Excalibur - Caledfwlch

Keowulf 10

Two nights ago, I dreamt.

I was a princess-prince-knight living during the Dark Ages.

For some reason, the ruling evil chief-king of the land had decided I was a traitor and put a price on my head, offering a generous reward for anyone who could kill me. It would be difficult for any bounty hunter to kill me as I was undefeated in battle.

I was a fugitive on the run. I escaped those pursuing me and made it to the border of the land where it would be harder for anyone to track me - for there it was a wild eerie untamed and enchanted forest full of danger, magical plant life and magical beings. It had a dense thick atmosphere. A river ran through it. No one had ever returned alive from the edges of the land before - few would dare pursue me into this place.

The place was beautiful in its raw wildness. Giant trees reached up into the sky - their tops high beyond sight. One giant half-fallen trunk of a tree lay at a diagonal across the river which ran through the place - the ends of the tree trunk I could not see. As I gazed at the tree trunk, it came acutely to my mind that no one had ever escaped the land before and that a party of pursuers had dared to pursue me to the edges of the land into the enchanted forest and had just entered it. I was at the very edge, the very end - there was nowhere else to flee except out of the land - and no one had ever escaped the land before. It was like an immutable law of physics - no one could escape. I stepped upon the trunk of the tree to ponder some way to do the impossible - to escape the land and the bounty hunters intent on killing me.

Suddenly, as I had stepped upon the trunk of the giant ancient tree, it flew up (as if catapulted by the touch of my feet) and out of the land like the land had been a world within a lake. I saw it from above the surface of the lake - the land lay beneath the still surface of that which appeared to be like a lake. I saw it from above the land which lay under the surface of a lake like world - I had escaped the land and my pursuers. I had done the impossible. I had transcended the law of reality which said it couldn't be done. I felt like Excalibur, held above the surface of the lake in the hand of the Lady of the Lake like in the movie The Mists of Avalon.

I woke up.

Kabbalah Of Excalibur

כ' תמוז התשס"ח
Faunus 22

32 Paths of Chochmah (Wisdom) according to the Gra.

An interesting kabbalistic connection comes to light when considering Excalibur's legendary journey from the mystic water of the Lady's Lake into her mighty hand.

The channels linking Chochmah (Wisdom, symbolized by water, #2 on the diagram) and Gevurah (Strength, symbolized by the left hand feminine power, #6 on the diagram), according to the kabbalah of the Gra, is characterized by two Hebrew letters - zayin (symbolized by a sword, channel 2-4) and yud (symbolized by a hand, channel 4-6).

Thus, the mysticism of Excalibur and the Lady of the Lake fits perfectly with the 32 kabbalistic paths of Chochmah (Wisdom) according to the Gra.

The combined gematria (numerology) of zayin-yud is 17, the same gematria as 'tov' meaning 'good'.

Votive Offerings

כ' תמוז התשס"ח
Faunus 22

In follow-up to my previous entry (Excalibur), I note that in Celtic legend, Excalibur comes from and returns to the mystically liminal Lady of the Lake.

Patrick Hunt of Archeography Photoblog writes of the Lady's Lake within the context of the legendary Arthurian Excalibur:

In the Celtic world, springs, lakes and marshes are liminal sacred places that are intermediary loci between, among others, the living and the dead. When Arthur’s legendary and to some extent magical sword Excalibur is returned to the Lady of the Lake, this is most likely an excerpted old echo of a longstanding Celtic votive ritual.

Examples abound in Europe and the British Isles of just such votive offerings.

Votive offerings exist in Torah as well as in Celtic legend. A votive offering is a neder.

Rabbi Stacy K. Offner of writes of a neder, a Jewish votive offering:

The most powerful kind of word that a person can utter: a neder, “vow.” A neder is an extraordinarily powerful kind of word, because it is not a word of description. It is a word of action.

Uttered words roll out into the world of action, for bad or for good. A neder (votive offering) is an extraordinarily powerful 'word' of action, able to overcome bad words of description.

Excalibur

י"ט תמוז התשס"ח
Faunus 21

Excalibur art by Bob Peak

In follow-up to entries from earlier today, first where I mentioned that I had slain a rampaging bull with a spear-like weapon (unclear initially when describing the dream as to whether the weapon was a knife or a spear) and second, where the ability to slay the bull and prevent fatalities was described as coming through the channel of chochmah to gevurah, I note that perhaps I was unclear at first as to the exact form of the weapon used to slay the bull because the weapon was neither a knife nor a spear, but rather, it was a sword.

Interestingly, the sword Excalibur comes from water (chochmah). Excalibur is one of three of King Arthur's weapons - the other two are a dagger (knife) named Carnwennan and a spear named Rhongomyniad, the two fuzzy forms (in the dream, The Bull And The Bulldozer) which now come together from the water (of Chochmah) into the form, Excalibur (through the clarification, Provoking Divine Mercy). Thesis - Antithesis - Synthesis.

Sceptre Of Selection

This shabbat marks the observance of Celtic Gwyl o Rhiannon.

Rhiannon is the Lady of the Lake who gave legendary King Arthur of Camelot the mystical sword Excalibur (Caledfwlch in Welsh, meaning "hard lightning"). Interestingly, this discovery on my part follows Wednesday morning's dream where I am the woman emerging from the lake. Consequently, my dream suggests that I have integrated this "goddess" archetype psychospiritually with consciousness. In other words, it has emerged from the water of the concealed world and become revealed. This is an example of אתהפכא חשוכא לנהורא in action.

In Celtic mythology, the Lady of the Lake is She who gives (as described above) and receives back for safekeeping Caledfwlch:

As Arthur lay dying, he tells a reluctant Sir Bedivere (Sir Griflet in some versions) to return the sword to the lake by throwing it into the water. Bedivere thinks the sword too precious to throw away, so twice only pretends to do so. Each time, Arthur asks him to describe what he saw. When Bedevere tells him the sword simply vanished underwater, Arthur scolds him harshly. Finally, Bedivere throws Excalibur into the lake. Before the sword strikes the water's surface, the hand reaches up to grasp it and pull it under. Arthur leaves on a death barge with the three queens to Avalon, where as his legend says, he will one day return to save Britain from a threat.

From this we can see that Caledfwlch is interwoven with the Celtic messianic ideal. Among the sword's mystical abilities, is the ability to "select" the "destined" King. It is the Divine Scepter of selection. Caledfwlch, the scepter of Divine Truth which selects and the sceptre of Kings, represents spiritual evolution.

In Jewish kabbalah, both of these functions - selection and evolution - are characteristic of the letter zayin. Zayin epitomizes the Woman of Valor. Like the Lady of the Lake whose gift bestows enhanced survival skills, zayin "sustains" and provides sustenance for living. Her Divine Hand opens to extend the sceptre of benevolence and to select species for "leaps" of development and evolution.

As zayin also corresponds to the Shabbat Queen, feminine nevuah and the matriarchal archetype Sarah, so too do Caledfwlch and Rhiannon connect with these concepts. As previously written, Rhiannon has a correspondence with Tzipporah as well. Significantly - zayin, Sarah, Caledfwlch, Rhiannon and Tzipporah - all have mythic roles where a critical "selection" determines the outcome of history.

zayin, the letter of shabbat, pertains to natural selection of species
Sarah selects Yitzchak to receive the covenantal blessing
Caledfwlch (the sceptre of Rhiannon) selects the King of destiny
Tziporrah/Rhiannon selects the redeemer

It is fitting therefore, that this year 5767, Gwyl o Rhiannon observance begins on Shabbat.

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