The Testament of Merlin

This evocative esoteric novel follows the life and work of Merlin as the founder of the Round Table fellowship, his return of Excalibur to the Lake, his safe conduct of Arthur to Avalon, his liaison with Viviane and the Faery powers in the Forest of Broceliande, and the resuscitation of his disciple Adragante in the Cauldron of Keridwen - including a remarkable sequence of initiations for the young knight. For it is Adragante who is called to bear witness to Merlin's life, his death at the hands of some shepherds at Drumelzier on the Scottish borders, and his subsequent apotheosis. Much of this is of great contemporary relevance in the present clash of Christian and Neo-Pagan dynamics. Théophile Briant needs no introduction in France: from an old windmill and lighthouse in Brittany he published, between 1936 and his death in 1956, a remarkable journal (Le Goëland, or The Seagull) devoted to poetry, the arts and the esoteric. A great enthusiast of all things Breton and Celtic, he spent twelve years writing this powerfully esoteric novel, which was not published until nineteen years after his death and amazingly has not appeared in English until now. Gareth Knight, an established esoteric author in his own right, has translated a number of French esoteric books.