Merlin, the mythical prophet, magician, and kingmaker of medieval legend, has lived in the Western imagination for centuries. Arthurian legend gives us more than the idealized government of the Round Table and the hero’s valiant quest for the Holy Grail—it also gives us Merlin’s darkness and power: sorcery, communion with nature, and the prospect of achieving our aims through shadowy transgression.
This week, our special guest is Jungian analyst and friend DOUG TYLER. Doug guides us through Merlin’s role in Western culture, sharing some of his favorite stories and explaining the profound influence of Merlin on his analytic work and psycho-spiritual landscape.
Considered through a psychological lens, Merlin models the necessity of journeying downward and confronting our darker aspects. He prefigures Gandalf and Dumbledore, embodying the archetype of the mature masculine in a strong and shadowed relationship with the feminine. Merlin can also be understood as a counterpoint to Christ: although his father was a demon, he was born to a virgin mother and twice offered himself as sacrifice.
In the episode we cover:
The Character of Merlin
Merlin is a mythical prophet and magician who appears in Arthurian legend. Merlin’s roots lie in early Celtic traditions popularized by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century as The History of the Kings of Britain. A century later, the French poet Robert de Boron expanded the legend, presenting Merlin as an Antichrist figure born of a virgin mother and a demon father.
Merlin commits dark acts of transgression to achieve required outcomes. His castle lies deep in the forest, a place of shadows and mystery. Merlin is identified strongly with nature and, like nature herself, is representative of forces outside the bounds of everyday laws and ego. As Doug Tyler comments, “He’s a shaman, he’s an alchemist, he’s a soothsayer, he’s a trickster.”
Heinrich Zimmer gives us an evocative account of Merlin’s Castle and its position at the heart of the forest:
The forest is the antithesis of house and hearth, village and field boundary, where the household gods hold sway and where human laws and customs prevail. It holds the dark forbidden things – secrets, terrors, which threaten the protected life of the ordered world of the common day. In its terrifying abyss, full of strange forms and whispering voices, it contains the secret of the soul’s adventure. Somewhere in this monstrous region, this seat of darkness, the castle of Merlin stands. Its countless windows look out upon the secrets that lurk around it, the doors are open to travelers from every quarter of the globe, and paths lead from the castle into the farthest reaches of the world. The castle is the heart of darkness, its countless eyes see and know all, and it offers to each of the elect a different approach to the mystery.” (The King and the Corpse, p.182).
Merlin and the Tension of Opposites
The result of a union between a pure virgin and a demon father, Merlin was uniquely able to hold the tension of powerful opposites and understand unseen forces at work. In boyhood Merlin solved the problem of a constantly collapsing tower, revealing the cause as an underground pool in which two dragons fought. This story illustrates Merlin’s unique capacity to move down–into the subconscious–a counterpoint to the desire to move upward, a typical depiction of enlightenment and spirituality.
In this way, Merlin serves as a counterpoint to the dominant medieval Christian emphasis on heavenly ascent and moral certainty. Like alchemy, the Merlin stories perform a compensatory function, reminding us that darkness cannot be banished or ignored. The dragons beneath the tower continue their struggle whether we acknowledge them or not. Merlin’s wisdom lies in recognizing that wholeness depends not on overcoming the opposites, but on learning to bear the tension and allow something new to emerge from their conflict. There much to be learned from subterranean realms.
A Jungian Interpretation of Merlin
Merlin brings the wisdom of the forest into the royal court, offering a symbolic rendering of the key Jungian principle of the relationship between ego and Self. While we need our ego to navigate the world, it can take us only so far. The Self, true center of the psyche, puts us in a more honest relationship with the darker, even sinister energies that can cross moral boundaries. We can look to Merlin to remind us that the ego alone cannot solve every problem that arises; we need to acknowledge the power of shadow.
For Doug Tyler, Merlin embodies an archetypal energy that can be called upon when we are feeling overwhelmed and in need of help. Jung, Heinrich Zimmer and others have referred to Merlin as a figure, like Mercurius, who could be seen to represent the beginning, middle, and end of deep psychological work. His ability to face and deal with shadowy, difficult forces without collapsing into them is a powerful metaphor for the analytic process.
The Cry of Merlin
In popular Arthurian collections, Merlin is trapped or killed by his student, variously called Viviane, Vivien, or Nimue, often after teaching her the secrets of his sorcery. She traps him in various ways depending on the version of the story, often using an unbreakable spell. Nevertheless, legends of Merlin frequently refer to the cri de Merlin—the Cry of Merlin—which suggests a numinous possibility: Merlin is not truly gone. Though hidden from the world, he remains a presence whose voice can still be heard by those who know how to listen. In an age of war and razing of the wild, we can hold onto the hope that Merlin is not lost to us but remains a force waiting to be channeled and redeemed.
Heinrich Zimmer writes,
“The course of world history has decided against the morality of the Celts, against Merlin’s divine squandering of himself, his abandoning himself to the beguiling being to whom he entrusted the golden ropes of his own captivity. Englishmen, not Irishmen or Welshmen, have founded the greatest empire since Roome, and the world is all in favor of Round table government, voyages of discovery, and the adventure of good-willed intervention. But the whitethorn hedge blossoms imperishably, and in it Merlin is living still” (The King and the Corpse, p.200).
Our Guest This Week
In this episode we are joined by Jungian analyst Doug Tyler. Doug practices as a Jungian Analyst in Knoxville, TN. He obtained his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Tennessee and his diploma in Analytical Psychology from the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts (IRSJA). He is a member of the IRSJA and is currently a training analyst with the Inter-Regional Memphis-Atlanta Seminar. Dr. Tyler has been a practicing psychologist for 25 years in Knoxville and lectures on various Jungian topics, including: Typology, the Holy Grail, the Hero archetype, the intersection of psychology and theology, and Merlin as multifaceted archetypal images.
Here’s the Dream We Analyze
I have a not-so-good condition, like I’m poor, and I choose to rob a bank with a group of criminals. And somehow that bank has something extremely valuable in it and maybe I wouldn’t normally want to rob it, but it exists and it seems like the only way. And all my work for so many years is leading me towards something that normally on a social level is a sacrilege, but for me it becomes a necessary rite. In a way it means doing something that people reject as if it were the greatest sin, the intrusion into the divine, the most vile thing, worse than killing someone maybe.
But I know that the first step is something forbidden. And we break the walls with a bazooka, but in a non-aggressive manner, there is no one in the bank, but later I notice that it is very possible there will be some collateral victims, but in a symbolic manner. As if there is always a repercussion on a moral level.
And I decide to take a car to put some of the money and leave as if the goal is not to take the whole treasure. Just a part of it is enough. The goal was just to get in there, to free something.
And I end up in an area near a lake and I manage to hide the money. Initially I cover the car and later it ends up buried in the water.
But both the mafia and the police are after me because it seems that I killed a criminal. I destroyed something that was basically evil. In the court that leads criminals, a kind of mafia, they are also looking for me.
And now I am being pursued by both forces. But neither of them knows who I am. And that gives a feeling of ambiguity.
And I leave there and go to an old woman’s house, a kind of grandmother. As a kind of alibi that I was at her place all evening. In a way I trust her that she is wise enough to understand the meaning of everything that is happening there and to cover me in case they come looking for me.
And in the city everyone is looking for criminals, both the police and the mafia, and I don’t know what to do. I have to lie to my family, because no one from the conscious outside world would understand what I did and that there is a meaning behind it and that makes me feel so alone and there is a huge pressure on me.
Because on the one hand I feel like it was necessary to break into the bank, as a connection with a greater force, but at the same time it’s something forbidden by people and everyone would judge me.
It’s like I have a huge treasure inside me but I don’t know what to do with it. Because the dream is beyond robbery or symbolic deaths, it’s about being in contact with a very big light (the gold in the bank) and being unable to show it or relate to others and that suffocates you. At least for the moment.
Because the first step is acceptance and the rite of robbery. But being such a new and unknown process, you don’t know if you did the right thing and what you need to do next.
And at some point a woman shows me an image in which there are some pictures of biblical characters who dedicated their lives to their religion, and half of the pictures are cut in two, only their lower limbs and a little bit of their torso are visible and the woman tells me those with the cut pictures died in the name of religion.
And then I realize that I have to give the money back and surrender and a state of inner peace appears. As if I understood something: the transcendence in the process.
And until the end of the dream I don’t admit my guilt to the others, because it’s not about that. But I don’t feel guilty anymore. It’s like when I gave up money, I don’t want it anymore. But I don’t want to sacrifice myself in front of people’s thinking either. I want to be forgiven by God. It’s a conflict between the world here with its rules and the world beyond.
Resources Discussed In This Episode
- Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival: A Romance of the Middle Ages
- Carl Jung & Aniela Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
- Emma Jung and Marie Louise von Franz, The Grail Legend
- Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain
- Alan Lee’s ‘Merlin’ – see the drawing of Merlin discussed in the episode here.
- Heinrich Zimmer, The King and the Corpse.
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