The Welsh Story of Creation by Kenneth Morris

Kenneth Morris first met Ella Young (1867-1956) in Dublin in 1896, and they became reacquainted in California in 1927, after which they kept up a correspondence until Morris's death in 1937.  One of the major topics of their correspondence was Kenneth's love of the classic Chinese poets, and in 1946 Young sorted her Morris letters, and contributed many chunks from them to the Theosophical Society's archives. One extract from the letters was published in The Theosophical Forum of October 1947 under the title of "The Welsh Story of Creation."  It was probably written very soon after 14 February 1928, and it clearly was written in response to a question from Young.  I present the text here as published in 1947:

And now I find you ask about the Welsh account of Creation, which sends me to another sheet. It is as follows: 

The universe periodically manifests and is unmanifested, man­vantaras and pralayas; we call the first “menw-anturiaid.” The beginning was the first occasion of the “Death of God.” He sounded his own name, whereupon all being flashed from latency into existence “more swiftly than the lightning reaches its home.” He, or it, then fell into Annwn and was united with Cythraul (now the devil, then matter) and united itself with the manred, small courses, or circlings, of the atoms; which thereupon began evolving through all imaginable forms in earth, air, fire and water, through elemental, mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. 

Thus the Teacher asks, “What are you, and what is your origin?” And the disciple answers, “I am a man in the Circle of Abred, having had my origin in Annwn.” They reckoned that the atom was a solar system consisting of proton-sun and electron-planets; that these planets were themselves worlds with as many inhabitants as this world; that the bodies and matter of these planets and their inhabit­ants were themselves atomic, those atoms being solar systems; their planets inhabited; thus they saw an infinity in the infinitesimal; which they called Annwn, and reckoned that we had evolved up through innumerable imbodiments through it all. But we are not just those manred evolved; because there were the Gwynfydolion in Cylch y Gwynfyd; who had been men made perfect in a previous manvantara; when God sounded his three-lettered name and the universe awoke, they awoke first; and looked out from the peaks of Gwynfyd, and beheld far off the House of God in Ceugant (Infinity); and “Evil on our beards,” they said, “unless for love we take his house by storm!” So they rode forth, the scythes on their chariots gleaming, to take infinity by storm; and, said the Druids, we still are engaged on that adventure. 

For the Gwynfydolion never could cross the Circle of Abred but became involved in it, fell, and united themselves with the souls of the manred that were evolving upwards; and that is why man is half god, half pig-tiger; the higher part of him is the Gwynfydol that came down; the lower half is the manred that ascended.—That, in very brief, is the Welsh explanation of things; and I defy the world to produce a better or a nobler! For here is the cry of the Gwynfydol:

To set my will, were it all in vain,
’Gainst this in-riding tide of pain,
And on the brink of hell to wage
Even losing love-war ’gainst hell’s rage;
Even at the last perchance going down
Drowned in the hell I willed to drown:
This my Nirvâna were—but this!
My goal, demand, reward and bliss!

I have long assumed that Morris's account was based on something in the Barddas of Iolo Morganweg, but are there any other sources for this account?   (I note that E.A. Holmes has written about this account and Barddas in an article in Sunrise for November 1976, which is available online here.)

Some Book Reviews by Kenneth Morris?

Some years ago I found a few book reviews in the UK journal The Bookman for 1930-31 that are signed only with the initials "K.V. M." Are these reviews by Kenneth Morris?  I wonder, but the timing might be seen to work out for them to be by Morris.  In January 1930, Morris moved back the England after living in southern California for twenty-two years.  He certainly sought some literary work at that time, for he contributed some articles to The Welsh Outlook in 1931 and early 1932. 

The "K.V.M." reviews appeared in only two issues of The Bookman, that of December 1930, and of March 1931. The first review covers only one book, A Woman of the Tudor Age, edited by Lady Cecille Goff. The reviewer notes that the book is "a realistic and human, if somewhat incoherent biography of one of the most important women of that time, and starting from the point of view of a contemporary and often of a participant, has thrown on some of the outstanding events of the political and social history of the period, sidelights which are the more valuable because they do not come from the usual coldly logical, external standpoint." 

The second review covers six books, and begins:

These six books are all written in historical settings, and fall chronologically and geographically into three groups of two. Two are set in nineteenth century England, two in North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and two in mediaeval Europe. None is preeminently concerned with mere events, but The Distant Storm [by David Emerson] and When Joan was Pope [by Richard Ince] both create an excellent historical atmosphere, and the latter reveals a careful study of the history of thought. 

Most interesting are the sparse comments on Alexander de Comeau's Monk's Magic:

Of the two mediaeval stories the first [Monk's Magic] is a lively fantasia of black magic, and the second [When Joan was Pope] a serious attempt to outline the early free thought of the Middle Ages.  To understand and enjoy "Monk's Magic" the reader must enter into the spirit of the dark ages of the human mind. The story is very well told. 

[I liked Monk's Magic so much that I reissued it last year. See here for details.]  But are these book reviews by Kenneth Morris?  Stylistically I tend to think they are not. But I don't think that's a definitive answer, and there likely will never be one.

Morris's Third and Final Novel: The Chalchiuhite Dragon

Morris's third (and final) novel, was finished in 1935, a few years before its author's death. But it was not published until 1992, when it was hailed (appropriately) as a long-lost masterpiece. At the time of publication, I wrote a short account of  Morris's works for Sunrise magazine. Below is what I said about The Chalchiuhite Dragon.

In The Chalchiuhite Dragon, Morris's final novel (written at the request of Katherine Tingley), he used as his raw materials the legends of the pre-Columbian new world, particularly of the Nahua-speaking native peoples of central and southern Mexico.

Morris found most of the basics for his story in Hubert Howe Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific States (5 vols., 1874-5); he recognized that Bancroft's interpretation of history and legend was questionable. As Morris writes in his Preface to the novel, "Bancroft disentangled, or thought he had disentangled, from the masses of legend the story of a Great King: this author tried to disentangle from Bancroft the story of a Great Teacher."

Morris's story concerns itself with the Quetzalcoatl legend, the story of the Prince of Peace, the Plumed Dragon, the god who is periodically reborn among men to teach Peace. As the legend goes, Quetzalcoatl was always born in a year Ce Acatl (Reed One, the fourteenth year in any year-bundle of fifty-two years). The chalchiuhite dragon, a living green jewel no larger than a woman's thumb and shaped like a dragon, would appear whenever Quetzalcoatl was about to reincarnate among men.

More specifically, Morris's novel tells the story of a year leading up to an incarnation of Quetzalcoatl. (Indeed, Morris's alternate title to this novel was The Coming of the God.) It is the time of the dominion of the Toltecs, who have gone conquering far and wide, adding kingdoms to the rule of their leader, the Toltec Topiltzin, whose godname is Camaxth, the Toltec God of War. Finally the Topiltzin hears of idealistic Huitznahuac, in the south beyond the south. He decides he must add this realm to the Toltec League, and he sets forth to subjugate Huitznahuac, where war and killing are unknown. To say more here would, I believe, begin to give away too much of the story, which deserves to be read on its own.

It is one thing to write fiction and another to write philosophy, and here Morris achieves a unique blending of the two mediums with nothing to the detriment of either: The Chalchiuhite Dragon is richly textured and filled with wisdom on many levels. To this writer it is the best of Morris's three novels. And it is one of those rare and precious books we will return to again and again, and savor over a lifetime. And surely, it is one of the most soul-enriching things in literature.

The Chalchiuhite Dragon, in full, can be read online here, courtesy of the copyright owner. This link also has on its front page Morris's own Preface to the book, and my Afterword, putting context to the work with regard to Morris's writing career, together with the Glossary I compiled of the Nahua (or Nahuatl) names found in the book.