Lions, Wounds, and the Royal Bed: Gawan, Lancelot, and Arthur as Archetypal Saviors of the Mystery Traditions

By John Knight Lundwall

The story of King Arthur and his round table of loyal knights is one of the most well known tales in western culture. A valiant and noble knight who pulls a sword from a stone and establishes a free society known as Camelot has been told in various forms across the centuries. This legend captures the imagination of those who love to hear tales of justice and truth prevailing in dark times. Less known about this tale is the academic wrangling over its historical roots. Did Arthur really exist? And if so, from whence and where did he arise? Rodney Castleden writes in King Arthur: Truth Behind the Legend, “The Arthurian saga is nevertheless much more than a hotchpotch of tales made up by medieval minstrels, and it is essential to try to separate the Arthur of the romances [...] from the historical Arthur–the dark age warrior on whom all the rest of the superstructure was built” (1). Castleden rummages through old documents, archaeology, and mythology in an attempt to reconstruct a historical figure. N. J. Higham, on the other hand, debunks a historical interpretation by asserting that the histories and stories were medieval inventions serving political purposes: “The character of Arthur was developed by two British writers,” he asserts, “to establish particular perceptions of their own people within insular history, for specific and contemporary purposes” (218).

In Harold Bayley’s eclectic work The Lost Language of Symbolism, Bayley recounts part of the local and geographic legend of Arthur:

Within the city of Edinburgh [...] is a famous Lion Rock known alternatively as “Arthur’s Seat”; and five miles south of Brecon in North Wales rise two mountain-peaks designated “Arthur’s Chair.” The semi-fabulous Arthur or Arturius, whose mystic land was Lyonesse and whose seat was Caerleon, was identified with Arctus, the Great Bear, and the legends of Arthur of Britain preserve many relics of prehistoric theology. (Vol II 9-10, italics his)

Whatever the truth behind a historical “dark age warrior” who actually lived, breathed, and created Britain, the tale of Arthur clearly has very ancient roots in mythic cosmology and ritual; making the claim for a historical Arthur less relevant than the archetypal idea of salvation which this mythic figure forges within its ancient context.

It is a curiosity that Arthur, as indicated by Bayley, is clearly associated with the land of the Lion. The place names of Lyonesse and Caerleon are implicit in this connection. Many medieval coats of arms bear the lion as a standard, as the lion has always represented royalty and kingship. The Arthurian lion which interests us, however, emerges from the tales recounted in Wolfram Von Eschenbach’s Parzival and Chrétien De Troyes’ The Knight of the Cart. In each of these tales the imagery of the lion is connected with a series of details which are surely linked to prehistoric theology dealing with the ascent of the soul in the after life.

In Eschenbach’s Parzival the lordly knight Gawan is entreated to perform a terrible task. He must enter into an enchanted, other-worldly castle and there perform a series of feats, which, until his arrival, no one had before survived. To succeed meant freeing the queen and her attendants who were trapped in the castle. To fail meant death. Surprisingly, the initial task is a bizarre scene where Gawan comes to a very large room with such a highly polished floor that he could barely traverse it, “The pavement was so glassy that Gawan could hardly find purchase for his feet” (286). In the midst of this room was a large, royal bed whose four posts rested upon ruby disks, like casters, causing the bed to slide and move across the floor. Gawan’s task is to literally tame this bed, and thus he jumps in its center and holds on for dear life as the bed flies from one end of the room to the other attempting to knock him off. So forcefully does this royal bed fling itself into the walls that the sound of the impacts are like thunder; such a terrible noise is produced as to nearly overcome the brave knight. Just so, the bed relents from its charges and plants itself in the square middle of the room where 500 sling stones are hurled at Gawan from pre-positioned catapults, followed by 500 bolts from crossbows. Gawan uses his large shield to protect himself but is wounded nonetheless. Finally, a door bursts open and in pounces a lion, “tall as a horse,” mauling the hero. With heroic strength he is barely able to defeat this kingly creature with his sword.

Having overcome all these trials Gawan frees the royal ladies within the castle, who in turn bind all of his wounds and nurse him back to health. Retiring into the heart of the castle Gawan comes upon a strange scene: “At one side of the Palace a spiral staircase, vaulted and moderately broad, ascended through the whole height of the Palace and beyond. It carried a splendid Pillar not made of rotten wood but strong and burnished [...]” (297). Moreover, the spiral stair case ascends into a dome of stain-glass and jeweled light, as if it were a paradisaical realm, an easy connection as the pillar is stated to ascend “the whole height of the Palace and beyond.” This pillar is no ordinary pillar. Thus it is not surprising that its surface is filled with moving images showing lands and people in the surrounding world (297).

The imagery is clear: Gawan has entered the axis-mundi of another land altogether. This realm is represented by the glorious pillar surrounded by a spiraling path, which in turn are representations of the pole-axis of a celestial order. John O’Neill shows in his work The Night of the Gods, that the ancient pillars and poles used in sacred architecture were models of entering into such celestial realms, and thus these sacred pillars in turn were equated with the gates of heaven.

Of course pulai, gates, mountain-passes, straits; pulis, small door; pulos, same as pulê; and pulôn, hall, porch, gate, door, are all closely related words; and it may be added that the name Πυλαια for the AmphiKtionic council of the Πυλαι of ThermoPulai must have taken their name religiously from the Gate [...]. This opens up a long vista of other gods of the gates [...]. this is why Athene was called πυλότις and Demeter πυλαια and πυλαϕόρα. (Vol I 253)

Just so, in Chrétien De Troyes’ The Knight of the Cart Lancelot is also sent on a quest to free Queen Guinevere from a royal tower in an enchanted land. The description of Lancelot’s entry into this land must be noted:

At the foot of that very dangerous bridge they dismounted and saw the treacherous water, black and roaring, swift and swirling–as horrifying and frightening as if it were the Devil’s stream. [...] the bridge across the cold waters was a sharp and gleaming sword–but the sword was strong and stiff and as long as two lances. On either side were large tree-stumps into which the sword was fixed. [...] What caused the two knights who accompanied the third to be most uneasy, however, was that they were convinced that there were two lions, or two leopards, tethered to a large rock at the other end of the bridge. The water and the bridge and the lions put such fear into them that they trembled. (244-245)

This imagery can be no other than an underworld descent. The crossing of roaring, black waters proves the case, as in nearly every mythologic tradition such waters are to be crossed to enter into the next world. Anthon’s Classical Dictionary recounts the long history of the Greek Styx, which was always associated with the color black or by its gloomy and turbulent waters (1269), and in the mystery religions, fording a place of waters and a place of fire was a common theme (Lundwall 8-9). Of particular interest is the Sword Bridge across which Lancelot must tread. In doing so he wounds his hands and feet (246).

This is clearly an allusion to Christ, whose hands and feet are pierced upon the cross in his own descent to the underworld. Of more important note, however, is the inflicting of wounds upon Lancelot’s hands and feet ties this scene with an earlier incident where Lancelot adjourns in a castle where there are three beds, the largest of which he is warned against sleeping in. Because it is the largest, indeed, an image of the royal bed, Lancelot retires in it. During the night a flaming spear is thrust from the ceiling as a ward against any who would use this bed, piercing Lancelot in his side and setting the bed ablaze (213-214). So it is these connections pile up with uncanny synchronicity. Here we have then, the five wounds of Christian theology inflicted upon Lancelot while he is crossing a place of water (the Sword Bridge) and of fire (the flaming spear and the royal bed) which water and fire aspects were used in the mystery traditions.

Moreover, at these key crossings there lies a royal bed and gaurdian lions. All this must be faced in order to save the royal queen from a foreign tower (the underworld axis/pillar). These images are a near duplicate of Eschenbach’s tale where Gawan enters another world (the castle of the enchanted pillar) and must free the royal queen and her servants; in order to accomplish this he retires to a royal bed wherein he is wounded, and then faces a monstrous, guardian lion.

As briefly indicated, the details of Lancelot’s trials are connected with the old mystery traditions. Bayley insists that so much of the Arthurian legend and symbology emerges from prehistoric religion, or, that is, from the oldest religions in Britain and beyond. This paper cannot begin to encompass a historical argument as to where and when these images might first emerge. The Saxons, Celts, and Romans each brought with them their own forms of worship, similar in many ways. These traditions and rituals mixed with indigenous religion and over the centuries Arthurian tales became holders of some of the old teachings and rites. This at least is Jesse L. Weston’s claim in her erudite study From Ritual to Romance. In her review the Grail legends of Arthur descend from liturgy of the mystery cults: “Some years ago, when fresh from the study of Sir J. G. Frazer's epoch-making work, The Golden Bough, I was struck by the resemblance existing between certain features of the Grail story, and characteristic details of the Nature Cults described” (4). When examining the details thus far described in our own overview–an enchanted land or entrance into the underworld, a royal bed, a guardian lion, saving of royalty in feminine form–I assert that just such imagery does originate in the pagan cults whose liturgy was highly cosmological and thus whose imagery holds profound meaning where we least expect it.

It is not surprising, for example, to find that in ancient ritual religions all over the globe mystery initiates were overtly associated with a lion. Gerald Massey recounts some African traditions:

“My lord the lion” is an African expression used by the Kaffirs and others in speaking of the lordly animal, also of the chief as lion-lord. [...] Again, the lion of Motoko is a totem with the Kaffirs in the neighbourhood of Fort Salisbury, Mashonaland. They have a priest of the lion-god called the Mondoro, who is venerated as a sort of spirit in lion shape. Sacrifices are offered annually to the lion-god at the Zimbabwe of Mashonaland; and it is held by the natives that all true men pass into the lion form at death, precisely the same as it is with the Manes in the Egyptian Ritual, who exclaims, on living a second time, “I am the lord in lion form.” (251-252)

Authors such as Manly Hall show that mystery initiates in Egypt wore lion and leopard skins (91) while R. S. Clymer reflects upon the Egyptian funerary texts where Isis is seen taking the deceased Osiris by the hand in the “lion’s grip” and raising him in an act of resurrection from the lion’s couch (50). Before we address the couch it must be realized that lions in the mystery traditions were always guardians of the gate of the underworld. So it is in many ritual paths there is literally a lion’s gate, such as we find in Mycenae in Greece, or at the temple of Demeter at Eleusis, or in Persepolis in ancient Persia. Lion guardians stood as sentinels at both Chinese and Japanese temples. To this we might add the plumed jaguar heads which circumference the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl in Teotihuacan (see Appendix, figs. 1-6). In fact, the tradition of guardian lions at the pillar gate of the next world is sustained today as the cement lions still manufactured as garden statuary and nearly always placed one either side of a door, drive, or gate.

Even as lions are guardians, so it is in ancient myth there are heros who confront the guardians and are given power over them, inasmuch as they are allowed to enter the domain of the lion. Surely the Greek myth of Heracles comes to mind, as he faces his first of twelve terrible tasks which is to defeat the Nemean Lion. Robert Graves recounts one tradition where this fierce, magical creature was born of Selene (a Moon goddess) who bore and dropped it “to earth on Mount Tretus near Nemea, beside a two-mouthed cave [...]” (426). Here we have then a lion at the underworld gate, a relation not lost on the fact that Heracles must find the Nemean Lion, which is a difficult task as the Lion has slain all who have come close to its domain. Our Greek hero is forced to ask Apesantus directions. Ironically, Apesantus is dead, slain by the Nemean Lion (427). Yet, who better to ask directions to the gate of the dead than by one of the dead? Thus it is that the Nemean Lion and the underworld are firmly linked.

As the myth goes, the great Heracles is unable to slay the lion with any weapon. Alas, he chases it within one of the caves and wrestles it with his bare hands. In this manner does Heracles kill the lion. Accomplishing this task our hero skins the beast and wears his mane as a royal emblem. Heracles is not the only mythic hero to do battle with the guardian lion, and in many other cases the mythic hero must conquer the lion without a weapon. Joseph Campbell shows numerous seals and engravings in his Creative Mythology of such figures he terms “the Queller of Beasts” (116-118; see Appendix, figs. 10-13). In each figure shown the one who must overcome the beasts, which are always lions, does so with his bare hands. Nor can we ignore Oedipus, another Greek hero, who must overcome a lion-formed sphinx at the gate of Thebes. (This is the Greek Thebes but the connection with the dead is clear.) This lion-sphinx, like the Nemean Lion, has slain all who have come in her path, and only Oedipus can defeat her, not with a sword or spear, but by solving her riddle.

The story of Oedipus returns us again to ancient Egypt and to the writings of Iamblichus, the founder of the Syrian school of Neoplatonism. In a document ascribed to Iamblichus (fourth century C.E.) titled An Egyptian Initiation, translated by Jean-Baptiste Pitois and recounted by Paul LaViolette, ancient neophytes of the Egyptian mystery teaching were blindfolded and led to the base of the great lion-Sphinx at Gaza. According to this document there was a secret door at the base of the Sphinx where the neophyte was permitted to enter into a labyrinth of tunnels and passageways which led to the Great Pyramid. The initiate had to pass many trials, including “ordeals by fire, water, and darkness” (130). How the initiate overcame these trials is unknown, but it was without sword or weapon. Like Heracles, or the Queller of Beasts, or Oedipus, the Egyptian initiate had to enter the lion’s domain and conquer it by the powers within himself. Thus we read in the seventeenth chapter of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, “I have come into this land, I have made use of my feet, for I am Atum, I am in my city. Get back, O Lion, bright of mouth and shining of head; retreat because of my strength, take care, O you who are invisible, do not await me, for I am Isis” (Faulkner trans. Plate 10).

In the tale of Oedipus we find that this great hero slays the lion-sphinx but is himself caught up in the riddle of her domain. Oedipus has slain his father and has taken his own mother to the royal bed where she conceives. Attempting to find a cure for the perils that inflict Thebes, Oedipus discovers that he is the murder of his father and the lover of his own mother. In an act of shameful realization Oedipus blinds himself with his wife’s broaches. In Sophocles recounting this is where the tragic play Oedipus Tyrannus ends–with Oedipus blinded. But there is reason to this madness. Throughout the play Oedipus faces his trials with his physical eyes, which is another way of saying with the eyes of this world. But these ocular receptors are never sufficient for the great mysteries. Only when Oedipus discovers the real truth of his life does he blind his physical eyes because his inner eye has been awakened. This is the whole point of blindfolding a mystery initiate, for to lead by the eye of the world only ends in calamity, but to see with the inner eye of the initiated is to see the universe as it really is. The opening of the inner eye is the force without weapon which defeats the guardian lion. Even so, Sophocles continues his tale in Oedipus at Colonus. This fact O’Neill picks up: “[Oedipus] lived and died where the profane put not their foot, at the Universe-pillar, at Colone, Κολωνή (= hill) and Κολωνίϛ, which we shall take the liberty of connecting with κολοσσὸϛ, columen, and columna [...]” (153). Oedipus, passing the trial of the lion-sphinx and mating on the royal bed only by which his inner eye is awakened, is led by the royal feminine Antigone, his daughter, to another land of the column or pillar, just as Gawan and Lancelot enter the very same land, passing similar trials.

Before leaving this topic it should be noted that the sphinx figure dominates ancient, liturgic religion of the Near East. The Greek sphinx form which Oedipus defeats is similarly found in the Babylonian mystery religions at Persepolis, and again in the mysteries of Mithras (see Appendix, figs. 7-9). Nor can we ignore the Semitic tradition of the guardian of the other-world pillar/column, the Tree of Life, by Cherubim and the flaming sword (Genesis 3:24); it is this cherubim which is described in Ezekiel 1: 2-10 as the multi-formed sphinx. To re-enter into this land of paradise is to pass the lion-guardian at the gate. For this reason the cherubim were placed on either side of the portal of the Holy of Holies in Moses’s wilderness temple and Solomon’s temple. Finally, another fourth century C.E. Neoplatonist by the name of Proclus identifies Orpheus, the pan-Hellenic figure which brought the mystery religions to Greece, as a god imaged as the lion-sphinx (Mead 109), as well as Pan, the Greek All-Father of later times (Mead 109).

One of the chief images in the Arthurian legends cited is that of the royal bed. Both Gawan and Lancelot face a terrible challenge upon such a bed. Gawan is wounded on the royal bed, after which he immediately faces the portal lion. Lancelot is pierced by a flaming spear upon the royal bed, and by this scene he is connected with the Sword Bridge and its further wounds and guardian lions. Lions, wounds, and the royal bed seem to come together as a set, and we wonder how this strange imagery is related? Of course, we have already let slip the key to the interpretation. Oedipus too is wounded in the chamber of the royal bed after he passes the guardian lion. By doing so Oedipus sees with the inner eye for the first time, and is brought to a new life and a new place of the pillar. Plutarch relates a very odd story of the mother of the royal Pericles who herself came from noble lineage. Her husband was Xanthippus, who defeated the king of Persia at the battle of Mycale, and her grandfather, Clisthenes, drove out the sons of Pisistratus and restored order, laws, and a model government to his country. Plutarch writes, “[Pericles’] mother, being near her time, fancied in a dream that she was brought to a bed of a lion, and a few days after was delivered of Pericles, in other respects perfectly formed, [...]” (Gospelink CD Rom). Plutarch continues to recount the great reign of Pericles, but the detail which interests us is that the mother of Pericles births a prince on the bed of a lion. Of course, she too is wounded on this bed, her maternal blood gushing in the anguishing pain of delivery– the end result of which is a new birth, a new creation, a new life–itself a model of a new pillar.

Again, it is in Egyptian imagery that these connections coalesce, for as Clymer already observed it is Isis, who binds the wounds of Osiris upon the royal, lion couch, clutching him in the lion’s grip and lifting him up out of death and into life and resurrection. In the Egyptian ritual the deceased was placed on a table, always called the lion couch or lion bed, where the deceased was embalmed, anointed, and consecrated for the next life. This was an act of re-birth, and even the Book of the Dead found with the entombed has been mislabeled, for it gives itself its own title variously translated as The Book of Going Forth by Day, the Book of the Master of the Hidden Places. Thus, the book, its ritual, and its embalming, lion bed are all instruments of resurrection and initiation. Noticeably, part of the embalming process included striking the corpse with ritual blows inflicting ritual wounds. The classicist Hugh Nibley wrties:

As we have noted elsewhere, the Egyptian embalming-table was constructed exactly like an altar of sacrifice [...] for the embalming rites included ritual blows inflicted on the corpse in imitation of the sacrificial death of Osiris (Era 72, July 1969, pp. 102f). Indeed, Kees notes that in this phase of the rites the "royal bed" is also the royal birthplace, the throne of coronation with its lion-heads, the bier of the King's father, and, as the mskhn.t, the divine mother and nurse, both Uto and Nekhbet (ibid., pp. 25, 27f); for the mskhn.t is also the cosmic instrument of resurrection used in the Opening of the Mouth as well as a delivery-stool for use at birth and rebirth. Thus the lion-couch is more than ever the supreme coincidentia oppositorum of death and birth. With the fall of Seth (who thereby becomes the victim in the place of Horus—i.e., his substitute), Horus "becomes mighty through the injuries which he received" (W. Barta, Ex Or. Lux, 20:48). (215)

So it is that the royal bed belongs to the lion guardian of the gate and its purpose is to forge new life from the birthing wounds of death (see Appendix, figs. 14-17). This whole imagery is picked up in the Christian paradigm. Indeed, the Greek word Christos descends from the Egyptian krst, signifying a mummy. The Greek word is changed into the Latin as corpus, and into the Old English as corpse. Christ means “anointed one,” and thus refers to the anointing and consecration of one on the lion couch who can pass the lion gate and resurrect in the next world. Jesus Christ’s association with a lion is also direct. Hall quotes Godfrey Higgins who cites two old Jewish commentaries, the Midrashjoheleth and Abodazara: “the surname of Joseph’s [the mortal father of Jesus] family was Panther, for in both of these works it is stated that a man was healed ‘in the name of Jesus ben Panther’” (178, italics his). This is not surprising because Jesus descends from the royal line of King David, who belonged to the House of Judah. Judah was one of the twelve sons of Jacob. Each of the twelve tribes was assigned a constellation of the zodiac and banners representing each tribe were thus representations of the celestial circle. To the tribe of Judah from ancient times was assigned the constellation Leo, the lion (Brown 26). Jesus descends literally from the land of the lion and by the lineage of the lion. His blood is spilt by the wounds inflicted upon him on the lion couch, which is the cross, another celestial signification implying not the four cardinal directions but the four pillars of heaven–the four constellations in the zodiac which held the solstice and equinox suns in antiquity. And this brings us back to the image of the sphinx whose animal forms always took that of the lion, bull, serpent/eagle, and human, that is Leo, Taurus, Scorpio, and Aquarius, or the celestial cross. This is the symbolic cross upon which Christ is crucified, i.e. the bed upon which he rises anew in a land of the enchanted pillar which endows him with a resurrected, immortal body.

It is amazing to note the elegance of ancient rite and cosmology. Embedded within all the arcana of the mystery traditions is a great deal of astronomical science. Some have thought that this science was the real basis of all the myth. This is hardly the case, but it should be noted that there are many astronomical connections with all that we have discussed. In an earlier paper I wrote how the Oedipus at Tyrannus tragedy written by Sophocles was an elegant allegory for the precession of the equinoxes (See Taurus Oedipus and the Riddling Sphinx: A New Interpretation). Even so, in ancient Hindu astronomy the constellation Leo was known, but of note is the fact that as a lunar station, when the moon entered the lion, the Hindus represented this conjunction as a “Bed or Couch” (Olcott 235). The lion couch or the royal bed thus held an astronomical corollary. This seemed strange to me, until I went to one of my astronomy programs, and entered the latitude and longitude of Cairo, Egypt, and set the date for 2500 B.C.E., the supposed completion dates for the Sphinx and Great Pyramid. In this precessional era the constellation Leo held the rising sun on the morning of summer solstice. Summer solstice was the era of great harvest. It was also when the Nile reached its peak innundation. To this day lion heads at streams and fountains have water pouring from their mouths representing the ancient connection of the summer solstice in Leo and the rising of the life giving Nile waters. Of increasing interest, however, was the fact that one week after (one quarter lunation) the day of solstice the New Moon rose with the sun in Leo. It did so only once every nineteen years (the Metonic Cycle). I cannot help but to think that in this way the solar and lunar calendars were married in the lion bed by the reconciliation of the solar and lunar count checked and rechecked as both orbs rose in the celestial lion (see Appendix, fig. 18).

We have drifted a long way, perhaps, from Arthurian legend, but have found ourselves planted firmly in the midst of its roots, holding the Excaliber by which we may cut to the heart of this tale. Arthur is king because he is the initiated one; the one who sees with the inner eye, the one who hales from the land of the Lion, the lineage of the lion, wearing the lion skin as holder of the keeper of secrets to the mysteries of immortality. His destiny is Camelot, the new pillar or axis-mundi that was a representation of the paradisiacal realm. Gawan and Lancelot thus become Arthur’s heirs, the cosmic heros who face the lions, wounds, and trials which take place on the royal bed of death and resurrection.

Is the Arthur legend historical? Astronomical? Liturgical? Perhaps all three. I will not say that the tale is not historical. There is a long tradition of academic exegesis which refuses to take anything literally or historically. Campbell writes in Hero with a Thousand Faces that myth “is psychology misread as biography, history, and cosmology” (256). As this paper has hopefully shown such an assertion is hopelessly simplistic. Even so, Freud’s interpretation of Oedipus is pathetically mundane, and the whole academic approach to the mysteries remains, ironically, simplistically profane, from the Latin profanus, literally meaning outside the temple, outside the mystery which they pretend to dissect. The modern world sees with the pre-blinded eyes of Oedipus, and thus are deeply blinded to all else but the self. For this reason the mystery teachings remain unknown and unrevealed. A fact that one as Christ cannot help but to lament of the lion’s way, “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:14). Just so, only Gawan the virtuous and Lancelot the valiant could obtain the way, because of their loyalty, virtue, integrity, and initiation into the inner eye of truth and mystery. Is Arthur historical? One might as well ask, “Did Christ really resurrect?” The answer to that question can only be discovered by the wounding on the lion couch and the birthing from the royal bed.

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Posted by john at August 28, 2006 06:45 PM