These sequences in the birth of Arthur, however, are familiar mythological themes. The son of the virgin birth must have empathy with the people and the land as well as preserving the reputation of his mother: he must depart for that reason. He requires this time of exile for a humble upbringing and to learn the arts and crafts necessary to outwit less worthy opponents. Only after the exiled son returns and takes the tokens of kingship is he able to claim the throne. He has, in effect, become the chief priest of the state and as such is culpable for its well being. These concepts of sovereignty have evolved through the generations -- sometimes slowly over centuries and sometimes abruptly in a few days. In either case the rights of kingship is a proven ritual and recorded within the mythologies.

The Significance of the Sword

In English mythology the stone which holds Arthur's sword is "...the genius loci, the spirit of the earth beneath us..." as Catlin Matthews says in Arthur and The Sovereignty of Britain [1989:21]. This spirit is called Logres "pride of the land" and was empowered through this rock -English monarchs are to this day crowned over the ancient inauguration stone - the stone of 'Inis Fal' now called the Stone of Scone (which after being purloined from Ireland to Scotland was subsequently looted again by Edward I to England in 1296, then brought to Westminster Abbey).
The origin of this stone can be determined from the Irish story, Baile in Scail (The Shadow's of Prophecy) where Conn of the Hundred Battles "...steps upon the stone of Fal, brought by the Tuatha de Danaan 1 from the Otherworldly island of Falias. The stone shrieks under him, but the Druids are unable to tell him anything else about it save that he will be king" [Matthews, 1989:62]. The fact that the Druids are unable to tell Conn about the stone points to a separate Celtic mythological tradition from the Irish. Catlin Mathews says that: "Celtic kings were not crowned and so had no coronation; they were, however, inaugurated upon the sacred earth of their kingdom" [1989:235]. In both the Celtic and Irish mythology, however, the result is the same: the stone identifies the next king.
In Irish mythology the spirit that lies within this rock is the earth goddess as sovereignty. In fact sovereignty is both the rock and the spirit of the land on which the king is to rule. From the Irish Book of Leinster there is a poem which ends: From the reign of Heremon, The noble and graceful, Such worshipping of stones there was Until the coming of good Patrick of Macha [from Graves, 1966:131
These rocks, Robert Graves points out, are related to the word "Baitulos" which are "...sacred stones in which a deity is resident; it seems to be connected with the Semitic Bethel ('House of God')" [1966:366]. The 2nd century historian Pausanias writes in his Guide to Greece that near the Achaian city of Pharai "...stand some stone blocks: there are just thirty of them, and the people of Pharai worship them, calling each one by the name of a god. There was an early period when the whole of Greece paid divine honors to natural stones instead of statues." [Vll,22,3]. Pausanias further says that this tradition of spirits within the rocks is funneled through an enchantress who, as she says, is "born between man and goddess." She is the "...Sibyl Herophile who stands on the rock to sing her oracles" [X,12,l]. The significance of this is that the Sibyl prophesied by calling on the spirits of the dead through the prophetic rock on which she stands. In effect she is the living earth with direct connections to the underworld, she is a mythological anachronism where she alone can call upon the land of the dead. Through the rocks, springs and trees the earth goddess communicated with the Underworld. As R.J. Stewart remarks, "...it was understood that all energy, life, power, and death came from beneath the ground" [1990:38]. The rock is the portal through which the earth goddess communicates to the upper world, and the Sibyl is the antenna that relays her message.
But, the rock in the churchyard that holds Arthur's sword is "a great stone four square" not some worn monolithic stone erratic. The earth goddess is an organic being where natural formations are more to her liking. The only notable god that was represented as a stone square is Hermes. Norman O. Brown records that "...representations of Hermes...usually took the form of a square-cut ithlyphallic block of stone surmounted with the god's head..." [1990:32] This approaches the shape of the stone which confronts Arthur, all right, but does the god Hermes contribute any substantive information to the Arthurian legend? In the myth of Hermes the most often recounted event is his stealing cattle from Apollo. But, as we have discussed earlier with Mithra and the Bull, cattle is just another way of linking the god to the sign of Torus. Apollo was already a sun god (they were his cattle after all) and the act of stealing them must be an attempt by Hellenistic Greeks to alter Hermes alliance from a moon god-serpent deity into the camp of the Sun God. If, as we now suspect, Hermes was part of the older religious mythos what additional evidence is there to connect him to it? By examining the words used to describe Hermes there may be some clues.
We can link Hermes to the older agricultural rites from the common epithet he uses, xapto'to1'\ (the giver of joy). This is a fertility moniker and the stone piles or heaps evolved into monolithic phallic representations - Hermes name means "he of the stone heap," a Greek term that may well represent a descriptive form rather than an actual pre-Hellenic name we do know from Herodotus that "Hermes with phallus erect" was a custom familiar to the Greeks.
This phallic image was central to the maintenance of the royal line and the continuity of the natural world. This is evidenced in Egypt from the pillar of Djed. The king raises with ropes the fetish of Osiris. As Nagel states, this "...is Osiris himself [where he] is a kind of libretto for the benefit of the priest who directs these ceremonies on the occasion of the coronation or funeral of a king of the Middle Empire..." [Nagel, 1955:127].
This phallic representation occurs too in the Mysteries of the Kabeori. As Pausanias described earlier, they were very secretive initiation rites. Pausanias, whenever he writes of the Kabeori, will not reveal what the mysteries involved. He says only that a "...dream forbids me to write what lies inside the sanctuary wall, and what the initiated are not allowed to see they obviously ought not to know about" [1,38,6]. Yet, Pausanias does reveal one important clue. He writes that, "..as for the story about Hermes and the ram told during the mystery of the Mother, I know it but will not tell it." [11,3,4] The "mystery of the Mother" refers to the earth goddess, while "Hermes and the ram" must be part of a ceremonial reenactment of the fertility ritual.
Hermes part in the fertility ritual of the Kabeori may have involved several roles. He is labeled, for example KAE1t'tEt'U OOA.OS ("secret action"), or KEpomos ("skill at making or doing things")" which is related to the Sanskrit Krtya, meaning 'a doing," especially a magic practice..." [Brown, 1990:23]. This magic practice formed part of the Kabeori mystery involving the male role in the fertilization of the earth goddess. As C. Kereny states, "...to transform men into true source of life into the service of that most fragile living thing, the embryo, 'man the germ;' to lead them...to the simplest form of humanness: this...may be taken as the function of the Kabeirian mysteries [in Campbell, 1955:59].
More specifically, Hermes was a guide to the underworld. He became tinctured with this epithet because he was the "herald" for the initiatory rites of the Kabeori. That meant he was the priest or mystagogue that lead the candidate through the initiation ceremony. Norman Brown writes that "...the pre-Homeric 'herald,' [was] the leader in both the rituals and the incantations of primitive image, inspired the mythological concept of the deity who is himself both a herald and magician" [1990: 30]. Hermes was the title for the bishop of the secret ceremony of the Kabeori, literally, the conductor of soles. As chief priest he would have been described as "secretly reciting" or "secret action" -- which is exactly the kinds of similitude used to describe him. These same characteristics were actively applied to the Druids as well. Druid priests performed secret initiations which required secret actions and secret words and, like Hermes, were responsible for the invention of writing, skilled in the art of medical science, and described as using magic and sorcery. In Caesar's The Conquest of Gaul, he remarks that the "...god [the Druids] reverence most is Mercury (Romanized Hermes). They have very many images of him, and regard him as the inventor of all arts, the god who directs men upon their journeys, and their most powerful helper in trading and getting money" [1951:33]. Thus Hermes epithets of "trick,” "stealthy," meaning "secret, mysterious action", or magician were likewise used to describe Druid priests. So when the Romans, who saw the Druids in Britain worshipping a stone cube as Mercury, they were referring to a complex set of religious variables that stretches back into the beginning of human consciousness. At least now, however, when we read that the Druids are believed to have worshipped Mercury in the form of a stone block, there is a rightful answer: Hermes is the earth goddess's representative responsible for ferrying the candidate through the initiation maze. Hermes, Mercury, Toth, therefore, is the stone holding the sword: a Druid monument to the mysteries of life and death where the churchyard ("like St. Pauls") is the sacred enclosure of Stonehenge or some wooded glade.
Robert Graves writing of the Welsh poetry traditions records in The White Goddess that the sword was a token of sovereignty and had a common origin with "...ancient symbols of royalty. He also says that "...the drawing of the sword from the rock seems to have formed part of the Bronze Age coronation ritual" [Graves 1973:324]. Graves points to the extraordinary parallels between the Greek myth of Theseus and that of Arthur.
Both Theseus and Arthur must extract the tokens of their kingship by recovering them from a stone. Whether it is pulling the sword from out of the rock, as with Arthur, or pulling the sword from under the rock, as with Theseus, the symbolism is the same. The sword is not just the token of rank as it appears in the myth of Theseus, but the prophetic acknowledgment of the rightful heir.
To fully understand the implications of the sword in the hero cycle, we look to Frazer who offers an example of the kingship rites at Nemi:
"In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by laying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or craftier. The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the title of king; but surely no crowned head ever lay uneasier, or was visited by more evil dreams, than his. For year in, year out, in summer and winter, in fair weather and in foul, he had to keep his lonely watch, and whenever he snatched a troubled slumber it was at the peril of his life."
In this instance the king is both consort of the high priestess and a title of the temple priest. Clearly the test of the kingship relies on his ability to remain strong and worthy as the priestess's consort. Rather than a set term of office, the king maintains his power only as long as he is physically able. Yet, obviously the king who guards the temple at Nemi was not a ruler of people or estates. Joseph Campbell remarks, "...among the Celts, the king may have been sacrificed at the expiration of a term..." and that this term may have consisted of only a few years [Campbell 1964:313].

Frazer describes a custom practiced in Cornwall up to the sixteenth century involved
"... annually appointing a mock king for a single day. On 'little Easter Sunday' the freeholders of the town and manor assembled together...and one among them...gaily attired and gallantly mounted, with a crown on his head, a scepter in his had, and a sword borne before him, rode through the principal streets to the church, dutifully attended by all the rest on horseback. The clergyman in his best robes received him at the churchyard stile and conducted him to hear divine service. On leaving the church he repaired, with the same pomp, to a house provided for his reception. Here a feast awaited him and his suite, and being set at the head of the table he was served on bended knees, with all the rites due to the estate of a prince."
[1959:293-294].
Thus, the sword, once the instrument of the kings execution, is now wrestled away from the Mother Goddess and a surrogate victim substituted in his place. Not only does the sword represent the sacrificial kings emancipation from the earth goddess, but the sacrificial blade becomes his own personal token of male power - he is Zeus with his lightning bolt, Thor with his thunder hammer, or Arthur with Excalibur. Certainly the name of Arthur's sword, Caledvwlch in Welsh and Caladbolg in Irish, points to the origin coming from the lightning bold or thunder hammer since -bolg means lightning. This symbolism surfaces in the cults of Mithra where the sword was used to present the candidate with a crown before being instructed in the mysteries. Not only does this reenactment sound suspiciously like the coronation of Arthur, but may represent the continuation of a ritual initiated within the misty past.
Symbols of Initiation

In England the "...secret initiations of the Druids indicated similarity between the Mystery school and the schools of Greece and Egypt." [Hall, 1977:23]. These mysteries schools bring to mind the underworld reenactment of the Orphic mysteries, Kabeorian mysteries, as well as the Elusinian mysteries. Hall goes on to say this that these "...schools which closely resembled the Bacchic and Elusinian Mysteries of Greece or the Egyptian rites of Isis and Osiris, is justly designated the Druidic Mysteries" [1977:22]...These mysteries are described by Caesar who says: “...that the soul does not parish after death, but passes from one body to another. They think that this is the best incentive to bravery, because it teaches men to disregard the terrors of death. They also hold long discussions about the heavenly bodies and their movements, the size of the universe and of the earth, the physical condition of the world, and the power and properties of the gods; and they instruct the young men in all these subjects." [Caesar, 1551 :32-33]
The candidate for initiation into the mysteries became metaphorically channeled to the truths offered by the mysteries. The initiate comes away from the ceremony with the knowledge that reproduction, death, and reincarnation are part of the cosmic cycle. Through ritual drama he assumes stewardship over the Earth-goddess and her son. This was done on the Druids feast days which "...took place only at the two solstices and the two equinoxes" [Hall, 1977:23]. These initiation days also correspond to the Greater and Lesser initiations of Demeter and Persephone as well as the Greater and Lesser mysteries of Isis and Osiris.
It is important to remember that, as Walter Burkert states: "...the 'other gift' of Demeter, besides the bringing of the grain, is the promise of a privileged life beyond the grave for those who have 'seen' the mysteries" [1987:21]. These mystery dramas are presented to the candidate with various metaphorical allegory that guide his passage. These symbols are ages old, but only partially revealed to the initiate. In the Elusinian mysteries a portion of the ritual involves a dance. Pausanias claims that the candidate goes "...to the oracle, wearing a linen tunic, which he ties with ribbons, and heavy local boots. The oracle is on the mountainside above the sacred wood. It is surrounded by a circular platform of white stone, of the same circumference as a very small threshing-floor..." [IX,39.3].
In allegorical terms the dancing floor is nothing else but a threshing floor where once ritualistic dances were replaced in later years as theater performances (the theater stage is merely a converted threshing floor). Moreover, the threshing floor is the place where the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone were yearly acted out in creating the flower - it is the substance of the underworld and the world of light. The significance of the boots are part of the ritual of the threshing floor dance, and the fact that the boots were heavy may be a functional adaptation used to stamp the grain from the chaff.
The symbolism of the boots may account for the sandals found under the rock of
Theseus. The sword is clearly a token of the royal pronouncement, but what is the connection regarding the shoes? The explanation is given by Frazer where he says that divine personages may neither touch the ground

"...lest there divinity might, at contact with earth...discharge itself with fatal violence...and...thus drained of his ethereal virtue, might thereby be incapacitated for the future performances of those magical functions, upon the discharge of which the safety of the people and even the world is believed to hang" [Frazer 1959:671].

The anvil atop the stone in Malory's story, is another example of the allegorical symbols used to depict god's spiritual ties to both the Otherworld, and the present world. We read from Hall that: "Alters were erected as a symbol of the lower world, and fires were kept burning upon them to represent that spiritual essence illuminating the body it surmounted" [Hall 1977:98]. The anvil, holding Arthur's sword, represents this spiritual fire. The rock it rests upon is the lower world where the earth goddess reaches upward to profess her vision of destiny and the eternal flame illuminates the divine assembly:
"Isis, or Nature personified, carries with her the sacred fire, religiously preserved and kept burning in a special temple by the vestal virgins. This fire is the genuine, immortal flame of Nature -- ethereal, essential, the author of life. The inconsumable oil, the balsam of life, so much praised by the wise and so often referred to in the Scriptures, is frequently symbolized as the fuel of this immortal flame."
[Hall, 1977:47]

To the initiated, then, 'idols' were sacred stones which contained the spirit of the universal understanding. To the uninitiated a divinity like Kermand Kelstach, ('Mercury of the Celts.'), is merely a stone. As Robert Campbell describes:

"In Hellenistic Greece and in Imperial Rome, the ancient gods were reduced to mere civic patrons, household pets, and literary favorites. Uncomprehended inherited themes, such as that of the Minotaur -- the dark and terrible night aspect of an old Egypto-Cretan representation of the incarnate sun god and divine king -- were rationalized and reinterpreted to suit contemporary ends" [Campbell 1973:248].
In Malory's Excalibur episode, Arthur broke his sword while in combat with King Pellinore. Merlin intervenes and leads Arthur away.
"They mounted, and Merlin led the way to a hermit, who treated Arthur's wounds, and in whose dwelling they rested for three days. They resumed their journey, which was to the Lake of Avalon, and as they were approaching the lake, Arthur said, 'How sad that I broke my magic sword!'
You shall have another one,' Merlin replied. So they rode till they came to a lake, the which was a fair water, and broad. And in the midst of the lake Arthur was aware of an
arm clothed in white Semite, that held a fair sword in that hand.
'Lo!; said Merlin, 'yonder is that sword that I spake of.'
With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake.
'What damsel is that?' said Arthur.
'That is the Lady of the Lake', said Merlin; 'and within that lake is a rock, and therein is air a place as any on earth, and richly beseen; and this damsel will come to you anon, and then speak ye fair to her that she may give you that sword.' ame the damsel unto Arthur, and saluted him, and he her again. 'Dams. 'said Arthur, 'what sword is that younder, that the arm holdeth above the water? I uld it were mine, for I h~ no sword."
'Sir Arthur, king,' said the dams' that sword is mine, and if ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, ye shall have it.'
'By my faith,' said Arthur, 'I will give you what gift ye will ask.'
'Well!' said the damsel, 'Go ye into younder barge, and row yourself to the sowrd, and take it and the scabbard with you. And I will ask my gift when I see my time.'
So King Arthur and Merlin alit and tied their horses to two trees, and so they went into the barge, and when they came to the sword that the hand held, then King Arthur took it up by the handles, and took it with him, and the arm and the hand went under the water."

The Lady of the Lake give up the sacrificial sword, at the same time, passes the stewardship of the land into Arthur's care. The sword is the primordial token of the land and the right to reign over it - exactly as it had been in the initial sequence of pulling the sword from the stone. The goddess appointed her sacrificial consort, but in this example the story is amended so that Arthur is already king - Excalibur is merely a replacement for his original sword. These episodes are multiple versions of the same mythological reenactment. They are, as Campbell says, symbolic expressions in which mythology is "...misread as biography, history, and cosmology" [Campbell 1973:256].
This knowledge is essential in understanding the sequence Malory use to describe the events of drawing the sword from the stone. Although it appears initially that Malory (or whoever authored the original story) has strung together a sequence of Christian holidays in order to sanctify the event. The reality is, that there are matching traditions that touch upon ancient pagan rituals. Malory begins the sequence on Christmas (25th of December) when all the lords of the realm, and all the gentlemen of arms came to London to see who should be rightwise king of this realm; Arthur pulls the sword on New Year's Day (January 1st); draws the sword again on the Twelfth-day, January 6th; repeats on Candlemas (February 1st); and finally was crowned on Pentecost (7th Sunday after Easter approximating May Day). The sequence begins on the winter solstice, but as Joseph Campbell points out, there are...two dates of the Nativity scene: December 25 [the date of the Christian solstice and the date of the birth of Mithra] and January 6 [whose origins of a virgin birth extent to the remote past], with associations pointing on one hand to the Persian and on the other to the old Egyptian sphere. Thus Arthur must extract the sword again on New Years day and repeat the process on the prehistoric solstice recognized by Twelfth Day. Arthur must wait to be king until May 1 the day when all sons of the virgin are conceived and to insure his presence will rejuvenate the land.
So, who ordained the kingship? It was the Earth Goddess choosing her consort; she is the immovable, unchangeable stone that holds the sword secure until the rightful, legitimate mate is found. And when would she justify his place beside her? After he has completed his test: by drawing the sword; on the first day of the year when the sun was at its weakest; at the time of his birth when the sun rose out of the side of Virgo -- December 25th. And why was his coronation on Pentecost? Because that is in May, where the Earth Goddess conceives of the new king. Why the anvil on the stone? Because, that is the eternal flame the Druids kept burning - it was the sacred stone alter, symbol of the lower world, while the eternal flames represented the solar light. And why is the sword sticking out of them? Because, the sword is the visible link to the underworld: it is the Sibyl that professes the rightful king.
The esoteric and allegorical transition of the king's immortal sole, enacted through the drama of the mysteries is the essence of the sword and stone episode in the Arthurian tales. We should remember that
"...the founder of Egyptian learning, the Wise Man of the ancient world, gave to the priests and philosophers of antiquity the secrets which have been preserved to this day in myth and legend. These allegories and emblematic figures conceal the secret formulae for spiritual, mental, moral, and physical regeneration commonly known as the Mystic Chemistry of the soul (alchemy). These sublime truths were communicated to the initiates of the Mystery Schools, but were concealed from the profane. The later, unable to understand the abstract philosophical tenets, worshipped the concrete sculptured idols which were emblematic of these secret truths." [Hall, 1977;46]