An Alphabet of Druidry

This idea came to me from a popular meme on Livejournal: The reader offers the journaller a letter of the alphabet and accepts one in return.  Both of them write about five topics which the given letter suggests to them.

Five is not a Druidic number, so I shall endeavour to write about three topics for each letter.  I reserve the right not to use letters that don’t appear in Druidic languages. 

An Alphabet of Druidry: A

A is for Apple. Nowhere in the book of Genesis does it say what sort of fruit grew on the forbidden Tree of Knowledge.  Since God makes rudimentary clothing for Adam and Eve out of fig leaves, one might think it was the fig.  But the apple is so pre-eminently the fruit of knowledge, wisdom, and more-than-human life and vitality, in the lore of northern Europe, that when artists began to paint the temptation of Adam and Eve by the serpent, it was inevitably the apple tree which sprang to mind.  Even today, if you see the story referenced in a television commercial, it will be a juicy red apple that Eve hands over and Adam does not refuse.

A is for Avalon. Avalon is the island where the apple trees grow.  Long before it was identified with Glastonbury in the marshes, the place where Joseph of Arimathea planted his staff and hid the holy Grail, it was named in early stories about Arthur of Britain as the place where he went to rest and heal after his final battle, the home of nine sisters led by one called Morgen who might or might not be a goddess or Arthur’s sister.  Dion Fortune identified it with Glastonbury, Inis Witrin, on the basis of visionary work; Marion Zimmer Bradley made it famous as the home of a mystical sisterhood.  But Avalon’s true location, perhaps, is and always has been in the Otherworld.

A is for Arthur. Arthur, Dux Bellorum, victor over the Saxons, High King, Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus, is an integral part of the lore of the Druid Revival.  He is the sun rising and setting to rise again; he is the golden grain thrusting up only to be cut down; he is the pole star about which the stars called the Bear, Arktos, Arth, reliably swing; he is the exemplary monarch, the protector of religion or its attacker, the perfect Christian, the imperfect pagan.  The relevance of Arthur and the stories clustered about him can be seen in the never-decreasing number of novels, children’s books, films, and other works of art inspired by the tradition.  We are not tired of King Arthur, and perhaps we never will be, until he returns.