Robert Graves - Novelist & Poet | SeeMallorca.com

 

How do you tell when you're in the presence of a pagan elder?

Hear what biographer Richard Perceval Graves has to say of his uncle Robert Graves (1895-1985), author of The White Goddess and prophet of the Return of the Goddess:

Graves's dedication to the Moon Goddess meant that at times...he had seemed to bring with him a breath of the ancient world, and in his presence Deyá [RG's longtime residence in the island of Mallorca] itself would sometimes appear to be a land of ancient days.

There it is. A pagan elder is one in whose presence—at least sometimes—you gain the sense of an older world, a pagan world, the way things once were.

Note also the corollary: that this elder's presence transforms his—or her—very environment.

If ever you've wondered how it is that we, the pagans, intend to take back the world, you now know.

 

 

 

Richard Perceval Graves (1995), Robert Graves and the White Goddess 1940-1985. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, p. 521.