Santa, baby!

I think a little Latin goes well with Christmas, don't you?

Sancte, bone, sub arbore pellem pone pro me

Bonissimam fueram,

Sancte, bone, sub noctem caminum deorsum rue

April Fool

I think I like Gerald of Wales for the same reason that I like Walter Map. He is gossipy and a bit irreverent. He is credited with having written a large number of books, one of which is The Journey Through Wales or Itinerarium Kambriae.

In this book, Gerald mentions a man named Maurice of London. Judging by the name, I think we can safely say that he is of Norman descent. He was given Cydweli Castle in Wales by Henry I and also owned a forest with deer that he was hell bent on keeping from the locals. Gerald does not say where his wife comes from. I wonder if she was Welsh. She played a little trick on him.

Knowing that he was crazy about his deer, she persuaded the household servants and shepherds to join her in playing this joke on him. She told him that he was allowing those deer to run so wild that they were now attacking and killing their sheep and their sheep were being wiped out. To prove her case, she had two stags brought out, in which she had their intestines stuffed with wool. He believed her and set his dogs on those crazy deer. I guess he was a simple minded guy.

Gerald also wrote about another woman: "It is not to be wondered at if a woman bears malice, for this comes to her naturally." Some men just do not understand. :-)

Prester John

I do not have a great deal of time for recreational reading lately but I decided to treat myself to a novel over the Christmas break. You do not expect to find something in Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum that leads to J.R.R. Tolkien but something did. This is, unfortunately, one of those areas where my personal library fails me for research. Although I do have Humphrey Carpenter's biography on Tolkien, my collection of what could be called 'occult' books is restricted to one small volume on the tarot. So I have had to resort to the 'Net. Sorry.

Eusebius of Caesarea is one of the first to mention Prester John, the king of a mythical Eldorado in the East. He did not start off that way. Eusebius was merely distinguishing him from John the Apostle. The legend of a king in the Orient with all the wealth and refinement of the East except that he was one of 'our guys' became current in the Middle Ages, especially during the Crusades. The Crusaders were hoping this king would come with all his splendor and huge armies to rescue the crusade from disaster.

John Mandeville wrote about the kingdom of Prester John in his Travels. Marco Polo also wrote about who he thought Prester John might be. Prester John was supposed to be descended from one of the three Magi and carried an emerald scepter. Prester John is implicated in the search for the grail in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival by being John, the son of Fierefiz and Repanse de Schoye. The introduction to my copy of Parzival avoids mentioning Prester John at all even though the green stone of the grail (lapis exiliis, a stone that has fallen from Heaven), seems to be mirrored in Prester John's emerald scepter. I have read somewhere, forgetting where, that in gnostic writings the emerald was a stone that fell from Lucifer's (who was the true King of the World) crown when he fought with the usurping Demiurge (who we now erroneously worship as God). This is strange territory for Tolkien to be venturing in.

The letter from Prester John that was circulating around in the Middle Ages, claimed that among his treasures which included the Fountain of Youth, was a mirror which allowed the king to see everything that went on in his kingdom. The question now would be, since this would appear to be outside of Tolkien's normal area of study, is how would he even be aware of this mirror? From Charles Williams of course. Williams, who was a member of the Inklings and one of Tolkien's friends, wrote a book called War in Heaven in which Prester John is a protector of the Holy Grail. Williams was a Rosicrucian and was good friends with Evelyn Underhill, who was a member of the Golden Dawn. One has to wonder what this means for Frodo's alias. However, I am going to state that I think the mirror, or mirrors, of Prester John is the inspiration for the palantir. Williams' book was published in 1930, early enough to have influenced Tolkien, and the Medieval legend has been around even longer than that.

The only thing bothering me is that spotting all these little details is beginning to spoil my enjoyment of the novel.

Beatles Song in Latin

Omnes surgamus et a carmen quod erat gratiosum saltemus,

Priusquam tua mater nata est,

Quamquam nata est duitissime,

Tua mater sciat - tua mater sciat.

Id iterum canite,

Cordes vestra levate et me carmen quod erat gratiosum canite,

Priusquam tua mater nata est,

Quamquam nata est duitissime,

Tua mater sciat - tua mater sciat.

(iterare)