The Arthurian legends and the entire Arthuriad as a whole seem to take place in some alternate reality, in some mythic realm….
As if there is some alternate earth, or inner earth, or “middle earth”, or astral realm where these people are/were real and these events did/are happened/happening….
Our conventional historians can’t seem to place Arthur or explain where all this comes from… They can point to some historical war lord, but it doesn’t really seem to explain where this vast and rich narrative and mythology comes from….
Perhaps Arthur, Merlin, and all the rest are something from a parallel world or higher astral realm of the imagination and that is what Avalon is… And it is only accessible by those who are able to believe in it and feel it and enter into it without all the baggage and beliefs of our modern secular-materialist thinking and paradigm….
Fairies are one of the most important elements of Arthurian fantasy. They are supernatural beings of Celtic origin, often fatal women, whose figures are an extension of the nymphs and goddesses of antiquity. Knights searching for adventures meet these women with strange powers in the dark and deep forests but also in the castles that stand on their roads. Beneficial or malicious, they often hide their nature under the guise of a virgin in distress in order to test the bravery and virtue of the knights. Among these fairies, Viviane plays a prominent role. The Lady of the Lake, called Niniène or Niniane in medieval texts, embodies the traditional water fairy. It is she who spirits away the newborn Lancelot to keep him and raises him in her domain of the Lake, sheltered from the world. Once he is knighted, she will always keep an eye on her protégé, whom she will save several times from madness. - Danielle Quéruel of the Bibliothèque nationale de France