The Grail Palace

Norma Lorre Goodrich suggests that the Grail Palace was on the Isle of St. Patrick, and recent archaeology has exposed sixth-century ruins of a church/palace there. But what was it, or the Grail itself, exactly? Goodrich uses the vast works of other scholars, adding her expertise in the linguistics field to extract information from Arthurian texts in several languages. Weeding out as much fancy as possible, the Grail Palace was the church or place where the holy treasures of Christianity were kept (not to be confused with the treasures of Solomon’s Temple, which Jeremiah and Zedekiah’s daughter Tamar allegedly took to Ireland in 587 BC, or the Templars found during the Crusades). The Grail treasures consist of items relating to Jesus: a gold chalice and a silver platter (or silver knives) from the Last Supper, the spear that pierced Christ’s side, the sword (or broken sword) that beheaded John the Baptist, gold candelabra with at least ten candles each, and a secret book, or gospel, attributed directly to either Jesus Himself, John the Beloved, Solomon, John the Baptist, or John of the Apocalypse.

Or was this book the genealogies of the bloodlines, whose copies were supposedly destroyed by the Roman Church?

If the house of the Last Supper was that of the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea, is it possible that Jesus used these rich items and that Joseph brought them to Britain in the first century as tradition holds? The high priest of the Grail Castle tradition was called the Joseph. Of all the knights who vied for the Grail or the high priest position as teacher and protector of the bloodlines and treasures, only Percival and Galahad succeeded. Did they take the place of Merlin Emrys when he passed on?

The purpose of the Grail Palace, beyond holding the treasures, was one of protecting and perpetuating the apostolic and royal bloodlines … hence the first-century Christianity brought to Britain by Christ’s family and followers. It was believed that an heir of both lines stood a chance of becoming another messiah-like figure. Such breeding of bloodlines was intended to keep the British church free of Roman corruption and close to its Hebrew origins. Nennius, who was pro-Roman to the core, accused the Celtic Church of clinging to the shadows of the Jews—the first-century Jews of Jesus’s family and friends.

But by the time the last Arthur fell, the hope of keeping the line of priests and Davidic kings, as had been done in Israel prior to Zedekiah’s fall, was lost. With the triumph of the Roman Church authority, political appointment from Rome trumped the inheritance of the priestly and kingly rights divinely appointed in the Old Testament. Celibacy became the order of the day to keep the power and money in Rome.

Goodrich suggests that there were three Grail brotherhoods: Christ and His Twelve Disciples, Joseph of Arimathea and his twelve companions, and Arthur and the Twelve Knights of the Round Table. After Arthur’s death, the order of the Grail with its decidedly Jewish roots gave way to Columba at Iona and the Roman Church. The Grail treasure—which had been brought from the Holy Land by Joseph of Arimathea, first to Glastonbury and later, after Saxons came too close for comfort, to the Isle of Patrick off of Man—had to be moved again. Percival and Galahad returned it to the Holy Land. And it is there, centuries later, that the Knights Templar allegedly entered into the mystery, perhaps with privileged information kept and passed down among the sacred few remnants of the bloodlines that shaped early Christian Scotland, England, and Ireland.

Étienne Gilson said that the Grail veneration started in Jerusalem with Arimathea and Jesus’s family and friends and that it stood for grace. God’s grace. Christ’s grace by sacrifice.

Or is it that only those truly baptized by Pentecostal fire are fit to care for the Grail treasures, just as only the high priest Aaron was allowed into the Holy of Holies in ancient Israel? And is finding the Grail a metaphor for the Holy Spirit embodied in the apostles, or entering into the presence of God? Lancelot only dreamed of it, while Percival and Galahad actually achieved it as evidenced by the fires on their tunics.

The truth has been veiled by time, muddied, or intentionally destroyed by later anti-Semitic factions in the church, and turned into a fantasy by later medieval writers who vilified most of the women, romanticized the men, and changed the now-lost original accounts to suit the tastes of their benefactors. Yet still this quest haunts the imagination and the soul—to be like, and hence in the presence of, Christ.