Merlin's Calling

About the Book

LE CRI DE MERLIN

DIARY FRAGMENT 1: UNDERSPELL

    To be encased in stone is both an otherworldly blessing and a maiden´s curse.  To refer to my current condition as entombed would be to speak with imprecision.  This will not do since much of magic, as I learned it from Blaise as a young boy, is in the words and, of course, in how they are strung together like a talisman emboldened by fetishes and charms.  

    No I am not dead but rather immobilized, spirit unmoved without a body to transport it.  My state is rather meditative.  Though deep in the earth, resonances from above penetrate this rock-hard cathedral that has become my terrestrial home.  Like a blind man, I grope for the nature of the times.

    Perhaps this subterranean abode is only fitting given my preference, when in flesh, for caves under the great halls of kings.  The solitude, to a point, also befits me.  I never cared much for the company of men or women, that is, until the end of my earthly life on the surface. Blind love for a particular women, the wily vixen Nimue, and as powerful a spell as has ever been cast rendered me thus.  But I get ahead of myself.  The story will come out in time, which is now my most abundant commodity.  

    I must tell you that the rumblings from above have been fierce and persistent.  Methinks the time for my release may be approaching with the coming age. How I know this is not clear, but then prescience has no set form nor manner of engagement.  

     A new millennium beckons and the surface world of human beings seems in dire need of a prophet and wise counselor.  After all, this was my role in the Briton of the Celts, when I walked the Isle fulfilling a destiny that expressed the will of powers greater than my own.  

    In those long lost days, I was called variously Merlinus Ambrosius, last of the royal Roman line; Merlin Emrys, hawk of bright light; Myrddin Wyllt, wild hermit; and Myrddin Silvester, man of the forest.  Dwelling in an age raging with fitful forces of darkness and light, I was called often.  

    Would that this shifting of shapes ceased; remanded to some permanence by the bidding of changing times.  Just as I recollect myself, a group doth form around me.  Even as I prophesy, the circle expands.  So begins my calling.  

    The events to be recorded in this heretofore unsung chronicle will be told as they are lived, in wizard´s time.  This way of reckoning knows no beginnings or endings.  For me, past-present-and future are entwined as an endless string of pearls to be fingered in any direction or grasped tightly by each discrete bead in the string.  

         So says Merlin, mythologized variously as seer, necromancer, prophet, mercurial trickster, bard, wise counselor to kings, mad-man prowler of the Caledonian wood, missing person and stone deity.

    * * * So begins Merlin´s Calling, a literary-fantasy, allegorical thriller and group´s tale.  Dr. Wallace Branford, a social scientist studying large group trends, receives a mailing from the alluring Philemont, purported to be Merlin´s diary. Trapped beneath the earth and under a spell cast by his paramour Nimue, the seer reveals his life, times and practices. A modern day Grail search ensues, with the truth about Merlin and the wisdom he holds for the coming age as its aim. Merlin´s prophetic voice and subtle second narration provide a plot within a plot. Questing characters scour the summer country of England, the northern mountains of Wales and the rocky coast of Cornwall for clues and inspirations. Eventual meetings are at once tense, exciting, soulful and magical. Protagonists battle their own demons and histories as dark, reactionary forces attempt to usurp or discredit the find. Merlin´s calling becomes urgent when he senses turbulence in the surface world and circumstances that might set him free. The story builds toward conclusion with a shamanic ritual at Stonehenge on mill

About the Author

Mark F. Ettin, Ph.D. works as a clinical psychologist in private practice in Princeton and East Brunswick, New Jersey. In 1996, he received the American Group Psychotherapy Association’s “Award for Excellence in Psychodynamic Group Theory” for a trilogy of papers on group psychotherapy, culture and mythology. Dr. Ettin has published three professional textbooks and over fifty journal articles and book chapters, including: “Merlin: First group consultant to the British Isle” for the British journal Group Analysis. Merlin’s Calling is Mark’s first novel. It takes off where his scholarly work leaves off, with wonder and curiosity about Merlin’s relationship to a new age in need of wise counsel and a bit of magic. Four years of research, with trips to Merlin sites in England proper, Cornwall and Wales inform this novel. The book has already met with acclaim after its selection as a finalist in the “Frontiers In Writing” contest.