HERALDRY
The shields carried by the knights of the fellowship were hugely important. They enabled others to recognize them; when they borrowed shields or used those belonging to others, disaster could follow—such as when friend or brother failed to recognize each other and fought, sometimes to the death. Shields also represented them in a larger way as the archetypal powers they represented. There are a couple of books available that either show or describe the armorials of the Round Table, and several more exist in medieval manuscript in various libraries. The images here are redrawn from a fifteenth-century French manuscript listing the arms of the Knights of the Round Table, edited by Edouard Sandoz in 1944299 and the soon-to-be-published masterwork An Armorial of the Arthurian Legends by Helmut Nickel, former curator of arms and armor at the New York Metropolitan Museum.300
The heraldry of the fellowship is an important aspect of the magical work of the Arthuriad. They are highly symbolic and can act as doorways to contact the knights. If you select the shield for one of the knights and use it as a meditational device, you may well find yourself experiencing the feelings and attitudes of the knight. Focusing on the imagery of the shields opens the way between our own world and that of Arthur’s court.
figure 28:
Arms of some of the knights and kings from the Arthuriad301
299. Sandoz, E. “Tourneys in the Arthurian Tradition” in Speculum xix (1994), 389–420.
300. Nickel, H. An Armorial of the Arthurian Legends (unpublished manuscript).
301. For further details, see Scott-Giles, C. W. “Some Arthurian Coates of Arms” in The Coat of Arms 64 and 65 (Oct. 1965 and Jan. 1966).