ARTHUR MACHEN AND THE SECRET SCHOOL OF THE GRAIL
The nineteenth-century writer Arthur Machen (1863–1947) was deeply concerned with the mystery of the Grail, returning to it a number of times both in his published work and private correspondence. In perhaps his most important and enduring work, The Secret Glory, we find a number of fascinating references. The longest and most intriguing reference comes in chapter 2. Here the young Ambrose Meyrick has gone with his father to visit old farmer Cradock, and on request an ancient aumbry is opened and an ancient cup taken out of it. The two men and the boy adore it—or perhaps what it stands for:
They knelt down, Cradock in the midst, before the cup, and Ambrose and his father on either hand. The holy vessel gleamed before the boy’s eyes, and he saw clearly its wonder and its beauty. All its surface was a marvel of the most delicate intertwining lines in gold and silver, in copper and in bronze, in all manner of metals and alloys; and these interlacing patterns in their brightness, in the strangeness of their imagery and ornament, seemed to enthral the eyes and capture them, as it were, in a maze of enchantment; and not only the eyes; for the very spirit was rapt and garnered into that far bright world whence the holy magic of the cup proceeded. Among the precious stones which were set into the wonder was a great crystal, shining with the pure light of the moon; about the rim of it there was the appearance of faint and feathery clouds, but in the center it was a white splendour; and as Ambrose gazed he thought that from the heart of this jewel there streamed continually a shower of glittering stars, dazzling his eyes with their incessant motion and brightness. His body thrilled with a sudden ineffable rapture, his breath came and went in quick pantings; bliss possessed him utterly as the three crowned forms passed in their golden order. Then the interwoven sorcery of the vessel became a ringing wood of golden, and bronze, and silver trees; from every side resounded the clear summons of the holy bells and the exultant song of the faery birds; he no longer heard the low chanting voices of Cradock and his father as they replied to one another in the forms of some antique liturgy…334
This represents Machen’s mature vision of the Grail, written in 1922 and very possibly influenced by the Nanteos Cup, a small wooden bowl kept in a house in Wales and believed by many to be the actual Grail. But Machen had been fascinated by the theme as early as 1906, when he already saw it as representing a mystery that was at once hidden and open to all. In a letter to Sir Paul England of February 12, 1906, he says:
I have been amusing myself lately by going to the British Museum where I make researches into the origin of the Holy Grail Legend to gratify a curiosity excited by (A. E.) Waite’s ingenious, but (I think) mistaken theory on the subject. He is inclined to believe the Legend the cryptic manifesto of the “Interior Church”; he would love to connect it with Cabalism, the Templars, the Albigenses…I am always telling him that nothing good ever comes out of heresy, but he won’t believe me.335
Machen wrote often and at length to his old friend A. E. Waite on the subject of the Grail, always trying to pull the latter away from the idea of the “Secret School” of Grail mysteries, which Machen saw as representing something else. In 1930 we see him maintaining:
I have no belief in “heretical sects” as a source of any Grail doctrine. Whatever the Grail may be, it is written in exaltation of the Sacrament at the Altar; and whatever heretical sect you choose, you will find, I believe, that its doctrine of the Sacrament is null, dull, and Protestant.336
But Machen was seeking something deeper, more subtle and profound than this. Something Celtic indeed, and something which was an “open secret.” In 1924 he wrote to Colin Summerfield of a miraculous book that tradition says belonged to St. Columba. He notes particularly that the book was not meant to be opened, and goes on:
This was important to me as illustrating one of the distinctions between the Roman and the Celtic Churches: the Romans exhibit their relics as much as possible to excite the devotion of the faithful: the Celts kept their relics in secrecy; it was dangerous for the unqualified to look upon them. You see how this bears on the Grail Legend; how it is one of the many small points which tend to establish the general conclusion: the legend of the Grail is, in one of its aspects, the Legend of the Celtic Church.337
To Machen, the Grail mystery referred simply and directly to the destruction and loss of the old Celtic Church, which he saw as originating, with distinct differences to the Roman establishment, in the fifth century and surviving as late as the eighth. After this, its systematic destruction by the now “established” Church of Rome brought such a sense of loss to the Celtic peoples that it gave rise to stories of forgotten relics hidden in the hills of Wales and of older doctrines still continuing in shadowy form among the valleys and groves of Machen’s own mystic landscape.
Machen was able to see very clearly the vision he sought. In a brief sketch published in Notes and Queries, he returned to the theme in “The Mass of the Sangraal.” The setting is the little—Methodist?—Church of Llantrisant. Strange, unaccountable events have taken place, and wonders have been seen:
There were a few who saw three come out of the door of the sanctuary, and stand for a moment on the pace before the door. These three were in dyed vesture, red as blood. One stood before two, looking to the west, and he rang the bell. And they say that all the birds of the wood, and all the waters of the sea, and all the leaves of the trees, and all the winds of the high rocks uttered their voices with the ringing of the bell. And the second and the third; they turned their faces one to another. The second held up the lost altar that they once called Sapphirus, which was like the changing of the sea and of the sky, and like the immixture of gold and silver. And the third heaved up high over the altar a cup that was red with burning and the blood of the offering.338
Echoes of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur and of the great Anglo-Norman Arthurian romances of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries can be heard here, and of something older as well: an ancient Celtic primacy that gave rise to the legends as we know them. It is these that intimately represent Machen’s “Secret School”—a far cry from Waite’s elaborate and ingenious speculations in The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail.339 For Machen it is no school at all, but a “Secret Glory which is hidden from the Holy Angels,” and which is certainly a description of the experience of the Grail and seems to be one held in common to mystics throughout time. It is an opening up to the true mystery at the heart of creation, a mystery that is present at all times and in all places openly but that remains unseen and unrecognized by most people, partly because it is the most simple, beautiful, and innocent thing—and because there are no words to describe it. It may be no more than a feeling, and yet how profound is a feeling? Can we truly describe any such thing? Most cannot. Those who do so are mystics, able to gather the bright and hidden mystery into a net of words and relay their feelings of it to us. Machen tried to do so and, I believe, to some extent succeeded. Indeed, in the (unpublished) concluding chapters of The Secret Glory there are passages that carry this thought to a triumphal conclusion, indicating that Ambrose Meyrick indeed found a way to the Glory.
One may see this clearly in the words Machen wrote in another book, The Glorious Mystery, in 1924. There he tells us what the Grail hero will find at the end of his quest:
His are the delights which are almost unendurable, the wonders that are almost incredible—that are, indeed, quite incredible to the world; his the eternal joys that the deadly flesh cannot comprehend; his the secret that renews the earth, restoring Paradise, rolling the heavy stone of the material universe from the grave whence he arises.340
This is perhaps as near as one can get to a mystical understanding of the Grail. It is so many things to so many people; to Arthur Machen it was a wondrous object that transformed everything with which it came in touch.
Envoi
Whether you spend a year working in Camelot or the rest of your life, the depths and power of this body of material is literally fathomless. Over forty years on from first discovering the Arthuriad and having been enriched by it beyond measure, I feel there is still as much to learn as ever. Even now, as I finish this book, a whole new level of wisdom is emerging from my ongoing studies. Where it will lead only the mighty archetypes that stand behind this material can tell. Those of you who spend time working through the layers of knowledge gathered in this book will see for yourselves the true mysteries at the heart of these things, which are beyond words and beyond telling. Whether you seek the Grail (in whatever form it takes or upon whatever path you follow) or not, you will learn to see the world with different eyes.
The essence of these teachings is contained in the word mystery as it was understood by our ancestors. A mystery is something that cannot ever be wholly understood but which offers a wealth of wisdom to those who seek its understanding. Those who answer the call of Arthur may be privileged to stand for a moment at the king’s side, to speak with his knights, to follow the Faery women into the heart of the Great Forest, to comprehend the purpose of these mighty tales. Most will discover that, when they depart, they can only say what the two young knights said who sought the Grail long after the Fellowship of the Round Table had turned to dust—“Go where we went, and you will understand.”
334. Ibid.
335. Machen, A. Selected Letters, ed. R. Dobson, G. Brangham, and R. A. Gilbert (The Aquarian Press, 1988).
336. Ibid.
337. Ibid.
338. “The Mass of the Sangreal” in Notes and Queries (1926), 245–6.
339. Waite, A. E. The Hidden Church of the Holy Grail (London: Redman, 1909).
340. Machen, A. The Glorious Mystery (1924; reprinted by Literary Licensing LLC, 2012).