Arthur, Merlin or Robin Hood: the greatest British Folk Hero? And Guinevere...

As a kid, I would have said Robin Hood - for sure. 

This was almost entirely because of the "lifestyle" aspect - I liked the idea of living in the woods, and off the woods, with a gang of my friends: tracking, bows and arrows, camouflaged clothes etc. And Robin Hood was without doubt the premier English folk hero, through the middle ages and up until the past couple of generations. If Robin has a real-life origin, he is English. 

Nowadays, it is Merlin - for sure. But he is not really an English folk hero - being a combination of the Scottish Lailoken and the Welsh Myrddin - with (I believe) the Scottish Lailoken being the historical person (and having nothing to do with the historical Arthur, Lailoken being born two or three generations after the Celtic general). 

Arthur has always been there, but was never first in my interest - indeed I found him a rather lacklustre person (in some versions) or a mere warrior (in other versions) - and not even the best warrior, either. 

The historical Arthur is "British" - i.e. from the time of Celtic England and Wales - but when Scotland was distinct, mostly Pictish. 

The later Arthur is "Norman" - or, more exactly, a product of the Franco-English Plantagenet dynasty; and thus concerned with validating and mythologizing their aristocratic obsessions with cavalry, adultery and celibacy. 

This is why the chivalric knight hero Arthur has tended to be a favourite of the upper classes, while Robin was the people's hero; and Merlin became the collective archetype of the great seer/ prophet/ magician/ sorcerer/ wizard - therefore something of a link between the Celts, English, Scots, and Normans.

Guinevere - who has never had much of an heroic status, except in the most superficial treatments - has always struck me as even more lacklustre and uninteresting than Arthur. But in marrying Arthur she can be regarded as another linking figure; between the Ancient British Celts of Cornwall, and the Anglo-French Normans - the failure of that marriage is the spiritual failure of the project of Britain. 

Guinevere is a sterile (childless) beauty, who never does much except get abducted and (apparently) falls in and out of "love" with various suitors (especially Lancelot). This hints towards a recent idea (elaborated by Wendy Berg - in Red Tree, White Tree) is that Guinevere is a fairy - and thus a link (or intended to be a union) between the world of Men and Fays. That is why she is fascinating but sterile, and so passive - she is unsuited to the human world. 

Also why Guinevere keep getting abducted by various (disguised) fairies who are her relatives and suitors from faery, trying to get her back. 

But the Anglo-Norman Chivalric Arthur was challenged in my childhood by a more historical Arthur; as the warlord-leader of the Roman-British Christians against the pagan, savage, barbaric Saxon invaders.  This Arthur was propagated widely, via scholarship initially, and later (but not much later!) by romantic fiction, TV, movies etc. 

For may people, this "peoples' hero Arthur" has largely displaced both the Knights and Damsels Arthur; and also Robin Hood; and absorbed Merlin as a kind of druidic figure. 

Arthur is the new Robin!...

Thus the national mythology continued to develop and evolve; even in late 20th century (maybe into the 21st century?) Britain. 

Why was King Arthur a Good King?

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This question must be tackled by any Arthurian story with pretensions to depth and significance.

The usual examples that I have come across are related to things like 'peace and prosperity and justice'. Arthur is (supposedly) a Good King because he provides (or at least tries to provide) these - against a alternative backdrop of endemic violence, social chaos, starvation, and arbitrary tyranny.

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But - while these outcomes are undoubtedly highly desirable - they are a means to an end - they are a paradise of the farmyard, rather than something especially human.

Therefore Arthur needs also to bring civilization. The stories which use the historical Arthur tend  to place him in the incipient 'Dark Age' period after the Romans left England; and therefore can present Arthur as a Roman - who wishes to restore a complex, literate and unified society.

This provides a higher ideal, especially if it is linked to the still existing international civilization of the Eastern or 'Byzantine' Roman Empire - although I have only come across Charles Williams who used this plot device.

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So, thus far Arthur can be regarded as aiming to restore the Roman Empire and establish international exchanges of goods and ideas; as well as provide peace prosperity, and justice at home.

But who is to say that any of these things are Good?

After all, that is what most of Western Europe and the Anglosphere has had for the past couple of generations and the result has been a society which lives for distraction and strategizes to destroy itself.

Indeed, the modern Westerner is likely to see the uncivilized, illiterate and violent 'Celtic' and Gothic tribes as more admirable (certainly more 'romantic' - ironic pun intended) than the Romans - more proud, free, spontaneous, artistic and spiritual. The Romans are admired rather than loved; and indeed are perhaps more often hated than admired - so a Roman-restoring King does not have much appeal.

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The missing element is, of course, Christianity. In restoring Roman Civilization, and rejoining the Byzantine Empire, Arthur was bringing his people back into Christendom: and that is (or should be) the ultimate reason why he was a Good King.

When writers (like Malory or Tennyson or TH White) set their Arthur legends in Medieval times, instead of the Dark Ages,  this profound Christianizing rationale is not available to them - because Medieval England was already Christian; and the artificial and unsatisfactory plot device of The Grail Quest has to be introduced to provide a bolt-on spiritual dimension for Arthur.

Modern people tend to suppose the 'Dark' in the Dark Ages refers to lack of goods and technology, or something material; but of course it actually refers to spiritual darkness.

Modern people forget that the Roman England had been Christian for several generations before the legions departed; and that when Rome fell the capital of the Empire had long since moved to Constantinople. Unfortunately, this meant that Britain was cut-off from (the New) Rome, except by a long, complex and dangerous sea voyage - and the consequence was rapidly catastrophic: materially and spiritually. 

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But for a (semi-) historical, Dark Age, Romanizing King Arthur; the motivation of re-Christianizing an England slipping back into paganism, and rejoining England to  the international Empire of Byzantine Christendom, would represent an ideal spiritual motivation; and one whose potential has barely yet been tapped.

Now, if only I was a storyteller...

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His name? Lermin!

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For the past five years, late September to Christmas, my family have been sitting down of a Saturday evening and watching the BBC TV series called Merlin - a twist on the King Arthur story in which Merlin is the same age as Arthur - a young servant initially in his late teens, and whose powers must be concealed because of the laws against magic.

Each episode begins with a portentous preamble (from The Dragon, voiced by John Hurt) saying the following:

In a land of myth, and a time of magic, the destiny of a great kingdom rests on the shoulders of a young boy [later 'young man'].  His name... Merlin.

But when the narrator says 'Merlin' we all shout him down in unison with 'Lermin'. 

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The original idea behind this daftness was a fantasy scenario that the great ACT-OR (John Hurt) had rehearsed and rehearsed his cheesy lines until he was thoroughly fed-up had lost all sense of their meaning, so on the final recorded take, after the big build-up, he got the main character's name wrong - but nobody noticed, and it got broadcast anyway. 

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I'm not, here, making a recommendation that the BBC Merlin was a great piece of television - but that it was enjoyable and wholesome family fare, with plenty of vivid characters, good and evil, played by a cast that mixed young discoveries with many stalwarts of British TV and movies.

Anyway, lastnight - Christmas Eve - we all sat down and watched the last episode with the death of Arthur, the Once and Future King prophecy, and a neat hint that the story or Arthur, and his role in Britain was not yet over and finished with, but that Merlin remained with us, unnoticed.

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I, like most Britons, have long been fascinated with the story of Arthur, in its many versions. As a teen I was much influenced, for good and ill, by TH White's Once and Future King. Now I find myself going back often to look at C.S Lewis's That Hideous Strength - a book into which he packed just about everything he wanted to say, and which consequently almost bursts with the pressure: it is, indeed (for all its flaws), a prophetic and inspired book. 

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"The poison was brewed in these West lands but it has spat itself everywhere by now. However far you went you would find the machines, the crowded cities, the empty thrones, the false writings, the barren beds: men maddened with false promises and soured with true miseries, worshipping the iron works of their own hands, cut off from Earth their mother and from the Father in Heaven.

You might go East so far that East became West and you returned to Britain across the great Ocean, but even so you would not have come out anywhere into the light. The shadow of one dark wing is over all Tellus"...

The Hideous Strength holds all this Earth in its fist to squeeze as it wishes. But for their one mistake, there would be no hope left. If of their own evil will they had not broken the frontier and let in the celestial Powers, this would be their moment of victory. Their own strength has betrayed them. They have pulled down Deep Heaven on their heads. Therefore, they will die...

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...Gradually we began to see all English history in a new way. We discovered the haunting...how something we may call Britain is always haunted by something we may call Logres. Haven't you noticed that we are two countries? After every Arthur, a Mordred; behind every Milton, a Cromwell; a nation of poets, a nation of shopkeepers. Is it any wonder they call us hypocrites? But what they mistake for hypocrisy is really the struggle between Logres and Britain...

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...Did they really mean any great harm with all their fussy little intrigues? Wasn’t it more silly than anything else?”

“Och aye,” said MacPhee. “They were only playing themselves. Kittens letting on to be tigers. But there was a real tiger about and their play ended by letting her in..."

"...Of course, they never thought anyone would act on their theories! No one was more astonished than they when what they’d been talking of for years suddenly took on reality. But it was their own child coming back to them: grown up and unrecognisable, but their own...”

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"Those who have forgotten Logres sink into Britain. Those who call for Nonsense will find that it comes.”

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That is why Arthur keeps returning to haunt us, and why almost all versions of the legend - including the modern, distraction-orientated and politically correct - illuminate with beams of light peeping through the chinks.

The BBC Merlin was limited by many deficiencies characteristic of its age - not least the elimination of religion from King Arthurs court (so that the King was crowned not by a priest but by the court librarian!) - yet because there was a decency behind it, a sense of striving to do one's best, there were times when the spirit of Arthur and Merlin, the spirit of Logres, was apparent.

Much more cannot be expected in our times.

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As Tolkien wrote in Smith of Wootton Major when Smith meets the Queen of Faery and found that:

"...His mind turned back retracing his life until he came to the day of the Children's Feast and the coming of the star, and suddenly he saw  again the little dancing figure with its wand [stood on top of the sugary sweet icing of the Great Cake], and in shame he lowered his eyes from the Queen's beauty.

"But she laughed... "Do not be grieved for me...

"Better a little doll, maybe, than no memory of Faery at all."

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Let's take Christmas in that way. No matter how subverted and commercialized, its transcendent meaning cannot be utterly hidden, for those with eyes to see, hearts to feel - and it is this from childhood which haunts our adult memories.

Happy Xtmas.

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Albion's folk heroes - Arthur, Merlin and Robin Hood compared

These are the three best-known British folk heroes, and each has a different archetypal quality.

Arthur is the earliest - dating from the time after the Roman Legions had left the island, and associated with a decades-long period of successful British resistance to the Saxons. He is the archetypal Good King, Father of the nation (although, strangely, not an actual father of children - except Mordred...) who presided over a golden age; brought-down by human frailty and supernatural evil.

Interestingly, the documented historical figure that most resembles Arthur is Alfred the Great - warrior, scholar, lawyer and devout Christian; who was, of course, a descendant of the Saxon invaders whom Arthur resisted. This perhaps shows that Arthur is an archetype of land and spirit, not primarily a matter of genetic descent.

When modern people think about Arthur there is the yearning, and perhaps hope, for Arthur to return (revive, reincarnate or as a modern spiritual descendant) and vanquish the powers of evil and reinstate the golden age.


Merlin is from a generation or two later; and is perhaps a composite of a Welsh poet and wizard with a Scottish-English border seer and prophet. Despite his well-attested decline from high rank into exile, madness and poverty - and a well-known 'grave' near Peebles in Scotland; the most imaginatively vivid legends have Merlin's time being curtailed by spiritual imprisonment (in a crystal cave, or oak) - with the promise of eventual return.

Spiritually some regard Merlin as the last of the (good) druids; others as a transitional figure - with one foot in pagan Druidism and the other in the new Christianity (of the Celtic variety). 

Modern English people have assimilated Merlin in many archetypal versions, from Gandalf, through Doctor Who, to Dumbledore. We see him mainly as a potent combination of magician, prophet, seer and wise-man; but in an eccentric, unpredictable, 'irresponsible' personality. Someone who operates behind the scenes, indifferent to power, status, wealth - probably also indifferent to sex, marriage, children and the like.

This latter idea finds an allegorical equivalent in the stories of Merlin's conception as a devil and a nun with a monkish baptism; or a virgin and an incubus; Merlin therefore having some aspects attributed to Jesus and 'the light', but mixed with something darker and more instinctive.   


Robin Hood is 'the people's hero' from the Middle Ages, leading a successful resistance to the Norman aristocracy. Robin is not much of a spiritual figure, but exponent of a 'pastoral idyll', a paradisal life of leisure, music and poetry - hunting, competing and helping the needy; lived-out in beautiful English woodland.

Robin is the escape from authority, liberation from work, brotherhood of all Men - and Robin's men are a fellowship of oddballs, eccentrics and drop-outs. Again, he is not a Father. (We Britons seem uninterested in patriarchs when it comes to folk heroes!)

Interestingly, Robin seems never to die, but to be a permanent presence - always young, always the same; always in his role of the impulsive and pleasure-seeking but honest and kindly counter-cultural rebel. All this makes him seem kin to the fairies, or a nature spirit - although Robin Wood is not magic except for his supernatural skill with the bow.


Of these folk heroes of Albion, the one who most appeals to me, and who seems to be most what we need, is Merlin. This is because I think we cannot - and should not - look to being rescued by a King, nor saved by an outlaw. We need to help-ourselves; and what we therefore most need is the wisdom of a wizard.

The British Myth - Arthur and The Grail

William Wildblood writes: 

The notion of Albion Awakening is tied up with the so called British myth as described by Geoffrey Ashe in his book Camelot and the Vision of Albion. This includes such ideas as the discovery of the Holy Grail and the return of King Arthur. 

Taking the second first, the well known story is that Arthur did not die after his final battle against a treacherous usurper, a kind of Judas figure, but was spirited away to a realm somewhere between heaven and earth to be healed of his wounds prior to one day returning and leading his country to a new Golden Age... 

The Holy Grail is more mysterious. Was it the cup used at the Last Supper and therefore symbolically or even literally the container of Christ's blood? This is how it is usually presented but it has antecedents in a Celtic cauldron which had the power to bring dead men back to life... Its loss has led to the desolation of the natural and spiritual worlds as experienced by human beings ever since. Its rediscovery by the worthy leads to spiritual transformation. 

Nowadays King Arthur is just seen as a legendary figure built up from a composite of real and imagined sources. He's not even a king, just a war leader who may have won an important battle against the Saxons and perhaps held them at bay long enough for them to have become more Christianised when they eventually did conquer this country. Clearly a real dark age Arthur was more like this. 

But the Arthur of the imagination is not like this at all. He is a far grander and more noble figure. The trouble is that by reducing Arthur to history we lose contact with the imaginative version and with the power of that version to inspire... 

Read the rest at Albion Awakening...

Supposing King Arthur really *was* buried at Glastonbury?

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So far as I can tell, modern historians and neo-pagans seem united in regarding the 1191 discovery at Glastonbury Abbey of King Arthur and Guinevere's tomb as a fraud.

But the evidence that it is a fraud is itself very tenuous - and the matter in reality hinges upon prejudice applied to what would seem to be inevitable minor discrepancies in the scanty records.

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Modern historians and neo-pagans are mostly very different people, but they are united in prejudice against the medieval monks; and effortlessly assume that they fabricated the whole discovery for cynical and materialistic reasons.

On the other hand, if we assume the Abbot and monks were honest and true (but fallible), then it is reasonable to assume that they did indeed discover Arthur's tomb; and certainly that is what everybody believed for the next few hundred years during which Glastonbury grew to become one of the largest, finest most visited Abbeys in Britain, with a magnificent library.

When the Religious Houses were robbed and destroyed by Henry VIII, Glastonbury Abbey and its monks were treated with exceptional brutality, and the place was looted by the authorities and then the locals who benefited from robbing the sites for a considerable time.

Along with the library, Arthur's tomb, which has been the centrepiece of the Abbey, disappeared (apparently) without trace. Somerset became strongly anti-Catholic - and since the early twentieth century the town of Glastonbury has been dominated by a socialistic, neo-pagan, Gnostic, syncretic - in a word 'anti-Christian' - sensibility.

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But suppose that Arthur's tomb really was discovered and restored and revered in Glastonbury Abbey - that leads to a rather different narrative than the usual one; and one that is far less flattering to the post-Catholic authorities and Somerset locals.

If we were prejudiced in favour of Medieval Catholicism and the Abbey, rather than the modern Leftist establishment and post-modern New Age 'counterculture'; then we might see Glastonbury and its history as a horribly cynical example of victim-blaming - in which vilification of the monks was used to justify murder, wrecking and looting; and history was re-written from the perspective of these self-serving lies.

Modern Glastonbury would then be the degraded consequences of the systematic destruction of ancient, legendary Britain - including her most potent hero, Arthur - and the severing of our magical and mythic links with that era; while falsely posing as a continuation of the very same legendary tradition which it in reality destroyed

If we add to this, the that the legend that Glastonbury (by Joseph of Arimithea) was actually the very first Western Christian community was also true - then the whole story takes on an epic and tragic form.

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So much hinges on our interpretation of that 1191 discovery of Arthur's tomb. If it was not the fraud, that 'everyone' now believes it to be - if it was real; then an extraordinary 'alternative history' opens back onto a lost inheritance of mythic history.

The matter of Britain, and her once and future destiny, take on a very different complexion.

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Will King Arthur save us?

Sewingshields 'castle' beside Hadrian's Wall, Northumberland - our local site for Arthur's sleeping army

I have been reading and thinking about Arthur, as I often do! And it led me to wonder about the old prophecies that he and some knights are magically asleep under some hill (such as South Cadbury in Somerset), or in a cave' (such as Alderley Edge in Cheshire) and waiting the call to arise and save England.

To my mind, England is now in greater danger than since the Norman conquest, because in 2020 we have already experienced a near-total destruction of our culture. It has Already Happened... The only open question is whether this is permanent. 

But almost immediately I realised that the measure of England's plight is that - even if we assume that Arthur is ready and waiting the call - the call will not come, because the people have consented (often embraced) their own annihilation. 

This situation has, of course, been building for several generations. England created the industrial revolution, invented socialism, and for more than a century has been abandoning Christianity. 

The net result has been a pervasive nihilism, self-hatred, adoption of a system of inverted-Christian values, the embrace of ethnic replacement - and now 'finally' (perhaps) a clamouring zeal for the Global Establishment program of generalised social-economic destruction and psychological crushing. 

The signs are that They will not be content until most people are reduced to an extreme state of groveling terror and despair. 

The mass of the English  - and in particular the ruling and professional classes - have given-up, and now seem unconsciously to seek their own deaths - and will defend this death-seeking stance with extreme, angry, hysterical and almost frenzied tenacity. 

The birdemic has enabled people dishonestly to disguise their pursuit of national and personal suicide as a concern for life and health - by the simple expedient of an insane (literally psychotic); monomania concerning the birdemic, combined with a reckless (and lying) indifference to the major (and increasing) causes of suffering, sickness and death. 

So, if Arthur and his knights were to awaken and try to save us from incipient destruction and death; they would be met by the united defiance of the entire Establishment, backed a large swathe of the masses, who would certainly regard liberation as an attack.  

Arthur was, after all, a divinely-anointed King, and vicegerent of God on earth. Naturally those who serve the powers of darkness would oppose him!

So, fantasies of National rescue - even of divine rescue - are false; so long as the people do not want to be rescued; and have, indeed, chosen to be damned. 

King Arthur, and legends of the British Isles

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I am English (mostly) and have lived in Scotland - but what about Britain?

The energetic reality of Britain, at a gut level, comes almost wholly from the Legends of King Arthur - the matter of Britain; which crops-up all around England, Scotland, Wales and even Brittany.

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Like so many people, I have a fascination for Arthur. My main basis for this - its crystallization - was The Once and Future King by TH White, which had a big impact on me in my late teens into early twenties.

But even now I consume quite a lot of Arthurian stuff in the realm of popular art and high art (indeed, I have never read Malory, nor any of the old sources).

An Arthurian setting does not have to be perfect to work its charm on me, even slight hints and pictures are effective enough to keep me interested - so long as I detect a seriousness of intent. I like to visit places with Arthurian associations.

On the other hand I strongly dislike exploitative, crude, vulgar use of the Arthurian legend: the Camelot musical, the idea that JFK's smug coterie was 'like Camelot', Mark Twain's Yankee in King Arthur's Court (or whatever it is called), and - although parts of the movie are very funny (notably the two stupid guards), I did not like the Arthurian links in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

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I like the character of Merlin very much, and also Arthur (as a good, just, somewhat unimaginative but well-meaning Englishman - not, of course, as admirable as the real King Alfred the Great - but better than any other real monarchs!).

I also like the idea of hot-blooded Scots or Welsh knights, and seductive Celtic witches and sorceresses like Nimue and Morgan le Fey.

But I have reservations. I have never liked Lancelot, or Guinevere, and I never liked the Grail plot (a big thing not to like!).

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So, King Arthur is the main British legend; indeed (for all its flaws) the only one.

The main English legend is Robin Hood; indeed (for all its flaws) the only one - until Tolkien.

Except that there was the mythic-reality of the Anglo Saxon golden age, upon which (covertly) so much of Englishness was built - St Cuthbert, St Bede, Alfred and so on.

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The other dimension - to which I alluded in yesterday's posting of the Border Widow's Lament - is the Border between England and Scotland; which for me has a rather distinct identity, based on the cohesion of Anglo Saxon times and again during the Middle Ages. 

Presumably this feeling about the Borders is hereditary - since three grandparents are Northumbrian (two going way-back) and the other came from Ulster, ex-Scots borderers.

Do I believe in such familial influences? Yes, like Tolkien, I do.

I don't try to prove them, nor do I try to explain how such influences work, but they are real.

Ancestral influences can be denied, of course, and existence does not end when they are denied: it merely becomes flat and dead.

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Is Aragorn more like King Arthur, or Alfred the Great?

The episode when Aragorn carelessly burns the lembas while sheltering in Lothlorien, and is scolded by an elf maiden 

Is Aragorn more like King Arthur, or Alfred the Great? Of course, he does not have to be like either! 

But there are zillions of people who have drawn a parallel between Aragorn and King Arthur (e.g. 288,000 Google entries pair these names!) - but I can't myself see much resemblance except that they are both Kings - and both Good Kings, at that. 

The main similarity is that both were aided by a wizard - and Gandalf is (obviously) derived from Merlin; as are all modern wizards. But Gandalf and Merlin are not very alike - in particular Gandalf is much more Good than Merlin; whose main intervention was originally (in Geoffrey of Monmouth) to enable Uther to commit adultery. 

And this matter of Goodness is what also distinguishes Aragorn from Arthur; because Arthur is quite flawed as both Man and King (in most versions of the story) - and his only major prowess is generalship (as a single combat fighter he is exceeded by several knights, notably Lancelot). 

By contrast, we know that Aragorn is among the best Men of all time - intelligent, wise, learned, a healer, skilled at tracking, hardy, a great fighter; and possessing a will strong enough to wrest control of the Orthanc palantir from Sauron. We confidently expect he will be the same as a King. 

On this basis, it is probably closer to the mark to consider Alfred the Great as a closer equivalent to Aragorn; since Alfred seems to have been both an exemplary individual; and more of an all-rounder than Arthur. 

Alfred was apparently not only an inspiring leader and excellent general, but also a major administrator and lawyer; scholar and author; and a deep and devout Christian. 

Alfred also has a very roughly analogous trajectory from being reduced almost to a 'ranger', hiding on the 'island' of Athelney in the Somerset boglands, before a 'return of the King' to reclaim his kingdom (about half of what is now England) from The Danes.   

I don't suppose that Tolkien seriously based the character of Aragorn on any particular historical or mythical model - especially considering that Aragorn developed narratively, by increments, from a brown-skinned hobbit-in-clogs called Trotter. 

But, in character, Aragorn seems more like Alfred than anyone else. 

The sacred kingship of Arthur, and the role of Merlin (from Gareth Knight)

Having magically engineered his conception; Merlin carries Arthur, son of Uther and Igraine, into hiding.  

From The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend: the archetypal themes, images and characters of the Arthurian cycle and their place in the Western magical tradition. Gareth Knight, 1983. Excerpted from pp 123-4.

In the matter of Britain the days of the dawn of our epoch, man was far less individualized than he is now. Man was more group-minded and open to inner plane influences. Those who could best guide the destiny of their particular group were those who could be most readily receptive to teachings of a higher order of consciousness from the inner planes. 

Certain blood lines had a natural clairvoyance which was an important corollary of power and vision. This was the foundation of the concept of aristocracy and the 'divine right of kings' - a concept so deeply ingrained in human consciousness that Charles I was proud to be a martyr in defense of it. 

The importance of this sacred kingship, and our inherited ease of contact with the inner planes, is clearly demonstrated in the Arthurian legend of Arthur's conception and birth, which reveal a specific policy of genetic engineering on the part of Merlin. 

Arthur, according to Merlin's intention, was meant to be a priest-king in the ancient tradition of Atlantis, chosen before birth, as a result of a mating carefully planned in the light of esoteric genetic considerations. 

Merlin chose the two parents with great care. Arthur's father was to be Uther Pendragon, of the ancient British royal lines. On his mothers side, Arthur had the blood of an Atlantean princess, Igraine. She was one of the Sacred Clan, who had come to Cornwall and become the wife of the local chieftain; known as Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall or Duke of Tintagel.

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Gareth Knight was a scholar of Owen Barfield, and aware of the idea that human consciousness had developed through the centuries, in a particular direction from groupish to individualized, from obedience towards freedom; and in accordance with a 'divine plan'. Here he explains and imagines this in terms of the Arthurian legendarium - with the purpose of using the result as a focus for ceremonial magical activities. 

In particular, GK homes in on the transitional stage of human consciousness - the 'classical and medieval' centuries which came in-between the remote era of immersive and unselfconscious groupishness of tribal Man, and the current individualism of modern Man. 

This was a time when group-identity and clairvoyance could be found most strongly in certain blood-lines of inheritance; and when contact with the spiritual world was still achievable - but only by such people, and/or by the use of initiation, ritual, symbol and other 'technologies' and disciplines. 

This passage triggered thoughts of the English then British monarchy, and the occasional rulership of monarchs who - to some degree - approximated to the 'priest-king' ideal. There were several such in the Anglo-Saxon era - most notably Alfred; but the Norman invasion, which was an alien and hostile takeover, caused a considerable disruption. 

Not until Henry II (the first Plantagenet) do we find a monarch that might be supposed to have had some 'magical' attributes - mainly by the female influences of his mother Matilda (who was descended from the Saxon kings) and his wife Eleanor of Aquitane (who had many of the attributes of an fairy enchantress). 

From then, through to the end of the Stuart line (with the death of Anne), there were from time to time English kings or queens with a touch of magic about them, and an apparent capacity sometimes to connect 'clairvoyantly' with higher guidance: e.g. Richard I, Edward III, Elizabeth I.   

By my understanding, this form of natural magic gradually but inexorably dwindled, but persisted as at least a possibility into the 20th century - however it is now so weak a stream that it has become ineffectual. 

Such is the nature of these times, and of our predicament. 

There are three basic possibilities: 

We can yearn for, and try to restore, ancient ways -including the group-ish enchantment of those times; including to hope for the restoration of a sacred monarch, with divine right and naturally 'clairvoyant'  who serves his people by his own subjection to divine guidance. 

We can (and this has been the response of our official and mainstream culture) dispense altogether with the magical and spiritual aspects of life - except maybe as a hobby and lifestyle choice that does not affect our primary motivations (and these motivations are some mixture of political ideology with whatever is currently hedonically-expedient: i.e. the bureaucrat-careerist archetype). 

Or... we can look forward, through, and beyond the present aspiritual, mundane, ideological and hedonic world; and consciously seek as individuals for a qualitatively-different kind of spiritual knowledge and guidance. 

Personal reservations about the Arthurian legends

I have recently twice had the experience of commencing a modern retelling of the King Arthur legends with enjoyment, only to abandon the story before the end due to a kind of revulsion at the gross psychological implausibility of the narrative turn.

The problem in both instances was that well-established characters, characters I had got-to-know,  suddenly began behaving unnaturally, unbelievably, by tortured-logic - due to their actions being artificially shoe-horned into a pre-exiting plot shape.

The fault, in both cases, was that the authors had tried to stick to the shape of Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur (middle 1400s) - which (for all its excellences) is merely a compendium of diverse and originally separate legends, cobbled-together into a semi-coherent set of loosely-linked stories.

As indeed is the Arthurian story itself - apparently consisting of two separate strands of ancient legend - one about the prophet and wizard Merlin, and the other about a noble war leader and exemplary character called Arthur - probably based on real people, probably from different times and places of post-Roman Britain (from the 400s AD onwards).

These strands were brought together mainly by the genius of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the middle 1100s to make the basis of the Arthurian story. And these are the Arthurian elements which I love - especially those concerned with Merlin.

These are the British elements of the King Arthur story - the true 'Matter of Britain'.

The later additional French stuff about knights, chivalry, round tables, courtly love, the Lancelot/ Guinevere adultery, and the Grail Quest I find more-or-less repellent - although I can tolerate them if they are subordinated within the narrative.

(I find the Grail Quest a particularly horrible intrusion. It's hard to put my finger on why; but for me it gathers and concentrates many of the very worst aspects of medieval Christianity - exactly the kind of corruption and pathology masquerading as health and purity that helped keep me away from Christianity for so many decades.)

Of these later elements, that of courtly love is, for me, the worst. The business of knights 'serving' their ladies, wearing their favours, the stupid stuff about 'honour', courtesy and being held bound by a casual and unconsidered word to do some ridiculous or wicked thing...

Bah! it is Frenchified, decadent and anti-Christian (as made clear by the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the late 1300s; in which these elements are a threat to the goodness and purity of Gawain, and his stubborn adherence to this courtly code is revealed as absurd and unworthy).

Consequently, from my perspective, all version of the Arthurian legends I have encountered (in movies, TV, novels and poems) are extremely imperfect and unsatisfactory works of art - through which something strong and important may shine.

In this my attitude seems to resemble that of JRR Tolkien - who, for all that he tried his hand at an extended Arthurian poem, had strong reservations about the thing as a whole, even as he responded powerfully to specific elements.

In sum, I wish that some more authors could put Malory behind them, and re-imagine the Merlin-Arthur aspects without the effete continental intrusions - to create a noble and psychologically plausible tale that taps into deep roots of British myth and the Christian impulse.

The deep archetypes of King Arthur and the knights, Robin Hood, and Merlin

What follows is either a deep archetypal insight, or more likely just my headcanon, concerning some subjects I have spent an inordinate amount of time reading and thinking-about. 

While I love the Big Picture; I have always had some reservations about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table - perhaps because of their deployment by the Plantagenet and Tudor aristocracy in a self-justifying, self-aggrandizing, sort of way. 

I mean, when all is said and done, Arthur is a king, and they're all knights!

And the stories are often (at least superficially) about fighting on horseback, ransoms, castles, hunting, courtly love, points of honour - and other such nasty or ridiculous (and typically Norman) stuff. 

To complement this as any kind of myth for England and the English; it is necessary to give primacy to Robin Hood and his Merry Men. 

These represent to me something like the Yeomanry and Craftsmen of the English and "Welsh" (Saxons and Celts). Certainly there was, for many generations, a kind of obsession - an insatiable hunger - among ordinary English people for songs and tales of Robin Hood. 

This archetype is, however, rather poisoned by the gentrification of making Robin an Earl, and having the story rotate around his supposed loyalty and obedience to his feudal monarch King Richard I ("Lionheart") - who was a a pretty typical absentee Francophile militaristic Norman oppressor. 

I see Robin and Co.'s "outlawry" as - negatively - a protest against the Norman Yoke and especially the vile Forest Laws imposed on the Anglo Saxons; but positively as a kind of restoration of the freedom and animism of a hunter-gatherer life. 

The other great archetypal character is Merlin the wizard - whose greatest resonance is as a kind of shaman-priest, and a link between the pagan and Christian. 

I suppose Merlin to have spent most of his time in the forest, nearby the Merry Men - In my mind replacing Friar Tuck in the role of spiritual teacher, advisor, seer, and magician. 

But, linking the worlds of Arthur and Robin; Merlin might reasonably have been supposed to spend some time in the court; including the crucial task of arranging the birth of Arthur from suitable hereditary stock - on the basis that, since we apparently must have a King and Knights, these might as well be Good ones. 

The return of King Arthur - into the realm of conscious thinking...

Sewingshields on Hadrian's Wall, under which King Arthur sleeps with his knights until needed - or perhaps, Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, the Eildon Hills, Alderley Edge in Cheshire, Glastonbury Tor, or elsewhere...

If the Sleeping King Arthur was to awaken and return to save Albion, as some legends suggest he will; then he cannot save us in the way a King might save his people in the past - by uniting and leading them with irresistible force to escape the yoke of evil rulers; to initiate a Golden Age of peace, plenty, beauty and Godliness. 

Such a King could not save modern Britain because many, perhaps most, people do not want to be saved. Taking cue from their leaders; the inhabitants hate themselves and their country, and actively seek (by multiple means) to disparage its people and forward its destruction

For a start, the Men of Albion do not want beauty or Godliness - only pleasure and comfort. 

Also, they do not regard their current rulers as evil - indeed, because they have rejected God, modern Men neither understand nor believe-in the reality of genuine evil (regarding 'evil' as merely selfishness). 

Any returning King would find more people against, than with him; and those who were with him so fear-full and this-worldly as to lack the courage to take any significant personal risk or suffer even short-term inconvenience. They will not even risk other people saying they aren't nice. 

What we have now is very purely a spiritual war, and the problem is that few people recognize the reality of the spiritual realm. 

Indeed, the essence of the spiritual war is exactly about this denial. One cannot take sides in the war of Good versus evil, God versus the demons, until these are known as realities. 

So the nature and validity of any returning Good King would itself be denied. He would be interpreted as a (reactionary) political leader merely, aiming at material benefit merely; selfishly seeking the Good of Britain merely. 

Nonetheless, the Rightful King can return - but not as a mass leader; and not to impose his will on the nation. 

He can return, but in the spiritual and not the material realm. 

He can return, but not to conquer and overwhelm the unwilling and indifferent - but must be asked and welcomed by choice of one person at a time. 

The King can return into the hearts of Men, to fortify and encourage, to provide understanding and guidance. He would unite and direct the spirit - not the bodies - of Albion.

What the King would rescue us from is passivity, un-consciousness and denial of God and the immortal soul.  

Hence, the Awakening King must be invited into your human heart and mine, each by a deliberate and personal act of decision. 

And the goal will be to save the spirit of Albion - to save it for that eternity into-which all will be welcomed who truly desire it. 

More on Arthur and Avalon

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Continuing from

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/supposing-king-arthur-really-was-buried.html

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When considering ancient written sources, including scripture, the modern emphasis is to assume the null hypothesis that if they are 'wrong' (i.e. factually inconsistent with other sources) in one respect, then they are 'unreliable' hence should be ignored.

Well, this is one assumption; but it is likely that ancient writers - who were mostly religious men, mostly apparently deeply religious men, for whom writing was a semi-sacred activity - were more truthful than modern historians - who are essentially just clever careerists.

More truth-full - but truthful in that way which is natural and spontaneous to humans - and in a way that is different from the post-religious and pseudo-scientific idea of truth which has dominated the West for recent generations.

The truth they are attempting to convey is the essence of the story, not the specific details.

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This is not an un-sophisticated way of writing - it is indeed perhaps more sophisticated than modern culture, in the sense that Chaucer is more sophisticated a writer than anyone alive; and everything which Chaucer wrote which can be checked against other sources shows many changes of detail - deletion, expansion, new material etc.

But it is likely that we modern reader lack the training and skill to read this kind of writing as it was read at the time - and we probably miss the truth of it: miss that which was most important to Chaucer's contemporaries.

(CS Lewis remarks that the interlace method of composition, so popular in the high Middle Ages and extending to Spenser's Fairie Queen, was popular for centuries - yet is generally too difficult for modern people to follow: we cannot hold the structure in our heads, nor recognise the logic of it. There are likely to be many other examples.)

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When an ancient writer is being truthful in a 'literal' sense - or the nearest equivalent, then he simply copies, or he memorizes word for word (or as closely as humanly possible, under the circumstances) - this is how certain specific prophecies or ancient laws are transmitted. They may be cast into a song or chant, then repeated and repeated until learned by heart.

When transmitted in this fashion, there is often inconsistency within and between texts - because the focus is on the specifics and not the generalizability.

Think about proverbs or maxims. These are traditional ways of transmitting advice, rules for living - all are accepted as true (none are denied or dismissed); yet maxims often (apparently) contradict each other; and the wisdom is in knowing which one to apply in a particular circumstance. 

This is demonstrated in the Lord of the Rings by Tolkien (who knew allabout these things) when the Fellowship is about to set out, and Elrond and Gimli engage in a 'battle of proverbs' (as Michael Drout calls it). Elrond says that no member of the company (except Frodo) is required to go all the way to Mount Doom. Gimli dissents, and replies with the proverb "Faithless is he who says farewell when the road darkens"; to which Elrond replies "Let him not vow to walk in the dark who has not seen the nightfall"; Gimli: "Yet strong word may strengthen quaking heart"; "Or break it" - finishes Elrond.

This shows that all traditional wisdom is regarded as true (nobody wise denies the validity of a proverb) 'despite' that proverbs superficially contradict one another.

This should also be assumed to be the case with pre-modern textual evidence, properly understood (unless deliberate dishonesty is being attributed - and this should be regarded as less - not more - likely than in modern scholarship).

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So, when we read something like Geoffrey of Monmouth's - History of the Kings of Britain - we should not consider it invalidated by the inconsistencies with other sources; rather, we need to try and read it such that we are aware of different genres at work within the piece and being alert to those moments when the truth is being given...

Rather as the Bible must be read as containing many genres such as (what we moderns would refer to as) history, poetic songs, mythic stories, parables, fables, philosophy, guides for living, maxims,  and so on - rather than read 'literalistically' as if it were wholly an instruction manual on a sentence by sentence basis (and therefore full of inconsistencies).

As it is, the small, clear, clockwork minds of modern secular scholarship confidently reads their ignorance and lack of sophistication into ancient works, and into the evaluation of ancient works; insensibly and uncritically - yet dogmatically; accepting its own arbitrary and self-imposed exclusions and over-simplifications as necessarily correct; such that the truth and validity of ancient writing is summarily rejected - and its wisdom and reality is hidden and/or condescended to.

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And this only refers to written sources, and to those written sources which survive.

The spoken, 'oral', sources may be lost entirely or mostly, especially secret knowledge; and most importantly the tacit knowledge of the skilled crafts (or 'mysteries' as they were called - as in the 'mystery plays' performed by the guilds) - which can only be handed on by prolonged contract between master to apprentice... these are left out if we focus on surviving written texts interpreted by the latest fashions in secular (careerist) academia.

Thus, things which were crystal clear to the masters of the past are utterly obscure to modern professional historians and other 'scholars'; and - this being the problem- are 'therefore' vehemently and scornfully rejected by moderns.

As someone who was apprenticed in the guild of the ancient mystery of Medicine and also in Science, I have seen this modern cynicism prevail. Many things of great importance that were once very clear and obvious - things clear and obvious (clear and obvious, that is, to one of adequate knowledge and skill - one who has been apprenticed for many years and has learned from his masters) are now routinely (and indeed compulsorily, in the law courts) utterly denied, and re-framed as the product of socialization/ brainwashing.

Ignorance, lack of skill, lack of relevant knowledge; the dumb, numb, overconfidence of the man who knows just one thing (e.g. statistics) - such deficits and deficiencies are now dominant; because their perspective is easily explained to the majority of equally dumb, arrogant idiots; and easily rendered into formulae and rules that can be 'objectively' (but without rationale) be monitored and enforced.

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To get back to Arthur - anyone who wants to know for himself the truth about Arthur, or Merlin, can never find it using the mentally-maiming conventions of modern secular scholarship - and would need to learn a very different way of reading and thinking about ancient sources than is enforced now.

And therefore he would be well-advised either to keep his discoveries/ inferences to himself - or else to refrain from arguing within the current conventions of career-effective academia - to frame those discoveries in another genre: story, song, poem, fable, parable...

Because, whatever is (if it is to be found) the true and necessary and valuable meaning of Arthur and Merlin and the rest; this truth (and it is a truth) is something or some-things excluded a priori by the methods of modern history, archaeology, textual scholarship.

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Will the future be Logres or Britain? - a guest post from John Fitzgerald

The Royal Family, as you rightly pointed out in your post, 'What Will Happen When the Queen Dies?'

 http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/what-will-happen-when-queen-dies.html 

have a tendency to polarise opinion.

Some see them as active agents of evil and willing participants in the ongoing dissolution of British culture and society. Others view the Sovereign as a genuine 'still point of the turning world', a bulwark of stability in the face of a collapse which would only career downwards at an even more breakneck speed without the Queen's restraining hand.

There is much, as you say, which is unknown about the aims and intentions of the inner circle of Royals. The truth, I feel, lies (as ever) somewhere between the extremes. There are, however, a series of storm clouds gathering vis-a-vis the succession.

The poet Kathleen Raine (1898 - 2003) had, I recall, a remarkably exalted view of Prince Charles and his role and destiny in our island story. She saw him as standing at the heart of what she called the 'Great Battle', a standard bearer and lightning rod for everything good, beautiful and true.

I've lionised Charles before on these pages to a gentle hum of disapproval, so I won't labour the point, save to say that his tremendous advocacy of Middle Eastern Christians has led some commentators (in The Catholic Herald notably) to speculate that he might be on the point of converting to Orthodoxy. Another potential reason, therefore, why he might find his path to the throne blocked.

I can certainly foresee a degree of tension between partisans of Charles and supporters of William. There is an apocalyptic French prophecy from the Middle Ages (I forget the source) which speaks of great troubles in France followed by a civil war in England sparked by a Sovereign's death and a dispute over the succession.

On that eschatological note, there are three monarchical restorations, I feel, which could potentially occur in the near future and shift the level of debate, due to the extent to which they could possibly be seen as prefigurations of the return of Christ as Judge and King. These restorations could come about as a reaction to political and economic collapse, as an act of defiance against tyranny or as a spontaneous realisation and insight into the spiritual significance and symbolic depth of the Crown.

'If Christ is to return,' as the theologian John Milbank puts it, 'then so too is Arthur.' The three countries in question are France, Russia and Logres. I'll come to Logres shortly, but first the other two points of the triangle -

(1) France, because of her centuries-old commitment to civilised values, especially in scholarship and the Arts; the longevity of her monarchy (496 - 1793), and her Christian witness and elevated status as 'eldest daughter of the Church' - and

(2) Russia, due to the spiritual intensity of her people (as reflected in Russian music and literature) and the idea of Moscow as the 'Third Rome', the true successor to Imperial Rome and Byzantium. Whether this claim is grounded in anything substantial or not, the very fact that it is made reveals a religious vision and an awareness of history way beyond the reach of most Western nations.

Logres is something different. It is the inner, spiritual side of what is commonly known as Britain. It is hidden, invisible, unmanifest - yet always there for discerning eyes to catch a glimpse from time to time. The writer Paddy Leigh Fermor, for instance, saw the ruined abbeys of post-Reformation England as the 'peaks of a vanished Atlantis drowned four centuries deep.'

It is C.S Lewis, however, who really sees beyond the screen of surface appearance in this sizzling passage from 'That Hideous Strength':

'It all began,' said Dr. Dimble, 'when we discovered that the Arthurian story is mostly true history. There was a moment in the Sixth Century when something that is always trying to break through into this country nearly succeeded. Logres was our name for it ... And then we gradually began to see all English history in a new way. We discovered the haunting.' 'What haunting?' asked Camilla. 'How something we may call Britain is always haunted by something we may call Logres. Haven't you noticed that we are two countries? After every Arthur, a Mordred; behind every Milton, a Cromwell: a nation of poets, a nation of shopkeepers. Is it any wonder they call us hypocrites? But what they mistake for hypocrisy is really the struggle between Logres and Britain.' 

Whatever our thrust and counter-thrust regarding the Windsors, it seems fair to say that they belong to Britain rather than Logres. They may well represent the very best of Britain, but there is a qualitative gap between Britain and Logres which they simply cannot bridge. They're not on that level.

Well then, who is? The Jacobite in me would plump for a restoration of the Stuarts and the return of the 'King over the Water' but that again would be to plant my standard on too low - too materialistic - a plane. Logres doesn't work like that. We would be best advised to turn to Lewis again and the continuation of the above-quoted passage, where Dimble asserts that there has been a 'secret Logres in the very heart of Britain all these years: an unbroken succession of Pendragons.'

This suggestion of a secret or alternative line of Sovereigns chimes well with similar motifs in other countries and cultures - the clandestine Merovingian bloodline in France, for example, or the Hidden Imam of Shia Islam. It ties in too with the universal myth of the Sleeping King, as recounted in this part of the world in the story of King Arthur and his Knights asleep in a treasure-filled cave, awaiting the hour of their country's greatest need, when they will wake and rise again to expel once and for all evil from her shores.

These themes, to my mind, have the ring of truth - not the empirical truth of an 'evidence base' but the truth of myth and story, which is an altogether deeper and richer thing, analogous to the 'Deeper Magic From Before the Dawn of Time' that Lewis writes of in 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'.

It is this level of truth that Winston Churchill tuned into during the Second World War. He recognised in his country's story - its highs and lows, twists and turns and narrative ups and downs - a greater depth of truth than the shortfall in money, manpower and arms, which daunted so many. The 'evidence base' spoke of a prudent acquiescence to the inevitable and a necessary accommodation with the enemy. The 'story' (a la Arthur and Alfred the Great) sang of turning the tables and setting the odds at nought.

This is how Churchill won hearts and minds. He backed the story and built his strategy on that. He chose, in short, Logres over Britain.

Which begs the question, did Churchill himself belong to the hidden line of Pendragons? It is an entertaining thought. Let's leave the last word to Lewis:

'Some of the Pendragons have been known to history, though not under that name. Others you have never heard of. But in every age they and the little Logres which gathered around them have been the fingers which gave the tiny shove and the almost imperceptible pull to prod England out of her drunken sleep or to draw her back from the final outrage into which Britain tempted her.'

CS Lewis "the man" is best found in his letters

The collected letters of CS Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper, are in three volumes - and the first two volumes - which span from Lewis's childhood to 1949 are the best. After Lewis became famous; most of his correspondence was with people he did not know well (or at all); and these later letters are therefore mostly more public and generic in tone. 

In the early letters you will find more of Jack Lewis's humour than in any other of his writings - displayed in the letters to his brother Warnie (then away as a Captain in the army, sometimes abroad), his childhood friend Arthur Greaves, and to other friends from college days. 

Indeed, it is in these letters that I find the most vivid impression of Lewis as a man - far more so than in any of his published writings. I get a distinct flavour of that man who formed and sustained The Inklings, who was (legendarily) the life and soul of the company - as well as loyal and considerate. 

I find 'Lewis the letter writer' to be a very likeable persona; more likeable than Lewis the theologian, literary critic or adult novelist - and even-more likeable than the author of Narnia

I don't know whether others will tune-into Lewis's humour in the way that I do (humour is very much a matter of taste); but I find it to be an absolute delight. In the first place - there are many parts which are laugh-out-loud funny; which is very rare among published private letters (Kingsley Amis's correspondence with Philip Larkin is another example: these letters are very funny indeed, albeit in a characteristically dark and cruel way!). 

Yet Lewis's humour is also warm and affectionate, probably because of the affection between Lewis and his correspondent - it is a generous humour; shared in order to give enjoyment to the recipient - and tailored to each recipient. 

So Lewis's funny passages sent to Warnie are different from those for Arthur Greaves, and these again from Owen Barfield and so forth. Lewis is sharing running jokes and the 'kind of thing' that provides amusement in a particular friendship; the 'kind of thing' that particular friends talk-about. 

The quality of writing is superb - the letters are as well-written as the published prose (although not so well spelled!) - which is unsurprising given that Lewis (like Samuel Johnson) composed in his ind, not on paper - and usually published his (corrected) first drafts.

The famously great powers of quotation that Lewis displayed in conversation are also on view - and it is made clear that these were based mainly on the capacity to pastiche rather than on an exact memory. 

Lewis's 'quotes' are nearly all more-or-less inaccurate, at a word-by-word basis (as Walter Hooper's footnotes make clear), but always contain the flavour, distinctiveness and pertinence of that being quoted. 

This is the same 'method' as deployed by a Scottish novelist I used to know - Alasdair Gray. He would fluently improvise 'quotations' from favourite works that cropped-up in conversation; getting the spirit exactly right while - strictly speaking - using mostly his own words. For example - he did this when we discussed funny parts of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five; and again with Flann O'Brien's At Swin Two Birds - also done in an impression of the appropriate US or Irish accent. The business was both hilarious and virtuoso.

I know that however much I recommend Lewis's collected letters; very few people are likely to read them. 

Very few people read 'secondary literature' (biography, letters, criticism) of even their very favourite authors. 

But I believe that if you have not at least dipped-into CS Lewis's letters - there is also a 'selected letters' available, and the complete letters to Arthur Greaves are published separately as They Stand Together - then you don't really know him. 

And, strictly, as writing; the best letters are Lewis at his best; equaled (in various different ways) but never surpassed by anything else he wrote. 

Glastonbury versus Wells

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Glastonbury

Wells

Glastonbury and Wells are adjacent towns in Somerset, England - I visited both recently, and they make an interesting comparison.

Glastonbury is world famous as the centre of legendary Britain: the place where Jesus visited with Joseph of Arimathea ('And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains green?'), and/or where Joseph of Arimathea visited after Jesus's Ascension to set-up the first Church in Europe; and the Island of Avalon where Kind Arthur went at the end of his earthly life, where Arthur's tomb was discovered.

More prosaically, in Medieval times Glastonbury had at times perhaps the greatest, most scholarly Abbey in England. And A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys is considered one of the greatest-non-canonical novels in English Literature.

And so on.

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But more recently (since the mid 1970s), Glastonbury has become the undisputed centre of New Age spirituality in Britain - and the venue for the biggest and lamest pseudo-sixties annual pop festival.

It is, to be candid - a seedy place, inhabited by a distinctly mixed population. Quite a lot of shabby weirdos, burnt-out cases and doormats and (presumably living-off them) and quite a lot of hard-eyed exploiters.

The ruined abbey is prohibitively expensive to visit and completely obscured by high walls to ensure nobody can get a free look.

In sum, with the exception of the magnificent Tor (well worth a climb) and a few decent shops (like Gothic Image); modern Glastonbury is peculiarly characterless, yet also an oppressive and sinister place - and a clear and unambiguous demonstration of why New Age can never be a proper or good religion.

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Wells, on the other hand - just a few miles down the road - is the smallest city in England (that is: the smallest place with a cathedral) - a tiny gem of medieval and other old architecture. It has a happy and somewhat magical feel about it - probably leaking out from the stones.

Although the Church of England is now spiritually almost moribund and increasingly openly anti-Christian - it still has perhaps a decade or two of inertial 'Barchester'-like beauty and elegance to run; and the Church has, over the centuries, kept the place beautifully - as has the Wells Cathedral School (derived from the choir school) whose boarding kids apparently inhabit all manner of delightful old buildings dotted around the place.

So - if you happen to be in that particular part of the Kingdom - I would advise making Wells your priority. Glastonbury is not all bad - but on the whole it is a lesson rather than an example.
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The Fall of Arthur by JRR Tolkien - Review

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http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/review-of-fall-of-arthur-by-jrr-tolkien.html
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Merlin and St Cuthbert

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Two great favourites of mine are Merlin the wizard (whose legends are all around Britain, including the nearby England-Scotland borders) and St Cuthbert the Wonderworker (who also lived fairly near to me on the island of Lindisfarne, and is still quite well remembered locally - at least in the names of places and institutions)-

http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/stcuth.htm

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Merlin and Cuthbert present interesting similarities and contrasts.

There is, of course, no remotely definitive story of King Arthur - since it is the dominant piece of genuine 'folk-lore' of England (even though British rather than English - having pretty much displaced the specifically English folk hero of Robin Hood). Like everybody, I have encountered innumerable versions of the Arthurian legends.

But the general character of Merlin is pretty consistent: a powerful wizard: kindly, broadly well-meaning, but irritable and prone to sarcasm - and morally ambiguous.

Merlin is essential to the creation and survival of the Good kingdom and the Good King; yet he is a worldly figure: he does dubious enchantments for dubious reasons (e.g. the shape-shifting spell to satisfy the King Uther's rapacious lust, leading to the birth of Arthur).

And, in many versions, Merlin comes to a sticky end - often by falling in love with a beautiful but wicked enchantress (e.g. Nimue or Vivienne) and teaching her his secrets - as a result Merlin may be imprisoned forever (or for centuries) in a tree, or crystal cave.

In other versions Merlin became a military leader, but was defeated, escaped into the wilderness to die as a raving lunatic bewailing his loss of power and prestige.

While Merlin's damnation is not definite, and repentance and salvation is not necessarily ruled-out - at best the possibility is suspended.

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St Cuthbert, by contrast, is perhaps the holiest Saint of England.

And, by contrast with the garbled legends of Merlin, Cuthbert's principal biographer was the first and one of the greatest English historians: The Venerable Bede of Jarrow and Monkwearmouth.

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Cuthbert was a monk (later and briefly a Bishop): an extreme ascetic, who prepared for his miracle-working years by many years of disciplined prayer, learning by heart of scriptures, fasting, vigils (staying up all night praying), participation in Church rituals and other hardships.

St Cuthbert, in contrast with Merlin, was one of those Saints who were regarded as having lived both in Heaven and on Earth in his later years, he had a glorious and inspiring death and went (it is presumed) to the high place prepared for him.

Cuthbert was immediately widely venerated, many Churches were founded in his name, and his memory and scattered relics were the subject of marvellous stories and the attributed cause of  numerous miracles.

A long distance footpath called St Cuthbert's Way was recently created to trace the important places of his life and the route of his posthumous remains:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Cuthbert's_Way

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Yet, for moderns, the powerful but flawed and ultimately tragic figure of Merlin seems much more exciting than Cuthbert.

The hints (and more than hints) of intoxicating and depraved lust which were Merlin's downfall, and which he seemed to embrace either helplessly or willingly, are just the kind of thing to strike a chord in our era.

The comparison illustrates a change of ethos, and a scaling-down of ambition. St Cuthbert's example is so far above anything attainable to us moderns that it is almost intimidating rather than inspiring to weak and corrupt individuals such as myself!

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The comparison also illustrates the Eastern Orthodox understanding of miracles, magic and wonders.

The Orthodox belief is that miracles and magic are real and accessible, but hazardous - because they can be achieved with either divine/ angelic or demonic assistance (and because demons are deceptive and can masquerade as angels).

Merlin was certainly attributed with advanced magical powers and in some version was actually demonic in origin - e.g. with a demon father magically inseminating  a virgin mother, with the intention of producing an Antichrist; but then having been blessed and baptized in the womb by a Saint, to emerging as the morally ambiguous - but broadly benign - trickster figure we know.

At any rate, it would be expected that some, at least, of Merlin's powers were demonic rather than divine; and that the demons exacted the usual payments.

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A traditional Orthodox view would probably be that Merlin came to grief in using magic because he was (ultimately) proud and lustful rather than humble and loving; because he sought and served power rather than disinterested knowledge; and insofar as he did not repent his pride and lust.

(Repentance not being the same as regret, or shame, or wishing things had turned-out otherwise.)

While St Cuthbert had - by long ascetic preparation - attained the necessary humility and love to be able (after this was attained, not before) to be permitted to deploy divine and angelic powers in the service of Good.

This seems to be the essential difference between a Saintly Wonderworker and a wizard like Merlin - and the (non-Saintly) White wizard's goodness is seen as inevitably tenuous, and mixed; and the temptation to darkness un-ceasing and eventually irresistible.

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'When there is no dream left worth dying for, then the people die.' - John Fitzgerald at Albion Awakening

It is the unquantifiable and intangible – not the immediate material reality – that carries most weight.

The bare historical record tells us that Arthur ultimately failed in his mission. He was killed in battle, and his restored Roman Britain crumbled before renewed Saxon onslaughts two generations after his death.

Yet as an icon and exemplar, his achievement is unparalleled. His legacy can be glimpsed in figures such as Joan of Arc, Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill, individuals who set the odds at nought and fought on for their dream when surrender seemed the only common-sense option.

These themes are pregnant with significance for our own times. 'When there is no dream left worth dying for, then the people die.' Would Carausius recognize in our society the same germs of dissolution that compromised the Roman Empire? Civilisations, history tells us, tend often to disintegrate from within...

The same holds true for the creaking spiritual and intellectual foundations of the West. Enfeebled from within by a sceptical, overweening secularism, we turn our backs on our patrimony, 'refusing to inherit' (in Roger Scruton's phrase) the deposit of religious, philosophical and political wisdom handed down by our ancestors.

Our moorings have been cut, and we are without recourse to that transcendent Deity who once animated our civilisation. If my truth is as good as your truth, then all 'truths' are equally worthless, and we leave nothing more than a vacuum for our children to inherit.

Nature, as we know, abhors a vacuum. Vacuums will be filled, one way or another. In rejecting its past, the West has laid itself open for conquest and exploitation, either at the hands of a corrupted ruling class or through the ascendancy of a rival civilization with a clearer sense of mission and identity.
http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/arthur-of-britain-last-emperor-first_4.html