King Arthur's Mythical Magician | Origins of Merlin | Real Royalty

Merlin. Mythical hero and historical figure. Wise leader and madman. Antichrist and fighter of evil. Christian, pagan, magician, scientist. Prophet and poet. He is the person who has the magic to unlock our future. He is Gandalf. He is Dumbledore and Harry Potter. He is the advisor of Arthur and a powerful and naughty magician. This tantalizing creature dances across the centuries, still working his magic on us today through books and games and film and television. From the poetry of Tennyson to the fantasies of Tolkien and Middle-earth, his presence is inescapable. So who is Merlin? He is not human, but through magic he carries the aspirations and desires of humanity. The popular image of Merlin today is of a kindly old man with pointed hat, long white beard, with star-full wand, weaving a little magic to amuse and to entertain. But beneath the surface, there is a dark, complex, significant figure. Merlin's origins are obviously buried deep in mythology and folklore, but he makes himself visible to us for the first time in an obscure 12th-century book, The History of the Kings of Britain, written by a little-known clergyman. And so the fictional legend begins. Merlin first appears in a work by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey of Monmouth was a historian, part Welsh historian, and Geoffrey's purpose was to create a myth for the new Anglo-Norman aristocracy. Because, of course, they'd left France, they had to justify why they were here and why they were conquering this new country. And in order to do this, he draws on Welsh tradition and he creates this powerful magician figure who becomes the person who organises the birth of Arthur and looks after King Arthur. He's not a real person, he is a fiction in Geoffrey of Monmouth's mind. He fuses two characters together. One of them is the wonder child Ambrosius, the other is the bard Merwin Wilt, and Geoffrey simply says that there was a character called Merlinus Ambrosius, and suddenly you have Merlin. Geoffrey's image of Merlin is half human and half beast. His mother is a nun. His father is an incubus or evil spirit. Together they create a magical wonder child, Merlin. Young Merlin quickly applies his magical powers in a legend that's been famous across the centuries in Wales. It tells of dragons beneath a castle tower that keeps collapsing. They fight, the red dragon seems as if it's going to be defeated and then succeeds, and the child says to the king, this is your kingdom. These are the British, the red dragon, and eventually the Saxons, the white dragon. The Saxons will defeat you for a time, but in the end the British will be triumphant. So it's a wonderful origin myth. Merlin is a link with ancient times. The historical storyteller Geoffrey connects him with the most famous of prehistoric monuments, Stonehenge. In order to establish Merlin's true credentials, Geoffrey creates a myth of a great battle in which the most famous British general is killed. Merlin is asked to fashion a fitting memorial in the hero's honour. He knows that the giant's dance in Ireland is the greatest monument in the Celtic world, and he decides to transport it over to Salisbury Plain, where it stands today. Geoffrey doesn't say Merlin did this by magic, he allows us to think this. So Geoffrey's creating a magician simply by manipulating his audience, by manipulating what his audience knew of Welsh tradition, and by manipulating our real psychological need to kind of create these powerful figures. Geoffrey used many sources when compiling his history of the kings of Britain, but one of the most important was an iconic manuscript of Welsh language poetry called the Black Book of Carmarthen. It is one of the National Library of Wales's most treasured possessions, and is the rarest book of Welsh poetry in existence. In it, we find our ancient Merlin. The Black Book of Carmarthen, as thought, was written in the middle of the 13th century, but it does contain poems written in the three centuries preceding its writing. There are three poems in the Black Book of Carmarthen that are associated in some way with the figure of Merlin. The only poem in which he is specifically named is the famous Amddithan, the discourse between Merlin and Taliesin, another sixth century figure who we assume to be a historical figure. They both have a chat about a battle that has been fought, and about events that are to come, some located in south Wales and some located in the old north up in the region of Carlisle. The other poems are Yr Oeannau, where Merlin, the figure from the old north, addresses a pig, and Yr Afallennau, in which he addresses apple trees. He has obviously lost his mind following a battle, and you have a series of prophetic visions in which he foretells events that belong to a far later period of the period of the 11th century in Wales. The Merlin that we see in this book is almost a tragic character. He has obviously had some bad experiences in a battle. He has become a figure who is living wild outside the boundaries of society, where he is banished to the woods, as it were, living and scavenging amongst animals, where he complains of having icicles in his hair with snow up to his thighs. He is a very sorry character indeed, and from the hardships that he had suffered out came this wisdom that was, by other people, respected and held in high esteem. I think the idea of a man endowed with the ability to prophesy, living in wild places, a wild man in a wild place, is really part of the mythology of every country on earth. In northern climes, of course, he lives in a forest, but in drier climes he lives in the wilderness. I mean, John the Baptist, for example, you might say, is a wild man with wild ideas, living in wild places. I think that is a universal tradition, but the people of Europe, in particular, focused on Merlin in a very special way. I think he sort of typifies the notion of the wild man in the wild place. What's so interesting about this wild figure is that he seems to go into frenzy. And something which other people noticed and talked about these characters, these Welsh poets, who became taken over by something called Arwen, which is poetic frenzy, is as good a translation as any. The wild man is a prophetic poet possessed of magical powers, is a legend that spreads quickly throughout medieval literature, and soon a very familiar image of Merlin starts to appear. We start to see images of Merlin in the 13th, 14th century manuscripts, illustrations which we have and we often see in books, beautifully reproduced, as if they're paintings hanging on a wall. They're not, of course, they're often very tiny, and they're illustrations integrated into a text. But within them, one immediately notices the universality of the figure, almost always old, bearded, with a long gown, a sort of medieval hoodie, if you like. That's the kind of image which crops up in many, many cultures with many, many different figures. Now Merlin is a figure that travels, and like the British tales, he gets exported throughout the French and Norman world. Soon he inhabits the imagination of mainstream Christian Europe. The stories of Merlin's life, the sort of expanded stories of Merlin's life, actually appear in French-language romances. So Merlin is no longer just a Welsh figure, a local figure, he's suddenly becoming a pan-European figure, and then he becomes the subject of his own story, the Suite de Merlin, or the Histoire de Merlin. And in it, you have Merlin given a complete biography. Merlin's birth story becomes very much more elaborated. And one of the things which emerges, I think, in the French tradition is the complication of dealing with what is essentially a pagan tradition in a Christian context. So you have the idea at the birth of Merlin that he's instantly baptised, and he's drawn into that Christian tradition. The French story has none of the historical pretensions of earlier tales. It is now high romance, driven by love and lust. He finally falls in love with a young female magician, and she seduces him into telling her all his secrets. And after she learns all his secrets, she shuts him up in a cave. Sometimes it's a glass cave. And Merlin is not dead, but kind of in hiding for all eternity. Love is sometimes foolish, and it reflects another key trait in the Merlin story. The trapped, entombed figure turns up in his native Wales. Here he is still a legend, and his magical attraction has never gone away. Merlin was born in Carmarthen, and according to the legend, he had a cave on the hill there somewhere. That is where he lived, and apparently this is also his tomb. We can't see it. It's been lost in time somewhere, because according to the legend, the cave was sealed up at that time, only going back 1,500 years. And obviously, it must have grasped over, and is now completely lost. We do get quite a few people walking up, dressed up as Merlin. Probably frighten the sheep on the top as well. They will kiss the earth that I believe he walked on. They feel so strongly that Merlin had guided them to this place, which perhaps we think a bit strange, but that is their beliefs. We're all entitled to our beliefs. Merlin's origins are undoubtedly Welsh. The desire to sort of place him in Carmarthen, Merlin Caerfyrddin, is really a misinterpretation of a place name. Though I gather around Carmarthen now, people are doing quite well out there. But you know, the name Carmarthen comes from mor, the Welsh for sea, and din, the old Welsh word for city or fort. And Caer, of course, is a fort. So it's the fort of the seafort, and has nothing to do with Merlin at all. But when you begin to try to make sense of place names, to give them a person, particularly a mythical person of remarkable powers, is a very appealing idea. And you find it all over the place. This chunk of wood, well, this is one of the fragments of the Carmarthen Oak, which was a famous landmark in Carmarthen for a couple of hundred years. It's ended up here because the oak tree was poisoned in the 19th century, because it became too much of a popular gathering point, and someone living in the neighborhood decided to poison it. And although it was propped up for many years, eventually it had to be removed. The largest part you can find within Carmarthen town itself. I remember it as encased in concrete with a metal railings around it. That's when I first saw that. And that was when my mother, back in 1973, eventually it was removed from there and brought here. And this is where I've seen it since. There is a story that Merlin says that when Carmarthen's Oak shall tumble down, then shall fall Carmarthen town. And it's for that very reason that we don't have the whole oak here in the museum in Abergele, because the good townspeople of Carmarthen were fearful that the worst would happen to the town if everything came here to Abergele. I think for some people, it's a bit of a pilgrimage. Many, many people, particularly from the States, they're very inspired, I think, by Merlin and Arthur. And they know about Carmarthen and the links with the magician. Merlin the magician is constantly shapeshifting, constantly changing, adapting to answer the political and cultural needs of the age. The Tudors, when they come to power in 1485, bring Merlin in from the rugged wild and into the royal court. The stories of companionship of Merlin and Arthur are used to unite the troubled kingdom. This time, the legend is retold by Sir Thomas Mallory and his magisterial work, La Mort d'Arthur. The world of Mallory's Mort d'Arthur sort of exists on the cusp of the modern world. And I think this is very significant for Merlin and the direction that Merlin takes, because within this modern world, there's always a desire for the certainties of the world that was left behind. You get this hunger, is really not too strong a word for it, for the certainties of the world that came before. And Merlin, in many ways, represents these certainties, a world where magic is possible, in which wisdom is possible, in which there is a connection to the natural world. But he's particularly important as the advisor to Arthur. And then the commons of Carleon arose with clubs and staves and slew many knights. But all the kings held out together with their knights that were left alive and so fled and departed. And Merlin came unto Arthur and counselled him to follow them no further. Books at this time were all copied by hand and were rare artefacts owned by the rich and read only by a privileged few. William Caxton's printing press of 1478 changed all that. Mallory's Mort d'Arthur is very interesting in this context because it's one of the earliest printed books in English. It was printed by Caxton in 1485 and it was printed with illustrations, with woodblock illustrations. We're in the same tradition of an integrated image picture with a text, but it's gone from the one-off manuscript into the printed book. And of course the dissemination starts on quite a different basis because although books are expensive, they do get disseminated much more widely. And what that means in particular is that the visual image of particular characters becomes much more stable because you have something to refer to which is widely distributed. So you've got quite a specific development of the image of Merlin as hooded with the beard and all the rest of it. The popularity of Mallory's printed book makes the Arthurian tales one of the most well-known legends in existence. The government of Camelot, with its institution of the round table, becomes central to the story, with knights such as Lancelot and Percival becoming defenders of the kingdom. Merlin the Wise leads Arthur to the magical sword Excalibur and he becomes chief advisor to the new king. Merlin presides over every event, offering counsel and prediction in equal measure. He is even involved in Arthur's birth in Tintagel. It is told in magical terms as Uther Pendragon falls in love with Iguerna, the wife of the Duke of Cornwall. Merlin consents to change Uther's appearance so that he will resemble her husband. Iguerna is deceived, they sleep together, and Arthur is born. Merlin's end of the bargain is that upon Arthur's birth the boy is to be handed over to him in secret in a cave beneath Tintagel castle. He will then be able to give him the knowledge that will one day make him a worthy king of Britain. But of course the Merlin legend can never stand still. It's too fertile to get fixed in a particular image or role and the wise sage's powers begin to grip the imagination of the Tudor dynasty. Merlin is now at the court of Queen Elizabeth I. He takes the form of a magus, a man with secret knowledge and magical wisdom. In this part of the legend he is a Welshman called John Dee. John Dee was known to the court of Queen Elizabeth and indeed he was a physician for Queen Elizabeth and did some astrology for Queen Elizabeth. You get this idea of Merlin the magician. He becomes much much more of a magician and he's taken up with this idea of magic, particularly ritual magic. Now ritual magic is essentially magic of an intellectual and literate kind and certainly in the renaissance there was a great deal of interest in ritual magic. Searching for hidden treasure, searching for the meaning of life, for many again it was a very very very sophisticated kind of magic and Merlin becomes one of the figures associated with that. This is the age of Shakespeare's Prospero and Marlow's Doctor Faustus. It's the age of alchemy and the occult, the pursuit of turning base metal into gold. It's the renaissance when science and magic go hand in hand and John Dee looks to Merlin for inspiration in his mysterious writings. And we certainly have a number of books that John Dee wrote in this curious curious language because he felt that he was communicating with angelic presences and this was all what this ritual magic was was like. It was kind of accessing something beyond the human. In the centuries that followed, cool reason and powerful religion pushed out magic and wild nature was something to be tamed. In the early 18th century, the sort of classical period, the very urbane writing, wild places were considered to be disgusting. In fact there are descriptions of people going through mountains and drawing down the curtains of their coach lest their sensibility should be injured by seeing such uncouth places. But as the 18th century progresses you get particularly artists delighting in wild places. A newly prosperous age needed an ancient past that could rival the empires of Greece and Rome. It looked to the ruins of the British and Celtic world and in particular to the tales and traditions of the druids and the bards. In the 17th century and especially then through the 18th century you get the antiquarian movement growing which looks at ancient Britain and the interest in ancient Britain revised and specifically of the druid figure and the illustrations draw on that figure and you get a whole strain of druidical and bardic imagery. Its most potent image probably is the 18th century image which is where you get a figure who's labelled as the chief druid but in fact he's a complete Merlin figure with the beard, the hood, the flowing robes and the oak leaves which are of course crucial in the in the idea that they had about the bardic tradition in that period. He is to all intents and purposes Merlin. Mountainous Wales becomes a significant landscape in the British imagination. It was known as a place where poets mattered, carrying the memory of the nation. One image had huge impact. The suicide of a lone bard who defied the invading armies of Edward I when he defeated the Welsh and slaughtered their poets. On a rock whose haughty brow frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood, robed in a sable garb of woe with haggard eyes the poet stood. Loose his beard and hoary hair streamed like a meteor to the troubled air. O'er thee, O King, their hundred arms they wave. Revenge on thee in hoarser murmur's breath. Vocal no more since Cambria's fatal day. To Highborne High, Ossoff, Llywelyn's lair. From Gray's poem, from that point, you've got an absolute flood of high art images and of popular art printed images. There's a particularly, I think, potent image which has not really been noticed much by art historians, which was made in the early 1760s by Richard Wilson. It's a picture called Solitude. You've got a picture of druidic figures, one figure in particular, the standard figure, the hooded figure, the beard, the staff. You've got druidical mysteries going on in the background. And one of the most celebrated redactions of it, of course, is the John Martin image of the Last Bard. John Martin was fascinated by apocalyptic imagery of all sorts, so it's not so much, I don't think in his case, the specifics of the Last Bard, it's just an apocalyptic image which he took to great extremes because Wales has become Switzerland and the Bard is perched way, way, way, way up high on the top of the mountain and so forth. It's quite an extreme rendition of the story. The one which we tend to think of now is Thomas Jones's The Bard of 1777, which is an extraordinarily powerful image and a beautiful image which combines the specifics of the myth of the Last Bard. You've got the armies of Edward I in there, they're very, very small, and you've got the Bard about to throw himself off the cliff into the River Conway below, committing suicide. But you've also got very prominently displayed Stonehenge in there, and Thomas Jones had just in fact visited Stonehenge. He'd gone down from London where he lived to have a look at Stonehenge. So it's a very specific reference to the British Bardic tradition. I thought it was something from the Old Testament before I read the explanation. It's got a sort of religious feel about it, hasn't it? Something apocalyptic from the Old Testament. Especially the way he's lit up. Do you get the light on Welsh hills like that? Yeah. So that identifies it too. It's kind of dramatic how it's focused on the one person. Yeah, he reminds me of Merlin, some sort of wizard. The Celtic revival of the 18th century inspired the creation of an event focused on ancient Druidic tradition, the Seat of the Bards. The Eisteddfod was established, and today it is still a place for Bards, Druids and Poets with their staffs, flowing robes and garlands of oak leaves. The mysticism and defiant spirit of Merlin looks like it's still alive and well. My role is the Archdruid. I write a great deal of poetry myself, and I am reckoned in my locality to be somewhat of a mystic. Because if somebody wants a poem to celebrate or in memory or something, they will come to me. Because it is still found in Wales that they think you have some sort of mystic quality. Well, I suppose that not everybody can write a poem. I suppose in that sense there is a certain amount of mysticism about it. Medieval fantasies also coloured the imagination of the 19th century. Romances, castles and chivalry were infinitely preferable to brutal modern reality. For artists and poets, the muse of the past is crucial in preserving the human soul. Suddenly you get this idea of Merlin not as a repository of wisdom, not as an ancient Bard, but as a romantic artist. So it's magician as artist, Merlin as artist now. Alfred Lord Tennyson's famous retelling of the Arthurian legends creates a Merlin that is the symbol for the suffering artist. Unlike the stern Victorian patriarchs in their black frockcoats, this exotic Merlin is overwhelmed by the seductive wiles of a woman. There is no fool like an old fool. A storm was coming, but the winds were still. And in the wild woods of Broccoliand, before an oak so hollow, huge and old, it looked a tower of ivied mason work. At Merlin's feet, the wily Vivian lay. Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm of woven paces and of waving hands, and in the hollow oak he lay as dead, and lost to life and use and name and fame. Then crying, I have made his glory mine, and shrieking out, O fool, the harlot leapt down the forest, and the thicket closed behind her, and the forest echoed. Fool. It's perfect for the 19th century because you get these strong gender polarities. Here is the masculine patriarchal Merlin with all of its own certainties, giving way to this very, very seductive, very, very attractive, but slightly dangerous power of femininity. I've always been drawn to the character, and I first started reading in my childhood, reading the Arthurian legends. Okay, so I'm just going to come up with some kind of image of Merlin. I think it's going to be Merlin the dreamer, as an old man towards the end of his days, in a state of fairly pleasant imprisonment, really. He's been beguiled by this enchantress. I think the reason this particular aspect of the character appeals to me is that I quite like to end my days in the same way, sort of resting beneath an ancient hawthorn tree, dreaming in an enchanted wood with the occasional visit from a young enchantress. The artist invents a Merlin that carries his own dream world within. In the 19th century, the Pre-Raphaelite painters made Merlin and his medieval world into a version of their own lives. The other really potent group of images in the late 19th century coming out of England are the images which are associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the arts and crafts movement, in particular, Burne-Jones. There are several Burne-Jones images which became particularly familiar. The very famous image of the beguiling Merlin there, the Merlin figure, doesn't look like Merlin at all. He's a young man infatuated with a woman. Well, of course he is, because he's Burne-Jones. And Burne-Jones is using the Arthurian narrative to make his own point about his own life there. That's how the painting is usually read, anyway. It was very popular in Germany. Germany was very, very interested in Romanticism and really took Romanticism into all kinds of directions. And they, too, were interested in the Arthurian world. They were interested in the stories of Arthur. And in Germany, Merlin kind of goes into a very strange direction, because he becomes the kind of embodiment of ancient wisdom, but also the embodiment of the old order, and unfortunately, in some ways, the embodiment of a new world order, which takes on Aryan overtones. So you get this idea of Merlin, the powerful magician, with the emphasis really on power. Disturbingly, powerful Merlin was perfect for Nazi purposes. Knights in gleaming armour riding through the German forests were an iconic image for national identity. The old stories gave a gloss of tradition to the brutalities of the Third Reich's aspirations and atrocities. Himmler and the knights of the SS wanted the Nazi state's spiritual and ideological centre to be the historic Wawelsberg Castle. At its core would be a round table inspired by the Arthurian legends. Himmler saw himself as a Merlin-type figure. It's kind of Himmler's personal view of nature as power and the Arthurian world as a stable world in which these kind of Teutonic Nazi knights could operate. The Second World War hit Europe dreadfully. If you look at what was being written after that, you would say that reworking a myth in things like Tolkien, for example, C.S. Lewis, is a kind of use of myth in order to make sense of today. Fantasy writers like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien drew on the complex associations of Merlin to wage a literary war against the totalitarian horror of Nazi Germany. Merlin the wizard becomes a fighter in the battle of good versus evil. The dreaming spires gave birth to powerful fictions. Lewis and Tolkien, two little-known Oxford dons, influenced each other greatly and between them they created some of the most popular fiction ever written. These fantasies were actually discussed by C.S. Lewis and by his friend J.R.R. Tolkien in a pub in Oxford which is known as the Bird and Baby. The famous inklings would get together quite regularly and talk about their philosophy and their fantasies and out of it really emerged this new image of Merlin, this image of Merlin For Lewis, the good is divine and will always win. We see this in the last of his fantasy trilogy, The Hideous Strength, where soulless industrialists try to take over Oxford. A group of academics react to this by bringing Merlin back to life in order to free the power of divine magic and to out the evil industrialists. Tolkien took a very different track. J.R.R. Tolkien, Merlin, isn't actually called Merlin, it's called Gandalf. And for Tolkien, we're not talking about the divine here, we're in a quite different kind of world. Gandalf is almost a classical image of Merlin in that he is the advisor. He advises the other members of the fellowship, particularly the little hobbits. So it's almost as if you have Merlin and the baby Arthur again, which Tolkien was very, very attracted to. And here is this figure of Gandalf, who now looks like all of the elements of Merlin we've seen developing over the ages. Alan Lee has illustrated the Lord of the Rings books, bringing to life the many characters. His talents were also used by the director Peter Jackson on the film trilogy, and he helped to create the image of Gandalf. When I finished working on the Lord of the Rings, one of the props that I'd designed, which was Gandalf's staff, was given to me as a parting gift. And this is it. And it has a tobacco pouch, which contains flints. I don't know if these were ever brought out on film, but so he can light his pipe, the pipe able to be stowed away in amongst the roots. Yeah, so it's quite an appropriate gift, really. I'm very happy to have this. My memento of six years in the New Zealand version of Middle-earth. Gandalf, this favourite incarnation of Merlin, is now worth billions of dollars worldwide. Here we are in the 21st century, and Merlin's back. He's the daddy of the wizards. Merlin is the original, and yet we are transforming him for our own needs now. We are in a world where there's not much religion. It's very rational. It's very mundane. It's dominated by technology, but Merlin's even got in on that. Our modern Merlin is now a valuable commodity. He is a creature of contemporary culture, turning up in film, television, video games, trinkets, and tat. So Merlin has now become really coinage in modern culture. It's a modern figure which speaks to everyone, because you find him in Harry Potter, both in Dumbledore and in Harry Potter himself. Suddenly, you know, children can do what all children want to do, which is be magicians themselves. When you think of Merlin, Merlin helps them to get through the bad times, and get in there. And so, without magic, you really cannot overcome some of the terrible feelings you have, and get through to reach the goals that you want. I think magic is important, because not just in books and stuff, but if there was no magic in real life, then there's really nothing to look forward to, or hope for, or wish for. When I see films, and I see people writing books and stories, or anything to do with Merlin, I think, here comes another one. Here comes another one. It's endless. Shall I read it? Shall I watch it? It's endless. But it's good stuff. It just makes me laugh, because I'm here, right in front of them, under their noses. I'm not playing a part. I am Merlin. It is me. It's inside. It's fantastic. They've named me George Vernon. Well, my parents did, but I always knew it wasn't my name. And then, I think I was four or five, they gave me a middle name, Merlin. 99.9% is Merlin. The 1%, hello George, how are you? All right, it's time to brush your teeth, that sort of thing, you know. Anything more than that, and George will blow a fuse. Tie your shoelaces, George, I can do that. It's Merlin that can paint. George can't paint. It's Merlin that creates. It's Merlin that can write. So that's the creative energy, is the Merlin. The biggest thing I can do is to show my artwork, to make people think, to look at a painting, to go into a painting, and bring up big questions. Mathematically, visually, colourly, you name it, it gets the person and lifts them on a higher level. Oh, the energy's here, it'll go on and on. I'm not immortal in the sense that I'm flesh and blood, right? The spirit will go somewhere else. We too now in the modern world, late 20th century, beginning of the 21st century, we're also in a period where we feel disconnected. Particularly, we feel disconnected from nature, we feel disconnected from government, disconnected even from society. And Merlin has changed to answer this as well. The Merlin we need to help us connect with a sometimes confusing and bewildering world is the Merlin of nature, of earth and fire, and of an ancient knowledge. The Merlin of the old world is now in the new age. You can call it new age if you like, but there are many people now who are much more open-minded about, shall we say, the power of nature, and that power we have in ourselves, and the power of prophecy. These people are coming to a certain time now where there's a lot of prophecies coinciding with this particular time. So Merlin's prophecies have a relevance today, because it's rooted in a Celtic belief that all of life is a circle, a great circle. People now are very, very interested in somehow getting into a spiritual nature, and Merlin has really become a shaman. Well, of course, this kind of reflects something that was associated with the earliest Merlin, Merlin who was taken over by the Arwen, who was taken over by this poetic ecstasy. And this has translated into yet another aspect of Merlin, Merlin as new shaman. And this is certainly in the 21st century the most widely known image of Merlin. Merlin the shaman, the witch doctor, the pagan, performing his ritual rites, dancing with beasts and with fire, in touch with the mysteries of the earth. He is once again at Stonehenge, creating myth and magic for those that need it. Come here and express yourself, experiment with who you are, and it's okay to let it hang out, to jump up and down, to yell and scream, to meditate, to play music, to dance, to chant, that it's all okay. And from that, it increases the possibility of who a person can be. People have the opportunity to experience their own inner magic, you know, and allow that to flower in their lives. Sometimes even the non-believers are affected. I'm always really cynical about the new age. It's all people dressed in purple, semi-naked at the solstice. And it's so commercialized as well, the dream catchers, the tie-dye, all that business. And yet I was in America recently, having my usual treat of a mani and a pedi, having my nails done in a suburb of Chicago, and there's a young Chinese lad painting my toenails. He says, where are you from? I said, I'm from Wales. Is it near Stonehenge? I said, well, it is, yeah, quite near. Have you been there? I said, yeah. He said, did you feel the energy? And all of a sudden, he sort of stopped mid-toenail paint with his eyes shining. And at that point, I thought, it's not just a place by the side of the motorway where tourists go. It still has this huge grip on the imagination. And in his eyes, he could see Merlin. And for somebody 4,000 miles away in a nail salon in Chicago, Merlin was real. In some modes of thought, Merlin is a title as opposed to a particular person. And there are Merlins throughout history, and there are Merlins today. But if the myth or legend of King Arthur and Merlin attached to that have a basis in reality, then he does look to be a king to fit the model role, which was the role of a Druid. Then he would have taught the balance of the landscape and the role of kingship as rather a father to the people rather than a dictator to the people. One of the appeals of Merlin's wisdom is the fact that it's so unspecific. It isn't the wisdom of science. It's the wisdom of science and more. It isn't just the wisdom of paganism. It's the wisdom of paganism and more. It isn't just Christianity. It is more than that. So however we feel that any of our specific realms of knowledge let us down, Merlin always has more than that. We're not quite sure what it is. And I think this is why we keep going back to it. But whenever we feel that science isn't enough, religion isn't enough, there is yet more knowledge to kind of carry us on. The beauty of Merlin is that he's the ultimate blank canvas. You can paint whatever picture you like on him and people have been doing it for thousands of years. You think he's the definitive wizard and yet if you look at the origins, he's an amalgam of all sorts of characters and stories and myths. Now come full circle to the land of fiction and to Monmouthshire where Geoffrey first penned his story and to Merlin, a character of the imagination reincarnated over the ages in his many forms. I don't see Merlin so much as around me. I see Merlin as in me because you know we are all creatures of the past and products of our conceptual futures. And Merlin was such a wise man, such a varied man, so many interesting fascinates, a fascination that I have in the fantasies that people have of Merlin. Well this is in many ways extraordinary because it illustrates again part of the Merlin concept. It brings us back to the early druidic phenomenon, you know the oak trees and this is a bowl of oak for example, and the face of paganism, life-loving, lip-licking, excitement and joy merriment. Merlin as an old man, a rather debilitated gerontocrat living in Curlean Camelot in the court and deeply smitten, smotened in love with the strange wicked little nymphette called Morgan le Fay who's in the castle half-sister of King Arthur. And there you can see Morgan in his lap, Merlin the old man deeply in love. Morgan in her wiles, you know childhood wiles, has him by the beard and he's trapped by her and in fact when he consummates his love for her in exchange for knowledge that he gave her, she turns herself in an oak tree and buries him forever as well he deserves to be. Well here is the period of Merlin that I love very much. It's Merlin when he sees battle and blood and war in Iraq and murder and mayhem in Arvidereth, hides away in shame, runs into the woods, becomes an eco-warrior, lives on roots and fruit and branches and shares his life with a pig because pigs were better than the royal court. He was in fact an early communist who abandoned all luxury, all conspicuous consumption and became a man of the woods, a proper hero figure for today. Merlin's legend will continue through time to the end of time simply because we need him. What attracts us to Merlin is the fact that he is undying, he is this kind of universal, eternal figure. He is this figure of legend, he's this figure of myth and it's that which allows him to change as we need him to change. I think that myth is one of the essential parts of a world without myth would not be a human world and Merlin, if he fits into that, is a necessary figure.