“Ha ha ha! Banishing Doubt is the Sixth Key,” she declared. “The Sixth Key!” And as she vanished, a great slimy bubble was spat forth from the cauldron. Captured within it was a finely wrought Silver Key. It was mine, but I dared not touch it... The bubble popped and all was gone. Illusion... perception... – such is the stuff of our doubts and prejudices.
With no warning a hole opened beneath my feet. I was swallowed by it. Deeper and deeper I fell, sometimes sliding within the narrow opening this way and that. It curved and turned – the roots and tendrils jutting through the walls tore at my hair and clothing as I bounced about down the passage. Finally I hit the bottom.
I found myself standing in an ancient, twilit Wood.
Before me stood the seventh gate, but this Time it was an actual gate. Wrought iron, gold and silver was it, with massive, beautifully turned ornamental designs. It loomed tall as an Oak Tree. The mighty beams that enclosed the doors of the gate were enormously thick and appeared to be covered in solid gold. Their simplicity contrasted the ornateness of the vertical bars of the doors and the whole was utterly pleasing in its artfulness. There, in the center of the gate – upon the doors, at just about my eye level – was a bold square of polished gold split in two vertically. In its center was a Silver Star with an Enchanting keyhole in it. Written upon the lintel, above the doors, in an unknown script, which somehow I was able to decipher, were the words: “All who would enter this gateway must solve The Riddle.”
“You jest.” Thought I, “This is ridiculous...”
“What riddle?” I said out loud with some irritation in my voice.
“Why, the Riddle of the Ages, my girl.”
I started. It was The Merlin’s voice. I spun around searching, but no one was there.
“Riddle of the Ages? Which one? There are so many. Perhaps the riddle is just that – to know which one to solve? The Riddle of the Ages... let me think.
“It would be the one The great Merlin was set to by the Voices of the Stars: ‘What would there be if there were nothing?’” quoth I.
“No,” said the voice of a woman of strict authority. “You have been taught the answer to that riddle by The Merlin. It is no longer a riddle to you.”
It was Vivianne’s voice.
“Oh, how I have missed you, my Lady!” said I.
“You must think hard, my Morgan of the Woods.”
“Mother, Mother!” I cried. “I thought never to hear your voice again. I Love you, Mother!”
“If the answer were a Viper, you would be struck, Morgan” laughed Nimue.
“Wait – this is all deception – I know it is... It must be. All of you whom I have Loved are gone from me and beside that, you would not be here in the Land of Naught! Do I only hear your voices because I long to hear them? Am I ignoring the truth because of my desire?”
“Yes, desire...” said The Merlin.
“Obtain one more Key and you can return to the land of form, if that is what you wish to do.”
This Time the voice was attached to a tall and straight young man walking toward me from a distance, but behind the golden gates. Arthur... Bear... Now I could see his brilliant smile, his golden hair and his teasing blue eyes. He walked to just beyond an arm’s length from me on the other side of the gate. I reached through it for him, but he stepped back.
“Morgan, my beloved, behold: the Seventh Key.”
He held in his hand an actual Golden Key.
“Morgan, when you attain this Key, you will hold the powers of Naught. But this Key is real... If you wish, it can be yours forever.”
“At this Time you may choose to stay here with me, where we will not die, we will not grow old and we will be un-made brother and sister. Does not the desire of your heart lead you to me?”
I looked at him hesitantly…
“But Arthur, my Bear, you hold a key in form. The other six have been Keys of the Magic of the Land of Naught. I was not meant to stay here.”
“Has your Love for me died, then, Morgan?”
“My Love... died?
“That is it! That is the answer to the Riddle of the Ages.”
Gwyddion had once asked – “Where does Love go when it dies?”
I shouted! “The answer is – It does not! Love never dies!”
The gates opened toward me. I stepped inside. Arthur held the golden Key in his hand.
“Take it my Love, you know your desire.”
With each step closer toward him, he receded and I began to forget where I was and why.
When my own desire had thoroughly Enchanted me, I reached for the Golden Key and for Arthur.
Just then – incomprehensible wonder of wonders and blessing of blessings – I heard them… the Voices of the Stars. They whispered into my thoughts, heart and Spirit...
“Morgan, daughter of the Goddess, you must not accept this golden Key. If you do, you will effect a change here in the Land of Naught. The only Keys you must receive are the Seven Keys of understanding. The Golden Key must remain here. It is a thing of Naught.”
“I had forgotten…” I answered.
“But wait, how do I know that you are not also aspects of my own desire? How can I be sure of anything anymore?”
They chuckled – a coarse, yet Divinely beautiful amusement.
“Morgan, Lady of the Lake, you have found the true seventh and last Key.”
More exquisite laughter...
“The truth is always there for truth seekers. You know the truth when you hear it and when you see it. Only your desires can keep the truth from you. Hold to the truth always, Morgan, even when you desire the lie...
“This is how Morganna held power over others. This is how she even fooled Igraine, to some extent. This is how Gorlois was beguiled by her. This is how she held her children and others captive. This is why Arthur believed she was you on the Night of his coronation celebration – and that you would lie with him again. Each of these ones accepted her lies – because Morganna used their own desires to wish these lies the truth.
“This power lies in the very roots of the Land of Naught. It is fed by the wisher’s desire for an un-reality – holding to the lie as being more desirable than their truth.
“There is one more thing that you must understand. It is concerning the answer to the Riddle: ‘Love never dies’... You have learned and understand that every thought, word and deed, becomes a fiber of the Weavers’ web – a permanent part of the whole of our lives – a piece of the Cosmos. Yet of all things that will return to the MOTHER at the Time of the great dissolution; Love, which is the reason – the impetus – for HER Creation of any Universal epoch – must return to HER intact. As such, it is the only force, of the Infinite Potential SHE holds, which must repeat into the next Universal Creation. Without Love, SHE would have no need or desire to create. Therefore, Love is the only thing of eternal existence – Love never dies.
“But you see, Morganna knew not the ways of Love, and therefore could not attain the seventh key, so that those gates would not open to her.”
As the specter claiming to be Arthur said: “At this Time you may choose to stay here...” What it did NOT say was that one can also choose NOT to stay here. Upon solving the riddle, one can choose to go home. Morganna never solved the Riddle and her Spirit was thus stuck in the land of Naught. Living in the duality of the Land of Naught and the world of form drove her to madness.
“Come home now, Morgan.”
“But how?”
“Accept this true Seventh Key of Knowledge and you will be home.”
“But wait – how can you be here in the Land of Naught?”
More delightful chuckles...
“We are all One, Morgan. We are all ONE.”
I repeated their words as a Chant.
“We are all ONE... We are all ONE... We are all ONE...”
My fingers began to hurt as I was grasping the Well so intently. I smelled the fresh clean Water. It sprayed upon me as it splashed against the Rocks.<
br />
I was home.
I also held within myself the Seven Keys of the un-raveling of the Human psyche – each Key being like unto the tip of what the Northmen call an Ice-berg – an Ice Mountain – with so much more below the surface than that which is seen. Now I understood the source and the ways of Morganna’s Magic. Now I could un-ravel it!
The Seven Keys – To overcome the state and predicament of Naught...
The First Key – Oblivion of the self. Resist oblivion – let no one change or diminish who or what you know yourself to be.
The Second Key – Fear... Fear is the destroyer – recognize the game that is being played and overcome it.
The Third Key – Knowing the Shadow Self ... Claiming our hidden, inner tendencies in order to understand and overcome them. In my life, this has been my self-destructive empathy.
The Fourth Key – Intimidation... Be unyielding to it. Become the powerful one.
The Fifth Key – Seduction... False security – lying to ourselves – it is the Glamour turned inside out and used for ill.
The Sixth Key – Doubt... Foil self doubt – for it kills your Magic and sets your life upon a stage of failure.
The Seventh Key – Obsession versus Truth... Seeing things as they truly are – not as we desire them to be.
Now armed with these Seven Keys of the gates of the Land of Naught, I understood from whence Morganna’s Magic had come – the other side of the mirror. It was twisted and bent toward the un-doing of all. Woven within the cloak she had mantled her daughter with was the tale of Morganna’s evil intent and doings. Now I could read it. Her story began to unfold to me like the peeling of an onion.
Chapter 45
Morganna Un-raveled
Morgan
You see – through our Father, Gorlois, and after Ambrosius Aurelius and his brother Uther – Morganna had a blood-right of sorts to become a Queen.
Then Arthur had come along and eventually became High King.
Now, Morganna was always one to secure her bets. So she conceived the plan to trick Arthur into bedding her and getting her with child. This she accomplished. Mordred was born of this making and she raised him to hate his Father, telling him every foul lie that she could about Arthur. Mordred was to kill his Father to become High King in his stead.
But, when all her plans seemed to be coming to fruition and the battle lines had been drawn in the dirt, so to speak, something changed. She then “saw” that Mordred was, at the last moment, weakening in his conviction to kill his Father. Morganna saw that as treachery and disloyalty to her. Or, perhaps she simply realised that Arthur was a hard foe to beat and that Mordred might fail. For, although she had “seen” Arthur fall at his hands, she knew that “the Sight” is not perfect. Whatever her reasons, upon the Night before the last battle Morganna drugged and Spelled Mordred into lying with her. From this unholy coupling her belly had once again become filled.
When Mordred died in the final battle, Morganna grieved excessively and she fled North to the Snowy Mountain of the Clans. There she saw a strongly built house which was pleasing to her, so she conjured upon the house and family which therein lived a great Charm of invisibility and forgetfulness so that no one passing should ever see it again. And what is more, with her Spells and Incantations, all that ever existed of the house, family, and Animals that therein lived was forgotten by any who had ever known them. Further, if a hunter or a wanderer should, by chance, happen upon the house and walk into it, he would immediately forget that it had happened. That family and their Animals Morganna turned into her servants. And there, Morganna grieved – and waited.
As for the family living within the Enchanted farmstead – they forgot that their lives had ever been anything other than what they had become.
Morganna’s plans for the fruit of her belly, her daughter Morganna, had been bound up in the truth that her blood contained all the royal bloodlines of these Isles, going back to Macsen Wledig, old King Hen Coel, and Yosef of Arimathea, or perhaps better yet to Yeshua the Jewish King and Christian God. I knew my sister’s way of thinking... That tasty morsel would nullify and overcome, or at least smooth over, the concerns about the incestuous part in all of this. Of this she was convinced. But, even Morganna had to know that incest was a strictly and severely forbidden practice amoung the Christians.
Morganna determined to proclaim her daughter to the world as Arthur’s granddaughter, through their son Mordred. She would win, regardless of the outcome. Then something had changed in Morganna’s thinking. Had her madness finally completely overtaken her?
My niece Morganna had been born and raised in that house while it was under this Spell of forgetfulness and would never have questioned the lack of any outsiders in their lives. All must have seemed well and normal to her. When the Time had come to leave the house, perhaps she thought that she was indeed Morganna Le Faye, herself. Or perhaps her Mother had simply held her body and Spirit so captive for all of her life that she could do naught but do her bidding. My niece’s glassy eyes told me as much at the Giant’s Dance upon the Night of her Mother’s Death and of the girl’s vanishing, alone, into the darkness.
I greatly feared for my niece’s welfare. If she was found out to be the daughter of the “Black Sorceress of Old” – as Morganna’s legends had named her of late – she would be persecuted from coast to coast upon these Our Fair Isles. Her life would be worth little.
So, my searchers were set to a new task – to find the house that Morganna had Magicked into invisibility and forgetfulness. Out they travelled searching for word of strange tales of disappearing houses, people and the like.
At length, rumours led them to the family of the house that had disappeared. The folks who lived there told that one Night, they went to sleep and all was well, but when they awoke with the Dawn, the young couple they had been were old, bent, and gray. Their children were all grown up and their beloved Animals were gone. They held no memory of the nearly twenty years that had passed and no memory at all of Morganna Le Faye, or her daughter. All they knew and believed was that most of their lives had been lost in one Night’s sleep. The searchers asked if they had Dreamt, but they answered “no.” That long Night had been completely blank. The family asked if the searchers knew what had happened, but I had given strict instructions that the matter not be revealed.
I had sent gold to them through my searchers.
But gold cannot buy back twenty years of our lives nor missing the Love of our Animals nor missing seeing our children grow. It cannot buy back childhood memories of the adult strangers who are our children.
But gold and a blessing were all I could give – along with my sincere sympathies.
So, it was confirmed, that upon Morganna’s Death, her Spells of forgetfulness and invisibility had un-raveled and reversed.
Chapter 46
The Complete Memoirs of Morganna Le Faye
Morgan
I had arrived as quickly as I could. I went to speak with these poor folk. I asked if I might look around. They graciously allowed it. I found an old cupboard that they said had appeared in the morning of their awakening. They feared to open it or even touch it themselves as they feared that it was Black Magic. I asked if I might open it. They agreed.
What I found inside shocks me even now. In a secret compartment, I found a trick door that popped open at my command. In it, there lay scrolls, tied together neatly with red silk ribbons. I opened the bundle with trembling hands. It was entitled:
“The True and Complete Memoirs of Morganna Le Faye...”
With lavish strokes of quill and fanciful adornment of Magical symbols, of Animals, and dark and fearful portraits of things unspeakable – in Morganna Le Faye’s own hand – was the true and full story of things she had withheld from me. Had she written it in her demented state merely for the pleasure of re-living it? More likely for the joy of thinking that I might find it one Day. I can imagine how she would relish shocking me.
Most of it was ille
gible. There were many pages rolled up in the scroll. Some were torn, smeared, or chewed away by rodents and other vermin, but then were followed by some which could be read – at least a word here and there. By some strangeness, a few pages, not far from the end, were readable – as if she taunted me from the land of the wicked dead.
These words were concerning the Night upon which my Father’s pyre burned so hot and brightly – the Night upon which Arthur was conceived.
I thought just to burn it unread, but my curiosity would not allow that... for I noticed that this was a much longer version of those events than the one she had ‘left’ for my finding so many years ago.
Oh yes... my curiosity has led me into mischief and trouble all my life. I reasoned: What more could I hear, what could be worse than all that I already know of Morganna? So, I read it...
“I stealthily crossed the corridor to the steep winding stairwell, up and up, narrow and darksome was it. As quietly as a Fawn in the Wood did I go to my Mother’s chambers. I hid myself behind a tapestry-covered wall, leading into her most private sanctuary. Her bed, it was lit by two small oil lamps. The chamber was just light enough for me to see all.
Finally! To see Igraine so disgraced and powerless – the Mother who Loved me less than her precious baby, Morgan, as soon as her precious baby was born. Did she ever Love me at all? I hated her!
Yet, as I watched her, so beautiful and desirable was she that I became short of breath and very aroused. I rubbed myself on the nub of pleasure between my legs in rhythm with Uther’s thrusting and grunting. I have always been a good imaginer; it has done me well, and brought much profit and gain my way. Some would call it fantasizing, but do I not live in the realm of phantoms. All is real to me. That Night I shared the lust of Uther for Igraine, my Mother. I imagined squeezing her full breasts in my hands and sinking my teeth into her shoulders and neck... On and on did Uther thrust his thick phallus into her, turning her this way and that.
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