Rarely do we hear about two mythologized kings on opposite sides of the world, united by their shared mystical encounter with an aquatic lake creature who gifts them a magical sword that wins them sovereignty against oppressive invaders. Yet, the legendary Celtic King Arthur and Vietnamese King Lê Lợi share this similarity in the ways their achievements and contributions to their Kingdoms are mythologized and remembered. Though they lived on opposite sides of the world at different periods of history, the many parallels between these two stories are worth exploring to discover (or perhaps uncover and recover) their deeper meaning and significance for us today.

King Aurthur tapestry circa 1385. Wikimedia Commons.

King Arthur is a legendary Celtic warrior and knight of the 6th century, whose mystical encounter with the Lady of the Lake, an aquatic lake enchantress, awards him a magical sword which enables him to lead and win a powerful battle against Saxon invaders in post-Roman Britain. While there is still debate whether he was a real person, most historians agree that King Arthur - whether real or mythical - rose to fame through the medieval writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Sir Thomas Malory and the values and virtues that characterized his reign continue to inspire and shape contemporary British national identity. Though King Arthur is thought to have been born of deceit and adultery, his reign was characterized by meritocracy, justice and equality, contrasting with the oppressive power structures and unjust conditions that prevailed before him. King Arthur’s reign, which came to be known as the Golden Age of Camelot, shaped British cultural identity and continues to influence contemporary governance, literature, and the collective British imagination.

King Arthur throwing Excalibur into the lake where the arm of the Lady of the Lake reaches up to retrieve it. Illustrator: Walter Crane 1845. Photo Credit: Public Domain Wikimedia Commons

The Vietnamese King Lê Lợi (reigning 1428–1435) was similarly of humble background fathered by a poor lowlander and mountain woman, and like King Arthur, was gifted a sword by a magical lake turtle which he used to lead the Lam Sơn uprising restoring Vietnamese sovereignty from oppressive Chinese control both militarily and culturally. Like Camelot, Lê Lợi's reign, which marked the founding of the Lê dynasty, is considered the "Golden Age" of Vietnamese medieval history bringing back to life indigenous Vietnamese cultural norms after a thousand years of Chinese domination. Like King Arthur, King Lê Lợi implemented land reforms to benefit the peasant classes, contributing to social stability and shared economic prosperity and during his reign Vietnamese art, literature, and education flourished. Today King Lê Lợi is remembered as a national hero symbolizing Vietnamese sovereignty against foreign oppression. The story of his encounter with the Divine Turtle is memorialized at a lake in the heart of the capital city of Hanoi called Hoàn Kiếm Lake which translates as “Sword Lake”, or “Lake of the Restored Sword”. Finally, in both the Arthurian and Lê Lợi’ myths, the magical sword is returned to the lake and taken back either by the Lady of the Lake or Divine Turtle and never seen again.

If these synchronicities between these two histories/myths are not wonder-inducing enough, there are also deep parallels between the Lady of the Lake and the Turtle of Lake Hoàn Kiếm, both of whom are fresh water aquatic creatures with divine and mystical powers.

Photo Credit: Nguyễn Thanh Quang ơn Wikimedia Commons. King *Lê Lợi*’ statue in front of the City Hall of Thanh Hoa province.

In both Celtic and Vietnamese cultural traditions, water is considered a sacred element. In Vietnam, the word for water is nước which is the same word for “country”, symbolizing the collective identity of the Vietnamese people. Because Vietnamese people depended so much on rice production for practical survival for millennia, much of the landscape consists of wetland rice paddies revealing a deep identification with water as the source of life, and the heart and soul of Vietnamese identity. The water deity Lạc Long Quân “Dragon King” is considered the progenitor of the Vietnamese people and, in fact, in some versions of the Lê Lợi myth, it is a dragon who gifts the King Lê Lợi a sword instead of a Divine Turtle. Nonetheless, in Vietnamese artistic representations, the Turtle (known in Vietnamese as Thần Kim Qui “Sacred Turtle”, or Cụ Rùa “Grandfather Turtle”) is considered one of the four sacred animals (along with the dragon, phoenix and unicorn) and a divine elder associated with wisdom, strength, longevity and good fortune.

Turtle Tower on an island at *Hoàn Kiếm Lake* which translates as “Sword Lake”, or “Lake of the Restored Sword”. Photo Credit: Cyril Doussin on Wikimedia Commons.

In Celtic mythology rivers, springs, wells and lakes were similarly considered sacred and were thought to be portals to the underworld or spiritual realm, and were personified as goddesses or the divine feminine. Historical records show associations between the Lady of the Lake, also known as Viviane or Nimuë, with the Welsh lake fairies known as the Gwragedd Annwn, as well as the Celtic water goddess Covianna, and the Irish goddess of the underworld Bé Finn.

Moreover, both the Lady of the Lake and Divine Turtle are associated with islands. The Lady of the Lake was thought to live on an enchanted paradise island in the middle of the lake known as Avalon. Avalon was where the sword excalibur was thought to be forged, and where Arthur went to heal from battle, and is also thought to be the location of his final resting place. Similar to the island of Avalon, today the Vietnamese Divine Turtle is memorialized by a temple on an island in the middle of Hoàn Kiếm Lake which, according to legend, is built at the exact spot where the Turtle was believed to have surfaced to reclaim the sword from Lê Lợi. Sometimes I like to think that the lake in both stories is the lake of the collective unconscious, and it extends so deep that perhaps there is no bottom. The Lady of the Lake simply swims deep enough downwards she reaches the other side of the world, emerging in the form of a Divine Turtle from the surface of Hoàn Kiếm Lake. . .

A depiction of the Divine Turtle (known in Vietnamese as thần Kim Qui or *Ông Kim Qui* which translates as “Grandfather Turtle”) carrying the sword on its back (which is known in Vietnamese as *Hoàn Kiếm* which translates as “perfect sword”). The image is part of a ceramic wall mural at the temple at *Hoàn Kiếm Lake* which translates as “Sword Lake”, or “Lake of the Restored Sword”. Photo Credit: Rdavout on Wikimedia Commons.

How can we make sense and meaning of the numerous similarities in these two myths? Is it just coincidence, or might these synchronicities serve to deepen our appreciation for storytelling and the mythic imagination as they relate to our quest to become more conscious of the nature of human experience?

Perhaps the person most popularized for comparative mythology is Joseph Campbell, who suggested in his book Hero With A Thousand Faces, that similar myths from vastly different cultures reveal a collective human psyche that expresses itself through archetypal themes. He coined the term "monomyth" which refers to an underlying story that takes on slightly different iterations in different languages and cultural expressions*.

However, I believe there is another layer to the synchronicities between these two myths that adds depth to our understanding of storytelling and the human experience. Historical and archeological research has shown that the Silk Road, which dates as far back as the second century BCE, was not just an ancient network of trade routes connecting East and West, but also served as a vital conduit for cross-cultural exchange. During the Middle Ages when the story of King Arthur became famous and when King Lê Lợi had his encounter with the Divine Turtle, the Silk Road facilitated the exchange of not only goods like silk, spices, porcelain, tea, precious stones, wool, gold and silver, but also the transmission of ideas and even religions like Buddhism and Christianity over thousands of miles. Perhaps it is not so far fetched to conclude that the Arthurian and Lê Lợi legends might have traveled this route, too, and might be iterations of each other.

A Vietnamese stamp showing the scene where *Lê Lợi* encounters the Divine Turtle who gifts him a sword.

Walter Crane. Wikimedia Commons. Henry Gilbert, *King Arthur's Knights: The Tales Retold for Boys and Girls*, Edinburgh and London, T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1911, p. 40.

Martin Shaw, renowned mythologist, observes that some myths and legends have what he considers “a migratory agency” and are “designed to travel”. In his audiobook Courting The Wild Twin, Shaw says stories are not just the property of those who create and tell them, rather, stories can take on an agency of their own. . .in fact they are in courtship with the landscapes they travel through as well as the people who are drawn to telling them. Stories need to feel welcomed in foreign places, he asserts, and in order to feel at home they may need to be told in different ways. Perhaps the King Arthur and King Lê Lợi myths might very well be one such migratory myth that has been welcomed and courted in two different landscapes.

Though we may never find proof that these two myths are actually one myth, or whether the Silk Road served as the route this migratory myth traveled between these two landscapes, what we do know for sure is that despite their different cultural origins, the similarities between these two myths suggest a shared ancestral voice. I like to think of them being woven together with a silk thread into belonging with each other. It seems less important to know where this myth of a King, a Sword and a Lake originated, and more interesting to marvel and wonder at the mystery.

In his book The Web That Has No Weaver, Ted Kaptchuk, whose expertise is in Traditional Chinese Medicine, says there is an interconnectedness and holistic nature to the human body where no single point can be isolated as the sole cause of illness, and true healing involves addressing the whole system, not just symptoms. I believe the body of the earth is the same. When myths and similar stories seemingly sprout and grow in different landscapes, we can easily become focused on the parts instead of the whole. We become fixated on identifying and proving an original “weaver” of the story, or we seek to find the most “authentic” version, or discover its original “roots” or singular locationality when in fact synchronicities in myths, if we allow them to be our guides, are inviting us to recognize and explore the interconnectedness of the whole. Carl Jung often talked about synchronicities as evidence of a unifying consciousness in the universe that is always operating at a higher level of awareness, directing our attention towards what we need to become more conscious of. In our contemporary disenchanted and divisive world, discovering an ancient mythological synchronicity between people from distant landscapes gifts us with the chance to consider a world that is quite different. Whether or not these myths are one and the same story, their continued retelling and influence today shows that people from Great Britain and Vietnam, to some degree, share the same mythology, and this ancient kinship is nothing less than remarkable, perhaps even divinely so. I would go as far as to say, they weave us back into relationship with the Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World.

Note* The Hero’s Journey is one such monomyth and both the King Arthur and Le Loi myths resonate with this. The Hero’s Journey is characterized by a rite-of-passage storyline where the hero is tested (either by external pressures or internal ones), and then undergoes a supreme ordeal (battle, cruxifiction, separation), and then journeys in a different world (underworld, other landscape, different form) for a time where he is assisted (either by divine intervention, fellow companion) and eventually triumphs (marriage, sacred union, divination, transformation, freedom, illumination) and then returns (resurrected) and restores the world.

Blog post cover photo credit: Abner Abu Castillo Diaz on Unsplash.

References:

Ashley, Mike (7 February 2013). A Brief History of King Arthur. Little, Brown Book Group.

Campbell, Joseph. (2008) Hero With a Thousand Faces. Joseph Campbell Foundation.

Frankopan, Peter. (2016). The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. Alfred A. Knopf.

Holbrook, S. E. "Nymue, the Chief Lady of the Lake, in Malory's Le Morte D’arthur." Speculum 53.4 (1978): 761–777. JSTOR. NCSU University Libraries, Raleigh, NC. 15 March 2009.

Kaptchuk, Ted. (2000) The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine. McGraw Hill; 2nd edition.

Quyen, Duong Van; Coburn, Jewel Reinhart (1994). Beyond the East Wind: Legends and Folktales of Vietnam (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Burn Hart and Co. pp. 50–63

Shaw, Martin (2020). Courting The Wild Twin. Chelsea Green Publishing (Audiobook).

Vo, Nghia M. (2012). Legends of Vietnam: An Analysis and Retelling of 88 Tales. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland and Co. pp. 120–121.