Thus we have come full circle. We began with the fact that the temple of the Grail was based, to some degree, on the Temple of Solomon and on the mystical traditions that underlie its creation. Now, at the end of our journey through the romances and theological expositions that form the background to the Grail myth, we return to the one actual site that influenced all of the descriptions of the Grail’s home and find that its title is the Throne of Solomon!
Having established beyond reasonable doubt that the Takht-e Taqdis/Takht-e Soleyman is the origin of most descriptions of the Grail Temple found in the medieval accounts of the sacred vessel, we need to ask an important question: Why? Why create an elaborate home for the Grail at all? Of course we can say that it was part of the subsequent elaboration of the myth into the huge panoply of the Arthurian legends, but we believe that Albrecht, as well as the anonymous writer of Sone—as well as the Grail authors—were trying to do more than this.
One statement of Albrecht’s makes it clear that his intention was to show how the mysteries of the temple could be experienced through his writing. It is why we placed it at the head of this book.
I have made the temple worthy of Christians, so that they may learn by studying its shape and design. (v. 516.2)
This is entirely in line with the purpose of all the Grail Temples, chapels, and castles discussed here, going back to Solomon’s Temple and its Holy of Holies. Replace the term “Christian” with “all men,” and we can see that what the writers of these works meant was that by entering the buildings—whether in actuality or in the imagination—and by reading the symbolism inscribed there, it was possible to understand the secrets of the Grail. This, as the author of Sone stated, taught us “the way we must act to enter paradise.”
It was, we believe, for this reason that Arnoul the Elder built his copy of the Holy of Holies, and why he said that
We have recalled these things and told them to you, fathers and masters, about this house, which you see, and in which you reside, not only because of you, but more for some strangers who live here with us. It is no surprise if guests and strangers do not perceive all the winding paths of this house, when many who were reared in this house from their infancy to adult age still could not know or understand the number of gates, doors, small entrances and windows.265
It is also, we believe, the reason for the creation of the Abbey of Ettal and the Grail chapel at Karlstein. In addition, the writers of the extraordinary texts we have been examining seem to be saying that in the centre of the castle of the Grail there is a shrine that all should seek to know and understand. Here perhaps we should be allowed to access the fragment of the Divine contained within each one of us—like the sparks of unfallen creation that the Gnostics saw entrapped within the flesh of the human envelope. These sparks are found within each of us, and the true quest of the Grail consists in bringing those lights to the surface, nourishing and feeding them until their radiance suffuses the world.
“Chaque homme porte a jamais l’age du son temple (each man is the same age as his own temple),” wrote the traditionalist philosopher Henry Corbin, adding that the completion of the temple on Muntsalvasche was a kind of second birth for Titurel, whom we next see five hundred years old but perfectly preserved. The temple of the Grail is really a divine clearing house for the souls of those who go in search of it—a kind of adjunct to paradise, with glass walls that reflect the true nature of the seeker and demand that he recognize himself.
The image of man as temple—as writers as disparate as Corbin, Schwaller de Lubicz, 266and Keith Crichlow have all noted—tells us that we must make ourselves into a temple in order to be inhabited by God. This is the object of all the tests, including the turning door and the blinding light of the Grail. The concept begins with the Egypt of the pharaohs, if not earlier, in the caves of mankind’s first dwelling; and it continues through Platonic and Neoplatonic schools of thought. To them the temple was microcosmically an expression of the beauty and unity of creation. Expressed thus, it was reflected in the soul and became, indeed, “a bridge for the remembrance or contemplation of the wholeness of creation” 267—words that could be as well applied to the Grail or the divine enclave of which it is a part.
This is the origin of the temple of light (the haykat al-nur), the macrocosmic temple that lies at the heart of Islamic mysticism, of which the Sufi mystic Ibn al-Arabi says: “O ancient temple, there hath risen for you a light that gleams in our hearts,” 268 the commentary to which states that “the gnostic’s heart, which contains the reality of the truth” is the temple.
Here we are back again in the world of the Solomonic Grail Temple, the image of which, transformed and altered, together with that of the earthly paradise, was enclosed in the world of the Arthurian Grail mythos. That world becomes transformed, in turn, back into the Edenic world of primal innocence, the original home of the sacred vessel, possession of which “represents the preservation of the primordial tradition in a particular spiritual center.”269
Ibn al-Arabi wrote that the last true man would be born of the line of Seth.270 Do we not have in this statement a clue to the destiny of the Grail bearer who will be present at the next “sacring” of the divine vessel? All the Grail knights were followers of Seth—who was the first to go in quest of it—and their adventures are transparent glyphs of the human endeavor to experience the Divine. Most of us, if we found our way into the temple unprepared, would probably suffer the fate of Lancelot. But the Grail Temple exists to show us that the way is worth attempting, that the center can be reached, if we are only attentive enough to the message it holds for us.
But what happens when we do finally reach the center? If we look at what we have learned so far about the image of the temple on earth and in the heavens, we may begin to arrive at an answer.
Dealing with the response in mankind to the voice of God, the Word, the Gnostic text known as the Authoritative Teaching says, “The senseless man hears the call, but he is ignorant of the place to which he has been called. And he did not ask … where is the temple into which I should go and worship my hope …?” 271 This could hardly be clearer. In the quest of the Grail, the failure to ask an important question is the cause of the failure of many knights who arrive at the castle. It is Lancelot’s failure, and it is the failure of all who do not listen to the Voice of the Light.
Kabbalistic teaching has it that “the temple has been destroyed, but not the path of purification, illumination, and union that lay concealed in it.” 272 For when the perfected soul of mankind “rises like incense from the golden altar of the heart and passes through the most inward curtains of his being to the holy of holies within,” 273 then the two cherubim who stand guard over the Ark of the Covenant “are united in the presence of the One in Whom the soul recognizes its eternal life and its own union with Him. Henceforward the soul is called the eternally ‘living’ [hayah], the ‘one and only’ [yehidah],” the perfect.274 The light comes like veritable tongues of fire upon all who reach the centre of the temple and find there the seat of God in the heart of creation.
This was the aim of the Grail knights, of the Templiesen of Wolfram von Eschenbach, of Titurel, and of the priest-kings who built the Takht-e Taqdis and its temples. Before them it was the desire of the people who erected their stone circles to echo the dance of the cosmos—awaiting that moment when God would reach down and hallow their seeking with a touch. So do all Grail questers, ancient and modern, await that touch that awakens the light within them, as must all who seek to enter the temple of the Grail.
There is no reason to doubt that for the majority of medieval authors who chose to write about the Grail—Chrétien, Robert de Boron, Wolfram, and Albrecht, as well as the anonymous author of Sone at least—the castle or temple of the Grail was intended to represent the earthly paradise (in the anonymous romance of Perlesvaus, the castle is even called Eden) and that the Grail, when installed at the centre, activated the building to become an actual paradisal place. In each of the examples we have explored here, the aspects of paradise are made clear; the Fisher King, Prester John, even Perceval himself are high kings and priest-kings. They echo the role of the high priest in Judaic tradition, hence the parallels between the Solomonic First Temple and the temple of the Grail as it manifests in the romances and in the Takht-e Soleyman, an actual building created as a gateway to paradise.
In his powerful work on the theme, Lars-Ivar Ringbom argued that the Throne of Arches at Shiz symbolised the centre of the cosmos, paradise on earth, the place where heaven and earth met, and that it was a center of sacred kingship.275 He believed, as do we, that Albrecht used these symbolic associations in The Later Titurel.
To enter the home of the Grail is to enter into the heart of the mystery. Here it is possible to experience divinity directly, without the intervention of priest, monk, or theologian. That direct experience brought forth the Grail itself and flowed into the gnostic and esoteric strands of Christianity, which offered a more profound and transcendent realization of the human and divine connection than the everyday mystery of the Mass. The existence of a place, whether temple or castle, which would only be experienced through extreme hardship or probation, became a necessity—those who sought a divine revelation were required to go there.
As the two young knights who sought out a ruined castle said at the end of Perlesvaus, when they return and are asked about their experience, “Go where we went and you will see.” Though we have explored the journey and visits to the Grail Temple in its most powerful aspects, there is possibly no better advice. Whatever we seek from the Grail, the temple holds it, or at least the key to its greater mystery. It is secret because we cannot look openly on these things, as Christ himself says in Le Morte d’Arthur where he invites Galahad to look upon the things that he longs to see but has been unable to do until that moment. Yet the Grail is hidden in plain sight, available to all, initiates or not, provided the intention is pure. It is enough to set forth on the quest itself, whether we find it in its ruined state, forgotten by most people, or in the glory of its greatest manifestation, as in the imaginative descriptions in Titurel, Sone, or the Letter of Prester John or in the physical representations such as the Takht-e Soleyman, Ettal, or the castle at Guines. By whatever means we proceed, the castle or the temple awaits, receiving all comers.
265. Holmes, “The Arthurian Tradition in Lambert d’Ardres.”
266. R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, The Temple of Man (Inner Traditions, 1988).
267. Crichlow, Soul as Sphere and Androgine.
268. Ibn al-Arabi, The Tarjuman Al-Ashwaq (Acra: Theosophical Publishing House, 1978).
269. René Guenon, “The Symbolism of the Graal,” Tomorrow 13, no. 2 (winter 1965).
270. Ibn al-Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, translated by R. W. J. Austin (London: SPCK, 1980).
271. The Nag Hammadi Library, edited and translated by James M. Robinson (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), 282.
272. Schayer, “The Meaning of the Temple,” 363.
273. Ibid.
274. Ibid.
275. Ringbom, Graltemple und Paradies.