Camelot and the Vision of Albion

“Att South Cadbyri standith Camallate, sumtyme a famose toun or castelle. The people can tell nothing thar but that they have hard say that Arture much resortid to Camalat.”

So wrote John Leland, an author attached to Henry VIII, in 1542.

In the summer of 1966 an archaeological organization began digging the hill of Cadbury Castle in the hope of finding some evidence which would substantiate that King Arthur was an ancient royalty and that Cadbury was his Camelot. The secretary of the organization was Geoffrey Ashe, who in Camelot and the Vision of Albion records his own personal search for the historicity of the legends of King Arthur and Camelot. The excavation of Cadbury established the possibility that Cadbury may have been a citadel of an Arthur-type figure, but nothing definite was found to substantiate that Arthur was an historical figure. The castle hill had earmarks of a stronghold of a wealthy leader who imported expensive goods. A “dark age knife” was found, also a dish marked with a Christian cross, some Tintagel pottery, and a bulk work three-quarters of a mile long, all of which indicated the “easy possibility” that this was the residence of a British Chieftain.

Very little of the book, in fact just a few pages, tells of archaeological finds. The bulk of the book deals with Mr. Ashe’s theory that the King Arthur legends, although centered around an historical figure, are grounded in ancient myths of the Celts, Romans, Greeks, Anglo-Saxons, Druids, and Hebrews. He leans heavily toward William Blake’s idea that “the stories of Arthur are the acts of Albion applied to a prince of the fifth century.” Blake seems to have introduced the idea that Albion was an individual rather than a place—a giant who sought and won the golden age for the British Isles. With artifacts showing early strata at Cadbury to be Mycenean and Minoan-Cretan, Mr. Ashe sees a natural link between the Titan myths of these cultures and the myths and legends of early England. Even Robin Hood is brought into the parallel with Arthur to show the natural tendency of legend to find a hero and peacemaker. He also found parallels between the story of the Holy Grail and the magic vessels of the ancient myths; between Atlantis, New Jerusalem, and Camelot; between Joseph of Arimethea (and other Christians in the lore of the British Isles), and King Arthur. All of these things, Mr. Ashe felt, indicate that although British myth is called unique, it “reflects a human phenomenon, a motive thought and behavior, that will be traced through the world in a profusion of forms.”

The remainder of the book deals with a common ideal Mr. Ashe finds in the philosophies of Confucius, Lao-Tze, Voltaire, Rousseau, the French Revolution, and even the Hebrew Messiah. The apparent ideal is a desire for the reinstatement of a lost golden age which brings final victory over life’s problems and sufferings. The same ideal is found in the ideas of Hegel, Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Mr. Ashe calls this common parallel, “The Mystic of Renewal, Reinstatement, Transfiguration; a fresh start,” and concludes that herein is the basic philosophical factor that is the moving influence in the legends which have been attached to “King Arthur.”

He next considers the question, “Why does the reinstatement and revival mystic occur and reoccur?” His answer is the well-worn and frequently overused resort to anthropology and evolution: Man’s need for security begets myth which begets myth, etc., etc. There is no consideration (of course) of the possibility that the theory may by backwards—that the legends were influenced by true accounts of Adamic forefathers in former dispensations who communed with a living God and taught of restorations and a God-ruled millennium.

The literature of Shelley, Robert Owen, Chesterton, the Fabian society, and Gandhi are brought into parallelism as further proof that the Arthur legends are influenced by psychological desire for a better age. His statement “Christ was a Platonist” cements the ever-growing indications in Mr. Ashe’s book, that the author is caught in the “parallel evolutions” and “psychic origin” trap so apparent in the intellectual literary criticism of today.

Mr. Ashe’s conclusions are these: “Arthur is best defined as the British General who won the battle of Mount Badon,” and who obviously was a real individual identified as a military commander. Histories never called him a king. Welch literature refers to him as an outstanding leader. His name became popular thereafter and many stories about his greatness were circulated being influenced by the myths of the “Titans” of early legends and the psychological need of man to find a renewal of life, a golden age.”