Summer Solstice and the Extraordinary Time

Tonight I hear a sermon for Trinity Sunday in which the minister announces the liturgical year is over. This is a surprise to me. In Catholicism it is always said that the liturgical year ends at Christ the King in November, right before the first Sunday of

Advent. But what this minister has said is more honest. From December till now, the witchly feasts have been fed by and mirrored ancient Christian feasts. The two come from the same source and are related. But it is at this heated time of the year the Churches, which just barely enter into mystery in their deepest of days, leave mystery and story all together and enter into the blank time where nothing happens and nothing is celebrated, the blandly titled, Ordinary Time.

From now on, with precious little relation to mainstream religion, the witch and the wizard tramp on into other side of the year which is shadowed and blank from Christian eyes and still unexplored by the eyes of others. The Birth of Christ yields to the Birth of Saint John, and the next months, beginning with the Solstice yield their own witchly mysteries.

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.

The Stone Castle is the castle of paradox. It is Morgan le Fay’s Castle of Mirrors and rightly so, for she was born here, at Tintagel, daughter of Igraine and Gorlois, sister of Arthur.

She is also Dame Bryson, the maid of Elaine who brings about the conception Galahad about.

Every Castle mirrors every other castle. All castles Mirror the Spiral Castle. But the Castle of Stone is the Castle of Paradox and the castle of deep looking. Galahad is not only the other Arthur. He is the perfected Arthur. Arthur’s swords complete themselves in each other. The Sword in the Stone is the sword in the anvil planted on a rock. It breaks in time and is replaced by the sword from the water, Excalibur. But Excalibur itself is not whole for long. Morgan Le Fay steals the sheath that heals all wounds and never returns it. Galahad is the perfected hero who takes the place of the old hero, and his sword is the sword of perfection. It is the Sword in the Stone that rest not on earth, but on the water much as did Excalibur. It is the two in one. And Galahad is the many in one. He is the new Arthur. He is son of Lancelot, the perfected Lancelot. He supplants Percival, the failed Grail knight, the who is too stupid, who gets the questions wrong. He is the all too perfect knight conceived in sin, the perfect sword raised from stone. Though for the outer world, this is Ordinary Time, to the witchly mind, this is simply another beginning.