Arthur And The Grail
Blessed indeed is he who has seen the Grail or felt the Divine Presence in outer vision and inner consciousness; his feet are already on the way. The Times Adventurous await him.
…
Francis Rolt-Wheeler, Mystic Gleams from the Holy Grail
The King and the Cup
The call of Arthur echoes the call of the Grail. It was inevitable, given the prestigious status of Arthur and his heroes, that at some point they would be drawn into the sphere of the other great myth—the quest for the sacred vessel known as the Grail. Much has been written about this and much still remains to be told, but in the present context we need to look at the way in which the Grail story became part of the stories of Arthur, the great quest becoming a central aspect of the call.
It is most likely that the oldest surviving story associating Arthur with the search for a significant spiritual object is to be found in the ninth-century poem Prieddeu Annwfn, attributed to Taliesin, which describes Arthur and his men setting sail to recover a great cauldron of power held in the keeping of the king of the underworld.80 The history of the Grail itself goes back much further than this, however; perhaps initially to Indo-European myths of a vessel that could be used to communicate with the gods. From there, via early Hebrew traditions, it became associated with the Christian myths of the Last Supper and the sacred blood of the resurrected Messiah. Throughout the Middle Ages it became the object of a search undertaken by Arthur’s knights, though not the king himself, perhaps because Arthur was himself the wounded king, referred to as the guardian of the sacred vessel.
We have written extensively about this subject and at the time of this writing are working with colleagues on important new discoveries relating to the Grail. Here we can only touch briefly on the topic, always remembering that of all the themes to be found within the Arthuriad, the Grail Quest is the one most fundamentally associated with the call of Arthur.
Almost the entire corpus of Grail literature was written between 1170 and 1225, appearing suddenly and ending almost as abruptly. The Arthurian canon was already well established by this time, carried by wandering singers and poets who were able to cross all boundaries, both physical and religious, and who fused Pagan and Christian ethos with chivalric achievement and folk culture, forming an archetypal world that lived in the imaginations of all kinds of people.
The two authors who did most to establish the canon of the Grail were Chrétien de Troyes and Robert de Boron. Chrétien was already famous throughout Europe for his Arthurian poems. In them he had introduced such originally Celtic figures as Lancelot, Gawain, and Geraint to a Norman-French courtly society who were hungry for more. Chrétien’s last work, left unfinished at his death, was the Conte du Graal, or Story of the Grail,81 in which he told of the adventures of a young and innocent youth named Perceval who just happened to catch sight of two knights—whom he took for angels—in the forest where he had been brought up by his mother in ignorance of all manly pursuits. From this moment on he desired only to follow them and to discover where and how they lived. He met many adventures on the way, but the strangest of all was that of the Grail.
Finding himself at the castle of his uncle, the Fisher King, Perceval witnesses a mysterious procession in which a vessel called a graal is borne through the hall and is used in some way to sustain a wounded man. Perceval, both from politeness and ignorance, fails to ask the meaning of these things, and as a result finds himself outcast to wander in the wilderness of the Wasteland. A hideous damsel chides him for his failure and tells him that had he asked the required question, the land and the king would have been restored. Thereafter, the foolish youth has to suffer in the wilderness for some time before he finds his way back to the castle, but the outcome is never revealed since the poem breaks off before the mystery of the Grail is explained.
The enigma of this story touched the imagination of the medieval world. Though it has been extended vastly since this first tentative account, the heart of the story, with its themes of healing and redemption, has remained the same. A Swiss knight named Robert de Boron, who already may have been working on a Grail text of his own prior to Chrétien, gave it a new and essential direction when he took the story back through time to the days when Christ walked the earth. He tells how Joseph of Arimathea, who gave his own tomb for the body of the Messiah, had been given into his keeping—by no lesser person than Jesus himself—the Cup of the Last Supper, along with the “secret words” that go with it.82
Other writers—notably Wolfram von Eschenbach, whose Parzival brought an oriental flavor to the myth and added significant references to star lore,83 the anonymous authors of the Elucidation84 and the Didot Perceval,85 as well as the vast compilation known as the Vulgate Cycle or Lancelot-Grail86—brought a mystical dimension to the older tales of warfare and love.
The church was quick to realize that these stories amounted almost to an alternative spirituality and for a time did its best to exclude troubadours and other storytellers from communion on the grounds that they were agents of the devil. Eventually, however, the church itself took over the office of storyteller, and texts such as Perlesvaus87 and the Vulgate Cycle were compiled by monks who incorporated the uncanonical writings of older authors into a setting of ironclad dogmatic theology.
It was these writers who first introduced the figure of Galahad, the stainless, sinless knight destined from birth to succeed in the quest for the Grail. Yet they made him the son of Lancelot, the strongest of the Arthurian knights, who was possessed of a fatal flaw—his love for Arthur’s queen. The anonymous authors of the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal, seeking to Christianize the overt Paganism of the older romances, brought about the birth of Galahad by having Lancelot tricked into believing he was lying with Guinevere, when in fact the lady in his bed was the daughter of the wounded Grail king himself.88
Charles Williams described this twist in the story as “one of the greatest moments of imagination ever permitted to man,” adding that
the absurd nonsense that has been talked about (Galahad) being “unhuman and unnatural” misses altogether the matter of the mystically enchanted fatherhood…where the Princess of the Grail abandoned her virginity and Lancelot was defrauded of his fidelity, so that the two great Ways (of Camelot and the Grail) might exchange themselves for the begetting of Galahad.89
The anonymous author of the text known as Perlesvaus added a further strand of veracity to the claims made for the myth, telling us that
the Latin text from which this story was set down in the vernacular was taken from the Isle of Avalon, from a holy religious house which stands at the head of the Lands Adventurous; there lie King Arthur and his Queen, by the testimony of the worthy religious men who dwell there, and who have the whole story, true from beginning to end.90
The “holy religious house” mentioned here is almost certainly meant to be Glastonbury, where the supposed bones of Arthur and Guinevere were discovered in 1184, and the “worthy religious men” who lived there, the Benedictines of Glastonbury Abbey—though whether they indeed had “the whole story” remains a matter for speculation.
What is interesting is that both the Isle of Avalon (a name for the Celtic otherworld) and the holy religious house stood “at the edge of the Lands Adventurous.” It seems that the monkish chroniclers recognized that the archetypal world of the Grail and the Arthurian heroes were only at one remove from everyday life, accessible not only in legend but also physically. In reality, the rebuilding program at Glastonbury Abbey, following a devastating fire, afforded the monks an opportunity to increase its validity as a pilgrimage site by claiming to have found the bodies of Arthur and Guinevere. This assertion simultaneously challenged the Welsh belief in Arthur’s expected return—if he was dead, the Welsh therefore had no basis for a hoped-for rebellion against their Norman overlords.91
The spate of texts continued unabated after this. Chrétien’s Story of the Grail boasted four continuations, by different hands, which extended the original by thousands of lines. Robert de Boron completed his trilogy: Merlin, Joseph d’Arimathiae, and Perceval.92 Versions of these stories began to appear throughout Europe, drawn now into the whirlpool of Arthurian literature. Descriptions of the Grail and of the mysterious procession, some based on Chrétien’s original version, others displaying a degree of originality, appeared in Germany, Italy, and Spain, taking the story ever further and deeper into the imaginations of the Western world.
The Other Church
An essential strand in the history of the Grail was its part in the division between Rome and the so-called Celtic branch of Christianity. Robert de Boron connected the Grail with the apocryphal story of Joseph of Arimathea and brought his hero to Britain along with the Grail. Here Joseph and his descendants founded the first Christian church at a date well in advance of the Church of Rome. At more than one church council thereafter British bishops claimed the right to prior speech before those of other countries solely on account of this early ascription of Christianity to Britain.
Celtic Christendom was discouraged and considered anathema by Roman missionaries, who found it well established when they arrived in Britain in the first century AD (according to Bede it was as early as AD 37). Even after the Synod of Whitby in 664, differences of belief and opinion continued. Members of the Celtic Rite (as the followers of the Celtic Church were called) were rarely considered for high office within the church.
But it was within the boundaries of Celtic Christendom that the stories of the Grail arose. We have only to look at the wonder voyages of monks like St. Brendan, written in Latin in the ninth century, to see the tendency among such Celtic monkish scribes. The Navigato Sancti Brendani (Voyages of Brendan) is full of elements that could easily have come from an Arthurian or Grail adventure.93 Here we meet the bold adventurer who goes in search of God’s mysteries, treasure, beautiful maidens, monsters, and islands shimmering in the seas of the West—the Lands Adventurous; yet another voyage outside the bounds of the known world.
Such writings as these were the product of a solitary hermetic existence more suited to an isolated island bothy or the desert fathers of Egypt and Syria than the community life of the Benedictine or Cistercian houses. It is perhaps significant that Pelagius, a fifth-century theologian whose doctrine was that man could take the initial step towards salvation by his own efforts, drew inspiration from the wild world of Celtic Britain.94
It is possible that the Grail legends shared in the accusation of heresy leveled against Pelagius for proposing such ideas. It certainly suggests why the Grail stories became so popular throughout Europe, as the seekers whose adventures were so boldly narrated by the wandering storytellers concerned a quest for something that was ostensibly to be found daily in every church in the Christian world. If the Eucharist did not bring seekers the level of mystical experience they were seeking, could the Grail perhaps bring them closer to God? An argument could indeed be made that the Grail romances offered a viable alternative to established Christianity, which is perhaps why there are so many associations in the Grail’s long history with heretical groups such as the Cathars and the Templars.
The astute commentator Joseph Campbell recognized in the dichotomy present within the Grail corpus itself a reflection of a similar disharmony within Christendom. Taking Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival as an exemplar, he notes:
This calamity (the wounding of the Grail King, Anfortas), in Wolfram’s meaning, was symbolic of the dissociation within Christendom of spirit from nature: the denial of nature as corrupt, the imposition of what was supposed to be an authority supernaturally endowed, and the actual demolishment of both nature and truth in consequence. The healing of the Maimed King, therefore, could be accomplished only by an uncorrupted youth naturally endowed, who would merit the supreme crown through his own authentic life work and experience, motivated by a spirit of unflinching noble love, enduring nobility, and spontaneous compassion.95
This seeming dichotomy was present even at the most profound level in the nature of the Eucharistic sacrament that played so profound a part in the mystical imagery of the Grail. Christ was God, yet he was also a man. His nature was heavenly, yet he was also of the earth. The bread and wine, before consecration, were merely bread and wine; afterwards, they became the actual body and blood of Christ, although they remained in appearance bread and wine.
As the early church labored to define the nature of Christ, so the medieval church sought to define the nature of these things. The precise definition of transubstantiation, as the miraculous change was termed, was not outlined until the Lateran Council of 1215—at exactly the time when the Grail texts were appearing. Pope Innocent III merely confirmed what everyone knew: there was reason to be semantically precise because heresy had begun to threaten the fabric of Christianity at this time. Indeed, heresies that denied the mystery of transubstantiation, preferring more rational explanations of the Eucharistic sacrifice, existed side by side with an almost talismanic belief in the real presence of Christ in the species of blood and wine.
The daily miracle of the Mass occurred on the altar in every church and chapel, so that the mystery became familiar without losing any sense of its numinous nature. Laity in the West were protected from the divine mysteries by a rood screen so that when the priest elevated the consecrated host, the deacon rang the sacring bell to draw attention to the sacred moment. In Perlesvaus it was in this moment that Arthur witnessed the Grail’s most profound mystery—though in a totally different manner to the normal Mass:
…looking towards the altar after the preface, it seemed to him that the hermit was holding in his arms a man, bleeding from his side, bleeding from his hands and feet and crowned with thorns.96
In both the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal and later in Malory’s version of this in Le Morte d’Arthur we come across similar events in which the Grail heroes or Arthur witness an actual appearance of Christ. These texts go out of their way to exhibit a similarity between the actions of the Grail and those of the Eucharist.
That this was unusual is evidenced by the fact that for a long time the laity did not frequent the sacrament of Communion in order to receive it. It was not until 1215 that the faithful were obliged to make confession and receive the sacrament at least once a year. Nor did they, even then, receive it in both kinds (bread and wine); this was generally forbidden to the laity, as the danger of spilling the precious blood was considered too great. Kings heard Mass before battle, before breakfast, before going hunting—but they seldom received the host; only the priest made his Communion.
These, then, were the sacramental mysteries around which the life of medieval Christendom revolved. Christ was present among men, not just in the reserved host on the altar, but also in each person who partook of the sacraments. This realization is an important one. People did not frequent the sacrament in order to be “good” in some perfunctory manner, but in order to be at one with Christ—in communion. This was, and is, the ultimate aim of every Christian—to be in oneness with God in the person of Christ, whether on earth or in heaven. But the obstacles to this union had to be overcome. Man suffers the effects of Original Sin, a loss of sanctifying grace, brought about through Adam’s fall. Thus the Grail knights had to struggle against overwhelming odds, always supported and aided by their faith and by the presence of the holy hermits who peopled the forest of adventure through which they rode in quest of the miraculous vessel.
The Redemption, whereby man is saved from sin and death, was seen in various ways. In the West emphasis was given to the expiation of sins through the sacrificial death of Christ, while in the East the Greek fathers were more concerned with the restoration of man to divine life—an idea referred to by the term theosis, or God-bearing. It is a delicate idea to comprehend, and one that the Western church has understated again and again.
Amongst the most clearly defined opponents of these traditional views are the Cathars and the Templars, whose histories have been tussled over and explored in tremendous detail over the last decade. Much of this is relevant only to those who feel called to explore this aspect of the Arthuriad and again only can be dealt with briefly here. A list of books that delve more deeply into the mystery of these two very different groups will be found in the bibliography; for the moment we need to focus upon those aspects of beliefs and traditions that are most nearly connected to the legends of Arthur and the Grail.
The Good Men of Albi
The Cathars remain one of the most enigmatic of the spiritual groups to have emerged from the melting pot of religious fervor throughout the Middle Ages.97 They were first recognized in the eleventh century in Northern Italy and Western Germany, with some also in Flanders and England, but had soon became concentrated in and around the area of Provence and the Languedoc, in what is today Southern France. They probably reached this area via the trade routes that spread from the First Bulgarian Empire via the Netherlands. They continued throughout the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries until they were virtually wiped out in the long-drawn-out Albigensian Crusades of 1209–29 (so named after the town of Albi, the center of Cathar activity, which earned them the alternative name Albigensian). The name Cathar itself is said to come from the Greek katharoi, “pure,” though they referred to themselves as bonshommes, good men (and women) or simply good Christians seeking to separate themselves from the Catholic world.
Having rejected many of the formalized beliefs of the Roman Church, the Cathars insisted that the world has been created, not by God, but by a Demiurge, a reflection of the real Creator, who had made the world as a poor copy of humanity’s true home—an earthly paradise in which there was no Fall, no expulsion from Eden, and no sin. This has led many commentators to see the Cathars as supremely dualistic, but while they certainly saw the world of matter and form as inherently dark, and the world beyond as light, they were well aware that a blending of the two aspects of creation was essential for the spiritual growth of humanity.
In addition, the Cathars saw Jesus as a wholly supernatural figure, a spiritual emanation from the Father. Since he was not a physical being, the idea of the Crucifixion and Resurrection (central tenets of Catholicism) were rendered untenable. The Cathars were also vegetarians who believed that to partake of any creature formed by the Demiurge was evil, and as pacifists they saw no point in destroying what was essentially already cursed. They also possessed a healthy attitude towards sexuality at a time when most Christians were being directed towards asceticism.
One of the many myths imposed on the Cathars in more recent times is their supposed belief in the shunning of all carnal relationships. In reality they frowned upon procreation, since to bring yet more life into what they saw as a fallen world was considered a sin; sex between men and women outside the sacrament of marriage was not seen as sinful.
The gentle way of life and religious toleration of the Cathars reflected a deep understanding of the links between Christianity and the religions of the East, as well as of the true nature of the human condition. Though their ultimate origins remain obscure, they are known to have inherited doctrines and beliefs from the ancient sect known as the Manicheans, who originated in Persia in AD 61 and who were, in turn, based on the ancient Persian religion of Mazdaism. From these sources sprang the later belief system known as Gnosticism, which led those who encountered it to explore a way of life radically different from the rest of the medieval world. Theirs was a way of kindness, self-possession, and generosity of spirit, while the greed, jealousy, and violence of the orthodox Western belief system was ignored.
Not surprisingly, considering these diametrically opposing beliefs, they were branded heretics by the church and were hounded into virtual extinction in a series of savage crusades launched against them by Pope Alexander III following the (apparent) assassination of a papal legate in 1208. As is still often the case, a political reason also existed behind that of the spiritual assault on the Languedoc. Before the Crusades were launched, this region had been fiercely independent from the rest of France. It had become a rich and virtually self-governing principality where the arts of literature and music flourished and the songs of the troubadours were heard in every town and village. The unscrupulous French king Philip II (1180–1223) saw a means of annexing the rich southern lands and lost no opportunity to endorse the crusade, in much the same way as his grandson Philip IV was to initiate the attacks on the Templars in 1307.
The degree of savagery leveled against the Cathars is a clear indication of the fear and hatred engendered by their beliefs. A huge number of people were slaughtered in the period of active military actions between 1209 and 1229, and in the following fifteen years of persecution leading to the fall of the last Cathar stronghold at Montségur in 1244.
Despite their eradication, the ideas expressed by the sect have remained embedded in Western consciousness and continue to fascinate us to this day, being recognized far beyond their time. Their connection with the Grail was well established at the time, as we can see from the fact that, during the siege of Montségur, when one of their leaders put on silver armor and stood forth on the battlements, the crusading armies withdrew in the belief that “the Grail Knight” had come to aid the beleaguered citadel.98
Even today rumors continue to circulate of a treasure far richer than mere gold or jewels that was smuggled out of Montségur the night before the castle fell and that was then taken across the mountains into Italy, where it vanished from sight. Some have suggested that this was the Grail or that it consisted of documents relating to Cathar beliefs. While there is no consistent evidence to prove this, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi SS, sent a wayward archaeologist named Otto Rahn into the area once controlled by the Cathars in 1944 to search for the Grail.99
The New Knighthood
Equally important to the story of the Grail is the history of a group of medieval knights who were attacked and eventually destroyed, having been accused of heretical beliefs similar to those of the Cathars.
In 1118 a Burgundian knight named Hugh de Payens, together with eight companions, all Crusaders, petitioned Pope Clement V to found a new order dedicated to poverty, chastity, and obedience, established specifically “in honor of Our Lady” and combining the disciplines of warrior and monk. The avowed intention of the order was to guard the pilgrim routes to the Holy Land—to become, in effect, a spiritual army that would owe allegiance to the Holy See rather than to the Crusader kings.100
This was something wholly new in the Western world, though similar orders existed in the East. The idea of combining the piety of a monastic way of life with the rules of chivalry must have seemed as startling as it was original.
Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the most famous theologians of the age and the founder of the Cistercian order, was requested to sponsor the fledgling order and to write a rule by which the knights would live their lives.101 It was largely due to Bernard’s influence that the Templars were given official status at the Council of Troyes in 1128. They were permitted to wear a white robe with a red cross emblazoned on the right shoulder and were given, as their headquarters in the East, a building believed to have been the site of the biblical Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem—or one adjacent to it. From this they received the name by which they are best known today: the Knights Templar. With this came a persistent tradition that they had excavated the ruins of the Solomonic Temple and discovered something hidden away beneath it. Just what that “something” was—or indeed if it still exists—remains a mystery, although it was almost certainly related to the traditions of the early Hebrews.
From this beginning grew the single, most famed military organisation of the Middle Ages. The Templars became the permanent “police” of the tiny war-torn kingdom of Jerusalem; they fought with utter dedication and became feared by Muslim and Christian alike. Bernard’s rule was a harsh one, binding the knights to forswear home and country, to fight at need to the death for the holy places of Christendom. For the sake of chastity they had to sleep fully clothed in lighted dormitories. They were not permitted to receive private letters; any communication had to be read out aloud before the company. They must attend Mass at least three times a week, wherever they were; accept every combat that came their way, despite the odds; and neither ask nor give quarter.
Bernard’s sponsorship alone was sufficient to swell the ranks at an astonishing rate. Soon the order began to build a network of castles, called “commanderies,” across the Holy Land, as well as in Europe. Their power and strength increased, and their wealth grew accordingly. Though each individual forswore personal possessions, they gave freely of their goods to the order and began also to win much treasure in their battles with the Moors. In time they became so wealthy and of such good standing that they virtually became the bankers to the crowned heads of Europe, lending huge sums to help finance the Crusades. However, as their political power grew, so too did their enemies increase. Finally, the miserly and avaricious king of France, Philip IV, who had once petitioned to join the order and had been refused, plotted to bring about their downfall, citing the most astonishing and unlikely of reasons.
Philip charged the Templars with heresy, and on the night of Friday, October 13, 1307, the majority of the order in France were seized and imprisoned. Subjected to horrific torture, many admitted to every kind of crime, from sodomy to spitting on the cross. The trial of the Templars continued for another seven years before the last Grand Master, the saintly Jacques de Molay, was executed on May 19, 1314, bringing the order to an end 196 years after its foundation. They left behind a memory and a myth that has remained constant ever since—that they had become the guardians of a relic of huge importance to the Western world and dangerous to the church of Rome.
For many, that relic was the Holy Grail, a claim that rests primarily on a single text within the Arthurian canon: the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach. Composed at the height of Grail fever, the work was either based on Chrétien’s Conte du Graal or drew on closely related sources. Wolfram himself accused Chrétien of getting the story wrong and proposed a different interpretation, bringing his own set of “origins,” which were, startlingly, of the East rather than the West.102
Wolfram claimed to derive the essence of his work from a book by one Kyot of Provence, who in turn had it from an unexpected source: an Islamic teacher named Flegetanis, who was wise in the wisdom of the stars and wrote of a great war in heaven between the angels. Lucifer—whose name means, significantly, the Light Bringer, and who had not yet been associated with the devil—was the hero of this war. He wore in his crown a great emerald, and at some juncture—either during the fighting or in his fall from heaven—this became dislodged and, according to Flegetanis (as reported by Wolfram), fell to earth, where it became known as the Grail.
This was all very different from previous versions of the story, and in addition, unlike the other versions of the story that had gone before, where the Grail is seen as a cup or dish, Wolfram describes it thus:
A stone of the purest kind…called lapsit exillis…If a human sees the stone, even if he is sick, he will not die within a week…and if he sees the stone every day for two hundred years his looks will not change, though his hair might become grey.103
This description has given rise to a great deal of speculation ever since the work first appeared. Wolfram’s use of Latin is inaccurate and cannot be translated exactly. It may be that he meant to write “lapis lapsus ex caelis (a stone fallen from heaven),” which would certainly fit the story of its falling from Lucifer’s crown. Other interpreters have felt themselves to be on the right track by identifying Wolfram’s “Gral” with the “lapis philosophorum,” the philosopher’s stone, a central image in the work of the alchemists.
The fact that the impulse behind alchemy itself emerged in the East, and that it entered Europe through the meeting of seekers from East and West who sought to plumb the mysteries of Creation, not only fits well with Wolfram’s supposed source, but also with the period of the Crusades, when the wisdom of Islam met the wisdom of Christianity. However, to this day, no trace of either Kyot or Flegetanis has come to light, despite the efforts of various scholars to solve the mystery. New evidence has recently come to light that associates Flegetanis with early Hebrew traditions; these are still being evaluated at the time of this writing.
What is really important here is the link with the Eastern mysteries and, of course, Flegetanis’s expertise in star lore. Even if we discount Wolfram’s story, it is equally possible that he encountered the basis for his version of the myth in writings or in conversations of any one of the travellers returning from the East, especially those who spent time in the Spanish city of Toledo, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians rubbed shoulders in an uneasy truce, and which became a veritable melting pot for the teachings and beliefs of the major faiths.
But it was Wolfram’s naming of the guardians of the Grail that has ever since associated the Poor Knights of Christ with the sacred stone: Templiesen. This name, though it is said to derive simply from the fact that the Templars were based in the Temple of Solomon, also aligned them with Wolfram’s guardians of the Grail. Another interesting clue is the connection with Bernard of Clairvaux. As well as the Templar rule, he wrote, at the request of Hughes de Payens, “A Treatise on the New Knighthood,” which he dedicated to the founder of the Templars. In this work Bernard speaks of the order in terms that are uncannily similar to descriptions of the Grail knights in medieval romances of the time:
The warriors are gentler than lambs and fiercer than lions, wedding the mildness of the monk with the valor of the knight, so that it is difficult to decide which to call them: men to adorn the Temple of Solomon with weapons instead of gems, with shields instead of crowns of gold, with saddles and bridles instead of candelabra: eager for victory—not fame; for battle not for pomp; who abhor wasteful speech, unnecessary action, unmeasured laughter, gossip and chatter, as they despise all vain things: who, in spite of their being many, live in one house according to one rule, with one soul and one heart.104
Later he wrote that:
A new knighthood has recently appeared on earth…It ceaselessly wages a twofold war both against flesh and blood and against the spiritual army of evil in the heavens.105
The church had long seen itself as the army of God, and this is precisely what the Templars were—priests and soldiers “doubly armed,” as Bernard remarked, so that they “need fear neither demons nor men.” Adding that “these are the picked troops of God” and exhorting them that
precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of the holy ones, whether they die in battle or in bed, but death in battle is more precious as it is the more glorious…If he (the knight) fights for a good reason, the issue of this fight can never be evil.106
Bernard is clearly referring to the Templars here, and not long after writing these words he commissioned the largest and most theologically complex collection of Grail stories ever written. Known as the Vulgate or Lancelot-Grail cycle,107 it tells the story of the Grail from the time of Christ to the end of the reign of King Arthur, all of it written down by Bernard’s Cistercian monks and based on a vast range of myth and tradition from many sources.
How much Bernard’s knowledge of the Grail myths influenced the Templar rule and how much the story was written to his specific directions is impossible to say with any certainty, yet there are clear parallels between the saintly knights of the Grail and the aspirations of the fledgling Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple. It is still a bewildering fact that, less than two hundred years later, the men whom Bernard said would be a “company of perfect men” were to be reviled, their order discredited and destroyed.
The reasons for this may well be laid simply at the door of avarice and jealousy—fear among the rulers of Europe and the pope in Rome that the Templars were becoming too powerful and too rich. Or, as recent researchers have suggested, it may have been because they were the guardians of a secret that could have placed the continuing hold of the Christian church over the Western world in jeopardy. That this “great secret” may have concerned the Grail—or at the very least the ideas the sacred vessel represented—is as good an explanation as any.
The Five Changes
One of the most mysterious and mystical texts relating to the Grail and Arthur is the anonymous thirteenth-century text known as Perlesvaus.108 We have already had occasion to notice this text before, and it remains one of the most important versions of the Arthuriad relating to the call of Arthur. This is, in fact, the only text in which Arthur himself has a direct and personal vision of the Grail—and it is, indeed, a significant one, representing much of the secret teachings hidden in plain sight within the romances of Arthur.
Arriving at the chapel of the Grail, the king tethers his horse and goes to enter, but something prevents him, and all he can do is watch from outside (this is a typical event in the quest where those deemed unworthy are prevented from entering). What he sees is remarkable:
…looking towards the altar…at the hermit’s right hand he could see the most beautiful child that ever a man beheld: he was dressed in an alb, with a golden crown on his head laden with precious stones, which shone with a brilliant light. To the left was a lady so beautiful that no beauty in the world could match hers. And…the lady took her son and sat on the right-hand side of the altar upon a huge, richly carven chair, setting her son on her knee and kissing him gently. “Sire,” she said, “you are my father, and my son, and my lord, and my guardian, and guardian of everyone…”
And when the hermit began to sing mass, the king could hear the voices of angels answering; and when the holy Gospel was read, the king looked towards the altar and saw the lady take her child and offer him to the blessed hermit…And when the child was offered to him he placed him on the altar; then began the sacrament…it seemed to him that the hermit was holding in his arms a man, bleeding from his side, bleeding from his hands and feet and crowned with thorns; he could see him quite clearly.109
Such a vision not only shows the importance of Arthur as a spiritual being, but reveals the way in which the writers and compilers of the Grail stories were drawing upon a sequence of mystery teachings that had been present for a long time. These are, indeed, secret teachings, whether direct from Christ or even older figures. Here Arthur sees the Virgin Mary offering her child as a living sacrifice, who is then transformed into the likeness of a wounded man. Lancelot was to see a similar vision later in the story of the quest, and being faithful only to this love for Guinevere is cast out and temporarily blinded for daring to enter the realm of the sacred.
Later in Perlesvaus the king visits the Grail Castle, along with Perceval, where we learn that
at that time there was no chalice in the land of King Arthur. The Grail appeared at the consecration in five forms, but they should not be revealed, for the secrets of the sacrament none should tell save he who God has granted grace. But King Arthur saw all the transubstantiations, and last appeared the chalice; and the hermit who was conducting the mass found a memorandum upon the consecration cloth, and the letters declared that God wanted His body to be sacrificed in such a vessel in remembrance of Him.110
This is a clear reference to the central mystery of the Mass, but why was it felt necessary to set forth what reads as the origins of that mystery if it was available upon every altar in the land? 111 The only reasonable explanation seems to be that the Grail romances were indeed seen as offering an alternative spiritual path. The reference to the “secrets of the sacrament” also implies a body of secret teaching. Elsewhere, in the Vulgate quest, we get a further hint, where the author receives the story he is writing in a small book handed to him by Christ himself—perhaps even written by him. This implies a deeper awareness of the mysteries underlying Christianity and shows just how profoundly the authors of the romance tradition saw into the heart of the Arthurian Grail myths.
But what of the five changes? Can we in fact peel back the curtain for a moment and glimpse what they might be? Prolonged meditation upon these elements brings profound understanding, though it may indeed be different for all. The significance of the changes is obviously great, and they clearly foreshadow the inner mysteries of the Grail, but they are disguised in such a way that only through inner communication is it now possible to recover them. The following interpretation is offered in this light as a revelation of the deepest mysteries of the Grail.
The five changes are as follows: spear, cup, stone, dish, child. The spear is that which pierced the side of Christ; the dish is that upon which the head of John the Baptist is carried; the stone is the lapis exilis or philosopher’s stone mentioned by Wolfram, and which to the alchemists was the symbol of divine alteration; and the child is the divine other, the living sacrifice who changes itself into the forms of bread and wine. The cup is the vessel of offering from which all who truly seek may drink and partake of the higher mystery.
Five is a significant number, and in the symbolism of the Grail it is reflected in the rosary (five decades of beads for each mystery), the five wounds of Christ, and the five great knights and what they represent—Perceval (youth), Gawain (manhood), Bors (maturity), Lancelot (worldliness), and Galahad (spirituality). Placed upon the ancient sacred symbol of the pentagram, the five-pointed star, we arrive at the following pattern:
The actual sequence of the changes is thus: spear—cup—child—stone—dish. Spear and cup are the signs by which are shown forth the coming of the divine child, who will be sacrificed upon the altar stone of the four elements and whose body will afterwards be laid within the dish. The blood of the child flows down the spear, into the cup, and begins the unending cycle again: the regeneration of the human soul into the divine being it must one day become.
There are, however, still further applications. Taking the Christian view, we have at the top the Grail (pure spirit), to the left the spear (Adam and Eve, the founders of the race), and facing/opposing them the stone (Lucifer, the Lord of Light, from whose crown fell the emerald stone). Below, descending from the spirit into the world is the child (Christ, the Divine Sacrifice) and the dish, in which he is laid in token of sacrifice. Thus the inner harmonics of the seen and unseen worlds resonate through the patterns of the Grail imagery, forming a nucleus from which the mystery of the quest evolves.
A further exploration of this symbology can be made that deepens the mystery still further. There are five specific “houses” or castles in the Arthurian world: the Castle of Marvels, the Castle of Adventure, the Castle of Camelot, Lancelot’s Castle of Joyous Garde, and the Castle of Corbenic. In each of these rests one of the hallows, the symbolic references of the Grail. One scenario in which some of this may be worked out is as follows:
|
Castle |
Hallow |
|
1. Marvels |
Dish |
|
2. Adventure |
Spear |
|
3. Camelot |
Stone |
|
4. Joyous Garde |
Cup |
|
5. Corbenic |
Child |
In the Castle of Marvels the holy dish dispenses wider and deepening awareness, which preludes the first mystery—that of the spear, which must be sought in the castle at the heart of the Lands Adventurous. At Camelot lies the stone, from which the sword of the spirit is drawn. At Joyous Garde, the home of Lancelot, the feminine cup of love, human and divine, is kept hidden in a secret place beneath the altar in the chapel. At Corbenic, the fruit of the marriage of spear and cup, the child, Galahad himself as Christ, manifest in the womb of the virgin vessel, awaits the coming of the acts of the Grail. Through these five, placed upon the pentagram, these acts are brought to birth.
The glyph can be read from any direction, through any dimension, but all ways lead to the Grail and to the caves of initiation, where the deeper mysteries are revealed. (Beginning on page 348 you will find a brief meditation designed to open the way to this aspect of the Grail myth.)
The Grail Today
The Grail remains an enduring symbol for the inner search, and the hallows are living symbols of a very real quest, in which all who hear the call of Arthur are still very much involved. This new knighthood, as Bernard called it, is every bit as real and valid as the original precepts of chivalry, honor, and the quest for meaning instigated by the Round Table Fellowship. As we said at the beginning of this chapter, those who answer the call of Arthur cannot help but answer the call of the Grail.
The dominant themes, which include the healing of the Wasteland and the wounded king, vibrant symbols for the wounds in creation itself, laid waste by our inability to understand the divine purpose, make it clear how deeply the Grail myths go. The vessel, however we see it, has its own purpose, which we may not always recognize. One aspect only of this is the transformative energy of the Grail and its ability to make things other. No one who goes in search of it remains unchanged, and if it had no greater purpose, this would fulfil its existence. The direction that the quester, sooner or later, must always take is summed perfectly in a Gnostic text, the Gospel of Thomas, translated by Gilles Quispel:
Let not him who seeks cease until he finds,
and when he finds he shall be astonished.112
It is that degree of astonishment, of surprise, which above all else marks out the Grail mystery. If you have not yet come upon it, it is hoped that you will do so and that it will bring as great a reward as you could wish for.
Practice
The practical work that follows in chapters 14–17 is all about establishing a personal link with the inner purpose of the Grail and its work in the world. This is the very heart of the Arthurian mysteries and follows naturally from the work of the Round Table Fellowship, both on earth and in the stars, explored in the previous chapters.
80. Matthews, C. and J. King Arthur’s Raid on the Underworld (Gothic Image Publications, 2008).
81. de Troyes, Chrétien. Perceval: The Story of the Grail, trans. N. Bryant (D. S. Brewer, 1982).
82. de Boron, R. Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin and Perceval, trans. N. Bryant as Merlin & the Grail (D. S. Brewer, 2001).
83. von Eschenbach, W. Parzival, trans. A. T. Hatto (Penguin, 1980).
84. Elucidation, trans. G. Knight and C. Matthews, in The Lost Book of the Grail (Starlight Press, 2017).
85. Didot Perceval: The Romance of Perceval in Prose, trans. D. Skeels (U of Washington Press, 1966).
86. Lancelot-Grail (formerly Vulgate Cycle): The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post Vulgate in Translation, ed. Lacy, N. J. (5 vols; Garland Publishing, 1993–1999).
87. Perlesvaus: The High Book of the Grail, trans. N. Bryant (D. S. Brewer, 1978).
88. Quest of the Holy Grail (Queste del San Graal), trans. P. M. Matarasso (Penguin, 1969).
89. Williams, C, and C. S. Lewis. Arthurian Torso (Oxford University Press, 1948).
90. Perlesvaus: The High Book of the Grail, trans. N. Bryant (D. S. Brewer, 1978).
91. Carle, J. P. Glastonbury Abbey: The Holy House at the Head of the Moors (Gothic Image, 1996).
92. de Boron, R. Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin and Perceval, trans. N. Bryant as Merlin & the Grail (D. S. Brewer, 2001).
93. Navigato Sancti Brendani Abbatis, ed. C. Selmer (Four Courts Press, 1989).
94. Evans, R. F. Pelagius: Inquiries and Reappraisals (Wipf and Stock, 2010).
95. Campbell, J. Flight of the Wild Gander (Gateway Editions, 1960).
96. Perlesvaus: The High Book of the Grail, trans. N. Bryant (D. S. Brewer, 1978).
97. Smith, A. P. The Lost Teachings of the Cathars: Their Beliefs and Practices (Duncan Baird, 2015).
98. Ibid.
99. Rahn, O. Crusade Against the Grail: The Struggle between the Cathars, the Templars, and the Church of Rome (Inner Traditions, 2010). Cf.Nigel Graddon, Otto Rahn and the Quest for the Holy Grail: The Amazing Life of the Real “Indiana Jones” (Adventures Unlimited, 2008).
100. Haag, M. Templars: History and Myth—From Solomon’s Temple to the Freemasons (Profile Books, 2009).
101. Bernard of Clairvaux, Treatise in Praise of the New Knighthood (Cistercian Pubs., 1977).
102. von Eschenbach, W. Parzival, trans. A. T. Hatto (Penguin, 1980).
103. Ibid.
104. Bernard of Clairvaux, Treatise in Praise of the New Knighthood (Cistercian Pubs., 1977).
105. Ibid.
106. Ibid.
107. Lancelot-Grail (formerly Vulgate Cycle): The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post Vulgate in Translation, ed. Lacy, N. J. (5 vols; Garland Publishing, 1993–1999).
108. Perlesvaus: The High Book of the Grail, trans. N. Bryant (D. S. Brewer, 1978).
109. Ibid
110. Ibid.
111. Campbell, J. Flight of the Wild Gander (Gateway Editions, 1960).
112. Quispel, G. Tatian and The Gospel of Thomas (E. J. Brill, 1975).