The Origins of Merlin

As a fortune-teller and shape-shifter, Merlin became associated with necromancy and the dark arts in the imagination of medieval Christians.

The story of his birth was founded in the religious legend of the Harrowing of Hell.

The demons of Hell, annoyed by Christ’s interference and his rescuing of souls from their domain, plot their revenge through the birth of an Antichrist.

They send a devil to impregnate an innocent princess of Dyfed in Wales, but when the child is born, their evil plans miscarry as the devout mother finds a priest to baptise him before he is pulled into their evil orbit.

This is Merlin, a child prodigy with magical powers and the ability to foretell the future, attributes that he decides to use on the side of good rather than evil. [British Library]

In European mythology and literature, since at least the 19th century, a cambion offspring from the union between a demon parent—whether incubus, succubus or other type of demon—with a human parent. In the word’s earliest known uses, it was interchangeable with a changeling. (Wikipedia)

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The Unfinished Side of the Bollingen Stone: (Almost Merlin/Mercurius) Photo: Kornelia Grabinska, 2011 (That Jung left one side of the stone blank…

Bollingen Stone: This is Telesphorus…. (Inscription:) Ὁ Αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεττεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη» · Τελεσφόρος διελαύνων τοὺς σκοτεινοὺς τοῦ κόσμου…

Stone Carving at Bollingen: The Orphan (Inscription:) I am an orphan, alone: nevertheless I am found everywhere. I am one, but opposed…

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