The Secret Tradition in Arthurian Legend

Somehow, in the course of my research, I came across this book. I believe it was in my Amazon Recommendations. Needless to say, this book is not within the realm of what I am studying, but I decided to get it from the library anyway because I thought it seemed interesting (and I really want to know if the author was given that name by his parents or if he was such a fan of the literature that he changed his name to be the same as one of the knights in the stories!). The author does seem to have a very good grasp of the modern version of the Arthurian legend, and would probably do a good job of writing his own fiction based on the Sir Thomas Malory and T.H. White Arthur. In fact, a lot of what he writes in this book is, in fact, new show more fiction -- i.e. it did not come from any commonly known source (the author claims to pull from oral sources, but in this case I must assume that he either came up with some of these elements himself or had some help from friends). The author states in his acknowledgements that "It is very much in the tradition of Arthurian literature to make use of manuscript 'oral' material in this way, and I am happy to join the long line of authors from as far back as Chretien de Troies [sic], Robert de Boron and Wolfram von Eschenbach who have similarly acknowledged such help, though somewhat to the scepticism of modern scholars. Much of this material relates to the 'Atlantean' tradition and takes its validity for granted. Those sufficiently interested may glean more information of this tradition from works such as Rudolf Steiner's Universe, Earth and Man or W. Scott-Elliot's The Story of Atlantis to name but two. Those who choose not to believe it may find much of this book of questionable validity but I fear I have come far enough along the road of occult research to realize that there comes a time when it is too limiting to try to write within the framework of assumptions imposed by the current intellectual establishment." (7 Sorry for the long quote -- I would make it a block quote if I could!)

Anyway, I haven't read the two books the author lists here. I do find it unfortunate, though, that the author is so perturbed by the "intellectual establishment" that he seems to have thrown any and all forms of intellectualism out the window. There are no citations in this book. Aside from the mentions of a few texts in his acknowledgements, the author does not even reference a single book in his own text. He actually makes some good points here and there about the literature he is studying, but because he gives no citations, readers can't follow along with his train of thought.

In the end, though this text has its entertaining moments, I can't give it a very high rating because it could have much more well written and, frankly, I probably am one of those so called academic "sceptics" the author despises so much. While it is clear that the author has read the most recent works of Arthurian literature, he is by no means well-read on the topic, and is probably not the best source of information (including "secrets"!) on Arthurian literature. show less