Author's  Bio

          Born in the City of Heidelberg, in the southwestern German Rhineland, home of picturesque mediaeval castles and one of the oldest renown universities of Europe, writer and artist Robert Jacobs became fascinated with mythology and dreams during his early childhood. For many decades he has studied the myths and perennial philosophies of ancient cultures, modern depth psychology, pursued a profession in the arts, and journeyed the road less traveled of spiritual awakening. It is this varied life experience that speaks through the characters of his books, some familiar and some manifested out of the unwriten pages from dark ages of lost histories and unknown biographies. Robert recieved his B.F.A. graduating with distinction in southern California, was mentored by author and spiritual practitioner the late Freedom Barry on the Central Coast of California, and now resides with his wife Letitia in the tranquil forests of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

dreams of  the Fisher Kings

        Dreams of the Fisher Kings:                        Part One, The Raven of Awen        

          "One of the most intriguing books about the Arthurian myths I have read. Part novel, part spiritual quest, it breaks the mould of most previous retellings of this evergreen story. Read slowly, digest carefully, and the reward is a new appreciation of the myth."                
          John Matthews: co-author of "The Complete King Arthur" 

          It may seem to many readers that the time bleached dragon bones of Arthurian myth and legend have been picked clean after fifteen centuries of writers, historians, archeologists and romantics plying their skills to unearth another revelation. As children, we are captivated by the magic of wizards, the specter of mythic beasts, and the heroics of lads rescuing fair maidens. All of these tales arose from an oral tradition of storytellers whose fanciful verses weren't even written down until centuries after they lived. The stories that came to us through the ages were created by ancient minds speaking of histories, tragedies and romances -- both real and imagined, from the physical realms that they knew, and the spiritual realms that they explored. Imagine entering those time eclipsed minds merging history, mysticism and the adept art of carving worlds from poetic language. The voices that we would hear could reveal a myriad of arcane mysteries concealed for centuries, sung to us with the rapture, romance, and dark visions of the dreams of Fisher Kings, waking us to hear them once more, from a new ancient voice.
          "Dreams of the Fisher Kings" breaks away from the typical format of a historical novel, inviting the reader to enter the mind of a sixth century storyteller -- a poet and mystic conveying his perception of another world. Over the centuries, and into the middle ages, many of the major writers from the Arthurian genre have alluded to an obscure source of their ancient stories, long since lost, but later deciphered from the poetic traditions of archaic Welsh dialects. The narrator who opens each chapter and guides us through the story embodies that lost source from the vague era of Dark Age Britain. In the first pages, we enter the depths of this bard's experience, delving into his unique vision of this nearly forgotten ancient reality. He himself is a mystery, as is the hybrid druid culture he emerges from, revealing an intimate knowledge of his epoch of history and its characters, familiar to the avid reader of Celtic myth and legend, while allowing them to be seen here in an original form. Our narrator uncovers the psychological nature of these iconic characters through their dreams and visions, where myth and dream merge, exposing the legendary reality that evolved into our assumptions about their lives of fiction and fantasy, for timeless mythic spirits to inhabit these meandering literary paths. The bards of the fifth, sixth and later centuries told and retold these legends until their stories were transformed within the historic and theological atmosphere of later cultural climates.
          Through the pages of "Dreams of the Fisher Kings" an ancient bard's perception allows us to peer into a mystic vision of an ancient story. His greatest inspiration, or "Awen" comes from a lineage of teachers following the elusive and mysterious Arthurian character Myrlyn, the "Raven of Awen" -- written of in the mediaeval romances as the magician Merlin -- wild wizard, visionary, and mentor of princes and kings. Where did he come from? How did he come by his inexplicable powers? What is his connection to the legendary sword of power, called Caladbolg by the ancient Irish or Scotti, and Excalibur by the mediaeval writers? "Dreams of the Fisher Kings" reveals all of this in Myrlyn's story.
          The mediaeval stories with which we are most familiar were composed by writers living in a time hundreds of years after any historic context of the original tales, written in languages foreign from the original sources. Names were changed; events were updated; and later cultural periods and their customs were implanted and portrayed upon a new world stage for foreign audiences. The genre of Arthurian literature evolved into a world of its own making. The Fisher Kings became a Fisher King. The Scotti and the Cymric Kingdoms became Logres or Camelot; while the overturned Cauldron of Wisdom and the lost Chalice of the Wells became the Holy Grail.
          The Fisher Kings are multidimensional charcters of history and literature, in and of themselves. Historically, they represent a line of Priest Kings going back to ancient Palestine and the Biblical prophets of old. In literature, they are described as one or more kings nearly fatally wounded, whose wounding affects the physical fortunes and spiritual status of the kingdom or kingdoms that they reign over. The descendants of the Fisher Kings can be interpreted as all of those souls who attempt to restore a lost or failing legacy of peace, prosperity, and spiritual renewal. The universal metaphor is applicable to all wounded souls seeking healing, psychological stability, and spiritual redemption.
          Transformation of individual characters takes place in their life experience, including encouters with wise mentors who guide them through both their outer and inner lives. Key characters evolve psychologically and spiritually through their dreams, also portraying the mythic adventures and explorations of the well known Arthurian myths and legends, providing a supernatural window into the familiar narratives, while maintaining a plausible historic context for the characters' outer world experience. The narrator and many of the main characters are bards and mystics from history. They all conversed in the common language of the ancient Cymri, linguistic and ethnic ancestors of the modern Welsh, whose dynasties of Post Roman Britain dominated the lands from Brittany in France to southern Scotland below the Antonine Wall. Common language roots and genealogical lineages support the historic dominance of the Cymri, most often called the Britons, for what is vaguely known as the Age of Arthur.
          Arthur himself is an enigma. The charcter of the "once and future king" has been so mythologized and romanticized that any attempt to place him in an accurate historic context is bound to fail. Arthur's only mention in surviving texts from any time near the two century span of his legendary appearances is in the epic poem "Gododdin" attributed to the sixth century bard Aneirin, who simply says of another warrior -- "he was no Arthur."  Since there is no definitive history of King Arthur, "Dreams of the Fisher Kings" takes a unique approach to the question of Arthur in this matter of Britain. There are many princes, and a few kings who bore the name Arthwys, Arthen, Artur or Arthmael, living between the fifth, sixth and early seventh centuries. Many other princes, kings or warlords lived legendary lives and established military resumes comparable to the mythic Arthur Pendragon. King Arthur exists mainly in the collective imagination. By shifting the context of that imaginal identity, "Dreams of the Fisher Kings" suggests the idea of a bear king of the north, an Arth-ur or Arth-wyr, existing in cultural legend centuries before the fall of Rome and the consecutive invasions of Britain. Astronomers and astrologers prophesied the coming of a bear king from the north, based on the observation of the axial precession. The polar alignment of the earth's axis has shifted over millennia, shifting the north star from the constellation Draco into Ursus, the bear or Cymric "Arth." The idea of a messianic king arose in the public imagination, inspiring the naming of princes, kings or legendary heroes as an Arthur or Arthwyr, who would save the Britons, or Cymri, from their invaders. "Dreams of the Fisher King" tells the stories of many such leaders who, for a time, came close to maintaining lasting power and peace for the Cymri. In the end, their language and Cymru, or Wales, survived -- but Britain, or England, bacame the land of the Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Norman French.
          The struggle of the Cymri, and the mystics, matriarchs, and heroes of their early culture, is the recurring struggle for individual and ethnic voices to be heard without suppression. Each era and epoch has its own avenues of belief, approaches to spiritual life, and varying balances of power within social and religious structures. Post Roman Britain was a time and place where a land and people were under inner and outer conflict: between ancient beliefs sustaining matriarchy and a new dominant patriarchal religion, with Church and Empire becoming the entities of supremacy, while tribal kingdoms continued to fight amongst themselves, as invaders populated their eastern shores. The idealism of a messianic leader or a supreme natural order gave way to the authoritarian power of these foreign invaders. "Dreams of the Fisher Kings" weaves together history, legend, myth, dynastic genealogy, psychology, poetry and mysticism to form the rich complex tapestry of the Arthurian genre in an intriguing way, never presented before, through individual characters who struggle within their own inner worlds, and battle with a flamboyant quill or an iconic sword in the outer world, to open new vistas of mystic vision for history, imagination, and the power of the spoken word.

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            Dreams of the Fisher Kings:                        Part Two, The Age of Afallon
 
        Robert Jacobs continues the saga of ancient Arthurian legend in his second book of this genre, with the returning wise narrator of Afallon bringing more of these stories to us from his lifetime and Britain's historic past, expressing the spiritual and psychological world of Post Roman Britain's transformative era. The bard's voice rouses our imagination to dream and expand our vision beyond the boundries of time, our histories, and our awakening souls.
           Visionary High Priestess of Afallon, Vivianne, daughter of Master Myrlyn, with her brilliant husband Taliesin Pen Bard of Rheged, emerge from the shadowed history of Dark Age Britain to guide and inspire a great generation of revered heroes of myth and legend to fulfill their destinies. Each character carries an identity that moves through an inner imaginal world, or is shed to be reborn into the outer world. These iconic characters come to life as they expose their psyches, their challenges and their passions within lucid and vivid dreams. The sixth century history of the "Hen Gogledd" -- the Old North of Welsh legend and lore -- echoes on and on in time through insights , impressions and the direct experience of a once forgotten and mysterious bard, born of tragedy, raised by mystics in Afallon, and blessed by the mentoring of Pen Bard Aneirin "of the flowing verse." The narrative becomes an avenue of the soul's journey, while deciphering clues of a storied antiquity. Mysteries of the Grail, Arthur Pendragon and the Fisher Kings are explored and exposed in a war torn land of turmoil, where only a few of the brave travelers, bards, warriors and saints find peace within the waking world, opening to the Otherworld of introspective dreams and mystic visions.
          Vivianne's prescient vision discovers the entry of a babe upon the fluid stream of time within dream and then within the waking world, to be nurtured into the greatest champion of Arthurian legend, known in this story as Llen or Llenlleawg, known to the ancient Welsh as Llenlleawg Gwyddel, and in the French mediaeval romaces as Lancelot du Lac. His comrade in arms, Gawain, known as Gwalchmai in the original Welsh tales, arriving from the northern islands as a formidable yet solitary ally of Afallon -- born of the heritage of an exotic northern priestess and the King of Lothian -- he stands as a protector of the mystic legacy of matriarchal sovereignty in the north, during an era of inner conflict between the Cymric kingdoms and the outward attacks from foreigh invaders.
          Pen Bard Taliesin composes his epic poem "Battle of the Trees" mourning the assault of the sacred wells and their guardians, described centuries later in the unfinished "Elucidation" of the French mediaeval poet Chretien de Troyes. This tragic event and the ensuing battle drive bard Myrddin mad, retreating into the wild, where his psychological and spiritual inner adventure sets the stage for his reemergence, giving rise to the later legends of Merlin as the mentor of Arthur. Artur, a Scotti prince of Dalriada, weds the princess Gwenhwyfar -- whose conflicted heart and psyche creates her own "False Guinevere" of whom later mediaeval romance writers would unveil in illicit liaisons with Lancelot du Lac. The treacherous Marganna, nothern queen and seductress of kings and princes, raises her own son Morcant as the historic and legendary assassin of kings and princes, portrayed by later writers as Mordred. The multilayered narrative culminates in epic battles, great romances, and timeless classics of poetic expression composed as kings and kingdoms rise or fall to their inevitable destinies and fates. The surviving bards, mystics, and heirs carry on their great legacies in verse, vision, and a resounding oral history, allowing foreign bards of distant centuries to create fantastic and enduring tales heard around the world.
          The turning points in these northern histories and legends were at the battles of Arfderydd and Catraeth, both inspiring epic poetry conveyed from mouth to ear for centuries, reverberating the unfortunate fall of the Hen Gogledd into the future. "Arfderydd" -- meaning weapon of the oak -- was the call to arms of the ancient druids, when nemetons of oaks, their sacred temple sites, had been severed or burned to the ground by invading armies. "Any fallen seed could rise into a greater tree -- a true oak -- flourishing for centuries, though scarred by each brutal season. From this most mighty tree we can gather limbs and leaves to build with, cushioning the blows, generating language that can heal, not harm. Every family of trees has its role, its best suited purpose; and our loss of one mars the life of all. A leaf becomes a letter; letters become language; languge becomes our creed; and we become our words. The words linger, mimicking an appearance, a dream, a vision. It is the role of the bard to shift the shape of words to carry more than is spoken, becoming a knower of the oak, becoming once again seed and branch of the immutable tree of truth. We eat of fruit or poison; we burn or build; we shelter with love or crucify -- our heartwood split for the fire."

      Excerpt from "Dreams of the Fisher Kings: Part Two, The Age of Afallon"
        Chapter Four: "Battle of the Trees"  

Robert Jacobs

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