(3.7) “Galahad and the Grail” – The Wasteland, Section 1

(3.7) “Galahad and the Grail” – The Wasteland, Section 1: Galahad and Gawaine. (this post is in process and incomplete at this time)

Book Three: “The Achievement of the Grail“ (by “book” is meant a large section in this installment of Guite’s Arthuriad).

Stave Seven: “The Wasteland” (a “stave” is an old-fashioned term for the stanza of a poem, a verse in a song, or a chapter in a long story; this chapter has three sections: Galahad and Gawain; Into the Wasteland; and The Three Trials).

“The King Arthur mythical tales echo something real about sin, redemption, and the hope that was broken in us and in the world that can be made whole again.” (Malcolm Guite).

What is a ‘Wasteland’ in the King Arthur legends? The Wasteland was a stretch of land that was haunted by a curse, a bewitched place where creation was broken, not functioning as the Creator intended.  The Wasteland is a place where creation is groaning and yearning to be healed. Dr. Guite describes the Wasteland this way in this chapter of his book… “A cursed place full of horrors, dried up springs, madness everywhere, without hope, love or grace;” “A wasted land where every field lay grey and barren, all unhealed;” “There was scarce a blade of grass, where noxious fumes choked its travelers;” “Where there were withered and leafless trees with hollow trunks;” Where sterile silence reigns and without birdsongs;” “A Kingdom of the Dead, as though kind nature left her throne, and for the kinship once we’d known left nothing but a heap of stone and left us all, all alone in dreariness and dread;” “Where all is silent and bleak, and cannot tell the living from the dead;” “It seemed the sun shrunk to a disc around which dark grey fog swirled.”  So the Wasteland was a place of lifeless devastation, a desolate region in which nothing was green or growing. The Wasteland was a mirror opposite of Shalom, which is a place where there is flourishing, completeness and wholeness, a land where there is natural harmony, fulfillment, health, and abundant well-being; a place that enjoys the vitality needed to thrive and flourish; a land of tranquility, freedom from disquiet and disorder, reconciliation, and integrity where everything functions together as it should.

Section 1: Galahad and the Grail.