Mary Stewart – Author and Mythologist, Arthurian, Hero

I read my first book by Mary Stewart in the summer between the fifth and sixth grades: The Crystal Cave, the first book in her famous Merlin Trilogy.

 Her novel opened my eyes to many things, to the notion that an author could build a credible mythological narrative based on actual historical antecedents for Camelot and King Arthur, subjects that at the age of eleven I was already fascinated with. Though, until I read Mary Stewart I thought of the Knights of the Roundtable as belonging to the world of make-believe, like Hercules, or Sinbad, I thought of them as fantastical, not pure fantasy like Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins, but nearer to them than they were to Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar or Genghis Khan.

 Mary Stewart wrote her trilogy (and then a fourth book) from the perspective of Merlin; she set the timeline in the fifth century CE, when Roman influence was waning in the British Isles, her books linked the rise of the Arthurian kingdom to a Roman dynasty, a ruling elite that had adopted the local customs and had become syncretized to their cultural norms, a group of so-called Gallo Romans who lived among Celtic and Brithonic people among whom were the Welsh, the Scots and the Picts.

 She wrote about the Roman Army, thereby introducing me to the Cult of Mithras, Sol Invictus; in writing about these Celts, otherwise known as the Gaul, she wrote about an ancient culture whose sphere of influence included Ireland and the British Isles, all of France and Spain. She wrote about this Indo-European culture that once covered the continents of Eurasia from the Iceland to Sri Lanka…and she wrote about the Druids, she wrote about their myths and legends. She peeled away the most fantastical elements associated with their place in Celtic culture, leaving me to wonder if what was left, even the magic might be real.

 The figures in her stories, Uther Pendragon, Merlin, Igraine and Arthur were presented with a kind of grittiness that made me believe in them as if they were real people. They were already mythic figures in my imagination, but through her narrative they became tangible and my connection to them grew.

 Through Mary Stewart’s presentation of Mithraism, because of its connections to the early Christian movement, I came to be interested in the real history of Church, I became a researcher, and I began to question everything that I had been told.

 I cannot thank her enough for this.

 Mary Stewart had an oversized influence on my life, though I did go further in her body of work than the Merlin Trilogy. At that time in my life and for years to come I read everything I could get my hands on concerning King Arthur, including Mallory’s, the La Morte de Artur, and all of the variations of that text which flowed from it.

 All of those readings were conditioned by Mary Stewart’s historicity.

 From Mary Stewart I learned about many other things:

 I discovered the real presence of Arthurian myth in European culture, serving as a force major, as a beacon of hope, providing my forebears with a set or mores and a code of conduct that initiated and fostered the chivalric ideal, while becoming a vehicle for the subversion of any state that did not live up to the ideal.

 Arthurian myth provided a foundation for the Albigensian and Waldensian Herseies, and other counter cultural movements around the turn of the tenth century. Such movements were supported by the agency of people known as troubadours, travelling poets and minstrels who seemed to be cast in the mode of the bardic-druid.

 My early exposure to Mary Stewart gave me a proper frame of reference to comprehend Joseph Campbell’s discussion of Arthurian Myth, which then became an entry point for my understanding of the hero’s journey and to mythology in general, providing me with a frame of reference by which to study the literature, history and philosophies of the church.

 If I had not read Mary Stewart I may never have become a theologian, if my interest in those things had not been piqued by her authorship, I would not be the person I am today…she is a hero of mine.