Taming Lions
Myth, in its various forms and flavors, is largely a language of symbols - often representing interior realities through stories of gods, and men, and monsters.
We’ve all heard tales of fire-breathing dragons - beasts that must be slain to claim the maiden’s hand, save the kingdom, or win some other sort of reward. There is an archetypal framework of a hero, a task to be completed, and an adversary, who stands opposed to this hero and task.
Dragons, of course, are one of the most iconic adversaries.
Nonetheless, what I’m interested in discussing today is a different kind of beast - one that is, perhaps, marginally less iconic: a lion.
The lion, as a challenger or enemy, is a recurring symbol throughout various forms of religion, philosophy, and myth.
Heracles famously trapped, and subsequently strangled, the Nemean lion - wearing its pelt as an impenetrable layer of armor.
In the Old Testament, Daniel is confined to a den of lions, and subsequently delivered by God.
Manjushri, a bodhisattva venerated in Mahayana Buddhism, is often depicted riding a lion or seated upon its pelt, wielding a flaming sword - the sword is said to represent transcendent wisdom.
In Arthurian literature, various knights encounter lions - they’re often unsuccessful in fighting them, and must instead circumvent, befriend, or master them.
For the sake of this article I’ll focus on a specific lion - predictably related to Grail myths and Arthurian literature.
In Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King, a select handful of Arthur’s knights are called to seek out the Holy Grail - they face various forms of travail through each of their journeys. In the case of Lancelot, he is driven mad by a psychological conception of sin, which appears to him in the form of a lion.
“In me lived a sin so strange, of such a kind, that all of pure, noble and knightly in me twined and clung round that one sin, until the wholesome flower and poisonous grew together, each as each, not to be plucked asunder…
Stay me not! I have been sluggard in the race, and I ride apace, for now there is a lion in the path.”
Sir Lancelot, to Sir Bors
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Idylls of the King
In the case of Lancelot, and perhaps other heroes, the lion is representative of the unmastered interior landscape - the undisciplined mind fettered by sin, ignorance, and fear, (which are largely synonymous). The lion stands between the hero and the Absolute - the Grail.
In his madness, Lancelot elects to sail into a violent storm - so that he might drown “and the great sea might wash away [his] sin.” Instead, the ship that carries him is spared - despite being thrashed around for seven days. The storm clears, and nothing remains but a still, starry night. He lives on.
His boat then gently lands at Castle Carbonek: “a castle like a rock upon a rock, with chasmlike portals open to the sea, and steps that met the breaker.”
He steps from the boat and approaches the entrance to the castle - two lions confront him at its gates, poised to attack. He reaches to draw his sword, but - perhaps by grace - it is dashed from his hand. He is disarmed. A voice tells him:
“Doubt not, go forward; if thou doubt, the beasts will tear thee piecemeal.”
Lancelot marches directly between the lions, entering into the castle’s chambers. He ascends to the castle’s highest tower, finding the Grail kept inside:
“Clear as a lark, high o'er me as a lark,
A sweet voice singing in the topmost tower
To the eastward: up I climbed a thousand steps
With pain: as in a dream I seemed to climb
For ever: at the last I reached a door,
A light was in the crannies, and I heard,
'Glory and joy and honour to our Lord
And to the Holy Vessel of the Grail.'
Then in my madness I essayed the door;
It gave; and through a stormy glare, a heat
As from a seventimes-heated furnace, I,
Blasted and burnt, and blinded as I was,
With such a fierceness that I swooned away —
O, yet methought I saw the Holy Grail,
All palled in crimson samite, and around
Great angels, awful shapes, and wings and eyes.”
Lancelot’s attainment is not facilitated by conflict - battling, resisting, or otherwise vitalizing his interior sin. Rather, it is facilitated by recognizing it for what it is: untruth, ignorance, and illusion. A waste of time.
Not lions, but paper tigers - idols of our own creation.
Are these phantoms, or malevolent beasts, that we carry fundamentally real, or are they self-created, time-bound burdens that keep us from the Truth - yet another way to stay encased in self-concern, self-pity, and “I, and me, and mine?”
The familiar, no matter how miserable or patently wrong, is often preferred to the Unknown.
If something is utterly worthless, the only logical reaction is to cast it aside - so why are we so infatuated with what is false, unproductive, and otherwise life-denying?
When has becoming transfixed by sin - ignorance - ever solved anything?
Guilt, shame, worry, and all of the manifold forms of self-induced psychological torment that we so diligently tend to, are worthless.
If it’s heavy, drop it; if it burns, don’t touch it again.
If the lion roars, face it squarely.
Then, look beyond it.
Lesson learned.
Onward.
