10

Troy and the palladium

Dardanus came to a haven, on a sea lapped headland, before the Dardanelles Straits, that leads into the Black Sea. It was by a sweeping bay, forming a natural harbour, and he established a settlement there upon the slopes of Mount Ida. Later his youngest son Idaeus joined him, with his mother’s sacred images of the Great Gods, and Dardanus established the rites of the Cabiri in his new home.

The settlement later merged with two others, Tros and Ilium, founded by his sons and from all three a city was born; on a mound, part of a low sandstone ridge, eastwards of Mount Ida. It overlooked the roads of the sea, and the great plain where the river Scamander flows, and a road winding up from the far south.

This city, made immortal by Homer’s 8th century BC epic poem ‘The Iliad’, was called Wilussa, Ilios, Ilium or Troy, and Troy is the name it is remembered by. Troy in middle English throwen, high German draja, Gothic thruaion and Celtic Troian, all carry the meaning ‘to twist’ ‘to turn’.  On an ancient Etruscan vase from Traghiatella in Italy, a seven-ringed labyrinth is depicted over which the word Truia (Troy) is inscribed. In northern Europe, in Scandinavia and Britain turf mazes were called ‘Troy towns’, in Welsh Caerdtroia a contraction of carytraion ‘the city of wanderings or turnings.’

Troy another city of turnings – as Atlantis and Knossos – their king the embodiment of a World Pillar; which the rites of the Cabiri would have revered in its many phallic forms. The city being given this name, indicates those religious rites dominated its functioning. Is this why Homer, in Book IV of the Iliad, refers to it as sacred?  

‘None stands so dear to Jove (Zeus) as sacred Troy,

No mortal merit more distinguished a race,

Than godlike Priam, or than Priam’s race…’

These verses of Homer, also show how the ancient world recognized the divine ‘godlike’ aspect of the Trojan race; and that the race was considered exceptional.

The Trojan hero Hector also refers to his city as being sacred, in this dialogue with his wife he says:

‘The day must come when this our sacred Troy,

And Priam’s race, and Priam’s royal self

Shall in one common ruin be overthrown.’ 17

The city’s sacredness continued to be recognized by the rest of the Greek world, long after

it was destroyed. ‘Ilium (Troy) was for a considerable period to the Heathen World, what Jerusalem is now to the Christian, a ‘sacred’ city which attracted pilgrims. . . By the shadow of ancient sanctity reposing upon it.’ 18

For a long time in the West, Homer’s city was considered a work of fiction, although some thought its location was at present day Hissarlik in Turkey. The German merchant Schliemann, learning about the site from an interested friend, decided to excavate there. He destroyed vital archaeological evidence with his crude methods, but in uncovering the site, with the sensational find of a gold mask and jewelry; he declared he had discovered Homer’s Troy. Subsequent excavations confirmed this and uncovered the presence of nine settlements having existed on the mound, the sixth that exhibited destruction by fire which appeared to be man-made, was revealed to be Homer’s city, its features conforming to his description of it.

The mound housed, what is now called the royal citadel, where many palatial buildings stood, the topmost section encircled by three concentric terraces, each lower than the other. This plan clearly mirrors the three concentric circles of land, interspersed with water, in the Trojan model becoming terraces, of the city of Atlantis.

The citadel at its base was ringed around by massive stone walls, interspersed with towers. ’The fortifications around the royal citadel are in a new style, amounting to some 550m in length and technically superior, consisting of gently sloping walls of well-cut masonry. . . and massive towers (cf Homer’s ’angle of the lofty walls’ and ’strong towered Ilios’).’ 22 Below, and in front, of this impressive citadel, sprawled the rest of the city, an oblong shape, itself also enclosed in strongly fortified walls; showing the same technical mastery.

Apart from the images of the Great Gods, the Trojans possessed another sacred object – the palladium; which was said to ensure the city’s safety. There are various accounts as to how it arrived in Troy, it fell from heaven, Electra the mother of Dardanus gave it to him before he departed Arcadia, or it was thought to be included in the sacred objects of the Great Gods.

The palladium is a mysterious object, it was said to be a wooden statue of the goddess Athena, but it exhibited radiant energy of astonishing intensity. Once Ilus, a son of Dardanus, upon an alarm of fire, rushed into the temple where it was housed to rescue it; and was rewarded for his efforts, by being blinded by a searing light. Although thankfully, his blindness was not permanent.

During the Greek siege of Troy, the Greeks Odysseus and Diomedes found a way into the city and stole the palladium from its shrine – because they believed it was keeping the city safe from harm. According to Virgil, in the ‘Aeneid’, when it was placed in the camp of the Greeks, the statue’s eyes bulged and emitted glittering flames, a salt sweat run down its limbs; and the flashing image of the goddess twice leaped to the ground.

Ovid 43-c17 AD the Roman poet, claimed the palladium ended up in Rome after the sack of Troy, and was in the care of the Vestal Virgins in the Temple of Vesta; and that by its enduring light they could see all things.

Clearly it is not just a piece of wood, but also a radiant energy source of some sort – is that why, in its mythology, it is also connected to Styx; the daughter of the Titan sun god Helios.

I found an explanation to the mystery, in one account of the origins of the palladium, in Greek mythology. When the goddess Athena was engaged in mock combat with her friend Pallas, there came a moment in the fight, when Pallas was about to strike Athena, with what looked like a deadly blow. Or so thought the god Zeus, viewing the combat from on high, and thinking Athena was in mortal danger, he intervened with his powerful weapon the aegis.

Pallas, distracted by the supernatural appearance of this deadly weapon, failed to avoid Athena’s returning blow. The blow and the fright occasioned by Zeus’ misguided intervention, had such a debilitating effect, that Pallas never recovered and died.

Athena was grief stricken by her friend’s death, and in her honour made a tall wooden statue of Pallas, equipped with spear and shield, and wrapped around its breast, Zeus’ powerful weapon the aegis.

The aegis according to Homer, produced the sound of a thousand dragons, a hundred pure gold tassels hung from around the frightful face it bore – bulging eyes, tusk-like teeth, protruding tongue and writhing snakes for hair – of the Gorgon Medusa; whose look could turn men to stone. Homer writes in the Iliad of its radiant energy:

‘The awful aegis, dread to look on, hung with

shaggy tassels round and dazzling bright. . .’ 20

Esoterically the tassel is an emblem of the sun. When the tassel is upside down the loose threads hanging from it spray out over the ball-like part at the top – and Homer says this part was tightly woven –  these splayed out threads of the lower part, mimic the rays of the sun streaming out from the round body of that star. To emphasize this connection the aegis tassels are golden. All this solar symbolism layered around the palladium, supports those accounts, of it being a powerful light source. The solar nature of the tassel, explains the ancient tradition, that originally the tassels had been snakes. Virgil, described the aegis itself as snake-like, with golden scales and linked serpentine forms.

The serpent as symbolic of the active ingredient of the palladium-aegis, is evident in a Roman marble relief, copied from a 1 AD Attic design, said to be a winged Nike, the goddess of victory – who is also thought to be an attribute of Athena – offering an egg to the Trojan palladium:

Opposite her stands an armoured warrior, his round shield propped behind the pillar.Plate 1 figure 4 There is no indication of whether the soldier is Greek or Trojan, but considering the Greeks were victorious at Troy, he may be Greek. Although the Romans who copied the design, may have viewed the warrior as Trojan, and considered it represented another victory. The victory of Aeneas in establishing the foundation of Rome and her power, and who they maintained had taken the palladium with him, when he fled Troy – this is how it came into the keeping of the Vestal Virgins.

This depiction of the Trojan palladium is very interesting, because it reveals the active solar ingredient, symbolized by the serpent entwined around a phallic pillar, inherent in the sacred object. The snake is very much alive and being fed an egg – like the insertion of a battery – by Nike.  An egg for the ancient Greeks was a symbol of eternal life, resurrection – they and the Romans left them at tombs as offerings – and because of the egg’s very nature; a symbol of life and fertility.

Nike does have another connection to the palladium, Athena was said to have made it with the flayed skin of the Titan Pallas the god of war, whom she defeated in battle. Pallas was the father of Nike and the father-in-law of Dardanus. It seems incongruous indeed, that the Trojans should venerate such an object, or Nike should feed it an egg.  Unless one understands the real import of the tale, which I would say is, the device being made from the substance of their war god, indicates it was a Titan power weapon taken from them, by the usurping Olympians – and then used by Zeus and incorporated in the device of Athena.  I think of it as an actual antediluvian energy device, that by the time it was installed on Samothrace or Troy, no-one knew how to operate. This is clear from the experiences of the people who came into close contact with it, the blinding of Ilus, the bafflement at its activation after it was stolen by the Greeks.

The possession of such an object would explain the Pelasgian race of ancient Greece – whom I have equated with the Atlanteans and their superior technology – being called the ‘sons of Hephaestus’ the divine metal worker, god of fire and craftsmen, and their being called ‘the sons of the sun’.

Homer’s ‘Iliad’ records the death of the great city of Troy, when the race of heroes – Trojan and Greek – fought each other, outside its impenetrable walls; for nine horrendous long years. This conflict was caused by Paris, the son of Priam king of Troy, falling in love with Helen the wife of Menelaus king of Sparta. Together they fled from her husband, and Paris brought her to Troy. An enraged Menelaus, with his brother King Agamemnon of Mycenae, formed an alliance with other Greek lords, and sailed to Troy to retrieve her. From this story comes Christopher Marlowe’s immortal lines, from his 1604 ‘Dr Faustus’ 12.81-2, when he asked if it was her face alone, that launched a thousand ships and caused the destruction of Troy? A good question, physical beauty has always played a role in human affairs.

  But I would think Robert Graves is nearer the truth of the matter, when he writes: ‘The Trojan War is historical, and whatever the immediate reason may have been, it was a trade war. Troy controlled the valuable Black Sea trade in gold, silver, iron, cinnabar, ship’s timber, linen, hemp, fish oil, and Chinese jade. When once Troy had fallen, the Greeks were able to plant colonies all along the eastern trade route. . .’ 23

When Menelaus by accident encountered Paris, on the plain outside the city walls, jumping from his chariot he confronted him, but a terrified Paris ran away; provoking the disgust of his brother Hector. Perhaps combat between the guilty lover and the wronged husband, might of, regardless of the outcome, brought the conflict to an end. And so, the years dragged on, the Greek hero Achilles killed the Trojan Hector, and in mocking delight dragged his corpse around the walls of the city. Later Paris – who was in no ones’ good books except Helen’s – fired an arrow that struck Achilles’ heel, his only vulnerable spot, from which he eventually died. His mother the goddess Thetis, had held him upside down by the ankles, when she bathed him in the waters of Styx to make him invulnerable from injury, leaving his ankles the only part not immersed.

So much blood and death, and after nine long years of unsuccessful siege and fighting, the Greeks decided that their only hope lay in subterfuge. They built a massive, hollow horse with fir wood planks that had a trapdoor in the side and wrote upon it a dedication to the goddess Athena, held sacred in Troy, asking she watch over their safe return to their homes. Then armed men entered the hollow horse and closed the trapdoor behind them, waiting and hoping the Trojans would bring it into their city.

After much quarrelling the Trojans did just that, the Trojans were renowned horse breeders, so this must have added to the attractiveness of the object.

There was much drinking of wine and feasting in Troy at the departure of the Greeks, garlands were hung over the horse and a bed of rose petals scattered around its feet. In the middle of the night, when the revelers were all slumbering, some deeply because of so much wine drunk; the Greeks climbed out of the hollow horse. They began a killing spree: slaughtering defenseless sleep and wine drugged Trojan warriors, the old, women and children alike.

One cut the throat of Priam on the steps of an altar, decapitated his corpse and threw it onto the tomb of Achilles. Later they sacrificed Priam’s daughter Polyxena on this tomb, where she joined the headless body of her father. Odysseus threw Astyanax, the infant son of the great Trojan hero Hector, from the walls – not wanting him to live to avenge his father’s death. Women they did not kill, they sold as sex slaves (the normal practice of the times, and now modern).

The Trojan hero Aeneas called the soul of Troy (Hector was its hand), was said to be without guilt and favoured by the gods, escaped the carnage. He carried his elderly, disabled father on his shoulders and brought him to safety, as well as the Trojan palladium. As I have written the Romans venerated Aeneas, calling him the legendary founder of their race; believing after he left Troy, he eventually wandered into Italy; and founded the city of Lavinium, on the site of the future Rome. This is the descendant of Dardanus, whom Virgil cast as the central figure, in his epic poem ‘Aeneid’; and outlined his god given destiny to establish a great lineage, that would later lay the foundation of Rome.

When one considers the Trojans were a conquered and dispersed people, they still miraculously left an undying influence on their world, and the future. But not just in Italy, it’s time to journey northwards to the island of Britain, which also bears the imprint of their legacy.  

11

Albion and Brutus

The ancient history of Britain and Arthur has come down to us, in works written in the eighth, and between the tenth and sixteenth, century AD. This is the case because the ancient people of Britain left no written records, so their stories were passed down in oral traditions; that obviously can be distorted or reshaped according to the teller and the chronicler – but they nevertheless hold important clues about the distant past.   

 Raphael Holinshed died c1580, was a translator for a printer Reyner Wolfe, who gave him the task of compiling a history from the Flood to that present time. Although his name has become attached to the work ‘The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland’, it is thought he was only responsible for compiling the history of England; and the rest of the work was achieved with the help of collaborators.

The ancient history he attaches to this island kingdom, is a wonderful mixture of Greek mythology and biblical figures. He states that the first inhabitants of the island were Samothracians, whose king Samothes, was the first son of Japhet, the son of Noah. Japhet, in the traditions of the people living around the Mediterranean, was regarded as their ancestor and in other accounts was said to be the father of Prometheus and Atlas.

As I have previously pointed out, this mixing of Greek and Hebraic ancient figures, has a core reality at its heart; they both represent the same antediluvian people – whether they are called giants, Titans, Mighty Ones, Nephilim or Watchers. A common origin that was clearly recognized in the medieval world.

 Under the rule of Samothes, the island experienced a golden age of justice, peace and learning. Samothes was said to have invented letters, astronomy and other sciences. This account is also found in the works of the ancient author Diodorus Siculus, which are dated from between 60-30 BC; and the Greek geographer Artemidorus Ephesus c100 BC. They both say the rites of the Samothracians or Cabiri were established on the island.

But the perfect rule of the Samothracians was about to come to an end – nothing stays the same – for according to Holinshed, the spectre of the Titan Albion, born of Neptune (the Roman name for the Greek Poseidon) and the Earth, was on the horizon. He was also called a descendant of Noah’s son Ham, and grandson of Osiris king of Egypt. He survived the Flood, and under instruction from his father Neptune or Poseidon, came to the island, overthrew the peace loving Samothracians; and ruled there, giving the land his name.

There is doubt as to the etymological origins of the name Albion. It may originate in the Old English hwit, from a Germanic source that can be traced to the Sanskrit sveta ‘to be white orbright’and Slavic‘light’, or from the Latin alba based on the Indo-European root for white. There is speculation that the name originates in the white cliffs, of the island’s southern coast.

Diodorus Siculus, quoting the works of the ancient Greek geographer and historian Hecataeus of Miletus c550-476 BC, also identifies Britain as Hyperborea. Hecataeus wrote that opposite the coast of Gaul (France) there is an island, not smaller than Sicily, lying to the north; it is the land where a wonderful round temple, dedicated to the sun god Apollo, had been erected. This round temple is thought to be Stonehenge.

Hyperborea – the place where the souls of the great dead, kings, poets, heroes travelled to after death – as I have already written, was also called by the Greeks the ‘White Island’ or ‘Blessed Isles’. Such a description ties in with the northern island’s renowned white cliffs, and the meaning of ‘white’ attached to its ancient name. This identification is further supported, by the island being the place, where the rites of the Cabiri – whose history intimately connects them to the mysteries of Hyperborea – were established. These connections, makes it highly likely Hecataeus assertion was correct, and that Britain was the location for an earthly Hyperborea, a powerful ritual centre aligned with the celestial Hyperborea ‘Beyond the North Wind’, in the constellation Corona Borealis.

Albion and his descendants were not destined to remain in control of the island, for Brutus a descendant of Aeneas – either his grandson or great-grandson – leading an invading army was next to appear on the scene. In one account, a dream led Brutus to the island, but it’s more likely, as a descendant of the same semi-divine bloodline who had long occupied the island, he may have thought he had as much right – even a superior one being a descendant of Atlas – as any of his race to establish a kingdom there. Blood is so often not thicker than water, and landing with an army on the southern coast, near Totnes, he overthrew the reign of Albion, and the island underwent another name change; being called Britain, derived from his name – and so it has remained ever since.

There is this account in the fourteenth century anonymous poem ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Man’ ‘And far over the French flood (the channel) Felix Brutus, with joy in his heart, founded the broad realm of Britain. . . And when Britain was founded by this noble prince, a bold race of men were bred there, lovers of battle, who wrought much strife (the French would agree) as the years passed. And more marvels befell in that land than are told of in any other.’24

So, both classical authors and oral traditions, indicate the influence and presence of the semi-divine race on this northern island. I know scholars tend to discount the avowal of a Trojan progenitor for a country’s ancestry, reasoning that under the shadow of the power and influence of the Roman Empire – who venerated this lineage and said they were their ancestors – others claimed the same to curry favour, or to enhance their own country’s image.

But only such a history and legacy, as the oral traditions tell us about, could have produced the immortal King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.

12

Arthur

In Arthur, an eponymous him, is the model of Atlantean kingship – a World Pillar – embodied. He is no druidic oak king suffering on an oak tree – hebelongs to an earlier age, he belongs to the stars, and that is how the ancient Britons saw him.

At one point, I did think the oak was the World Tree connected to Arthur. But when I researched its mythology, I realized it wasn’t a World Tree; for I couldn’t find any example of the oak embodying a fount of immortality.

 The word oak is from duir means ‘door’, and the door of the oak was said to open both ways, because the post on which it is fixed is at the turning of the year – one way leading to the waning year, the other to the waxing. ‘D is the oak which rules the waxing part of the year – the sacred Druidic oak. . . T is the evergreen oak which rules the waning part, the bloody oak . . . the oak-king. . . who was crucified on a T-shaped cross.’ 25

It is called the royal tree, perhaps because it was the symbolic or literal tree on which oak kings were sacrificed, their blood sprinkled on the ground, in propitiation to the gods; to ensure the returning fertility of the earth, after the waning period of winter. Robert Graves views this type of kingship, as lying behind many aspects of Greek mythology, when the king and later his tanist or substitute was sacrificed. He also viewed the myths as recording the gradual usurpation by men, of the religious mysteries, previously the provenance of women – woe for the many daughters of Atlas.

Arthur, in his mythology, is associated with the northern star constellations, at the heart of the mysteries of cosmic kingship.

The name Arthur originates in the Celtic word for bear artos, Gaelic-Pict Arwiragus ‘the bear-folk chief’. Here is another king who ‘bears’, like Atlas and Arcas. The ‘ar’ in his name has been linked to ‘ploughed land’ and artor meaning ‘ploughman’. He was identified with Ursa Major, which was called by the Britons ‘Arthur’s Wain (wagon)’.  As late as 1805, Sir Walter Scott referred to the constellation, in his ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’, as ‘Arthur’s slow wain’.

In the connection of his name to a ‘ploughman’, he was also identified with Boötes, and its bright star Arcturus. By these associations, Arthur was not only the driver of the celestial wagon, a wearisome toil, ensuring the machinery of Heaven, Earth and the Underworld move in unison; he was also the embodiment of the wagon itself.

John Lydgate 1370-1440, wrote in his 1412 ‘Troy Book’:

‘. . . to schipmen Þat ben discrete and wyse,

Þat list her cours prudently deuise

Vpon Þ see, haue suffisanunce y-nowe

To guy her passage by Arthouris Plowe. . .

Guyen her course only by Þe sterre

Which Þat Arthour compasseth enviroun;

Þe whiche cercle and constellacioun

. . . is called the cercle of Artilofax’26

‘. . . to shipmen that be discrete and wise

That steer their course prudently devised

Upon the sea have sufficient knowledge

To guide their passage by Arthur’s Plough. . .

Guide her course only by the stars

In the environment that Arthur compasses

By which circle and constellation

Is called the circle of Artilofax’

Artilofax refers to the northern star constellations, revolving around the pole star.

In John Lydgate’s ‘Fall of Princes’, after Arthur was grievously injured in battle, he was conveyed to the star constellation Boötes:

‘Thus of Breteyne translated was sunne

Vp to the riche sterri briht dongoun

Astronomeeres weel reherse kunne –

Called Arthur’s constellacion,

Wher he sit crowned in the heavenly mansioun

Amyd the palies of stonis crystalline.’ 27

‘Thus, of Britain translated was the sun(Arthur)

Up to the constellation that is a bright heavenly beacon*

Astronomers well know

Called Arthur’s constellation(Boötes)

Where he sits crowned in the heavenly mansion

Amidst the place built of crystal stones.’

*According to John Kenneth Brookes Withrington, in his ‘The Death of King Arthur and Legend of his survival in Sir Thomas Malory’s ‘Le Morte D’Arthur’ and other late medieval texts of the fifteenth century’, the word ‘dongoun’ means ‘a constellation that shines out like a victorious beacon’.

It’s a marvelous image. Arthur enthroned within his celestial Camelot, towers, rooms and floors gleaming like glass, shimmering with fiery rainbow hues, when starlight and sunlight refracts through the natural fractures veining the crystal. Did Ariadne visit from her spiral castle, bringing along Boreas to entertain them with heavenly winds. Or did he, king beyond compare, visit her realm and hob-nob with other kings, wearing his best crown, set with a great clear crystal shining with starlight.

But enough of fancies. Returning to earth, John Lydgate was born in Lydgate Suffolk, he was a poet, and Benedictine monk of the monastery of Bury St Edmunds for most of his life. Although he travelled widely in Britain and abroad and was known in the highest circles in the land, receiving commissions for works from King Henrys IV, V and VI.

Making him seem more human, like the all too human Hercules, he confessed to a dissolute youth, and bemoaned that during his time in Lydgate, alcohol was in short supply. Perhaps love, during those years was also in short supply, for graffiti carved into a stone pillar of the Lydgate church is believed to be his handiwork, it reads ‘Well fare mi lady Cateryne’ (fare thee well Lady Catherine).

This man of learning, not only identified Arthur’s role as a heavenly one, he also used solar imagery to define him, for instance in the poetry previously quoted, he refers to Arthur as the sun. John Withrington remarks upon Lydgate’s great usage of solar imagery, in connection with the king: ‘It is striking the number of times Lydgate alludes to the sun and light in his narrative of Arthur. . . The king reigns over twelve kingdoms like the sun amid the twelve signs of the zodiac, and he sails over the sea, which is where the sun sinks into the west. . .  The hitherto earthbound son/sun of Albion is now a source of light in the heavens. . . A constellation that shines out like a victorious beacon.’ 28  

 The astrological and solar imagery Lydgate attaches to Arthur, which he may also have garnered from oral sources, shows the origin of his kingship in the mysteries of a kingly World Pillar, who embodied solar regenerative powers. Therefore, the ancient British festival, held during the longest darkest night of the year on the 21st December, was called Alban Arthuruon meaning ‘light of Arthur’. At that uttermost dark time of the earth or the human soul, the sun child Arthur is born –  bringing new light and the promise of fertility and rebirth.

 But it was not only Lydgate, who wrote of Arthur in celestial terms.

In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s c1100-c1154 Historia Regum Britanniae ‘History of British Kings’, he relates how during the reign of Vortigen, the father of Arthur, Uther Pendragon, witnessed a comet streaking across the heavens. He summoned Merlin the magician, and asked him what the comet could portend, for such celestial occurrences, were thought of as signs from the divine realms.  

Merlin told him. ‘. . . (this) star of wonderful magnitude and brightness, darting from a ray at the end of which was a globe of fire in the form of a dragon, out of whose mouth issued forth two rays one of which seemed to stretch itself beyond the extent of Gaul(France), the other to the Irish Sea and ended in seven rays. For the star, and the fiery dragon under it signifies you shall be king of all Britain. . . and the ray extended to Gaul, portends that you shall have a most potent son. . .’29  

Uther Pendragon own name means ‘dragon’s head’, and the celestial dragon, of course refers to Draco the Dragon. The ray issuing from the celestial dragon, to earth representing Arthur, evokes the pole of the pole star – uniting heaven and earth – and guarded by the dragon; who in certain periods such as 3000BC, had the pole star within its starry body, when it was the star Alpha Draconis. This account is rooted in the ancient mythology of Arthur as a World Pillar

Arthur, as an axis mundi, can also be interpreted, as lying behind the myth of the Knights of the Round Table. In Sir Thomas Malory’s died 1471, ‘Le Morte D’Arthur’‘The Death of Arthur’ ‘. . . Merlin made the Round Table in tokening of the roundness of the world, for by the Round Table is the world signified by right.’30   This table that represents the earth, with a circle of twelve knights sat around it, does evoke the twelve signs of the zodiac encircling that earthly sphere. Arthur presiding over this table, is the commanding centre around which events move in their right order – because it is an earth aligned with the heavens.

The tale is well-known of how Arthur, unaware of his identity as son of Uther, was acting as squire for Kay, whom he believed to be his brother. He had forgotten Kay’s sword, and unable to find it, was frantically searching around for another to replace it. This is when he came upon the sword embedded in the stone, and pulled it out with ease, not knowing that whosoever did so was the true king of Britain. Many great knights and lords had tried before him and failed miserably.

I wonder if this tale has its origins in an omphalos stone, and the sword symbolic of the umbilical cord, pole or post rising from it and uniting heaven and earth – like the heavenly rod in the hand of a Cretan king?  

The sword taken from the stone is used by Arthur while in a great rage, and against the advice of Merlin, in a fight with King Pelinore; who had killed one of his young knights. Arthur betraying all his better qualities, as the bloody fight continues, is astonished when the sword suddenly shatters in his hand – as if its power is basically a moral one, betray those principles and the power is undermined. The hot blood singing in the king’s brain is extinguished, like removing a warm coat in a snowstorm, and humbled, Arthur is made aware of the wrongfulness of his actions.

Later, when Arthur is standing disconsolate beside the lake of Avalon, an arm belonging to the Lady of the Lake rises from the watery depths, her hand holding the wondrous sword Excalibur in its magical scabbard – it appears the gods love Arthur, as much as they did Aeneas. The sword was forged in the otherworld of Avalon, and Arthur as a cosmic king who bridges three realms, can use such a supernatural gift – perhaps Excalibur was the template for the first earthly copy.

But shadows fall, as they always do, across his splendid life, and his rule was ended, when he was grievously injured in battle, John Lydgate pictured him ascending the heavens to Boötes. But his mythology also gives him another destination – Avalon.