the mysteries of avalon
And I will fare to Avalun, to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante the queen, an elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all sound; make me all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will come again to my kingdom, and dwell with Britons with mickle joy.
…
Layamon, Brut
The Isle of Apples
The Temple of the Grail could, with reason, be seen as a masculine enclave, though it certainly acknowledges the sacred feminine. But there is another place, peopled by otherworldly women, which balances the foursquare towers of the Grail with the shadowy presence of an older world.
Among all the hundreds of names attached to the Celtic otherworld, that of Avalon is one of the most evocative. It is the place to which tradition ascribes the last resting place of Arthur, where he waits for the day when he is called back to serve the needs of the land, to begin again the work that was left unfinished after the ending of the Grail Quest and the bloody slaughter of the Round Table Fellowship at Camlan.
Many have sought to discover the whereabouts of this fabled place, and tradition has, since the Middle Ages, associated it with the Somerset town of Glastonbury, which has been called “this holiest earth.” Here Joseph of Arimathea is believed to have come, bearing the precious Grail, and to have established the first Christian community within living memory of Christ. Here saints such as Patrick, Brigit, and Columba are said to have lived for a time.156
It may be unwise to seek a physical place for something as elemental as Avalon, but before Glastonbury (a Saxon name), the site was known by another name, Yniswitrin, which can be interpreted to mean “the Island of Glass,” ruled over by Avalach, who is also called Rex Avalonis, King of Avalon. It is he who is the father of Morgan (later Morgan le Fay), described in another text as “the Royal Virgin of Avalon,” a title that can only refer to a hereditary guardian.157
So Yniswitrin became Avalon, the Island of Apples, a place of wonder and mystery where it was known that some great and mysterious object was kept—guarded, perhaps, by a college of priestesses (as suggested by Dion Fortune) under the leadership of Morgan, she who was elsewhere known as Arthur’s sister and perhaps a goddess herself.158
Thus another aspect of the inner landscape was outlined within the Arthuriad. It was part of a larger whole, known as Logres, the mystical heart of Britain, with its castles at Camelot, Caerleon, and Carlisle, its great forests in which the Fellowship of the Round Table wandered in search of adventure, and its magical springs and wells guarded by otherworldly maidens of surpassing beauty. And at the center lay Avalon, the magical isle that was a doorway onto the lands of Faery, to the people of the Sidhe, who sent forth their representatives into the lands of men to try and test them—and sometimes to lead them back into the deep places of the earth, where the Old Gods still dwelled, as they had done since the beginning of time.
The Arthurian kingdom was thus always on the edge of Faery. When Arthur set forth in his ship Prydwen with his band of warriors, as described in the Prieddeu Annwfn, they sailed to an island where the Cauldron of Rebirth was kept, guarded by nine muses and by the warriors of the otherworld. This is strongly reminiscent of another island, ruled by Morgan and her sisters, where a vessel was housed that could give life and healing to those in need.159
But Avalon was (and is) more than this. It was (and is) a place where eternity touched the earth, where anything could happen. It was (and is) both a gateway between the worlds and the home of the deepest mysteries of Britain. It was one of “the Fortunate Isles,” a place of apple trees and the perfume of flowers. Malory calls it “the Vale of Avilion,” and Geoffrey of Monmouth describes it in detail:
The island of apples…gets its name from the fact that it produces all things of itself; the fields there have no need of the ploughs of the farmers and all cultivation is lacking except what nature provides. Of its own accord it produces grain and grapes, and apple trees grow in its woods from the close-clipped grass. The ground of its own accord produces everything instead of merely grass, and people live there a hundred years or more. There nine sisters rule by a pleasing set of laws those who come to them from our country…Thither after the battle of Camlan we took the wounded Arthur…Morgan received us with fitting honour, and in her chamber she placed the king on a golden bed and with her own hand she uncovered his honourable wound and…at length she said that health could be restored to him if he stayed with her for a long time and made use of her healing art.160
This Avalon is a place of healing, a realm of peace where the enmity between Morgan and Arthur no longer exists.
Another text, the Gesta Regnum Britanniae,161 which actually post-dates Geoffrey by a few decades, describes Avalon in terms that link it even more explicitly to the realm of Faery:
This wondrous island is girdled by the ocean; it lacks no good things; no thief, reiver or enemy lurks in ambush there. No snow falls; neither Summer nor Winter rages uncontrollably, but unbroken peace and harmony and the gentle warmth of unbroken Spring. Not a flower is lacking, neither lilies, rose nor violet; the apple-tree bear flowers and fruit together on one bough. Youth and maiden live together in that place without blot or shame. Old age is unknown; their is neither sickness nor suffering—everything is full of joy. No one selfishly keeps anything to himself; here everything is shared.162
In other cultures this would have been called an earthly paradise; to the Celts it was the otherworld, a place as simple and real as any one might find in the realms of men. We may wonder at a realm where sickness and sorrow, old age and misery are banished; where men and women live together in peace and harmony, and where all things are provided from the goodness and plenty of the earth. To the people who helped create the Arthuriad, as we know it, such places lay merely over the next hill or behind the next tree.
I went in the twinkling of an eye
Into a marvelous country where I had been before.
I reached a cairn of twenty armies,
And there I found Labraid of the long hair.
I found him sitting on the cairn,
A great multitude of arms about him.
On his head his beautiful fair hair
Was decked with an apple of gold.
Although the time was long since my last visit
He recognized me by my five-fold purple mantle.
Said he, “Wilt thou come with me
Into the house where dwells Failbe the Fair?” (…)
At the door toward the West
On the side toward the setting sun,
There is a troop of grey horses with dappled manes,
And another troop of horses, purple-brown.
At the door toward the east
Are three trees of purple glass.
From their tops a flock of birds sing a sweet drawn-out song
For the children who live in the royal stronghold.
At the entrance to the enclosure is a tree
From whose branches comes beautiful and harmonious music.
It is a tree of silver, which the sun illumines;
It glistens like gold.163
This seems a wholly fitting resting place for Arthur, who sought to create just such a perfect realm in the world, only to be defeated by human weaknesses and failings such as the people of the otherworld were not subject.
Most of the adventures of the Round Table Fellowship take place in the setting of a deep primeval forest. This in part reflects the physical appearance of the countryside at the time when most of the romances were written, but there is a deeper significance than this. The forest symbolized an untamed world where almost anything could, and did, lie in wait for the unwary. It stood, also, for a certain state of mind, a place to be reached on the long road from birth to death—Dante’s impenetrable forest of the mind, in which the soul, wakening as he expressed it “midway through life’s journey,” found itself with a thousand possible ways through the darkness of the world beneath the trees.
The forest, too, was part of the otherworld, a vast uncharted tract that lies along the borders between the world of men and the realms of Faery. Certain areas in Britain and Brittany were given names: Broceliande, Arden, Inglewood—dark places redolent of enchantment, where only those intent upon adventure would willingly go.
Thus, when out hunting one day, the queen and her escort, who happened to be on this occasion Sir Gawain, became separated from the rest of their party and found themselves sheltering near the fearful Tarn Watheling, where more than one adventure had begun. There they witnessed a horrific apparition, the ghost of Guinevere’s mother, who “yammered” horribly at them and warned of dread things to come.164
Yet though the forest contained many terrors, it contained as many wonders. From its depths came beautiful Faery women to test and beguile the wandering knights as they plied their course through the trees. Many sought husbands among the fellowship and sired sons upon them, introducing a strain of otherworldly blood into the company.
One such was Sir Launfal, who wandered into the otherworld, met and married a beautiful Fée (French for faery; pronounced fay) and was sworn to secrecy on pain of losing his love forever. Yet he was unable to keep silent when Queen Guinevere herself approached him with words of love, and in desperation he declared that even she, for all her renowned beauty, was no match for his own dear love.
Earning in this way the enmity of the queen, Launfal faced death or banishment rather than speak further, and he was finally vilified by the appearance of the Fée herself, who entered the court, outshone every woman there, and who then carried Launfal away with her “to Avalon, it is believed.”165
Not all such women encountered in the forest were as fair of face and speech. Ragnall, one of many archetypes of the sovereignty-bestowing Goddess of the Land, appeared as a hideous, loathly lady who tricks Arthur into promising her the person of Sir Gawain in marriage in return for a favour. Her subsequent appearance at court and her gross manners and appearance perhaps in part prepare one for the transformation that occurs on the wedding night, when Ragnall, who has been “enchanted,” is restored to her true beauty through Gawain’s love and understanding.166
Elsewhere in the depths of the forest roamed the Questing Beast, a creature part lion, part serpent, and part goat, which made a sound as though thirty couple of hounds were in its belly. Arthur first glimpses it as a youth, before he is crowned king, and it presages a meeting with Merlin, who appears first as a child, then as an old man, who tells Arthur of his birth and parentage and makes many cryptic references to future events. The beast he does not explain, but we learn that it was given birth to by a woman who had condemned a man to be torn to pieces by dogs. It exists solely to be sought after and is followed for many years by King Pellinore. After his death the Saracen knight Palamides takes up the quest but seems never to succeed, for this is a ferlie, a wonder out of the otherworld, which cannot be caught or pinned down by any physical means.167
Men and women who had the power to change themselves into animals were not infrequent in the Arthurian world. In one story Arthur follows a strange composite beast that turns into a venerable white-haired man; in another we have one of the earliest tales concerning a werewolf, Bisclavret, in which a knight cursed with this affliction is first betrayed by his wife and her lover, and then finally vilified and returned to his own form after many years in wolf shape.
In the Welsh story “The Lady of the Fountain”168 we encounter the Lord of the Beasts, who has one foot, one eye, and one arm, and who commands all the beasts of the forest, who gather about him like a congregation listening to a sermon. And when the knight Kynon asks him what power he has over the animals,
“I will show thee, little man,” said he. And he took his club in his hand, and with it he struck a stag a great blow so that he brayed vehemently, and at his braying the animals came together, as numerous as the stars in the sky…and he looked at them, and bade them go and feed; and they bowed their heads, and did him homage as vassals to their lord.169
Other knights become attached to a specific beast: Owein with a lion, Gawain with a wondrous mule or a horse that leads him into strange lands. These are all, to some extent, like the totem beasts of the shaman, who act as guides to the soul in its journeys about the otherworld.170
The sometimes uneasy relationship with faery magic of Avalon is outlined clearly in many of the romances, but nowhere is it more obvious than in the record of Merlin and Nimue.
Merlin and Nimue
The nature of the relationship between Merlin and his mistresses has long been misunderstood, as has the nature of these women themselves. Essentially, these were otherworldly women, described as fays or faeries by the medieval authors. Their task was to act as initiators into the mysteries of the otherworld, to offer challenges to the heroes who wandered the pathless forests of the Arthurian world. Again and again we read of mysterious women who appear at Arthur’s court to ask for help, but when a knight is dispatched to answer such requests, it often turns out that far more is involved than was at first supposed.
Some knights ended up marrying the magical women they helped. Thus Sir Launfal goes off with his fairy mistress to live in her enchanted realm, while Sir Gawain has at least two otherworldly wives at various times in his career, as well as numerous fairy mistresses.
Later writers such as Sir Thomas Malory took a more humanistic view than the tale-spinners of earlier times and either moved away from the otherworldly nature of the stories or sought to Christianize them. By ignoring the more ancient aspects of the myth, these otherworldly woman appear scheming rather than wise, necromantic rather than guardians of the gates to inner realms. This is very clearly what happened to the story of Merlin’s relationship with his sister Gwendydd. In virtually all the later versions of the story, this relationship, which first appeared in the twelfth century Vita Merlini, has been so eroded that it no longer bears any similarity—at least on the surface—to the original version. Merlin’s connection with his sister, who may have shared his own nonhuman blood, has been changed out of all recognition.171
Instead of a sister she has become a temptress, no longer related to him but from an other-
worldly source. The old relationship of brother and sister sharing a visionary consciousness becomes a tale of an old man falling for a beautiful otherworldly woman. Thus Merlin’s companions are shown as obtaining his wisdom though their wiles. What began as a portrayal of a spiritual bond of magical and prophetic awareness became skewed into a very human and generally fatal love story, in which Merlin falls for a treacherous fay who steals his power and uses it to bind him forever. The story of how this happened, and what lies behind it, is one of the most fascinating in the Arthuriad.
Daughter of Diana
The name most often applied to Merlin’s nemesis—for so she is portrayed—is Nimue, or sometimes Niniane or Vivienne. We first encounter her in the Merlin section of the Vulgate Cycle. Drawing upon a vast range of older works, many of which were subsequently lost, it preserved some intriguing details of Merlin’s life, while themes and ideas first expressed in Robert de Boron’s Merlin and the Vita Merlini of Geoffrey of Monmouth were expanded.
The Vulgate Merlin was later translated into English by an anonymous author, and it is in this version that we read the story of a forester named Dionas—so called because of his devotion to the goddess Diana—to whom the goddess herself appeared and made the following prophecy:
I grant thee, and so doth the god of the sea and the stars…that the first female child that thou shalt have shall be much coveted by the wisest man that ever was on earth…and he shall teach her the most part of his wit and cunning by way of necromancy, in such manner that he shall be so desirous after he hath seen her, that he shall have no power against her wish, and all things that she enquires after he shall teach.172
The same text continues by relating how Dionas, who had long served the Duke of Burgoyne (Burgundy), is given the latter’s daughter for a wife, along with half the forest of Brioke—almost certainly the magical forest of Broceliande, which stands to this day in Brittany. When, in due course, the couple have a daughter, she is named Niniane, which, according to the author of the text, is of Hebrew origin and means “I shall not lie” in French. The child is regarded as being under the protection of the goddess from the moment of her birth, in much the same way as her father is termed her “god-son,” a euphemistic way of describing him as her devotee.
The interpretation of Niniane’s name is not without interest. That it is said to derive from the Hebrew may be no more than an instance of the common desire among medieval authors to provide authentication for their characters, as anything with the rumour of the biblical was acceptable. The deciphering of her name as meaning “I will not lie” is more interesting. It scarcely bears scrutiny as a piece of orthography, but if we accept it we may glimpse another reading of her character, not simply as the “evil temptress” whom the later authors endeavored to make her, but as a prophetess incapable of falsehood. The overall character of Niniane, as she appears here, shows the anonymous author struggling to balance the Pagan aspects of her character with her evident humanity. He shows her to have been much put upon by Merlin and eventually to have hated him enough to justify her entrapment of him as a way of escaping his unwelcome advances.
The prophecy made about Niniane by the goddess—that she will be loved by the wisest of men—is proved to be accurate. We hear next of the meeting of Merlin and Niniane, whom the former seeks out, disguised as a young squire, at a fountain where she used often to go. There, he demonstrates his miraculous powers by calling up an enchanted garden and summoning knights and ladies to dance and sing for her.
Anon the maiden…saw come out of the forest of Briogne ladies and knights and maidens and squires, each holding other by the hand, (that) came singing and making the greatest joy that ever was seen in any land; and before the maiden came jongleurs with tymbrels and tabors (medieval musical instruments) and entered the scene that Merlin had made, and when they were within, they began (to sing) carols and (play) dances so great and so marvelous, that one might not say the fourth part of joy that was made there; and because the land was so great Merlin made there a garden, wherein was all manner of fruit and all manner of flowers, that gave so great sweetness of flavor, that marvel it were to tell.173
Merlin is clearly in love with Niniane, and in this version demands assurance of her own feelings. Niniane promises to return his love on condition that he teach her all his wisdom. He agrees to do this, but not immediately, as he must leave her then for other work. Before he goes, however, he teaches her a spell that enables her to conjure up a great river, and beyond it a magical place into which she may go at will and where magical servants will attend her.
There are a number of interesting details here. It is possible to see that the goddess, who spends many days with Dionas, may at one time have been the actual mother of Niniane. This may be the reason why in a thirteenth-century text known as the Huth Merlin she is repeatedly referred to as “the Huntress.”174 This title prompts Merlin to relate a strange tale about the goddess, which may throw further light on the true identity of Niniane.
The story concerns the Lake of Diana in the Foret en Val, so called because it was here that Diana lived in a wondrous palace with the hunter Faunus. But in time she fell in love with another man, named Felix, and so wished to dispose of her former love. When Faunus returned one day from hunting, wounded, he sought to take a bath in healing waters. But Diana drained these and, in a scene reminiscent of Merlin’s demise, persuaded Faunus to get into a tomb upon which she immediately placed a heavy lid with a hole in it. She then poured boiling lead through the hole, killing her lover. Although he had previously abjured her to get rid of his rival, when Felix hears the manner of his death he is horrified and cuts off Diana’s head.
In the light of this story, it has been suggested that the association of Niniane with Diana could be carried a step further—that in fact the writer of the Huth Merlin may have known an ancient Celtic story from the Mabinogion in which the maiden Blodeuwedd is made from flowers by the wizard Math to be a wife for the hero Llew Llaw Gyffes.175 However, she falls in love with a hunter named Gronw Pebyr and arranges the death of Llew by having him stand with one foot on a bath and the other on the back of a goat, at which point Gronw casts a spear at him. This curious death is the only way that the hero could be killed, and there are certainly some parallels here with the story of Diana and Faunus, especially in the manner of the two characters’ deaths. But the most interesting fact is the suggestion that otherworldly blood flowed in Niniane’s veins and that there might be a connection between her and Blodeuwedd.
Malory’s characterization of Nimue is certainly far from consistent, though she is unfailingly represented as helpful to Arthur. Indeed, once Merlin has been taken out of the picture, she virtually takes his place, saving Arthur from various attacks by his half sister Morgan le Fay. Malory’s rather unflattering portrayal of the aged Merlin besotted on the beautiful fairy damsel now named as one of the Ladies of the Lake, who cozens him out of his secrets and then uses them to imprison him, seems to be part of the general tendency on the part of medieval writers to reinterpret the more primitive Pagan material as they understood it. As Merlin himself became represented as the son of a devil rather than the child of an otherworldly being, so now Nimue, whose father served the goddess Diana, is portrayed as a temptress whose power derives solely from that of Merlin. Her presence, along with that of the nine sisters of Avalon, is of tremendous importance for our understanding of the feminine mysteries within Arthurian myth and legend.
Initiating Goddesses
Many of the women who appear in the Arthurian cycle either begin as beings from Faery or share the characteristics of goddesses. This is not always immediately apparent due to the gradual Christianization of the material and to the changing attitudes of successive generations of storytellers who altered, modified, and sometimes suppressed many of the “Pagan” aspects of the tales they told, but there are some instances where we can immediately perceive the otherworldly nature of the characters.
Thus Morgan le Fay, whose origins have been traced to the Irish goddesses Macha and Morrighan, becomes in the medieval Arthurian world an enchantress—at least on the surface. Malory says of her that she was the daughter of Arthur’s mother, Igraine, and Gorlois of Cornwall, and that after her father’s death and the events of Arthur’s birth, she was “put to school in a nunnery, where she became a great clerk of necromancy.”176
It is easy to see in this statement a reference to earlier times, when female children who displayed a talent for the second sight or other aptitudes for the mystical life were sent to be educated by schools of priestesses such as once flourished in both Britain and Ireland. Morgan, who became known by the epithet “le Fay,” the Fairy, retained some of her goddessy qualities, even in the medieval tales, where she is referred to by this title in more than one source.
In Malory, while on the one hand she is portrayed as an enchantress and shapeshifter, Morgan also figures as one of the three mysterious queens who appear after the Battle of Camlan to bear the wounded Arthur to Avalon, there to be healed of his wounds and to await the time of his country’s need.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, once again recording an ancient tradition, refers to Morgan in his Vita Merlini as one of nine sisters who dwell on an island in the sea called “the Fortunate Isle.” He continues:
She who is first of them is more skilled in the healing art, and excels her sisters in the beauty of her person. Morgan is her name, and she has learned what useful properties all the herbs contain, so that she can cure sick bodies. She also knows an art by which to change her shape, and to cleave the air on new wings like Daedalus.177
Geoffrey’s description of the wondrous island with its sisterhood of nine shares many details with other accounts of the Celtic otherworld, as we have seen. It is clear enough that Morgan is the tutelary spirit or goddess of this place, and that her animosity towards Arthur (who, as her half brother, thereby has Faery blood himself) is merely an aspect of the challenging and testing role such figures eternally offer in order to discover who among their many servants is truly worthy of favor.
Morgan appears in this guise in the marvelous Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where she is the organizing principle behind the appearance of the monstrous green giant at Camelot. The story is typical of the role fulfilled by such goddesses in Arthurian literature and is worth retelling for the light it throws upon them.178
The Green Knight
The court is assembled for the Christmas feast, but before it can begin there is a crash of thunder and in through the door rides a monstrous figure wielding a mighty axe. He is green from head to foot: green skin, green clothes, and green horse. Mocking the assembly, he offers to play “a Christmas game” with anyone who has the courage. The rules are as follows: that he will receive a blow with his own axe from any man there, on the understanding that he will gave one back afterward. At first no one comes forward, but when Arthur himself rises from his place, his young nephew Gawain steps forward to accept the challenge. He strikes a single blow, severing the Green Knight’s head from his body. But, to everyone’s horror, the giant picks up his head, holds it on high, and the lips move. He will expect Gawain in a year’s time at the Green Chapel. Setting the head once more on his shoulders, he departs as he came.
A year passes and Gawain prepares to set forth to keep his word. He has no idea of the whereabouts of the Green Chapel, and his wanderings take him into the wilderness of Wirral, where he faces danger from trolls and the harsh winter weather. Half dead from cold and fatigue, he arrives at last at the castle of Sir Bercilak, a huge, larger-than-life figure who offers him hospitality and introduces him to his beautiful wife, who is accompanied by a hideous old woman. Bercilak declares that he knows where the Green Chapel is, a mere few hours’ ride away, and declares his intention of going hunting. When Gawain declines to accompany his host, preferring to rest, Bercilak proposes a sporting exchange of winnings: he will give Gawain whatever spoil he derives from the day’s hunting in exchange for anything his guest has won during the same period.
Once Bercilak has departed, his wife enters Gawain’s room and does her best to seduce him. Gawain politely refuses but is forced to accept a single kiss. When Bercilak returns with the spoils of the hunt, all that Gawain has to exchange is the kiss. The same thing happens on the two successive days, with each time the lady of the castle amorously approaching her guest and Gawain accepting first two, then three kisses, which he duly exchanges with his host. On the third day he confesses his errand and that he has little chance of surviving, at which Lady Bercilak offers him a green baldric that protects its wearer from all harm. This Gawain accepts, with some hesitation, and does not declare it in his day’s “winnings.”
Next morning he sets out for the Green Chapel, and on arrival finds the Green Knight sharpening his axe. Gawain kneels in the snow and his adversary twice feints, until Gawain is angered and bids him to strike once and for all. The third blow merely nicks Gawain’s neck, at which he leaps up, declaring honor satisfied and calling on the Green Knight to defend himself. The giant laughs and says that the “game” is over and that he is really Sir Bercilak, enchanted into his present shape by the arts of “Morgane the goddess,” who is really the old crone at the castle. Her intention had been to frighten Guinevere and to test the strength of Arthur’s knights. Gawain has come through with honor unstained, except for accepting the green baldric from Lady Bercilak, for which reason he received the nick from the Green Knight’s axe. Gawain returns to Camelot and tells his story. All the knights decide to wear green sashes in honor of Gawain’s successful adventure.
In this extraordinary tale, which derives ultimately from an ancient Irish source, Morgan’s role is made to seem slight by the poet, who sought a Christian allegory in what was essentially a Pagan midwinter tale; yet even he called Morgan “the Goddess.”
I have dealt elsewhere with all of this in some detail179 and will say here only that it is Morgan’s presence that motivates the story, which concerns nothing less than an initiation designed specifically to test Gawain and, through him, the Round Table Fellowship, and to prepare the hero for an even greater glory when he becomes the “Knight of the Goddess,” her champion and lover in the realms of men.
This initiatory sequence is continued and completed in another poem of the same period (thirteenth century), The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnall, in which Gawain is required to marry a hideously ugly hag in order to save Arthur from death at the hands of the fearsome Gromer Somer Jour.180
When, on their wedding night, Gawain suddenly finds that his hideous bride has become a ravishingly beautiful woman, he is given a further choice: to have her fair by night and foul by day or vice versa. His response is to allow her to choose, and the spell is thus broken because Gawain gave her “sovereignty,” the right to be herself and to express her own nature—a rare enough thing in the repressive Middle Ages.
Behind this curious tale we catch a glimpse of an age-old theme where the Goddess of Sovereignty, the representative of the land itself (see below), encounters the new young king of the land and, by testing him, proves his worthiness to rule. In the version outlined above Gawain acts as Arthur’s surrogate and is at the same time established as the champion of the goddess, who through him offers her blessing upon the land.
Her choice of Gawain, Arthur’s nephew, is not out of place, since to the Celts the relationship of the sister’s son was considered of equal or even greater worth than patrimony. We may see in this a natural concomitant of the act where Arthur begets a child upon his half sister Morgause. In the romances she is Morgan’s sister, but it is easy to detect the presence of a single figure behind both: the Goddess of the Land, testing the young king. For whatever reason, in this instance Mordred, the offspring of this union, becomes Arthur’s nemesis—perhaps because, in his pride, Arthur refused to acknowledge the right, by Celtic law, of his sister’s son to rule. In the same way, he ordered the head of the god Bran the Blessed, buried under White Mount in London to offer protection against invasion, to be dug up, on the grounds that he alone should ward the land from its enemies.181
The Flower Bride and the Dark Goddess
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight it is specifically stated that the reason why Morgan sent the Green Knight to Arthur’s court was to frighten Guinevere, as well as test the honor and courage of the fellowship. On one level the reason for this was an old rivalry dating from the time near the beginning of Arthur’s reign when Guinevere had banished one of Morgan’s lovers from court, thus beginning long-term hostilities. On another there is quite a different sort of rivalry between the two—that of two goddesses of opposite aspects.
Morgan has her origin in the savage figure of the Irish war goddess the Morrighan, and as such is portrayed as a Dark Goddess, representing the powerful earthy qualities of winter and warfare. Guinevere, on the other hand, who was also once a goddess, is of the type called the Flower Bride, representing spring, the unfolding of life, and the burgeoning of growth. As such, these two are in polarized opposition for all time, and it is even possible to see in the story of Guinevere’s love for Lancelot, who becomes her champion and brings about the eventual ruin of the Round Table, a pattern of the elemental struggle between the champions of summer and winter for the hand of the Spring Maiden.182
A version of this is told in the Mabinogion tale of Pwyll, who changes places for a year with Arawn, the lord of the otherworld, and undertakes, as one of Arawn’s ritual tasks, an annual fight with Hafgan (Summer Song) for the possession of Creiddylad, the Maiden of Spring. We may judge the importance of this theme from the fact that echoes were still to be found as late as the nineteenth century in Wales, where teams of people, led by a Lord of Summer and a Lord of Winter, engaged in mock battle for the Maiden.
Thus, in the Arthurian tales, Lancelot, who is Guinevere’s champion, becomes the bitterest foe of Gawain, who, as the Knight of the Goddess, is therefore Morgan’s champion. To begin with, the two men are friends, and this lasts through many adventures until Lancelot accidentally kills Gawain’s brother (significantly while rescuing Guinevere). Before these come numerous challengers who either insult the queen, accuse her of falseness to Arthur, or abduct her.
This last event is significant for a number of reasons. It is one of the roles of the Flower Bride to be stolen away by one of her suitors and then to be rescued by the other, thus forming an endless shifting of polarities with each succeeding seasonal change. In the case of Guinevere we have a clear indication of her having at one time fulfilled this role in a story contained in the Life of Gildas by Caradoc of Llancarfan.183
In this text, which deals with the deeds of a sixth-century saint who may actually have known the historical Arthur, we read how Melwas of the Summer Country carried off Guinevere, who had then to be rescued by Arthur, though not without the intervention of the saint. This story reappears in several versions within Arthurian literature, where the abductor has become Meleagraunce, a knight who desires Guinevere for his own. Then the rescuer is Lancelot rather than Arthur, a seeming continuation of the various surrogate figures who stand in for the king at certain points in his life.
The identity of Melwas or Meleagraunce is not hard to fathom. In the Life of Gildas he is called the King of the Summer Country—a name for the otherworld. In the later versions Meleagraunce is the son of King Bagdemagus of Goirre or Gor, both names for the otherworld. In the story of Pwyll he is identified as Arawn, King of the Celtic Hades. Hence we have a scenario in which Guinevere is carried off into the otherworld by its king or his representative, to be rescued by her champion. The Flower Bride is then brought back in triumph to the court of her lord, who is king of the land.
We need only add to this the fact that, at an earlier stage in the development of the Arthurian tradition, Gawain was the queen’s champion. In the later texts he has changed allegiance from one aspect of the goddess to another and has thus become the opponent of the Flower Bride’s champion. This is, of course, a vastly simplified scenario; each aspect of the goddess has its own multifarious aspects—as, indeed, we may see from the sheer variety of roles fulfilled by the various otherworldly women in the Arthurian world.184
Other Initiators
So many of these magical beings appear at Arthur’s court, usually beginning as suppliants but ending as initiators, that it is not hard to perceive a clear pattern. One story in particular is worth summarizing: Malory’s “Tale of Sir Gareth” from Le Morte d’Arthur.185
The hero is Gawain’s youngest brother, the son of Morgause and Lot of Orkney, but he chooses to remain incognito on his arrival at Arthur’s court and begs, as the first of three boons from the king, to be fed for a year. Kay, who takes charge of him, puts him in the kitchens and generally mocks him, naming him “Beaumains,” Fair Hands, because of his unusually large white hands. Both Lancelot and Gawain befriend him in that first year, though even the latter does not recognize his brother.
At the end of the year a damsel named Lynette appears asking for a champion for her sister against Sir Ironside, the Red Knight of the Red Launds, who is besieging her castle. Gareth, alias Beaumains, now makes his two further requests—that he be given this adventure and that Lancelot should follow him and make him a knight when he deems the youth has earned it. Arthur agrees and Gareth and Lynette set out together, the maiden riding ahead and scorning anything to do with the “kitchen knave” that King Arthur has seen fit to send with her.
During the succeeding days Gareth proves himself a sterling fighter, finally bringing Lancelot, who has followed, to a halt—at which point the great French knight declares Gareth a worthy opponent and knights him forthwith. Despite this, Lynette continues to upbraid her young escort, giving him the benefit of a tongue-lashing at every opportunity. Gareth, however, staunchly refuses to be drawn and performs ever more extraordinary deeds of prowess as he encounters a succession of knights in variously colored armor, finally defeating the Red Knight of the Red Launds himself and winning for himself the undying love of Lynette’s sister Lyonors.
The story does not end there, however. Lyonors bids her champion to go forth and win even more honor before he marries her; then, when he has gone, she changes her mind and requests her brother to lure him back again by pretending to kidnap a dwarf who has served him faithfully. All is reconciled and Gareth would have consummated his love before the wedding had not Lynette prevented it by magical means. Lyonors holds a great tournament in which Gareth wears a magic ring enabling him to change the color of his armor at will. He thus fights several Round Table knights incognito, then slips away unnoticed. Gawain sets out to discover the identity of the young knight who carried all before him, and the two brothers meet and fight before Lynette arrives and stops them by identifying them to each other. She then heals their wounds with her magic and they return to the court, where Gareth is recognized as the son of Morgause and Lot and marries Lyonors at a splendid feast.186
This story is one of several which tell of “the Fair Unknown,” generally the son of a great hero who appears at court incognito, has various adventures, fights with his own brother or father, and is finally recognized and honored by all. In each of these there is also a figure not unlike Lynette, who performs the function of leading the hero through a series of adventures designed to test his skill and prowess. Almost without exception she possesses magical abilities and is active in arranging his eventual recognition.
Lynette herself actually appears as Lunette in another major story from the cycle, Ywain by Chrétien de Troyes. Here she rescues the hero several times from death and gives him a ring that conveys the power of invisibility. A passage from Chrétien’s poem makes her true identity clear:
I would like to make a brief mention of the friendship that was struck up in private between the moon and the sun. Do you know of whom I want to tell you? The man who was chief of the knights and honoured above them all should indeed be called the sun. I refer to my lord Gawain…And by the moon I mean she who is so uniquely endowed with good sense and courtly ways…her name is Lunette.187
Once again we recognize the figure of one of the otherworldly woman who appear in a hundred different guises throughout the Arthuriad. Their function is to raise the Round Table Fellowship from a simple Chivalric order to a band of initiate knights. It is she who stands behind so much of the action and adventure in the stories—whether as Morgan le Fay she is sending a magical cloak which consumes to ashes anyone who puts it on, or as Ragnall, setting Gawain the supreme test of courtesy and love.
Such figures are an essential part of the inner dimension of the Tradition. They are the initiators who cause things to happen leaving the neophyte changed forever after. They are the polarized energy that drives the vast epic of Arthur from its dramatic beginnings to its climactic end. Without them the stories would be nothing more than a parade of meaningless images; with them it becomes a stately procession of wonders that open ever more and deeper doors into the landscape of the otherworld.
A Break Between Worlds
Again and again we find stories of Arthur’s often uneasy relationship with the women of Avalon, the Faery women who offer challenges to him and his knights at almost every point in the Arthuriad. Faery women like the Lady of the Lake and her kin provide Arthur with his magical sword—and reclaim it at the end of his earthly existence. Others, like Morgan, are sent to plague Camelot again and again, stealing Excalibur’s sheath, which offered Arthur protection from wounds, and creating the Valley of No Return to specifically entrap the knights who enter the Lands Adventurous. They are also present at the end of his life—or at least at the moment when his life in the outer world ceased and he enters the inner realm of Avalon. But above all they challenge and sometimes damage the lives of the Round Table Fellowship.
The causes of this animosity between Arthur and the world of Faery are only hinted at in the Arthuriad. Some would have it that Merlin caused the break between the two realms, either through his association with Nimue or because he sought to create a kingdom that grew away from the Avalonian world. However, there is another story, drawn from a text that, until recently, has been neglected.188 Known as the Elucidation, it was written by an anonymous author as a prequel to Chrétien’s Conte du Graal. Most interpreters have dismissed it as being incomprehensible, but a careful study, along with a new translation, have revealed it as holding several keys to an understanding of the Grail mystery and how an ancient agreement between the Faery realm and that of humankind was broken.
The text may be summarized as follows:
The story of the Grail falls into seven parts, in which Master Bleheris, the mysterious storyteller, relates how the rich land of Logres came to be destroyed. Attendant upon the wells and springs of the land were damsels whose task it was to entertain all wayfarers and see them fed with rich fare, but King Amangons and his men raped the maidens of the wells and carried off their golden cups so that thereafter their wells dried up and the land became waste. No longer could the court of the rich Fisher King be found. Many years later, the Round Table Knights, hearing of this evil deed, went in search of the damsels and found their descendants wandering in the woods, each protected by a knight. These they overthrew and sent back to Arthur’s court. One, Blihos Bleheris, knew the whole story and told Arthur that the maidens now wandering the woods were the offspring of the original well guardians and that they would continue to wander until the court of the rich Fisher King was found again.
Arthur’s knights determined to go in search of this court and of its master, who knew much of the arts of magic and could change his semblance at will. Gawain was to find the court and have much joy there before Perceval found it—the same Perceval who asked about whom the Grail served and about the cross of silver, but not why the spear dripped with blood. The story also wishes to tell how the Grail served all with rich food—but this is Perceval’s story and should await its turn, for when the Good Knight shall come who has found the court of the rich Fisher King three times, then shall the full story of the Grail be told. Indeed, the court was found seven times in all, and of each discovery there is a tale. (Most of these are not told within the Elucidation but may be identified from a close scrutiny of the text.) After this the land was restored, the streams ran again, and the forests were thicker than ever. Meanwhile, the descendants of the well maidens built the Castle of Maidens, the Perilous Bridge, and the Orgeluse Castle, and seem to have created a fellowship, known as the Rich Company, which is directly opposed to the Round Table.
There follows an account of Perceval’s parentage that reads as though randomly attached to the preceding matter, which will be seen to have little or nothing to do with Chrétien. It seems, rather, to be a much earlier story, which the author (who also makes himself one of the characters) had heard and decided to add to the literature of the Grail. It does, however, offer several clues to the later material. The whole episode of the well maidens (obviously otherworld characters) and their rape and the subsequent drying up of the land offers a convincing explanation of the Wasteland, while the character of the Fisher King here plays a more important role—seeming more like a positive version of the enchanters Garlon or Klingsor, whose acquaintance we shall make in other texts but who generally oppose the Grail rather than becoming its guardians. There is, too, a suggestion of a cult of sacred wells, of an otherworldly being who rules over them, and of the intermingling of human and faery blood. As always in Arthurian matter, the kingdom of Logres is seen as an inner realm, a Britain-within-Britain, a shadowy place whose borders overlap those of Arthur, while the story of the opposing company, who appear to emerge from the otherworld, suggests a lasting break with the world of men.
This mysterious tale stands as a parallel to the Christian prequel in which Joseph of Arimathea brings the Grail lineage to Britain. Its mystery lies largely in the fact that it was transcribed after Chrétien’s Conte du Graal had been written. Its unknown author attempts a précis of the very essence of the Grail legends in this compressed preface to Chrétien’s story. Here is no wounded king, however, and the Dolorous Blow is struck—not upon a man, but upon a woman—and that woman very obviously is the representative of the land itself.
The damsels of the wells have a very venerable Celtic lineage. It is clear that at some point the women of the Sidhe, of the Faery Mounds, have become incorporated into the Grail legends in a very specific way. Indeed, the many fées and otherworldly women of the medieval tales are scarcely distinguishable from the bean-sidhes of Celtic legend. Traditionally they mediate the gifts of the otherworld to all comers, giving hospitality and often teaching the ways of wisdom.
There is also some historical relevance to the service of the wells. In Irish tradition small silver vessels were kept at wells and were legally bound to them. They were placed there to help quench the thirst of travellers. It was anciently considered a measure of how well the king’s laws were kept to leave such precious cups unguarded.189
The original state of Amangons’s kingdom seems to have been in harmony with the otherworld. The damsels of the wells give their bounty to all passersby, just as the hospitality of the Sidhe was offered in Celtic times. Moreover, when this pleasant time ceases, the kingdom is said “to have lost the voices of the wells,” or that primal harmony which we also have lost. It also loses something else—the Court of the Rich Fisher, also called the Court of Joy, which is where the Grail is to be found. So, in this story, we have two concurrent traditions: the vessels of the damsels of the wells, which give nourishment, and the Grail, which may restore the kingdom to its original harmony and fertility.
How the unknown storyteller managed to conflate the Celtic and medieval traditions, we have no means of knowing, but he was a master. He knew that in both traditions, loss of the otherworld—loss of paradise—was the primal loss, and that without communion with that otherworldly state, the world and its people fall into wasteland and misery. He even emphasizes this point that the story itself is a seed-bearing vessel:
He who made this book wills that you show to everyone the story of the Grail and who it served, for its services should be heard about in the right context—from a good Master—lest the good things which it serves become unknown and hidden, for the storyteller will teach it to all people.190
It is in the story that healing is found. The descendants of Amangons and the damsels of the wells are destined to travel on, telling their story, until it seeds in the heart of those who can find the Grail. As in the parable of the tares and wheat in the Gospels, the evil perpetrated by Amangons cannot be uprooted, nor can his kindred pay for his wrong, for they are equally descended from the damsels of the wells. The perplexity of the Round Table Knights is that of all good people who take up a cause. How shall they begin? How can they discriminate? How do they cope with the existence of evil?
Interestingly, if we recall the biblical parable of the tares and wheat, Christ says that not until the world is remade will every wrong be righted, and that good and evil must coexist until that time. He also says that the good seed stands for “the sons of the kingdom”—those who attempt to reconstruct the kingdom of God on earth.
The Amangons story is really about loss of the inner kingdom, loss of the otherworld, loss of paradise—and the one who is the bridge between the worlds is the Goddess of Sovereignty, the Mother of the Earth. In this story her representatives are violated, unable to give of their cup to all who come. Perhaps what is more horrific is the fact that Sovereignty herself becomes dumb because no one can hear her voice.
The way back to this communion with the Mother of the Earth is by means of the quest for the Court of Joy—the natural realm of the Grail. Only a few worthy questers win through to that dimension, but their achievement benefits everyone, good and evil alike. But the Court of Joy is not in some place “out there,” it is here, within.
The power of the story to bring about change, to prepare for the coming of the Grail: this is the inheritance of the damsels of the wells to their children. Within us also is a similar inheritance, for everyone has at least one speck of mother wit in his or her makeup. If you like, we are all children of Amangons and the damsels of the wells, equally capable of acts of thoughtlessness or generosity. Whatever our genetic or moral background, this gift of the goddess is a joyous yeast to our endeavours. This Celtic prequel allows us to see how we may make the Grail legends our own way of spiritual progress, for it stands in the tradition of the great salvific story, being itself a kind of gnostic Grail fable. (For a more detailed account of this material, see our Lost Book of the Grail, forthcoming from Starlight Press, 2017.)
So many strange and wondrous beings emerge from the depths of the forest that one almost begins to wonder, after a time, if there is not a deeper struggle between Arthur and the denizens of the otherworld. The realms of Faery and those of Arthur overlap at every point, as we have seen. Even in the quest for the Grail, perhaps the greatest challenge to the fellowship, the signs and symbols of the otherworld are threaded like a strand of silver through the scarlet tapestry of Christian miracle and dream.
In the Lais of Marie de France,191 composed in the twelfth century by this remarkable woman of whom virtually nothing more is known, this otherworldliness enters in as strongly as anywhere. Marie drew for her inspiration on tales then still circulating orally in France and Brittany—tales redolent with folklore and the magic of Faery. They are Celtic wizardry in courtly dress, written for the elegant, literate audience at the court of another Marie, of Champagne, the daughter of the redoubtable Eleanor of Aquitaine, who could herself have passed for one of the women of the Arthurian milieu.
From the Lands Adventurous via the Black Pine to the Fountain of Barenton, hidden deep in the Valley of No Return, the Knights of the Round Table rode “overthwart and endlong” the length and breadth of the land. Wherever the marvelous menagerie of their heraldic devices—eagles, bulls, ravens, and lions—appeared, they were recognized and their aid or company sought. Like the legendary “fast guns” of the Old West, those wishing to prove themselves as the best among the chivalry of the land sought to challenge them to battle with lance and sword.
Practice
The relationship between Arthur and the land, and the overshadowing presence of otherworldly woman such as Morgan, Nimue, Ragnall, and others, is one of the most profound aspects of the Arthurian mysteries. The meditations and rituals included in chapter 13 are designed to enable you to make contact with these beings and to understand the effect their presence had in the shaping of Arthur’s kingdom.
156. Carle, J. P. Glastonbury Abbey: The Holy House at the Head of the Moors Adventurous (Gothic Image, 1996).
157. Matthews, C. and J. Ladies of the Lake (Aquarian Press, 1992).
158. Matthews, J. Gawain: Knight of the Goddess (Aquarian Press, 1990).
159. Matthews, C. and J. King Arthur’s Raid on the Underworld (Gothic Image Publications, 2008).
160. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini, trans. J. J. Parry (University of Illinois, 1925).
161. Gesta Regum Britanniæ (Deeds of the Kings of Britain) written sometime between 1235 and 1254 and attributed to a Breton monk, William of Rennes, ed. Francisque-Michel (Archaeologia Cambrensis 2 Supplement, 1862).
162. Matthews, C. Elements of Celtic Tradition, trans. Kathleen Herbert (Element Books, 1994)
163. Cross, T. P. and C. H. Slover. Ancient Irish Tales (Figgis, Dublin, 1936).
164. Hanna, R., ed. The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyn: An Edition Based on Bodleian Library MS. Douce 324 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974).
165. Sir Launfal in The Middle English Breton Lays, eds. A. Laskaya and E. Salisbury (Medieval Institute Publications, 1995).
166. Withrington, J. The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnall: A Modern Spelling Edition of a Middle English Romance (Department of English, Lancaster University, 1991).
167. Cooke, B. K. The Quest of the Beast (Edmund Ward, 1957) and Stone, A. The Questing Beast (Heart of Albion Press, 1993).
168. Mabinogion, trans. J. Gantz (Penguin Books, 1985).
169. Ibid.
170. Ibid.
171. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini, ed. and trans. J. J. Parry (University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, 1925).
172. Merlin, or The Early History of King Arthur (4 vols), ed. H. B. Wheatley (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trubner, 1865–1899); language modernized by JM.
173. Ibid.
174. The Huth Merlin is the same work as that attributed to Robert de Boron. See Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin and Perceval by Robert de Boron, trans N. Bryant as Merlin and the Grail (D. S. Brewer, 2001)
175. Mabinogion, trans. J. Gantz (Penguin Books, 1985).
176. Malory, T. Le Morte d’Arthur, ed. J Matthews (Cassell, 2000).
177. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini, ed. and trans. J. J. Parry (University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, 1925).
178. Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. S. Armitage (Faber and Faber, 2011).
179. Matthews, J. Gawain: Knight of the Goddess (Aquarian Press,1990).
180. Withrington, J. The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnall: A Modern Spelling Edition of a Middle English Romance (Department of English, Lancaster University, 1991).
181. Matthews, C. “The Guardian Head, Sacred Palladia of Britain” in The Secret Lore of London, ed. J. Matthews and C. Wise (Hodder Coronet, 2016).
182. Matthews, C. Mabon and the Guardians of Celtic Britain (Inner Traditions, 2002).
183. Two Lives of Gildas by a monk of Ruys and Caradoc of Llancarfan, trans. H. Williams (The Cymmrodorion Record Series, 1899).
184. Matthews, J. Gawain: Knight of the Goddess (Aquarian Press,1990).
185. Malory, T. Le Morte d’Arthur, ed. J. Matthews (Cassell, 2000).
186. Ibid.
187. de Troyes, C. Perceval: The Story of the Grail, trans. N. Bryant (D. S. Brewer, 1982).
188. Elucidation, trans. G. Knight and C. Matthews in The Lost Book of the Grail (Starlight Press, 2017).
189. Cormac’s Glossary, ed. W. Stokes (1868, Kissinger reprint, 2010).
190. Matthews, C. and J. The Lost Book of the Grail (Starlight Press, 2017).
191. Marie de France. Lais, trans. G. S. Burgess and K. Busby (Penguin Books, 1986).