Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today we're going to
be discussing the Wounded King.
He is an entity that shows upinside of the Arthurian mythos
and romance and legend andmultiple different stories,
mainly inside of the storiesthat have to do with the Grail
and the seeking of it and otherhollows.
My name is Nathaniel Hoitmacherand this is the Forbidden
(00:23):
Knowledge Podcast.
I am a historian that looksinto the mythologies of the
world and other things in orderto learn lessons of history and
help with my own understandingof things, and so today we're
going to be looking at who theWounded King is, what is his
significance, why is he stillrelevant to our modern era?
(00:52):
Why are the Arthurian legendsand myths still relevant even to
this day?
To understand this, we need tomake it so that way, we go and
look at an overview of his partand role in the stories and, as
mentioned previously, it'susually when the knights are on
their grail quest.
Now, one of the things one ofthe main ones, excuse me that
pops up all the time, for it iswith Percival, or Percival,
(01:16):
depending upon how it'stranslated in the various
different languages.
Percival ends up going to wherehe meets the Wounded King while
he's searching for the Grail,and he ends up coming across the
Grail King's castle and whilethere, a procession comes
(01:38):
through and it shows the fourmain hollows of the Grail quest,
and one of them is, of course,the grail quest and one of them
is, of course, the grail.
Another one is the lance thatpops up.
There's also the entire team ofthese things with it that just
go there.
It's a huge procession ofthings that to go along with it,
(01:59):
and each story tells it alittle differently.
Um, for what's going on there?
But mainly what happens is thatthe wounded king is the one
that invites him to the castle.
Now, the wounded king issometimes confused with the
fisher king.
Some scholars think thatthey're the same one.
I've read certain things thatsay that they're not.
(02:20):
For the purposes of this video,I'm going to assume that
they're not.
I have yet to figure that out,whether they are the same entity
or not.
So we're just going to keep itsimple and focus on the Wounded
King.
Now it says in one of the textshe can't stand nor sit.
He can't do any of the thingsthat a normal king can do in
(02:42):
terms of like hunting and allthese other things that are
expected of royalty during themedieval era and making it so
that way he can go and do thosethings, which is not okay.
And of course he is wounded andthat's why he can't do that.
And because he's wounded, theentire land has been laid to
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waste.
There's nothing in there.
It's dying and decaying slowlybut surely.
Hence why people are seekingout the grail, because it's
supposed to be able to restorethe land to what it is.
I'm not going to talk muchabout the grail in this episode
because that's not what thisepisode's about.
That would take multipleepisodes to go into that.
(03:26):
But the Wounded King is tied tothe notion of sovereignty with
the land, and it's an ancientIndo-European concept, possibly
even Proto-Indo-European concept.
And we see the notion in othertraditions as well that have
nothing to do with theProto-Indo-European concept.
And we see the notion in othertraditions as well that have
nothing to do with theProto-Indo-Europeans or
(03:49):
Indo-European grouping of people.
So the main idea here is thatpeople used to view the earth as
a female entity.
We still refer to it as MotherNature to this day in the
English-speaking world.
People used to view the earthas a female entity.
We still refer to it as MotherNature to this day in the
English-speaking world, and sothat is a remnant that is left
(04:13):
over from that.
And in order to be king, youhad to be wedded to the land
this gets to the Skyfather ideaand notion and the Earth Mother,
and so it was supposed to bekind of like this divine pairing
and this divine marriagebetween the two of them, and and
(04:34):
there was a sacred rite andritual that comes along with
that in order to make it so.
That way one could be the king.
Now, unlike the kings that wethink of in medieval time period
, the ancient kings were betterknown as petty kings or like
(04:55):
chieftains almost, and theytypically did not rule forever,
almost, and they typically didnot rule forever.
They were typically only incharge for a short amount of
time.
Sometimes they're even voted in, depending upon the place and
culture.
That's true of the nordicpeople and germanic peoples, the
(05:16):
gaelic speaking.
They also had it to where theirking would be, and chieftain
would originally be kind ofvoted in by a group of elders
and whatnot, and it wasn'tmaking it so that way.
They were completely in chargeof things either, and they would
only be there for a while andthey could always be replaced
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and they could always bereplaced, and if the king wasn't
doing their job well enough,not only could they be replaced,
but in certain traditions theycould be killed.
So being king wasn't necessarilya good thing.
Like it became later on, theoriginal thing was a much more
(05:57):
dangerous game.
Because if a trout came through, which from our modern
understanding of things scheme,because if a trout came through
which from our modernunderstanding of things, people
would realize that you know, theking doesn't necessarily have
any control over the weather andtherefore, you know, to be
killed because of that could befolly in our modern thinking.
But to the ancients thinking,since the king is a
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representative of the goddess ofthe land and making it so that
way she is not happy, forwhatever reason, then he can't
be king anymore.
Now I'm going to touch on twoother notions that kind of play
along with this to showcase whathappens there.
(06:42):
So as well, the king is notbeing able to fulfill his duties
as king because he is wounded,and by being wounded you're no
longer whole, and because you'reno longer whole, the land in
which you have it is no longerwhole either.
That's the connection therebetween the two that go along
(07:04):
with this.
So the first idea here, to kindof showcase this, is there's the
god Tyr from the Norse pantheon, which is part of the
Indo-European tradition as awhole, and he ends up losing his
right hand in order to make itso.
(07:28):
That way they can bind theFenris wolf, which is the son of
Loki.
And this wolf is so powerfulthat, you know, in Ragnarok he
will consume Odin the Allfather.
And the only one who's willingto place their hand inside of
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the wolf's mouth is Tyr.
This is done after they havetried to chain him with various
different chains and fetters totry to contain him.
Tyr was also the only one whowas willing to feed the wolf
while he was growing up, when hewas a child, and that kind of
(08:11):
thing.
And so what happens is thatthere's some sort of trust
between Fenris and Tyr, and thenhe has broken the bonds that
have been put on him twice, nowa third time they come up with a
new one.
With it it's a very light ropethat's around him and that kind
(08:32):
of stuff with it, and he sensesthat something's wrong.
Fenris, that is, fenris that is.
And so because of that, whatends up happening is Tyr has to
agree to place his hand insideof the wolf's mouth in order to
make it so.
That way he can fulfill theoath of the gods, and then they
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can bind Fenris, and that'sexactly what happens.
But in the process, tyr loseshis hand.
Now some people think that Tyrwas the original king of the
Nordic tradition and that he waseventually moved down because
(09:16):
of that, and the explanationbehind this is that his name
literally means God, as in thehigh God, and then it's also
associated with Deus Jupiter interms of the role that was once
played, which was the king ofthe Pantheon, in terms of the
role that was once played, whichwas the king of the pantheon.
(09:37):
So does that prove that that'sthe case for it?
No, we don't know definitively.
There's just not enough.
That's left over.
There is an argument to be madethat there is the case for it
and that maybe this story istold in order to make it so.
That way, it explains why hecan no longer be the king
Because he lost his hand.
He is no longer allowed to beking, he is no longer complete
(10:00):
and whole and he would onlybring about ruin to the land,
and making it so that way hecan't be doing it anymore.
This is the thought processthat goes on there for what it
is.
To help illustrate this pointfurther, we're going to be
looking at another characterinside of the Irish tradition,
(10:25):
and this is of Nuada from theTuatha Dé Danann, also known as
Tuatha Dé, and he is also knownas Noada of the Silver Arm.
So he, just like Tyr, was theking of the gods and he was
(10:47):
definitively the king of thegods, specifically of the Tuatha
, for a while.
And then he gets injured and heends up losing his arm in
battle and he is no longerallowed to be king and then he
ends up making it so.
That way he gains a silver armagain for it and eventually
(11:08):
that's restored to fullfunctionality and all these
other things that go along withthat, and he's allowed to be
restored as the king again,these other things that go along
with that, and he's allowed tobe restored as the king again.
So, between these two variousdifferent concepts that are
there, the two differentelements and stories, you can
see that the celtic peoples willcall them and whatnot.
(11:29):
I don't really like that term,but you have that for the celtic
peoples and then you also havethat for the Nordic peoples,
both of which are undisputedlypart of the Indo-European
tradition, and we can see thatthe ancient peoples thought that
when the king was wounded, orthat he was injured or whatever,
(11:52):
he could no longer be fit torule, was injured or whatever he
could no longer be fit to rule.
And we're seeing this beingplayed out inside of the
Arthurian mythos and romance.
And so what happens there isthat because the king is wounded
, he needs to be healed in orderfor the land to be healed,
(12:14):
because in this time period theydidn't get rid of kings because
they were injured.
This is the medieval timeperiod.
Now this is a completelyseparate idea, where the king
would rule until he died or hedecided to step down and maybe
his son takes over or whatever,but it still has remnants of the
(12:35):
original story.
The original understanding ofthings makes it so.
That way it goes to a much,much older tradition where you
had to be wedded to the land, tothe goddess, and that's what
we're seeing here.
That's what we're seeing here.
(13:00):
Now, on an allegorical level,you have where the wounded king
represents ourselves, but itrepresents a version of
ourselves where we've beenseverely wounded, not just
injured.
Injury is something that we canrecover from much more easily
and it just takes time to heal awound, on the other hand, is so
deep that it can't be healednot by normal means anyway and
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we notice that, of course, thatthe wasteland has come into
being, meaning that there'snothing there.
The land's literally in decayand dying.
And for whatever wounds wepersonally have as individuals,
it takes away our sovereigntyover ourselves, and making it so
that way we do harm toourselves and to the world
around us, and because of thatit makes it so that way.
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We have to learn how toovercome these wounds that have
been inflicted upon us, and thestory for what's going on here
is that it's the Dolores blowfrom the sphere of Longinus.
This is typically how it isseen.
There are other variants of thestory.
We'll just use that one forsimplicity's sakes for this
(14:11):
episode.
And what happens is that yousee from the get-go how this can
be applied to us, even in ourmodern era, where we have
something that wounds us verydeeply, that is done to us,
(14:32):
probably in childhood, orpossibly some other person
that's very close to usbackstabs us or whatever, when
we're older and we're neverquite the same, and because of
that we make it so.
That way, we are no longer awhole human being and we take
our angers and frustration orour sadness or depression or
(14:53):
whatever else is out on otherpeople and it impacts us
negatively and the rest of theworld around us, until we go out
on a quest to actually fix thisstuff, which is part of the
point of the arthurian mythosand tradition that the seeking
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of the grail and what itrepresents makes it so that way
they can actually heal the kingand therefore the land at the
same time.
(15:41):
Slash Parzival ends up going tothe Grail castle.
He doesn't ask the question whodoes the Grail serve or what is
its purpose, and because hedoesn't do that, it makes it so
that way.
The next morning when he wakesup from it, the castle
disappears.
There's no, the entire body ofstuff is there.
He finds himself waking up inthe middle of nowhere.
Eventually he is met by anotherLee woman and she berates him
(16:07):
for not asking the question whenhe saw the procession and
everything that was there for it.
And so what is happening here isthat when we don't take the
opportunities that we havebefore us in order to go and
heal ourselves and actually makeourselves whole again, or at
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least that part of us wholeagain that there are
consequences for doing so,consequences for doing so and it
perpetuates the cycle, goingforward even further and
Percival slash.
Parcival has to go and try tofind the grail for even a longer
amount of time now, and ittakes him much, much longer to
(16:51):
do so.
And this leads to where he'stold that the wasteland will
continue to exist because of hisignorance and naivete and not
willing to do certain thingsthat needed to be done there,
even though he had come acrossthe grail itself.
(17:12):
And you know, we see this playout with other people, where
they know that they have aproblem but they're not really
doing anything about thatproblem in order to fix it.
And maybe they're even given anopportunity to fix things and
to make things better, but theydon't and they choose not to.
(17:33):
So this, this is what theWounded King is, this is what
his role is, this is what it ishistorically, where the basis
comes from, as well as how itcan be applied to our modern
understanding of things.
And with that, I hope that youenjoyed this episode and got
(17:55):
something really good out of it.
And with that, I hope that youenjoyed this episode and got
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(18:18):
thank you very much for yourtime.
I appreciate it.