'Someone who has been put there by destiny (call it synchronicity if you prefer)' ...
I was made Emperor that night, I think, with something of the rites of every Faith that could claim a follower among the British host. Pharic and his Caledonians set a circle of seven swords point down in the grass about me, and in all that followed no man entered the circle between the two swords at my face, and I was chrismed with armour-grease from the captured Saxon wagons. But the priest who anointed me was a wild-eyed creature who came out of the dark with the villagers, a Christian priest by his frock of undyed sheep's wool and his shaven forehead, but he wore the Sun cross carved from red amber around his neck, and he made the King marks on my forehead and breast, feet and hands, not in the Christian form but in older symbols.
I rose and stood before my war-host while they roared their acclamation, aware of the Purple and the Diadem as though I were clothed in flame. I felt the great carved stone at the back of my heel and knew in my soul that it was no throne but a coronation stone like the Lia Fail of the High Kings of Erin, a stone for the King to stand on at his king-making, and I sprang onto it and flashed my sword to my men and all around me a thousand weapons were tossed up in reply.
And when at last the tumult sank enough for me to make myself heard, I cried out in the loudest voice that I could muster, that it might reach to the furthest fringe of them. "Soldiers! Warriors! After forty years there is an Emperor in the West again. It is in my heart that few beyond our shores will ever hear of this night's crowning. Assuredly, the Emperor of the East, in his golden city of Constantinople, will never know that he has a fellow; but what matters that? The Island of Britain is all that still stands of Rome-in-the-West and therefore it is enough that we in Britain know that the light still burns. Together we have saved Britain for this time, and together we will hold Britain, so that the things worth saving shall not go down into the dark!"
No kidding! I'm so impressed with the passages of Sutcliff that John Fitzgerald has posted that I've just bought two books of hers off of amazon. I've never read Sutcliff before.
Thanks for posting this.
12 July 2016 at 18:25
The one thing needful is not, at this time and place, Christianity - but something more basic and less advanced than that - which has the potential to lead to Christianity...
What is needful here and now must be positive and must be 'spiritual' - but that something should be along 'metaphysical lines: i.e. a new set of basic assumptions. These need to be along the lines of recognising the reality of the immaterial, the reality of that which cannot be sensed, detected with scientific instruments or measured but is nonetheless necessary and true and life-enhancing.
The whole situation of England Now needs to be reframed - accurately - in people's minds in spiritual terms. That is, in non-material terms concerning the Spirit of Albion - and the destiny, choices and work needed to move towards that goal.
This can happen, and has happened, inarticulately as a kind of mass mood - but it also needs to condense and solidify into an explicit and focused form as leadership.
If anything significantly Good is to happen, the whole thing will come to a point: a moment of decision.
In sum - all that has happened and is happening needs to (and I believe will) find its convergence in the thinking mind of a single person in one particular time and place - someone who has been put there by destiny (call it synchronicity, if you prefer) to confront exactly this decision - to decide as a free and informed agent (recognising both freedom and agency) whether or not to assume this individual burden (rather like Frodo and The One Ring at the Council of Elrond).
Upon that absolutely personal and specific choice will depend a great deal - and from that there will be second choices, and multiple tertiary decisions from a larger number of specific individuals about whether to aid, or thwart, the direction of unfolding events.
There is now a pause for reflection - in which the first step is to choose whether to reflect. There is a national mood of significance, but the decisions are all at the individual level.
(This past few days must be intensely annoying to the powers of purposive evil who have been lulling and demoralising England for 70-plus years; very gradually and almost insensibly sending the British to sleepwalk into annihilation.)
The thing is that from now onwards - mass effects are of diminished importance. Individual consciousness is suddenly and very obviously crucial. For things to turn-out for the best we must all be alert and responsible.
"The one thing needful at this time in England... (Not Christianity - but something more basic)"
3 Comments -
'Someone who has been put there by destiny (call it synchronicity if you prefer)' ...
I was made Emperor that night, I think, with something of the rites of every Faith that could claim a follower among the British host. Pharic and his Caledonians set a circle of seven swords point down in the grass about me, and in all that followed no man entered the circle between the two swords at my face, and I was chrismed with armour-grease from the captured Saxon wagons. But the priest who anointed me was a wild-eyed creature who came out of the dark with the villagers, a Christian priest by his frock of undyed sheep's wool and his shaven forehead, but he wore the Sun cross carved from red amber around his neck, and he made the King marks on my forehead and breast, feet and hands, not in the Christian form but in older symbols.
I rose and stood before my war-host while they roared their acclamation, aware of the Purple and the Diadem as though I were clothed in flame. I felt the great carved stone at the back of my heel and knew in my soul that it was no throne but a coronation stone like the Lia Fail of the High Kings of Erin, a stone for the King to stand on at his king-making, and I sprang onto it and flashed my sword to my men and all around me a thousand weapons were tossed up in reply.
And when at last the tumult sank enough for me to make myself heard, I cried out in the loudest voice that I could muster, that it might reach to the furthest fringe of them. "Soldiers! Warriors! After forty years there is an Emperor in the West again. It is in my heart that few beyond our shores will ever hear of this night's crowning. Assuredly, the Emperor of the East, in his golden city of Constantinople, will never know that he has a fellow; but what matters that? The Island of Britain is all that still stands of Rome-in-the-West and therefore it is enough that we in Britain know that the light still burns. Together we have saved Britain for this time, and together we will hold Britain, so that the things worth saving shall not go down into the dark!"
Rosemary Sutcliff, 'Sword at Sunset' (1963)
28 June 2016 at 21:18
Superb writing!
28 June 2016 at 22:00
No kidding! I'm so impressed with the passages of Sutcliff that John Fitzgerald has posted that I've just bought two books of hers off of amazon. I've never read Sutcliff before.
Thanks for posting this.
12 July 2016 at 18:25