of Merlin, which creates "an essential link between himself and Merlin ... [and] unites pagan and Christian religion in a loose bond". Another pagan dimension is provided by the reference to Cybele, the Mother goddess, as well as the temple to the neolithic goddess of fertility, in the final pages. Themes In 1932 Powys said that, amongst other things, he wrote his Romance, "To express certain moral, philosophical and mystical ideas that seem to me unduly neglected in these days" ( In particular this is presented as a "psychic battle ... over the Grail ... between the 'forces of mystery,' and 'forces of reason' ([A Glastonbury Romance], 747)", or, in the words of Morine Krissdottir "a battle ... between the powers of science and the powers of magic", with Powys asking, what effect, if any, can myth myth have in the scientific twentieth century"? C. A. Coates describes it as "a novel in which the main element is the possibility of mystical experience" and that it is "one of the great mystical novels". While, for Glen Cavaliero, "Glastonbury as a place [is] uniquely constituted for revealing [Powys's] vision of reality. That vision might be described as a naturalizing of the supernatural, the incorporation into a single vision of two normally separate areas of experience". G. Wilson Knight, however, has a different focus, and sees A Glastonbury Romance as "the greatest study of evil that has ever been composed". Kenneth Hopkins draws attention to the "half a dozen love stories ... each concerned with a different aspect of love". Along with which there is "love go God, love of ones neighbour, love of power, love of self, love of money; selfish or generous or hopeless or triumphant love". Anthropomorphism The novel also contains numerous examples of anthropomorphism, that is "the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a god, animal, or object" (OED), reflecting Powys's belief that "there is nothing in the universe devoid of some mysterious element of consciousness ... whether animal, vegetable or mineral". This includes "certain astronomical powers or bodies" who are "possessed of sub-human or super-human consciousness", including "The Sun, the Moon, the Evening Star, the Milky Way, the Constellations". Also, in the first paragraph of the novel, there is reference to the dualism of the First Cause's "divine diabolical soul", the novel's equivalent to a Judeo-Christian God. In Powys's own word, from his "review" in 1932