John Adcox: The Sword and the Grail

The Sword and the Grail: Restoring the Forgotten Archetype in Arthurian Myth

A few years ago, I wrote an essay for a Jungian journal on the meanings of the two key archetypal images in the Matter of Britain, the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

I’ve been thinking about the ideas in that article a lot lately, mostly because I am working on a series of four contemporary Arthurian novels called The Unbroken Circle. The individual books are called The Widening Gyre, Winter Kept Us Warm, What The Thunder Said, and The Last Light Flickers.

I’ve been working on these books for something like ten to fifteen years, and I’ve been thinking about these since, well … at least since high school. They’re longish (the first is around 350,000 words . . . although in my defense, some of them are very short words, and I’ve used some of them more than once.) and, frankly, they’re hard. I think I finally cracked the first one last year. Since, I have finished the second, and a little more than half of the third. They’re coming much faster now.

They’re connected to another book of mine called Blackthorne Faire, which is coming in September of 2023.

I imagine that I can guess what a lot of you are thinking about now. Really, John? Do we really need another King Arthur book? Obviously enough, I think the answer is a resounding yes. It is, after all, a topic that’s endlessly fascinating. And besides, there hasn’t (yet) been one set in modern Atlanta! There is another reason.

I’ve always felt that the Arthurian legends are, well, incomplete. While King Arthur is sending his knights out to find the Holy Grail, this amazing feminine symbol of healing and power, Morgan le Fay, his shadow self or opposite number, is trying to steal the sword Excalibur, the great symbol of masculine energy.

It seems to me that they’re both looking for something that’s missing in themselves. The whole thing falls apart in the end, because no one is able to bring these two archetypal artifacts together.

According to the traditional story, Arthur is destined to return some day because the world needs him. But also, I think, because he still has things of his own to resolve and learn—his relationship with his wife, for example, and with his best friend and his sister. Not to mention his son. And why should Arthur himself be the only one permitted (or doomed) to return? What about the others? What if they all came back, in the hour of our greatest need?

Those are the questions I was asking myself when I started writing these books. I think I’ve come up with some pretty surprising answers.

In any case, writing the article has helped me work through some of these ideas.

An updated version of the complete article follows just below. I’d love to know what you think. Please drop me a note at john@johnadcox.com

The Sword and the Grail: Restoring the Forgotten Archetype in Arthurian Myth

If it were even possible to assemble them in one place, the volumes written on psychological and mythic approaches to the Grail quest in Arthurian myth would bend even the sturdiest, stout oak bookshelves. From Emma Jung and Maria Von Franz’s definitive work, The Grail Legend, to the work of later luminaries ranging from Joseph Campbell to Robert Johnson, the Grail quest has evolved from Celtic lore to become a metaphor of astonishing power that continues to guide generations of seekers on their own journeys to individuation, to use the Jungian term.

The Arthur stories are no longer purely Celtic—they have become universal. It’s not too great a stretch to call the Matter of Britain, the cycles of legends surrounding King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, the definitive myth of Western civilization. Here we find our modern concepts of equality (the Round Table had no “head” and no corners), romantic love, strength protecting the weak, and spiritual growth and enlightenment based on the achievements of the individual expressed in a single source—and arguably expressed with more power and greater resonance than in any other myth cycle.

How else can one explain the enduring popularity of the Arthur story? There have certainly been other romantic stories, probably even greater ones. Adventure? Our heritage of myth is full of it. Magic? We’re lousy with it. Fellowship and superhuman accomplishment? Look no further than the adventure tales of Fionn McCumhail, Jason and the Argonauts, or Robin Hood and his Merry Men.

All of these cycles, and thousands of others, have been enormously popular through the ages. Robin Hood and the men of Sherwood, especially, have inspired countless novels, songs, poems, films, and television productions. But none of them have approached the Arthur stories for enduring and significant popularity. It’s more than a subgenre—it’s an industry.