King Arthur/fr

Les chevaliers du roi Arthur, réunis autour de la Table ronde pour célébrer la Pentecôte, ont une vision du Saint Graal.

Le « roi d'autrefois et de demain », roi des Bretons au Ve ou VIe siècle et gourou de l'école mystique de Camelot, incarnation d'El Morya. Il chassa les envahisseurs saxons de Grande-Bretagne, unifia le royaume et établit l'ordre des Chevaliers de la Table ronde, dont le code de chevalerie les obligeait à défendre les sans défense contre les méchants et les malfaiteurs et à défendre les idéaux de pureté, de vérité, de miséricorde, de fidélité et de générosité.

Légendes arthuriennes

Entre le XIe et le XIVe siècle, les légendes arthuriennes ont atteint leur apogée. Les ménestrels et les troubadours ont fait connaître la renommée d'Arthur dans toute l'Europe. Les historiens ont raconté ses exploits héroïques en prose, les poètes en vers, tandis que les artistes ont décoré les salles, les tapisseries et les vitraux de nombreux châteaux avec des scènes représentant les aventures du roi Arthur et des chevaliers et dames de la Table ronde.

L'histoire d'Arthur telle qu'elle est présentée dans « La Mort d'Arthur » de Sir Thomas Malory est considérée comme un chef-d'œuvre. Malory a écrit son grand ouvrage derrière les barreaux pendant la guerre des Deux-Roses (1455-1486). Ce livre a ravivé un vif intérêt pour la vie d'Arthur, ses nobles exploits et ceux de ses chevaliers.

Par coïncidence, l'année où le livre de Malory fut publié, Henri VII, le nouveau roi d'Angleterre, annonça qu'il était lui-même un descendant du roi Arthur. Il déclara que son fils, qu'il avait prénommé Arthur, était l'accomplissement de la prophétie de Merlin : Arthur était revenu pour régner sur l'Angleterre.

Le regain d'intérêt pour Arthur et sa cour de Camelot fut ensuite suscité par la publication des « Idylls of the King » (Les Idylles du roi) d'Alfred Lord Tennyson en 1842. L'œuvre connut un tel succès dans tout le monde anglophone qu'en 1890, elle était enseignée dans toutes les écoles publiques des États-Unis.

Le roi Arthur historique

On dit que le roi Arthur historique a vécu vers 500 A.D, et qu'il aurait été le chef des Bretons dans leurs combats contre les rois anglo-saxons envahisseurs. Malory et Tennyson rapportent tous deux qu'il a combattu et vaincu douze rois. Arthur était un chef si sage et a accompli tant d'actes de bravoure qu'il est devenu un héros éternel pour ses compatriotes.

Certaines preuves historiques de la vie d'Arthur proviennent de l'abbaye de Glastonbury. Certains prêtres qui y officiaient au VIe siècle ont conservé une trace de la réception des corps exhumés du roi Arthur et de sa reine, Guenièvre. Les corps du couple royal ont été enterrés sous le maître-autel de l'église.

Selon le récit de Giraldus Cambrensis, qui était présent lorsque la tombe fut ouverte sur ordre d'Henri II vers 1150, celle-ci contenait les ossements et l'épée d'Excalibur du roi Arthur. Elle contenait également une croix de plomb sur laquelle était gravée l'inscription suivante : « Ici repose le célèbre roi Arthur, sur l'île d'Avalon. »

La naissance d'Arthur

Selon Malory, Arthur est né d'Uther Pendragon, « roi de toute l'Angleterre », et de la noble reine Igraine, à la demande de Merlin, étant entendu que l'enfant serait remis à Merlin dès sa naissance. C'est ainsi que le petit nouveau-né, enveloppé dans un tissu d'or, fut amené au « pauvre homme » à la poterne du château et confié à Sir Ector, dont la femme l'allaita. Merlin fit appel à un saint homme pour le baptiser et donna à l'enfant le nom d'Arthur.

En l'espace de deux ans, alors que le roi Uther était gravement malade, ses ennemis « livrèrent une grande bataille contre ses hommes et tuèrent nombre de ses sujets ». Merlin conseilla au roi de se rendre sur le champ de bataille sur une civière, car « si votre personne s'y trouve... alors vous remporterez la victoire ». C'est ainsi qu'à St Albans, les hommes d'Uther vainquirent la « grande armée du Nord ».

Le roi mourant retourna à Londres, où Merlin convoqua tous les barons du royaume d'Uther afin que le roi puisse désigner son héritier. Et Merlin dit à haute voix : « Votre fils Arthur sera-t-il roi après vous ? » Et Uther répondit : « Je lui donne la bénédiction de Dieu et la mienne... » puis il rendit son dernier souffle.

Le roi Arthur recevant Excalibur, N. C. Wyeth

L'épée dans la pierre

The land of England stood then “in jeopardy a long while,” for many rose up attempting to capture the crown by force. So Merlin went before the Archbishop of Canterbury and counseled him to call all the lords of the realm to London at Christmas in order that Jesus, born King of Kings, might come to show who should rule England.

By the alchemy of the Christ consciousness, Merlin caused the sword and the stone to appear in the churchyard of Canterbury cathedral with these words: “Whosoever pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England.” By the trial of the sword—representing the power of the soul that is free from the bondage of attachment to things material symbolized by the stone and anvil—Arthur proved his kingship.

The trial of the sword represents the power of the soul that is free from the bondage of attachment to things material, symbolized by the stone and anvil. It is an illustration of the divine right of kings—he who has the greatest attainment of the Christ consciousness has the right to rule. Knights and warriors, kings and noblemen gathered from throughout the western world, but Arthur alone, a lad of twelve, could free the sacred sword. He was crowned King of England by the Bishop of Canterbury.

Thereafter, Merlin remained at Arthur’s side as counselor and friend. The young king once would have died by the sword of mighty Pellinore had not Merlin appeared and “cast an enchantment” upon the knight. It was because Arthur’s sword was smitten in two during that fierce joust that Merlin and Arthur rode to the lake where they miraculously beheld rising from the water the arm of the Lady of the Lake holding the magnificent sword Excalibur. Merlin later counseled him, “Look ye keep well the scabbard of Excalibur for ye shall lose no blood while ye have the scabbard upon you”—a prediction well fulfilled in future years.

It was Merlin who went before King Leodegrance to announce the desire of Arthur to wed his daughter Guinevere. He returned triumphantly to Camelot with Lady Guinevere and the Round Table, a gift to Leodegrance from Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon.

The Marriage of King Arthur, Lancelot Speed

Camelot

At Camelot, King Arthur called together men and women of the highest attainment from throughout the realm and formed the Order of the Knights of the Round Table. Their raison d’être: the quest for the Holy Grail, the defense of the Mother principle, eternal brotherhood under the Eternal Father, the restoration of Christ’s kingdom on earth, the protection of the flame of the Holy Spirit in the community of Arthur’s court and its extension throughout Britain, and the ennoblement of the soul through devotion to the Christ in individualized community action.

The knights of the Round Table and the ladies of the court at Camelot were initiates of a mystery school of the Great White Brotherhood. In the tradition of the Pythagorean school at Crotona, the Essene community at Qumran, the mandala of Christ and his apostles, as well as the guilds of medieval Europe that would succeed them, the knights and ladies guarded the inner truths of the Brotherhood revealed to them by Merlin. The jousting and competition of the knights in their tournaments was the measuring of levels of inner soul attainment.

The devotion of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere in their soul relationship of guru and chela was the focus of the flame of the Father-Mother God in the center of the court. The coming of Launcelot du Lac, also a chela of Arthur, to the Order of the Knights of the Round Table was the drawing together of the three persons of the Trinity, the threefold flame in the heart of Camelot. The soul relationship of Launcelot and Guinevere was that of twin flames. Together Arthur, Guinevere, and Launcelot laid the foundation of the Christian/Piscean dispensation for the English-speaking peoples.

Arthur led his knights in the quest for the Holy Grail, the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper. After his ascension, the Grail cup was deposited in a well at Glastonbury by a group of disciples who, together with Mary the Mother and Joseph of Arimathea, journeyed by boat from the Holy Land to establish shrines on the European continent and in the British Isles for the expansion of western Christendom during the next two-thousand-year cycle.

Thus El Morya, anointed by God (through Merlin, the reincarnated Prophet Samuel, anointer of kings and prophets unto the people Israel), attuned with the Grail focus and by his noble ideals and spiritual genius, built the platform for the dissemination of the Christic light throughout the globe wherever the British went forth by its impetus to discover and settle new worlds. The inner significance of the knight initiates of the brotherhood of the quest was seeking and finding the Christ consciousness through the law of self-disciplined service to life.

The Death of King Arthur, John Garrick (1862)

Arthur’s passing

Among the knights of the Round Table, Sir Modred (said to have been Arthur’s son sired prior to his marriage) harbored intense jealousy and hatred for the king. Knowing that the military strength of Arthur was unsurpassed, he contacted the sorceress, Morgana le Fay, and together Modred and Morgana used the subtle entrapments of witchcraft, treachery, and intrigue to destroy the sacred trust of king, queen, and knights of the Round Table. In a war that resulted from the denial of a Roman demand for tribute, Arthur would have conquered Rome itself and the entire empire if he had not been called back to England where Modred had usurped the throne and imprisoned Queen Guinevere in the Tower of London. In the fierce Battle of Camlam that followed, Arthur slew Modred but was mortally wounded.

According to Arthurian legends, he was placed on a barge with three queens which drifted toward Avalon, an “island valley,” where, as Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote in Idylls of the King, “falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies deep-meadow’d, happy, fair with orchard lawns and bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea.” Some accounts say that Arthur would be healed of his “grievous wound” at Avalon and would return to rule over his people.

Sir Thomas Malory writes in Le Morte d’Arthur:

Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of Our Lord Jesu [withdrawn] into another place; and men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the holy cross. I will not say that it shall be so, but rather I will say, here in this world he changed his life. But many men say that there is written upon his tomb this verse: Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus [Here lies Arthur, the once and future king].

The return of Arthur

Many Englishmen believed that Arthur never died. He was for them a sort of guardian angel, watching over his people from his home on the Isle of Avalon. In times of acute crisis, they believed Arthur would return to lead England to victory.

We also believe that the saint who became Thomas Becket and Thomas More was the reincarnated soul of Arthur, and that he, now ascended, is our own Guru and teacher who shows us the way of the will of God according to the path of Christ.

The Heart of the Inner Retreat is as “Avalon” where chelas of El Morya retreat in summer to be healed of the blows of karmic adversity affecting body, mind and soul. And the master himself takes refuge in this Western Shamballa—Gautama Buddha’s etheric/physical retreat in the West, an extension of his retreat over the Gobi Desert, which is centered over “the Heart” of this island valley.

See also

Holy Grail

Excalibur

Sources

El Morya, The Chela and the Path: Keys to Soul Mastery in the Aquarian Age

Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 31, no. 34, July 2, 1988.

Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 28, no. 51, December 22, 1985.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, May 22, 1983.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, April 21, 1984.