[Dr. K's note: This is copyrighted material that is made available here for a brief time for the use only of members of ENGL 320, "The Arthurian Tradition," in accordance with the copyright law. I will be removing this page at the end of the term. If you want it, therefore, print it out.]
Thoughts on Avalon
One of the main problems I had, in writing the
Arthurian novel, was the fear that Christians would feel I was attacking the
basics of Christianity, rather than the enormous bigotry and anti-feminism that
have become grafted on to Christianity. I don't think they have any part in
Christianity itself, or in the teachings of Christ.
I have read widely on this subject, and while I
am skeptical about the conclusions of some of the fanatically feminist or
pro-matriarchal scholars as Bachofen, or Helen Diner, I found Merlin Stone's When
God Was a Woman very believable in its account of the historical conflict
between Hebrews with their patriarchal culture, and their neighbors with
Goddesses, holy prostitution, and validation of female sexuality. The ancient
Hebrews, for a variety of political and other reasons, seem to have had a holy
horror (no pun intended) of female sexuality, and that somehow got transferred,
along with a lot of other cultural rubbish, into Christianity. (The political
situation between the super-patriarchal Romans and the Celts, who had a much
more easy-going attitude toward women, didn't help either.) The Romans never got
over their dismay and disbelief at finding Celtic tribes ruled by women; they
insisted on calling the war-leaders of the tribes the "Kings" and
never were comfortable with their client queens. This, I think, sheds a lot of
light on one of Arthur's titles, dux bellorum.
Well, all this is obvious to you, perhaps. But
when Christianity came to the Empire, with the third-century Christian Fathers
and their completely neurotic insistence on the evil of woman (Jerome and
Augustine went far further than the most repressive of the Old Testament writers
about women's wickedness), all the elements were present for fertile cultural
conflict. This was what I saw in the Arthurian saga, with the emphasis on those
mysterious figures, the Lady of the Lake and Morgan le Fay. Malory, a true
product of his day, saw the whole story as a parable of conflict between
Christianity/feudal tradition, with God, King, Nobles, and Clergy dividing up
the world, and women nowhere -- and the emerging light of Renaissance thought,
which began to make it clear that this was over-simplified. For me, the whole of
Malory's dilemma lies in the awareness that the best knight -- Lancelot -- was
not the best Christian; he was, in fact, a miserable sinner -- while the pious
and blameless Arthur was getting bashed all over the place by his
"inferiors." Malory's dilemma: was God slipping up somewhere? Was
there chaos lying behind the orderliness of the medieval-feudal structure?
When I read Malory I noticed specially that
Morgan le Fay, and the Lady of the Lake (with her many "damsels") were
frequently portrayed as Arthur's friends and allies -- but equally often as his
antagonists. Yet their "evil" was never motivated, except,
occasionally, to test the faith of the knights, either in God, or in "true
love" -- like the Song of Solomon, a parable in devout Christian eyes for
the love of God. ("For God and my Lady...")
Yet, I wondered: if Malory disapproved so much of
these women, why did he not simply expunge them from the mythos, as he did with
so many other elements of the ancient Celtic folk-tales that he grafted on to
the doings of his 5th-century historical hero chieftain. My theory is that he could
not, because in the originals, now lost, Morgan and the Lady of the Lake
were absolutely integral to the whole story and it was unthinkable to tell tales
of Arthur without also telling tales of the women involved. This whole thing
took place in a Celtic milieu, after all, where the women were integral to the
whole thing. Malory minimized the women; he made them into villains, nitwits,
and evil sorceresses (remember Morgan attacking King Uriens with murderous
intent, but when she was held back by her stepson Uwaine, she had no excuse
except "The devil made me do it"). But Malory could not get rid of
them entirely.
And the key to that, of course, is simply -- or
so I felt -- that they were at the heart of the whole cultural and religious
shift at that time, from Goddess-oriented, female-validating religion to
God-oriented, Middle Eastern/Oriental woman-fearing religion.
For me the key to "female personality
development" in my revisionist, or better, reconstructionist version, is
simply this. Modern women have been reared on myths/legends/hero tales in which
the men do the important things and the women stand by and watch and admire but
keep their hands off. Restoring Morgan and the Lady of the Lake to real,
integral movers in the drama is, I think, of supreme importance in the religious
and psychological development of women in our day.
I feel strongly that it has been a genuine
religious experience. About the time I began work on the Morgan le Fay story
that later became MISTS, a religious search of many years culminated in my
accepting ordination in one of the Gnostic Catholic churches as a priest. Since
the appearance of the novel, many women have consulted me about this, feeling
that the awareness of the Goddess has expanded their own religious
consciousness, and ask me if it can be reconciled with Christianity.
I do feel very strongly, not only that it can,
but that it must. As Morgan discovers the Goddess, exiled from Christian
churches, silently reappearing in Saints and the veneration of Mary, so I think
the worship of the female aspect of the deity was kept alive under that name all
these centuries, and is now surfacing again.
I think it's overwhelmingly important to remember
that it is not an attempt to supplant "God," presumably the "real
God" fundamentalists talk about, with "a lot of pagan Goddesses and
idols." What we are seeking is the female aspect of Divinity itself;
Goddess as an extra dimension of God, rather than "replacing God with
Goddess." The Divine is. It's very important to remember one of the
tragically few public utterances of the shortest-lived of the Popes, John Paul
I; he said (I paraphrase, but I think I am close to quoting exactly):
"It is important to remember that God is our
Father; but it is equally or more important to remember that God is our loving
Mother." Even when we think of God as The Goddess, it is no different than
the difference between seeing God as "Fount of Eternal Love" or
"Giver of Justice" or "Provider of Daily Bread" or
"King of Kings." We are not, by those names, worshipping four
different Gods, but four names for the ultimate Divine. (I don't think the
so-called worshippers of "Pagan Gods and Goddesses" were, either; they
were seeing the outpourings of the Divine in different lights, which they called
Zeus and Apollo and Artemis and Isis and so forth.)
So when women today insist on speaking of Goddess
rather than God, they are simply rejecting the old man with the white beard, who
commanded the Hebrews to commit genocide on the Philistines and required his
worshippers daily to thank God that He had not made them women, in favor of the
aspect of the Divine which said, "Love one another as I have loved
you" or "The Earth is Mine and the fullness thereof," and
focusing on that way of seeing and revering God/dess.
Well, I had no intention of preaching a sermon
(though some day I hope to publish the text of my ordination sermon, which had
to do with Mary and Martha ... the chronicler of that famous episode in Bethany
did not, after all, say that Jesus refused to eat Martha's good dinner).
One of the best things that ever happened to me
was when my dear friend Madeleine L'Engle, who is not only a great writer of
fantasy but a notable Christian laywoman, reassured me that she understood that
I had not been attacking Christianity -- only the bigots and fanatics who
presumed to call themselves spokesmen for it. Another reader told me that part
of the value of the book, if not the main virtue, was in reminding us that the
moral majority types who have spoilt Christianity for decent people in the last
decade are not a new thing, but have plagued all religions in all times ...
history is full of Jerry Falwells, maybe to test true religion, which "is
not puffed up..." and knows it is nothing if it "has not
charity."
And, I suppose, a little, the purpose of the book
was to express my dismay at the way in which religion lets itself become the
slave of politics and the state. (Malory's problem ... that God may not be on
the side of the right, but that organized religion always professes itself to be
on the side of the bigger guns.)
I would also like to say that I do feel, very
strongly, that Glastonbury is a sacred place. On the grounds of the Abbey
there's a stone commemorating that this has been a place or worship "since
there were Christians in England" or something of that sort. I believe the
sacredness of the site is far older than that; I can feel it. As Dion
Fortune said in one of her books, places where mankind has been in the habit of
reaching out toward the Divine make a kind of track, making it easy to go in
that direction.
I think the neo-pagan movement offers a very
viable alternative for people, especially for women, who have been turned off by
the abuses of Judeo-Christian organized religions. I speak, of course, of
patriarchal attitudes, hatred of women, the pervasive and insidious attitude
that mankind was made to dominate nature rather than the other way round, which
is leading us, via hubris, to destroy our very planetary environment in a
mass of pollution and misused technology. People who have become so sickened by
the pride, arrogance, anti-woman attitudes, hypocrisy and cruelty of what passes
for Christianity that they leap toward atheism or agnosticism, may well reach
out for the gentler reign of Goddess-oriented paganism to lead them back to a
true perception of the spiritual life of the Earth. Time enough later to make it
clear -- or let the Mother make it clear to them -- that Spirit is One and that
they are, in worshipping the Goddess, worshipping the Divine by whatever name.
And I can't think of a better place than Glastonbury for that
realization.
A review to check out--you will have to get it on microfilm at the library:
The New York Times,
Jan 30, 1983 v132 s7 p11 col 2 (23 col in)
The mists of Avalon.
(book reviews) Maureen Quilligan.
Review Grade:
A-