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The Grail as a Ghibelline Mystery

Here we may briefly consider the meaning that the regality of the Grail and its order had in the system of both visible and secret forces that acted during the historical period in which these romances became popular.

The becoming invisible or inaccessible of all that with which the traditions of various people have dramatized and preserved the memory of the primordial seat and tradition symbolizes the passing from the visible to the occult of a power that should nonetheless be regarded as regal. The kingdom of the Grail, in terms of a center to which, as it is stated in Wolfram von Eschenbach, the elect from all over the world are called, from which knights leave to travel to faraway lands on secret missions, and which, finally, is the “seminary” that produces kings, is the seat whence many kings are sent to various lands. No one will ever know whence these kings came and what is their race and name.¹ The sign of the inaccessible and inviolable Grail remains a reality even in the form according to which it cannot be connected to any known kingdom on earth. It is a land that will never be invaded, to which one belongs for reasons other than mere physical birth, in virtue of a dignity that is different from all other dignities and that links in an unbreakable chain men who may appear to be scattered in the world, in space and time, among various nations. In my books I have often dwelled on this traditional teaching. In such an esoteric sense, the kingdom of the Grail, just like Arthur’s, Prester John’s, Thule, Avalon, and so forth, endure forever. The words “non vivit” found in the Sibylline formula “vivit non vivit” does not refer to it. In its polar character this kingdom is immobile. It does not get closer to various points in the flow of history; rather it is the flow of history, to which men and kingdoms get more or less close.

For a certain period of time it seemed that the Ghibelline Middle Ages approximated this kingdom to a great degree. This epoch appeared to offer sufficient conditions for the “kingdom of the Grail” to turn from occult into manifest, affirming itself as a reality that is simultaneously inner and outer, in a unity of the spiritual authority and of the temporal power, just as it was in the beginning. In this way it can be said that the regality of the Grail constituted the apex of the medieval imperial myth and the highest profession of faith of the great Ghibelline movement. The regality of the Grail lived more as a climate than at a particular point in time, being expressed more through legend and fantastic or “apocalyptic” representations than through the reflected consciousness and the unilaterally political ideology of that time. This was the case for the same reason that that which in the individual being is too deep and dangerous for the waking consciousness is often expressed less in the latter’s clear forms than in symbols of dream and of subconscious spontaneity.

An in-depth understanding of the Middle Ages from this perspective would cause me to expound again the main features of that general metaphysics of Western history that I have already discussed elsewhere.² Thus, here I will only recall some points in an axiomatic form.

The inner decadence and finally the political collapse of the ancient Roman world represented the syncope of the attempt to shape the West according to the imperial symbol. The spread of Christianity, because of the particular type of dualism that it supported and because of its merely religious traditional character, rapidly led beyond the process of dissociation, up to the point at which, following the invasion of Nordic races, the medieval civilization developed and the symbol of the empire was resurrected. The Holy Roman Empire was both a restauratio and a continuatio, considering that its ultimate meaning—beyond any external appearance, compromise with contingent reality, and often limited awareness and various dignity of the individuals who represented its idea—was that of a renewal of the Roman movement toward an ecumenical “solar” synthesis. This renewal, which logically implied the overcoming of Christianity, was therefore destined to clash with the hegemonistic claims of the Church of Rome. In fact, the Church of Rome could not acknowledge the Empire as a superior principle to that which she herself embodied; at her height, and in flagrant contradiction to her evangelical premises, she attempted to usurp the Empire’s rights; thus arose the theocratic vision of Guelphism.

Overall, according to the common perception (which, as a starting point, is correct), the medieval civilization was shaped by three elements: Northernpagan, Christian, and Roman. The first played a decisive role in regard to ethics, lifestyle, and social structure. The feudal regime, the knightly morals, the civilization of the courts, the original substance that engendered the crusading spirit are inconceivable without a reference to Nordic-pagan blood and spirit. But while the races that descended upon Rome from the North should not be considered “barbarian” from this perspective (since it seems to me that they carried along values that were superior to those of a civilization that was already decayed in its principles and in its people), we can still talk of a certain barbarism, which does not mean primitivity but rather involution, in specific regard to their spiritual traditions. I have already mentioned the existence of a primordial Nordic-Hyperborean tradition. In the peoples living at the time of the invasions we can find only fragmentary echoes and obscure memories of such a tradition, which leave a wide margin to popular legends and to superstition. In any event, these memories were such that forms of a tough, warlike, and rough-hewn life prevailed over everything spiritual. The Nordic-Germanic traditions of the time, which were largely constituted by the Eddas, retained slight residues whose vital possibilities appear to have been exhausted and in which little was left of the wide scope and metaphysical tension that were proper to the great cycles of the primordial tradition.

Thus we may speak of a state of an involutive latency of the Nordic tradition. But as soon as contact with Christianity and with the symbol of Rome occurred, a different condition ensued; this contact had a galvanizing effect. In spite of everything, Christianity revived the generic sense of a supernatural transcendence. The Roman symbol offered the idea of a universal regnum, of an aeternitas carried by an imperial power. All this integrated the Nordic substance and provided superior reference points to its warrior ethos, so much as to gradually usher in one of those cycles of restoration that I have labeled “heroic” in a special sense. And so, from the type of the mere warrior the figure of the knight arose; the ancient Germanic traditions of war waged in function of Valhalla developed into the supranational epic of the “holy war” or crusade; a shift occurred from the type of the prince of a particular race to the type of the sacred and ecumenical emperor, who claimed that the principle of his power had a character and an origin no less supernatural and transcendent than that of the Church.

This true renaissance, however, this grandiose development and wonderful transformation of forces, required an ultimate reference point, a supreme center of crystallization higher than the Christian though Romanized ideal, and higher than the external and merely political idea of the Empire. This supreme point of integration was manifested precisely in the myth of the Grail’s regality, according to the intimate relation it had with the several variations of the “imperial saga.” The silent problem of the Ghibelline Middle Ages was expressed in the fundamental theme of that cycle of legends: the need for a hero of the two swords, who overcomes natural and supernatural tests, to really ask the question: the question that avenges and heals, the question that restores power to its regality.

The Middle Ages awaited the hero of the Grail, so that the head of the Holy Roman Empire could become an image or a manifestation of the Universal Ruler; so that all the forces could receive a new power; so that the Dry Tree could blossom again; so that an absolute driving force could arise to overcome any usurpation, antagonism, laceration; so that a real solar order could be formed; so that the invisible emperor could also be the manifest one; and finally, so that the “Middle Age” (medium aeveum) could also have the meaning of an “Age of the Center.”

Anyone who follows the adventures of the heroes of the Grail up to the famous question is bound to have the clear and unmistakable feeling that something, all of a sudden, prevents the author from speaking freely, and that a trivial answer is given to conceal the real one. In fact, what really matters is not so much to know what are the objects according to the Christianized fable or to the ancient Celtic and Nordic legends, but rather to feel the tragedy of the paralyzed or wounded king; once one achieves that inner realization, the symbol of which is the vision of the Grail, what matters is to assume the initiative of the absolute action that brings about a restoration. The miraculously redeeming power that is attributed to the question can be perceived as extravagant only from this perspective. To ask is the equivalent of stating the problem. After all the conditions of the earthly and spiritual knighthood have been realized and the Grail has been known, the indifference that is considered a serious fault on the part of the hero is the indifference he displays when he witnesses without questioning the spectacle of the coffin and the surviving king, who is either maimed, killed, or retaining a merely artificial semblance of life. As I have already said, the dignity of the hero of the Grail is a dignity that obliges; such is its specific, prevalent and antimystical character. Historically speaking, the kingdom of the Grail, which was supposed to be restored to even higher heights, is the Empire itself; the hero of the Grail, who would have become the “lord of all creatures,” the one who has received the “supreme power,” is the same historical emperor, Federicus, in the event he would have realized the mystery of the Grail, or would have been the one who becomes the Grail itself.

There are some texts in which such a theme is introduced in an even more immediate fashion.³ Once the chosen knight arrives at the castle, he directly addresses the king and asks in an almost brutal fashion, skipping every ceremonial form, “Where is the Grail?” meaning: “Where is the power of which you should be the representative?” Once this question is asked, a miracle ensues.

At this point fragments of ancient Atlantic, Celtic, and Nordic traditions are mixed with confused images of the Judeo-Christian religion. Avalon; Seth; Solomon; Lucifer; the stone-thunderbolt; Joseph of Arimathea; the White Island; the fish; the Lord of the Center and the symbolism of his seat; the mystery of the revenge and the deliverance; the “signs” of the Tuatha dé Danaan, who in turn are confused with the race that brought the Grail to earth—they all form a whole in which the various elements, as I have endeavored to show, reveal a logical unity to those who are capable of penetrating its essence.

For about a century and a half, the entire knightly West lived intensely the myth of the court of King Arthur and his knights seeking the Grail. It was a progressive saturation of a historical climate that shortly after was followed by an abrupt break. This awakening of a heroic tradition connected to a universal imperial idea was destined to arouse inimical forces and lead to a clash with Catholicism.

The true reason why the Church became such a staunch antagonist of the Empire was the instinctive perception of the true nature of the force gaining momentum behind the external forms of the knightly spirit and the Ghibelline ideal. Even though on the other side, among the defenders of the Empire, an adequate awareness was present only in part, because of compromises, contradictions, and indecisions of which Dante himself was not exempt, the instinct of the Church was nevertheless absolutely correct. Hence the drama of medieval Ghibellinism, of the great knightly orders, and in particular, of the Order of the Knights Templar.