- Title
- The enchanter of the Arthurian legends
- Ray
- Seventh Ray of freedom and transmutation
- Color
- Deep violet and midnight blue, with silver
- Works with
- Saint Germain, regarded in some teachings as the same soul
- Associated places
- The old forests, hills and standing stones of Britain
- Symbols
- The staff, the crystal and the star-strewn cloak
- Keynote
- Magic is love that understands how things work
Merlin is known to everyone as the enchanter of the Arthurian legends: the counselor who guided a young king, read the stars and spoke with the forest. In the ascension teachings he is a Master of the magical dimension, which they understand as the study of natural law and the inner alchemy by which a person is changed. Some teachings regard him as an earlier embodiment of Saint Germain.
His presence is often described as amused. He is warm, sharp, fond of riddles and impatient with self-importance. Students say that he has a way of asking exactly the question they were hoping not to be asked, and then laughing kindly at their surprise.
The Enchanter of Legend
In the old stories Merlin arranges the birth of Arthur, guides him to the sword, and counsels him through the founding of his kingdom. He is the one who sees ahead, who understands the forces at work beneath events, and who uses that understanding in the service of a just and peaceful realm. The Round Table, at which no seat was higher than another, is often remembered as his idea.
The teachings add that behind the legend there was a real teacher: one who kept a school of the ancient mysteries, and who tried to bring a measure of the higher order into a violent age. They say that he knew the kingdom would not last, and built it anyway, because a pattern once shown is never wholly lost.
Merlin and Saint Germain
Many students of these teachings hold that Merlin and Saint Germain are one soul, and that the alchemist of the eighteenth century and the enchanter of the sixth are two chapters of the same long service. Others regard them as two Masters who work very closely together. Our circle has not been told which is so. Ilse Varrow says only that when either of them arrives at a sitting, the pace of the first sentence is different, and the humor is the same.
What Magic Means Here
The word magic is easily misunderstood, and Merlin is the first to say so. In the ascension teachings it does not mean the control of other people or of events by hidden means. It means understanding how energy, thought and feeling work, and aligning oneself with those laws so completely that life begins to change from within. A garden tended with that understanding is magic. So is a quarrel ended by a single honest word.
A note of discernment. Merlin teaches that any practice which seeks to bend another person's will, even toward an outcome you believe is good, is outside the law of love. The only person you may work magic upon is yourself.
What Merlin Teaches
- Wonder is not childish. It is the beginning of every science.
- Learn how things work, and then work with them rather than against them.
- The greatest transformation is always of the one who performs it.
- Build what is good, even if you know it will not last. Patterns endure.
When to Call on Merlin
- Recovering a sense of wonder and possibility
- Study of natural law, of the elements and of the cycles of nature
- Inner alchemy: changing a habit, a belief or a long-standing pattern
- Storytellers, teachers and all who work with the imagination
- Healing regret about the misuse of power, in this life or another
How to Work With Merlin
Go outside if you can, among trees or under the night sky. If not, picture yourself there. Picture a cloak of deep blue scattered with silver stars around your shoulders. Say: Merlin, show me how this works. Then hold in mind a pattern in your life that you would like to change, and watch it as you would watch weather: without blame, with curiosity. Write down the first thing that occurs to you afterward. It is often a riddle. It is usually worth solving.
An Invocation
Beloved Merlin, Master of the hidden laws,
restore to me the wonder I have lost.
Teach me how things truly work,
and give me the wisdom to work with them in love.
Let every change I seek begin in me.
A Word From Merlin
You want me to wave a staff and change your life. I have done stranger things. But the staff was never the point, and neither was the life. The point was the one holding the staff.
Change that one, and the rest will follow. It always does. It is the oldest trick there is, and it never stops being astonishing.
Received by Ilse Varrow