Who was Merlin really? And what does he have to do with Sovereignty?

Who was Merlin really? It’s a question I often get asked.

Well, we have to go back to the 12th century, when a school of scribes was appointed by the Norman conquest to win the hearts and minds of the unruly Celts, and they reinvented Merlin from an already-existing native, mythological shaman called Myrddin Wylt.

Myrddin was a bard and a shaman in ancient Welsh myths whose role it was to uphold the Sovereignty of these Blessed Isles which were once known as Myrddin’s Precinct, according to the Welsh Triads. The Druids, however, did not call Myrddin a shaman because that’s a Siberian word. They called him an awenwyddion. So what does that mean in Welsh?

Awen refers to a silver stream of inspiration that is gained by visiting, in shamanic trance, the “gods” or dion of the Other Worlds, to gain from them wydd, or wisdom and knowledge. To make it simpler for my readers, though, I’ve called all my Celtic awenwyddions “Dreamers” as a shamanic journey in trance is really just a waking or lucid dream in which we visit the “gods” for guidance and wisdom.

Merlin white horse — Merlin riding the White Horse of Sovereignty

It was same Norman writing school that promulgated the myth of Merlin concealing the Thirteen Treasures of Britain in Bardsey Island, just off the county of Gwynedd. In my opinion, this was a ploy to provide a distraction away from the real location of a much more sacred burial ground for those precious, protective talismans of Sovereignty – a 10-mile wide circle of 13 giant earthworks in the Somerset landscape which is known today as the Glastonbury Temple of the Stars.

In the Welsh myths, Myrddin stores the treasures in a Glass House. The oldest name for Glastonbury is the Isle of Glass. It can be no coincidence that there were many Norman propaganda writers who were based in Glastonbury Abbey, and from there they published The High History of the Holy Grail – a book about the adventures of 12 Arthurian knights on the Glastonbury Temple of the Stars.

If you read my book The Grail Mysteries, you’ll get to know Myrddin a lot better as you follow him, along with the bard Taliesin and the sea god Manawydan, in their quest to bury the Thirteen Treasures of Britain around the Glastonbury Temple of the Stars – all in the face of the evil machinations of Bricriu of the Poison Tongue’s and Vlak the Dragon Slayer’s efforts to thwart them.

You will also hear Taliesin’s moving rendition of an original Mabinogion myth about how a huge and bitter gulf came about between Ireland and Britain – a gulf that is still yet to be bridged properly and which led to the head of the giant king Bran being buried in the land, for protection.