Mists Of Avalon Quotes

There is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you.

All gods are one god.

Love is the only prayer I know.

I have called on the Goddess and found her within myself

... all the tears women shed, they leave no mark on the world ...

By what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.

The older I grow the more I become certain that it makes no difference what words we use to tell the same truths.

There is no sorrow like the memory of love and the knowledge that it is gone forever

And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference...

And so, perhaps, the truth winds somewhere between the road to Glastonbury, Isle of the Priests, and the road to Avalon, lost forever in the mists of the Summer Sea.

Never name the well from which you will not drink.

What wise God would consign a man to Hell for ignorance, instead of teaching him better in the afterlife?

There are ignorant priests and ignorant people, who are all too ready to cry sorcery if a woman is only a little wiser than they are!

My love for you is a prayer, she thought. Love is the only prayer I know.

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom,

No man or woman can live another's fate

Beware what you speak,' said the Merlin very softly, 'for indeed the words we speak make shadows of what is to come, and by speaking them we bring them to pass, my king.

But this is my truth; I who am Morgaine tell you these things, Morgaine who was in later days called Morgan le Fay.

The Goddess does not shower her gifts on those who reject them.

The Goddess has a fourth face. It is secret, and you should prey, as I do, as I do Igraine, that Morgause will never wear that face.

Arthur, their young king, like a hero out of legend.

And as men believe, so their world goes." - Merlin

I think too many people presume to read the divine Scriptures and fall into such terrors as this,' said Patricius sternly. 'Those who presume on their learning will learn, I trust, to listen to their priests for the true interpretations.' The Merlin smiled gently. 'I cannot join you in that wish, brother. I am dedicated to the belief that it is God's will that all men should strive for wisdom in themselves, not look to it from some other. Babes, perhaps, must have their food chewed for them by a nurse, but men may drink and eat of wisdom for themselves.

Morgaine laughed and mocked, but when it was a real trouble, no one could be kinder.

I should know, for I am Morgaine le Fay, priestess of the Isle of Avalon, where the ancient religion of the Mother Goddess is born.

Avalon will always be there for all men to find if they can seek the way thither, throughout all the ages past the ages. If they cannot find the way to Avalon, it is a sign, perhaps, that they are not ready." - Kevin

Lancelot: Morgaine, Morgaine - kinswoman, I have never seen you weep. Morgaine: Are you like so many men, afraid of a woman's tears? (...) Lancelot: No (...) it makes them seem so much more real, so much more vulnerable - women who never weep frighten me, because I know they are stronger than I, and I am always a little afraid of what they will do.

They have not forgotten the Mysteries,' she said, ‘they have found them too difficult. They want a God who will care for them, who will not demand that they struggle for enlightenment, but who will accept them just as they are, with all their sins, and take away their sins with repentance. It is not so, it will never be so, but perhaps it is the only way the unenlightened can bear to think of their Gods.' Lancelot smiled bitterly. ‘Perhaps a religion which demands that every man must work though lifetime after lifetime for his own salvation is too much for mankind. They want not to wait for God's justice but to see it now. And that is the lure which this new breed of priests has promised them.' Morgaine knew that he spoke truth, and bowed her head in anguish. ‘And since their view of a God is what shapes their reality, so it shall be–the Goddess was real while mankind still paid homage to her, and created her form for themselves. Now they will make for themselves the kind of God they think they want–the kind of God they deserve, perhaps.' Well, so it must be, for as man saw reality, so it became.

But even the longest day wears to sunset.

I came to see that my quarrel was never with the Christ, but with his foolish and narrow priests who mistook their own narrowness for his.

I am dedicated to the belief that it is God's will that all men should strive for wisdom in themselves, not look to it from some other. Babes, perhaps, must have their food chewed for them by a nurse, but men may drink and eat of wisdom for themselves.

I have neither talent or taste for kingship, cousin. I am a warrior, and to dwell always in one place and live at court would weary me to death!

For this is the great secret, which was known to all educated men in our day: that by what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.

A priestess of Avalon does not lie. But I am cast out of Avalon, and for this, and unless it is all to be for nothing, I must lie, and lie well and quickly

God is one and there is but one God — all else is but the way the ignorant seek to put Gods into a form they can understand...

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom,” Viviane said. “Then, when you begin to learn, you will not have to forget all the things you think you know.

Return again, return, life itself is calling you with all its pleasure and pain ...

If you seek to avoid your fate or to delay suffering, it only condemns you to suffer it redoubled in another life.

And the truth is only that we grow and die and wither even as this grass here.

Pride, she thought drearily, was a cold bedfellow.

For this is the thing the priests do not know, with their One God and One Truth; that there is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you, and whether, at the end, you arrive at the Holy Isle of Eternity or among the priests with their bells and their death and their Satan and hell and damnation...but perhaps I am unjust even to them. Even the Lady of the Lake, who hated a priest's robe as she would have hated a poisonous viper, and with good cause too, chid me once for speaking evil of the God. 'For all the Gods are one god,' she said to me then, as she had said many times before, and as I have said to my own novices many times, and as every priestess who comes after me will say again, 'and all the Goddesses are one Goddess, and their is only one Initiator. And to every man his own truth, and the God within.' And so, perhaps, the truth winds somewhere between the road to Glastonbury, Isle of the Priests, and the road to Avalon, lost forever in the mists of the Summer Sea. But this is my truth, I who am Morgaine tell you these things, Morgaine who was in later days called Morgan le Fay.

… but I believe the divine ones will send other great masters to preach the truth to mankind, and that mankind will always receive them with the cross and the fire and the stones

But I am Niniane of Avalon, and I account to no man on this earth for what I do with what is mine -- yes, mine and not yours. I am not Roman, to let some man tell me what I may do with what the Goddess gave me

She cried aloud, with a great mourning cry for all that she had never known in this life, and the agony of a bereavement unguessed till this moment.

And then a memory from Avalon surfaced in her mind, something she had not thought of for a decade; one of the Druids, giving instruction in the secret wisdom to the young priestesses, had said, If you would have the message of the Gods to direct your life, look for that which repeats, again and again; for this is the message given you by the Gods, the karmic lesson you must learn for this incarnation. It comes again and again until you have made it part of your soul and your enduring spirit.

Sin is in the wish to do no harm.

and suddenly she tired of behaving as she ought.

But if men do not believe in more than one life,” Igraine protested, shaken, “how will they avoid despair? What just God would create some men wretched, and others happy and prosperous, if one life were all that they could have?

For ever the world of Fairy drifts further from the world in which the Christ holds sway. I have no quarrel with the Christ, only with his priests, who call the Great Goddess a demon and deny that she ever held power in this world.

I cannot regret it. They tell us in the temple that true joy is found only in freedom from the Wheel that is death and rebirth, that we must come to despise earthly joy and suffering, and long only for the peace of the presence of the eternal. Yet I love this life on Earth, Morgan, and I love you with a love that is stronger than death, and if sin is the price of binding us together, life after life across the ages, then I will sin joyfully and without regret, so that it brings me back to you, my beloved!

He leaned his head in his hands, as if the burden he bore were too great for endurance. ‘You are wise’, he said, then raised his head and stared at her with unflinching hatred. ‘I wish you were a foolish woman I could despise, damn you!

For all the Gods are one God,” she said to me then, as she had said many times before, and as I have said to my own novices many times, and as every priestess who comes after me will say again, “and all the Goddesses are one Goddess, and there is only one Initiator. And to every man his own truth, and the God within.

Will you walk the road to your destiny, or must the Gods drag you to it unwilling?

The symbol of the dragon should be always before them, that mankind seek to accomplish, not to think of sin and do penance!

I learned only so great a love of music as to be discontented with my own sounds.

For lo, all the days of man are as a leaf that is fallen and as the grass that withereth. Thou too shalt be forgotten, like the flowers that falleth on the grass, like the wine that is poured out and soaks into the earth.

...perhaps mankind must have a time of darkness so that we will one day again know what a blessing is the light.

He was guarded behind a hundred fences of reserve and anger.

The Gods give of their best, not their worst, to men!

If your priests are right,” said Viviane calmly, “I am already thoroughly damned and you may save your breath.

They have known one another since they were young, and if they cannot forget that once they loved in a way that comes not twice to any man

For this is the great secret, which was known to all educated men in our day: that by what men think, we create the world around us, daily new. And

Igraine said sharply, 'You will not speak so of the God of my husband, who is a God of love.' 'You say so. And yet he has made war upon all other Gods, and slain those who will not worship him,' Viviane said.

And indeed there is little opportunity for the old and poor to sin, except to doubt God’s goodness, and if God cannot understand why we doubt that, then he is not as wise as his priests think, heh heh heh . . .

The Christians seek to blot out all wisdom save their own; and in that strife they are banishing from this world all forms of mystery save that which will fit into their religious faith. They have pronounced it a heresy that men live more than one life - which every peasant knows to be true.

Fear was the worst thing. Fear would put her at the mercy of whatever misfortune came. Even the wild beasts could smell fear on your body and would come and attack, while they would flee from the courageous. This was why the bravest man could run among the deer with safety, so long as fear was not smelled on his skin

It is hardly lonely in a nunnery, son, with other women. And God is there." Morgause said, "I would rather dwell in a hermitage in the forest than in a house full of chattering ladies! If God is there, it must be hard for him to get a word in edgewise!

He said, and his voice was strained as if he had had a mortal wound, 'Gwenhwyfar-' He so seldom spoke her formal name, it was always my lady or my queen, or when he spoke to her in play it was always Gwen. When he spoke it now, it seemed to her she had never heard a sweeter sound. 'Gwenhwyfar. Why do you weep?' Now she must lie, and lie well, because, she could not in honor tell him the truth. She said, 'Because-' and stopped, and then, in a choking voice, she said, 'because I do not know how I shall live if you go away.

And if the earth Gods wreak vengeance on the sinless and the sinful alike, then this further destruction cannot be punishment for sins, but is in the way of all nature.

Beware what you speak,” said the Merlin very softly, “for indeed the words we speak make shadows of what is to come, and by speaking them we bring them to pass, my king.

grateful love and thanks. And last but not least to my elder son, David, for his careful preparation of the final manuscript.

Look to the east," she said, "for always, while the light dies in the west, there is the promise of rebirth from the east.

Do not think that this little one cannot understand. Babes know more than we imagine; they cannot speak their minds, and so we believe they do not think.

No man or woman can live another's fate.

it is the belief of mankind which shapes the world, and all of reality.

At last she drifted into sleep, and in the country of sleep she found herself standing in the orchard where she had spoken with Uther, where she had dried his tears with her veil.

Was she mad, with her fancies of shared destiny and the other half of her soul?

she might have known that he would manage to die at the most inconvenient time possible,

Ai miei tempi sono stata chiamata in molti modi: sorella, amante, sacerdotessa, maga, regina. Ora in verità sono una maga e forse verrà un giorno in cui queste cose dovranno essere conosciute

A king must protect his people from outsiders, from invaders, and lead his people to defend themselves—a king must be the first to thrust himself between the land and all danger, just as a farmer stands to defend his fields from any robber. But it is not his duty to dictate to them what their innermost hearts may do.

For this is the thing the priests do not know, with their One God and One Truth: that there is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you, and whether, at the end, you arrive in the Holy Isle of Eternity or among the priests with their bells and their death and their Satan and Hell and damnation

It had to do with the knowledge that the world was as it was because of what men believed it was... year by year, these past three or four generations, the minds of men had been hardened to believing that there was one God, one world, one way of describing reality, and that all things which intruded on the realm of that great one-ness must be evil and of the fiends, and that the sound of the bells and the shadow of their holy places would keep the evil afar. And as more and more people believed this, it was so, and Avalon no more than a dream adrift in an almost inaccessible other world

But a voice said within her, Now it is too late. They found her at high noon, just as the sun came out after the storm, floating among the reeds of the Lake. Her long hair was spread out on the surface like water reeds, and Morgaine, stunned with grief, could not find it in her heart to regret that Kevin had not gone alone into the shadowed land beyond death.

From these Christians who came to us to escape the bigotry of their own kind I learned something, at last, of the Nazarene, the carpenter’s son who had attained Godhead in his own life and preached a rule of tolerance; and so I came to see that my quarrel was never with the Christ, but with his foolish and narrow priests who mistook their own narrowness for his.

...if there be any Gods at all, of which I am not even certain, I cannot believe they would stoop to meddle in the affairs of men. Nor will I wait upon the Gods to do what I see clearly must be done—who’s to say that the Goddess cannot work through my hand as well as another.

They have not forgotten the Mysteries,” she said, “they have found them too difficult. They want a God who will care for them, who will not demand that they struggle for enlightenment, but who will accept them just as they are, with all their sins, and take away their sins with repentance. It is not so, it will never be so, but perhaps it is the only way the unenlightened can bear to think of their Gods.” Lancelet smiled bitterly. “Perhaps a religion which demands that every man must work through lifetime after lifetime for his own salvation is too much for mankind. They want not to wait for God’s justice, but to see it now. And that is the lure which this new breed of priests has promised them.

dappled sunlight and looked at the silver vapor swirling inside. “Mist gathered at first light on the first day of the new moon on the Isle of Avalon,” he said. “Yep. Good for one hour of great talent,” said Annie. Jack smiled, remembering their hour as horse trainers and their hour as stage magicians. “I wonder what we’ll be great at this time,” he said. “Maybe great nurses?” said Annie. “We’ll see,” said Jack. He put the tiny bottle in his backpack; then he picked up the piece of paper from the floor. On the paper he had written the two secrets of greatness they’d

remember I trust you, Igraine,” he said, and laid his hands on either side of her face and kissed her. Although he did not say so, she knew he was in his own gruff way apologizing for his suspicions and his angry blow, and her heart warmed to him; she returned his kiss with real tenderness.

Perché? si chiese Morgana. Forse perché il mondo era quale lo credevano gli uomini? Nelle ultime generazioni gli uomini avevano imparato a credere che esistessero un solo Dio, un solo mondo, un solo modo di descrivere la realtà, e che quanto era estraneo a quel mondo appartenesse ai diavoli, e che il suono delle campane tenesse lontano il male...E più era numerosa la gente che lo credeva, più Avalon diventava un sogno alla deriva in un altro mondo quasi inaccessibile.

but the older priestesses had explained to her, as they gathered in the courtyard, that the Moon God was effacing the brightness of the Goddess, and she ran out with them joyously to join in the shrieks of the women to frighten him away. Later it had been explained to her how the sun and moon moved, and why, now and again, one of them crossed the face of the other; that it was in the way of nature, and the common people’s beliefs about the face of the Gods were symbols which these people, at the current state of their evolution, needed to visualize the great truths. Some day all men and women would know the inner truths, but now they needed them not.

But whatever it is that they believe, the views they hold are altering this world; not only in the spirit, but on the material plane. As they deny the world of the spirit, and the realms of Avalon, so those realms cease to exist for them. They still exist, of course; but not in the same world with the world of the followers of Christ.

That faith seems too simple to me-the idea that we have only to believe that Christ died for our sins once and for all. But I know too much of the truth ... of the way life works, with life after life in which we ourselves, and only we, can work out the causes we have set in motion and make amends for the harm we have done. It stands not in the realm of reason that one man, however holy and blessed, could atone for all the sins of all men, done in all lifetimes. What else could explain why some men have all things, and others so little? No, that is a cruel trick of the priests, I think, to coax men into thinking that they have the ear of God and can forgive sins in his name-ah, I wish it were true indeed.

As they deny the world of the spirit, and the realms of Avalon, so those realms cease to exist for them. They still exist, of course; but not in the same world with the world of the followers of Christ. Avalon, the Holy Isle, is now no longer the same island as Glastonbury where we of the Old Faith once allowed the monks to build their chapel and their monastery.

What sorrow is like to the sorrow of one who is alone? Once I dwelt in the company of the king I loved well, And my arm was heavy with the weight of the rings he gave, And my heart weighed down with the gold of his love. The face the king is like the sun to those who surrounded,. But now my heart is empty And I wander along throughout the world. The groves take on their blossoms, The trees and meadows grow fair But the cuckoo, saddest of singers, Cries forth the only sorrow of the exile, And now my heart hoes wandering, In search of what I shall never see more; All faces are alike to me if I cannot see the face of my king, And all countries are alike to me When I cannot see the fair fields and meadows of my home. So I shall arise and follow my heart in its wandering For what is the fair meadow of home to me When I cannot see the face of my king And the weight on my arm is but a band of gold When the heart is empty of the weight of love. And so I shall go roaming Over the fishers' road And the road of the great whale And beyond the country of the wave With none to bear me company But the memory of those I loved And the songs I sang out of a full heart, And the cuckoo's cry in memory.

Quite simply, when she came near him, she knew that she had discovered some lost part of herself; with him she was whole. Whatever might happen between them as ordinary man and woman, something lay beyond it which would never die or lessen in its intensity. They shared a destiny, and somehow they must fulfill it together... and often when she had come so far in her thoughts she would stop and stare at herself in disbelief.

This I have known since first I trod the path—a time comes when there is only despair, when you seek to tear the veil from the shrine, and you cry out to her and know that she will not answer because she is not there, because she was never there, there is no Goddess but only yourself, and you are alone in the mockery of echoes from an empty shrine. . . . There is no one there, there was never anyone there, and all the Sight is but dreams and delusions. .

And now the priests, thinking that this infringes upon the power of their God, who created the world once and for all to be unchanging, have closed those doors (which were never doors, except in the minds of men), and the pathway leads only to the priests’ Isle, which they have safeguarded with the sound of their church bells, driving away all thoughts of another world lying in the darkness. Indeed, they say that world, if it indeed exists, is the property of Satan, and the doorway to Hell, if not Hell itself.

Jess Pepper's review of the Avalon Strings: 'In a land so very civilized and modern as ours, it is unpopular to suggest that the mystical isle of Avalon ever truly existed. But I believe I have found proof of it right here in Manhattan. To understand my reasoning, you must recall first that enchanting tale of a mist-enshrouded isle where medieval women--descended from the gods--spawned heroic men. Most notable among these was the young King Arthur. In their most secret confessions, these mystic heroes acknowledged Avalon, and particularly the music of its maidens, as the source of their power. Many a school boy has wept reading of Young King Arthur standing silent on the shore as the magical isle disappears from view, shrouded in mist. The boy longs as Arthur did to leap the bank and pilot his canoe to the distant, singing atoll. To rejoin nymphs who guard in the depths of their water caves the meaning of life. To feel again the power that burns within. But knowledge fades and memory dims, and schoolboys grow up. As the legend goes, the way became unknown to mortal man. Only woman could navigate the treacherous blanket of white that dipped and swirled at the surface of the water. And with its fading went also the music of the fabled isle. Harps and strings that heralded the dawn and incited robed maidens to dance evaporated into the mists of time, and silence ruled. But I tell you, Kind Reader, that the music of Avalon lives. The spirit that enchanted knights in chain mail long eons ago is reborn in our fair city, in our own small band of fair maids who tap that legendary spirit to make music as the Avalon Strings. Theirs is no common gift. Theirs is no ordinary sound. It is driven by a fire from within, borne on fingers bloodied by repetition. Minds tormented by a thirst for perfection. And most startling of all is the voice that rises above, the stunning virtuoso whose example leads her small company to higher planes. Could any other collection of musicians achieve the heights of this illustrious few? I think not. I believe, Friends of the City, that when we witnes their performance, as we may almost nightly at the Warwick Hotel, we witness history's gift to this moment in time. And for a few brief moments in the presence of these maids, we witness the fiery spirit that endured and escaped the obliterating mists of Avalon.

I have no quarrel with the Christ, only with his priests, who call the Great Goddess a demon and deny that she ever held power in this world. <...> Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you, and whether, at the end, you arrive in the Holy Isle of Eternity or among the priests with their bells and their death and their Satan and Hell and damnation ... but perhaps I am unjust even to them. Even the Lady of the Lake, who hated a priest's robe as she would have hated a poisonous viper, and with good cause too, chid me once for speaking evil of their God.

Il mondo della Magia si allontana sempre di più dal mondo dove regna il Cristo. Non ho nulla contro di lui, ma solo contro i suoi preti che negano il potere della Grande Dea oppure l'avvolgono nella veste azzurra della Signora di Nazareth e affermano che era vergine. Ma che cosa ne può sapere una vergine delle sofferenze dell'umanità? E ora che il mondo è cambiato e Artù, mio fratello e amante, che fu re e che sarà re, giace morto (e la gente comune lo dice addormentato) nell'Isola Sacra di Avalon, la storia dev'essere narrata com'era prima che i preti del Cristo Bianco venissero a costellarla di santi e leggende. Il mondo è mutato. Un tempo un viaggiatore, se aveva la volontà e conosceva qualche segreto, poteva avventurarsi con la barca nel Mare dell'Estate e giungere non già a Glastonbury dei monaci, ma all'Isola Sacra di Avalon; allora le porte tra i mondi fluttuavano con la nebbia e si aprivano al volere del viaggiatore. Perché questo è il grande segreto, noto a tutti gli uomini colti del nostro tempo: con il nostro pensiero, noi creiamo giorno per giorno il mondo che ci circonda.