Merlin Returns
Excerpt-The Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities-Daniel C Noel
MAKING CONTACT WITH MERLIN-SHAMANIC MODEL FOR WESTERN SEEKERS
IN JUNE OF 1987 I made my sixth visit to England in fourteen years. I had been moved on previous trips, even genuinely enchanted, by the sacred spaces in the West Country of southwestern England. My tours there went to sites associated with the legends of those landscapes, and pursued topics like King Arthur and the Grail quest lore, including the role of Merlin. But I had not connected these explorations with my interest in shamanism. I did not really know until 1987, for instance, that before Merlin became Arthur's advisor and court magician in the late-medieval texts, he had been seer, bard, Druid, Wild Man, and, at bottom, shaman. Beyond this, he could provide a model for my own native shamanism, or any Westerners.
I began to learn these lessons that June at Michael Whan’s house in Harpenden, outside of London. - It was my first visit to Michael’s house, and I was browsing his bookshelves. I ran into something that immediately intrigued me, something which Michael and I discussed. When I returned to the United States and could not find a copy, he kindly sent me one. The book was The Quest for Merlin by Nikolai Tolstoy, a descendant of the great Russian novelist.4 Published only two years before my trip, his extensive study turned out to be only one of several recent manifestations of a Merlin resurgence. It has remained the most important one to me, however, because of the strong case it makes for Merlin’s shamanism. I first read it in earnest after moving back from my Santa Fe sabbatical to New England. There I was, poised, as it were, midway between the New Mexico “Land of Enchantment” where I had learned I was an Anglo and the enchanted Anglo landscape of my ancestry and Western heritage.