Approaching the Stone Castle

As we come to the longest day of the year, we set our sights on the Stone Castle. We also acknowledge other things, resolving ourselves to what is, to the lack of money or having less of it than before, to the quest for new work, finding new ways to get old things which are going away, to adjusting ourselves to the new rhythms of the summer months, the time when I delve into the past and feel the sweetness of something that is more than nostalgia and the ache of something more than a love of the past. This is the bending toward something old time, when I reach into the past for links to the future.

            Now it is time to take down the Stone Castle and examine it. The first thing it is to me is Tintagel, the castle by the sea where Arthur was born, the place where the Roebuck brings the child our of timelessness into flesh from Igraine’s body. In a shadowy way, Tintagel is also the Grail Castle,  the Castle of the Great Alchemy, the Castle called Corbenic where Galahad is conceived. And the mystery is that Galahad, born from the rape and deception of Lancelot is another form of Arthur born from the rape and seduction of Igraine.  The young prince who in Arthur’s old age pulls a sword from a floating red stone is the mirror of the young king who pulled a sword from a grey stone on an anvil.

The Castle of Stone is the Castle of many contradictions. Though, in the circle it lies to the southeast, it is in Britain southwest, on the world’s edge in Cornwall looking over the sea and the sunken lands of Lyonesse. Though Arthur has been called the winter king born at December 25^th, this is the castle of the Summer Solstice and the Child born of Fire and Heat. As Christ and John the Baptist are linked on two sides of the year, so Arthur and Galahad.