Knightly Virtues

Many years ago, at the Citadel of the Wyverns, Wolff (who was then Sir Wolff) spoke to the initiates on the knightly virtues. Many of those initiates had no idea what these were, although their dreams and ideals had crafted many versions, mostly incomplete and some rather strange.

Today Wolff looks back on what he said, and this is what he recalls.

The heraldry of the Citadel shows a shield upon which a unique beast flies. It has the head of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the body of a dragon — most often depicted with two legs, making it a sort of wyvern.

This beast is a mnemonic image for the virtues which the Citadel of old sought to imbue within the hearts of its knights.

The lion's head symbolises courage to do what is right, act justly, protect the innocent, and resist falsehood.

The eagle's wings symbolise excellence to do what is best, act rightly, aim for perfection, and resist mediocrity.

The dragon's body symbolises wisdom to do what is merciful, act generously, defend the weak, and resist ignorance.

In the book of the prophet Jeremiah it is written that the wise man should not boast of his wisdom, nor the strong man of his strength, nor the rich man of his riches — but they should understand that God prefers the exercise of kindness, justice and righteousness. This too is virtue, and not much different.

Heraldry

The idea of the shield as symbolic of values and beliefs, of history and philosophy, is an ancient one. A good herald 'reads' a shield, and knows at once the biography of the knight behind it.

However, there is one caveat. The shield must be properly blazoned. It must have true heraldry behind the choice of field, the choice of divisions and quarterings, the choice of charges. Then only can the reading be proper.

It looks like I must blazon the Shield of the Wyverns for posterity now, reading it as the Dauntless might have, had he lived to see it. I am to be a herald, a teller of life stories, a semiotic reader who transforms symbols into narrative.

And all this, in the space of 24 hours. Joy can be beyond belief.

Blue, Gold and Red

In heraldry, blue represents the heavens and the spiritual virtues; gold represents the earth and the temporal virtues; red represents sacrifice, courage, and the common blood of mankind. And so Sir Wolff, knighthood regained, looks upon the armoury of his forefathers and meditates on the shield thereof.

It is divided blue and gold, and the blue is on the shieldbearer's right, for it serves him foremost and is the source of his virtue. The gold is on the shieldbearers's left, for it serves to support him and is the product of his virtue. Across, in letters of crimson fire, is the monogram of his order — it reminds Wolff of the blood shed by the Redeemer, that binds heaven and earth as one.

In chief azure is an historical and legendary wyvern limned in gold and fire, but not the poisonous serpent with an envenomed tail of other traditions. Rather, this has the head of a lion, for courage is its first answer, and it was born from the power of the Lion Throne. It has the wings of an eagle, for excellence lifts it, and it was brought here by a mission of Eagles. It has the body of an oriental dragon, for the wisdom of the past and the wealth of the Middle Kingdom gave it form and substance.

Thoughtfully, Wolff lifts it. It is heavy, for its gravity is great; it is light, for its burden is balanced. No helm goes with it, no armour is specified for it, and it has no visible supporters — all that is supplied by the invisible realm.

Tonight, he will stand vigil. He will speak to the memories of his ancestors and the histories of those who served before. He will bow in the presence of his Creator and give thanks. And the crosspiece of the blade Perdurias, the glaive of the Dauntless, will be the focus of his thought.

Who knows the mind of God, and who will be His counsellor? Not Wolff, never. But he who lives to serve will some day be rewarded — for the best is yet to be.

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Note: The fictional adventures of Sir Wolff do provide much that is of interest. You can find some of them linked here. Just ignore the one about earwax. That was an accident. And you might want to start here.

Shieldbearer

Some nights, I feel the fire in my veins. I sit here, and I think of all the kind, gentle, fiery ancestors I've had. My grandfather was saintly. Never raised his voice to me, but once. But when he felt something was wrong, he would stand firm in the breach and it was as if a flaming sword was in his hands.

A flaming, two-edged sword. Some of you will know what I mean by that. He lived in a room full of them. I remember him filing, polishing, underlining; he never felt that his mastery was sufficient.

Once in a while he would tell me things, in his mild, resonant voice. He sounded like a giant hidden in the flesh of a man. He was sixty years older than I was, but that voice was strong.

He told me about the shield. He said that once upon a time, it was about being a knight. And a knight is a servant of a king, sworn to uphold the values and laws of that king. Those values, he said, were hidden in plain sight upon that shield.

There's a lot of blue. That is for things of the spirit, of the unseen, of what is above.

There's a lot of gold. That is for things of the world, for one should not be of no earthly use.

There is some red, and that is blood, shed to reconcile what is above to what is below. For Christians, that is the blood of Christ, and it is the mark of healing and joining.

There is a beast with three parts. It is historical, mythical, and not some sort of evil monster.

He told me that as symbolised by the lion's head, you should seek courage to do what is right, to act justly, to protect the innocent, and resist falsehood.

He told me that as symbolised by the eagle's wings, you should seek excellence to do your best, to act rightly, to aim for perfection, and resist mediocrity.

He told me that as symbolised by the dragon's body, you should seek wisdom to do what is merciful, to act generously, to defend the weak, and resist ignorance.

He said that if a school wanted to make good Christian men, then the vision should be simple — for all to be good, to be Christian, to be men. No doubt many would quibble about whether a school should have such ideas, but that was the vision of the Dauntless Hero. Whether the boys wanted to be such, that was a matter for their conscience, not for coercion.

He said, it's a pity that you don't learn what that shield means, although you wear it everyday on your shirt. You're a shieldbearer. You're a knight. Don't forget it, because you will carry it all your life.

And now I know what he meant, and he is gone more than sixteen years now, and I never got to tell him that I once shared his lessons with the entire school that he taught me was my home and my mission. The anniversary of his passing was Sunday, 10 October 2010. 10-10-10. He would have laughed at that, in his hidden-giant deep tenor voice.

Shield

And as if in a mighty dream of the past, I saw a shield shining in the light, and it had no supporters, nor needed any; for it was a guard upon the arm of Michael, the archangel, who is prince over the people of God. This is the blazon I saw upon it:

Party per pale Or and Azure; the letters ACS overlapped Gules; in chief Azure a four-clawed two-legged Eastern dragon coiling Or, with the head of a Lion and winged as an Eagle displayed.

Then I remembered the virtues that the Dauntless had brought to us of old: courage and valour, wisdom and chivalry, excellence and humility; the defence of innocence and the pursuit of justice; service as of a knight, mastery as of a craftsman. For while the colour of gold and earthly success made half the shield, the other half was of the heavens and the undying excellence of the Spirit; and over all was the blood that joined one to the other in faith and hope and love.

I cried out to the archangel who defends the people, "Will nobody teach the young what meaning is carried upon this shield?"

He replied to me, and his voice was as the rumble of stone upon the mountains, "Who has the gift, and who has the voice? Who was told these things in ages past?"

And I knew of whom he spoke, and it was as a burning fire within me that would not be put out.

Happiness is Blue, Gold is Guilt?

There are two fairly large and overlapping groups of people I know. One group believes that affluence contributes towards happiness, the other group believes that affluence contributes to poverty in the spiritual realm. The overlap causes a genuine disconnect: is spiritual richness then exclusive of material happiness?

Of course, there is a large group where there is no such problem. These believe that richness in the spiritual realm creates wealth in the material realm and therefore nobody needs to be guilty about being materially affluent.

The problem, I think, is that these two realms have often been seen as mutually exclusive, even opposite to each other. What I believe is nothing new: I believe that the material realm is a lower order reflection of the spiritual realm. For those who don't believe in a spiritual realm, it's analogous to using description theory as a higher-level construct that deals with material things when it has to.

It is probably also easier to argue that the material realm proceeds from the immaterial than vice versa. But that's not the point. The point is that seeing things like beauty or niceness or happiness or anything like that requires physical apparatus. If the physical apparatus is functioning better and more healthily, so much the better.

It's not so much the sound mind in sound body thing; I don't think it's possible except in a theoretical sense to separate the two. I think that any analysis or appraisal or evaluation of the material realm is impossible without what some people call the spiritual realm and others call the abstract realm (whether correctly, usefully, consistently or not).

This is why the crest of the College of Wyverns is half in blue, for the spiritual things, and half in gold, for the material things. Yet it's not a clean division, the two are mixed in the chief of the shield, where the wyvern itself is placed as the dominant charge. What holds the two halves together are the blood-red letters, which signify in this plane that all humanity shares a common physical heritage (blood) — and in the teachings of that school, the idea that the blood of the Divine binds heaven and earth as one.

This is why you don't need to be guilty, defensive, offensive, or overly joyful about material pleasures and the material life. All that is merely the lower level output of the higher level structure. That's why some people aren't happy although enormously wealthy, while some people are. Perhaps at the highest possible level of the ineffable hierarchy, we'll finally figure it out.

But I doubt the solution will please those who in this life are purely quantitative or purely qualitative researchers. In fact, I doubt that such a solution will please anyone completely, for this is the nature of our humanity.

Another Look

A reply (though not a rebuttal, nor even a rejoinder) to Second Class.

Sometimes, I suspect visual metaphors for knowledge come with too great a facility to the sons of men. From a literal looking back, as in my post this morning, people think of looking into the past. That's not necessarily the case, but let's consider both possibilities, and one more for the fun of it.

The literal act of looking back, the need to turn one's head to look, is of use only if one is going backwards, or if one is using that act to fix in one's mind the visual image of something one has already turned away from. We've heard phrases like 'to look back in anger' or 'to look back in regret'; these are metaphors engaging the visual aspects of memory, and not the optical aspects or the associated cognitive and perceptive aspects of using one's eyes. When Lot's wife and Orpheus looked back, the act was a prohibited one, not the thought; the physical look, not the memory.

The second case is the Second Class viewpoint. To look back at the past is an honourable occupation, and a wise one; without knowledge of the past, one is doomed to a meaningless present and an implicitly useless future; after all, if your future is not engaged with your present, why are you looking forward to it? It would have no relationship to you at all (or you do not think that relationship is important), since in the future, you would not be looking back to the 'you' of now. I agree with the gist of that post, although I don't think it is quite a rejoinder, but a complement.

The last case is the peculiar one of modern heraldic interpretations. I've been resident on the island of Singapore for some time now, a city-state which in some historical accounts was founded by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. One of his legacies is an educational institution, which has a version of the Raffles arms bearing a two-headed gryphon, which is said to be looking back to the past and forward to the future.

This is clearly wrong; the two-headed eagle is a symbol of Empire, looking both east and west with rapacious eyes and greedy claws. That the Rafflesian eagle was made into a gryphon (an even hungrier, horse-eating beast) is merely tribute to the meaning of 'Singapore': 'Lion City'. In this case, the eagle is now grounded in a lion; the Raffles Institution has claws firmly planted on the island, never to take off again (as Raffles used to do, frequently).

If the modern Rafflesian interpretation is correct then, to be consistent with the trappings of Empire that the school still uses (Latin motto, baronet's helm etc) on its heraldry, the two eagle heads must symbolise a Western past and an Eastern future. It looks back into the West, just as Tolkien's elves do. It cannot let go of its colonial past. That's why it needs two heads.

Eagles Of Light And Darkness

Perhaps you walk around your housing estate, in a country where large raptors are rare and hawkers are more common than hawks. And then you come across a banner, a poster, a statue, an image... of an eagle. What does it symbolise? What might it mean to you?

Politically, the eagle has always symbolised great secular power - the imperial might displayed beneath an eagle's image has been the standard of Babylon, Assyria, Rome, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the United States of America. In religion, the eagle has represented Zeus, Mithras, Apollo and other gods of the heavens. The abomination raised in the gates of the Temple at Jerusalem by Herod the Great was a Roman eagle, emblem of Jupiter. The eagle is a mighty totem of many shamanistic cultures.

The two-headed eagle is particularly potent in this regard, symbolising dualism, military might and omniscience, force and violence. The eagle is the foremost of all heraldic avians. A quick look at pages such as this will tell you why. It was also a powerful alchemical symbol.

Is the eagle then always an emblem of the malefic, the secular, the pagan? No. Not always. The eagle in flight symbolises many good things. When the Bible speaks of eagles' wings, there is no doubt that it speaks of the enlightenment, encouragement and invigoration that comes from God. It is the image of heavenward flight that links the flying eagle to the Holy Spirit and to that most theological of writers, St John of the Apocalypse. In fact, it is entirely clear that the single eagle in flight is an emblem of salvation, hope, inspiration and all things good.

Two eagles which aren't a double-headed eagle are problematic. We might leave that for another post.