The greatest magician of all time was Merlin. He lived, if indeed he lived at all, in Wales and southern England during the dawn of Christianity in those lands, long before written historical records were kept, yet his name is universally recognized around the world as synonymous with magic, and his popular image is almost as well known as that of Santa Claus. Speak the name Merlin, and immediately an image springs into the mind of an old man with a flowing white beard and bushy white eyebrows, dressed in a midnight blue robe and tall conical hat covered with stars. He is the prototypical wizard.

Merlin is best known as the teacher and advisor of Arthur Pendragon, king of all the Britons. The legends of these two mythic figures are inextricably linked, but there is no certain proof that either man existed. If Arthur did live, he was probably the leader of one of the many Celtic tribes of England and Wales during the latter part of the fifth century. He is renowned as a military commander who united the tribes of Britons against the invasions of the Saxons, after the collapse of Roman rule in England. The success of his wars against the invaders resulted in a golden period of peace and prosperity.

The popular myth of Merlin, as we know it today, has come down to us primarily from two sources -- the historian Geoffrey of Monmouth (circa 1100-1154), and the writer Sir Thomas Malory (died 1471). Both men collected bits and pieces from earlier sources. Most of Malory's work was based on the French Arthurian prose cycle, a group of French medieval romances centered around the court of King Arthur. Before Malory, both Merlin and Arthur were better known on the Continent than they were in England. Malory's work crystallized the Arthurian legend into the form we recognize today.

In the modern popular legend, Merlin is a mysterious figure whose origin is uncertain. He has the power to communicate with animals, to see visions of the future, and to work miracles of magic. He has no specific home but dwells in the forest. After Arthur's ascent to the throne, Merlin lives with him for a time in Camelot. Merlin usually first appears in the modern stories as the teacher of young Arthur, although he sometimes is mentioned briefly in his role as advisor to Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon (pendragon, literally the "head of the dragon," was the term used for a supreme military commander).

Employing both his wise advice and his magic, Merlin helps Arthur to prevail in his wars against the Saxons. He uses his magic to construct Camelot. Shortly after the victorious Arthur has been betrayed by his queen, Guinevere, and his best friend, Sir Lancelot, Merlin mysteriously disappears, leaving Arthur to find his own way out of his difficulties. In a poetic parallel, Merlin's disappearance is brought about by a woman's betrayal.

The ancient legend of Merlin is fragmentary and sometimes self-contradictory, because it was assembled from a variety of sources over a long span of time, but we can sketch out the most important details in the mythical life of Merlin with some assurance.

The fallen angels in hell, led by Lucifer, conspired to bring about the birth of the Antichrist by sexually uniting a mortal woman with a demon to produce an unnatural offspring. A particularly devout family was selected and made to suffer torments in order to weaken the faith of its members. One by one they died horrible deaths, until at last only a young woman remained. She placed herself under the protection of the Church, but in a moment of despair opened herself to the intrusion of the demon. The child Merlin was the result of this union. Merlin was destined to be the Antichrist, but the quick action of the woman's confessor, a priest named Blayse, prevented this outcome. When the child was born, his mother protested to her holy protectors that she had not had sex with any man. Immediately, Blayse took up the child and baptized him, and by this act placed Merlin under the protection of Christ and gave him a new destiny.

Even as an infant, Merlin showed precocious signs of his demonic origins. He saved the life of his mother from her enemies, and displayed his prophetic gifts by proclaiming the dark family secrets of those who accused his mother of fornication and sorcery.

At that time, Vortigen was king of the Britons. The king was greatly troubled by a mysterious difficulty while trying to build a stone tower on a projection of ground surrounded by a lake that was to act as the tower's natural defensive moat. The foundation of the tower appeared solid enough, but every night the ground beneath the tower would shake and cast down all the stones that had been erected the day before. Vortigen consulted with his diviners. They told him that it would be necessary to bathe the foundation of the tower in the freshly-spilled blood of a child that had never had a father.

Agents were sent across the land in search of such a child. They happened upon Merlin just as the young seer was being driven away by a group of other boys, who declared loudly that they would not play with him because he had no father. The men of the king must have viewed this as a sign that they had found the child they were sent to seek.

Merlin amazed Vortigen by fearlessly telling the king that he was aware of the fate that was being planned for him, but that he also knew the true cause of the problem with the tower, thanks to his gift of second sight. Hidden beneath the waters of the lake, Merlin informed the king, was an underground cavern containing a red and a white dragon. Whenever these dragons turned in their embrace and caused their bodies to revolve, the ground shook and the stones fell. Vortigen ordered the lake drained, and discovered the cavern with its two dragons, just as Merlin had predicted.

Vortigen immediately made Merlin his court advisor and soothsayer. After the death of the king, Merlin continued to advise his successor Ambrosius, and after him the hot-tempered Uther. Sometime during this period, Arthur is fabled to have erected Stonehenge, using stones magically transported from Ireland. This tale gives a good indication of how highly he was regarded as a worker of magic.

Uther developed an irrational passion for Yguerne, the beautiful wife of the duke of Cornwell. He prevailed upon Merlin to change his appearance to resemble that of the duke, and made love to Yguerne. On the same night the duke died, Arthur was engendered. At birth the baby was given to Merlin, who placed him in a foster home. After Arthur proved his royal blood by drawing the sword from the stone, Merlin informed the young man of his origins and helped him attain the throne.

For years Merlin continued to act as court soothsayer and advisor to Arthur, as he had done for Uther, but abruptly he vanished from Camelot and was never again seen in human flesh.

There are various accounts of Merlin's disappearance. The most popular states that Merlin was seduced and betrayed by a beautiful undine (water spirit) named Nimue, who first tricked Merlin into teaching her magic, then cast him into a magic sleep and imprisoned him, still alive, in a tomb of stone. Sometimes this temptress is described as a princess. She is called by different names in various accounts, such as Niniane and Vivian. Another story claims that Merlin was imprisoned by his spirit lover in a prison of air, where he remains invisible, but still able to see and hear everything that transpires around him, and even on occasion to speak to mortals. The prose romance Perceval states that Merlin retired from court life voluntarily and went into private retreat. Another story says that Merlin was imprisoned by his lover in a hawthorn bush.

Common to most of the accounts of Merlin's end is the assertion that he did not die, but continues to this day in a kind of waking dream. This same story is told of Arthur, the once and future king.

If Merlin did exist, he was very likely a Welsh bard and soothsayer. The Welsh legends of Merlin characterize him more as a poet and musician, while the French legends emphasize his powers of magic. It seems likely that Merlin was also a druid. The druids were a Celtic priest-cast centered in England. They flourished in Ireland, Wales, England and France around the time of Christ, but were suppressed by the subsequent Roman military occupiers, and by the Christian priests who followed after them.

So great was the reverence, fear and respect of the common people, that a druid walking between two warring armies could halt the battle. Eventually the druids degenerated into little more than a society of Celtic poets, but in Merlin's time the druids, although already in decline, retained most of their authority as holy mystics and wonder workers.

The modern belief is that the wisdom of Merlin stemmed, not from some supernatural coupling between a demon and a woman, but from long years of training as a druid. Druids were famed for their ability to create poetry spontaneously to suit any occasion, and for their superhuman memories. They served for centuries as the living repositories of the histories of the Celtic tribes.

The fable that Merlin was the child of a demon from hell is a slander of the Church. But it was probably based on an older Celtic legend that Merlin was the product between a god and a woman. In one later version of the tale, Merlin's father is supposed to have been a glorious supernatural being who appeared to his mother in her dreams. It was a common Celtic belief that magicians were the product of unions between spirits and mortal women. The same belief was held by the ancient Greeks regarding their heroes such as Heracles, but instead of magic powers these Greek heroes were gifted with warrior skills. Girls born from such unions were more likely in Greek myth to have the powers of sorcery, because sorcery was considered by the Greeks to be unmanly or dishonorable. The Celts had no such prejudices against magic.

When all the fabulous stories concerning Merlin's supernatural birth and miraculous powers are stripped away, it seems quite likely that a druid named Merlin (or something similar) did live around the fifth century in Wales, and did serve as the soothsayer and advisor to a local Celtic king. More than this we cannot say. If Merlin was a real man and not simply a legend, the fame that surrounds his memory in later years is a testimony to his achievements and authority during his lifetime.

Merlin's greatest power was fabled to be his ability to see events in the future. It was this gift of second sight that made him so valuable to Arthur and the other kings he served. We do not know for certain what methods Merlin used in his scrying, but the poet Edmund Spenser made reference in his Faerie Queene to Merlin's crystal ball. Crystal scrying was in widespread use in Roman times, so it is quite possible that Merlin did employ a crystal. However, given his druidic origins, it seems to me more likely that Merlin scried in a basin of water -- the method employed centuries later by Nostradamus.

There is no sign that the legend of Merlin is fading into history. Just the opposite, it grows stronger with each passing year. Merlin has become a kind of demigod of magic, a hero for all modern magicians to emulate and admire. He comes to life each time the tales of his exploits are told, and between the telling of his story he sleeps, but will never die.