How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The cave was bigger than I had imagined. It stretched upwards further than I could see, and the floor was worn smooth. I had even been wrong about the crystals; the glimmer that reflected the torchlight came only from puddles on the floor, and a place on one wall where a thin slither of moisture betrayed a spring somewhere above. (I.7.40)
Merlin's having his first mind-bending experience in the crystal cave. He's actually seeing the mineshaft in Segontium, the one that he will so desperately need to find years from this moment, when he's prophesying for his life before Vortigern. Crucial point: Merlin doesn't necessarily know what he's seeing at first in his visions. It often takes years for them to come true.
Quote #2
The starlight struck the face of the stone where I had paused to wait, and something caught my eye, a shape rudely carved in the granite, and etched by the cold light like lampblack. An axe, two-headed. The standing stones stretched away from me into darkness like a march of giants. […] As I turned away I glanced at the axe again. It had vanished. (II.2.7)
Merlin has this freaky encounter on his first night in Brittany as he follows a wagon to Ambrosius. He doesn't understand the significance of the two-headed ax until later, when he learns that it is symbol for "the god." The freakiest part? The image of the two-headed ax appears only to him, and it disappears after he sees it. It's an early hint that Merlin has a great mystical purpose on earth.
Quote #3
The man saw me coming and turned his head, and I saw that nothing was needed. He was smiling, but his face in the starlight seemed curiously smooth and unhuman in its lack of expression. I could see no sign of stress or effort. His eyes were expressionless too, cold and dark, with no smile there. (II.3.24)
Merlin has a vision of the godly Mithras, who slaughters a white bull so that fertility can be restored to the earth. Merlin has no direct knowledge of this myth, though he'd seen depictions of Mithras back home in Wales. The vision marks Merlin out as someone special to this god, and it keeps him from being killed by an angry Uther.
Quote #4
But when Ambrosius talked about it, I know I had seen more than was in the painting. I had seen the soldiers' god, the Word, the Light, the Good Shepherd, the mediator between the one God and man. I had seen Mithras, who had come out of Asia a thousand years ago. (II.6.21)
It's interesting that Merlin doubts his own understanding of his mystical vision. He needs his own father to explain things to him before he accepts that something truly weird and special has happened. Though we can see his awe in the naming of Mithras, Merlin kind of takes these brushes with the supernatural in stride. He makes no effort to become a formal devotee of the god; he just waits for the next encounter.
Quote #5
"When you're seeing things, your eyes go queer; I've noticed it before. The black spreads and goes kind of blurred, dreaming-like. […] And you talk as if you were just a voice and not a person. [...] Or as if you'd gone somewhere else and left your body for something else to speak through. Like a horn being blown through to make the sound carry." (II.11.70)
Cadal describes for Merlin what he looks like when he is having a vision: basically, Merlin becomes a kind of shell person, empty of personality or identity. He's truly channeling some divine figure. Merlin confesses that the whole experience is downright disturbing—he really doesn't like it. But somehow, Merlin knows that these scary experiences are part of his destiny, and he'll just have to suck it up.
Quote #6
I would certainly be able to tell them why their foundations would not stand. It was an engineer's answer, not a magician's. But, I thought, meeting the oyster eyes of Maugan as he dry-washed those long dirty hands before him, if it was a magician's answer they wanted, they should have it. (III.8.20)
Merlin would really like to approach the problem of Vortigern's falling tower with the eye of a scientist, but he knows that Vortigern and company are a superstitious bunch. They'll never accept a rational explanation. More than that, these guys are desperate: they already know that rational thought and action aren't going to save them. They need a miracle, and they're hoping that demon-boy Merlin can deliver it.
Quote #7
But they were at a disadvantage: they started afraid—afraid of Ambrosius' reputation, of his recent ferocious victory at Doward, and more than both […] of my prophecy to Vortigern. […] And of course the omens worked the other way for Ambrosius. (IV.4.5)
Merlin's very perceptive here about the power of prophecy. On the winning side (Ambrosius and Uther), it gives the soldiers a boost. But for the losers (Hengist and the Saxons), it makes every effort literally an uphill battle. Same prophecy, two different realities. There's also the sense that Team Hengist has a lot of angst because they know that Ambrosius will stop at nothing to restore Britain to the Britons. These two sides are not entering the fight in the same frame of mind.
Quote #8
I went wakeful, as one is at a death-bed, and on that voyage of all those in my life, I never felt the movement of the sea, but sat (they tell me) calm and silent, as if in my chair at home. […] I suppose I was not there. I was watching still between day and night in the great bedchamber at Winchester. (IV.10.43)
Merlin is experiencing a phenomenon called bilocation, where his body is in two places at one time. It's not clear whether he's physically at Ambrosius' deathbed here, or whether he's just there "in spirit." But he does manage to experience both the journey from Ireland and the death of his father simultaneously. It's definitely an altered state of reality, and it's not something that Merlin fully understands.
Quote #9
I heard it said, long afterwards, that I moved the stones of the Dance with magic and with music. I suppose you might say that both are true. I have thought, since, that this must have been how the story started that Phoebus Apollo built music the walls of Troy. But the magic and the music that moved the Giants' Dance, I shared with the blind singer of Kerrec. (V.1.5)
Any rock star would understand the phenomenon described here by Merlin. You do one good (or crazy) deed, and the whole internet goes wild. In Merlin's day, songs and stories passed by performance were the internet. And you can imagine how much fun those Dark Age folks had with the story of how Merlin moved gigantic, supernatural stones. There's no way that a scientific explanation was ever gonna make it into those verses.
Quote #10
The wind whipped water to my eyes, and the scene blurred. The crystal globe was cold in my hands. I gazed down into it. Small and perfect in the heart of the crystal lay the town with its bridge and moving river and the tiny, scudding ship. […] It seemed that the whole countryside, the whole of Wales, the whole of Britain could be held small and shining and safe between my hands, like something set in amber. (V.3.32)
Stick with us, Shmoopers—this scene is particularly trippy. Merlin has gathered up a handful of herbs to heal Ulfin's boo-boo, when POOF: a crystal snow globe appears in his hands instead. He sees a vision of Britain that is different from anything he's experienced so far. This time, stuff isn't happening around him; instead, things are happening because of him. He knows finally what his destiny will be: to help a mighty king to the throne of Britain to keep it safe forever.