{"id":255,"date":"2014-01-31T16:06:29","date_gmt":"2014-01-31T16:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/?p=255"},"modified":"2014-01-31T16:06:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-31T16:06:29","slug":"sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight-interpretation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/2014\/01\/31\/sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight-interpretation\/","title":{"rendered":"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Interpretation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sir_gawain_and_the_green_knight_by_goblinhood-d5yfyaz\"<\/a>The story begins in Camelot, the home of Arthur and his knights, suggestive of the\u00a0 heavenly home of all human souls and the place which the soul leaves in order to\u00a0 journey into the\u00a0 material world.\u00a0 Also the place to which it returns.\u00a0 The round table evokes an infinity with no beginning and no end and therefore a place beyond time and space, an eternal realm where\u00a0 all souls are equal in dignity, and are at-one.<\/p>\n

One way of looking at the Gawain figure is as the human soul, drawn away from its heavenly home by the challenge of its natural desires, represented by the Green Knight, whose colour evokes the natural world and whose decapitated but still living head and body suggest the recurring cycles of death and regeneration which characterise nature.\u00a0\u00a0 Even while there is apparent loss of life above a hardened winter soil, there is always life stirring in seed and root below in preparation for new growth to emerge in spring.<\/p>\n

The Knight\u2019s challenge draws the soul into a different kind of existence, away from
\nthe peace and unity of its home to a place of passion,\u00a0 division and strife.
\nThe entry of the Green Knight into Camelot suggests that the seeds of natural desire\u00a0 are present even in the soul\u2019s supernatural home, (and are therefore in some way essential to what it is to be a human).\u00a0 Essential too, is the soul\u2019s exploration of this in a territory foreign to itself \u2013 the material world.\u00a0 It is only through a confrontation with nature and matter that it discovers what it is in essence, which is spirit.<\/p>\n

\"sirgawain16\"Gawain\u2019s journey takes him through wildernesses, and forests inhabited by savages and robbers.\u00a0 Forests are often interpreted as matter itself, a place where the soul tends to loose sight of its heavenly origin in the darkness and density. But the soul can never be destroyed as it carries the seed of immortal life within its depths,\u00a0 and Gawain survives and battles on to his reward \u2013\u00a0 what appears to be rest and enjoyment in Bertilak\u2019s castle.\u00a0 But these are really only further trials awaiting the soul that has proved worthy, and are all the more insidious as they have the appearance of innocence.<\/p>\n

On his way to meet the Green Knight Gawain takes his shield with the five pointed star.\u00a0 A pentogram is often suggestive of defence and guardianship, as well as of the victory of the human soul over the foursquare manifested world of nature.<\/p>\n

He is tested three times both by the Knight and his Lady. Three is a familiar number in fairy tale and myth; objects, events and people often come in threes, it is a number symbolic of completion, accomplishment, solidity and law.\u00a0 Once Gawain has been tested three times, the exercise is complete, and he is either proved or not \u2013 that is the law.\u00a0 Perhaps too, the divine trinity underlies the tests, suggesting that they are God-ordained.<\/p>\n

Gawain carries the green girdle home with him \u2013 he has yet to attain to full mastery over his own nature, the girdle serving as a reminder of this.<\/p>\n

The story takes place in the darkest, coldest part of the year when frost and snow has hardened the ground, a hardening suggestive of the material world, but also a time when new life (the Green Knight arrives on New Year\u2019s Day) is stirring deep in the earth.\u00a0 Gawain must look beyond his earthly, material nature and dig deep into his soul to find the divine life that will help him overcome his trials and master his lower nature.<\/p>\n

Bertilak\u00a0 is a shapeshifter; at one moment the fearsome Green Knight, at another the cheery host, and nothing is quite what it seems with him.\u00a0 He is able to withstand decapitation, and appears now as a friend, now as an adversary. The name Bertilak can be translated as \u201cbright lake\u201d and water is an apt symbol for him \u2013 ever-<\/p>\n

changing, elusive to the grasp.\u00a0 He is the natural and cryptic forces behind the physical world, which are unstable and can be dangerous to the unwary soul.\u00a0 The hero has to wrest something stable and transcendent from within in order to deal with them, rather as Arthur draws Excalibur, the bright sword of intellect from the constantly shifting waters of the Lady of the Lake.<\/p>\n

The green girdle of Bertilak\u2019s wife encircles the generative life of nature, in which\u00a0 the sexual appetite and procreation constantly brings forth new life, generation after generation, in a never-ending round.<\/p>\n

The name Gawain has a possible association with Gwalchmai, the traditional hero of Welsh legend.\u00a0 \u201cGwalch\u201d means falcon or hawk of May.\u00a0 The hawk is a solar bird, indicating that the Soul\u2019s origins are heavenly and that it has the potential to cast light wherever it places its consciousness.<\/p>\n

The deer (temperance),\u00a0 the boar (fortitude),\u00a0 and the fox (prudence), are virtues related to man\u2019s triple nature of heart, will and mind respectively; all need to be developed by the soul on its path to perfection, all are the rewards of a soul striving for the good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story begins in Camelot, the home of Arthur and his knights, suggestive of the\u00a0 heavenly home of all human souls and the place which the soul leaves in order to\u00a0 journey into the\u00a0 material world.\u00a0 Also the place to which it returns.\u00a0 The round table evokes an infinity with no beginning and no end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-saga-interpretation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Gawain-Green-port.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gVax-47","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wisdomtales.org\/wpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}