#the old religion

[nononsensesblog]

Do you guys understand? Merlin is magic personified, he is the power that can manipulate natural and supernatural beings and forces, he has always been and he will always be, he is immortal, he is an spiritual brother to dragons, his birth has been prophesied by many cultures, he is the son of the earth, of the sea, of the sky; Magic is the fabric of of the world and he was born of that magic; He is the Old Religion, he is magic itself. Do you understand that???

[wytchoftheways]

Hallowing the compass: ⛤ 𓃶

walk the perimeter of the circle and say out loud or think…

I conjure thee compass round

Be ye cast and be ye bound

By road above, and road below

By snake, by hare, by toad, and crow

By white spirits red spirits grey spirits and black,

I conjure thee up threefold track

Be ye cast and be ye bound

Hallowed be o’ compass round

[kissme-withyour-cherrylipstick]

Very curious to hear what people think!

[the-wanderer]

[twistedshipper]

"Go to the place that men call the Isle of the Blessed, where the power of the ancients can still be felt. There you will discover Arthur's salvation."

[gaiusbunnymask]

the divine right of kings and the old religion: why arthur pendragon is the one and future king, and what the "two sides of the same coin" thing is all about

(disclaimer: this is my opinion and point of view, you are welcome to disagree. if someone else has already talked about this before, please let me know!)

throughout the show gaius displays extreme loyalty and servitude to uther and later arthur, the pendragons in general, though that loyalty doesn't inhibit him from lying and acting behind their backs if he thinks he has to. but his belief system establishes that even if uther is a tyrant, he must obey him, for uther is his king. gaius could have run away during the purge but he chose not to. was it because he considered uther his friend? or is there another reason?

later merlin will do things following gaius' example and instructions: act behind his king, protect him in secret with the use of magic, and put his loyalty to the king over everything else.

...but why????? (long meta below the cut!)

when gaius is asked in 1x01 if he practiced magic, he says "uther banned such work 20 years ago", meaning, what's important is what uther has sanctioned as monarch of camelot. yet he still thinks magic is a gift that must be used to do good, and somehow in his mind this equals to supporting the pendragon family, which has banned and persecuted magic for two decades. it also means that he finds merlin using his magic to support and protect arthur, the future king, perfectly plausible and aligned with his philosophy of life, even in a kingdom where being caught using magic will get you killed. his beliefs seem very contradictory and it's no wonder that a lot of sorcerers and the dragon hated him.

but i think there's something more to it

even with magic being outlawed gaius still thinks that the only magic that should be done is the one in service of his monarch. so if merlin does magic to do his chores is "bad", but if he uses sorcery to save uther that's "good".

this is why i think gaius was, intentionally or not, developed as a character with an intrinsic belief on the divine right of kings. at some point before the beginning of the show he must have sworn an oath of fealty to uther, which ties him indefinitely to the pendragon family. taking into account that the old religion was THE religion camelot lived by before the purge, that means that when gaius became uther's servant/sorcerer/court physician at the time, the old religion was pretty okay with the pendragons ruling. nimueh, a priestess of the old religion, was friends with uther, and was ruling alongside the king at the time. with this in mind we can safely conclude that, before the purge, in the eyes of the old religion, the triple goddess and its representatives, uther was a legitimate king.

this means a few things:

-gaius is a follower of the old religion; even if he has stop practicing magic, he grew up in it

-it was probably the custom that a monarch would have a priest/priestess in their court ruling alongside them; at the very least the magical/religious representative would have an official position in the court and a seat on the monarch's council. the ancient round table has a seat for magic placed on the right side of the king, which as the merlin wiki says, it "suggests that magic was held in great esteem in the time of the Ancient Kings".

-said magical/religious representative would legitimize the king's power, and in turn, said king would give the magical/religious representative status and power.

-because, functionally speaking, the old religion can be understood like any other religion in medieval times, meaning that the doctrine of the divine right of kings also applies here

-all this to establish that the subjects and authorities of the old religion, and the triple goddess, believe in the pendragon's divine right to rule over the land

-and that the old religion gave uther the right to rule before the purge

-but since uther has rebelled against the old religion and threw the balance into chaos, he must be punished and someone else must take his place and right his wrongs, bringing the world back to the goddesses'-ordained natural order (yey shakespeare reference!)

-uther's replacement must be legitimate, recognized as a rightful heir in the eyes of the old religion and the common people;

-and who are the easier candidates to choose from? the pendragon children, morgana and arthur

-but morgana is an illegitimate child in this feudal worldview, and therefore in the eyes of the old religion too. however, she is still a better prospect than uther, and even arthur, because she's both a pendragon and a priestess of the old religion, so she's able to gather subjects through the course of the story

-this brings us to why the old religion and it's followers believe that arthur must be the king to unite the land of camelot and "bring magic back to the land", which is code for legalizing and reinstating the old religion to its previous status:

he was born from magic, literally, which means he's literally a son of the old religion and its godesses and source of power (jesus parallelism lmao)

he is a pendragon, a family that had ruled with the blessing of the old religion in the past

he is a legitimate heir

and the role that merlin plays in all of this? he's supposed to guide arthur to do "the right thing", what the old religion wants him to do. he already comes with great status, what with him being emrys, which means his power and influence will be immortal. he is to take a position of authority, the same place that nimueh used to have, so that united with arthur the two of them will constitute a sort of dual power (secular and magical) that legitimize each other and bring back the natural order of things.

in this aspect, s3 morgana and morgause could be seen as arthur and merlin's counterpart; they encapsulate another dual power with the potential to rule rightfully. if only they hadn't chosen to kill so many innocent people...

and with arthur being the once and future king, and merlin being immortal, this means that they could hold this positions in the distant future, when arthur comes back. In conclusion: they have the potential to be perfect dual power, legitimate and eternal.

i think this is what the prophecy of the once and future king is about and where the two sides of the same coin thing comes from.

kilgahrrah, who loathed uther with all his enormous being, believed in arthur's divine right and the necessity of a dual power. gaius also believed this. the druids believed this, and the same can be said of almost every subject and creature of the old religion that we encounter throughout the show. most of the non-magical people also believe in the divine right of kings.

this is why it was so easy for merlin to believe his destiny is to serve arthur. the society, the religion and the environment he lived in reinforced these beliefs.

[symphonyofsilence]

Let the poor man rest.

[clandestinewhore]

𐕣 𐕣 𐕣

[descendinight]

study of picture 学习

[divorceblogger]

this show rules sorry

[luciewitch13]

Sidney Sweeney in immaculate

[ives57]

[zemi-noelle-art]

Webcore Angel 💿

[sanseterrer]

In a Belarusian village on a September day // part 1

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price and Jane Asher

The Masque of the Red Death (1964) // dir. Roger Corman

[graphic--horde]

Angel blinkies

I just found a TON and thought it'd be cool to put em here