Priestess of Avalon
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Priestess of Avalon
Marion Zimmer Bradley
* * *
CONTENTS
· PEOPLE IN THE STORY
· PLACES
· PROLOGUE
· Part One—THE WAY TO LOVE
· Part One—THE WAY TO POWER
· Part Three— THE WAY TO WISDOM
To our grandchildren
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This is the story of a legend.
The provable facts about Helena are few in comparison with the wealth of stories that have attached themselves to her name. We know that she was the consort of Constantius and the honoured mother of Constantine the Great, and that she had some association with the town of Drepanum. We know that she owned property in Rome and that she made a visit to Palestine, and that is all.
But wherever she went, myths sprang up behind her. She is honoured in Germany and Israel and Rome, where she is hailed as a saint in the churches that bear her name. Medieval hagiography makes her the great discoverer of relics, who brought the heads of the three Wise Men to Cologne, the Robe Jesus wore to Trier, and the True Cross to Rome.
But she holds a special place in the legends of Britian, where it is said that she was a British princess who married an emperor. She is believed to have lived in York and in London, and to have established roads in Wales. Some even identify her with the goddess Nehalennia. Did these stories arise because Constantius and Constantine both had such strong connections with Britain, or could she have originally come from that isle?
If so, perhaps it is not so great a stretch to link her with the mythology of Avalon, and add one more legend to the rest.
Marion Zimmer Bradley and I began this work together, as we have worked together before, but it was left to me to complete it. At the end of her life Marion attended a Christian church, and yet she was my first high priestess in the ancient mysteries. In telling the story of Helena, who also walked between the Christian and the pagan worlds, I have tried to remain faithful to Marion’s teachings.
In the creation of this book, Marion’s was the inspiration and origin. The historical legwork was mine.
Among the many sources which were useful I should list: Fry’s Roman Britain; Gibbon’s classic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which includes all the gossip; The Later Roman Empire, by A.H.M. Jones; Robin Lane Fox’s fascinating Pagans and Christians; and The Aquarian Guide to Legendary London, edited by John Matthews and Chesca Potter, particularly the chapter on the Goddesses of London by Caroline Wise of the Atlantis Bookstore. More specifically, I relied on Constantine the Great, by Michael Grant, and Jan Willem Drijvers’ classic, Helena Augusta; and for Helena’s journey and the reinvention of the Holy Land, Holy City, Holy Places?, by P.W.L. Walker. The hymn in chapter thirteen was written by St Ambrose in the fourth century.
I would like to express my gratitude to Karen Anderson for working out the astronomical configurations in the third century skies, and to Charline Palmtag for helping me with their astrological interpretation. My thanks also to Jennifer Tifft, for enabling me to make an extra trip to England and find the chapel of St Helena in York, to Bernhard Hennen, for taking me to Trier, and to Jack and Kira Gillespie for showing me Cumae and Pozzuoli.
Diana L. Paxson
Feast of Brigid, 2000
* * *
PEOPLE IN THE STORY
^ »
*
= historical figure
()
= dead before story begins
*
Aurelian —Emperor, 270-275
Aelia—a young priestess, trained with Helena
*
Allectus—Finance Minister to Carausius, later Emperor of Britannia, 293-6
Arganax—Arch-Druid during Helena’s youth
*
Asclepiodotus—Constantius’s Praetorian Prefect
Atticus—Constantine’s Greek tutor
*
Carausius—Emperor of Britannia, 287-293
*
Carus—Emperor, 282-3
*
Carinus—older son of Carus, emperor, 283—284
Ceridachos—Arch Druid when Dierna becomes High Priestess
Cigfolla—a priestess of Avalon
*
Claudius II—Emperor, 268-270, Constantius’s great-uncle
Corinthius the Elder—Helena’s tutor
Corinthius the Younger—master of a school in Londinium
Julius Coelius—[King Coel] Prince of Camulodunum, father of Helena
*
Constantia (I)—daughter of Constantius and Theodora, married to Licinius
*
Constantia (II)—daughter of Constantine and Fausta