Chapter 31 The Spiral castle
A pale and dour faced C S Lewis was nursing his coffee cup in the corner of the Red Lion.
‘I am so very sorry, chaps. I wanted to wake well; I am improving, granted, but I feel I have jinxed our trip.’
‘Nonsense.’ replied Barfield. ‘Had we marched on yesterday we would have missed a great deal. Maybe once the stone is put up you’ll be feeling more chipper; I am counting on it. Tonight, I think, we should climb Silbury Hill and then tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, we can head to Calne and take the bus to Wells. We shall be in Glastonbury a day later than scheduled, that’s all, and we shall have plenty of time to make it to Porlock.’
‘I do hope so, Owen. I’m rather excited about climbing that hill; I do get the feeling that it wasn’t built to be looked at, but to be climbed. Who is that fellow with Tollers?’
Barfield looked over his shoulder to where Tolkien stood at the bar with a short man in a white collar-less shirt and a cloth cap.
‘I have no idea. I used to think Tollers aloof, but I now see I was wrong; distant, yes, often lost in his own thoughts, but not aloof.’
Barfield refilled Lewis’s coffee cup.
‘I do wish you lived in Oxford, Owen. I’ll never understand why you didn’t pursue an academic career.’
‘Oh, I question it, too, Jack, believe me – I guess it wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t feel I had much choice – family pressures, as you know. But don’t think of me as despairing – when I’m working I do often enjoy it; it’s more a problem when I’m here – with you; then I wish I could write and spend my days on my ideas… but the grass is always greener! You are forever complaining about how little time you get to research, how you have too many tutorials, or essays to mark – of the faculty’s bureaucracy. The picture you paint is at odds with my ideal Oxford, which is what I really yearn for, an ideal.’
Barfield sat in silence, his face shadowing a gamut of internal conflicts.
‘And besides I can write; I have no less time than you or Tollers for that; and what I write no man can threaten to end my tenure if it wonders far from current academic thinking.’
Lewis smiled and nodded. ‘Indeed, Owen. I must say I couldn’t imagine quite what department we would have to shoe-horn you into – English? Philosophy? Religion? Each would be some procrustean bed that it would pain you to lie upon.’
Barfield smiled. ‘Yes, I’m a Romantic in an age when that is frowned upon. Better, then, to weather the stormy seas of my ideas alone, far from the shore, than be smashed to pieces trying to find a safe haven.’
‘Ha! I like that! I’ve never thought of academia as a haven; maybe some isolated cove, its watering places full of washed up old salts!’
‘Speak for yourself’ said Tolkien, sitting himself down beside Barfield. ‘I’ve been speaking to one of the labourers; apparently the last stone took three days to erect, so don’t be expecting to see anything finished today.’
‘Three days?!’ said Lewis. ‘Where’s Merlin when you need him?’
Tolkien and Barfield exchanged a look and laughed.
‘We were saying the exact same thing yesterday,’ Tolkien explained.
‘Now there’s an idea for a book,’ Lewis began, ‘what if Merlin were to reappear in our modern era… why does no-one write the kind of books I want to read?’
‘Then maybe you should write them?’ Tolkien stated.
Lewis nodded, slowly – his eyes focussed beyond his two friends. ‘Maybe I should. Don’t you find that books only go so far? One reads so many books these days that tease, that suggest they’re going to supply something wholesome, fulfilling, but leave one empty! They don’t have the meatiness of the old sagas.’
‘But the old sagas have myth, they have that rich vein of gold on which to draw – most modern writing doesn’t go down beneath the topsoil; it’s surface; windblown, empty. Myth must be at the foundation of a good story – so it resonates, has a sense of depth – like this place…’ Tolkien said, lifting his hand to the window, ‘which is myth set in stone, rather than in letters and ink.’
‘The Boann myth?’ Lewis asked.
Tolkien shook his head.
‘That’s only part of it; that’s a myth for the hill and the river, but I don’t know about here, the circle itself. I don’t yet presume to imagine what went on in the circles themselves, what kind of ritual may have been performed here, nor why.’
Not, he imagined, drunken and lewd rich city men capering to the chant of Pan…
‘I think the medieval legends only help us so far: the Merlin myth may contain elements of older traditions but for the most-part it’s your usual folkloric fare – petrified giants, fighting dragons… if there is deeper myth then it lies well-hidden.’
‘And by deeper myth…?’ Lewis asked.
‘The perennial myth: of losing and finding – of the death and the eucatastrophe!’ Tolkien said, eyes blazing for a moment. ‘That, really, is the core of all great myths.’
‘And true myths…’ Lewis said, referring to a conversation years before when Tolkien and Dyson had persuaded him that the Christ story was exactly that – like the myths and legends he loved, but true.
‘Would you see the myths performed here as being linked to the cycle of the crops, orient and immortal?’ Lewis asked. ‘The circles themselves suggest so, I would say.’
‘Indeed Jack; I can imagine a seasonal ritual held every year here when the April showers have swelled the apple blossom and the crops begun to grow, which, until that time have been held fast in winters embrace – imprisoned in the dark earth, the realm of the dead or of the giants or titans - a treasure held in the dragon’s cave waiting for the killing of the guardian and the release.’
Lewis nodded.
‘There’s something in the return of the warmth and greenery that stirs one’s soul; I imagine it was celebrated from time immemorial, with many different names given to the dramatis personae. One wonders what prefiguration of Christ was worshipped here – do you think a maiden like Persephone, or a youth like Adonis?’
‘Your Sulis, Tollers…was it her? Celtic myth tells us little of dying and rising gods, it would seem – at least on my paltry readings.’
Barfield lent in ‘Charles Williams would know, I’m sure; that’s something you must remember to ask him.’
‘Hmm. I’m sure you’re right. He knows the old Cymric stories best… not that your own knowledge, Tollers, is any less.’ he said on seeing Tolkien’s face fall.
‘Remember that poem by Taliesin he enthused about – the Spoils of the underworld - that told of the prisoner in the underworld, imprisoned in Caer Sidi, the spiral castle, and rescued by Arthur who sails his ship Prydwen through its seven gates.’
‘Careful, you don’t want Petrie to hear that…’ Tolkien joked. ‘Prydwen means ‘white face’ – it’s the sun ship sailing the heavens, like the sun-ship sailing through the body of Nut, the night sky…and the seven gates could well be…’
‘…the seven heavenly bodies that lend their names to the days of the week…’ Lewis added.
‘Precisely. Petrie would no doubt decide this was an old solar Egyptian myth and that Taliesin was heir to the Priests of Amun-Re.’
‘I guess the spiral castle that holds the prisoner is the turning night sky, if the whole enterprise is a celestial one.’ Lewis considered.
‘Or a place from where the night sky is seen turning, so that it feels like it is you who are spinning.’
‘Which, in fact, we are – not that they knew that before Galileo.’ Barfield added. ‘So, the spiral castle might be the sacred temenos from which the turning of the heavens was observed.’
Tolkien nodded; ‘But aside from using the circle as an observatory, it’s hard to see how they might have been used in rites – it doesn’t explain what went on here, any more than the orientation of a church does! I said to Owen last night, Jack, that these sites, especially Stonehenge, remind one of Merlin’s observatory in the woods – where he was said to observe the stars through its 60 doors and windows. Strange that Merlin should also be associated with Marlborough. There must be a link between him, the stars, and these stones.’
Lewis thought a moment. ‘60 doors and windows; it sounds a draughty place.’ Lewis sipped his coffee in thought. ‘He was, of course, imprisoned in stone, wasn’t he – by the fairy woman Vivienne? Or was it Nimue?’
‘Yes, set under stone, or within a crystal cave or island of glass.’ Tolkien said.
‘A strange myth – but not unlike the prisoner in Caer Sidi – wasn’t one of the ‘caers’ of the poem Caer Wydr, the fortress of glass? Was he, I wonder, a form of Merlin, or vice versa?’
‘Remember that Merlin is to be sacrificed at the castle of Vortigern, as a foundation sacrifice, his blood cementing the stones and ensuring they wouldn’t
fall…that surely is the origin of his subterranean burial.’
‘Whereon he finds two dragons fighting…like the image on the font here in Avebury Church.’ Barfield reminded them.
‘It’s all so confusing and muddled,’ grumbled Tolkien, who despite loving the unpicking of myths was feeling the lack of a good college library to follow up his intuitions. ‘I’m sure there is a connection between this place and Merlin, but also, somehow, the Lady of the Waters ought to fit in… where is the Sulis or the Boann of the Merlin myth, the drowned river woman?
Lewis shrugged. We need to interrogate Fraser at Jesus College on our return. I don’t recall such a figure.’
Tolkien nodded, sadly. ‘Me neither. Me neither. But it doesn’t mean she’s not just hiding in plain sight.’
‘And Merlin,’ Lewis asked, ‘’where’s he hiding? In Silbury Hill?’
‘Not according to Petrie.’ Tolkien stated, ‘if the myth is true, he’s going to be under stone, not earth.’
Barfield chuckled ‘And today we’ll see those stones going back in place; let’s hope Keiller isn’t looking for some blood-sacrifice to keep them from falling again.’
A pale and dour faced C S Lewis was nursing his coffee cup in the corner of the Red Lion.
‘I am so very sorry, chaps. I wanted to wake well; I am improving, granted, but I feel I have jinxed our trip.’
‘Nonsense.’ replied Barfield. ‘Had we marched on yesterday we would have missed a great deal. Maybe once the stone is put up you’ll be feeling more chipper; I am counting on it. Tonight, I think, we should climb Silbury Hill and then tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, we can head to Calne and take the bus to Wells. We shall be in Glastonbury a day later than scheduled, that’s all, and we shall have plenty of time to make it to Porlock.’
‘I do hope so, Owen. I’m rather excited about climbing that hill; I do get the feeling that it wasn’t built to be looked at, but to be climbed. Who is that fellow with Tollers?’
Barfield looked over his shoulder to where Tolkien stood at the bar with a short man in a white collar-less shirt and a cloth cap.
‘I have no idea. I used to think Tollers aloof, but I now see I was wrong; distant, yes, often lost in his own thoughts, but not aloof.’
Barfield refilled Lewis’s coffee cup.
‘I do wish you lived in Oxford, Owen. I’ll never understand why you didn’t pursue an academic career.’
‘Oh, I question it, too, Jack, believe me – I guess it wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t feel I had much choice – family pressures, as you know. But don’t think of me as despairing – when I’m working I do often enjoy it; it’s more a problem when I’m here – with you; then I wish I could write and spend my days on my ideas… but the grass is always greener! You are forever complaining about how little time you get to research, how you have too many tutorials, or essays to mark – of the faculty’s bureaucracy. The picture you paint is at odds with my ideal Oxford, which is what I really yearn for, an ideal.’
Barfield sat in silence, his face shadowing a gamut of internal conflicts.
‘And besides I can write; I have no less time than you or Tollers for that; and what I write no man can threaten to end my tenure if it wonders far from current academic thinking.’
Lewis smiled and nodded. ‘Indeed, Owen. I must say I couldn’t imagine quite what department we would have to shoe-horn you into – English? Philosophy? Religion? Each would be some procrustean bed that it would pain you to lie upon.’
Barfield smiled. ‘Yes, I’m a Romantic in an age when that is frowned upon. Better, then, to weather the stormy seas of my ideas alone, far from the shore, than be smashed to pieces trying to find a safe haven.’
‘Ha! I like that! I’ve never thought of academia as a haven; maybe some isolated cove, its watering places full of washed up old salts!’
‘Speak for yourself’ said Tolkien, sitting himself down beside Barfield. ‘I’ve been speaking to one of the labourers; apparently the last stone took three days to erect, so don’t be expecting to see anything finished today.’
‘Three days?!’ said Lewis. ‘Where’s Merlin when you need him?’
Tolkien and Barfield exchanged a look and laughed.
‘We were saying the exact same thing yesterday,’ Tolkien explained.
‘Now there’s an idea for a book,’ Lewis began, ‘what if Merlin were to reappear in our modern era… why does no-one write the kind of books I want to read?’
‘Then maybe you should write them?’ Tolkien stated.
Lewis nodded, slowly – his eyes focussed beyond his two friends. ‘Maybe I should. Don’t you find that books only go so far? One reads so many books these days that tease, that suggest they’re going to supply something wholesome, fulfilling, but leave one empty! They don’t have the meatiness of the old sagas.’
‘But the old sagas have myth, they have that rich vein of gold on which to draw – most modern writing doesn’t go down beneath the topsoil; it’s surface; windblown, empty. Myth must be at the foundation of a good story – so it resonates, has a sense of depth – like this place…’ Tolkien said, lifting his hand to the window, ‘which is myth set in stone, rather than in letters and ink.’
‘The Boann myth?’ Lewis asked.
Tolkien shook his head.
‘That’s only part of it; that’s a myth for the hill and the river, but I don’t know about here, the circle itself. I don’t yet presume to imagine what went on in the circles themselves, what kind of ritual may have been performed here, nor why.’
Not, he imagined, drunken and lewd rich city men capering to the chant of Pan…
‘I think the medieval legends only help us so far: the Merlin myth may contain elements of older traditions but for the most-part it’s your usual folkloric fare – petrified giants, fighting dragons… if there is deeper myth then it lies well-hidden.’
‘And by deeper myth…?’ Lewis asked.
‘The perennial myth: of losing and finding – of the death and the eucatastrophe!’ Tolkien said, eyes blazing for a moment. ‘That, really, is the core of all great myths.’
‘And true myths…’ Lewis said, referring to a conversation years before when Tolkien and Dyson had persuaded him that the Christ story was exactly that – like the myths and legends he loved, but true.
‘Would you see the myths performed here as being linked to the cycle of the crops, orient and immortal?’ Lewis asked. ‘The circles themselves suggest so, I would say.’
‘Indeed Jack; I can imagine a seasonal ritual held every year here when the April showers have swelled the apple blossom and the crops begun to grow, which, until that time have been held fast in winters embrace – imprisoned in the dark earth, the realm of the dead or of the giants or titans - a treasure held in the dragon’s cave waiting for the killing of the guardian and the release.’
Lewis nodded.
‘There’s something in the return of the warmth and greenery that stirs one’s soul; I imagine it was celebrated from time immemorial, with many different names given to the dramatis personae. One wonders what prefiguration of Christ was worshipped here – do you think a maiden like Persephone, or a youth like Adonis?’
‘Your Sulis, Tollers…was it her? Celtic myth tells us little of dying and rising gods, it would seem – at least on my paltry readings.’
Barfield lent in ‘Charles Williams would know, I’m sure; that’s something you must remember to ask him.’
‘Hmm. I’m sure you’re right. He knows the old Cymric stories best… not that your own knowledge, Tollers, is any less.’ he said on seeing Tolkien’s face fall.
‘Remember that poem by Taliesin he enthused about – the Spoils of the underworld - that told of the prisoner in the underworld, imprisoned in Caer Sidi, the spiral castle, and rescued by Arthur who sails his ship Prydwen through its seven gates.’
‘Careful, you don’t want Petrie to hear that…’ Tolkien joked. ‘Prydwen means ‘white face’ – it’s the sun ship sailing the heavens, like the sun-ship sailing through the body of Nut, the night sky…and the seven gates could well be…’
‘…the seven heavenly bodies that lend their names to the days of the week…’ Lewis added.
‘Precisely. Petrie would no doubt decide this was an old solar Egyptian myth and that Taliesin was heir to the Priests of Amun-Re.’
‘I guess the spiral castle that holds the prisoner is the turning night sky, if the whole enterprise is a celestial one.’ Lewis considered.
‘Or a place from where the night sky is seen turning, so that it feels like it is you who are spinning.’
‘Which, in fact, we are – not that they knew that before Galileo.’ Barfield added. ‘So, the spiral castle might be the sacred temenos from which the turning of the heavens was observed.’
Tolkien nodded; ‘But aside from using the circle as an observatory, it’s hard to see how they might have been used in rites – it doesn’t explain what went on here, any more than the orientation of a church does! I said to Owen last night, Jack, that these sites, especially Stonehenge, remind one of Merlin’s observatory in the woods – where he was said to observe the stars through its 60 doors and windows. Strange that Merlin should also be associated with Marlborough. There must be a link between him, the stars, and these stones.’
Lewis thought a moment. ‘60 doors and windows; it sounds a draughty place.’ Lewis sipped his coffee in thought. ‘He was, of course, imprisoned in stone, wasn’t he – by the fairy woman Vivienne? Or was it Nimue?’
‘Yes, set under stone, or within a crystal cave or island of glass.’ Tolkien said.
‘A strange myth – but not unlike the prisoner in Caer Sidi – wasn’t one of the ‘caers’ of the poem Caer Wydr, the fortress of glass? Was he, I wonder, a form of Merlin, or vice versa?’
‘Remember that Merlin is to be sacrificed at the castle of Vortigern, as a foundation sacrifice, his blood cementing the stones and ensuring they wouldn’t
fall…that surely is the origin of his subterranean burial.’
‘Whereon he finds two dragons fighting…like the image on the font here in Avebury Church.’ Barfield reminded them.
‘It’s all so confusing and muddled,’ grumbled Tolkien, who despite loving the unpicking of myths was feeling the lack of a good college library to follow up his intuitions. ‘I’m sure there is a connection between this place and Merlin, but also, somehow, the Lady of the Waters ought to fit in… where is the Sulis or the Boann of the Merlin myth, the drowned river woman?
Lewis shrugged. We need to interrogate Fraser at Jesus College on our return. I don’t recall such a figure.’
Tolkien nodded, sadly. ‘Me neither. Me neither. But it doesn’t mean she’s not just hiding in plain sight.’
‘And Merlin,’ Lewis asked, ‘’where’s he hiding? In Silbury Hill?’
‘Not according to Petrie.’ Tolkien stated, ‘if the myth is true, he’s going to be under stone, not earth.’
Barfield chuckled ‘And today we’ll see those stones going back in place; let’s hope Keiller isn’t looking for some blood-sacrifice to keep them from falling again.’