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PRESENT ERA. A CIRCULAR HALL IN A SMALL COUNTRY NAMED PORTUGAL . . .

Once upon a time, the kingdom known as Portugal was called Lusitania. The name is an amalgam of lux (light) and Tanit,¹ a Phoenician lunar goddess and divine virgin equated with Isis. Her emblem is a fusion of the Egyptian symbol of eternal life—the ankh—and an isosceles triangle beneath a crescent moon.²

In its Latin form, lux tanit means “a storehouse of light” or “a place of concealment.”³ Lusitania, then, is “a place where the knowledge (light) is stored or concealed.” In the medieval legend, the Graal is described as a gold object carried on a salver, a silver tray used in a formal ceremony. It is similar to the Portuguese root word salvar (to save) from which arises the term salvation. And salvation by imbibing the knowledge contained in the Graal—the Sophia, that beautiful woman of knowledge—adequately describes the Templar quest.

In Tomar, the Templars could have named their circular “church” the rotunda. The same word exists in Portuguese, even carries the same meaning. But they did not. Instead, they named it something else—charola, an unusual choice of word to ascribe a building, for it literally translates as “a salver.”

Who would have thought it, the rotunda is the resting place for the Graal?

And by creating a kingdom within a kingdom and erecting this salver in the town whose name means “to drink,” the Templars provided a safe haven where one could imbibe the Graal, through a secret ritual, to experience that ultimate of journeys: the discovery of the nature of reality and the self, a timeless experience once given its own unique symbol, the cup of everlasting life.

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