The roots of Merlin’s magic can be found in the Enarei, the Scythian shamans, a name is derived from “Anarya,” which translates as “not men.”
Born male, the Enarei underwent a transformation, adopting female attire, speech, and societal roles. They wielded immense respect and political power as chief advisors to the king. They used divination to determine causes of royal illnesses and national crises and were in charge of fumigation rituals that burned cannabis in braziers in tents. Red hot stones were placed in a brazier followed by stalks of flowering buds. While the tent filled with smoke, the not-men led prayers, chants and songs.
The Scythians worshipped a sacred deer, an ancient stone-age myth that circulated through numerous cultures over the world that depended on deer to survive famines. In Scythian mythology, the Golden Deer acted as a celestial guide and mediator between realms, transporting the dead to the afterlife. Deer antlers were mounted on the heads of Scythian war horses and headdresses of the Enarei.
Everything we know about the Enarei comes from two sources: Herodotus and Hippocrates, and neither visited a Scythian encampment, but relied on testimony of travelers, so it’s all unreliable, secondhand info. Herodotus got as far as the primary Greek port on the north coast of the Black Sea, a port that traded extensively with the Scythians.
Since Scythians descended from the Yamnaya, the first horse riders, they ruled the roads connecting Europe with China and India, and established a huge oasis at Bactra, where the trail split, leading either to China or the Khyber Pass. Controlling trade along this route produced vast wealth and Scythians dominated trade in slaves, spices, grain, fur, wool, lapus lazul, and livestock.
For centuries, the sight of marauding Scythians on horseback was the equivalent of gangsters today driving race cars while brandishing automatic weapons . At an early age, male and females mastered the composite and recumbent bow, the AK-47 of the ancient steppes.
When attacked or engaged, Scythians avoided hand-to-hand combat, but rode away to a distance where they could continue to pummel the attacker with poison arrows while remaining immune from any incoming projectiles.
The Scythians wore leather pants, a garment unique to their culture, and something necessitated by daily horseback riding. They had no permanent villages because they traveled in covered carts pulled by oxen and horses. Their lifestyle was preserved after a large migration moved from Bactra to Romania, where they became known as the Gypsies.
The Scythians were especially adept at firing arrows while fleeing, as evidenced by numerous Scythian artifacts depicting what became known as the Parthian shot. It is assumed the most elaborate Scythian-style artifacts were created by Greek artists.
When a Scythian king died, his slaves and horses would be ritualistically killed and buried in a circle around his tomb, which was buried under a mound of earth. The king would be buried with all the essential objects and supplies to carry him to the afterlife.
The coming-of-age ceremony was celebrating someone’s first kill. This ceremony could happen on the battlefield, or back at the camp. If held at the battlefield, the skullcap would be chopped off and the assembled warriors would use it as a cup to drink blood. Only a fully made member of the tribe was permitted the honor of chopping off a skull cap, but anyone who killed an enemy was immediately awarded the privilege.
These skull caps became treasured possessions and often encased in gold, bronze or leather. They were undoubtedly used eventually to drink bhang after a wave of fire temples appeared along the Silk Road serving Soma, also known as Haoma in Persia. This ritual was the foundation for the Christian Eucharist, and the myth of the holy grail goes all the way back to the Scythians.
The myth was never about an actual cup as every warrior was buried with theirs. It was about the medicine that went into the cup, something that healed the sick and brought peace to the kingdom. Although this connection has been obscured and hidden, it seems likely Merlin’s magic was derived from cannabis intoxication, which allowed him to visualize the future and communicate with animals, all traits of the original Enarei., and Merlin shares structural and functional traits with the archetype: The original Merlin was likely gay or at least multi-sexual.
While Greek culture detested effeminate males, the Scythians viewed them as closer to god. The Greeks believed horse riding caused impotence and led to gender transformation.
The Gender-Fluid & Transgressive Shaman: In early Welsh poetry (such as the tales of Myrddin Wyllt), the proto-Merlin is a “wild man” of the woods who loses his mind in battle, sheds civilized taboos, and speaks with animals. Like the Enarei, who stepped completely outside traditional male warrior roles to gain spiritual authority, Merlin operates entirely outside the standard patriarchal and military hierarchy of Camelot.
Androgyny and Shape-Shifting: Merlin is a consummate shape-shifter, frequently shifting between male and female forms, or old and young personas. The Enarei embodied a similar ritual androgyny, which the Greeks viewed as an “effeminate disease” but the Scythians revered as a divine gift from the goddess Artimpasa.
Royal Kingmaker and Prophet: Just as the Enarei were the ultimate spiritual authorities behind the Scythian throne, Merlin exists primarily to guide, protect, and legitimize the king (Uther and later Arthur) through absolute prophetic foresight.
The Batraz and Nart Saga Connection
In the Nart Sagas—the epic folklore of the Ossetians (the last remaining descendants of the Alans)—Batraz is a central superhuman warrior associated with a magical sword and lightning.
While Batraz himself is a direct prototype for King Arthur or Lancelot rather than Merlin (most famously mirrored when Batraz, on his deathbed, demands his unstoppable sword be thrown into the Black Sea, causing the water to turn blood-red and seethe), the magic and structural world surrounding Batraz mirrors Merlin’s acts:
The Smith-Sorcerer Kurdalægon: In the Batraz cycle, the hero is tempered and forged in a celestial furnace by the heavenly blacksmith Kurdalægon. This figure acts as a divine mentor, physician, and engineer of destiny. This directly parallels Merlin’s role as the supernatural architect who engineers Arthur’s birth, protects him with magical defenses, and guides the retrieval of Excalibur.
The Mysteries of the Enaree: The Androgynous Shamans of the Scythians
Lavish burials were important for the Scythians, whose tumuli still stand today after many centuries. And in those burials, the Enaree played a crucial role, conducting their shamanistic practices to help the deceased depart to the afterworld.
After the burial, the Enaree would ritually clean themselves with the vapors of the cannabis plant, which has been attested archaeologically in Saka Scythian tumuli. In these were discovered various receptacles containing remnants of cannabis, including tripods, braziers and incense burners. One of the famous Pazyryk Scythian burials contained a pot inside which were fruits and cannabis, and a copper censer in which the latter was burned.
The Enaree played numerous roles in Scythian society, one of which was the role of divination. They acted as seers, and performed special forms of divination that utilized the inner bark of the linden tree. They would cut the inner bark of the linden into three pieces, and then plaiting and unplaiting them around their fingers in order to obtain the answers they wanted. For example, whenever a Scythian King would fall ill, the Enaree were called in to divine and discover which enemy had “bewitched” the King.
“The Anarya were especially consulted when the king of the Scythians was ill, which was itself believed by the Scythians to be caused by a false oath being sworn upon the king’s hearth. Once the Anarya had identified the suspect who had sworn the false oath, the said suspect would claim to be innocent. If the Anarya maintained the accusation, six more soothsayers were consulted, and if they upheld the original accusation, the suspect was executed by being beheaded. If the additional soothsayers declared the suspect was innocent, the process of consulting more soothsayers was repeated. If the soothsayers all found the accused to be guilty, the culprit was executed through beheading, and his property was divided among the Anarya who had found him guilty. If the larger number of soothsayers still declared the suspect to be innocent, the initial accusers were executed by being put into an oxen-pulled wagon filled with brushwood which was set on fire was made to be pulled by the oxen, who eventually also burned along with the wagon and the disgraced soothsayers; the sons of these Anarya were also all killed, but their daughters were spared.”
—Hippocrates, On Airs, Waters, And Places
The secrets of the young gay Scythian have long been lost, and the kingdom has been in perpetual war ever since. The king assembles his best knights and commands them to find the secret that will bring peace to the kingdom, which according to ancient legends is a golden grail held captive in a blackened forest.