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Hold the Light: Wisdom from Myth, Legend & Fairytale 9) The Wounded King

3/27/2020

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The Wounded King 

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The land and the king are one! And if the King is sick he can no longer be allowed to rule! This ancient & outmoded belief – held across cultures for thousands & thousands of years – may seem archaic & irrelevant. Yet if we look symbolically we will immediately see how – on a much deeper level of health – just how absolutely relevant and pertinent for our times such a notion might still be. 

Our Kings represent & embody our dominant values
They uphold the status quo. A good king will enable his kingdom to flourish and thrive. He will protect and honour all. He will create and maintain order and dispense blessings and fertility. Tolkien’s Aragorn is such a king.
 
But if the king falls into shadow -
– even whist he may have started off with good intentions - he will become a tyrant – a bully. Or he may become weak like Tolkien’s King of Gondor who falls under the spell of the evil trickster. Then the kingdom will fall to ruin.  
 
In pre – patriarchal times, the fertility of the land was nurtured by the Goddess and her priestesses and even in King Arthur's post-Roman Briton, the new king upon accession must visit and receive the blessing and sanction of the Maidens of the Wells who communed with the spirits of the earth and in so doing maintained the health of the land.
The Grail legends tell that for many years all went well – until an evil king raped one of the Maidens & stole the power for himself.

  The soul of the Land was damaged, the King fell ill and a veil of enchantment lay over it from that moment onward.

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So, if ever there was a time to talk about the Wounded/Shadow King - it’s now!  For surely now might be a moment for healing to occur. No one on planet earth could have envisioned such a dramatic shut down of our former way of life. And all over the globe people must be wondering at just how miraculously nature is thriving and coming back to life amidst our crisis. The Chinese character for crisis means opportunity too doesn’t it! And that’s what we’ve got right now – a crisis embodying the greatest opportunity ever to review just where we want to be & what values we truly want to uphold. 

While writing - I am reminded of the beautiful passages from Irish mythology from the story of the gods giving over the custodianship of the land to the Celts who arrived in Ireland from across the sea with no where to live.
"Help us oh land that has drawn us to your shores: help us! Show us the noble fellowship of your trees: we will be comrades to them. Show us the shining companies of your rivers: we will put a blessing on every fish that swims in them. Show us thy hero-hearted mountains: we will light fires of rejoicing for them. Oh, land help us: help us!"

Song of the Children of Mil
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We have all been given the custodianship of our planet - and yet slowly we have slipped - bit by bit over the last four thousand years into a collective set of behaviours which are simply not sustainable - and yet even in the face of catastrophes brought about in consequence of our ways, we have either gone into outright denial - or simply not believed it could really be so true - and we have all gone on flying around - driving our cars - clamouring for fracked energy, 5G and all the rest even at the risk of irrevocably damaging the earth’s magnetic field and our own precious health for generations to come.
 
But while ever we sanction these old Wounded King's in all the most powerful positions on earth – while ever we buy into their Dogma & Creed (for that is surely what it is) we will just keep on and on creating the same old world - and bolstering up the same old multi-national companies that have us all at their mercy - pharmaceutical and otherwise! And we will help them go on - trying to get it all back to normal - when what is really needed is a whole new normal. We need to root these old kings out from every corner of our crazy world.

We need call out them out!
 
  The Emperor has no clothes folks!
The Emperor has no clothes!


Cease the Day!

much Love
 Anne Maria
x x x


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Hold the Light/blog published daily during the Crisis @
www.annemariaclarke.net http://www.annemariaclarke.net/blog
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    Anne Maria Clarke is a storyteller, writer, & teacher of myths, legends & fairy - stories.

    https://twitter.com/MariaClarke
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