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.

Harvest Of Highest Beauty

ו' בתמוז תשס״ט
Faunus 7

In preparation for sabbat Lughnasadh, the upcoming Celtic fire festival which marks the beginning of the harvest season, I've acquired my first ritual drum - a tunable Celtic bodhrán made with a natural finish mulberry wood frame and a goatskin head. It's an instrument of most high beauty. So simply perfect!

Mulberry corresponds to the magical Ogham letter muin. The associations of muin include:

harvest
highest beauty
celebration and bounty
respite from labor to enjoy the fruits of one's labor
completion
exhilaration and joy
deep mysteries of divine ecstasy
inspiration
communication
release of prophetic power
the throat and the path of the voice
mead (also called honey wine)
in vino veritas (nichnas yayin, yatza sode)

Interestingly, most of last week I was bedridden with a nasty case of the flu, waking up one morning from a dream with a wizard's cauldron brewing up fiery energy in it [1] and feeling like my throat was on fire. The sore throat has since resolved. I am still recovering from the cough and congestion, though those have very much improved such that I no longer feel so weak as to be bedridden. I am healing and more importantly, my throat and the path of my voice have been purified by fire.

This instrument is a gift of Goddess to me.

Footnote:

[1] I didn't eat any of the stew-like concoction brewing in the cauldron, as there was fire in my throat already and the stew didn't appear appetizing to me on account of that. Also in the dream, I threw one of my pearls into a magical pool of magical water. Like Excalibur, only my chosen would be able to go into the magical pool of magical water to retrieve it.

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.