#avalon priestess

[thesorceresstemple]

Mists of Avalon

[geekynerfherder]

'Priestess Of Avalon' by Kinuko Y Craft.

Cover art for the novel, 'Priestess Of Avalon', book 4 in the 'Avalon' series written by Marion Zimmer Bradley & Diana L Paxson, published in 2000.

[avalon-princesss]

~💜Morgana le Fay 💜 ~ Wreaths Made by Avalon Princess

[cunning-pope]

Priestess of Avalon. Traditional art.

[blowmymongrelmind]

his ass would be So susceptible to a cult!

[dollopole]

We deserved more of just Merlin

The little head tilt, the sweet voice and the tiny smile, the moment he asked Arthur:

“Don’t you?”

To Merlin, magic had always been there for everyone to see, to feel.

He is magic, after all.

For all those years, Merlin had believed what he felt was obvious, and that everyone else felt the same way. It was strange to Merlin that Arthur couldn’t understand that the forest, the animals, even the smallest, living in it, were sacred. Because life is sacred. He couldn’t grasp the reason why the knights couldn’t feel that the old Druids’ camp was haunted, and therefore didn’t believe him. He had literally heard death, and cried because of it.

“As if everything is much more than itself.”

The phrase could refer to him too. Merlin is much more than… Him.

That’s what brought his doom. He had never had the chance to truly know himself. He was either a servant, or the sorcerer of a prophecy, or a Dragonlord.

Never just him.

And in this moment we see he had missed being one with nature, breathing in the animals’ lives. He was himself again.

He was vibrating, much like anything else there living with him.

They never went deep into Merlin’s powers, they were just there for Arthur. Merlin had lost sight of what he wanted to do with them, he even forgot he was so powerful he could have overthrown Arthur himself, if he really wished to.

Merlin was the only man alive able to see Avalon.

During the knights and the king’s quest to save Gwen, Merlin met the Queen of a Queendom no one had ever even seen.

He could have killed Morgana (and did try) multiple times, although she was an High Priestess, and simply decided not to, but he had more than just the power to do so.

The Catha, the Druids bowed to him, met him in the woods, called to him.

Merlin created a telepathic connection with Arthur the first days he was in Camelot.

He survived death multiple times.

His immortality forbid him to die.

Merlin hated hunting because he could feel the animals being scared, followed; he had recognised Gwen when Morgana transformed her into a deer; he could hear the magic around him, inside objects and inside people, like a whisper, as if it was nothing; he could call lightning from the sky.

He could stop the time, or at least slow it down.

Every magical being knew him by name only. But he was not a leader, he was just different.

“Is she like me?” “No one is like you, Merlin.”

After everything he had witnessed, even Gaius knew Merlin was special and did nothing to help him understand why he was.

Merlin was the reason Aithusa was born, why Kilgharrah was free, and we were robbed of him getting to really know his powers, both as a Dragonlord and as the most powerful sorcerer to ever walk the earth.

He literally deleted himself just to be at Arthur’ side, and it hurt him. We saw it constantly. He was sad not only because everyone and everything was against him, or because he couldn’t use magic for simple tricks, but because he couldn’t really know what he could do, both as a magical being and as just Merlin.

To study his powers meant treason and death, and Merlin forbid himself to go beyond what he already knew.

His incapacity to understand, his lack of will to know, and his indecision about who he was, literally helped the fall of the great destiny he was a part of.

Merlin’s decisions, whatever he wanted them to happen or not, helped Arthur die.

Merlin’s real enemy was himself.

[kaibutsushidousha]

Thoughts on Kirschtaria?

I love Kirschtaria lots but he isn't exactly easy to talk about. Olympus was 4 years but I still think it's too early for this post. Kirschtaria is the one who knows what the entire Animusphere plot is about. Until his final scenes, where he opens rebellion against the CHALDEAS and tries to unfold his secret plan, he's under constant surveillance by the priestess and pretty much all of his actions and speeches inform of CHALDEAS's (Marisbury's) beliefs rather than his own. A good analysis of Kirschtaria needs to wait until we know what exactly he was involved with.

The post-rebellion parts, where we get to see his past and learn about his ideals, are not easy to talk about either because Kirschtaria is too much of a straightforward hero behind his mage posturing and 5D chess. He's cheerful, accepting, driven to be productive, loves his friends, believes in everyone's inherent potential to be good, and wishes to end inequality above all.

One of the parroted Animusphere beliefs that Kirschtaria showed to genuinely believe in is the idea that humans are unequipped to immediately make the right choice but he puts a positive spin to it making we are experts in fixing mistakes later.

I don't think I can find anything original to say by explaining how his experience with Pino taught him that beauty can come from the least expected places and how much that is reflected in his relationships with Caenis and Beryl, so I guess all I got to close off this with post with is some speculative trivia that never leaves my brain.

I strongly believe Kirschtaria's characterization is the result of Nasu really wanting to write his original version of Jesus but knowing exactly how much of a bad idea it is to portray the central figure of a massively active religion. This is the same guy who made the Buddha into a boss character with no speaking roles and removed Hassan's Allah Akbar chant from every rerelease of Fsn for sensibility reasons. Jesus himself gets referenced as the Messiah sometimes but never by name. Nasu plays safe with this kind of thing.

So instead of Jesus, we have Kirschtaria. Named after the Japanese "kirishito" spelling of Christ, but written with a very unusual romanization because Nasu really wanted the English spelling of the name to contain an anagram of Christ (irscht). Then he put Kirsch through the basic Jesus plot of carrying out a major project to free mankind from its history of sin and enable everyone to do better, with the only life paid as the price being his own. And in true Jesus fashion, this ends with Kirschtaria dying by the side of a huge sinner that he personally pardoned and inspired to be better. And since subtlety is for pussies, we also get a scene where Caenis sees Kirschtaria shirtless and practically straight up says "Dude, you look like one of those Jesus portraits".

I could continue with commentary on how Pino being poor, sickly, and homeless is in line with the standard archetype of characters who appear to receive miracles in the Gospels, or how Nasu's interest in Jesus is tangible again with his next story portraying both Avalon le Faes as prophesized saviors born through special means for the sole purpose of going on a painful journey of pilgrimage fated to culminate on them sacrificing themselves to absolve the people of an ancestral sin but I think it's better not to stretch the idea too much.

[princess-of-morkva]

heeey, you know how in the legends Morgan le Fay was the one looking after King Arthur in Avalon?

Imagine Morgana ending up in Avalon after her death. You know. Because she's a High Priestess and they were basically the show's version of Avalon's sisterhood of fay?

Imagine Morgana, now with pointy ears and fabulous wings, being saddled with the task of caring for her brother's body and sleeping spirit?

Imagine how angry she is, now immortal and with endless time on her hands, but bound by Avalon's will, having to spend her eternity caring for a brother whom she helped kill?

Imagine how she shouts at him, but receives no response, hits him but leaves no mark. Because he is dead and she has to look at him. At his blank, peaceful face.

(Imagine how after centuries, she learns to let her anger rest

Imagine how after millenia, she does her duty properly and heals his wounds and spirit and lets the Once and Future King rise again

And now that her duty is done, she may leave Avalon and walk the human world again)

[mask131]

William Morris' works (3)

We talked about "The Well at the World's End" in the previous post: here I want to talk about the second novel - sorry, romance - of Morris I know about. It is not one of his most famous pieces, but it is a very interesting and fascinating one: The Water of the Wondrous Isles.

It was part of the recent French translations that were published, and as with the last post I will info-mine the préface written for it, this time by William Blanc - and titled "The first feminist Arthurian romance".

Despite the old age of The Water of the Wondrous Isles - first published in 1897 by Kelmscott Press - it manages to be a very modern work, that predicted several evolutions of the fantasy genre nearly a century before they happened. Today it is culturally common to do a "feminine" or "feminist" version of the Arthurian myth (those two are not the same thing), in the wake of Marion Zimmer Bradley's very popular 1982 "The Mists of Avalon" which told the story of Camelot from the point of view of Morgan, reinvented as a great pagan priestess. You also find this with the bow-wielding Guinevere of Fuqua's 2004 "King Arthur" movie. But in a certain way, The Water of the Wondrous Isles did a "feminine Arthuriana" first.

William Morris, like the rest of Victorian society, was fascinated by the legends of the Round Table - he dedicated several of his youth productions to this myth. However unlike Alfred Tennyson, who was a poet adored by the upper-society of England and who liked to depict Camelot in a very misogynistic and conservative way, Morris was basically working for the "counter-culture" by making female characters his protagonists and his heroines. Already in his "Defence of Guinevere" (a verse work published in 1858) he depicted the queen of Camelot put on trial for her adulterous relationship with Lancelot: she offered a speech that turned the accusations on their head, to denounce the sordid institution of arranged marriages. For Morris, it is this tradition which is to be blamed, instead of the legitimate desire of women.

Forty years later, with his "Well at the World's End", Morris offers a variation of the quest for the Holy Grail, where a man and a woman quest as equals. H.G. Wells himself wrote about "The Well", in 1896, praising it for being a version of Malory's works where women are placed on the same rank as men. But what about "The Water of the Wondrous Isles"? A first obvious thing is that one of the main characters is called Arthur, and becomes the lover of the heroine Birdalone. Even better: after many adventures, he has a "madness episode" during which he flees to the depths of the wild forest for several years, almost turning into an animal. This is a common trope of the medieval tales of Camelot: a knight in love loses all reason because of his passion (see Tristan, Lancelot or Galehaut). But Morris, an admirer of the Arthurian myth, turns the tables and changes the tale so that his story corresponds to his political views and so that, more importantly, he can mock the Victorian sanitized versions of the Arthuriana. Here, it is not Lancelot or Tristan who becomes mad, it is rather a character with the name of the king of the Round Table - Morris has his "Arthur" wearing rags, wandering in the wilderness, not as a ruler but as a simple knight in love. So that Arthur takes on the role of the very man who, in the legends, seduced his wife. It is even more striking to notice that, in the medieval texts of the 13th or 15th centuries, once the knight is healed from his madness he returns into the warrior-aristocracy of their society. Within Morris works, such a "return to normal" never happens.

However, it is Morris' handling of female characters which requires a comparison with the Arthurian texts to fully understand his project.

The protagonist, Birdalone, is snatched away from her mother by a witch who turns her into a servant. She escapes by using a magical boat which allows her to cross the lake forming the titular "water of the wondrous isles". Yet, the boat is strange, because to work it requires the blood of its user to be spilled. This dangerous navigation, in which the heroine can lose her life, recalls another famous 19th century figure: the Arthurian poem of "The Lady of Shalott", by Alfred Tennyson (1832). To offer a brief recap, a young woman named Elaine of Astolat lives in a tower where she works on a tapestry. Seeing Lancelot by her window, she falls in love with him, abandons her weaving work, gets out of her tower, takes a boat leading her to Camelot, but dies as a result of her uncontrolable passion devouring her from the inside. Tennyson, with this tale, translates one of the fears of the Victorian patriarchy: to see women escape the domestic space in which they are confined, to see them express freely their desire. The poet warns maidens that such a behavior will lead to a harsh and horrible downfall (see 2000's "Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth Century Britain. The Legend of King Arthur and Robin Hood", Oxford University Press).

Tennyson's poem was fitting perfectly within the British society of the 19th century, and thus was illustrated many times. It was notably loved by the Pre-Raphaelite Confrery, which had many of its member later becoming friends of Morris: Elizabeth Siddal, in 1853, or Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1857 both illustrated the poem. William Holman Hunt also made a drawing of Elaine in 1857, depicting her engulfed in her madness (symbolized by her disheveled hair, with the weaving of her tapestry mimicking a spider web). The colorized version of this drawing (1888-1905) is even more explicit: the young woman turns her back on a depiction of the Virgin Mary (see Jeffers Thomas' "Tennyson's Lady of Shalott and Pre-Raphaelites renderings: statement and counterstatements"). And of course, John William Waterhouse offered two different paintings of the tragic fate of Elaine, one in 1888 and one in 1894.

William Morris has this entire set of imagery in his head when he write "The Wondrous Isles", but he inverts it: the boat of Birdalone does not take her to her doom, but rather helps her escape imprisonment - she flees the domestic slavery in which the witch maintained her and lives various adventures. [In the text, Morris has the witch call Birdalone her "thrall", a term from the Old Norse society to designate a slave - the use of such an archaism is a manifestation of Morris' fascination for Old Norse texts]. To get out of the house is to encounter life, not death. In fact, we see here Morris criticizing the harsh conditions house-workers lived in as they toiled in the homes of upper-class Victorian families. When "The Water" was written, a third of the employed women were house-workers, and they were roughly in their twenties, just like Birdalone (see Davidoff Leonor's "Mastered for Life: Servant and Wife in Victorian and Edwardian England", and Theresa M.'s "The Domestic Revolution: The Modernization of Household Services in England and France 1820-1920").

Birdalone escaping through the boat is Morris' way to represent a woman free of the weight of the conservative Victorian society: she is free to go wherever she want, and to love whoever she wants. But these adventures have their dangers: throughout her journey she meets brutal men who, to possess her, threaten her and wound her - some even openly claiming they will rape her, such as the Red Knight. We find here a recurring theme in Morris' Arthurian texts, who is likely inspired by the murder of Morgause at the hands of her own son (who accuses her of adultery) in the medieval "Morte d'Arthur" ; he might also be influenced by the fate of Guinevere. Morris often depicts a masculine and patriarchal violence against women, but only to denounce them, such as through the trial of the queen of Camelot in "The Defence of Guinevere" ; or with the murder of the Sun Knight's wife in "The Well at the World's End" (the Sun Knight himself being a clear reference to Gawain).

But Morris doesn't depict the tragic condition of women as a fatality: on the contrary, his heroines fight back against the masculine aggression. Guinevere has her long defence-speech to denounce all those that condemn her relationship with Lancelot, Birdalone fights at first with a bow (a weapon commonly associated with women in Victorian England, as they practiced archery for sport), then wears an armor and uses a sword to attack and defend herself or her kin. Of course, Morris is still a man of his time, and so he depicts Birdalone easily outmatched every time she fights a man... But in this end of the 19th century, to have a woman fighting is a shocking thing. In the USA, one would have to wait forty more years before the fantasy pulps starting putting as main characters female warriors - such as C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry or Robert E. Howard's Dark Agnes.

Birdalone does not just go through her trials by fighting. As Florence Boos noted, the heroine of "The Water" uses the help and assistance of other women (Boss Florence, "The Socialist New Woman in William Morris' The Water of the Wondrous Isles): the three maidens, Aurea, Atra and Viridis, but first and foremost Habundia, the "Lady of the Wood" who helps Birdalone flee the house of the witch.

Habundia has a unique place within the text: associated with magic and the forest while clearly not being part of the human species, she reminds of another famous Arthurian woman at the time: Viviane. Just like with the Lady of Shalott, Tennyson gave Viviane a bad name in his poems. In his "Idylls of the King" (1859), he depicts Vivien as the one who trapped Merlin with her spells, in the heart of the forest, to steal his powers before locking him inside an oak-tree. We find back this fear of the Victorian patriarchy that is the "fallen woman", the "prostitute, the temptress, the archetype of the woman who, just likes Eve, drags men to their downfall (see Auerbach Nina's "Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth"). Like in medieval literature, the male doom is tied to the forest, perceived as a wild and dangerous space. In Gustave Doré's engravings for Tennyson's Vivien, we see Merlin as a very old man trapped between the young seductress and a tree whose roots wrap themselves around the couple.

Morris rejects this imagery: just like with Elaine or Guinevere, he inverts the tradition. Habundia offers a positive Vivien: with her, the forest and magic are not perdition, but salvation. Inverting Tennyson's discourse is not just a way for Morris to oppose himself to the famous conservative poet ; it rather takes place in a larger political context. Ever since hs youth, Morris has been influenced by the progressist Romantics. In the early 1880s, he engaged himslf in socialist revolutionnary movements: in 1883 he joined the Democratic Federation of Henry Hyndman, before co-founding at the end of 1884 the Socialist League and becoming the chief redactor of its newspaper, "Commonweal", to which participated Paul Aveline and Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl Marx). While they mostly focused on questions of "classes", they still formed a thought about the life conditions of women, and denounced the bourgeois patriarchy. In 1885, they published the English translation of August Bebel's 1879 Woman and Socialism (Bebel was one of the leading figures of the German socialist movement). Simultaneously, a scandal erupted when William Thomas Stead published an investigation about child prostitution. All of this pushed Eleanor Marx to write with Paul Aveline, in 1887 "The Woman Question" (see Kapp Yvonne's "Eleanor Marx, a biography"). One year later, Morris and other members of the Socialist League supported the strike of female workers in the match-making factories of London (see Taylor Rosemary's "The city of dreadful delight: William Morris in the East End of London").

The institution of marriage is the focus of the socialist critique against women's life-conditions in Victorian society. The manifesto of the Socialist League, published in the first issue of "Commonweal" and cosigned by Morris and Eleanor Marx, compares marriage to prostitution. Eleanor Marx goes further in september 1885 by claiming that the sexual exploitation of women is the same as the salarial exploitation of capitalism. All of this transpires in the fate that the witch prepares for Birdalone: she is born from a poor family, her body is entirely offered to her new "mistress", and said mistress not only uses the girl for manual work, but also plans during her teenagehood to prostitute her. A passage of "The Water" seems to take back the same comparison Eleanor Marx makes between domestic work and prostitution.

In front of all this, Birdalone does not find a solution in the protection of a male figure: rather, she emancipates herself through her own work, notably her mastery of embroidery. The witch wants her to use this art to better seduce men, but Birdalone transforms it into a tool to gain her freedom.

"The Water of the Wondrous Isles" prefigures several motifs that shall become central in 20th and 21st century fantasy, but it also depicts something original for fantasy: a fantasy world where a lot of focus is given to crafts and the artisanal world ; something quite unusual in an epic genre that often ignores handwork.

Morris is a socialist, but also a heir of John Ruskin, who opposed the alienation of the 19th century factory-worker, used in a chain-work to reproduce endlessly the same calibrated ugly objects, to the (very idealized) freedom of the medieval craftsman, able to be autonomous in his work and to create unique (and thus beautiful) items. Morris put this thought in practice: all throughout his life, he interested himself in the "decorative arts", creating furnitures, wallpapers, staine glass and tapestries. He founded his very own society, Morris and co., in 1861, and thirty years later he opened his own publishing house, Kelmscott Press, in which he tried to create books imitating medieval manuscripts. Morris does not separate craftsmanship from his literary productions, the two are linked: the beautiful book is a box containing the beautiful text, and together they form a prolongation of his political engagement, an answer to the ugliness produced by the industrial capitalism.

In "The Water of the Wondrous Isles" Birdalone embodies this political valorization of labor. Her goal in life is not to marry a beautiful prince or to have children, but to become autonomous through her work. An entire part of the book depicts her leaving her friends to work with her own hands in the City of the Five Crafts. This industrious community evokes the descriptions Tolkien would write sixty years later of the Shire, in The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien was five when "The Water of the Wondrous Isles" was published) ; but whereas Tolkien's creation is a small countryside society, Morris presents an entire city where the handwork is not decorum but rather the heart of the action: when she arrives, Birdalone proves her talent and is quickly accepted by a local guild. She later creates her own workshop, and for five years she wlecomes numerous women in it, before leaving and offering her business to her coworkers. This reminds us of the activities of Morris, with his "Morris and co." and "Kelmscott Press" ; it also reminds us of the "socialist future" imagined by Morris, a future in which the guild system of the Middle-Ages returned, to oppose the capitalist exploitation (this idea of the future is what later gave birth in the British Left to the "Guild Socialism").

The sejourn of Birdalone in the City of the Five Crafts, which forms the introduction of the sixth part of "The Water", is not just an aside: it is a central element, because Morris shifts again a traditional motif. The one of Cinderella: in the version that the brothers Grimm popularized and that Morris is aware of (he asked Edward Burne-Jones in 1864 to make ceramic ornaments depicting the Grimm's Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella), Cinderella, a girl from a modest background, marries a prince. Morris' similarly humble heroine meets the beautiful knight Arthur, but their relationship does not elevate Birdalone in society. On the contrary, Arthur and her leave the castle and settle themselves in the birth-town of the young woman, governed by a council. Here, Arthur becomes part of this tiny republic, earning a role that Morris explicitely compares to a Roman consul. Meanwhile Robert, a former employee of Birdalone who worked with her at the City of Five Crafts, marries Aurea, a noble friend of Arthur. The tale ends in a hamlet of craftsworkers where the frontiers between the classes are broken: only remains a community of free workers, the medieval town becoming an allegory of the future socialism.

The political fight of Morris is mixed with a fascination for, and an idealization of, the Middle-Ages. His vision mixes progressist hope and a nostalgia for a lost era. He explored it in his 1890's utopia, "News from Nowhere", and we find it here through the character of Habundia. Unlike the other companions of Birdalone, at the end of the story she does not live within the city, but in the nearby forest. She does not embody Middle-Ages of guilds, but rather the Middle-Ages which are (ever since the 18th century) associated with an idealized nature, the druids, the fairies and the elves. The Lady of the Wood is "not from the race of Adam", she is not a human being, but she is far wiser than humans and owns an ancient knowledge that she describes as a "great book of nature", a knowledge that she transmits to Birdalone.

We find here a typical motif of fantasy: the "wise one" from a non-human race who lives in an ancient forest. It is Galadriel, from The Lord of the Rings, it is Yoda from The Empire Strikes Back. Morris doesn't invent this motif: it already existed at the end of the 14th century, in Chaucer's "Tales of Canterbury", within the story of The Wife of Bath. Taking place in Arthurian times, the texts opens with a description of the Queen of the Elves dancing merrily with her subject, before holy Churchmen banish them away. Morris knows this text, and Kelmscott Press published in 1896 a beautiful edition of the Tales of Canterbury, illustrated by Edward Burne Jones (in general, many echoes of The Wife of Bath's Tale can be found within The Water of the Wondrous Isles). But whereas Chaucer rejoices in the disappearance of the elves, Morris regrets them. This nostalgia, which will be found again in Tolkien's works, is a new thing for the Victorian era, and it translates a new fear: the one of seeing nature disappear because of industrialization. Morris interwoves this with a political thought: at the end of the 19th century it was a common thing to believe, in socialist circles, that many pre-industrial ancient societies were organized in a communist way. This "proto-communism" was explained by the fact these ancient societies were supposedly dominated by women, a trait thought to have survived in the Norse and Germanic societies of early Middle-Ages but that disappeared with the apparition of "private property", which imposed a patriarchal power.

This idea, originally created by Friedrich Engels in his 1884's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, heavily influenced Morris. (See Boos Florence's "Gender-Division and Political Allegory in the Last Romances of William Morris", and Eller Cynthia's "Gentlemen and the Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory") This imagery, which was a very idealized version of the past, fully played in the creation of Habundia. She embodies the perfect "original past", a past without economical property, without social property, without sexual property. If we admit that the city where the adventures end symbolizes an utopia, a prefiguration of socialism, the last pages of "The Water" allow an idealized past to neighbor a desired future: the primitive-communism of Habundia and the democratic city of the free craftsmen. Between the two is a nightmarish aside, the one of the industrial and patriarchal capitalism, in which the reader lives, and expressed through the character of the witch, who took Birdalone from her mother, abused her, and is never forgotten.

[knchanted]

Stargate: Replication is a title for a fan story I started forever ago, concept of a continuation story for Stargate Atlantis. (Reposting this blogpost in a different format cuz it was lowkey ugly before)

Concept art for my OC Kataerin, a Replicator, pre-Atlantis departure. (Used a pose base by Anadia-Chan)

Concept art for my OC Kataerin, a Replicator, post-Atlantis departure. (Used a pose base by Anadia-Chan)

Complete re-draw of my OC Kataerin’s post-Atlantis departure outfit, redone completely from scratch and recently tweaked.

Concept art for a new character, Princess Amelia of Avalon, a Replicator, daughter of Eliza. (Used a pose base by Anadia-Chan)

Concept art for a new Dr. Elizabeth Weir, now known as Eliza the High Priestess of Avalon, a Replicator, mother of Amelia. (Used a pose base by Anadia-Chan)

Concept art for a new Dr. Elizabeth Weir, now known as the Red Empress, a Replicator, allied with the King of the Wraith Empire, or what’s left of it anyway. (Used a pose base by Anadia-Chan)

This story takes place 15-16 years after the departure, and eventual return of Atlantis to the Pegasus Galaxy, answering open ended questions, wrapping up plots, and filling plotholes with a bit more than basic story putty. It also features new characters in an updated setting.

I drew these 2+ years ago and probably bit off more than I can chew trying to draw a full-art 200 page comic with how many ADHD hobbies I have. BUT!

I am planning to finish this. As a fanfic, with more updated concept art of the whole cast and the new sister city called Avalon.

[ghastmaskzombie]

The plot of Dr. Stone is so absolutely insane if you think about it from the perspective of the villagers. I mean it's seriously like, "second coming of Christ" levels of magical. Like "King Arthur returns from Avalon and gives every briton their own hovercraft" kinda magical.

Like, picture this: you've grown up in a little village on a lake. Your people survive on fishing and foraging, like people have done since the dawn of time. As far as you know, your village is the only one in the world. The wilderness is full of stones that look just like people, but they're not people. No one has ever known why.

All your life, the priestess has told the people stories of ancient times. She's told you about fantastic creatures and great adventures. And magic. She says your very first ancestors came down to earth from the sky. You always wondered how much of it was true.

But the next generation's priestess is sick. She's sick and everyone says she's never getting better. Her sister and the weird kid on the edge of the village hope to cure her someday, but you're not holding your breath.

But then they bring home a strange man from outside the village. Which is weird, because you didn't think there were people outside the village. He's supposed to be some kind of sorcerer. They say he first appeared in an eruption of fire on a hilltop. Then he was murdered and came back from the dead, and lifted an entire tree by himself. All in one day.

And then he makes an elixir that he says can cure any disease, and gives it to the priestess. And it works, somehow??? And then everyone starts to look at what he's been working on. It's crazy. He turned sand into new kinds of stone, and one of them can cure eye diseases and start fires, and apparently he used lightning to give the other one telekinesis. Which he uses to make lightning at home.

And then the priestess says she knows who he is. He's the chosen one from the prophecy. He's the son of one the first ancestors who came down from the sky. And he adds that he's also one of the stone people, come back to life. And he can bring the others back to life. Which means they used to be alive. Which is crazy. You don't even have a word for how many of them there are. There used to be that many people?

This guy is literally going to resurrect a civilisation of incomprehensible miracles from before what you thought was the dawn of time. And you've just gotta deal with that.

And then a couple months later, he cracks open the founders' gravestones and finds their voices trapped in a crystal, and brings it back for everyone to hear. Because of course he can.

Next thing you know he's made a boat that runs across the ground like an animal, and a box that sends voices across the sky, and a little ship that can actually fly. He's given your people more food and warmer homes and softer clothes and stronger weapons than anyone ever imagined.

He says he's going to the moon, and you believe him.

[ihearhercalling]

𝔐𝔶 𝔇𝔢𝔦𝔱𝔦𝔢𝔰 || Modron

Also known as Morgan le Fay origin // cymru, y mabinogi, arthuriana domains // late summer & early autumn, samhain (as morgan) motherhood, avalon, sisterhood, the otherworld, herblore, witchcraft, fertility, priestess skills, sisterhood, fate, family dynamics, music, healing, trials & hardships as a form of initiation, bodies of water, life & death, sovereignty symbols // apples, ravens, august-september crops, mother & child dyad, blackthorn tree

[sororalice]

On The Blessedness Of Reaching Out To The Dead

A homily for Samhain on October 31, 2024.

Dearly Beloved,

A very blessed Samhain to those in the Northern Hemisphere and a very blessed Beltane to those in the Southern Hemisphere! I pray that all of you are blessed and comforted as the Wheel Of The Year continues to turn!

In my home, we are honoring our dead, our Beloved Ancestors, Mighty Dead, and Blessed Saints. As we move towards the dark of the year, we take this moment to reach out to all of those who have come before us, those dead to whom we owe our honor, respect, and love.

I often meet this time of year with mixed feelings, because while I wish to celebrate our dead, I am also reminded of my own feelings of sadness and loss. Death has brought too many missed opportunities for me, too many lost moments, and too many people cut down far too young. So I weep a little bit, even as I celebrate the holiday. But this is only to be expected…it is natural to feel sad about those whom we have lost. It is natural to mourn. But it is also natural to cherish our lost and to celebrate and honor those who have come before us. Thus I am moved on this high holiday to speak of those honored ones, those beloved ones, those who have journeyed off to what some traditions call the Isle Of Apples, mystic Avalon, Hades, or simply the Underworld.

So let Charon sound His dread horn and let us speak of reaching out to the dead.

Magick, throughout its history, has had an intimate relationship with the dead. Some of the most famous mages of ancient myth, such as the famed Witch Of Endor spoken of in the “First Book Of Samuel”, worked with spirits of the dead, and the Greek poet Homer, whose epic poems were considered divinely inspired by many ancient Greeks, includes an act of necromancy in Book 11 of “The Odyssey”. Clearly, the magick of working with the dead is ancient.

But many times when modern pagans are working with the spirits of the dead, we lack the pragmatism of those ancient necromancers. As is implied by the name, necromancy is the art of divination by means of communication with the spirits of the dead, and while Samhain is definitely a fine time for divination, I know that when I take my journey into that in-between place that lets us communicate with the dead, I am not trying to divine anything. Instead, I merely want to spend time with my beloveds. I call my father, my grandparents, and even my fallen cats. I sit with them in the candlelight of my temple, as the smoke of the incense drifts between our world and the worlds beyond. Sometimes we talk. More often we are silent and simply keep each other company in the dark. Sometimes that’s all love needs, especially among family.

But there is another sort of spirit I also wish to discuss and honor here. Over the last couple of weeks the Mighty Dead and Blessed Saints, those mages and mystics who have died and live on as mighty spirits who may become our allies in the Work, have been making their presence known to me. Jake Stratton-Kent, one of the mages most responsible for the recent revivification of the Grimoire Tradition, has come up in conversation by “chance” no less than six times with six different individuals over the period of four days at the time of this writing. Jerry Cornelius, the leader of an important lineage of the A.’.A.’., has come up just as frequently. Copper Persephone, an important teacher and priestess in the Reclaiming Tradition, has also come up again and again. And of course, for me there is always my father, Anthony “Dragon” Spurlock, witch, artist, and musician, who casts a long shadow over my life. These Mighty Dead are always with us, but in this moment, this special moment where our worlds are as close as they ever get, they are especially with us, reaching out to us, ready to hold our hands and guide us forward as we step forward into the darkest time of the year.

So let us reach out to these spirits in those shadowy places between the worlds, for what happens between the worlds affects all the worlds. Let us go to them or call them to us. Let us tell funny stories around the fire or cry ourselves to sleep in remembrance, as our hearts guide us. Let us sing their names in joy as we celebrate them and whisper their names in sorrow as we mourn them. Let us hold them all in our hearts on this, their special day. Let us lift them up in song and honor them in memory.

Let us reach out to the dead.

Happy Samhain.

In love,

Soror Alice

Art: Odilon Redon, “Apparition”, (~1910)

[chipinabag]

It's starts with a coin, they are rare in his time not because of the magic in the world, but because of the population of the world.(there is about 1 every 100.) he is given his first one when kilgharah tells him of his destiny. Of course when he asks he is only given a riddle as an answer. A riddle he figures out only after he is holding Arthur's dead body. He carries that one around his neck with a leather cord to keep it there.

A coin is floating over nimuah's body after she is struck by lightning, he often questions if it is because he killed her or because he masters the power of life and death. He collects it anyways.

A coin is around Cornelius Segan's neck with a gold chain when merlin fights him, he manages to grab it before he kills him.

Freya gives him one during her final moments with merlin.

His father gives him a coin with a silver chain, while he dies. Merlin now keeps that one on and arthur one day relizes where he got that chain but he doesn't asks questions he just gives merlin a silver chain and tells him (more like orders) to swap the leather cord for the silver one.

When he meets gwaine he noticed a silver chain around his neck with a crescent moon, a ring and a coin but he doesn't ask for it he is too distracted by saving gwaine's life. He never asks about it, but he does sorta eyes the chain every once in a while.

Lancelot is given one during his time with Percival but sadly gives merlin it when he relizes that he is going to sacrifice himself for merlin. He doesn't know why but it feels right to give it to merlin. He guesses it will help merlin with his destiny in the future.

Mordred gives him one when he becomes a knight hoping it will get him on merlin's good side. (It does not) later on when he is dying on the sandy planes of camlann he smirks at the thought of the coin he has given Emrys and when his fate lies ahead now that he has stabbed the once and future king.

A coin floats over morgana's dead body after merlin stabs her and arthur watches as the coin floats to merlin and merlin grabs it. "We are finally at peace." Again merlin doesn't know why he is given the coin, for killing a high priestess or because he has killed morgana and brought peace.

Arthur now relizes that he is going to die it his last moments with merlin. He manages to grab the chain around his neck and puts it in merlin's hand when he says "thank you". He doesn't know if it was because he was dying but it felt right and his body felt light as he closes his eyes.

Merlin now relizes what the coins mean and what kilgharah's riddles means.

Gaius gives him a coin after merlin comes back from avalon and has earned the title of court physician. That night Gaius passes in his sleep, merlin now carries that coin with his father's coin.

His mother said that she was given the coin when she gave birth to him. She gives it him as he holds her hand as she passes.

Percival gives him the necklace that gwaine wore right before he goes on a patrol mission. Merlin tries to give it back, begging him to take it back. Telling him he will die if gives him the necklace. Percival smiles and pulls him into a hug, "I know." He says into merlin's neck. Merlin was quiet after his tears stopped. He is silent during the knights death ceremony.

Leon and Gwen both died in their sleep both giving him a coin. Leon was given his after he was saved by the druids. Gwen was given by her brother before he died. She didn't relize she had it after she was released from morgana's spell. She cried over her brother that night with arthur to comfort her.

Merlin, now alone, leaves camelot and spends a couple of decades in his hut by the lake of avalon.

He tries to throw the coins into the lake but he wakes up wet and the coins where they had were previously.

He is mugged for them multiple times, but he wakes up alone, bloody and the coins in his pouch and around his neck.

When he burned he returned back from the ashes again with the coins.

As years go by he becomes anything that would get him close to people. Not because he wants to but because he has to. He needs the coins.

physician,

teacher,

Student,

painter ,

poet ,

lover,

whore,

robber,

cop,

Bank teller,

Book store owner,

Centuries has passed by and the coins are even more rare as before, over time they became more and more harder to find. Now not because of population but because of magic in the world. Now it maybe 1 in 5,000 people have a coin.

He had time and the magic (though not as strong as before) to help him achieve his goal.

Time passes he now only needs one more, one more to finally join his friends in avalon. One More and he can leave this world and move on.

The time has come and merlin has bumped into someone and he feels it. He feels the coin on this person. He looks up to apologize he stubbles back and lands on his ass.

This man. He has seen this man. In his dreams. In his nightmares reminding him of his failures. Of his destiny.  His other half.

"Watch where your going you clumsy idiot, do you know who I am?"

Merlin now confused and now exciting where this final life with this reincarnated arthur will take him, but he is excited.

"No, but I know that your a pompous prat!"

[justforbooks]

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

I received a special copy of this book from one of my very best friends. It was originally published in 1982 – not new, but an important classic. The Mists of Avalon is a ~900 page retelling of the legends of King Arthur, his Companion Knights, including Sir Lancelot, and the Round Table – but from the perspectives of the women involved, including Queen Guinevere (here Gwenhwyfar), Arthur’s mother the Queen Igraine and her sisters, Queen Morgause and Avalon’s Lady of the Lake Viviane… and most centrally, Arthur’s half-sister and lover, Morgaine, who we have also known as Morgan la Fay or Morgaine of the Fairies, and Viviane’s sometime successor as Lady of the Lake. Among others. (Sorry. These name changes are a bit to follow. Lancelot here is Lancelet, etc.)

I generally stay away from books of this length in recent years – I don’t know when I last read a book of 900 pages. It took some adjustment around paid reviews and deadlines, but I’m grateful I was able to find time for this one. It took a little over two weeks but was worth every minute. I enjoyed being able to sink into a story this sprawling, which does call for some in-depth engagement, as we follow generations and lifetimes, a quite convoluted family tree, and shifting allegiances (and names).

My own background with the Arthurian legends is weak, although I definitely loved T.H. White’s The Once and Future King when I was young (high school? earlier still? that one over 600 pages), and I remember an illustrated book of the tales of the knights of the Round Table at some point… I have a loose sense of the romance and idealism of Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, and Camelot, but brought no muddied plotlines to this reading. It seems The Mists of Avalon is understood partly as corrective to Morgaine’s reputation as evil sorceress from previous tellings.

There’s no question that Bradley’s is a big, complicated, engrossing story. Its prologue begins with a brief, italicized reminiscence of Morgaine’s from later in her very long life; these retrospective views will punctuate the book. Then we move (with book one, “Mistress of Magic”) to Igraine, who will be mother to both Morgaine and Arthur, when she is a teenaged bride to the much older and coarse Duke Gorlois of Cornwall. Igraine was raised on Avalon, that magical, misty island where an ancient, pagan, woman-centered religion has long been fostered. She has some priestess training and some of the Sight, but it’s been her duty to be a wife and a mother: her daughter Morgaine is Gorlois’s child, and she will later marry Britain’s High King Uther and have a second child who will become the fabled King Arthur. So we begin with Morgaine’s infancy and before Arthur’s birth. I will begin fast-forwarding here… much has been written about this book, and you don’t need my plot summary.

Morgaine will become a priestess of Avalon, and she will become very powerful indeed, but will have to serve the Goddess in ways that pain her deeply. In four parts – “Mistress of Magic,” “The High Queen,” “The King Stag,” and “The Prisoner in the Oak,” we see her play the role of the maiden, the mother, and the crone. She is fierce in her protection and promotion of the religion in which she is trained. It is central to the story of Arthur’s reign, in this telling, that (under Gwenhwyfar’s influence) he shepherds Britain toward a homogenous Christian faith, away from a diversity of indigenous traditions, including the goddess cult of Avalon, and Morgaine fights that transition mightily. Her story is, I think, a tragedy, and includes strong threads of that classic tragic element, hubris (a term Arthur invokes once).

Bradley has chosen to tell this story mostly in a series of close-third-person perspectives, so that the reader can see the thoughts and feelings of one character and then another (the exception being those italicized first-person moments with an older Morgaine), so that we understand that each is dealing with insecurities and ultimately, mostly, good intentions, which heightens the sense of tragedy: that both Arthur and Morgaine want the best for Britain, that Viviane knows she will hurt her beloved niece Morgaine but feels it necessary for the greater good. It is a very fine literary trick to set up no absolute villains or heroes, but rather to offer us flawed humans who try hard and fail. It is hard, though, not to sympathize with the side that wishes to preserve its tradition as one of several, rather than the one that wants to squash out all but one religion.

There are many plot threads, romances, love affairs, couples that produce children (all-important heirs) and those that don’t. There are many themes, a number of which involve women’s various roles in society: to bear children, to be chaste, to support their mates, to participate in political machinations (or not), to be involved in one religion or another. An important difference between the rites of Avalon and those of Christianity centers on sex, which is either a grievous sin in all contexts except strict (marital) reproduction, or a beautiful celebration of life, the natural world, the God and the Goddess coming together. [Same-sex encounters are not many, but also not absent. No surprise that Avalon and Christianity handle them in different ways.] Morgaine’s tradition is inherently feminist, and at odds with Christianity, in that it holds that women belong to no man and may take lovers as they choose and as serves their worship and their life’s work.

This is a work of fantasy (as in magic and sorcery), and a classic retold, as well as historical fiction, as Arthur’s legend offers a version of how the Great Britain we know today came to be. Bradley’s work offers another take, in which a brave woman undertakes to defend indigenous traditions in a time of political and religious upheaval. The outcome, I think, doesn’t change much, but the way we view the different players involved matters a great deal. It’s also, of course, about human relationships. Morgaine, Arthur, Gwenhwyfar and Lancelet go back to childhood together, and there is a refrain late in the book of recalling the few of them who had once been young together. There’s a pretty strong thread of sympathies between friends, lovers, enemies, and those who move between those categories, even when they wind up killing one another.

Bradley’s storytelling is absorbing. It was easy to fall into a world very different from my own here, in the details of women’s lives in royal castles – dark, monotonous, filled with gossip and spinning and sex that’s not entirely consensual, even for privileged women – and in the rapture of Avalon’s powerful priestesses. The mysticism of that religion, the spell of Goddess-blessed sex, and the strong feelings of characters willing to die for their beliefs are all evocatively told. The romance, intrigue and pathos of that famous love triangle between Arthur, Gwenhwyfar and Lancelet is powerful and discomfiting. Heavier scenes are as well written as the light-hearted and humorous ones; Bradley’s characters’ humanity is always present. It was a hell of a journey, and I’m glad to have made it.

Whew. Thanks, Liz.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[tainbocuailnge]

the time travel in lb6 isn't that hard to follow ingame because they slowly reveal and explain each part of the three layers of timeloop but i love how insanely complicated it makes the plot of lb6 seem to just lay it out like this

14000 years ago sefar attacks earth. because the six fairies had not made the holy sword out of selfish laziness, sefar cannot be stopped and earth is reduced to a lifeless ocean, turning this world into a lostbelt. when the six fairies go to the surface to see what happened they find they cannot return to paradise/avalon because they are no longer innocent and are stuck living in the endless ocean. paradise sends the god cernunnos to punish them, but cernunnos is too kind to go through with it and instead holds back the waves so the fairies have a calm sea to play in. initially they are grateful for the mercy, but cernunnos' mere presence reminds them of their wrongs and eventually they decide to kill cernunnos and turn his body into land to live on so they can go back to normal.

over the span of millennia they expand the land with countless fairy corpses until it has taken the shape of britain. from the six fairies form six clans that frequently war with each other. from the corpse of albion that washed ashore is formed the lake district and the northern fairies. cernunnos' priestess is cut up and cloned into artificial humans to supply the fairies with a concept of civilisation to copy as they live out their facsimile of normality.

4000 years ago morgan arrives in fairy britain from paradise, tasked with saving britain. using the nickname tonelico she travels with her companions and protects britain against the calamities that happen every 100 years. the fairies are invariably ungrateful and she has to go into hiding after every calamity is resolved lest they kill her.

2000 years ago the great calamity that happens every 1000 years destroys britain and turns it into a wasteland.

about a year ago, beryl arrives in this wasteland that remains of fairy britain. he summons ruler class panhuman morgan as his servant. since morgan as paradise fairy has strong ties to the land, and she existed in this lostbelt as well, she gains a rough awareness of what happened. from her own summoning she extrapolates how rayshifting works and then kills herself to send her panhuman memories and knowledge back in time to the tonelico of 4000 years ago

4000 years ago, tonelico with her new panhuman knowledge of king arthur's round table comes up with the plan of unifying the six clans under a human king so that together they can stand against the great calamity. she repeats the same 2000 years of ungrateful work while preparing for this plan.

2000 years ago, the would-be king is murdered at the coronation ceremony and the six clans turn on each other. tonelico snaps and decides she will not save the fairies, only the land. she fakes her death and returns as the tyrant morgan, who swiftly unifies britain with her unparalleled ruthless might and establishes the queen's calendar in what conveniently corresponds to 0AD in panhuman history. almost all the fairies die in the great calamity, but she had built her throne to be able to revive them using a system similar to servant summoning, thus ensuring fairy britain will survive as long as she sits on her throne. morgan deals with the calamities by sending each disaster into the past for tonelico to deal with, made possible by the fact that her fairy britain is effectively a singularity of the lostbelt, meaning only everything in the queen's calendar is "real history" and the events leading up to it can be smudged as long as tonelico's failure remains fixed.

about a year ago, beryl wakes up the next morning to find the endless wasteland has been replaced by a whole fairy kingdom with his servant berserker morgan at its head.

present day, chaldea arrives in the fairy kingdom and the plot of lb6 starts to play out. mash loses her memory and takes up the identity of fairy knight galahad for a while. she meets back up with guda and regains her memory, but almost immediately after she is caught in morgan's spell and sent to tonelico's time.

a little over 2000 years ago, mash joins tonelico's entourage and becomes known as fairy knight galahad. together they investigate the great pit at the center of britain and find cernunnos' cursed corpse at the bottom, thus learning that the cause for the calamities is britain trying to kill itself because it should be dead. the coronation fails again like history said it would. in between faking her death and returning as morgan, tonelico seals mash in a crystal coffin in orkney so that she will survive until present day unscathed and be able to reunite with chaldea. because the start of the queen's calendar is fixed morgan will not remember her, but "mash kyrielight" was not part of this history and can take the knowledge she gained with her to the present.

present day, guda unseals the coffin in orkney and reunites with mash. she shares what she learned with the rest of chaldea and the remaining plot of lb6 plays out.