The Sword in the Stone or Anvil or Lake

The images of a sword in a stone, or in an anvil, or in a lake, and the stories behind those images, are important because they help give direction and meaning when it seems that there is simply nothing we can do to change the world for the better.

The image at the right is a reminder of the Disney film, “The Sword in the Stone,” and you will notice right away that this sword is actually in an anvil, not a stone. This symbolic sword also often appears in images and legends as being in a lake. 

There is a vast literature and scholarship around this sword but I have yet to see even an attempt to understand the obvious connection between the stone and the anvil, or the lake. But the connection becomes immediately understandable if you take the approach that these images, like all the images of myths and legends, are exactly the same reality as dream images.

What happens in the story is that a stone or an anvil appears in unexplained manner and has a sword lodged inside it. People become aware of it and of the idea that whoever is able to extract the sword will be the king. Many try to extract it but can not, but then a simple person comes along and just does it. People don't believe their eyes at first but it becomes evident over time that this simple person is indeed the future king. The version where the sword is in the lake has it that there is lady living in the lake who gives it to him.

The stone can readily be seen as a symbol of solidity, individuation, integrity, as in the imagery of the Philosopher's Stone. It is that rock within us, our quintessential being, or true self. When the stone has a red tincture it indicates its living nature. An anvil also connotes unshakable solidity but brings out the aspect of taking severe blows and enabling the forging of metals. The water of the lake is like the subconscious and the Lady of the Lake is the agency hidden in it that helps us.

The overall idea, then, of the sword in the stone/anvil/lake stories and imagery is that we can derive effective power “simply” by being what we were originally intended to be, integrated and without pretension.

That is an important point, in my opinion, because I have been so often disappointed and even appalled at the results of so many conscious, deliberate attempts to help other people. I think often of Mark Twain's comment that when someone came at him to do him good, he would run the other way as fast as possible, and of Thoreau's comment that he had lived some thirty-odd years on this planet and had yet to hear the first word of valuable or even earnest advice from his seniors. “Doing good to others” can and often does actually do harm to others if it is done without solidity and integrity. This is an area in which politicians and public statesmen can easily fail, because they try to be effective without first having achieved the “stones.”

The situation is so complex and full of paradoxes that it seems that all you can really do that improves the world is to become simply true. That does not entail passivity in the face of social wrongs such as unjust wars – I found myself saying when my own society asked me to participate in the Viet-Nam killing: “No, do what you will to me, and even if no other person in the world refuses to do it, and even if my refusal fails to stop or hinder the killing in any degree, I am not going to do it." It seems to me that what the sword in the stone/anvil/lake vision is telling us is that such solidity is ultimately effective, and that it is readily available to the “simple.” I hate to use the word “simple” because it is actually a great accomplishment in the circumstances, but that's the way the fairy tales often say it.