Springing from the heart of medieval France, The Romance of the Faery Melusine tells the story of Raymondin of Poitiers who accidentally kills his uncle while out hunting, and flees deep into the forest until he encounters a faery by a fountain. Struck by a mutual soul-love, the faery Melusine agrees to help him, and to become his wife, on condition that he makes no attempt to see her between dusk and dawn each Saturday. On this basis the house of Lusignan magically thrives, until a treachery tempts Raymondin to violate his promise and shatter the magic which holds his faery wife to the human world.
First rendered into written form in a text by Jean d’Arras in 1393, the legend of the Faery Melusine is well established in France, where she is credited with having founded the family, town and castle of Lusignan. However, it is very little known in the English-speaking world, despite the fact that Melusine originally hailed from Scotland.
This new translation by Gareth Knight of André Lebey’s 1920s novel Le Roman de la Mélusine captures the freshness of Lebey’s retelling of the legend and brings the benefit of Knight’s expertise both in medieval French literature and in the esoteric faery tradition. Gareth Knight is the author of The Faery Gates of Avalon and The Book of Mélusine of Lusignan.
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: 978-1-908011-32-9
- 152 pages
- perfect-bound paperback: 229mm x 152mm
- black and white text
- published 5th July 2011