One of the classes I’m taking right now to finish up school is called “Magic in the Middle Ages.” If you have any inquiries about gemstones, goat’s blood, or the Age of Aquarius, I’m your girl.
My book had a passage on magic within medieval romances that struck me. In many of these romances, the magic involved is presented as some sort of pre-established circumstance: an enchanted castle or an immovable sword, wanting some daring intervener to break the curse. You’re all familiar:
“In The Book of Lancelot of the Lake, the hero enters a wood and discovers a band of knights and damsels singing and dancing around a chair that bears a golden crown. As soon as he joins them he loses all memory and is trapped in the dance. When he sits on the chair and has the crown placed on his head, however, the enchantment is broken. He then learns how the dancers were enchanted, many years beforehand, and how they could not be released until the “best and handsomest knight in the world” sat on the chair and wore the crown.”
Someone pursues adventure into a very unknown realm against all odds and adversaries only to find that their very person was sufficient to break the enchantment.
Wow! Perspective only by risk, disenchantment only by heroic effort. I’ve so much to learn from that to break out of things I’m done waltzing with.
