I feel enchanted with the polar opposites of Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar (whom I prefer to call Morgan and Gwen), between whom Arthur was a plaything, swinging this way and that. Both Morgan and Gwen were religious fanatics, the kind that only bring grief to the world. So many people end up dead in this story, reminiscent of Hamlet.

Morgan really is a witch and a harlot, as accused. Gwen is a spoiled brat and a schemer. Morgause is a black witch, and in many ways like Lady Macbeth. Nimue is like Ophelia, in her drowning death, and like Sarka who killed herself after betraying her lover. Accolon was like a suicide guerrilla fighter, the follower of fanatic Morgan. Niniane was the victim of murder followed by cover-up. Did Raven fly like a raven? (Echoes of “The Crack in the Cosmic Egg”.)

I feel enchanted and yet repelled. If these are the mysteries of Pisces and the Moon that one learns in Initiation (I am of that age), I would rather stay uninitiated, stay with Aquarian Enlightenment alone. At least in this life.

Magic images reverberate with archetypes (the Holy Grail, Excalibur, the Round Table, the Holy Thorn. It is like recognizing old friends from the Arthurian legends in a new guise, seen from the viewpoint of the women in the drama, as if indeed the Goddess was more important than God. These images are seductive, reverberate in the soul; but for the sake of tolerance and peace, I must resist them. They created war and racism in the first place and made us into killers. In fact, the Holy Grail killed directly when touched by the “unprepared”, like the Ark of the Covenant in the Bible story.

The legends of Arthur and Camelot are woven intricately into the story of Morgan’s long life. Women play large roles in it (Igraine, Viviane, Morgause, Morgan herself, Gwen, Raven (who saved all her life’s energies through a vow of silence in order to spend them all in performing the miracle of the Grail), Elaine, Niniane, Nimue…Elaine is the maiden who seduced Lancelot by pretending to be Gwen, and gave birth to Galahad, who alone had a full vision and touch of the Grail before it killed him. Mordred, son of incest, was not deformed physically but morally, and destroyed his father’s reign of peace in Camelot by his lust for power. Gwen, after a lifetime of resisting temptation, finally fled with Lancelot, but ended up in a nunnery. (The last two themes appear in a changed context in the musical play “Camelot”.)

The Beltane fires and the phrase “the king stag slain by the young stag” reflect real-world struggles among animals for alpha-male status and sexual supremacy, and also the legends recounted by Frazer in “The Golden Bough”; as well, perhaps, some of Sigmund Freud’s theories. There is a fascinating mix of Druid and Christian mythology: the Grail was both part of the Druid Holy Regalia and the cup from the Last Supper of Jesus brough to Avalon by Joseph of Aramathea. Another unexplained dual image is the near-identity of Avalon and the Island of the Priests in Glastonbury: the Tor had a ring of stones in one world and a bell-tower in the other, and Galahad, reaching for the Grail, reached “through the worlds”. But Avalon was drifting farther and farther away, as Christianity was winning over Druidism, Gwen over Morgan. And the Fairy kingdom, in which time passes differently, was even beyond Avalon, with still more powerful magic. Morgan at the very end recognized that the Virgin Mary could be the new image of the Goddess, and was reconciled to Viviane being buried in Glastonbury. But not until she had killed Kevin, the Merlin of Britain, for “treason”, since he recognized the same truths before she did. Kevin was not only a better harp player than Morgan (though both were good), but better in religious insight. While Gwen and Morgan were religious fanatics, bot Merlins, Taliesin and Kevin, were reconcilers.

It is also interesting to speculate on the history, as successive waves of invaders and cultures washed over Britain: first Druidic Celts, then Romans, then Christian Celts introduced by newly converted Roman Emperor Constantine, then Saxons who were invading in Arthur’s time, whom he defeated but later formed alliances with, and finally, beyond the story, Normans.

I am still trying to figure out the significance of the name changes: how Lancelot was originalle named Galahad and then gave that name to his son; why both Arthur and Mordred (deadly rivals, father and son, King Stag and Young Stag) were originally named Gwydion. Could it mean symbolically the transformation of brother to lover, son to destroyer, the innocent to the sinner?

Was Mordred violent because he was an abandoned child? Why didn’t Morgause kill him in infancy as Lot wanted? While she was power-hungry, still she loved children, her own and fostered ones. Or was Mordred violent because of genes damaged through incest? The same old nature-nurture argument. Was Arthur good because he was a much-wanted child?

There are themes of young women married to old men: Igraine to Gorlois, Morgan to. The characters keep calling each other “cousin” and “kinswoman”; they were all related, like the royalty of Europe before World War I. Gwen finally returns to the convent of her childhood, safe between walls. She had been so afraid of the open sky, of committing a sin, of nature – so tense that she was unable to complete a pregnancy, though she conceived several times. Morgan, who slept with almost everybody, had no shame except for the initial incest with Arthur that in the end proved fatal to Camelot, produced only one child with great difficulty, and aborted the second when she was already too old. Since her live birth produced the moral monster Mordred, she could be compared to Rosemary in “Rosemary’s Baby”. Rosemary was the “Black Mass” reflection of Mary, mother of God rather than the Devil. Mary had to be a virgin, while Rosemary had to be a non-virgin. Morgan was a virgin before the Holy Marriage of Beltane, but not at Mordred’s birth.