The Purpose of John Mappin's Camelot by Irina Mappin


Irina Mappin and John Mappin have Created a Unique Project at Camelot Castle

In a recent article Irina Mappin explained the purpose behind the unique artistic project she, her husband John Mappin and artist Ted Sturton have created at Camelot Castle, near Tintagel, Cornwall in England.
She said, "Camelot has the purpose to provide a unique space where people can come to share both in the extraordinary natural beauty of our environment and in the extraordinary strength created when people of goodwill share their ideas and vision."
The Camelot Castle project springs from and seeks to emulate deep and inspirational precedents, historical examples that demonstrate how a culture can be elevated when men of good will, vision and creativity come together.
Primary among these from the perspective of the great minds behind Camelot - which incidentally includes Director Peter Bogdanovich, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, actors Al Pacino, John Travolta and Nichoas Cage among its friends, idols and inspirations - is Haroun Al Raschid who was the supreme ruler of Baghdad and governed and administrated the entire Arab world circa.800 A.D.
Raschid became the architect of a “Golden Age”, by passing a law that every Thursday every Master of every intellectual or physical discipline, be it Mathematics, Architecture, Religious, Political, or Creative must attend court and there must share their ideas.
We are used, of course, to governments passing laws that are of use to neither man nor beast, inhibit our efforts to survive or which are downright oppressive but Al Raschid's law must, on the contrary, go down in hstory as one of the most enlightened and visonary laws ever passed.
By that one act Al Raschid precipitated a surge of innovation that spread across the Arabic world and Mesopotamian culture and thence through Spain and across half of Europe. Indeed, those new ideas have left an indelible mark on the civilised world today.
There is a great deal more depth to the story of Al Raschid than space allows here, but suffice to say that here was a ruler with the soul of a poet - a very scarce commodity in this or any other age, alas - who isolated and harnessed the power of aesthetics and beauty to carry a civilising message across thousands of miles and great distances. One can imagine how quicly the world might change for the better were that power in turn to harness the speed, power and flexibilty of modern means of communication.
Another, earlier example of such a phenomenon was the formation, on the advice of Merlin, of the Round Table at the court of Arthur Pendragon. the legendary King of the Britons during the post-Roman era. From that particular project were born the chivalric and heroic codes that have inspired generations of men down through the centuries, a spark or thread of nobility and decency that did much to dispel the baseness of the Dark Ages that had cast their dark mantle across Europe.
A third was the structure and codification of the American Constitution, perhaps one of the most civilised documents of governance seen to date and which played a mighty role in keeping the flame and dream of human freedom alive throughout an age were those who would yet again debase and enslave Man have been hard at work.
In their turn, inspired by these historical examples, the Founders of Camelot have researched deep into the wisdoms of the East. They have been able to draw upon modern and workable wisdoms that have sprung from the freedoms established and maintained by the United States. And, through unique access to and friendships in the Middle East the Founders have isolated some previously unguessed importances that, heralded by Arabic culture, will affect the entire future of mankind.
So when you visit the modern Camelot and share your ideas here at its Round Table, you are becoming part of a purpose line that has a venerable and ancient pedigree, yet stretches far into the future and the new civilisation that even now is aborning among the febrile embers of the old.
If ever there was a time when creativity and the sharing of ideas was needed, if ever the stage of history awaited the entrance of men of vision, the Arthurian architects of tomorrow with the souls of warrior-poets, it is now.
It is artists and creative men who make the dreams of the society, the scientists who devise the means and the adminstrators who organise the co-action required to make the dreams reality. A society that no longer dreams is dead.
But one which recovers its ability to dream is reborn.
And here, in a nutshell, you have the dream of Camelot.
Make it your own.
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