Arthurian Synapses
Feb. 18th, 2007 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helen99I've always been a fan of Arthurian mythology, so I bought a book last night called Merlin and Wales: a Magicians Landscape. It's written from the perspective of someone who has researched several versions of the Arthurian legends and also probably studied quite a bit of general mythology seen through Jungian-colored glasses...
Anyway, I finally reached an excerpt that just caused me to go... "I need to set this book down for a while and rest my brain". I thought I'd share the excerpt:
"Word-head
The fifteenth-century poet Rhys Goch Eryri says that Emrys's head was concealed in the Coed Ffaraon (Pharaoh's Wood) at Dinas Emrys. In Celtic belief, a magic head, whether carved in stone or in words, stood for the whole immortal being. Therefore if Emrys's head was hidden in the wood, so was he all, just as the burial of the god Bran's head under the White Hill made Londone the capital, just as the Queen's head on a Welsh postage stam implies her whole body and that of Britannia. In a sense, the Dinas Emrys hill is the head beneath its forest hat. Similarly, on a smaller scale, Emrys's head is the buried cauldron, seen as a gilded version of King Vortigern's helmet, abandoned as he fled. Inverted, it changes from a symbol of war, to the crucible of peace.
Such radical transformations, both of scale and purpose, are to be expected on Dinas Emrys, where rival attitudes contend, yet search for reconcilliation. Consequently, Emrys's dinas holds mixed metaphors. Oak and ash trees still run their tangled roots like pubic hair over its mound of Venus, beneath which Emrys lies in hiding. He is our sovereign foetus, destined to re-emerge as an alternative to the warrior-hero norm. Under the tree is a hill and under the hill is a cave and in the cave is a pot and in the pot is a head and in the head is a mouth and in the mouth is a tongue and on the tongue is a word, ready to reinaugurate divine reality by means of the inspired spirit or awen (muse)."
Wow. I'm not sure whether or not my knowledge actually increased, but I'm pretty sure I just built an entire army of new synapses.
Anyway, I finally reached an excerpt that just caused me to go... "I need to set this book down for a while and rest my brain". I thought I'd share the excerpt:
"Word-head
The fifteenth-century poet Rhys Goch Eryri says that Emrys's head was concealed in the Coed Ffaraon (Pharaoh's Wood) at Dinas Emrys. In Celtic belief, a magic head, whether carved in stone or in words, stood for the whole immortal being. Therefore if Emrys's head was hidden in the wood, so was he all, just as the burial of the god Bran's head under the White Hill made Londone the capital, just as the Queen's head on a Welsh postage stam implies her whole body and that of Britannia. In a sense, the Dinas Emrys hill is the head beneath its forest hat. Similarly, on a smaller scale, Emrys's head is the buried cauldron, seen as a gilded version of King Vortigern's helmet, abandoned as he fled. Inverted, it changes from a symbol of war, to the crucible of peace.
Such radical transformations, both of scale and purpose, are to be expected on Dinas Emrys, where rival attitudes contend, yet search for reconcilliation. Consequently, Emrys's dinas holds mixed metaphors. Oak and ash trees still run their tangled roots like pubic hair over its mound of Venus, beneath which Emrys lies in hiding. He is our sovereign foetus, destined to re-emerge as an alternative to the warrior-hero norm. Under the tree is a hill and under the hill is a cave and in the cave is a pot and in the pot is a head and in the head is a mouth and in the mouth is a tongue and on the tongue is a word, ready to reinaugurate divine reality by means of the inspired spirit or awen (muse)."
Wow. I'm not sure whether or not my knowledge actually increased, but I'm pretty sure I just built an entire army of new synapses.