I watched Star Wars for the umpteenth time a few days ago and studied Obi-Wan Kenobi. Alec Guiness played this wonderful wise man who had hidden himself away until Luke needed him to guide him to the 'force'. I realized that I must have used the actor/character as a template for Merlin or Merwyn as I call him in Black Harvest. He is white-bearded with a mischievous, almost childlike-trickster way about him. He is a strong father/grandfather figure for both Arthur and Arthur's daughter, Shielagh. And yet we never think of these characters as having a great love or even being married, for that matter. (Arthur married Guinevere but it was almost a sexless union, bore no issue and his wife's heart belonged to one of his knights, Lancelot.)
Therefore, I wanted to tell the story about how Merwyn met Vivienne, the love of his life and the mother of his sire, Arthur. Like Arthur with Fiona, their meeting was lightening quick, passionate and their parting fraught with heavy sorrow. Both father and son do not belong to just one person, do not even belong to themselves. They belong to their society and even bear the burden of the proliferation of their ongoing mythology.
Merwyn is considered the archetype of the Magician of the Tarot. He is a creator, an active builder, healthy ego in action and one who is known for the power of will. And yet, yet... Doesn't he get lonely for someone to love and accept him? Someone who'll chide him with, "Yeah I know you can make a mountain out of a molehill, but take out the trash!" I decided to give him a story of his own about how he met Vivienne and it just poured out of me as if it had been waiting like a genie in a tight bottle.
Merwyn met his love on a hillside near Hart Fell in Scotland. He thought she was a shepherd and he had found an errant lamb. Dropping the lamb at the person's feet, he happened to look up. In his own words, he related, "And that is when I dropped the creature and fell to my knees. My heart dropped there on the hillside along with the lamb and fell to its knees." No longer an asexual magician, in one fell swoop he transformed into a man gobsmacked by love.
The gods of myth are there to remind us that even though they are, by definition, gods, they still can hate, can hurt, can love and this makes them very vulnerable. Yes, they can levitate, shapeshift and travel through time but see how silly they are when their emotions get the better of them. And this is certainly what makes them less than gods. Or makes we wee humans more god-like.
Eros - the great leveller.
Merwyn is considered the archetype of the Magician of the Tarot. He is a creator, an active builder, healthy ego in action and one who is known for the power of will. And yet, yet... Doesn't he get lonely for someone to love and accept him? Someone who'll chide him with, "Yeah I know you can make a mountain out of a molehill, but take out the trash!" I decided to give him a story of his own about how he met Vivienne and it just poured out of me as if it had been waiting like a genie in a tight bottle.
Merwyn met his love on a hillside near Hart Fell in Scotland. He thought she was a shepherd and he had found an errant lamb. Dropping the lamb at the person's feet, he happened to look up. In his own words, he related, "And that is when I dropped the creature and fell to my knees. My heart dropped there on the hillside along with the lamb and fell to its knees." No longer an asexual magician, in one fell swoop he transformed into a man gobsmacked by love.
The gods of myth are there to remind us that even though they are, by definition, gods, they still can hate, can hurt, can love and this makes them very vulnerable. Yes, they can levitate, shapeshift and travel through time but see how silly they are when their emotions get the better of them. And this is certainly what makes them less than gods. Or makes we wee humans more god-like.
Eros - the great leveller.
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