The knights of King Arthur’s Round Table – Erec, Lancelot, Yvain, Perceval and Gawain – first appeared in the works of Chrétien de Troyes, who cast into Old French stories told by Welsh and Breton story tellers which had their origin in Celtic myth and legend. Chrétien wrote at a time when faery lore was still taken seriously – some leading families even claimed descent from faery ancestors. So we do well to look again at these early stories, for they were written not so much in terms of mystical quests or examples of military chivalry but records of initiation into Otherworld dynamics. Gareth Knight, an acknowledged expert on spiritual and magical traditions and a student of medieval French, goes to the well spring of Arthurian tradition to unveil these original principles. What is more, he shows how they can be regenerated today. “Opening the faery gates” can have its reward not only in terms of personal satisfaction and spiritual growth but as part of a much needed realignment of our spiritual responsibilities as human beings on planet Earth.
Gareth Knight is one of the world’s foremost authorities on ritual magic, the Western Mystery Tradition and Qabalistic symbolism. He trained in Dion Fortune’s Society of the Inner Light, and has spent a lifetime rediscovering and teaching the principles of magic as a spiritual discipline and method of self-realisation. He has written around fifty books covering topics as diverse as Qabalah, history of magic, Arthurian legend, Rosicrucianism, Tarot, Faery, the Inklings (Tolkien, C.S.Lewis et al) and the Feminine Mysteries, as well as several practical books on ritual magic. The Gareth Knight Group, a magical fraternity which he founded in 1973, is now run by his daughter Rebsie. He has lectured worldwide and contributed extensively to Inner Light, the journal of the Society of the Inner Light, and Lyra, the Gareth Knight Group journal.
- ISBN: 978-1-908011-40-4
- 220 pages
- cover artwork by Jerry Gehringer
- perfect-bound paperback: 229mm x 152mm
- black and white text
- published 21st June 2013