Barbelith Underground > Temple > Once and Future King

reidcourchie

Originally posted by Cavatina
"reidcourchie, if I understand you rightly, you're not considering a magickal 'second coming' of an Arthur figure, but rather 'a rise of Arthurian ideals' or a 'spiritual force' which would somehow renew or reinvigorate the British nation."

This is largely a hypothetical excercise for me. I am happy to consider either and or. When I've discussed this with friends of mine who know a lot more about magick and Arthur than I do, the spirtual force is genrally the favoured one rather than a second coming. I'm enjoying speculating about what kind of person a 21st century Arthur would be but I think the spiritual force concept has a lot of positive aspects to it. I think I may have gone about this the wrong way, perhaps I should have set down an idea and just tried arguing the point, this and it's sisiter thread in the headshop may be a tad to general.

As for which aspect would I personally consider to be important? I think the round table in terms of equality (symbolic only because lets face facts the knights with few exception were largely white norman nobility by the time it gets round to the French romances) because I think inequality seriously weakens a society. I like very much the healing aspect of the grail but I'm somewhat leary of the Christian aspect of the mainstream tellings of the story (I know that the grail could just as well have been one of the seemingly hundred of magickal cauldrons that infest Celtic mythology) as an agnostic it seems to exclusive. The warrior aspects and the fighting for what you believe also appeal to me in a largely non-violent way, to me more than anything this suggests that if you want to change things it's a matter of hard work.

I wasn't trying to take these aspects of the stories as just being British merely in this thread I am concerned with Britain (it's where I live and what I know most about).

Originally posted by Cavatina
"Arguably these threads of 'the' myth are important for European as well as other English-speaking cultures. So, would you envisage a spiritual renewal beyond Britain?"

This is not really my area of expertise but too hazard a guess I would say it would be connected heavily to belief. I believe that Arthurian myth is very heavily connected with the spiritual forces connected to Britain because of the investments we've made in the myth. If other cultures have made the same investment then yes it would. In the other thread I think it was Grant who posted a number of similar myths to Arthur from different cultures, perhaps if one returned this would cause some kind of domina effect. The problem is if it did how would you go about concentrating on the positive side of the myths and avoid the negative and/or nationalistic side of the myths? This is however all wild speculation ona subject I know little about so feel free to shoot me down.