Pagan Portals--Merlin by Elen Sentier

Author:Elen Sentier [Sentier, Elen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785354533
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2016-12-09T06:00:00+00:00

6

Merlin and Broceliande

The Breton stories place Merlin in the ancient forest of Broceliande.

If you go to France, to Brittany, and travel about 18 miles west of Rennes, you find yourself at the forest of Paimpont, all that remains of the vast forest of Broceliande that once covered ancient inland Brittany.

The land is also known as Argoat, and Argoat was another uncanny Merlin connection for me that happened at school. I enjoyed French and learned to speak it very well, although I’m extremely rusty now, and this was largely through the agency of the young lady, Jeanne, we had to help us with spoken French. She was a university student who came over on a placement to spend a year at our school and she was very good. One of her suggestions I remember best was how to pronounce ‘un petit’, we were all getting it wrong, sounding like clumsy English folk on holiday, so she said, ‘Non! You say it like the nursery rhyme, Umptey Dumpty, yes? Umptey, umptey, umptey!’ I never forgot! But back to Merlin, she told us she came from Argoat, the old forested land that had been Broceliande, and showed us on the map where her parents lived.

Jeanne was about five years older than me but we became friends, she would visit with me at home on weekends and in the holidays when we would talk endlessly about Merlin and, indeed, we journeyed together to meet him.

This was not like journeying as per core shamanism. Back in those days, 1964, Michael Harner hadn’t written his first book, and Mircea Eliade’s first work was only just out and certainly hadn’t been read by most of our folk although I think Dad did. The word shaman was known only in anthropological circles and the industry that now surrounds shamanism didn’t exist. No, our journeys were what people might call daydreams, for dreaming is how my folk work. It’s far closer to what Jung calls ‘active imagination’. We would go off onto a hilltop, into the woods or by a stream or river and sit quiet and dream …

Dreaming and imagination have been so degraded in the past 30-odd years, many people now seem to consider it a completely illusory process … we have lost so much reality! It’s the way I use and teach and it works, just as it did back in 1964, to transport you across and between the worlds. My French friend and I used it and had many encounters with Merlin, for she too came from a family of old ones in Brittany and her background was similar to mine.

Journey to Broceliande

One time that I especially recall was when we crossed to the Broceliande she knew and grew up in. We began our journey from a wild, empty hilltop a couple of miles from the village. We’d walked up there from home and brought a picnic. The sun was shining and it was hot; after we’d eaten we lay back against a big rock and closed our eyes, luxuriating in the warmth.

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