Review of "The Grail"

Well, there's already been an encouraging comment - I suppose you could call it an endorsement - on The Grail: Relic of an Ancient Religion from the all-round Arthurian expert John Matthews:

"A brisk rattle through the well-worn paths of the Grail and King Arthur.  Some challenging new theories, applied with a kind of relish reminiscent of Robert Graves, make this a fascinating book."

I'd call that praise.  And now, this new review has just been published on the Radical Goddess Thealogy blog. 

Definitely worth a read!

Breaking the Mother Goose Code

A strange conversation on Facebook, the other day.

Somebody I sort of know had put up a post demanding that we all boycott Cadburys because they're selling "Halal Easter eggs".

Now, the idea of halal chocolate was a new one on me, so I thought I'd check it out.  What had actually happened was this: Cadburys had put up a page on their website, indicating which of their many products are "halal certified".  In other words, it's essentially dietary guidance - a bit like listing which Cadburys products are "Suitable for vegetarians".  There was nothing "halal" about any of it, just a page letting Muslims know which Cadburys chocolate bars and so on are okay for them to eat.

I pointed this out.  But, no, that wasn't good enough.  Because, apparently, Easter eggs are Christian and so, by making them "halal" Cadburys were pandering to the Islamists and helping to sell Britain downriver.

So I came back - no religious text, to the best of my knowledge, refers to chocolate eggs and no religion has a monopoly on them (let's face it, God neglected to let most of the world know that chocolate even existed until comparatively recently).  But I was wrong, it seems, because the word Easter in front of "eggs" makes them Christian, and exclusively so.  And I was apparently attacking my friend's religion, which was a big No-No.  And that's when I explained that "Easter" comes from "Eostre", a pagan goddess - which explains the eggs, bunnies, chicks and other Eastery thingies.  There's no "Easter" in the Bible, only Passover.

And there endeth the Facebook friendship.

Which brings me to the subject of this post.  I was very keen to read Jeri Studebaker's Breaking the Mother Goose Code - How a Fairy-Tale Character Fooled the World for 300 Years, partly because it looked interesting, and partly because my theatrical hero - Joey Grimaldi, King of Clowns - appeared in the first modern pantomime, Harlequin and Mother Goose; or, the Golden Egg, which did great business when it hit the stage at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in December 1808.

I wondered - just wondered - whether Jeri Studebaker might mention the Mother Goose pantomime in her book.  And I was not disappointed.  Jeri had done her homework.

The first part of Breaking the Mother Goose Code really does focus on the character of Mother Goose, drawing attention to the similarities between this alternately beautiful and grotesque figure and certain ancient European mother-goddesses, especially Holda-Perchta.  The second half takes the argument further, beyond Mother Goose herself, to examine the ways in which so-called "fairy tales" function as a kind of oral memory of the time when Goddess worship was widespread (and largely uncontested), and how these fairy tales - especially when shorn of their latter-day accretions - can be thought of as shamanic journeys and/or magical rituals and spells.

The idea, overall, is that patriarchy is a fairly new phenomenon.  And it's a stinker.  Whenever and wherever it appears, it pursues a sort of scorched earth policy.  But people - whole populaces - don't just alter everything they believe overnight because an angry man tells them to.  Those pre-patriarchal belief systems were natural and hardwired into our collective psyche.  In the face of barbaric violence and blanket intolerance, the old ways lived on - surreptitiously - and did so, partly, through the transmission of fairy tales.

I like this idea.  Mainstream history has been rather naughty, I feel, in taking such a dismissive and lofty attitude towards "folk" history (local legends, place-names, fairy tales).  Just because these things weren't written down till a late stage, doesn't mean that they don't provide us with important glimpses of ancient knowledge.  The Australian aboriginal sang the world back into existence with his song-lines, re-making the landscape by telling its stories, long before the White Man arrived to tell him he'd got it all wrong, and then make a slave of him.

Jeri Studebaker's research for this book is ample and impressive.  She really knows her subject and has gone into it in great depth, producing a book that is both readable and stimulating.  Hard facts mingle with interesting theories and speculations.  And nowhere, I feel, is Jeri at her best more than when she is taking a wrecking-ball to patriarchy.

The differences between patriarchy (recent, bloody) and pre-patriarchal societies (been around for ever, generally equitable and non-violent) are brought out in such a way as to illustrate, not only what a disaster patriarchal structures have been for the species and the planet, but what we lost when we allowed our more natural societies to be steamrollered by the maniacs of patriarchal thinking.  So many lives lost.  So much wisdom lost.  So much damage done.

In fact, Studebaker doesn't belabour this point, but chooses her examples carefully, citing experts in these matters.  Her argument - that fairy tales like Mother Goose represent a sort of quiet resistance, a continuation of pre-patriarchal values in a time of patriarchal thuggery - grows, little by little, from her near-forensic analysis of Mother Goose (Holda-Perchta) herself to the wider world of fairy tales and their magical methodology - until, in my case at least, I was convinced.  Strip away the Disneyfication, and fairy tales really can take us back to a pre-patriarchal age of equality and possibilities.

For an illustration of how disgusting and despicable patriarchal thinking can be, one has only to consider that online run-in with my "friend" over the matter of halal chocolate eggs.  The intolerance, the ignorance, the "I can attack anybody's religion if I choose, but nobody can attack mine!" attitude (even though nobody was actually attacking her Christian faith) and that vague sense of a call-to-arms, a sort of "Let's have another crusade" subtext, are all indicative of patriarchal thinking.  It is crude, divisive, and usually ends in tears.

Mother Goose and her fellows, as Jeri Studebaker shows in her rather wonderful book, can show us that it doesn't have to be like that.  The Golden (Easter) Egg has nothing to do with Christianity, and those who squabble over it - "I can have it, you can't!" - are infantile and deluded.  The Egg was delivered by Mother Goose, the Eternal Feminine, and we can all have it, if we're prepared to play the game.

Click here to go to the Moon Books page for Breaking the Mother Goose Code.

Gods of the Solar Eclipse

Naughty me.  I should have posted this a couple of days ago.

It's a post I wrote for the Moon Books blog, timed to coincide with last Friday's eclipse.

Click here to read it: Gods of the Solar Eclipse.

Mind Body Spirit

Just because you haven't heard a lot from me lately, doesn't mean I've not been busy.

Quite the reverse, in fact.  Interesting research trips to Oxford and Bristol for my biography of Sir William Davenant (nearing completion), lecturing at the University of Worcester, Shakespeare Tours and Ghost Tours in Stratford-upon-Avon, and a new project which I'm not going to tell you about.

But - hold your horses, folks, because it looks like there might be a fair few blog posts in the offing.  The Grail is out, later this month.  Indeed, a correspondent in Washington State has already posted a photo on Facebook showing his pre-ordered copy, which arrived by post today.  So it's kind of out there already.

And here's my first guest blog post on the subject, courtesy of the wonderful Mind Body Spirit Magazine.

More to come ...

2015

Hello, Happy New Year, and welcome!

It had occurred to me to write up a review of 2014 and the various things that happened last year - from publishing my first university paper on The Faces of Shakespeare to the publication, in September, of Naming the Goddess, in which I have an essay (tweet received this morning from Michigan: 'Loved your essay in "Naming the Goddess"! Great perspective.:)', plus appearances at Stratford Literary Festival and the Tree House Bookshop, lecturing at Worcester University and being a tour guide in Stratford-upon-Avon, completing The Grail; Relic of an Ancient Religion and writing Shakespeare's Son ('The Life of Sir William Davenant'), and so on.  But I didn't get round to it.

Instead, I'm going to preen myself a little over this, which my wife found online a day or two ago.  Seems there's to be a rather interesting-looking course on the 'Renaissance of the Sacred Feminine', to be held at Avebury in Wiltshire (good location!) this coming August.  Details can be found here.

If you click on the link and scroll down to the bottom section - 'Avebury/Wiltshire Reading List' - you'll see that the last entry concerns my King Arthur Conspiracy book.  Alternatively, I'll save you the bother by copying what they wrote:

The King Arthur Conspiracy: How a Scottish prince became a mythical hero
By Simon Andrew Stirling
2012
First discovered during the Scotland adventure, this book is an indispensable read for anyone interested in the Arthur/Merlin/Avalon motif.  All the latest research.  It will expand your view beyond the emphasis on Glastonbury and Tintagel.

Now, seeing that made me feel really chuffed.  It also made me want to get in touch with the organisers and tell them that, actually, all the latest research is probably best found in The Grail, due out in March, but that it was very kind of them to say those things about The King Arthur Conspiracy (and might help with a few book sales), and if there was anything I could do to contribute to their intriguing course in August they had only to ask.

Didn't get round to doing that, either.  Although there's still time.

For the meantime, we're holding our breaths and crossing our fingers over the Beoley skull.  With any luck, there'll be some scientific investigation of that particular item before too long.  Maybe even a TV documentary.  I'll keep you posted.

And my Davenant book is coming on apace.  New discoveries about Shakespeare's relationship with Jane Davenant.  All good clean fun.  The manuscript's due to hit the editor's desk at the start of June.

There's another project in the wings, which I'll mention more about if things keep going smoothly.  All in all, 2015 has a very exciting feel about it.  I hope yours does, too.

TTFN!

THE GRAIL ... Coming Soon!!!

A sneak preview, friends, of The Grail, coming soon from Moon Books.

Publication in March 2015.

Looking good, isn't it?

I've set up a Facebook page for the new book (click on "Facebook page" to go straight to it) and I'll keep you updated as the launch date draws nearer.

Meantime, work proceeds on Shakespeare's Son - my "Life of Sir William Davenant" - which has been keeping me pretty busy.  And hoping to have some interesting news pretty soon regarding Shakespeare's skull.

Plenty more to come, folks!

Pagan Pages

Just been told that an interview with me is now up on the PaganPages.org website.

So, with thanks to Mabh Savage, I give you ... The Pagan Pages Interview with Author Simon Stirling.  I think it's a good one.

Toodle-pip!

Naming the Goddess

Coming soon, from Moon Books - Naming the Goddess (Amazon.co.uk details here)

I contributed the chapter on "Christian Wisdom, Pagan Goddess: Reclaiming Sophia and the Saints from the Judeo-Christian Tradition".

Looking forward to reading the book as a whole!

Alyth, the Scene of Arthur's Last Battle

While I work on Shakespeare's Son - my biography of Sir William Davenant, a man of whom I'm becoming increasingly fond - The Grail continues to make its way through the publishing process, courtesy of Moon Books.  So, by way of a sneak preview, in this post I shall offer up some of the evidence for the location of Arthur's last battle.

The Battle of Circenn

You probably think Arthur's last battle was fought at a place called "Camlann".  I've been unable to find any reference to that place-name before the Middle Ages.  The very earliest mentions of anyone called Arthur in the records indicate that he died in a battle fought in Angus, Scotland.

Adomnan of Iona's Life of Columba (circa 697) tells us that Artur son of Aedan was present when his father was "ordained" king of the Scots by St Columba in AD 574.  The saint predicted the fates of Aedan's sons, announcing that Artur would "fall in battle, slain by enemies".  Adomnan assured his readers that this prophecy came true when Artur and at least one of his brothers was killed in a "battle of the Miathi".

The Miathi, or Maeatae, were a Pictish tribe: essentially, they held the low-lying lands to the south and east of the Highland massif.  Another Latinate term for these people was Verturiones.

The Irish annals, which drew at least some of their information from the records kept by Columba's monks on the Isle of Iona, specify that Artur son of Aedan died in a "battle of Circenn".  This refers to the Pictish province which was roughly contiguous with today's Angus and the Mearns.  The term Circenn combined the Gaelic cir, meaning a "comb" or "crest", and cenn, "heads".  Circenn, then, was the land of the Comb-heads.  This tells us that the Miathi Picts modelled their appearance on their totem beast, the boar (rather like their compatriots in the Orkneys, the Orcoi, from orc - a young boar).  Indeed, it is possible that the Latinate name for the Verturiones tribe combines verres and turio and indicates the "offshoots" or "offspring" of the "boar", while the very term "Pict" (variant, "Pecti", "Pecht") quite possibly derived from the Latin pecten, a "comb".

Now, let's look at "Camlann" - the traditional name for Arthur's last battle.  Its first appearance in the records comes in an entry interpolated into the Welsh Annals, where it refers to a gueith cam lann or "strife of cam lann".  By the time this came to be written down, the region in which Artur son of Aedan died was speaking a version of Northumbrian Old English which became the dialect known as Lowland Scots.  In that dialect, cam lann would mean "comb land".

In other words, "Camlann" is merely an anglicised version of the Gaelic Circenn, the land of the "Comb-heads" in which the first Arthur on record fell in a cataclysmic battle.

Culhwch and Olwen

One of the oldest of the Welsh (i.e. British) tales to feature Arthur is that of Culhwch ac Olwen.  It forms a sort of mythologised, potted account of Arthur's career, culminating in the desperate and bloody hunt for a king who - for his sins - was turned into a boar.  This hunt begins with a violent amphibious landing, at a site which can be identified as Cruden Bay, on the Aberdeenshire coast, after which Arthur is met by the "saints of Ireland" who "besought his protection".  The dreadful Boar-King is challenged and chased from Esgeir Oerfel, the "Cold Ridge" of the Grampians, the Boar-King making his way across country towards Llwch Tawy (Loch Tay) before he is intercepted by Arthur and his men and driven into a river.

In The King Arthur Conspiracy I identified the treacherous Boar-King as Morgan the Wealthy, a renegade British prince who abducted Arthur's wife, Gwenhwyfar, and escaped into the land of the Miathi Picts (his bolt hole appears to have been the fortified Hill of Tillymorgan in Strathbogie).  The site where Morgan finally came to grief is marked by the "Morganstone" on the west bank of the River Ericht, a short distance to the west of the Hill of Alyth in the great vale of Strathmore in Angus.

Arthurian Connections with Alyth

Before we proceed, let us consider some ancient references to Arthur and his family in the context of Alyth and its immediate vicinity.

In addition to having a son named Artur or Artuir, King Aedan of the Scots had a daughter called Muirgein.  According to Whitley Stokes, editing and translating the Martyrology of a 9th-century Irish monk called Oengus, Muirgein daughter of Aedan was born "in Bealach Gabrain".

The inability of certain scholars to find a "Bealach Gabrain" in Scotland has led some to argue that Muirgein daughter of Aedan was utterly unconnected with Artur son of Aedan.  But place-names evolve.  The Gaelic term bealach, meaning a "pass" or "gorge", usually appears as "Balloch" on today's maps.  There is a "Balloch" which runs along the feet of Barry Hill and the adjacent Hill of Alyth in Strathmore.

Furthermore, this "Balloch" or bealach was in a region named after the grandfather of Artur and Muirgein.  Gabran was the father of Aedan.  He ruled the Scots for twenty years until his death in about AD 559 and gave his name to the region of Gowrie (a corruption of Gabran).  The "Balloch" near Alyth was in Gabran's land (Gabrain) and lies close to the town of Blairgowrie, which also recalls the name of Arthur's grandfather.  The "Balloch" at the foot of the Hill of Alyth was almost certainly the "Bealach Gabrain" or "pass of Gowrie" where Arthur's (half-)sister, Muirgein daughter of Aedan mac Gabrain, was born.  To pretend that the Balloch of Gowrie could not have been "Bealach Gabrain" because they are not spelled the same way these days is tantamount to claiming that Londinium and London could not have been the same place.

So Arthur's sister, Muirgein (latterly, Morgan le Fay), was born near Alyth.  Writing in about 1527, the Scottish historian Hector Boece also indicated that Arthur's wife was buried at Meigle, which is just a mile or two south of Alyth.  Hector Boece's local tradition recalled Gwenhwyfar as Vanora (via Guanora) and claimed that she had been held hostage in the Iron Age hill-fort atop Barry Hill, adjacent to the Hill of Alyth, before she was executed and buried in what is now the kirkyard at Meigle.  A carved Pictish standing stone, now on display at the Meigle museum, reputedly depicts the execution or burial of Arthur's wife.

Y Gododdin

One of the best sources of information about Arthur's last battle is the ancient epic, Y Gododdin.  This was composed and sung by Aneirin, a British bard of the Old North, and can be dated to circa AD 600 (the date of Arthur's last battle is given in the Irish annals as, variously, AD 594 and 596).

Unfortunately, the relevance of Aneirin's elegiac tribute to the warriors of Lothian (the "Gododdin") has been missed by scholars who want to believe that the poem bemoans the destruction of a British war-band from the Edinburgh area which had the misfortune to be wiped out at a mythical battle fought at Catterick in North Yorkshire.  No evidence exists that any such battle was fought.  The Angles (forerunners of the English) preferred not to recollect their defeats but were happy to remember, and to boast about, their victories.  If the Angles of Northumbria had indeed obliterated a British band of heroes from Lothian at Catterick, we might assume that they would have remembered doing so.  And no scholar has yet explained the presence of "Irishman and Picts" at this imaginary battle in Anglian territory.

A verse or two of Y G[ododdin, added at a later date than the original composition, described a battle fought in Scotland (Strathcarron) in AD 642 and the death in that battle of a Scottish king who just happened to be a nephew of Artur son of Aedan.  This interpolation does at least suggest that the subject of the original poem was a battle fought in roughly the same area (Scotland) by the family of Artur and his father Aedan.  The Y Gododdin poem also mentions various famous warriors who appear in the early accounts of Arthur's career and who were contemporary with Artur son of Aedan.

One surviving version of Y Gododdin even mentions Artur/Artuir by name:

Gochore brein du ar uur
caer ceni bei ef Arthur
rug ciuin uerthi ig disur ...

Confused by the misidentification of the battle sung about by Aneirin in Y Gododdin, and the assumption that Arthur himself could not have been present at that battle, scholars have persistently mistranslated this verse - mostly in an attempt to render the second half of the second line, "He was no Arthur".  But Aneirin's verse should properly be translated thus:

Black ravens [warriors] sang in praise of the hero [Welsh, arwr]
of Circenn [transliterated into Welsh as "caer ceni"].  He blamed Arthur;
the dogs cursed in return for our wailing/lamentation ...

Aneirin indicated, in his Y Gododdin elegy, precisely where the final battle took place:

Eil with gwelydeint amallet
y gat veirch ae seirch greulet
bit en anysgoget bit get ...

Which translates as:

Again they came into view around the alled,
the battle-horses and the bloody armour,
still steadfast, still united ...

The "alled" was Aneirin's Welsh-language attempt at the Gaelic Allaid - also Ailt - or the Hill of Alyth.

Breuddwyd Rhonabwy

The extraordinary medieval Welsh tale of The Dream of Rhonabwy actually provides a description of the scene in the hours before Arthur's last battle was fought.  The visionary seer, Rhonabwy, finds himself crossing a great plain with a river running through it (Strathmore).  He is met by a character call Iddog, "Churn of Britain", who admits that it was he who caused the cataclysmic "battle of Camlan" by betraying Arthur.  In company with Iddog, Rhonabwy approaches the "Ford of the Cross" (Rhyd-y-Groes) on the river.  A great army is encamped on either side of the road and Arthur is seated on a little flat islet in the river, beside the ford.

The topography precisely matches the detail from a 19th-century Ordnance Survey map of the area around Alyth seen at the top of this post.  On the right-hand side of the detail is the ridge known as Arthurbank, which lies along the River Isla, opposite the junction of the River Ericht with the River Isla (a few miles down the Ericht from the site of the Morganstone).  A little flat islet lies in the River Isla, close to the Arthurbank shore, and a ford runs alongside this little islet, exactly as described in the Welsh account of Rhonabwy's dream.

Aneirin also mentioned this ford in his Y Gododdin poem as rhyd benclwyd - the "ford" of the "grey" or "holy mount".  There is, indeed, a Greymount marked on the map, a short distance to the north of the ford on the Isla.  In his Agriculture of Perthshire, published in 1799, the Rev. Dr Robertson described the discovery of a "large Druidical temple" at Coupar Grange, adjacent to this ford.  A standing stone found in this "temple" would no doubt have been rebranded a "cross" by the early Christians, so that the ford across the Isla, beside the little flat islet, would have become known as the Ford of the Cross (Rhyd-y-Groes), as described in The Dream of Rhonabwy, or the "Ford of the Grey/Holy Mount" (rhyd benclwyd) as described by Aneirin.

Until the late 18th century, an Arthurstone stood at the south-eastern edge of the Arthurbank ridge (its presence is still marked on the map).  This Arthurstone corresponds to the Morganstone, a few miles away up the River Ericht, and marks the spot where Arthur fell in his battle with the Boar-King of the Miathi Picts in the land of the "crested" Comb-heads, Camlann.

The Head of the Valley of Sorrow

After the battle, Arthur's wife Gwenhwyfar was executed and buried only a mile or so away at Meigle.  The legend of Culhwch and Olwen (which, interestingly, features a treacherous individual identified as Grugyn, who also appears in Aneirin's Y Gododdin) tells us that, after the battle at the river with the dangerous Boar-King, Arthur and his heroes once more "set out for the North" to overcome a fearsome witch.  She was found inside a cave at Penn Nant Gofid - the "Head of the Valley of Sorrow"- on "the confines of Hell" (which we can interpret as the edge of the territory controlled by those boar-like Miathi Picts).  The Welsh gofid ("sorrow/trouble/affiction/grief") appears to have been something of a pun, for another Welsh word for sorrow or grief is alaeth (compare Ailt, Allaid and Alyth, the "Head of the Valley of Alyth" being the very hill on which Arthur's wife is rumoured to have been held prisoner before her execution and burial nearby at Meigle).

In the Welsh tale, this witch is known as Orddu (that is, Gorddu - "Very Black"). A similar legend from the Isle of Mull, whose Arthurian associations have been overlooked for far too long, names the troublesome wife as Corr-dhu ("Black-Crane").

We might also note that the 9th-century Welsh monk known as Nennius described a "wonder" of Scotland in the form of "a valley in Angus, in which shouting is heard every Monday night; Glend Ailbe is its name, and it is not known who makes this noise."

Nennius's Glend Ailbe seems to be a corruption of the Gaelic word for a valley (glen) and the River Isla, or perhaps the Allaid or Hill of Alyth, which dominates the vale of Strathmore.  The mysterious shouting in this "Valley of Sorrow" was reputedly heard ever Monday night.  And we know from Aneirin's eye-witness account of Arthur's last battle that it came to an end on a Monday.

This is just some of the evidence for Arthur having fallen in the vicinity of Alyth.  There is plenty more to come in The Grail; Relic of an Ancient Religion - including descriptions of the Pictish symbol stones, found close to the site of that battle, which actually depict the Grail in use!

I'll let you know when the book is about to be published.

Apologia

I've been remiss.  Dreadfully so.

The only thing I can say in my defence is that I have been busy writing my biography of Sir William Davenant (Shakespeare's Son) and enjoying myself giving tours in Stratford-upon-Avon - some days, you might see me in doublet and breeches, leading a troupe of tourists or students from one Shakespearean site to another, whilst on Saturday evenings I guide intrepid visitors through the dark delights of Tudor World on Sheep Street, every Ghost Tour threatening to yield at least one supernatural experience.  So, yes, I've been busy.

Added to that, my paper on The Faces of Shakespeare is about to be published by Goldsmiths University; Moon Books will soon be publishing Naming the Goddess, to which I contributed a chapter, and my own The Grail; Relic of an Ancient Religion is currently passing through the Moon Books production process.  Oh, and I've also been quietly working on a project based on events in 1964-65 for a company set up by a very good friend of mine from my drama school days.

So I hope you'll forgive the radio silence.

Anyhoo - my great buddy and artistic collaborator on The Grail, Lloyd Canning, got a fantastic four-page spread in this month's Cotswold and Vale Magazine, including (as you can see) the cover shot.  Lloyd's amazing images really came out well in the magazine, and The Grail got a good mention (as well as my Who Killed William Shakespeare?), which means that we're all very chuffed.  A hearty CONGRATS to Lloyd for the well-earned and much-deserved publicity.

I'll try to post another update very soon.  I promise.

The Meaning of "Camlann"

I received a message from Moon Books today, telling me that the copyedited manuscript of The Grail; Relic of an Ancient Religion is ready for me to check.

It seems unlikely that the book will be available before the Scottish independence referendum in September.  I'll be keeping a close eye on the referendum: the vote takes place the day before my 12th wedding anniversary, and having got married on the Isle of Iona to a woman who is half-Scottish, as well as having gone to university in Glasgow, my sympathies lie very much with the "YES" campaign.

I was also interested to note that Le Monde published this piece, indicating that the pro-independence campaign is gaining ground.  The reporter had been in Alyth, Perthshire, to follow the debate.  Alyth, as I revealed in The King Arthur Conspiracy, is where Arthur fought his last battle.

How do I know this?  Lots of reasons, not least of all the fact that the place is name checked in a contemporary poem of the battle.

But wasn't Arthur's last battle fought at a place called Camlan?

Well, for a long while I wasn't so sure.  Now, though, I know that it was - sort of - and I explain why in my forthcoming book on The Grail.  But as that may not be out before the referendum, I hereby present this information as a gift to the "YES" campaign and in honour of a warrior who gave his life fighting for Scottish (and British) independence.

Many commentators refuse to accept that the place-name "Camlan" isn't Welsh.  The fact that Camlan is the Gaelic name for the old Roman fortifications at Camelon, near Falkirk in central Scotland, means nothing to them.  Arthur's "Camlan" was Welsh, and that's all it could have been.

Very silly - and utterly useless, in terms of trying to track down the site of that all-important battle.  If it was a Welsh place-name, it would have meant something like "Crooked Valley", which really doesn't help us very much.

The first literary reference to "Camlann" comes in the Annales Cambriae ("Welsh Annals") which mention Gueith cam lann - the "Strife of Camlann".  However, that reference cannot be traced back to an earlier date than the 10th century, hundreds of years after the time of Arthur.  The contemporary sources make no mention of "Camlann", and so it may be that the name didn't come into use until many years after Arthur's last battle was fought there.

The earliest literary reference to anyone called Arthur concerns an individual named Artur mac Aedain.  He was a son of Aedan mac Gabrain, who was "ordained" King of the Scots by St Columba in 574.  Accounts of the ordination ceremony indicate that Arthur son of Aedan was present on that occasion, and that St Columba predicted that Arthur would not succeed his father to the Scottish throne but would "fall in battle, slain by enemies."

Those same accounts tell us that Columba's prophecy came true: Artur mac Aedain died in a "battle of the Miathi", which means that he was killed fighting the Picts of central Scotland. 

The Irish Annals, which were compiled from notes made by the monks of Iona, inform us that the first recorded Arthur was killed in a "battle of Circenn", fought in about 594.  Circenn was the Pictish province immediately to the north of the Tay estuary - broadly, Angus and the Mearns - which was indeed the territory of the "Miathi".

Circenn might have been Pictish territory, but the name of the province is Gaelic.  It combines the word cir (meaning a "comb" or a "crest") and cenn, the genitive plural of a Gaelic noun meaning "head".  An appropriate translation of Circenn would therefore be "Comb-heads".

The Miathi Picts, like their compatriots in the Orkneys, appear to have modelled their appearance on their totem animal, the boar.  This meant that they shaved their heads in imitation of the boar's comb or crest - rather like the Mohawk tonsure, which we wrongly think of as a "Mohican".  Indeed, whilst we assume that the term "Pict" derived from the Latin picti, meaning "painted" or "tattooed", there are grounds for suspecting that it was actually a corruption of pecten, the Latin for a "comb" (hence the Old Scots word Pecht, meaning "Pict").

So where does "Camlann" fit into all this?

After Arthur's death, much of southern and central Scotland was invaded by the Angles, those forerunners of the English.  As a consequence, the Germanic language known as Northumbrian Old English was established in southern and central Scotland by the 7th century.  It eventually became the dialect called Lowland Scots.

In the Scots dialect, came, kem and camb all meant "comb".  And lan', laan and lann all meant "land".

The land in which Arthur's last battle had been fought - that is, the Pictish province of Angus - was soon speaking an early variant of the English language, or Lowland Scots.  The fact that the Pictish province of Circenn was named after its "Comb-heads", those Miathi warriors who cut their hair to resemble a boar's comb or crest, meant that the place became known by its early English equivalent: "Comb-land" or Camlann.

This was not, of course, the name that Arthur and his warrior-poets would have used for the place.  But then, the term "Camlann" didn't appear in any literary source for at least another three or four hundred years.  By the time the Welsh annalist came to interpolate the "Camlann" entry into the Annales Cambriae, the location had become known by its Old English/Lowland Scots name.  But that name was merely a variant of the older Gaelic name for the province - Circenn, or "Comb-heads".

And that is where the first recorded Arthur fell in battle, as St Columba had predicted.  Not in England or Wales or Brittany, but in Angus in Scotland.

The province of the Pictish "Comb-heads".  The region known as "Comb-land", cam lann.

My Writing Process (blog tour)

I was "tagged" to take part in this blog hop by the wonderful Margaret Skea, whom I have known since the Authonomy days, and who posted about her writing process on her own blog last week.

Margaret passed on to me the four questions that writers are invited to answer as part of this blog tour.

So, here goes ...

1. What am I working on?

Right now, I'm finishing one project and starting another.  The Grail; Relic of an Ancient Tradition has been occupying my time now since January 2013.  I was looking to do something of a follow up to The King Arthur Conspiracy, partly because I had been doing some more research - especially into the location and circumstances of Arthur's last battle - and partly because I wanted to address some of the (very minor) objections to Artuir mac Aedain having been the original Arthur of legend.

Thanks to Trevor Greenfield of Moon Books, I was given the opportunity to write The Grail in an unusual way.  Each month, from January to December 2013, I would write a chapter, which would then by uploaded onto the Moon Books blog.  That meant that, each month, I would send my draft chapter to my associate, John Gist, in New Mexico, who would read it and comment on it for me, and I would visit my friend Lloyd Canning, a local up-and-coming artist, to discuss the illustration that would accompany the chapter.  There would be a final rewrite, and then I'd submit the chapter and the image to Trevor at Moon Books.

It was a long process, and an odd one (I wouldn't normally submit anything less than a complete manuscript).  I've spent the last couple of months revising the full text and adding a few more illustrations.  And, well, it's about finished.  John contacted me from the States last night to say that he had read through one of the more recent drafts of the full thing and he really liked it.  It's not all about the distant past - there's a lot about how our brains work, and how a certain type of mind tends to ruin history (and other things) for everybody else.  That type of mindset seeks to prevent research into figures like Artuir mac Aedain so that the prevailing myth can be maintained.  The same type of mindset will cause us no end of problems in the immediate future, and the book ends with something of a prediction.

Coming up ... Sir William Davenant.  I published a piece on The History Vault, a couple of days ago, about Shakespeare's Dark Lady.  It could be read as a sort of introduction to my biography of Sir William Davenant.  I've only just signed the contract for the Davenant book, and it's due to be handed in to The History Press in June 2015.

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

History for me is an investigative process.  I lose patience very quickly with historians who do nothing more than repeat what the last historian said.  It's a major problem: a consensus arises, and woe betide any self-respecting historian who challenges that consensus.  But the consensus is often based, not on historical facts, but on a kind of political outlook.  It tends to be history-as-we-would-like-it-to-be, rather than history-as-it-was.

There are similarities with archaeology.  Dig down anywhere within the Roman walls of the old city of London and you'll hit a layer of dark earth.  This was left behind by Boudica when she and her Iceni warriors destroyed Londinium in about AD 60.  But if you don't dig down far enough, you won't find that layer.

Too much history - certainly where Arthur (and the Grail) and Shakespeare (and Davenant) are concerned - gets down as far as one layer and stays there.  In the case of Arthur, that layer is the 12th century; with Shakespeare, it's the late 18th century.  In both instances, that's when the story changed.  New versions of Arthur and Shakespeare arose, reflecting the obsessions of the particular era.  When historians dig down to that layer, and report on what they've found, they're not writing about Arthur or Shakespeare - they're writing about what later generations wanted to think about Arthur and Shakespeare.

You have to go down further.  Otherwise, you're just repeating propaganda.

I'm also a bit fussy about how my books read.  That's my dramatist background, I reckon.  But I read a great many books - history, mostly, of course - and too many of them are, frankly, boring.  I seek to write exciting, accessible history that has been more diligently researched than the norm.  I don't seek to shock, but real history often is shocking.  Maybe that's why so many historians prefer to keep telling the "consensus" story.

3. Why do I write what I do?

The work I do now started because I was intrigued and inquisitive.  The familiar legends of Arthur are all well and good, but I was more interested in the man who inspired them - who was he? what made him so special?  And the same with Shakespeare - how did a Warwickshire lad become the greatest writer in the English language?  (My own background is not too different from Shakespeare's.)  And what was the inspiration for the character of Lady Macbeth.

I'm still intrigued and inquisitive, but over the years I've found myself more and more determined to see justice done - to right the wrongs of the past.  Those wrongs are perpetuated by historians who don't ask questions.  And that's a betrayal, not only of the actual subjects (Arthur, Shakespeare) but also of the reader today.  It's a kind of cover-up, designed - I believe - to reshape the past so that it justifies certain policies today.  If you're a monarchist, for example, or an old-fashioned imperialist, you're going to want to believe that Queen Elizabeth I was marvellous.  And then you're going to have to believe that Shakespeare thought she was marvellous.  Which means that you'll have to turn a blind eye to what was going on during her reign, and to the criticisms which Shakespeare voiced.  Before you know it, you're ignoring the facts altogether in order to write a history that supports your own prejudices.  I can't believe how often that happens.

Both Arthur and Shakespeare were killed, and their stories were subsequently written up by their enemies.  Their real stories are much more interesting - and they deserve to be told.  If we cling to the myths, we allow demagogues to dictate our history to us.

4. How does my writing process work?

Well, it's not quick.  The research can take years.  Then there are usually a number of false starts.  Fortunately, I tend to have some sort of agreement with a publisher, these days, so when I say I'm going to write something, that means I have to get on with it.

I'll start at the beginning, with the long, slow process of getting words down on the page (it's long and slow because I have to go hunting for the information before I put it down).  But I always have a carefully worked out structure in my mind, and day after day a kind of rough draft takes shape.  It's usually fairly messy, and at some point I'll stop and go back to the start, smartening it up and giving myself enough momentum to plough on and get a few more chapters drafted.

After that, it's an ongoing process of revision (never less than three drafts).  For several months, I'll be revising the early chapters while I'm still drafting the later ones.

I have to work pretty much every day.  For a finished manuscript of, say, 100,000 words, I'll expect to write anything up to 500,000 words, which will be sifted and boiled down to fit the appropriate length.  I'll keep going back and revising different sections, here and there, and often, in the latter stages, I'll rewrite the chapters out of sequence (partly to keep them all fresh).  Then there's endless, obsessive tinkering, as I fuss over every full stop and comma.

The King Arthur Conspiracy took seven months to write (and rewrite).  Who Killed William Shakespeare? took nine months, and then some for the illustrations.  The Grail took me a year to write (a chapter a month) and another 2-3 months to revise (with illustrations).  With Sir William Davenant I want to create something special, so that'll take ages.

There are two things I couldn't do without.  One is coffee.  The other is my fantastically loyal, supportive and organised wife, Kim.

*****

I now get to tag a couple of authors who will pick up the baton and run with it, and I've chosen two great writers who are part of the Review Group on Facebook.  I'll let the first introduce herself:

I’m Louise Rule, my first book Future Confronted was published in December 2013, and I am now researching my next book, the story of which will take me travelling from Scotland to England, and then to Italy. I am on the Admin Team of the Facebook group The Review Blog which I enjoy immensely.

Louise's blog can be found here.

My other chosen successor on this blog tour is Stuart S. Laing.  Stuart writes about Scottish history - his posts on the Review Group Blog covering fascinating moments in Edinburgh's past are a joy to read, but it's his historical novels - the Robert Young of Newbiggin Mysteries - which really deserve attention.

Stuart's blog can be found here.

Finally, it remains for me only to thank Margaret Skea for inviting me to take part in this hop.  And to thank you, dear reader, for perusing my musings.

Ciao!

The Grail - Final Chapter

It's here!!!

The last chapter of The Grail; Relic of an Ancient Religion has now gone live on the Moon Books blog!

So there we are.  A year's work comes to an end, with a chapter which seeks to recapitulate where we've been and what we've learnt, and to carry much of that forwards - to anticipate, as it were, where we're going.

It's arguably one of the most contentious, controversial chapters I've ever written.

A few weeks now to go back through all the chapters and try to tidy up any loose ends.  But, in the meantime, huge thanks to Trevor Greenfield at Moon Books for the opportunity, John M. Gist for the advice and feedback, and Lloyd Canning for the monthly illustrations.

The Grail - Saints and Stones

The last but one chapter of The Grail; Relic of an Ancient Religion is now up on the Moon Books blog.  In this 11th chapter, we break the news that the "Grail" can still be seen on Pictish symbol stones in very close proximity to the scene of Arthur's last battle.

It's a difficult chapter, I'll admit.  Working this way (a chapter a month, published online, and then on to the next chapter) has been a very interesting experience, but not always an easy one.  Usually, I'd write out several chapters, then go back and revise them, move on to the next chapters, go back, revise, move forwards, back, revise, onwards, rewrite a section, rewrite another section, complete the manuscript, then revise it ... But not this time!  Oh no.  A chapter, when it's done, goes up on the blog.  It's published.  And on we go to the next one.

I'm beginning to look forward to reading through the completed manuscript when the final chapter is published next month.  It'll be interesting to see how (and if) the whole thing hangs together.  How much repetition is there?  What needs to go, what needs to be better explained ...

Anyway, the research has been fascinating.  As has been receiving feedback on each chapter (work-in-progress) from my brother-in-arms, John Gist, and planning each of the chapter images with my very talented near-neighbour, Lloyd Canning.  Lloyd lives round the corner from me; John lives in New Mexico.  It's been an international collaboration!

A lot of new material has been unearthed during the course of this project, and I'm hopeful that the final chapter will put most of it into perspective.  I look forward to being able to post the link.

Meanwhile, in other news, the Royal Shakespeare Company bookshop is now stocking Who Killed William Shakespeare?

"Made it, Ma!  Top of the world!"

The Grail - CAMLANN

Chapter 10 of The Grail; Relic of an Ancient Religion - entitled "Camlann" - is now up on the Moon Books blog!

I've written about the Battle of Camlann before on this blog, and with The Grail I have been able to put the fruits of yet more research out there.  I have finally (I believe) tracked down the original meaning of cam lann - which is how the place-name first appears - and it confirms that Artuir mac Aedain was the one and only Arthur of history.

There is quite a lot more detail given of the final battle in this chapter, especially in terms of topography (what the sources tell us about the scene and where those references show up on today's map), leaving precious little room for doubt as to where Arthur's last battle was fought.  And all this builds up to a revelation which will be made in the next chapter:

The Grail can still be seen in the immediate vicinity of Arthur's last battle!

That chapter will be up in about a month's time.  I'll let you know.

Kitchen Witchcraft

Witch.  It's such a troublesome word, isn't it?  So many negative connotations.

Centuries of misinformation, prejudice and propaganda turned the very notion of "witchcraft" into something hideous and fearful.  We see similar processes at work today - in the United States, for example, where a positive word like "liberal" (meaning generous, open-minded, and inclined towards favouring individual liberty) has been turned into a political insult.  Whenever we see something like that happening - wherever a perfectly good word denoting a perfectly decent political or religious stance is transformed into a term of abuse, becoming a sort of catch-all "bogeyman" for the majority to fear and loathe - we have to question the motives of those who drive that semantic change.

One way or another, witchcraft is an extremely ancient pursuit.  It's difficult to separate "witchcraft" from its companion concept, "paganism".  Both have been enjoying something of a resurgence, lately - and, overall, that's a good thing, because this represents a return of sorts to an older and more natural way of doing things.

The term "pagan" means, simply, country-dweller (paganus).  While the more elaborate cults flourished in the cities of the ancient world, those cities were utterly dependent on rural communities to provide the food for their markets and their tables.  And those rural communities remained in touch with the processes of agriculture, the cycle of the seasons, the hardwork, care, attention and - yes - hope which are all necessary if we are to enjoy ample harvests.

Typically, city-dwellers came to look down on the country-folk as rural idiots, even though the urbanites were dependent on them for the absolute necessities.  The country-folk knew that the weather mattered.  They knew that water was essential; anything that polluted a water-source was a huge threat.  Better to keep the water-spirits happy.  And to do whatever you could to secure good weather.  And cherish the plants and animals that provide for us.

Various rituals and forms of worship evolved in order to make farming - that most essential of occupations - as successful as it could reasonably be.  We do much the same these days, only we do it all wrong: pesticides, intensive farming, GM crops are all signs of a system under immense strain.  We have forgotten how to farm, and keep trying to make it more "efficient", and to compensate for the damage we did previously, by piling on the pressure.

What the pagans of old knew - and what others, like the Findhorn Community, have discovered since - is that you can't bully nature.  You can try, but it'll backfire on you.  You have to coax it, work with it, be nice to it.  The whole thing is a transaction between us, the human community, and the multitudinous spirits which inhabit the natural world.  If we are good to them, then they'll probably be good to us.  If we ignore them, and then ruin their habitats, they'll make our lives more difficult.

So that's paganism - the cautious, conscientious and frequently joyous process of interacting with the natural environment in the hope of securing positive outcomes.  And every community had those (male or female) who were just a little bit more expert at this sort of thing than the rest of us.  They understood which plants were good for treating which ailments of the body, mind or spirit.  Though most of us lived close to nature - right in amongst it, if you like - they lived as part of nature, doing the deals that were needed to be done.  To be more precise, such people worked with the spiritual side of nature, including past members of the human community.  If a priest intercedes between man and God, the witch interceded between man and the gods.

Rachel Patterson lives in a city.  But she also knows that her home and garden benefit from a little care and attention, on both the material and spiritual levels.  A clean kitchen is one thing; a kitchen that is in tune with the seasons and used as a place in which to celebrate the seasonal round - the systole and diastole of winter and summer - is not just clean: it is happy.

Rachel's book, Kitchen Witchcraft: Crafts of a Kitchen Witch - part of the Moon Books "Pagan Portals" series - is delightful.  She writes with a great sense of fun and real love for the world around us.  And the book serves as a sort of primer, a very gentle but effective introduction to the ideas and principles of contemporary paganism.  Forget about magical oils made out of bats' wings - today, we use essential oils.  They make our candles smell nice.

What really works about this book is that it fits in so comfortably with the modern obsession with home improvement and that all important do-it-yourself ethos.  Rachel acknowledges, early on, that the kitchen (or hearth) is the heart of the home.  It is where our food is prepared and cooked - and often eaten.  It is a personal space (most cooks like to work alone) and a convivial space, a place of conversations, hearts-to-hearts.  No other room is quite like it.  And, like the hearth of old, it needs to look and smell and feel special.  We need, in effect, to love our kitchens - and to show that we love them.  We need to personalise them: not out of a catalogue, but with our own arts and crafts.

There are blessings in this book, and meditations, but nothing remotely "witchy" in the sense of diabolical (and why should there be? - who wants bad spirits running amok in their kitchen?).  As with so much that is useful in the pagan world, much of it is just sound psychological common sense, comprising various activities which can put you in a better mood and improve the mood of your environment (the two go hand in hand).  At the same time, Rachel Patterson provides quick rundowns of some of the basic elements of the pagan worldview - the regular festivals, the essential elements - and works these into her simple "recipes" for a happy home.

Anyone who is offended by anything in Rachel's book has real problems.  Only the worst kind of superstition, fostered by indoctrination, could view Kitchen Witchcraft as a menace to Creation.  But then, that indoctrination is so often applied by mindsets that are addicted to suffering.  Rachel Patterson, in her lovely, short, joyful book, implies that suffering might be natural, but it is not to be encouraged.  The kitchen should be a place of life, not death.  A few flowers, candles, stones and shells are unlikely to do any harm, and if they improve our relationships with ourselves, with our kitchens and with the world outside, then what's wrong with that?  We need more of this sort of thing.

Reading the book reminded me of the Pagan Pride festival in Nottingham, this past August.  It was a lovely event, with a pronounced fancy-dress feel (including a rather glamorous Robin and Marion duo), and amounted to little more than a relaxed and good-humoured celebration of life.

After I had given a talk on "Arthur and the Grail", we made our way out of the park, walking behind two elderly ladies who had dressed up as witches.  Lovely homemade cloaks and pointy hats.  And I was really touched to see that these two women were having fun.  They had been allowed to announce, in public, "Yes, we are witches.  We belong to a most ancient tradition."

Were they evil?  I doubt that very much. They were probably heading home for a cup of tea.  And I'd like to think that their kitchens are sacred spaces, where nourishment is lovingly prepared.

Their playfulness, their honesty about themselves, and the fact that - thankfully, at long last - it is possible, once again, to admit that you have a relationship with the earth, with water, with air, and with fire, and that you can only be happy when working with these elements to achieve balance in your life (and really delicious cakes) ... that is what I was reminded of when reading Rachel Patterson's book.

Don't get hung up on words like "witch" or "pagan".  We could all do with a little more magic in our lives - and a good place to start looking for it is in Rachel Patterson's little book of Kitchen Witchcraft.

Justice for Daisy

If you follow this blog, you might have spotted that I've mentioned the "Heroic age" a few times recently - and, indeed, what I call the New Heroic age, which is the return to a crass kind of medievalism.  The New Heroic age is what we are living through now.  We are being led backwards, away from democracy and high standards of scientific inquiry and evidence, back to the intolerance, inequality and savage injustices of the Middle Ages.

Why - you might ask - do I keep mentioning this?  Well, it's partly because I'm approaching the end of my work on The Grail; Relic of an Ancient Religion for Moon Books, in which I have sought to explain how the stories of Arthur and the Grail were corrupted in the Middle Ages.  The "Heroic age" mentality which altered and reinvented the original tales has not gone away.  Historians are especially prone to Heroic age thinking, and there are many - way too many - Arthurian scholars and commentators whose Heroic age obsessions blind them to the historical facts of Arthur's Britain.  I hope, in my final chapter for The Grail, to explain how the contemporary rush towards medieval thinking (with "wealth-creators" as the new aristocracy and transnational corporations as the new Church) is, and will be, such a disaster for mankind and for the planet.

It is probably unavoidable.  I suspect that there is a historical inevitably to all this.  Every previous civilisation has foundered and collapsed, usually because of personal greed and a too literal approach to certain religious beliefs, and so we should expect our civilisation to go the same way too, and for the same old reasons.  Every Tea Party fundamentalist, every hard line Conservative ideologue, is committed to unravelling the achievements of science and democracy and reviving "god-fearing" feudalism.  We are pretty much doomed.

But that does not mean that we shouldn't make a stand for what is right.

I came across the story of Daisy Coleman recently, and it struck me instantly as an example of the New Heroic age stamping its disgraceful attitudes onto our modern world.

Daisy was a pretty 14-year old living in Missouri when she and her 13-year old friend were raped and left for dead by a bunch of boys.  That's bad enough.  But the ringleader of the abusers was a popular football player from a prominent local family.  And even though the sexual assault on two underage girls (who had been rendered insensible by alcohol) was filmed, the boys escaped prosecution.

Instead, the local town - closely followed by the internet - chose to blame the girls for being drunken sluts who had sneaked out of their homes that night and were obviously begging to be raped.

This, dear reader, is the Heroic age at work - in all its despicable, cruel and heartless glory.

1) the rapists were not only protected by their own families; the police and prosecutors bent over backwards to protect them, because they belonged to a sort of local "aristocracy", and the prosector even seems to have lied about the victim's family having refused to co-operate with any investigation - this, it would seem, because political favours were being "called in" and the local Republicans were closing ranks to defend their own;

2) the right-wing media (e.g. Fox News, which is doing all it can to reintroduce the worst kind of medievalism to our planet) happily vindicated the abusers and blamed the victims for allowing themselves to be violated;

3) the hatred of the victims (who were 13 and 14 years old, let's remember, and were left unconscious in the snow after their ordeals) quickly spread to the internet - which is a great conduit for Heroic age spite and political/religious intolerance - where Daisy was libelled, among other things, as an "uber-slut".

There is some good news.  The hacktivist collective known as "Anonymous" took up Daisy's cause.  Obviously, if her hometown was not prepared to give her justice, it would fall to the international community to demand a proper investigation of these brutal and inexcusable crimes and the prosecution of the perpetrators - those privileged youths who committed their vicious sexual assaults apparently in the knowledge that nobody would take action against them for raping and nearly killing two teenage girls.  The case, it would appear, has been reopened (although vital evidence, including the recording of the incident, was seemingly "lost" during the initial inquiry).

The dreadful story of Daisy and her friend is a near-perfect example of the New Heroic age at work.  First of all, it establishes a powerful clique of rich and influential individuals who pretty much have the entire neighbourhood under their fat thumbs.  That clique breeds offspring who see themselves as a race apart, untouchable by the law, because they are protected by their parents and their parents' political friends.  Worse, though - such offspring are raised to believe that they are, in some way, special.  That the usual rules do not apply to them.  That they are somehow "better" than others.

So when these sociopathic youngsters decide to rape two impressionable, underage girls (the circumstances suggest that the double rape was planned) and then dump them, they did so in the belief that they had some sort of right to do this, and that they would get away with it - which is pretty much what happened.

After all, if in doubt, the full force of Heroic age wrath could be directed - not at the psychopaths who committed the crimes, but at the younger victims.  The criminals came from "good" families.  One, at least, was a promising football player.  Their parents were well-connected (and, I'm sure, churchgoers).  Therefore, the boys were not at fault.  But the girls!  Well ... we know how the Church in the Middle Ages treated women.  Especially nubile young women.

In the twisted world of Heroic age thinking, the boys were "good" and the girls were "bad".  Powerful bodies, united in self-interest and political/religious extremism, came together to keep the boys out of trouble and to deflect all the outrage onto the girls.  Like a medieval knight exercising his feudal rights, the boys (sportsmen, we remember) were simply doing what God expects them to do - to rape defenceless girls and then leave them to die of exposure.  And if anyone made a fuss, an avalanche of hatred and abuse could easily be directed at the victims and their families.  They would be effectively excommunicated, vilified, cast out like the harlots that they so evidently were - if they sinfully forced those good ole boys to get them drunk and rape them.

This one case illustrates how the New Heroic age works.  And if you care for justice, democracy, decency, morality, civilisation and the rights of the victim, you will be appalled by it.  Or you might just think, "Hey, it's Bible Belt America, where this sort of thing happens all the time."

What you should realise, though, is that this is the situation which we are all being driven into.  One in which a wealthy and powerful minority wield power of life and death over the rest of us.  One in which there is no justice, only the rule of the local, like-minded, conservative clique.  One in which some are born to rape and the rest of us exist to be their victims.

That's the New Heroic age.  And it will destroy our civilisation within - ooh, at a rough guess - twenty years.

(You can keep up with developments in the campaign to see Justice for Daisy here: Operation Maryville)

A Deed Without a Name

Growing up in the 70s and 80s with a curiosity about the supernatural, I was frequently disappointed.  There was, for example, one book I remember in my school library (never quite figured out what it was doing there) which took a scattergun approach to the subject.  A page or two on every aspect of the "occult", very little of which made any sense at all.

It took me many years to realise that what we call the Supernatural is, in fact, the Natural (just as the "paranormal" is actually the "normal").

What I mean by that is this: the world we inhabit is infinitely more interesting - and stranger - than we care to admit.

Do miracles happen?  Yes, all the time.  Just look around you.  Creatures are born, plants grow, wounds heal, every now and then there's a rainbow ... and while science can explain what's going on (most of the time), it still can't get to the fundamentals.  It can tells us how something happens.  It can't really tell us why it happens.

And then there are the things that science just won't go anywhere near.  These are the things which tend to get classed as "Supernatural" (or "paranormal").  But that classification is false.  It implies that the "natural" is what can be measured, dissected, categorised.  Anything else is, by definition, "supernatural" - and, as far as science is concerned, it doesn't exist.

In reality, though, the "Supernatural" is pretty much everything that our official culture wants to pretend doesn't happen.  Over time, we have gone through a situation in which certain forms of supernatural activity were tentatively accepted (by the Church) to one in which nothing of a supernatural nature is tolerated (by science).  This does not mean, however, that the supernatural has gone away.  It can't.  Because it's only natural.

Now, even I was quite taken aback when Moon Books sent me a copy of Lee Morgan's A Deed Without a Name for me to read.  Why?  Because the book ventures into what I would consider one of the most problematic areas of occultism.

The subtitle gives the game away: "Unearthing the Legacy of Traditional Witchcraft".  A Deed Without a Name makes no attempt to portray witchcraft (ancient or modern) as fluffy, in a New Age sort of way.  Rather, it goes straight to the heart of everything we were raised to fear and distrust about witches.

There has long been a debate about the accounts of witchcraft given in the many trials of witches which took place in the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods.  To what extent did the inquisitors invent examples of scandalous behaviour and impose their own ideas of witchcraft onto their victims?  Or, if you prefer, were the infamous witchcraft trials of ages past really informed more by Christian prejudice and propaganda than by anything that genuine witches might have done?

Lee Morgan takes the position that the tales told by the inquisitors - and the witches they tortured and killed - might well have been true.  It's a startling angle.  If you've assumed that the witchcraft frenzy which swept through Europe around the time of the Reformation was a kind of wildly deluded displacement activity, a sort of massive outbreak of paranoid delusion and insanity, then it comes as a shock to be told that the witchfinders weren't really making anything up.

But Morgan's argument makes sense, for the simple reason that much of what the medieval witches were accused of falls within the scope of shamanistic practice.

Shamanism is probably the oldest form of religious activity in the world.  Every culture had its shamans.  They were the healers, the seekers, the walkers between worlds.  They interacted with their environment (both in its natural and supernatural forms), usually for the good of their communities.  However, as Lee Morgan makes clear, the spiritual realm is not all sweetness and light: it has its negative, as well as its positive, aspects (indeed, such definitions are wildly subjective - best to think of them as the dark and light sides of the same thing).  There were good witches and bad witches, the benandanti and the malandanti; those who worked for the community against the malevolent forces of the Otherworld and those who served those malevolent forces (both helping to preserve a form of balance, with the latter especially reminding the living community of its debts and responsibilities to the unseen forces and the dead).

Morgan takes us through various aspects of traditional witchcraft and makes a point of preventing the reader from retreating into the modernist "oh those poor women" approach to the witches of yesteryear.  She makes it clear that many of the witches - male and female - who were hanged and burned were not accused of things they had not done.  Rather, it was simply the fact that their (Christian) inquisitors did not understand the workings of traditional shamanism which created a rather skewed picture of what the witches were actually up to.  Did the witches have intercourse with the Devil?  In a sense, yes - because spiritual forces did enter them, passing on their fiery power and exchanging vital energies.  And who has never dreamed of having sexual intercourse with a stranger, a dream lover?  Such things are only natural - but, being beyond the vision and the tolerance of the churchmen, they were deemed supernatural, and therefore worthy of damnation.

Overall, then, Morgan reclaims the traditions of witchcraft from the bloody hands of the Christian inquisitors (and, by extension, from the disinfected hands of the laboratory scientist).  It might be difficult for the reader to confront the possibility that werewolves and vampires, the Revenant and the Leannan Sidhe, might actually exist.  We have adopted a strictly either-or position in recent years: either such entities are real (as certain religious fundamentalists might aver) or they are mere fantasies (as the materialist of today would suppose).  Lee Morgan indicates that neither position is strictly accurate.  The fundamentalists and the materialists bring their own prejudices and delusions to the argument.  But if we go back, to the universal experience of the shaman, we find that such entities are very much out there, demanding recognition and respect.  They are part of our world, and if we refuse to acknowledge and interact with them (or insist on damning them out of hand), then we are the fools.

The book offers much in the way of ritual activity designed to help the novice witch discover who or what their "fetch-beast" is (the animal soul-guide of the shaman), how to communicate with the demon lover, how to conduct an exorcism, how to produce healing.  On a psychological level, many of these exercises make sense - "Donning the Mask", for example, is really just a case of confronting and assimilating the Shadow, as C.G. Jung called it, which is an essential part of the individuation process.  There is, of course, no requirement that every reader attempt necromancy - and arguably every reason to recommend that they don't - but that is beside the point.  What Morgan has done here is to open a window on an ancient world, a window which had seemingly been slammed shut by intolerant propagandists of the past, but one which needs must be open if we are to recognise and acknowledge the role of the supernatural in our lives.

More importantly, perhaps, she has rescued the witch of old from both ideological extremes - that of the Church and that of the scientific materialist.  For ancient societies knew perfectly well that our world was at least as spiritual as it was material, and probably a great deal more of the former than the latter.  Today, we know only how to relate to the material side of existence (and we're not very good at that).  We have been taught to ignore and forget about the spiritual, and if we do allow it into our consciousness at all, it is on the basis that it's all rather lovely in an escapist sort of way.

Morgan reminds us that the Other side isn't entirely lovely, that demons do exist, and that some of us will always be called upon to interact with these unseen forces, some to help and some to harm.  In short, the witches of yesteryear have been misunderstood in two different ways - portrayed as the slaves of Satan by a bigoted Church and dismissed as fantastists or victims by modern commentators.  But they were none of these things.  They were our own homegrown shamans, the inheritors of traditions and practices that go back to the very mists of our earliest history.

They flew, as all shamans do.  They copulated with spirits in human, daimonic and animal form, as shamans often do.  They healed and they blighted, blessed and cursed, as shamans the world over have done.  They were part of the natural equilibrium that we upset about 2,000 years ago and have failed to reinstate ever since.  And they had much to teach us about our world, both in its natural and supernatural guises.

A fascinating book, then.  And a brave addition to the growing corpus of material which looks at our spiritual past in a way that is sensitive and sensible.

They were not witches in pointy hats with warts on their noses.  They were native priests and priestesses, herbalists and exorcists, who knew how to interact with our world in ways that we have forgotten.

And if we are to rescue our precious world from the ravages of science and religion, we must listen to their voices again and prepare to greet the darkness - before it overwhelms us completely.

The Terrible Desire

The latest chapter of The Grail; Relic of an Ancient Religion has just gone live on the Moon Books blog.

I've entitled this chapter The Terrible Desire, after what was, I believe, the original meaning of the (rather corrupted) term "Holy Grail".

Also in this chapter, I follow up and expand upon material previously published in The King Arthur Conspiracy on what the original "Grail" actually looked like and what its real purpose was.

And, as ever, there's a great new image by Lloyd Canning accompanying the chapter.

So ... nine chapters down, three to go!  Coming up: new information and evidence on Arthur's last battle (i.e., where Camlann was, exactly, and what happened there) and something I find really exciting - existing evidence for the "Grail" in the vicinity of the battlefield.  Yes, you can see the actual Grail actually in use there!

I can hardly wait to let you in on that little secret, so please do keep watching.  Meantime, I'm off to prepare for my book signing and talk on Who Killed William Shakespeare? at Warwick Words tomorrow.

Have a great weekend!

Journey to the Dark Goddess

One of the major drawbacks of our modern world is our utterly unrealistic way of thinking.  Call it "unreasonable expectations".

We want rampant economic growth, seasonal produce available all year round (and perfect, of course), lights on 24 hours a day, success, progress, advance - and, with our undiminished desire to raise global temperatures, a sort of never-ending summer.

This is all wrong.  There is no light without darkness, no summer without winter.  Action and reaction are equal and opposite.  To go forwards, we must first step back.

Somewhere in our past, we forgot all that.  Our thinking was corrupted.  Any sense that we are losing, suffering, sinking became stigmatised (we see it today in Britain, most forcefully, in the ever-growing discrimination against people with physical disabilities or mental health issues).  Somehow, it became "wrong" to be in a dark place.

Jane Meredith's Journey to the Dark Goddess, subtitled "How to Return to Your Soul" and published by Moon Books, illustrates why such perverse ways of thinking are so inappropriate.  Because what the people of the ancient world knew only too well is that we must honour the darkness as much as we welcome the light.  We must embrace death with as much reverence as we greet life.  Nakedness, loneliness, illness are all valid and necessary aspects of existence.

Or, if you will, we need to be reminded that recession is as important as growth, darkness as vital as light, regression as inevitable as progress.

Meredith focuses her investigation on three ancient goddess myths - that of the Sumerian Inanna (Ishtar to the Babylonians) and the Greek myths of Psyche and Persephone.  Each one involves a descent into the Underworld, the place of death and decay, which is also a place of rebirth.

The book takes a logical, practical approach to the necessary experience of going down into our innermost selves - the descent, that is, of the goddess to the place of no return.  In four major sections, Meredith guides the reader through the period of Preparation, the process of Descent, the time spent in the Underworld, and the Ascent or return to the upperworld of "ordinary" life.

This is not a book which can be read quickly, and there is purpose and design at work in that.  Meredith uses some clever tricks to relay her messages, repeating each one - as it were - in different ways.  Myths are related, personal experiences described, past rituals recounted, future rituals mapped out.  These changes of tone or approach break up the material, making it easier to swallow and reinforcing the importance of each stage in the journey.  At the same time, each subsection feels as though it should be assimilated and digested before moving onto the next.  The book itself is a process of descent and ascent, of going down and rising up, of plunging into the darkness before coming back to the light.

As any good book on what is essentially a religious theme should, Journey to the Dark Goddess prompts a sort of ongoing evaluation of the reader's life.  This is intentional, on Jane Meredith's part.  How much of your life have you spent (unknowingly) in the Underworld?  Are you there now?  At what moments did your life fall apart - and did you fight the descent, the "call" of the Underworld, or did you simply vanish into the abyss?  Did you try to return, only to find - many months later - that you never really made it back?

These are big questions for the reader to consider.  Fortunately, Meredith provides guidelines for several uncluttered rituals which can help, and which together amount to a deliberate and controlled re-enactment of the journey of descent and ascent.  She invites the reader to replicate the sacrificial journey of Inanna, shedding seven layers of pride and defensiveness as she ventures into the unknown.  Thus, the reader is offered the chance to cleanse herself, sloughing off the numerous skins we all wear, until there is nothing left.  From that position of emptiness, nakedness, nothingness - symbolised by the goddess hanging dead on a meat hook, her infernal sister suffering the pangs of her rebirth - a stronger, wiser, better adjusted self can emerge.

Ultimately, Journey to the Dark Goddess is a practical guide, and so best recommended to someone who is ready to undertake the descent and/or to work through any past issues with the "Underworld" part of our nature.  It also has a value for the storytellers among us, for the pattern of preparation - descent - "death" - ascent is a perennial model for the journey of the hero.

At the same time, though, the book serves as an excellent reminder of how skewed our thinking is these days.  Because we have been taught (by religion, by politics) only to look on the bright side, to go for growth, to eschew anything "dark" and "infernal", we have ruined ourselves, our families, our environment.  The Dark Goddess is angry.  To some extent, she always is.  But if we try to ignore her, we end up worse off.

A timely text, then - for alongside the personal journey, the necessary descent into the place of death, decay, darkness, from which we can come back if we know how, there is the wider issue: that, for as long as we ignore and reject the darkness of the Underworld and its reigning deities, those forces will always catch us unawares.  And we have been trying to ignore and reject the goddess for far too long now, at a massive and ever-increasing economic and planetary cost.

Time, then, to give the Dark Goddess her due - both for our individual health and sanity, and for that of the planet itself.  In this book, Jane Meredith shows us how to make a practical start.