Merlin In The Garden

a philosophic dialog

I must tell you, patient friend, that in that one full summer of peace amid the savage war (while King Uther Pendragon threw himself into the civil duties of Great Magistrate which he had so long neglected) that in that one peaceful summer the Great Druid of Britain did become a true friend of the Garden at Chalice Well.

Perhaps you'll notice that I choose to capitalise the word "Garden" as though it had been the generally accepted title of some thing. In sad fact, very few people ever gave the garden at Chalice Well any name at all because people saw the whole place as one thing and instinctively felt the water spirits were its ruling force. For a national institution that was so well loved, Chalice Well was poorly understood. The average Celtic Briton of Uther's time probably just felt that the whole hillside and steep little vale of the sacred precinct was a fount of miracles which they were glad to have and let it go at that. For their own part, the deep granite spring itself and the two stone-lined pools and the two rocky streams which the spring fed on the grounds were thriving from all the worship. As you know, humans who took the waters there very commonly experienced divine visitations – indeed, in good weather there would be whole weeks at a time when at least one such powerful radiant spiritual event would happen every day – and as you may know, water is very receptive to that kind of energy. And while the spirits of the waters throve and became large (with their fame on the lips of a grateful nation) so they began to ignore the earthly plant spirits of the place more and more until at last by Uther's time the waters finally saw the beautiful garden all surrounding them as little more than vegetation.

In this particular year, the year when Merlin's mental state forced him to take this leave from duty that I'm telling you about, Merlin was noticing a peculiar thing the staff were doing. Whenever the flower beds and lawn and trees and hedges of the institution came up in conversation among the staff, people would lower their voices and avert their eyes and yet speak more rapidly. Something seemed to be afoot. In fact (as Merlin did not know at first) the plant spirits had refused to appear when invited to the Chapel during the ceremony back at Yule Eve, a thing never heard of before, so that in the first grey light of the first dawn of the new year the whole able-bodied staff of Chalice Well must go out on a singing trek over every foot of the winding narrow snow-paved garden paths and they must stop frequently for earnest prayer. After that extraordinary Yule, you may be sure, the staff were excited and worried and so by now, with a vibrant spring raising the plants into their height of power, the humans of the place watched and waited but knew not what to do.

But Merlin had not yet fathomed these strange doings and no one had seen fit to explain. Thus, you may understand, when Merlin went out one afternoon in the first week of June – the first week of his well earned healing retreat too – he chanced to find himself gazing at the Gushing Fountain from rather far back up the hill among some shrubby yew trees and then, you will not be surprised to hear, he found himself conversing with a rather different and smaller kind of being than he may have thought to meet.

With a little flash of orange light – while Merlin was just standing there in the spotty shade of the yew trees and rummaging through his purse for a snack – a small green person materialised before him, a little green humanish person standing in the next bit of shade ahead, all clad in a skin of bits of leaves and shaking its fist in evident frustration toward the Fountain. He or she looked to be about six inches tall. Actually though, this particular faery was one of those who grow big and small repeatedly while you stare at them so Merlin knew at once that it was more than a chance seeing.

And so he called to the being; "Wilt thou have a crust of bread from me?"

The small/big person gave over shaking its fist at once and turned to him, replying; "Nay, a sip of beer will do."

While Merlin retrieved the large full bottle from his generous purse and removed its stopper and handed it up, the spirit closely examined his heart then said; "One day let's have a talk." And she or he reached down a viney twiggy hand to take his offering. Then she or he immediately vanished, bottle and all.

Well, what to do?

Merlin sat himself outside the Chapel's private door that evening, the lovely old carved private door beyond the back hedge where members of the public do not go but where the staff buzz in and out like a beeline at the knothole of a hollow oak hive, and he waited for some one in particular to have a chat. Of course he waited for Mistress Flora. Of all the spirits who lived as actual humans then in that place, she was the closest to the earth instead of the water. Even though she was embodied then as just a teenage woman and even with twin babes to occupy her time, she was of course the humans' leading gardener and leader too of some of their most important ceremonial prayers.

She came on soon enough, with her little boy and girl toddling along a ways behind, each tied by their own string to the apron of a good old gentleman. Flora herself was hurrying ahead lugging a huge basket packed with flowers and greenery to decorate the Wishing Altar but she certainly stopped when she came upon the Great Druid standing there patiently beside the Chapel door silently and courteously holding up his hand in the sign of one who would like to speak.

Mistress Flora put down her bulging load and stepped up at once and smiled in Merlin's face and took his hand in both of hers to remould his fingers into a simple sign of friendly greeting.

So he smiled too and briefly described the meeting by the yew trees and asked her thoughts.

While the babes toddled up alongside their elderly gentleman – whose hands were rather full of bundled greenery too – Mistress Flora nodded and smiled a little more then answered; "Yes! We hope ye'll sit down some morning for a mite of chat. I mean the garden people want to have a talk, not the staff. We're thinking about the way things always change." But that was all she managed to explain. That much explanation seemed to exhaust the young woman's store of ready words and she knitted her brow and searched in vain for some more human sentences that might reveal to him more of her people's thoughts. But meanwhile, her two sweet babes – no longer occupied with walking and now clinging safely to their grandfather's trouser legs – took to slapping angrily at one another's hands. So Flora went on at last; "Ye'll understand our meaning right enough, good druid, if ye'll hearken. Please, I know ye shall."

But Merlin did not have the strength as yet for magic work, not even for an operation like this one which promised to be so large a part of the Great Work. He considered it seriously and longingly and tried to sum up for himself the good and bad aspects of the proposal but could not find any reason not to try. He even thought of three good common British sayings that seemed to clinch it: 'Real opportunity doesn't come along just every day;' and 'God gives mortal strength;' and 'Idle hands find idle work'. It seemed like he must accept the offer to hold a serious philosophical discussion with the flower garden but he just didn't have enough of the real world's madness washed out of him as yet to undertake any such a like-kind doing. Ghosts of noble soldiers he had known and loved and saved and lost were coming yet to visit him nightly. That particular summer Merlin had to take the waters for weeks before he was fit and unburdened enough for any kind of renewed effort. All through June and July, Merlin scarcely even found it in himself to lend a hand around the place in little ordinary ways. It was even midsummer before he took up the staff's offer that he should lead one of their invocations and even then they let him choose which deity he wished to call. Many pilgrims must have wondered at the silent weary dark-enshrouded man, whose face some of them knew, bathing with them all that spring.

But finally then one morning at the end of August there sat Merlin at last, cross-legged and motionless from dawn to nearly noon, perched on a bench in the garden of Chalice Well (for his mother had implored him for the sake of his bones not to sit too long in dewy grass) staring with utmost interest at a stand of hollyhocks in bloom twelve feet toward his left. Now in late summer those were the only large generous flowers there (for the garden had no rose of Charon) and for several long hours a veritable flock of bees dashed among the blooms, among the more than man-tall stalks draped with their fuzzy leaves, the stiff leaves and stalks all together rustling in the warm breeze, conjuring a cloud of sound around the plants. This music was primarily a buzz and hum of insect joy that so much nutritious pollen was to be found here and taken so easily.

Merlin's mind kept turning back to the reproductive essence of the scene, to its physical reality. All through those intervening weeks, the garden had been enticing him every way they could to wonder about that question which they had conveyed to him through their young woman: how everything constantly becomes something else. Every glance of his upon a seeding stalk of grass brought back the subject to his mind, and every touch of his fingertips on wood and every wafting mushroom scent. Just yesterday he had chanced to meet Miss Flora in the children's nursery room beyond the kitchen and he had finally agreed, to her delight, and so this morning now he had promised to give the senior chiefs among the garden people every possible chance to talk to him. So, he had slept last night upon some relevant philosophic maxims then wandered out into the rising sunlight, bringing a courteous gift for the garden of course, and thinking to himself how much that day so far felt like a widower's first date. So there Merlin wandered out with a gift in hand into the fragrant summer dawn and sat down where an unseen faery voice bade him, and turned his face in the direction he was bidden, and waited patiently and most attentively through the whole show which was then presented.

He did not really feel that he got the point of the presentation till near its end, till near eleven o'clock, very near the hour when the sun must blaze overhead and force them to rest from their efforts. What was the garden trying to say? What was the question they were posing for him to lend his thoughts to? Obviously, the bee and flower motif gave him to understand at once that reproduction is a method of creating transience and change, a way to explore the possibilities offered by the world around you, but that idea must be just the starting point. Surely they must be saying more than that. He finally got it after hours listening, as I say, but only through a long and winding train of thoughts.

On one hand, the intercourse of hollyhocks and bees was strange to him indeed. Here was an hermaphroditic being who thrust itself up tall to hold out its sexual organs in a fitting way to copulate with beings of an utterly different race. Furthermore, the beings of that foreign race spared scarcely a thought for the service they did; they generally saw themselves as robbers of the plants, like so many insects do, and felt themselves fiercely loyal to their own separate scheme of reproduction. But on the other hand, the beauty of the flowers was just as plain to him as to the bees. In searching for a shape and colour and scent and flavour which would work as an attractive charm upon the senses of the pollinating travellers, the plants had hit upon a form that attracted his eyes too, and magically struck up inside of him (just as it did in the bees!) a deep instinctive tune of immortality and pleasure.

From this, many questions arose. He must struggle through them then in search of ones that shone more brightly of truth than others did, for those would be their opening statement in the discussion.

For awhile Merlin pondered how this scene had come to be. He guessed perhaps the eldest wild ancestral hollyhock originally had stood up taller than its squash and pumpkin cousins so as to hold its blooms above high thick-crowding grasses on some prairie and charm some bees who flew up there. Then human gardeners too had found its descendants charming and they chose to pamper hollyhocks among themselves and carry them wherever there were flying pollinators of any suitable kind. Thus these descendants, these performers, soon arrived upon this particular little stage this morning and various questions arose from that: why is the world not full already; why did the grasses grow tall and how did other kinds of beings play a part; are the likenesses of things more true than their differences or equally true or less; but none of this seemed quite exactly to the point. At last he wondered what other ways there were in which the destiny of bee and flower and man converge. Upon that wondering, a bright white light appeared high in his mind's eye and the buzzing of the bees struck his ears with a new bright chime and a subtle brightness of colour flooded the whole appearance of the scene.

How do their destinies converge? He fixed that in his conscious soul.

In truth behind truth, he and the spirits of the garden were converging toward some common vision, and the birthing force of that coming vision was the reason they all seemed to be here. Realisation is a more real thing than any individual beings who might appear to play host to it, for awareness is the universal stuff of all. Thus a brightness could pierce his soul's imaginary skin when he chanced to touch a glowing realisation. And yet, this thought about the fundamental nature of awareness did not seem to lead further on. He set this paragraph aside.

He focused on the scene through his physical eyes again and noticed the colour of the blooms. The trumpet-shaped cone of petals was a deep red then at their base an inner crown of a peculiar white leading toward the bloom's interior. (We may marvel that Merlin could focus his perception on such fine detail at a twelve foot distance.) He spied a flower where a bee with its fur all covered in yellow powder was just now kneeling on a spot of crimson flesh to leap and fly away and thus there was revealed an area of paler flesh. That white was not white, for he could feel a faint strain at that spot in his field of vision. That faint awareness of strain convinced him immediately that there are other colours which the human eye may struggle to see but cannot. With that, he was suddenly convinced that to the bees, those radiating centres of the flower petals all this morning had been flashing brilliantly with dazzling sunlight. And what of that? It showed the error of his judgement before when he had thought that the blossom's beauty was alike to himself and to the bee. In fact, the blossom was differently beautiful for himself and the bee because of a difference in their physical bodies. This felt as bright and true as any thought before.

He came back to the whole scene before him, to its reproductive nature, to the question of how their destinies converge, and to the initial question of how everything constantly becomes something else and as well the initial seeing that reproduction was a way for these immobile plants to explore their surroundings. He rested on those points a little while then chose a new approach. They had chosen to show him bees and hollyhocks. He had considered the hollyhock awhile so now what of the busy flyers?

It struck him to ask how much the bees were like the garden spirits and how much like the humans too. The bees of a hive love one another so fervently that their desire for individual life is very little felt. They work themselves to death without resentment and some kinds die whenever they venture to sting in the hive's defence. Merlin knew that the 'king bee' (for that was the expression used by humans in those days) was really the hive's queen, that they had chosen her only to lay their eggs and not for any other regal duties. The bee hive is much more of a collective enterprise than most humans knew, a collection of the members' imagination as well as their will. If you have ever witnessed a swarming hive all make a choice at once and all fling themselves into the air and dash off together in the direction of some distant place, and especially if you were a practitioner of psychic arts while seeing that amazing sight, then surely you will know what I mean.

The garden spirits were certainly a hive as much as that, Merlin knew, for he could just as easily draw back and talk with them all together; he spoke with a mountain just as easily as with a rock or tree or worm that helped to make the mountain, or with a whole rolling weather front as easily as with its individual winds and vaporous clouds. But differences between the plants and insects flew immediately to mind: the garden's queen and king lived in much more unity than the queen bee and her wandering drones; land spirits are strongly rooted to their physical place while animal spirits are not. And a great difference for humans too: humans build such a perfect marriage as the bees sometimes but very seldom and Merlin himself, the representative human on the scene, had never been a committed part of any such.

So then he thought that he had strayed from the question of how things are alike onto how they are different. But no, he then immediately saw, in fact it was the opposite; he had tended longingly toward the unrewarding question of how things are alike even after he had definitely realised that the faeries wanted him to wonder how things are different. For Merlin – a human – it had always been a source of most attractive joy to see the endless subtle common nature of all things in the world, for this was a thought far different than his typical accustomed thoughts, a thought that conjured feelings of secure peace, a thought that seemed to be purely and deeply good because it always reassured his hope; and yet it was a thought which is evidently not important to hollyhocks and their kin. It occurred to him that bees must surely share his accustomed weariness of striving and his fear amid all the competitive killing and dying that is common to animal life. Too, the bees and humans both managed to struggle through all of that by reducing all the world's complexity to simple rules of life. All of that would seem to suggest that bees as well as humans experience a joy beyond their usual experience whenever they chance to realise that the myriad separate things around them really can be seen alike in fundamental ways. That is a lodestar of how most animals live. But none of that at all could be said of the garden. The garden lived by striving to fill every corner of its reach with a mass of living substance and that is a very different strategy than the beasts'. A garden did not yearn for peace because it never very much waged war; it only girded itself for a fight when some horde of pests descended and even then put up a weak defence. No, variety instead of unity was the great ideal for plants and that was why plants shaped their individual bodies so freely and cross-bred so strongly and mutated so fervently. Merlin wondered why he'd never come upon this thought before: plants are far more powerful than beasts. How many stands of forest had he seen that were all denuded by some host of marauding pests, and a whole season's food production lost, and yet the selfsame trees leafed again prolificly next year? Plants are far more powerful than beasts, with every cubic yard of their habitation place so much more full of powerfully nutritious stuff, and all of it done by a strategy of diversifying. The faeries of this particular garden place had rejoiced with dance and song one day when a healthy thistle seed blew into a spot where nothing else had thrived; and now in one corner of the chamber behind his eyes, the faeries held up some pictures of that celebration. (Merlin was very glad to see those little pictures and to feel the joy around them, for he and the garden today had managed very little direct mental communication; this sudden bit of contact made him feel that he was coming up at last close behind them on their trail of thoughts.) Well then, it must be a stunning transcendental vision for plants now and then when they realise that everything really can be changed by will. That was a lodestar of their life. For beings in the normal ways of human life that very same thought holds a perfidious evil attraction, stinking of corrupt self-destruction. Human philosophers do not generally say that the omnipotent power of will is definitely evil but rather that it is a fact too strong for human frailties, and the plants likewise know that the human ideal of cosmic unity is a basic fact even though it reeks of stagnation to them. So, the feelings of humans and plants are not precisely opposite but they are strikingly different and born of different ways of physical life. So now he understood their inquiry, and also understood why they had sought a human being – an animal – rather than a hill or star or season or deity with whom to converse upon it. One of his fondest ideals was bad in their eyes and one of their fondest bad to him.

So now he had this: How is it that everything constantly changes to something else? Is it because good and evil beyond our normal seeing are the same? Is that how all our destinies converge?

At last Merlin let the lids fall down over his physical eyes and sat there for long minutes basking in a penetrating light of pleasure. The bees by now were struggling in the warm sun too much to give him much attention but he felt the hollyhocks and the whole garden relax and smile together with him.

Now, as per their agreement, he must ponder that awhile and try to come back someday with a thoughtful reply. Surely the garden had gained some partial increase of wisdom from his thoughts so far, just as he had gained a bit from theirs, but in truth he had only just barely managed to grasp their main intent. How is it that everything constantly changes to something else? Is it because good and evil (beyond our normal seeing) are the same? Is that how all our destinies converge?

I can tell you that it took considerable effort for the lean brown man to stretch himself and slowly stand. He realised how warm he was in the sun but how cool his sweaty gown felt in the breeze.

He brought his gift over to the hollyhock bed – it was simply a large watering can full of rich green algae-laden liquor from the rain barrel near his bedroom door – and examined everything carefully close up while pouring out these two gallons of rich brew slowly through the can's long neck among all the plants within reach, poking his long spout here and there down low where they were very crowded.

He now saw there had been poppies this year in the foot-wide strip of ground between the hollyhocks and lawn. Only the dry grey curly flower stems of them were left by now, the bright orange petals and clump of leaves all gone, each stem standing up a foot high above the carpet of green thriving pennyleaf at their feet, each dry stem left alone to hold up its drying capsule of the tiny ripening dust-sized poppy seeds. The tough springy corkscrew stems (all that remained above earth of their race) swayed in unpredictable directions at his slightest touch. Very soon the seed capsules would dry so much as to pop their mouths agape; then their bouncing in the wind would sprinkle their magic powdered essence round about. After that, of course, the heart would be gone from the flower stems and under the next rain (or even the next watering can) their very bodies would dissolve enough to collapse and sink below.

These plants were surpassing beautiful to Merlin. Because he was the kind of thinker that he was, a spinning geometric symbol appeared in his mind's eye to try summing up his vision of the poppies. This geometric figure was the astronomer's symbol 'Earth': a circle with two lines crossing in it to show the cross-roads of the elements. This mystical glyph appeared to him superposed upon the top mouth end of one of the poppy pods but it didn't fit the little geometric circle figure which the pod had sculpted on its face. The thin puckered mouth of drying plant material made a circle figure with ten radii instead of the Earth figure's four and so the Earth figure spun and whirled upon it in his mind's eye. You may be sure, this piece of geometric vision (which you and I might find to be a little interesting) was full of splendid concentrated meaning for him. And he counted this vision as a gift back from the garden, as more than ample recompense for the can of thick green water he had lugged out there at dawn.

But then the water quit gushing from the end of the long spout. He was already holding it tipped down steep to drain every drop, so truly the can was empty. Merlin laughed out loud at his own shock and disappointment with this inevitable event and looked up at the great noontime sun and shook his head disparagingly at his own sudden change in spiritual size. What did the Sky care about his running out of water? Of course he was familiar with the thought that good and evil are the same if you can look beyond the manifest needs of life; he personally knew of beings in the universe who are so big that their immense lives are undisturbed by any struggle between "dark and light". And he was familiar too with the notion that the struggle between "good and evil" is the motive force within all earthly life, though he had personally rejected that idea for being too simple. But the garden was proposing a different thought than those to him.

The garden faeries had mentioned Destiny in their question, had they not? Now, Destiny is a force that draws you toward it, different from Fate which carries you along. But so what? What good sense could he make of that? Destiny, Change, the relativity of Right; he doubted that he knew these subjects very well at all. He wondered how long it might take him to get back here to offer some relevant questions in reply. How old would he be by then? And would he ever live enough that he and they could find agreement on some answer? What were they looking for after all? How did this philosophical inquiry offer hope for resolution of the garden's conflict with the waters?

In the meanwhile these matters would brew in his mind, especially this matter of right and wrong. Oh yes, any spirit incarnated in this world (this hard earthly realm where all the elements combine) must constantly discern what is good and bad. That is a lodestar of life on Earth. But what is the truth inside that truth? Why do all things change, endlessly and constantly, into other things? Is it a fundamental truth that the most powerful opposites really are the same, and thus there is no power holding things in one shape or another? The destinies of all things surely do converge, but can this be the reason that they do: because they all sum up to zero, not infinity nor yet to one? Over the coming years these things would sometimes plague him and sometimes yield to his thirsty lips the sweetest kind of consolation. In human terms, it might be long indeed between his visits to that garden bench.

Friend, I can tell you a thing which Merlin did not ken until another visit later: the reason why the garden spirits had resolved to undertake that philosophical discussion.

Just the mere comprehension of such powerful questions by such patient beings brought an increase of the garden's power, for they were thus holding themselves up into the main stream of the Great Work and thus they began to draw the attention of some very strong souls. They sank their roots a little deeper, held their leaves a little longer in the fall, and put up new leaves sooner in the following spring.

Also, as you would surely guess, with all the congress of cogitation going there, more of the humans at Chalice Well took to lingering among the flower beds to think deep thoughts. There soon occurred some very splendid visions of Love among the roses and just as soon, one old half-hollow oak gained fame as a proper speaking tube. This was the big grandfather tree who had stood long years of service down beside the little outflow dam of Chalice Well, dropping many of his acorns year by year into the water there where the two streams of the well converge and jump and run away; he had a little open slit among his buttressing roots where people found that they could slip in offerings or inquiries and whisper and listen to replies from various realms.

The staff took to making time among the plants a regular part of the healing ritual which they offered to the public, so that each little bunch of naked bathers would troop up from the cleansing pool to sit and sing awhile among hydrangea shrubs and such. They soon began, of course, to find proper names for the various spots about and they got some new signs put up in various places giving visitors directions to "The Garden".

Ah now, my friend, you must know too that it was very well for the Great Druid to partake in this bit of strength, for he would soon be called back to his duty. Five times since Uther's wooing, the glowing Moon had turned the face she shows the human world so that on that peaceful summer day, the Lady Duchess Igraine would stand the sea cliffs and trot the stone-fenced country lanes of her Cornish realm with belly well swollen and many distant thoughts. Only five moons more there were ere Yule when she would pace up and back her privy chamber again in yearning expectation of a man, but now with her ladies present too. She would shout for Merlin then, shout silently with all her might and grief for a great druid to come quick and spirit off this new man to long years of hidden safety, this child of brilliant light who was not her husband's but her nation's and the world's.