I have been watching the cable series Camelot, and I got through the last episode of the first and last season (I recommend it with some reservations). As I was watching the show, I noticed many parallels between the stories of Arthur, Jesus and many gods plus other iconic heroes (especially Thor and Hercules) from different pantheons and cultures. Many years ago I read Golden Bough and Joseph Campbell’s works and one of my friends, Kelly recommended I read The Mists of Avalon.
The main reason I watched the whole series was the brilliance of the actors who played the magical characters: Morgana Le Fay (Eva Green) and Merlin (Joseph Fiennes). Fiennes was of course great in Shakespeare in Love; he played a crucial role in Elizabeth, and he was the monsignor in a chilling season of American Horror Story. I have loved Green’s work ever since I first saw her in Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (Fiennes also worked with Bertolucci in Stealing Beauty) and she played the witch Angelique in Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows film, which was only half-good. She was also in the James Bond film, Quantum of Solace and the underrated The Golden Compass. Most recently, she was in Penny Dreadful, which started out great then petered out. Green may have the most hypnotic eyes in the modern cinema and she usually wears heavy black mascara.
The story was obviously written and evolved over many hundreds of years and there is some tension between the newer Christian and older pagan elements. Merlin has a Christian mission; he has to find the Holy Grail, but his mentor Merlin who made him aware of the Arthur’s destiny to be king. Therefore, if King Arthur is like Luke Skywalker (reluctant hero from humble origins who rises to greatness) then his Obi Wan Kenobi is a druid.
The wrathful God in the Old Testament often acts like the sky gods Zeus and Odin. Frigga raised Thor but he is tied to the earth because his birth mom was Gaea who is the embodiment of the earth while his father Odin is the embodiment of the sky while mortal women who were impregnated by a deity sired both Hercules and Jesus, thus they are all tied to the earth and consequently humanity.
In the Old Testament, Jesus was born of a mystical union when God impregnated Mary, a mortal woman. In Greek mythology, Hercules was born when Zeus impregnated a mortal woman named Alcmene (or Alcmena) who tricked her by assuming the form of her husband. Hercules was a reminded of Zeus’s infidelity which is why his wife Hera always wanted to kill Hercules (she even sent a snake to kill him as a baby but Hercules was so strong that he strangled the snake in his bed).
In the King Arthur story, Uther turned into the image of Gorlois , Queen Ingraine’s husband by Merlin’s magic, and they slept together which resulted in the birth of Arthur. Merlin knew from the beginning that Arthur was destined to be king and he was hidden away among peasants. This of course parallels the story of Moses (who was sent away as an infant to avoid being killed) and Jesus. Therefore, Moses can be thought of a protojesus and jesus is a protoarthur.
In some versions, Merlin was the product of a union between a royal woman who was a virgin and an incubus (either a male demon who drains female energy or a demon who assumes male form). He was meant to be the anti-Christ, but he was baptized and ended up helping Arthur follow God’s path, but it is still bizarre that a druid would help fulfill the Christian God’s plan for England.
As a side note in King Arthur had to pick the sword Excalibur out of the stone to prove he was worthy of being king. In the origin story of the Marvel comics version of Thor (produced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby) a lame surgeon lifts a mystical hammer off the ground which proves he was worthy of being Thor and he transforms into the thunder god (the hammer can transform back and forth into a walking stick . None of this was in the Norse myth. I wonder if this came from the King Arthur story because it echoes the Excalibur story.
After he was born, Jesus was sent away so he would not fall prey to the slaughter of the innocents. Arthur was also sent away and he lived as a peasant until he was king or else Morgana le Faye might have killed him (she was his half-sister who had a fairy parent and she had a claim to the throne before the existence of Arthur was known).
There are some more parallels between Jesus and Arthur. Jesus has twelve followers or disciples and Arthur had twelve followers or knights. In addition, one of Jesus’s apostles betrayed him (Judas by handing him over to Roman officials) and Arthur’s follower Lancelot betrayed Arthur by sleeping with the king’s wife Guinevere.
In addition, Thor is involved in the Asgardian end of the world called Ragnorak and Jesus is supposed to return in the Christian Armageddon.
**Have you ever seen an American film from the 30s and all of the dialogue seemed to be delivered in an affected, pretentious, unnatural and un-American accent?
The Mid Atlantic or Transatlantic accent It was a quasi-American and quasi Brit accent that used to be spoken in many early 20th century films. Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and Orson Welles spoke it, but apparently, it did not spring from any region, and it was mostly just spoken in films to make the speakers seem more sophisticated. Language scholars believe the accent came from elocution lessons taught in some prep schools but it was never widely spoken by the public anywhere. The use of the accent became extremely unfashionable when hot new generation of film school graduate and TV spawned directors such as Martin Scorsese, Arthur Penn, Robert Altman, Dennis Hopper and Francis Ford Coppola took over the medium in the late 60s and 70s.
