Arthur and Dragon

There's a weird scene in John Boorman's movie Excalibur (1981) in which Arthur, a callow youth who has just inadvertently drawn Excalibur from the stone and consequently been declared the rightful king, pursues Merlin deep into the Greenwood, seeking answers.  When he has caught up with him, he asks his questions and Merlin gives him answers.  Then he finds Merlin stretched out , in a trance, his slitted eyes blood-tinged, and then it is full night with full moon and creatures emerge around him-- a python, a white-faced owl, large millipedes, a scaly lizard, and howls and cries of beast and bird fill the air.  Arthur is frightened.  Suddenly Merlin grabs him from behind, and there follows an interchange in which Merlin explains that this is all "the Dragon, a beast of such power that that if you were to see it whole and all complete in a single glance, it would burn you to cinders. It is everywhere. It is every thing."  Arthur, stuttering, attempts to ask him what can he, should he, must he do... and Merlin cuts in-- "Do nothing... Sleep!... Rest in the arms of the Dragon... Dreammm....."  And so Arthur does.

A powerful scene.  But what did it mean?  It cried out for interpretation, but I never really tried that, maybe because I assumed it was just a bit of theatricality in a very theatrical movie.  But it came to me as I was reviewing some notes on initiation that this was an initiation of some sort-- an introduction to, and an initiation by the Dragon, in which in sleep-trance Arthur is properly invested as King, and prepared somehow by the Dragon to play-out this role-- or something like.  Arthur does manage to win his throne, but the story of Arthur is, finally, tragic.  He fails, and as Merlin had warned: "If you fail, the land will perish."  And as we know, the Saxon invaders overwhelm most of Britain.  But why did he fail?  I tried to find a rationale for this, and here I left the movie behind, and the received legend of Arthur...

The Dragon represents the primeval Life-God, the "all-pervading formative power " known to some as Eros.  He represents the pagan God of Nature-- here, of pagan Britain, which is falling under the sway of Christianity, a way of love and peace, yet is riven by strife.  The Dragon had hopes for Arthur, that he would be the king that his father Uther could not be, and rescue the Land, presumably from anti-natural Christianity but also the Saxon beast.  But how is Arthur expected to do this?  He is initiated, invested by the Dragon, but the Dragon is not his God.  Merlin has not acted as young Arthur's mentor, has not instructed him, has not prepared him to become Son of the Dragon, the Dragon's hero wielding the magic sword of power forged in the dragon's blood.  The initiatory interlude in the movie seems isolated from the rest, as if it didn't really mean anything; and so, in effect, the initiation to the Dragon did not take.  Yes, we later see gold statues of the Dragon set about Arthur's Camelot, but they seem merely picturesque props, certainly not sacred images.  And what I've always found in the various versions of the Arthur legend is that Arthur is not interesting, he seems a figurehead, not a powerful, capable, charismatic sovereign, which perhaps explains why he fails to prevent his own cuckoldry-- in effect a castration-- and he becomes the maimed, ill Fisher King, who can only send his knights out on a futile quest to find the Grail, the magic cup that will restore his manly, kingly power and his kingdom.  But the Dragon was his power, not a Christian relic, and he was never really the Dragon's son.  Perhaps this was fated, as the Dragon had faded before the encroaching Cross, and could not manage to save his Land through his chosen champion Arthur, wielding the biting sword of dragon-power.  But as it is said that the King shall return in a time of desperate need, perhaps instead it is the Dragon, as King, who shall return, to save not only Britain, but the World.

Well, but the Arthur story doesn't work for me.  Arthur is uninteresting, and he fails.  Merlin is fascinating, but he receives short shrift, because the story is a product of Christendom.  But if Arthur was really Merlin's son and heir, the story might work, and come to a satisfying conclusion.  But I suppose I have evoked a better story, even, than that; really, a sacred myth, which informs the Mythos.  Something that works.  Not Dragon, but Drygand.