The Lady of Shalott

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Daturae
Berichten: 663
Lid geworden op: 07-04-2010 22:30

The Lady of Shalott

Bericht door Daturae » 06-12-2013 21:26

Met dank onderstaande overgenomen van Ina Cüsters -van Bergen. Omdat ik ook een groot fan ben van het gedicht, The Lady of Shalott van Lord Tennyson, en het schilderij dat Waterhouse daarop maakte. En natuurlijk het lied dat Loreena McKennitt er 10 jaar later over maakte.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0rVNQw1DQM

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I am a great admirer of the paintings of John W. Waterhouse. His subjects are directly related to the Western Mystery Tradition. Waterhouse lived between 1849 and 1917. He is one of the Pre-Raphaelites. His paintings depict mythological and magical themes: scenes from Ovid’s’ Metamorphoses, from the writings of Homer, from the Arthur-mythology. What is the nature of the world that Waterhouse depicts on his paintings?

By: Ina Cüsters -van Bergen



The time in which Waterhouse lived was a time of great cultural and spiritual richness. He lived at the same time as Gurdjeff, Ouspensky, Blavatsky, and Rudolf Steiner to name just a few. Occultism and Spiritism were hot, Séances were common, and trance mediums produced ectoplasm. Among the elite, entering into an Order was fashionable. The art of this time tells us about this.

Waterhouse knew the work of the anthropologist J.G. Frazer. Frazer assumed that the antique mythology was a remnant of religious pagan rituals and classic ritual drama. Within the different Hermetic Orders mystery plays were performed.

The paintings of Waterhouse remind us of that. Standing before the huge canvasses, mythological scenes come to life. You are no longer a watcher, but you become a participant of the event. The story is frozen at the highpoint of emotions of a particular story. Waterhouse carefully chooses his themes: like for example ‘Consulting the Oracle’ and ‘The Magical Circle’. The paintings are doorways to mystical experiences. This technique is typical for the Western Mystery Tradition. In this way also the Tarot cards are used as astral doors. By the example of the paintings of the Lady of Shalott I want to explain such an astral door to you.


The poem ‘The Lady of Shalott’ by Alfred Tennyson

Waterhouse chose this poem because it describes magical events. ‘The Lady of Shalott’ tells about a woman who suffers from a magical enchantment. She lives on her own on an island. She is unable to see the world directly. The farmers in her environment know who she is, they can hear her sing, but they cannot see her:

Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to towered Camelot:
And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers "Tis the fairy
The Lady of Shalott"

Her task is to watch the world through a mirror, and to weave fate as scenes into a tapestry. The Lady lives isolated in a tower very close to the castle of King Arthur. She can perceive the World outside only through a mirror:

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott

Afbeelding

One day she catches a glimpse of a handsome knight – Lancelot- and she cannot withstand her longing to look at him directly. This tips the fragile balance.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me,"cried
The Lady of Shalott

Afbeelding


The mirror breaks, the tapestry is torn in pieces and flies away on the wind. The Lady feels the curse coming over her. She steps in a boat, drifts downstream to Camelot, while she sings her last song. She dies before she arrives:

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darkened wholly,
Turned to towered Camelot.
For ere she reached upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott

Afbeelding

The mythological background

The drama starts when the Lady of Shalott sees Lancelot du Lac in her mirror. There is something strange with the women in the life of Lancelot. First of all; three women called Elaine play a very important role in his life. Together they represent the three faces of the Goddess in the life of Lancelot. Instead of developing a fertile relation with the Goddess, and by consequence with the women in his life, he becomes a prisoner of his knightly love for Queen Guinevere, King Arthur’s wife.

The first Elaine in Lancelot’s life is Elaine of Benoic; the wife of King Bran the Blessed. She is his mother. The second Elaine is Elaine of Carbonec; she is the daughter of the Fisher king, king Pelles. She appears right at the beginning of the Arthur legends as the Grail virgin in the Grail castle where the Grail questions are asked; What is the Grail, and whom does it serve?

Merlin the Mage causes a relationship between Lancelot and Elaine of Carbonec to establish, because from their genes Galahad – the Grail prince – must be born. Merlin enchants Lancelot in thinking that Elaine is Queen Guinevere. At another occasion Lancelot defends the honour of Elaine in a magical disguise, in order to prevent Guinevere from becoming jealous. However he is recognized by his shield and this makes Guinevere so jealous that she almost destroys the magical destiny of the second Elaina.

The third Elaine is Elaine Le Blanc, the beautiful virgin of Astolat. She is the Lady of Shalott. She is not an earthly woman. She is a Fay, a being from the Otherworld. She represents the power of the Goddess in the life of Lancelot. When she looks at him directly, the curse becomes active, and she dies of a broken heart. Her work at the tapestry before the magical mirror is to weave fate.

The death of Elaine Le Blanc is the direct cause of the insanity of Lancelot on his quest for the Grail. He is captured in the possessive obsessive love for Guinevere, and this degenerates his powers, and keeps both of them prisoners of their fate. Completely insane, he loses his way in the woods, torn apart between two goals. There he is wounded by a sow. Also this is symbolic language. The sow is a sacred animal of the Goddess. When she wounds him in his thigh, this means that Lancelot is not capable to transform his sexuality to a spiritual level, and remains not capable to relate and work with female powers.


The Magical World of the Goddess

The paintings of Waterhouse show us the working space of the Goddess. You see her magical mirror behind her, her initiation-tool. The only way to build a relation with the Goddess is to look in her mirror and ‘cross the water’. The water is the subconscious mind. The round mirror is a kind of window through which the Heavens are able to see events on earth. Fate is woven from here and corrected when necessary.

But Elaine of Astolat, Lancelot’s Goddess, is imprisoned in these invisible areas; there is no connection between them, and as a prisoner of the circumstances she is unable to build a relation between them. ‘I am half sick of shadows’, she says in the poem. The mirror of the Goddess in magic reflects the Heavenly Light on the land of your life, and is the key to ‘Know Thyself’, when there is no communication between the Higher and the Lower, then the curse becomes active.

The Goddess spins the thread of life, and she decides how long this thread will be. She uses the thread to weave your fate in magical tapestries. In this way she causes the events on earth. When the tapestry of the Lady of Shalott flies away, this means that the events as they could have happened now die together with her. Because he lacks divine guidance, Lancelot cannot find the Grail. When the Lady of Shalott dies, she takes her tapestry with her on her boat. On the painting you can clearly see the part of the scene she was weaving, where she is united with Lancelot. The Lady of Shalott is a part of Lancelot’s soul that dies.


Courtly Love

Polarity between the sexes is a very important magical theme. This theme belongs to the starry influence of Gemini. One half of the twin soul stays in heaven; this is the Holy Guardian Angel. The other half incarnates on Earth. The Magical Mirror acts like a window for communication between both parts, and the language of communication is courtly love. On the Earth the Heaven is mirrored in nature, this is the tapestry of the Goddess. Through synchronicity the voice of Heaven is heard; this is the song of the Lady of Shalott.

As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flashed into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra", by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot

In heaven fate is woven based on what is seen in the magical mirror. The magical mirror is the doorway to self-knowledge and connects the Above with the Below.


Mystery plays are powerful spiritual tools that help you establish your connection to the Powers of the Above.

When you want to experience the Transformations of the Arthur mysteries, learn to know the powers of the Fay and experience the Otherworld, when you are on a quest for the Grail in your life… then the upcoming retreat is an event not to miss. Read about the healing retreat ‘In Service of the Grail.’


'By Ina Cüsters-van Bergen, Director of Studies of the Hermetic Order of the Temple of Starlight. Visit the website of the Order www.templeofstarlight.eu for extended information about Western Magic and Mystics.'
Blessed Be, Daturae

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