of the hidden mysteries to be found within the medieval texts. In the USA Manly Palmer Hall (1901–1990), founder of the Philosophical Research Society, located astonishing depths of meaning in the stories of Arthur and the Grail in books such as Orders of the Quest (1948), expanded in The Adepts in the Western Esoteric Tradition (1949), and inspired followers such as Corinne Heline (1882–1975), who in her book Mysteries of the Holy Grail (1977) rightly called the court of Arthur “a Mystery School.”15 In Germany Steiner taught extensively his own strand of mystical awareness of the Grail and Arthur, inspiring his fellow seeker Walter Johannes Stein to research and write a powerful book, The Ninth Century: World History in the Light of the Holy Grail (1923), of which I was instrumental in bringing out the English edition in 1991.16 In France notable esotericists such as Rene Guénon (1886–1951), Henry Corbin (1903–1978), and more recently Pierre Gallais17 have explored the Grail myths in particular, bringing their own intricate awareness of its place in the world. In Italy Julius Evola explored the initiatic aspects of the stories in his Mystery of the Grail.18
In Britain, where the Arthuriad finds its natural home, a succession of knowledgeable adepts have answered the call of Arthur—notably Dion Fortune (1890–1946), who founded the Fraternity of the Inner Light (later renamed the Society of the Inner Light) in 1927, a dedicated mystery school that continues to honor the Grail and Arthurian mysteries at the heart of its magical work and whose teachings empowered Gareth Knight, one of our own teachers, to follow the path of Arthurian enlightenment. Its sister organisation, the Servants of the Light (SOL)—founded by W. E. Butler in 1964, whose developing work began as the Helios Course by Gareth Knight and John Hall and today still flourishes under the watchful eye of Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki (also one of our teachers)—places considerable emphasis on the same teachings.
The poet Charles Williams, a follower of Waite and himself a member of Stella Matutina, founded the Order of the Co-Inherence within an intimate circle of friends in 1917. This was something closer to Waite’s idea of a secret Christian order existing alongside the outer work of the church and was more of a mystical brotherhood than a proper magical order. It feels, indeed, not unlike what we have learned to call the Company of Hawkwood, with its variable membership who have followed where we led over the past thirty-one years.
At the end of his study of the Holy Spirit, The Descent of the Dove, Williams wrote words that still resonate with us, in terms that apply equally to the Arthurian mysteries:
The apprehension of this order, in nature and in grace, without and within Christendom, should be, now, one of our chief concerns; it might indeed be worth the foundation of an Order within the Christian Church (where) the pattern might be stressed, the image confirmed. The order of the Co-Inherence would exist only for that, to mediate and practice it…The Order would have no easy labour. But, more than can be imagined, it might find that, in this present world, its labour was never more needed, its concentration never more important, its profit never perhaps more great.19
This book is dedicated to all those who have shared our journey as students, scholars, fellow travellers, correspondents around the world—the “friends of myth,” as we like to think of them. And, of course, to all the many who will answer the call of Arthur—as well as of Guinevere, Merlin, Lancelot, Perceval, Argante, and the mighty throng of archetypal beings who walk at our sides and open the way to the vast and mighty realm of the otherworld that underpins everything we read and write and study. As you follow them, be prepared to find yourselves standing in front of many doors, entrances to the truly magical realm of Arthur. Prepare to share in the visions and the adventures that lead to the very heart of what has rightly been called the Western Mystery Tradition.
This is of its nature a retrospective work, and some of this material has appeared in a different format in other publications. It has generally been revised and rewritten for this book.
Note
To distinguish between the various contributors without unnecessarily interrupting the flow of the text, we have placed initials next to the subheading where one or other of the writers has made a major contribution: John Matthews (JM), Caitlín Matthews (CM), Virginia Chandler (VC).
1. de Boron, R. Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin and Perceval, trans. N. Bryant as Merlin & the Grail (D. S. Brewer, 2001).
2. Currer-Briggs, N. The Shroud and the Grail (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1987).
3. Deleforge, G. The Templar Tradition in the Age of Aquarius (Threshold Books, 1987).
4. Birks, Walter and R. A. Gilbert. The Treasure of Montségur: Study of the Cathar Heresy and the Nature of the Cathar Secret (Aquarian Press, 1987).
5. Gadal, A. Sur le Chemin du Saint-Graal (Harlaam, Rosencruis-Pers, 1979).
6. Rolt-Wheeler, F. Mystic Gleams from the Holy Grail (Rider, 1948).
7. Hall, M. P. Orders of the Quest: The Holy Grail (Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society, 1976).
8. Waite, A. E. The Holy Grail: Its Legends and Symbolism (Rider, 1933).
9. Ibid.
10. Steiner, R. Occult Science: An Outline (Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1979).
11. Richardson, A. Dancers to the Gods (Thorsons, 1985).
12. Richardson A, and G. Hughes. Ancient Magics for a New Age (Llewellyn, 1989).
13. Phillips, O. and M. Denning. The Magical Philosophy; The Philosophy of the Magical Art; the Ethics of Western Occultism (5 volumes; Llewellyn, 1975).
14. Gray, W. G. The San Grail Sacrament (Weiser, 1986).
15. Heline, C. Mysteries of the Holy Grail (New Age Press, 1977).
16. Stein, W. J. The Ninth Century and the Holy Grail (Temple Lodge Press, 1989).
17. Gallais, P. Perceval et l’initiation. Essais sur le dernier roman, de Chrétien de Troyes, ses correspondances orientales et se signification anthropologique (Paradigme Publications Universitaires, 1998).
18. Evola, J. The Mystery of the Grail (Inner Traditions, 1994).
19. Williams, C. The Descent of the Dove (Faber and Faber, 1939).