3

Concerning the Traditional Method

What still needs to be overcome is the tendency to derive the fundamental themes of the Grail and of the imperial myth solely from a particular historical movement, by supposing an external, casual, and empirical transmission. According to a widespread opinion, the Grail is essentially a Christian legend. Some have instead hypothesized a Celtic-pagan origin;¹ others favor an Indo-Chinese origin;² still others argue for a Syrian origin;³ and some have made references to alchemy.⁴ On another plane, not only has the Grail been associated with the doctrines of the Cathars and the ancient Persians, but some have even attempted to identify characters and historical locations described in the legend (France, according to some, Iran, according to others).

No matter how legitimate these comparisons may be, what is significant is the spirit in which they are drawn. The characteristic feature of the method that I call “traditional” (in opposition to the profane, empirical, and critical-intellectual method of modern research), consists in emphasizing the universal character of a symbol or teaching, and in relating it to corresponding symbols found in other traditions, thus establishing the presence of something that is both superior and antecedent to each of these formulations, which are different from and yet equivalent to each other. Since any one tradition may have given to a common meaning a more complete, typical, and transparent expression than have the others, seeking to establish correspondences is consequently one of the most fruitful ways to understand and integrate what in other cases is found in a more obscure or fragmentary form.

Although this is the method I intend to follow, it is not the one favored by most modern scholars. First of all, these scholars establish not true correspondences but opaque derivations. In other words, they investigate the empirical and always uncertain circumstance of the material transmission of certain ideas or legends from one people to another, or from one literature to another, thus ignoring that wherever we find at work influences characteristic of a plane deeper than that of a merely individual conscience, a correspondence and a transmission may take place also through nonordinary ways, that is, without specific temporal and spatial conditions and without external historical contacts. Second and foremost, every comparison in such modern research ends up becoming a shifting rather than a widening of perspective. For instance, when a scholar discovers the correspondence of some themes of the legend of the Grail with other themes found, say, in the Persian tradition, this is regarded by him as a “research into the original sources”; the end result is that he will proudly announce to the world, “The Grail is a Persian symbol!” The new reference does not help him to clarify one tradition through another or to understand one tradition through the universal, metaphysical, and suprahistorical element that may be more visible in a corresponding symbol formulated in another tradition. In other words, this amounts to a random shift of perspective in a two-dimensional model. It is not research into that vantage point that, more than others, may help to lead one from the two superficial dimensions to the third dimension, namely, depth, which may act as a conduit or as an ordering center for all the other data.

At this point I wish to make a further clarification concerning attempts to interpret the Grail in terms of historical figures and situations, considering that such attempts have also been made in other legends that have important connections with the Grail (e.g., those of King Arthur and Prester John).

Generally speaking, in these attempts we detect the so-called euhemeristic tendency, which has been taken up by modern scholars because of their irresistible impulse to reduce the superior to the inferior whenever possible. According to modern scholars, the figures found in myths and legends are merely abstract sublimations of historical figures, which have eventually replaced the latter and become myths and fantastic tales. On the contrary, the opposite is true: there are realities of a superior, archetypal order, which are shadowed in various ways by symbols and myths. It may happen that in the course of history, certain structures or personalities will embody these realities. When this happens, history and superhistory intersect and integrate each other; human fantasy may then instinctively attribute the traits of myth to those characters and structures because reality has somehow become symbolic and symbol has become reality. In these cases, the euhemeristic interpretation totally subverts the true relationships. Here myth constitutes the primary element and should be regarded as the starting point, while the historical figure or datum is only one of the various contingent and conditioned expressions of this superior order of things.

Elsewhere I have indicated the true sense of the apparently absurd and arbitrary relationships that certain legends have established between different historical figures. These relationships were established even though these figures, while lacking any historical common factor in space and time, were obscurely perceived to be equivalent manifestations of a single principle or function. The reason behind some genealogies, which are apparently not any less extravagant, is also analogous: a legendary lineage expresses figuratively a spiritual continuity, which may be real even without a biological continuity in space and time. The genealogies of the kings of the Grail, Lohengrin, Arthur, Prester John, Helias, and others should be regarded essentially in this fashion. Moreover, it is precisely such ideal situations, which proceed from the abovementioned interaction between history and superhistory, that give us the fundamental key to understand the genesis and the meaning of the legend of the Grail and of those elements in it that lead back not only to the suprahistorical idea of the Empire but also to one of its particular manifestations in the Western medieval world.