Forbidden Knowledge

The Wounded King: How an Ancient figure from Arthurian Tradition Helps Explain our World

• Nathaniel Heutmaker • Season 2 • Episode 4

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The Wounded King symbolizes the connection between kingship and the land, illustrating the importance of healing in both myth and modern life. His story challenges listeners to confront their wounds and recognize how inner healing can restore vitality to their surroundings.

• Exploration of the Wounded King’s significance in Arthurian legend 
• Connection between kingship and the state of the land 
• Comparison with Tyr and Nuada’s stories of injury and leadership 
• The allegorical interpretation of personal wounds and leadership 
• Perceval's quest for the Grail as a metaphor for personal healing 
• Reflection on the impact of neglecting self-healing on society 

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Speaker 1:

Today we're going to be discussing the Wounded King. He is an entity that shows up inside of the Arthurian mythos and romance and legend and multiple different stories, mainly inside of the stories that have to do with the Grail and the seeking of it and other hollows. My name is Nathaniel Hoitmacher and this is the Forbidden Knowledge Podcast. I am a historian that looks into the mythologies of the world and other things in order to learn lessons of history and help with my own understanding of things, and so today we're going to be looking at who the Wounded King is, what is his significance, why is he still relevant to our modern era? Why are the Arthurian legends and myths still relevant even to this day? To understand this, we need to make it so that way, we go and look at an overview of his part and role in the stories and, as mentioned previously, it's usually when the knights are on their grail quest. Now, one of the things one of the main ones, excuse me that pops up all the time, for it is with Percival, or Percival, depending upon how it's translated in the various different languages. Percival ends up going to where he meets the Wounded King while he's searching for the Grail, and he ends up coming across the Grail King's castle and while there, a procession comes through and it shows the four main 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 that pops up. There's also the entire team of these things with it that just go there. It's a huge procession of things that to go along with it, and each story tells it a little differently. Um, for what's going on there? But mainly what happens is that the wounded king is the one that invites him to the castle. Now, the wounded king is sometimes confused with the fisher king. Some scholars think that they're the same one. I've read certain things that say that they're not. 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 it simple and focus on the Wounded King.

Speaker 1:

Now it says in one of the texts he can't stand nor sit. He can't do any of the things that a normal king can do in terms of like hunting and all these other things that are expected of royalty during the medieval era and making it so that way he can go and do those things, which is not okay. And of course he is wounded and that's why he can't do that. And because he's wounded, the entire land has been laid to waste. There's nothing in there. It's dying and decaying slowly but surely. Hence why people are seeking out the grail, because it's supposed to be able to restore the land to what it is. I'm not going to talk much about the grail in this episode because that's not what this episode's about. That would take multiple episodes to go into that.

Speaker 1:

But the Wounded King is tied to the notion of sovereignty with the land, and it's an ancient Indo-European concept, possibly even Proto-Indo-European concept. And we see the notion in other traditions as well that have nothing to do with the Proto-Indo-European concept. And we see the notion in other traditions as well that have nothing to do with the Proto-Indo-Europeans or Indo-European grouping of people. So the main idea here is that people used to view the earth as a female entity. We still refer to it as Mother Nature to this day in the English-speaking world. People used to view the earth as a female entity. We still refer to it as Mother Nature to this day in the English-speaking world, and so that is a remnant that is left over from that. And in order to be king, you had to be wedded to the land this gets to the Skyfather idea and notion and the Earth Mother, and so it was supposed to be kind of like this divine pairing and this divine marriage between the two of them, and and there was a sacred rite and ritual that comes along with that in order to make it so. That way one could be the king.

Speaker 1:

Now, unlike the kings that we think of in medieval time period, the ancient kings were better known as petty kings or like chieftains almost, and they typically did not rule forever, almost, and they typically did not rule forever. They were typically only in charge for a short amount of time. Sometimes they're even voted in, depending upon the place and culture. That's true of the nordic people and germanic peoples, the gaelic speaking. They also had it to where their king would be, and chieftain would originally be kind of voted in by a group of elders and whatnot, and it wasn't making it so that way. They were completely in charge of things either, and they would only be there for a while and they could always be replaced and they could always be replaced, and if the king wasn't doing their job well enough, not only could they be replaced, but in certain traditions they could be killed.

Speaker 1:

So being king wasn't necessarily a good thing. Like it became later on, the original thing was a much more 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 modern understanding of things, people would realize that you know, the king doesn't necessarily have any control over the weather and therefore, you know, to be killed because of that could be folly in our modern thinking. But to the ancients thinking, since the king is a representative of the goddess of the land and making it so that way she is not happy, for whatever reason, then he can't be king anymore. Now I'm going to touch on two other notions that kind of play along with this to showcase what happens there. So as well, the king is not being able to fulfill his duties as king because he is wounded, and by being wounded you're no longer whole, and because you're no longer whole, the land in which you have it is no longer whole either. That's the connection there between the two that go along with this.

Speaker 1:

So the first idea here, to kind of showcase this, is there's the god Tyr from the Norse pantheon, which is part of the Indo-European tradition as a whole, and he ends up losing his right hand in order to make it so. That way they can bind the Fenris wolf, which is the son of Loki. And this wolf is so powerful that, you know, in Ragnarok he will consume Odin the Allfather. And the only one who's willing to place their hand inside of the wolf's mouth is Tyr. This is done after they have tried to chain him with various different chains and fetters to try to contain him. Tyr was also the only one who was willing to feed the wolf while he was growing up, when he was a child, and that kind of thing. And so what happens is that there's some sort of trust between Fenris and Tyr, and then he has broken the bonds that have been put on him twice, now a third time they come up with a new one. With it it's a very light rope that's around him and that kind of stuff with it, and he senses that something's wrong. Fenris, that is, fenris that is. And so because of that, what ends up happening is Tyr has to agree to place his hand inside of the wolf's mouth in order to make it so. That way he can fulfill the oath of the gods, and then they can bind Fenris, and that's exactly what happens. But in the process, tyr loses his hand.

Speaker 1:

Now some people think that Tyr was the original king of the Nordic tradition and that he was eventually moved down because of that, and the explanation behind this is that his name literally means God, as in the high God, and then it's also associated with Deus Jupiter in terms of the role that was once played, which was the king of the Pantheon, in terms of the role that was once played, which was the king of the pantheon. So does that prove that that's the case for it? No, we don't know definitively. There's just not enough. That's left over. There is an argument to be made that there is the case for it and that maybe this story is told in order to make it so. That way, it explains why he can no longer be the king Because he lost his hand. He is no longer allowed to be king, he is no longer complete and whole and he would only bring about ruin to the land, and making it so that way he can't be doing it anymore. This is the thought process that goes on there for what it is.

Speaker 1:

To help illustrate this point further, we're going to be looking at another character inside of the Irish tradition, and this is of Nuada from the Tuatha Dé Danann, also known as Tuatha Dé, and he is also known as Noada of the Silver Arm. So he, just like Tyr, was the king of the gods and he was definitively the king of the gods, specifically of the Tuatha, for a while. And then he gets injured and he ends up losing his arm in battle and he is no longer allowed to be king and then he ends up making it so. That way he gains a silver arm again for it and eventually that's restored to full functionality and all these other things that go along with that, and he's allowed to be restored as the king again, these other things that go along with that, and he's allowed to be restored as the king again.

Speaker 1:

So, between these two various different concepts that are there, the two different elements and stories, you can see that the celtic peoples will call them and whatnot. I don't really like that term, but you have that for the celtic peoples and then you also have that for the Nordic peoples, both of which are undisputedly part of the Indo-European tradition, and we can see that the ancient peoples thought that when the king was wounded, or that he was injured or whatever, he could no longer be fit to rule, was injured or whatever he could no longer be fit to rule. And we're seeing this being played out inside of the Arthurian mythos and romance. And so what happens there is that because the king is wounded, he needs to be healed in order for the land to be healed, because in this time period they didn't get rid of kings because they were injured. This is the medieval time period.

Speaker 1:

Now this is a completely separate idea, where the king would rule until he died or he decided to step down and maybe his son takes over or whatever, but it still has remnants of the original story. The original understanding of things makes it so. That way it goes to a much, much older tradition where you had to be wedded to the land, to the goddess, and that's what we're seeing here. That's what we're seeing here. Now, on an allegorical level, you have where the wounded king represents ourselves, but it represents a version of ourselves where we've been severely wounded, not just injured. Injury is something that we can recover from much more easily and it just takes time to heal a wound, on the other hand, is so deep that it can't be healed not by normal means anyway and we notice that, of course, that the wasteland has come into being, meaning that there's nothing there. The land's literally in decay and dying.

Speaker 1:

And for whatever wounds we personally have as individuals, it takes away our sovereignty over ourselves, and making it so that way we do harm to ourselves and to the world around us, and because of that it makes it so that way. We have to learn how to overcome these wounds that have been inflicted upon us, and the story for what's going on here is that it's the Dolores blow from the sphere of Longinus. This is typically how it is seen. There are other variants of the story. We'll just use that one for simplicity's sakes for this episode. And what happens is that you see from the get-go how this can be applied to us, even in our modern era, where we have something that wounds us very deeply, that is done to us, probably in childhood, or possibly some other person that's very close to us backstabs us or whatever, when we're older and we're never quite the same, and because of that we make it so. That way, we are no longer a whole human being and we take our angers and frustration or our sadness or depression or whatever else is out on other people and it impacts us negatively and the rest of the world around us, until we go out on a quest to actually fix this stuff, which is part of the point of the arthurian mythos and tradition that the seeking of the grail and what it represents makes it so that way they can actually heal the king and therefore the land at the same time.

Speaker 1:

Slash Parzival ends up going to the Grail castle. He doesn't ask the question who does the Grail serve or what is its purpose, and because he doesn't do that, it makes it so that way. The next morning when he wakes up from it, the castle disappears. There's no, the entire body of stuff is there. He finds himself waking up in the middle of nowhere. Eventually he is met by another Lee woman and she berates him for not asking the question when he saw the procession and everything that was there for it.

Speaker 1:

And so what is happening here is that when we don't take the opportunities that we have before us in order to go and heal ourselves and actually make ourselves whole again, or at least that part of us whole again that there are consequences for doing so, consequences for doing so and it perpetuates the cycle, going forward even further and Percival slash. Parcival has to go and try to find the grail for even a longer amount of time now, and it takes him much, much longer to do so. And this leads to where he's told that the wasteland will continue to exist because of his ignorance and naivete and not willing to do certain things that needed to be done there, even though he had come across the grail itself. And you know, we see this play out with other people, where they know that they have a problem but they're not really doing anything about that problem in order to fix it. And maybe they're even given an opportunity to fix things and to make things better, but they don't and they choose not to. So this, this is what the Wounded King is, this is what his role is, this is what it is historically, where the basis comes from, as well as how it can be applied to our modern understanding of things.

Speaker 1:

And with that, I hope that you enjoyed this episode and got something really good out of it. And with that, I hope that you enjoyed this episode and got something really good out of it and, if you did, please like and subscribe. Don't forget to share this video with people that you think might want to have access to it and see it. It'll really help the channel out and grow. It costs nothing and it will make it so. That way, other people can benefit from it and with that, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.