The Holy Grail! Most people think they know a certain amount about it, even if their only exposure to the legends of the Grail come from watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail and some forgettable film or other starring Harrison Ford. You can check this by asking a dozen of your friends to tell you everything they remember about the Holy Grail. Unless they’re serious geeks, or simply know nothing at all about the subject, most of them will tell you that it was supposed to be the cup that Jesus of Nazareth used at the Last Supper, that King Arthur’s knights went looking for it, and wasn’t there something about a rabbit with nasty vicious teeth? One or two of them might recall that Sir Galahad had something to do with the Grail, and so did the castle of Caer Bannog—or was that the rabbit again?
If this is what comes to your mind when you think of the Grail—well, setting aside the dreaded Rabbit of Caer Bannog—you’ve just demonstrated the enduring effect of medieval spin doctors. Yes, spin doctoring goes back to the Middle Ages, and quite a bit further still, in fact. The version of the Grail legend whose last dim echoes cling to most minds these days is the result of the work of some capable medieval practitioners of that dubious art. It has almost nothing in common with the oldest surviving forms of the legend. There were solid reasons for that, which we’ll discover as we proceed with a quest of our own.
That quest begins with Chrétien de Troyes, a French poet of the twelfth century. He’s the author of the first surviving Grail story, Perceval, ou la Conte du Graal, which was written sometime around 1190. Chrétien had already written four other Arthurian stories, all of them bestsellers by the standards of the time, and helped kickstart the fad for Arthurian romances that played so huge a role in shaping the imagination of the Middle Ages. He claimed that he got the story of Perceval from a book lent to him by one of his noble patrons—a claim which, weirdly, most modern scholars dismiss out of hand.
The story Chrétien told is a very strange one. It begins with a young man raised in the forest by his widowed mother, in complete ignorance of his heritage. He meets a group of knights riding by, and mistakes them for angels; once this is cleared up, he decides that he wants to become a knight, and goes off to have adventures, abandoning his mother, who dies of grief. After a visit to King Arthur’s court and an assortment of other adventures, he comes to the castle of the enigmatic Fisher King, who is wounded and cannot heal. There he sees a curious spectacle: a procession in which, flanked by candles, a bloody spear and a grail are carried past. Having been told that it’s rude to ask too many questions, he doesn’t ask the Fisher King about this.
He spends the night in the castle, and wakes the next morning to find it empty. Later, a strange and supremely ugly maiden tells him that if he had asked about the grail, the Fisher King would have been healed of his wound. She also tells the young man his own name, Perceval, which she knows but he does not. Perceval then vows to find the castle of the Fisher King again and ask the question, and rides off to another set of adventures…
…and it was at this point that Chrétien de Troyes died, leaving the story unfinished. Nobody knows how he meant to end it.
Let’s note something before going on. The word “grail,” graal in the original, was a provincial French word for the kind of broad flat dish that was used to serve a large fish at a medieval banquet. The grail, in other words, wasn’t originally a cup at all: it was a platter. Nor did Chrétien call it the Holy Grail; he refers to it, rather, as the rich grail.
Chrétien’s story was wildly popular. Three other writers of the time wrote their versions of what came next in the story; their three Continuations, as these are called, soon got mixed up with the original. Another author, Robert de Boron, wrote his own version of the whole legend, which brought in the Christian element; in his three books, Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, and Perceval, the grail became the platter (not the cup) that Jesus used at the Last Supper, and a great deal of theology found its way into the story.
Then there was the version that bears most directly on our quest, Parzival, which was written around 1210 by Wolfram von Eschenbach and ranks as one of the supreme masterpieces of medieval German literature. Wolfram also claimed to have gotten the story from a book—once again, weirdly, modern scholars dismiss this claim out of hand—but it’s a different story from Chrétien’s, in crucial ways. Wolfram’s Grail is a stone, not a platter; he describes it as “the longing for paradise,” and explains that it has a name: lapsit exillas. We’ll get to that shortly.
Between them, Robert de Boron and Wolfram von Eschenbach threw open the floodgates. Grail legends accordingly surged across the European landscape during the half century that followed. The earlier ones, published before 1225 or so, had certain things in common. They had Perceval (or Parzival, or Percival, or Perlesvaus, or some other version of the same name) for their hero; they included some version of the strange ceremony at the Fisher King’s castle; and in nearly all of them, the Grail is associated with secrets of a religious nature. Those secrets may be holy names or mysterious prayers or simply “the mystery of the Grail,” but it’s stressed over and over again that these are profound and frightening secrets of deep importance, and they have to do with the essential themes of Christian faith.
To anybody in the medieval Western world, those hints and warnings could have only one meaning: heresy. Which heresy is no secret, either, because Wolfram gives the game away. The only reason that this isn’t recognized is that modern scholars have engaged in the most spectacular contortions to avoid talking about the obvious meaning of that phrase lapsit exillas. I’ve seen it interpreted as lapis exilis, “stone of exile;” as lapis ex caelis, “stone from heaven;” as lapis elixir, “elixir stone;” and any number of other equally improbable ways. (I don’t know of anyone who’s interpreted it as Lapsang Souchong and announced that the Grail was really a teapot, but equally absurd arguments have been made.)
What makes this fascinating is that lapsit exillas has a straightforward Latin meaning. Lapsit is a standard poetic contraction of lapsavit, “he, she, or it fell.” Exillas is two words, ex illas, “from among them,” and as anybody with even a basic familiarity with Latin knows, ille and its derivatives have an honorific force. “From among Them” catches some of the flavor.
The name of the Grail, then, is “She fell from among Them.” We’re talking about Gnosticism, of course. The central Gnostic myth tells of how Sophia, Wisdom, the last emanated of the divine Aeons, fell from the world of light through her desire for independent creation, and by that act brought into being the fallen world we live in. Her fall, her repentance, and the redemption through wisdom she offers to the sparks of divine light that fell with her into material existence: these sum up the narrative structure of Gnosticism.
Nor was Gnosticism anything like an unfamiliar concept at the time. The years between 1190 and 1250, when the first great wave of Grail legends were written, were also the heyday of the Cathar heresy, a rival to established Christianity that came within an ace or two of displacing the official church in much of France and significant parts of Spain and Italy as well. The Cathars, called Albigensians (“those people from Albi”) by the church, were Gnostics, and their apogee marked the last great flowering of the Gnostic faith before modern times. It’s a matter of historical record that the Inquisition was created to exterminate the Cathars, and only turned to other victims once the Cathars (and half the population of southern France with them) had been wiped off the face of the earth.
It’s at this point that the spin doctors become relevant. They were monks, most of them, writing in a handful of monasteries in France and England, and their creation was the version of the Grail legend that most people in the English-speaking world remember today. They got rid of Perceval as quickly as they could—he was married when he found the Grail, after all, and we can’t have that!—and replaced him with a newly invented knight, Galahad.
Some of my readers may be familiar with the term “Mary Sue.” For those who aren’t, this is the standard term among writers for a fictional character who exists solely to act out the author’s wish-fulfillment fantasies. (I’ve heard the term “Marty Stu” used sometimes for the masculine equivalent, which is just as common, but I prefer to avoid assuming Mary Sue’s gender and use the original for both sexes.) Mary Sues as main characters make for a very specific kind of fiction, utterly compelling to readers who share the authors’ insecurities and fantasies, utterly unbearable to those who don’t. This makes them tolerably useful, in that you can very often use the response to a given Mary Sue to tell quite a bit about the person who responds.
Galahad’s a great example of this. He’s the supreme Mary Sue of the Christian mystic. All the Christian mystics I’ve ever met think he’s wonderful, and wish they were more like him. Everyone else thinks he’s an insufferable prig. He drips purity out of every pore, and this makes him invincible in combat. He shows up at King Arthur’s court, proves that he’s destined to find the Grail by sitting in the Perilous Seat that’s swallowed up every other claimant, gallops off at top speed to find the Grail, promptly finds it, drops dead on the spot in an odor of sanctity so strong it’s practically a stench, and is wafted straight to Heaven by a gaggle of angels.
Then the Grail, which in these stories is of course the cup of the Last Supper and the chalice of the Mass, is hauled away to heaven as well, so don’t you even think of looking for it, you naughty heretics! The mysterious ceremony at the Fisher King’s castle vanishes without a trace, too, replaced by the standard Catholic Mass. It’s a very efficient transformation of a once-threatening narrative, and it makes for a good lively story, at least if you can stand Galahad. Interestingly, the spin doctoring continues in certain circles; you can find any number of recent Christian mystics who insist that the Galahad version of the story is the only one that matters.
Richard Wagner, to circle back to our theme, was not a Christian mystic. His attitude toward Christian mysticism can be gauged quite precisely from the fact that Galahad appears nowhere in his version of the Grail story, which he duly named Parsifal after its main character. Wolfram von Eschenbach was his main source, but he was clearly aware of the whole trajectory of the Grail story, and drew on multiple versions for his own purposes. In a certain sense, Wagner’s Parsifal was also a Mary Sue, but his Mary Sueness was handled much more deftly than Galahad’s, and it also applies to dimensions of human experience much more commonly encountered than the travails of the devout Christian mystic. We’ll get to that as we proceed.
Yet the Grail also has a distinctive role in Wagner’s artistic cosmos, and it’s one that builds on the themes we’ve been discussing all through this sequence of posts. Two weeks ago we talked about the way that in Wagner’s view, the archaic mythic image of the sun-treasure got split apart in recent centuries, divided like so much else in our sundered world into sacred and secular halves. The secular half of the sun-treasure archetype ended up attached to money, that system of arbitrary tokens we use to manage the exchange of goods and services in modern societies. That archetypal force, Wagner held, goes a long way to explain the immense and irrational magnetism that money exerts on the modern psyche.
There’s also the sacred side of the division, however. Here Wagner was just as explicit: he argued that the sacred dimensions of the archaic sun-treasure ended up concentrated, in the imagination of the Western world, in the legends of the Holy Grail. It’s an intriguing suggestion, but to make sense of it we’ll have to take a closer look at the division itself.
Most societies around the world and throughout history haven’t drawn a hard and fast line between the sacred and the secular. The two interpenetrate so completely that many of the world’s languages have no word for “religion.” This isn’t because there’s a shortage of activities of the kind we call “religious.” It’s because the people who speak these languages had no need to separate them out from all other human activities.
In English, to point up a comparable situation, we have no general word for “activities done in response to the weather.” We open umbrellas, put on or take off sweaters, dive into swimming pools, turn up the heat or the air conditioning, and do quite a few other things to respond to the weather, but we don’t set them apart from all our other activities and assign a special word to them. In the same way, people who speak the languages we’re discussing say prayers, make offerings, learn and repeat sacred stories, and do most or all of the other things that we call “religious,” but they don’t set them apart from their other activities and have a general word for “activities done in response to the gods.”
There’s actually a straightforward reason for the evolution of that category in our society. It’s an act of collective self-preservation. It so happens that the religious specialists in most other cultures don’t claim infallible access to the will of the Divine. Ours do—and this is just as true of Protestant clergy who insist on the infallibility of the Bible as it is of Catholic clergy who insist on the infallibility of the Pope. It so happens that religious specialists also tend to be sources of very bad advice about subjects outside the realm of faith and morals, and this hasn’t kept them from offering such advice and claiming infallibility for it—and here again, this is as true of the Bible as it is of the Pope.
Thus in the Western world we’ve carved out a special category of “things that religious specialists are allowed to monkey with,” which we call “religion.” Until our religious specialists finally get around to noticing that they have no more business handing down edicts about geology or economics than geologists or economists have handing down edicts about theology, that division will probably have to remain in place as a matter of sheer survival. All this, in turn, serves as background for Wagner’s insight.
He was right, of course, that the legends of the Grail emerged in Europe around the time that European religious specialists started to claim the right to tell everyone else what to do about everything, and he was also right that the division between the two sides of the ancient sun-treasure widened as the claims of religious specialists became more extreme. It’s interesting to note, though, the divergent trajectories of the divided treasure. As money came to dominate the collective imagination of the Western world, the Grail faded from sight—and not only the Grail.
All the old mythic images stole away from the increasingly glaring light of the conscious mind and found new homes in the darkness, where they could exercise their power unnoticed. This didn’t decrease their power, quite the contrary: it’s the mythic image you don’t recognize and therefore can’t take into account consciously that has the most power over your mind. Thus one great advantage of being mythologically literate is that you can choose the narratives you use to understand the world, instead of letting the old mythic patterns play merry hob with your mind in ways you can’t anticipate or even perceive.
Thus it’s inaccurate to see the Grail as a counterbalance to money, a sacred image holding the balance vis-a-vis the secularized image of money. Money exercises the whole emotional and imaginative force of the ancient sun-treasure. It’s just that it does so in a covert way, slipping through the crawlspaces of the Western mind to twist our thinking into its own shape. Most people accordingly go through their whole lives without ever noticing that they’re stumbling through the trajectory of an archaic myth, seeking a Grail that they’re destined never to find, because they can’t get the clarity they would need to ask the right question at the right time.
What makes the Grail legend important in Wagner’s mature thought is not what it is, but what it could be. He saw the Grail—or rather a galaxy of ideas and insights that rotated around the old image of the Grail—as a potential answer to the dreadful conundrum posed by The Twilight of the Gods, the riddle that brought him to the brink of suicide and drove George Bernard Shaw to betray everything he once believed in. Is it possible to get the Ring back to the bottom of the Rhine without burning the world down in the process? In less mythic language, is it possible to break the spell of commodification by any means short of the decline and fall of civilization and the coming of a new dark age?
Wagner thought that there might be. In the final installments of this series of posts, we’ll consider the option that he proposed in his last opera.
Wasn’t that what Kane went looking for in the swamp of the toadmen? Oh, wait, that was the bloodstone. And it was on a ring too, go figure.
The Grail was a platter subject to spin doctoring? That’s quite appropriate since metal spinning is the art of turning a sheet of metal into a pot or bowl. It’s quite capable of turning a platter into a cup.
The curious can look up metal spinning on YouTube.
Dear sir, I protest your remark about the glorious third Indiana Jones movie! It has won a special place in my heart from when I first watched it as a boy. And so long as I live it shall not be forgotten!
Thinking about it now. It would be a nice touch to watch it again. I have not seen it in more then a decade, so it might be nice to see how much it aged. And how much it aged for me.
Just thinking about it, even without today’s essay, it has some silly tests of character, and the grail must have unrealistic “wash away gunshot wounds” healing powers.
I wonder how I would react watching it again today…
Equating it with gnostics, that, wow. It makes so much sense.
To think about it, the grail featured prominently in my youth. There were movies, books, murals, frescoes and even video games where it featured (not as a cup, but something hidden. Of course there was a treasure map). It always had an appeal, I just could not understand it. Maybe, for me, it acted as a gateway drug.
I wonder how damaging all the spin doctoring is on the average western psyche. But reading this, imagining myself as a dr. Jones Senior while my son comes to my study, where I am reading my books seeking gnosis. That is a nice image. Although I admit, I might divination from the image a bit and go spend some time with my kid. 🙂
To think of it, Owen Merrill makes a better dr. jones senior. 🙂
Speaking of religion, the people on Anarres call it the “religious mode”, which I guess was in the analogic philosophy of Odo. But that speaks to this separation you’ve delineated that causes such a hang up for so many people in the West.
Infallibility has the word fall in it. Something about fall from grace, fallen world, the fall of man, seems to a particular item of obsession.
“Galahad’s a great example of this. He’s the supreme Mary Sue of the Christian mystic.”
This somehow never clicked with me before, but it’s pretty obvious once you point it out.
This may sound silly, but the relationship between Percival and Galahad reminds me a lot of that between Grover and Elmo on Sesame Street: in the mid-1980’s, the young, innocent, and absolutely annoying (though YMMV) Elmo, whose main gimmick is talking in third person because of his youth and naivete, increasingly replaced the much more clever, versatile, and funny Grover, whose convoluted antics might annoy the other characters or even himself but never the viewer.
“Mary Sues as main characters make for a very specific kind of fiction, utterly compelling to readers who share the authors’ insecurities and fantasies, utterly unbearable to those who don’t. This makes them tolerably useful, in that you can very often use the response to a given Mary Sue to tell quite a bit about the person who responds.”
You answered a question I’ve been asking myself for years. Why is it that, in the Isekai genre (the Japanese genre that involves some socially inept NEET getting hit by a truck and whisked away to a D&D style fantasy land via reincarnation with his memories intact), most characters are Mary Sues?
In most cases (except the parodies), the main characters are gifted with powers so beyond the world into which they are reincarnated that they effortlessly go through life defeating enemies and acquiring fortune, fame and women. It’s “utterly unbearable” to read or watch.
Your Galahad example picture immediately reminded me of similar neutral example pictures of Joan D’Arc. And that seemed even more apropos while reading Kimberley Steele’s latest “Etheric Yin and Yang” post. It got me wondering if I’m being overly influenced by current affairs or if maybe the original authors were hinting that Galahad had a secret. Gotta go dig up Ravenscroft’s grail/blood books and see if he might have suggested that. Suddenly also wondering if he was of Druidic persuasion.
Justin, ha! And here I figured that was one more incident in the history of the Ring of Eibon.
Siliconguy, okay, that’s funny. Thank you.
Marko, no accounting for taste, I suppose. 😉 Thank you, though — I hadn’t imagined Owen Merrill played by Sean Connery.
Justin, even thinking of it as a distinctive mode is, I think, very Western. Would the analogic philosophy of Odo include a meteorological mode?
Slithy, I never watched Sesame Street, but from your comments, yeah, it sounds similar.
Dennis, I wasn’t aware of that, but yeah, it’s a good example.
Oldguytoo, nah, it’s precisely that Galahad doesn’t have a secret. He’s a manufactured attempt to insist that there’s no secret to be had.
I’m having trouble following the part about the vanishing image. The old image of the treasure was split into two portions, the secular and the sacred. The sacred gradually faded from view… and afterwards, all of the treasure’s power over people’s souls was concentrated in the secular image of money. Or in other words, if we skip past the stage in which two portions exist separately, the spiritual dimension of the treasure has become invisible, but the treasure remained as compelling as if its still-visible secular portion still had spiritual as well as material value, although those who desire it may struggle to recognise that their desire for it is not merely “economically rational”?
Whereas Wagner sought to find and reclaim the sacred portion of the treasure, drawing this power away from money towards this other image?
Do I have this right?
Suggested reading – Phyllis Ann Karr’s “Idylls of the Queen”, a meaningful and hilarious take on the Round Table from the viewpoint of Sir Kay, Arthur’s sarcastic and cynical seneschal. It’s also a murder mystery taken straight from Mallory. A lot of depth to it and eminently readable, and as a take on the Grail Quest and the Fisher King, on Morgan Le Fay, et. al, ties in quite nicely with this topic. Ace Books 1982, mass market pb.
Excellent essay JMG. This series is building up to a great conclusion!
I took a deep dive into the primary sources on the Grail legends a few years ago and I recommend this book, which compiles all of the manuscripts, including the three continuations: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-complete-story-of-the-grail-chretien-de-troyes-perceval-and-its-continuations-nigel-bryant/11847844?ean=9781843844983&next=t
I’m still fairly ignorant about Gnosticism, and it is time to change that. My sense is that there is a lot of nonsense written about it, and it probably takes reading a number of sources to get a decent overview. What, in your view, are the best 2-3 books to start with to get an overview on Gnosticism?
Good point.
Maybe when I have shifted from Phrygian to Mixolydian I will have a better idea. Better yet if I go to Bhrupali.
Thank you for another lucid and engaging essay, JMG. You have me on the edge of my seat waiting for the next installment.
On the subject of spin doctoring, in “The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain,” Lewis Spence had a similar take on the transformations applied to the Celtic pagan sources of the Grail myth by the likes of Chrétien de Troyes, Robert de Borron, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and others.
In the older Celtic tales, the grail was alternately a cauldron, a dish, or a stone, but not a cup. Spence wrote a blistering indictment of the French and German spin doctors in his forthright Scottish style: “A good deal of nonsense has been written concerning the profundity of the Christian mysticism which inspires the Grail legend, and there can be little doubt that Tennyson, Richard Wagner and others are responsible for much of the pious glamor which hangs about it…. The pious folk who transformed the Grail legend into a Christian tradition caparisoned it with the trappings of Christian myth at a period when that was inspired by the most grovelling and absurd superstitions….”
Carl Jung’s interest in the grail legends, alchemy and gnosticism and are well documented. His lifetime of work circumambulates the idea of the Self, of which the grail, the stone, and the light of Wisdom (Sophia) are all images. He believed that humanity is confronted with the threat of a long fall into darkness unless we are able to, as you put it, “break the spell.”
As I see it, finding answers to the right questions is essential to fulfilling the central quest of our time.
I’m grateful for your presence.
Chalice versus a platter? Well, the platter that plays a part in Christianity would be the one that bore John the Baptist’s head, wouldn’t it? And a platter lacks the sexual dimension of a chalice, as the chalice is often placed near a sword. Not so with a platter.
I read Wolfram’s “Parsifal” back in the day, quite a few years ago. The part that stuck with me was his relationship with his mom, who dressed him in ridiculous clothes so he’d never become a knight, that is to say become a man. I remembered the ugly bargain bin clothes my mom used to buy for me, and that she seemed to want to discourage me from going out with girls. Although it never set me upon a grail quest, I do think Wolfram was psychologically astute about it.
The question Parsifal failed to ask has always puzzled me: How was he to know? Is this the “overwhelming question to which T.S. Eliot refers? A matter of ripeness, perhaps.
I don’t know if anyone else sees it, but your fonts ran wild!
They settled down after a while; I guess you got them under control.
@JMG #8
No argument about Galahad’s boring perfection vs. Parsifal’s interesting innocent mistakes, but was Galahad being Lancelot’s bastard a later addition and not a secret? Thanks, Drew C
A note on the Latin: according to what I was taught in school, the preposition ‘ex’ is always used with the ablative case. So ‘from among them’ would be ‘ex illis’.
‘Illas’ is in the accusative case, which takes the pronoun ‘ad’. ‘Ad illas’ would translate as ‘into their [feminine] midst’. Unless ‘ex illas’ was a common medieval (mis)usage, it makes less sense grammatically than the other interpretations you mention.
BUT if we allow the hypothesis that ‘exillas’ is a medieval misspelling of the adjective ‘exilis’ (thin, small, meagre, poor, feeble), ‘lapsit exilis’ could be translated as ‘The Poor Fallen One’, which would fit the divine Sophia pretty well. (And it reminds me of the first of the Beatitudes: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’)
‘Lapis exilis’ is also still a contender in my opinion, since ‘Worthless Stone’ is one way of referring to the common, everyday consciousness that the alchemists were toiling to transmute into the gold of enlightened consciousness. (Which reminds me of Christ saying that ‘the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’ – Matthew 21:42).
That is, the Grail is all around you and within you, waiting for your holy inquisitiveness to work upon it and transform it into something precious and mighty, as the simple fish platter was able to become ‘the rich grail’ that held within it the Ichtus or healing spirit of Christ.
Either way, it seems likely that Chretien was working hard to play to both his Christian and his Gnostic readers. I’d never made the Gnostic connection explicitly before, but I think you’re right that it fits the historical context rather well. Just please have mercy on us poor fallen Latin scholars whose noses have such trouble rising out of our dictionaries 🙂
I’ve long had the thought that I look forward to Wednesdays as an equivalent day to Sundays, a day of sermon. This weeks post reminds me exactly why. So many layers of meaning are wrapped up in this post, touching on our every day lives to the situation going on with the decline of the Western Empire to the possible futures we can lay seeds and work for. Thanks for continuing to provide this sacred space of sanity and finding ones center no matter what else is going on within and around us.
We’ve had 2000 Years of Priesthood And the World Is Getting Worse
Not sure where this is all going but these things seem like important clues.
The Fisher King – Is this Jesus The King of Kings and Fisher of men, who died because of a spear to the side (while being crucified)?
Is Perceval who was raised by his mother in the wilderness the son of the Fisher King?
(like how Perseus is the son of Zeus?)
Why does Sophia’s story have so much in common with Lucifer’s story?
( Does the path back to the Divine start with renunciation of arrogance, just as the beginning of wisdom starts with the recognition of your ignorance?)
Spear and Grail are pretty obviously male and female, but not sure how platter works in that metaphor.
And how this relates to getting the gold back to the Rhine maidens ??? ( I will just have to wait for the next installment. Lol)
“…the Inquisition was created to exterminate the Cathars, and only turned to other victims once the Cathars … had been wiped off the face of the earth” So the Inquisition was subject to Shirky’s Law? ;{)(https://www.ecosophia.net/a-neglected-factor-in-the-fall-of-civilizations/)
I’m not very familiar with the Percival myth, but from your description, it smells suspiciously like the ancient mysteries, especially the hero cult versions of them. (Percival seems rather reminiscent of Perseus in general; Odysseus’s mother died of grief after he set out on adventures and he abandoned a comrade with a wound which would never heal, too; etc.)
Do you know of a good English version of the early form of Percival myth? I’d be curious to add it to my list of mysteries to study…
I think it was sometime during the Lebanese Civil War that I saw a news photo of a fighter identified as Druse wearing a t-shirt with the motto “Kill Them All, God will Sort Them Out” or it may have been “. . . Let God Sort Them Out.” Needless to say, I was struck by the irony.
Rita
Daniil, yes, that’s what I was trying to suggest.
Patricia M, hmm! I’ll consider that.
Samurai_47, I hadn’t seen that complete version yet, and will have to pick up a copy. In terms of Gnosticism, Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels is still the most widely recommended introductory book; after that, I recommend Bentley Layton’s The Gnostic Scriptures for a fine deep dive into the original texts.
Justin, then there are the Umbrellian, Galoshian, and Just-Plain-Soaked-To-The-Skinnian modes!
Goldenhawk, thank you! Yes, that’s classic Spence. He was among other things reacting to the writings of A.E. Waite, who wrote two long dull books trying with all his might to define the Galahad version of the story as the only one that counts and sweeping everything other than orthodox Christianity under every available rug.
Phutatorius, Wolfram is very psychologically astute — he’s constantly doing things like this. As for the question, it’s quite common in certain initiation rituals for the candidate to be refused on a first try due to not being able to answer a question correctly; he’s then taken around a few more times, taught some things, and then returns to the chief officer of the lodge, gives the right answer, and gets the secrets of the degree. This is one of the things that led Jessie Weston to see the Grail legend as a veiled narrative from an initiation ritual.
Teresa, there’s something funny going on with the interface between my writing program and the blog. I’ll see what I can do about it.
Drew, it was never a secret. The people who invented Galahad made him Lancelot’s illegitimate son from the beginning, and splashed it all over the stories.
Dylan, so noted! I’ll look at garblings of ille in medieval sources.
Prizm, you’re most welcome and thank you.
Justin, yes, exactly.
Dobbs, you’ll certainly have to wait for the next installment, or more precisely the next couple of installments. The Fisher King in the legends is usually an older relative of Parsifal, but the echoes of Christian legend are of course deliberate; the parallels between the stories of Sophia and Lucifer are relevant, but note that Sophia repented; and the platter (or shield) pairs with the sword, as the cup pairs with the spear. Not all polarities are sexual!
Roldy, good. Yes, exactly — having made the mistake of wiping out their primary quarry, the Inquisition then had to find somebody else to hunt down, torture, and kill. Other heretics were one option, Jews were another, but they didn’t really hit their stride again until the witch panics took off.
SDI, good. You might want to read Jessie Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, which makes exactly this argument about the Mysteries, and my book The Ceremony of the Grail, which updates and expands on her thesis. Both Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival are readily available in English translation, and those are good places to start looking into the older version of the tale.
Rita, unfortunately that’s a way of thinking that all the Abrahamic religions fall into from time to time.
“All the old mythic images stole away from the increasingly glaring light of the conscious mind and found new homes in the darkness, where they could exercise their power unnoticed. This didn’t decrease their power, quite the contrary: it’s the mythic image you don’t recognize and therefore can’t take into account consciously that has the most power over your mind. Thus one great advantage of being mythologically literate is that you can choose the narratives you use to understand the world, instead of letting the old mythic patterns play merry hob with your mind in ways you can’t anticipate or even perceive”
Reminds me of:
“Therefore it is that you, small as you are, have your affinities with these Cosmic Beings and are influenced by their phases from the Absolute down to the atom of your own Earth, which is the Secret Wisdom. For the uninitiated man is acted upon by these forces, but the initiate, by his knowledge, escapes from their influence and uses them for his own ends.” – Cosmic Doctrine, ch 5
There seems to be something cultural with men in their early 20s where they’re more susceptible to Mary Sue literature. Maybe it has something to do with the birth at the mental sheath around 21. There’s a sort of delusional (and maybe Faustian) disregard for limits – “Let’s start a business and get rich!”. This is probably why The Kingkiller Chronicle is so popular. The main character is a total Mary Sue. I’m embarrassed to admit I really liked the series some years ago; now I look on it with wry amusement, although I’ll probably finish the the final book if it is every written. Anyway, this lack of wisdom among coming of age men seems like a lever that could be pressed magically or culturally. The closest thing I can think of right now are those conservative organizations for young people, although those come hand in hand with Christianity. I sure would have liked some coming of age initiation into a usefull way of being besides being legally allowed to buy alcohol. Maybe the natural course of things will take care of it.
Thanks for the essay! Wolfram von Eschenbach probably didn’t speak Latin himself. I mention that because “ex illas” does not exist. It would be “ex illis”.
Otherwise very interesting. Many people do seem to chase a mirage of wealth or even “independent wealth” without ever getting closer, leaving other, more important goals by the roadside.
“Kill them all, God will know his own” – I’ve never understood that attitude. It always seemed to me that you would want to keep the heretics alive as long as possible; after all, God created them and presumably wants them in heaven, so if you cut off that possibility you’re going to be held responsible for sending them to hell.
Perhaps it is just me being blinded by the narratives told from Abrahamic religions, but I can’t see how the ring can be returned without some sort of sacrifice on our behalf. People are so caught up in money, it’s hard to imagine enough people being persuaded to willingly sacrifice money, whether that be to charity or through volunteering, or other avenues.
That being said, the Covid experience did seem to encourage many to get out of the money economy and find other ways of sharing value. While the situation may prove chaotic to some extent, there is hope that it doesn’t have to be a complete upheavel, a Ragnarok or Apocalypse. Just something really close ….
I had never heard of the Story of Sophia before. I LOVE IT! We live in such Luciferian times or so i have been thinking. But what if i am wrong what if we are at the beginning of Sophia’s story rather than stuck in Lucifer’s hell.? Yeah sure we have a long hard path in front of us after we reject our hubris and arrogance. The fact that hubris and arrogance is not really working out for us makes rejecting it seems like a reasonable thing to do.
Leaving Lucifer
Seeking Sophia
Is my path forward
Hi John Michael,
Right, let’s see whether I’m getting these lessons right. Here goes:
1) Avoid Killer Rabbits and Shrubberies – death + expense;
2) Don’t attempt direct contact with deities lest the tried and true keepers become obstreperous – death;
3) Extreme personalities exhibiting equal parts: excellence; arrogance; and hubris – death (although just between you and I, I’d brave the dangers of Castle Anthrax);
4) Claims to infallibility – probably spiritual death; and
5) Disregard of entropy – foolish.
How’s my score? 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Are we going to learn more about the mysterious book, or books, used by de Troyes and von Eschenbach?
Are we in for a discussion of Eliot, perhaps my least favorite of major poets?
JMG and commentariat–
There are echoes of many themes here. Trying to prevent a son from going to war is found in the stories of the Trojan war with Thetis hiding Achilles among the women’s quarters of a friendly king.
At least one source I read while studying Arthurian fiction said that the question that Percival should have asked the Fisher King was “What ails thee, Uncle.” in other words a normal expression of concern for someone who is obviously in pain.
I wonder whether anyone in the time of Henry VIII associated his leg wound that would not heal with the myth of the Fisher King. Probably not publicly since it would have implied that the kingdom was suffering–not flattering to the ego of a ruler.
In reference to the Inquisition, it is important to remember that there was not one unified Inquisition. The crusade against the Albigensians was one. The Spanish Inquisition was directed against Jews and Moors who had converted to Christianity when the Moors were driven out but were suspected of secretly continuing to practice Judaism or Islam. The Roman Inquisition functioned only in Papal Territories (which extended into parts of Switzerland). The ruler of a territory had to invite an Inquisition, and you may note that no ruler of England ever did so. Those interested in the workings of the Roman Inquisition may find interesting material in _Witchcraft and the Papacy: an Account Drawing on the Formerly Secret Records of the Roman Inquisition_ by Rainer Decker. The Vatican opened some files to scholars a couple of decades ago. Unfortunately for historians Napolean stole many records from the Vatican when he conquered Italy, later promised to return them but never did and no one knows what happened to them.
Rita
Wow. This is very interesting. It has made me eager to read the original from Chretien de Troyes!
About the Crusade, when i was at Albi, i was told it was Bernat of Claravall who, while on a mission in 1145, was aparently scared to the marrow by the strength, establishment and maturity that Catharism was gaining in Occitanie, and wrote to the Pope and raised the alarm, giving Albi only as an example of what was going on on the whole region.
After all, Catharism put down strong roots not only among the peasantry, but among nobles as well, That’s why the Crusade turned out to be so succesful in it’s aftermath: It allowed and gave a pretext for a complete anexation, with almost all noble families in Occitanie wiped out and replaced by Normand lineages.
Unfortunately for the Cathars, Simon of Montfort turned out to be a very good leader, bold yet meticulous, who took the Castles in the region one by one, and defeated the Catalan king at Muret.
Guillem.
Teresa, the font changes hide a cryptic message. Something about the Rabbit of Caer Bannog. (That teapot idea is good enough for Monty Python!)
I read the French Arthurian literature around the time of Indiana Jones 3, which I didn’t like as much as 2 (most fans consider 2 inferior), but I loved the scene of Indy having to choose the True Grail from a shelf of false Grails. It was the one that looked like an ordinary wooden cup, such as a 1st century carpenter might have owned. There’s wisdom in that, I think. Anyway, I remember there being four Grail knights–Percival, Lancelot, Galahad, and Bors, the foreign knight. Any idea what Bors was doing in there?
Agni Yoga prefers the “stone from heaven” reading, for obvious reasons.
On lapsit exillas:
How fascinating that it clearly refers to the fall of Sophia. Why do scholars have such a difficult time making this connection? I typed the phrase into google translate and got the phrase “he slipped into exile.” Indeed, we are all spiritual beings in exile. I notice a lot of weird scholarship around Gnosticism, some modern scholars are claiming that Gnosticism as a movement did not exist, and some are now claiming that the Cathars did not actually exist but were the product of mass hysteria. What’s the deal?
On the divide between the sacred and the secular:
The division was partly a survival mechanism from early scientists. They needed to carve out a space where they could be safely allowed to work without being in danger of crossing the Church, so they divided the world into the ‘material’ and the ‘spiritual’. Then they ceded authority to the church on the spiritual and claimed authority on the material. Of course, once science gained a stronger foothold, that truce was ended and now we have materialists insisting that the spiritual and mental realms are either not real or are totally reducible to matter. Also we now have scientists paralleling the overeager clergy by claiming authority on things that they don’t have expertise in. I hope one day our culture will be able to heal and recognize the spirit in matter and the matter in spirit.
Very enlightening JMG! Because I studied French and was familiar with Chretien de Troyes, I thought I knew something about this subject….Turns out I didn’t really…Thank you for some great scholarship!
Ash Wednesday is in March, but April is still the cruellest month.
Hi JMG,
As soon as I saw the Grail mentioned I had an idea of where the post might be going. The discussion of Gnosticism and specifically The Sophia reminded me; I live in the Tokyo area and tolerably often go on long walks about the town. Imagine my surprise then when I came across a University bearing the name Sophia University. And imagine my doubletake when I learned it was a Jesuit University.
I’ve read rumors that at high levels in the Catholic hierarchy there is a willingness to engage with Gnostic ideas beyond stake-burnings. Of course most of those claims came from Protestants who I figured were engaging in the long established Christian ‘fun’ of “No, you’re the heretic!”.
But finding that school made me wonder if the Pontiff isn’t keeping things away from the unwashed after all.
Cheers,
JZ
Did you know that there are quite a few absurd little doodles in illustrated medieval manuscripts which have rabbits killing knights?
Thank you for the information on the wider Arthurian legends… all I’ve ever come across is very modern re-writings by modern authors who use the legends as a matrix on which to project their own ideal social fantasies, and versions based on Mallory’s “Mort d’Arthur”.
Now, I have a reference to go looking up the real stories.
Sometimes, in the 70s, I think, a book hit the market and turned flaming hot. It’s premise was that “the grail” was a shortened and disguised version of the original word, “sangrail” — which meant “blood”.
It’s been a while, so I’ve lost all but the gist, that the grail was actually the blood — the bloodline — of Jesus. His descendants! Basically, a line of royals anointed by the Divine. Rather changes essence of the grail stories, or maybe amplifies them.
I recall that the authors traced the bloodline to a family (wealthy) in France. They included a photo of the latest child … who looked to me like Damien of The Omen movie fame. (!)
Religious folks really didn’t like the book. For all I know, it could have been bogus history. But the idea that the old stories were really about hunting the “cup” that held what Jesus called “His blood”, is a tantalizing concept.
Hey, @samurai_47 #11 …. Thanks!
I saw “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” at the theater. I hated the ending and mostly forgot about it. Decades later I got a job working at One Eyed Jaques a store that sold card games, table top role playing games, board games, and the occasional jigsaw puzzle. At least several times every week someone would quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
One of the books I’m reading happens to be “The Mother of the Lord” by Margaret Barker. She makes the point that Wisdom from the book of proverbs is cast out of the temple by the Deuteronomist reformers under king Josiah.
Years ago I read the “Story of Roland” from the public library. If I recall correctly Roland was also raised in the woods by a single mother just like Parsifal.
@Marko #3
We named the dog Indiana….😉
Jake, good. Fortune was among other things a close student of Jung’s writings.
Luke, women around the same age are just as vulnerable to Mary Sues, so you may be on to something.
Aldarion, Wolfram claimed in the poem that he was illiterate, so you may be right about his lack of Latin knowledge. I’ll be looking into “ex illas.”
Roldy, if you believe in predestination — and many Christians then and now do — no, God doesn’t want them in heaven. He predestined them to fry in hell for all eternity for his own greater glory.
Prizm, we’ll get to that!
Dobbs, it’s a story with a lot of wisdom to it — pun not intended.
Chris, oh, direct contact with deities can be a good idea:
Just don’t grovel!
Mary, neither of those has any relevance to Wagner; you can certainly bring up the grail for the next fifth Wednesday, though.
Rita, there are several different grail questions — the stories vary, there as in so many other contexts.
Guillem, thanks for this.
Enjoyer, the evasion of Gnosticism is really quite weird. I’m not sure what’s behind it.
Pyrrhus, you’re welcome. It’s a very rich field of study!
Justin, doubtless because it’s tax season.
John, hmm! Maybe so.
Renaissance, okay, so the vorpal bunny of Caer Bannog goes back further than I thought.
Elk River, the title is Holy Blood, Holy Grail and it was impressively bogus. That “Sangreal” might have been “sang real,” “royal blood,” is an intriguing notion nonetheless.
Moonwolf8, I grew up in a circle of teen geeks who all adored the movie and could quote entire scenes from memory. Still, I understand not liking the ending.
” Anyway, this lack of wisdom among coming of age men seems like a lever that could be pressed magically or culturally. The closest thing I can think of right now are those conservative organizations for young people, although those come hand in hand with Christianity. I sure would have liked some coming of age initiation into a usefull way of being besides being legally allowed to buy alcohol. Maybe the natural course of things will take care of it.”
You are overlooking a traditional one.
Feb 5 news “WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — The U.S. Army announced its record-breaking recruitment numbers, marking its most productive December in over a decade, with some crediting President Donald Trump for the boost.
This marks a significant turnaround for the branch, which has faced challenges in recent years in recruiting enough young people and has implemented major changes to its recruitment programs.”
Feb 25
“The Air Force and Space Force are currently on track to meet their fiscal 2025 recruiting goals, the Department of the Air Force’s top recruiting official said, keeping up a hot streak after several challenging years.
“All components [of the Air Force] and the Space Force are either on or ahead of their curve for where we should be this time in the year,”
“MILLINGTON, Tenn. (October 1, 2024) – The U.S. Navy exceeded its Fiscal Year 2024 recruiting goals, contracting 40,978 new recruits by the end of the fiscal year and marking its most significant recruiting achievement in 20 years.”
Stop insulting the people you want to work for you and wonderful things happen.
Boot camp definitely counts as an initiation.
@blue sun
I have a lot of fond memories of that dog. 🤓😉
@JMG
Oh 😯 Sean Connery would work well for Owen. An I shall refrain from speculating on the actors for the other characters. Not to degenerate into fanboy speculation.
As for my taste, I have noticed; 1 it always was strange, 2 it seems to be evolving.
1 I spent a lot of my youth in stories and media. A lot. Most of the early stuff was on par with Indiana Jones. Looking back I sometimes think it was necessary for me at the time. Like how a young chick’s digestive system needs protein, but an adult chicken eats mostly plant matter. I lived in a mythologically illiterate society. I kind of think it was perhaps necessary for my growth.
2. I have noticed that my taste seem to be evolving and the reason seems to be understanding. I never liked opera, until last year. And I notice, that I notice more meanings and connections in works of art, and in my environment.
So there might be some hope for me yet.
That was quite an entertaining account of the origins of the grail legend. I would never have known any of it if I hadn’t read it here. I would have just continued to believe the version proferred us in the movie “Excalibur,” and some references in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.
Discussing Wagner takes me into deeper philosophical waters than I wish to hazard just now, let alone discussing the ideas of C.G. Jung. So I’ll comment on the paintings.
Galahad looks gay. I love his nelly fourteenth century armor. But to judge from the very slender right leg, his lower body seems less robust than would be called for in a warrior. I hope Christian mystics won’t get too upset with me for making such impious observations.
The image of Percival looks like a fine Pre-Raphaelite painting. Do you happen to know who it’s by? I love the deep rich colors, and good drawing ✍️ is always a pleasure to look at.
I am attracted to the idea of a sun treasure; it tends to make me think of chests of pirate gold catching sunbeams on the sea bottom. Perhaps I’m caught between the spiritual and materialist conceptions of the great treasure.
Is it generally thought by scholars that the Fisher King has some Christian symbolism? I seem to recall that Jesus has been described as a fisher of men (or was that Peter, an actual fisherman?), and the spear seems suggestive of the one that killed Christ. Since Chrétien de Troyes predeceased the resolution of his story, I guess the fisher king will never be healed of his wound. Poor fellow!
As usual, I learned a lot from this essay — thank you! I wonder what you think about the extent of Buddhist influences on Parsifal — via Schopenhauer or directly. It’s no secret that Wagner toyed for years (decades?) with the idea of yet one more opera, tentatively called The Seekers, based on an incident in the life of the Buddha and involving a woman who succeeds in convincing the Awakened One that she need not be reborn as a man before she can contemplate entry into nirvana. He never wrote it, of course, and am I correct that he concluded that he had said all he had to say on the subject in Parsifal? (It is compassion — compassion for Amfortas. — after all that keeps Parsifal from succumbing to Kundry’s wiles. If that isn’t a Buddhist notion, I don’t know what is.).. Instead of repeating much of what he had said in Parsifal in another opera, so I gather, Wagner was contemplating writing symphonies in his final years, But alas, he died before he could start in on them.
Hi John Michael,
Like you, I tend to view money as a tool, so when you wrote about money being symbolic I was a bit lost. Symbolism is not my strong suit. However, trust me in this, I can well see the lure of the stuff in my casual observations, and we’ve spoken of this over the past few weeks.
Out of curiosity, what do you reckon it will take to break that spell?
Cheers
Chris
Hi John Michael,
Oops! Forgot to mention, yes I won’t grovel. 🙂 I too was one of those geeks. What a fun film, but you can sort of see the narrative tension which came from having two directors. The Life of Brian (which is also a film I love) was far more cohesive in many ways. Man, that scene with the centurion correcting Brian’s Latin grammar was hysterical. Far out. Just have to re-watch it now and for sure the silliness will haunt my dreams.
Cheers
Chris
This brings back memories. I did my history thesis on Cathar architecture. I came across an essay written in the early 1900s in German that I made a clumsy attempt to translate (way before Goggle translate) that made the case that a certain style of church in the south of France contemporary to the Cathars exhibited characteristics antagonistic to the Gothic that was spreading from the north. It’s hard to see now but the north of France (really just the Ile-de-France) was another world to the south. The south had their own language, religion and, for my thesis, architecture. All of that was destroyed in the Cathar Wars. The version of orthodoxy pushed from its center in northern France was also the same orthodoxy that silenced the Celtic version of Christianity. Many threads.
As to architecture, there are many churches spread across the present day departments just north of the Pyrenees. Their common characteristics are the Greek cross instead of the Latin cross, a tendency toward the use of domes and semicircular arches (as counterpoint to the lancet arches and vaulting of the gothic) and a general centered-ness that implies the circle. My thesis was that the Greek cross and the dome were significant as items that would have been brought back from the holy lands by the Crusaders supposedly alongside Catharism. The dome was significant because it represented the circle as a juxtaposition to the cross. I don’t think I made the case well but the idea of heretical architecture intrigued me.
Anyway, I haven’t thought about this stuff in decades. It was all caught up in a current in the late nineties with the DaVinci Code. Some odd books came out around that time. I’ve read and reread the reprints of Otto Rahn whose mysterious death deserves a movie. Another favorite was by Jean Markale that wove a beautifully bizarre web around a certain village in the Aude and a Cathar castle called Montsegur. These interesting books were interspersed with the “scholarly” ones that said the Cathars didn’t exist or that they did exist but were just proto-Marxism. So it goes.
I’ve read the old grail stories and had heard of Wagner’s Parsifal but this new perspective is fascinating. Thanks as always for the enlightening journey!
No doubt. I re-read Eliot’s Wasteland yet again last night. There are some strikingly vivid passages and imagery, but other parts are as impenetrable as the tax mans code.
Speaking of Sophia, do you think the Pistis Sophia -or some similar gnostic text- might at all have been the book that both Troyes and Eschenbach spoke of that the scholars dismissed out of hand? There must have been some surviving copies of such things.
On another note, how do you think groups like the UGC, and other gnostic lineages -and the broader spectrum of occult orders in general, that often have priesthoods- can sidestep or walk around that boulder in the path, that you have sketched out, with regards to this problem of claiming “infallible access to the will of the Divine.” Obviously the specialists in other cultures that you mention don’t have that attitude, so looking to them would be a start.
I ask because I’m aware of some gnostic types who have taken to wearing a collar like a priest or vicar as they go about in society, as a way of setting them apart, and to my mind, making them feel special. To each their own, live and let live, but I didn’t really care for that anymore than I liked the idea of the way neopagans have whined about needing to have their own special clergy.
I also ask because the puffed up-ness, (or “egoizing” as the Odonians might have it) is a major turn off for many people who might otherwise use the tools covered under the umbrella of religion. They’ve heard too many preachers rant and rave, and then be tore down by their sexual escapades, or what have you. So the the good aspects of meteoreligion get dismissed.
Siliconguy, and of course the military is also the traditional way for young men from poor backgrounds to get an education and career training, so the initiatory aspects fit rather nicely into the old custom of trade guilds and the like.
Marko, fortunately it’s all idle speculation, as there’s zero chance any of my tentacle fiction will ever appear in movie form. As for your taste, good to hear that it’s evolving. That’s true of most people who really care about books, movies, etc. — there are things I adored in my teen years, for example, that I can’t even read now.
Kevin, I simply went hunting online via image searches — the Perceval is one of the images that came up from the search string “Perceval Grail,” and the Galahad was the most suitable response to “Galahad Grail.” I agree that Galahad looks like a wimp!
Tag, the draft of an opera was Die Sieger, “The Victors,” and as far as I know Wagner scholars generally agree that a lot of it ended up in Parsifal. Wagner studied Buddhism fairly intensively in the 1850s — like a lot of early European students of Buddhism, he was originally attracted to it via Schopenhauer, but went to translated Buddhist texts and scholarly works on the faith, since there were plenty of those available in translation by that time. I wish Wagner had gone ahead and written it — it was an interesting story and I think he could have done good things with it.
Chris, what will it take to break the spell of money? The fall of our civilization. I don’t know of anything else that’s done the trick. As for that scene in The Life of Brian, oh, yeah. It’s one of the best parts of a very, very funny movie.
Daniel, fascinating. Is your thesis available anywhere? It would be useful to me in some of my current studies — among other things, I note that the church architecture of the Knights Templar also tended to emphasize circular structures. Here’s Temple Church in London, for example:
Justin, hmm! It’s a fave of mine, and penetrable if you know the contexts. As for the book, no, both Chrétien and Wolfram say that it’s a book that recounts the Grail legend specifically. Wolfram says that it was written by Kyot de Provins, based on a work by the heathen philosopher Flegetanis. There’s been a vast amount of scholarly handwaving about those names, but the basic concept remains plausible.
With regard to the broader question, it’s always a struggle. One of the reasons I stopped taking students for UGC ordination a good many years ago, and only started up again recently, was that so many of the people who came to me wanting ordination were just looking for some way to claim unearned authority over other people, which is inherent in our culture’s notion of priesthood but is antithetical to the UGC tradition. I’m sorry to say there’s no shortage of Gnostic priests out there who’ve fallen into the same trap. It may be futile for me to fight against it, but there it is: I’m not interested in helping another round of little tin gods inflate their egos to the bursting point. Even more, that’s not what the UGC is about, and I care enough about the tradition that I don’t want to see it twisted into its opposite.
On the case always governed by the preposition “ex,” Dylan is right, and his further interpretative suggestions seem plausible to me.
I have not been able to find a source for the form in which JMG cites this phrase, “lapsit exillas.” An online text of Wolfram von Eschenbach (apparently hosted by Notre Dame University) has “lapis exilis” while acknowledging that “lapsit exillis” is a variant found in some MSS. The latter, of course, meets Dylan’s objection satisfactorily.
See note 24:
https://www3.nd.edu/~gantho/anth164-353/notesParzival.html#n24
Most societies around the world and throughout history haven’t drawn a hard and fast line between the sacred and the secular. The two interpenetrate so completely that many of the world’s languages have no word for “religion.” This isn’t because there’s a shortage of activities of the kind we call “religious.” It’s because the people who speak these languages had no need to separate them out from all other human activities.
According to Norman Cantor, Europe did not divide the sacred from the secular until about the time the first Parsival was written. (1066 and Manzikert and all that meant fewer raiders from outside western Europe, so more wealth, so the difference between Catholic Church law and secular law had enough money involved to be important).
Wait! Does this mean that George Lucas stole from Perceval when he wrote Star Wars: Episode One? When he had a young Anakin Skywalker ask if Padme was an angel? Or how his broken hearted mother died when he left? (Though admittedly , this was due to an acute case of Tusken Raider torture). That’s where the similarities end as far as I know but it is an interesting coincidence. I don’t the think the word “angel” is used anywhere else in the entire film series also it really sticks out in the first episode.
JMG, I thought you might enjoy this synchronicity… I have been reading through your past Magic Mondays and happened to run across the following not long after reading the current essay ( https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/26061.html?thread=1315021#cmt1315021 ). Sounds like you’ve had this project brewing in your mind for some time!
Did you know that there is one theory that the Arthur legend is actually based on of the kings of the Lombards in Italy?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authari
And because the Saxons actually participated in the initial Lombard invasion of Italy in 568, some of them took the stories they heard there to their kin who were settling Britannia. I can give you more details on the similarities if you are interested.
Whom does the Grail serve? “The Grail serves the servants of creation…”
I don’t remember where I read that, but it’s “served” as an interesting meditation subject for me. If one imagines the Grail as holding CONSCIOUSNESS itself, it’s a support for the dual substance (as opposed to non-dual) theories of mind and consciousness as presented in Patanjali yoga world view and pedagogy.
Summary: the body, mind and senses are an inanimate machines “turned on” by consciousness. Classical Yoga psychology and practice proceed by cleaning up the machines in order to “find the grail” – the light of pure consciousness. This not only opens up the reality of one’s own true powerful identity, but also opens up possibilities of communication between “minds” on all levels of existence.
Dualism is not everyone’s cup of tea for sure😉
However, it’s a world view that’s “served me well” (as a servant of creation)!
JMG -your essay was amazing.
Another breakthrough for me when reading it was the bit about mythic images finding new homes in the darkness. I think one of the greatest gifts of the Tarot and it’s study is how it can bring buried narratives and patterns to light so that their power can be wholesomely integrated.
Thank you again and always.
Yogaandthetarot Jill C
I know I could unpack more of Eliot’s poem if I put some more time into it.
Re: UGC … Sounds good, thank you. I appreciate your efforts…
—
In the meantime I found these Orphic Sayings of Amos Branson Alcott… some real gems in there, like this one on the ides of sin, which seems rather gnostic, and relates I think to this conversation: “All sin is original,—there is none other; and so all atonement for sin. God’s method is neither mediatorial nor vicarious; and the soul is nor saved nor judged by proxy,—she saves or dooms herself. Piety is unconscious, vascular, vital,—like breathing it is, and is because it is. None can respire for another, none sin or atone for another’s sin. Redemption is a personal, private act.”
I do think there can be good in confessing to another person -but that person doesn’t have to be a priest, and isn’t the sole connection to the divine. But rather, the act of confessing helps clear your conscience and hopefully make better choices in the future. What adam & eve did in the garden seems to have little to do with it either.
I have been listening to a series of lectures on the transcendentalists, by Ashton Nichols. I found the lectures on William Ellery Channing, and certain aspects of the one on Theodore Parker, to be filled with ideas applicable today -though I wouldn’t call myself a unitarian. But I see in them a connection or lineage to various types of religious dissenters … which is of course why so many people came here in the first place.
All this talk of the bloodthirsty bunny of Caer Bannog and doodles of knights in mortal combat with rabbits has me looking askance at our pet rabbit – who, I might add, has been identified by fellow fans of ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ to have a striking resemblance to that dreaded beast (a descendant, perhaps?). She has nibbled each family member at least a few times in the past (but not in the bum) and so I wonder if she is just tasting her prey before deciding whether or not to devouring us in the middle of the night? I will advise my son to lock her cage door before he goes to sleep, just to be on the safe side…
With or without Wagner, it is good to see some posts by you on this enduring (and nearly twisted out of recognition) legend. My main ‘scholarship’ on the topic consists of watching the Monty Python movie at least 40 times during my youth, and a single reading of Mort d’Arthur at the age of 20. Though I have an enduring fascination with the myth I have not bothered to delve into reading any books about it because I figure that 19 books out of 20 are balderdash and I’d rather spend my time on a less mine-filled field. So, thanks for getting the discussion going; looking forward to what comes next!
Of late, it has become a massive political pain point for the Hindu community in India that we do not have a word for religion, nor have our scriptures ever used such a word.
You see, the fathers of the Indian constitution copied large sections from older British administrative law, and from American, Swiss, and Soviet constitutions. This means our constitutional law protects religious rights of citizens, but defines those rights in ways that only make sense if your scripture explicitly distinguishes between religious and secular aspects of life.
While Christian missionaries and Muslim denizens gain massive benefits from these protections, Hindu groups repeatedly find their religious issues being deemed secular, cultural, or even customary, by their own country’s government. The recent issue of women’s entry into the sanctum sanctorum of the Lord Aiyappa temple, for instance, brought this discrepancy to light.
Lord Aiyappa is a deity who, by legend, has vowed chastity. Women are not allowed into the sanctum sanctorum of his temple. A group of “feminists” decided that this was a human rights issue of exclusion, and demanded entry of women into that room.
Needless to say, practicing Hindu women would respect the celibacy of the deity and not enter the chamber, while atheists and non-hindus have little-to-no business being in the heart of a Hindu temple to begin with. But with no clear dogma or creed, the only basis for classifying a person as hindu is jus sanguina: if their parents are registered as hindu, then they are registered as hindu regardless of whether they practice or not. This practice, if course, was initiated by our English overlords in the heyday of their occupation.
This little loophole allowed all manner of irreverant crud to force entry into the sanctum sanctorum or the deity in the name of Women’s Rights. Newspapers that print in English, needless to say, supported them completely. The priesthood was duly portrayed as a bunch of insufferable patriarchical ignoramuses. Any argument in favour of the faith and its policy were dismissed as medieval and unjustifiable.
It took a mammoth effort on part of a team of dedicated legal professionals and cultural activists, spearheaded by a brilliant attorney named J. Sai Deepak, to finally force the government to regard the policy of the temple as a valid instance of religious doctrine, protected by constitutional law. Years of legal battles later, the court finally ceded the case to the Hindu community, and to this day there are leftists and “progressives” who claim it to be an instance of Hindu majoritarian despotism.
@ ambrose #35
Really? Not that I can see but then I’m terrible at codes.
Why don’t scholars (or anyone) refuse to see what’s right in front of them?
Because it conflicts with their upbringing, training, world view, and what their friends and professional colleagues believe.
I’m currently plowing through “War Before Civilization” by Lawrence H. Keeley (1996, Oxford University Press) and in the preface, he discusses how archeologists — including himself!!!! — simply refused to see the heaps of bones they’d uncover with arrowheads embedded in them and the obvious fortresses they’d unearth as being evidence of violence and widespread fighting.
Professor Keeley came to understand differently, as he began to observe and not just look.
The lure of happy, peaceful, Rousseau-like Neolithic pastorals was just too strong.
That could be what’s happening here, with Sophia.
Gray Hat, interesting. It’s always possible that I got it wrong, because lapsit exillis would indeed meet the objection.
Bruce, that sounds about right.
Paul, I have indeed. I’ve been pondering it since I first read Wagner’s essay “Die Wibelungen,” which is quite some years ago now.
David, no, I hadn’t run across that theory yet. The Arthurian legend isn’t as good at generating oddball theories than the Atlantis legend, but it’s good to see that it’s catching up.
Jill, that’s quite a bit of meditation fodder there! Thank you.
Justin, the Transcendentalists don’t get enough attention in today’s alternative-spirituality scene. I intend to find some good material for the UGC lectionary from that source.
Ron, I didn’t watch the movie in question quite so often, but it’s more or less engraved in my mind. Since I was your classic autistic geeky bookworm back then, though, I balanced it by reading every scrap of medieval Grail literature I could get!
Rajarshi, ouch. Do you think there’s any chance that some competent pandits and lawyers could work together to work out some kind of theory of religious Hinduism that could pass legal muster, and safeguard the religious rights of devout Hindus?
Teresa, that’s a classic example. The way that the Mayans were misdefined in the same way, until the Mayan hieroglyphs were deciphered and it became immediately clear that Mayan city-states fought each other tolerably often, is another. There are many more. Scholarship is less immune from groupthink than most other human activities!
Hmmmm Money as archetypal sun treasure explains a lot about the rise of our current billionairocracy in the Western world
Fantastic to hear about the lectionary…re: Transcendentalists…
…I plan on writing about some of these people. I’m looking to incorporate some of their other ideas into other things I’m working on too.
Cheers to all.
>“Kill them all, God will know his own” – I’ve never understood that attitude
If I were that deity, as soon as the guy who did all the killing died and crossed over into the afterlife, I’d take him right back to that point in time and say “You sort them out now, take your time but you don’t leave here until you do” and then walk away.
I mean, I wouldn’t dream of being God but I wouldn’t appreciate people intentionally creating messes for me to clean up. Would you?
>the military is also the traditional way for young men from poor backgrounds to get an education and career training, so the initiatory aspects fit rather nicely into the old custom of trade guilds and the like
Whether you’re poor or not – infantry is a skilled trade, just as much a skilled trade as HVAC or farming or auto repair or plumbing. I think the minimum cutoff IQ for infantry is 100?
Re: Domed Heretical Architecture
I dug out the old thesis and my memory was fuzzy on it. Looks like most of the southern French churches still stuck to the basilica plan but with domes along with some other unusual features that more mimicked architecture from Byzantium and further east. There is still a distinct focus that differs remarkably from the Gothic that strikes me as very foreign to the growing orthodoxy of the age. Despite the distance from the version of me that did the writing it is still readable though the argument is tenuous. Appropriate for a undergrad history thesis. Rereading it I wish, as my professor did at the time, that I could have spent some time in person in the churches I described. But the history department at my university was way down the list from the football team so we had negative funding.
The digital version is undoubtedly long gone or on a hard drive that no longer spins. I do have a hard copy that I could lend you if only for the bibliography. I can send it along with a prepaid return label if you wish. Feel free to email me.
Hi John Michael,
Given the Norman invasion of Britain way back when, just from a purely pragmatic perspective, I kind of wonder if the sudden interest in Arthurian stories a few years later, particularly from what looks like authors with French names, don’t you reckon that there is a historical political element to the arc of the narrative?
And yet what interests me the most was that as a character and story, Arthur was both before and after, if you know what I mean.
Cheers
Chris
SDI/#22 — SDI, a totally fun, low brow way of reading what appears to me to be the Parcival story based on Eschenbach from these essays — is Parcifal’s Page by Gerald Morris.
Thank you for this, another interesting essay. And a good summary of a fascinating myth, even if I’d already read up a bit on those details in part due to inspiration from your Druid Revival books. I don’t really have a proper argument here, just a few stray observations:
It’s intriguing to me that this story hinges on the hero failing because he follows the instructions he’s given and doesn’t speak out of turn. In most tales like this, it’s the other way around: failure often comes as a result of not listening to wise counsel, or by disrespecting a powerful and maybe semi-divine figure. Here Percival does the prudent thing and listens, and that causes him to fail. That’s a neat inversion.
I meant to say this last time and didn’t get around to it in time, but I find it interesting how Wagner apparently was able to predict neoliberalism 150 years ahead of time. Maybe it wouldn’t have been that hard to extrapolate from the commodification that existed in his time, but considering what absurd extremes we’ve taken it to (“ecosystem services”, anyone?), I still think that’s a noteworthy feat. Also, if money and the Grail are the solar treasure, where’s the telluric counterpart?
Speaking of which, my favorite interpretation of the Grail is the one in the Druid Magic Handbook. It’s just such a beautiful image, and makes a lot of sense to me.
In any case, looking forward to seeing Wagner’s solution when we get there. Along with commodification, we’ve also taken quantification in general to extremes, so maybe that’s another part of the puzzle…
@ Luke Z #26
Yes, I suspect that’s a niche Heathenry could fit into rather well, especially the American version. While the macho Viking warrior thing gets exaggerated at times in my opinion, I think there’s a lot of room for initiation rituals and other practices there that…let’s say accept and encourage traditional masculinity in ways that aren’t as common in our societies, without the Christian baggage. (Or the cultural and political baggage of the American Army, for that matter.)
As for The Kingkiller Chronicle, I also read it back when it was new-ish. A friend of mine wouldn’t shut up about them, so I gave in. Personally I never liked them much, for exactly the reason you state: I found the main character an obvious and painful Mary Sue. (Btw, I thought “Gary Stu” was the accepted male counterpart?) Also, Ruthfuss *still* isn’t done with the series? Really? Another good thing about our host: he actually finishes his sprawling fantasy epics. 🙂
Dear JMG:
“have no more business handing down edicts about geology … than geologists … have handing down edicts about theology”; Oh I was so looking forward to handing down edicts about theology! Bummer! Now what do I have to look forward to?
And we have such a wonderful weasel word: penecontemporaneous.
Sigh.
Cugel (a licensed geologist in several states)
Teresa Peshel–I once had an assignment of finding a dispute in scholarly journals and writing a paper on it. I located a disagreement about evidence of cannibalism in Anasazi era excavations. Letters to the editor flew fast and furious. You would have thought the accusations of cannibalism had been leveled against the writer’s own grandparents rather than about people who had been dead for centuries before Europeans even showed. up.
Another version of the Grail as Christ’s physical bloodline occurs in _Preacher_, a graphic novel in several volumes by Irish cartoonist Garth Ennis. A major plotline involves an organization called the Grail which has been preserving the bloodline. But, on the logic that mere humans are not fit mates for the descendants of the incarnation of God, they have been inbreeding, with the result that their candidate for world savior is an imbecilic parody of humanity. As one character sums up the situation, “Son of God or no Son of God, no good comes of marrying your sister.” The comics were made into a tv series, but IMO don’t bother with it.
Another interesting graphic novel treatment of the myth is in _Camelot 3000_ in which an alien invasion results in Arthur being awakened in the year 3000. Merlin locates the reincarnated knights of the Round Table and they fight Morgana who controls the aliens. Percival is not rescued before he has been turned into a monstrous Neoman–mutant servants of the state–but retains his knightliness. Galahad is a Japanese warrior, about to commit seppuku for failing his employer when reclaimed for Arthur by Merlin’s charm. First issued in the 1980s Camelot 3000 is still in print.
Rita
Free Rain, doesn’t it, though!
Justin, glad to hear it.
Other Owen, nice. I claim no insight about what the Divine would do about that person, but I certainly wouldn’t want to be him.
Daniel, thanks for this. I’ll be in touch.
Chris, one of the odd things that few people remember is that quite a few of William the Conqueror’s soldiers were Bretons rather than Normans, and Brittany is a major homeland of Arthurian stories. So, yes, there’s plenty of politics in there, from quite an array of sources.
BorealBear, what a fine theme for meditation! 😉
Cugel, choose a clergyperson. You have my permission to hand down one edict on theology for every edict that person issues on geology. Please do so pennecontemporaneously!
At this link is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts. Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or in the comments at the current prayer list post.
* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May Cliff’s friend Jessica, who is suffering from severe postpartum depression, be blessed and soothed; may each day take her closer to an outlook of joyful participation in the world.
May Other Dave’s father Michael Orwig, who passed away on 2/24, make his transition to his soul’s next destination with comfort and grace; may his wife Allyn and the rest of his family be blessed and supported in this difficult time.
May Viktoria have a safe and healthy pregnancy, and may the baby be born safe, healthy and blessed. May Marko have the strength, wisdom and balance to face the challenges set before him. (picture, update)
May Cliff’s friend Jessica, who is suffering from severe postpartum depression, be blessed and soothed; may each day take her closer to an outlook of joyful participation in the world.
May Peter Evans in California, whose colon cancer has been responding well to treatment, be completely healed with ease, and make a rapid and total recovery.
May Debra Roberts, who has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, be blessed and healed to the extent that providence allows. Healing work is also welcome.
May Jack H’s father John, whose aortic dissection is considered inoperable and likely fatal by his current doctors, be healed, and make a physical recovery to the full extent that providence allows, and be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Goats and Roses’ son A, who had a serious concussion weeks ago and is still suffering from the effects, regain normal healthy brain function, and rebuild his physical strength back to normal, and regain his zest for life. And may Goats and Roses be granted strength and effectiveness in finding solutions to the medical and caregiving matters that need to be addressed, and the grief and strain of the situation.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
May Corey Benton, who is currently in hospital and whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, be healed of throat cancer. Healing work is also welcome. [Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe]
May Open Space’s friend’s mother
Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
May Peter Van Erp’s friend Kate Bowden’s husband Russ Hobson and his family be enveloped with love as he follows his path forward with the glioblastoma (brain cancer) which has afflicted him.
May Scotlyn’s friend Fiona, who has been in hospital since early October with what is a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, be blessed and healed, and encouraged in ways that help her to maintain a positive mental and spiritual outlook.
May Jennifer and Josiah, their daughter Joanna, and their unborn daughter be protected from all harmful and malicious influences, and may any connection to malign entities or hostile thought forms or projections be broken and their influence banished.
* * *
Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
Re: Renaissance
This website shows quite a few killer bunnies in illuminated manuscripts. Monks and scribes definitely had a sense of humor.
https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2021/06/killer-rabbits.html
Another common motif is of knights fighting enormous snails.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231221-the-mystery-of-the-medieval-fighting-snails
BorealBear,
I was meditating today and the answer to my musing of pressing a lever came to me. It was rather obvious in retrospect – occult philosophy. In an ideal world we’d have a way to pass it on to coming of age people. I suspect there would need to be a popularizer to do it – kind of like a Jordan Peterson for the occult. Not sure if that’s possible. Of course, any young person who picks up JMGs Ariel Moravec series is going to get an initiation into that world. Could rant about this for awhile. Prometheus Rising would be good mandatory reading (that’s what did it for me), although the framing is off, imo. And yeah, Rothfuss still isn’t finished; he’s probably written himself into a labyrinth.
With those killer bunnies and enormous snails, those manuscript illuminators must have been keen gardeners!
@Chris #73 & JMG
It is not really surprising the Normans took a keen interest in Arthurian tales. It is, in fact, typical. of them.
The Norman method of conquest was always the same: begin with a bloody invasion. Really, really bloody. Conquered people were never under any doubt about being subjugated, and thoroughly. Risings and rebellions only happened in the first few years, e.g. the harrowing of the North a couple of years after 1066, and only once or twice and that was it. Same deal in southern Italy when the de Hauteville brothers arrived and seized power.
Then the new overlords, and their descendants, would marry local women and enthusiastically adopt local customs. The Normans in Ireland were described as ‘more Irish than the Irish’ for example. In many ways this preserved and enhanced local traditions. This meant they brought Normal law and economics, but fully supported local arts and music.
This created a new culture, and the result was, after a couple of generations, almost always a vibrant, wealthy society. England under the Normans in the 1100s was a very wealthy place. Likewise the Norman Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was one of the greatest centres of learning and the arts as well as commerce for over a century in Medieval times.
So, for the Normans in England to adopt the “Matter of Britain” as a key part of their literature and culture is typical of their behaviour, since it was a big part of the local culture.
@ Ecosophy Enjoyer #80 – Yes, aren’t those images wonderful?
There’s a Jungian treatment of the Grail myth written by Robert Johnson called “He.” Johnson deals only with the first versions of Grail myth with the Grail king. Jung’s wife Emma researched the Grail myth extensively and wrote a book called “The Grail Myth” that’s still available.
Greetings to our host and commenters.
There are so many books mentioned in the essay, and the comments. I’ll never catch up now!
Money seems to be a reasonable thing to seek if a person does not have any skills that make useful objects, regardless of its mythic status. I do wonder how that tips over into obsession and compulsive behavior.
For example, in the absence of investment banking, the skills of the investment banker are useless, but a competent cook or housekeeper can cook or clean for someone else. Likewise, competent carpenters will always be in demand. (One hopes for reasonable compensation!)
Does barter have its own mythic status, or should I plan to offer Grail-shaped refrigerator magnets ? I’m going to need to get more books somehow!
It seems that in nearly all modern popular culture use of the grail or grail-like-objects the purpose to possess it is not sacred but to monetize it. In movies and low budget relic-hunter TV shows they search for the grail because them that possess it will attain limitless wealth or power. Of the course the intrepid hero of the show does not want those things. He or she is trying to get the Grail to keep it from the baddies who will use it for evil.
So our modern day take on the myth has been fully soaked in Faustian thinking.
Phutatorius #14: “I read Wolfram’s ‘Parsifal’ back in the day, quite a few years ago. The part that stuck with me was his relationship with his mom, who dressed him in ridiculous clothes so he’d never become a knight, that is to say become a man…I do think Wolfram was psychologically astute about it.”
Quite a number of people have pointed out that the dominant mythical figure of our age (at least in the developed Western world) is the Devouring Mother, and that the most obvious example is women (it’s nearly always women, especially single mothers) who want to “trans” their sons, i.e., literally and figuratively turn them into girls so they’ll never become men – the “Munchausen Mommy” syndrome: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/munchausen-by-medical-board
Quin, thanks for this as always.
Enjoyer, and thanks for this!
Tom, interesting. I had sufficiently bad experiences with people in the “men’s movement” that I’ve tended to avoid anything along those lines, though I did chuckle at the parody volume Fire in the John. Emma Jung’s book, on the other hand, was my first introduction to Jungian psychology — I read it first in my teens, and own a copy.
Sylvia, barter is all through the old fairy tales — people (and nonpeople) are always exchanging this for that. So I think you’ll be fine, since authors and publishers need to exchange their books for something or other!
Clay, and it’s very indicative that the protagonist has no interest in the grail except to limit access to it, so the bad guys don’t get it. He or she never, say, wants to heal the wounded king or restore life to the Waste Land. It’s a bleak commentary on our age.
@BorealBear, Luke Z…
The Kingkiller Chronicles…. I don’t think the main character is a total Mary Sue… he hasn’t gotten the girl yet, and he may never, if Rothfuss doesn’t finish the books! (The love interest aspect of those books with the character Denna was one of the parts I liked about them. It rang true to my teenage years and early twenties.) I enjoyed the two books myself. I was sucked in by them in a way I hadn’t been by epic fantasy in some time. Never gave Martin a shot, or Jordan for that matter though.
As far as men and initiation go, I do think the Heathen stuff would be a good fit… if a person is fitted to being a Heathen, anyway. The Boy Scouts did do some good in this area, but then they were also riddled with the problem of kids being fiddled as plagues the Catholic Church. Brett McKay started something called the Strenuous Life, which has a lot of good things about it, that may fill some of those needs: https://strenuouslife.co/
Personally I’d like to see something that isn’t Christian or ideologically neutral (neither conservative nor liberal)… but that’s me. Plus I’d need something for being middle-aged with my long hair turning gray.
…and IS ideologically neutral…
the last comment should have read.
JMG and @clay, ” In movies and low budget relic-hunter TV shows they search for the grail because them that possess it will attain limitless wealth or power. ”
…the grail is the ring? Is that it? They transformed the grail into the ring? Wow.
@JMG
Re: Your response to Clay
To me, that trope makes sense because if I had the power to drastically change the world for good, I would probably:
1. Ruin some things through lack of wisdom or knowledge
2. Ruin some things due to corrupt intentions
3. Have to manage things I don’t really care about because it would be my duty
Two ways to forsake that immense responsibility are to either not use the Grail or to throw my moral principles to the wind/convince myself that whatever I am doing with the Grail is good.
However, the hero can use the Grail to make a few big positive changes and then hide it away.
Sylvia, IDK any specifics about myths around barter, but it does occur to me that a libation poured out for Hermes, or any similar spirit, might be appropriate, as a way of calling the immortals to witness the barterer’s good intentions. It is also interesting to recall that compensation for the exercise of practical skills included a certain level of courtesy, which our own newly rich, of just about all persuasions, have yet to learn. In a mystery novel by Austin Freeman, the solution turned on a forged letter to the victim’s valet, written in a jocular and familiar tone which no gentleman would ever employ when addressing his confidential servant.
Speaking of myths, the hiding of one’s son among women is found in Greek myth, Thetis hiding her boy Achilles, and I doubt the tale was young then.
@ Yavanna 88: I’m happy to report that she failed. However, she’s now well over 100 and maybe she’s still not ready to give up the attempt. 🙂
@ JMG: Ditto on the so-called men’s movement, Tho my own experience was very peripheral (through a Unitarian Universalist “study group”), I thought I smelled something. The main organizer of this group was a disbarred lawyer. He gathered us all together to watch the movie, “My Life as a House.” He seemed to “swear by” that movie. That was about the time I made up my mind to leave and not go back.
“it’s very indicative that the protagonist has no interest in the grail except to limit access to it, so the bad guys don’t get it. He or she never, say, wants to heal the wounded king or restore life to the Waste Land. It’s a bleak commentary on our age.”
I never thought about this before. It feels like its indicative of a cultural feeling that spiritual power is something not for our time: to be respected but also sequestered away safely in the past, where it can’t interfere with modernity and the march of Progress(tm).
JMG,
Thanks for this series. In doing follow-up research as I read along, a few things have become clear to me that I didn’t fully grasp before.
In school back in the ‘80s, I was taught the standard narrative: early Christians were persecuted and thrown to the lions, and then in the 300s, Constantine suddenly converted and made Christianity the official religion of Rome. What was never made clear was why Christianity was outlawed in the first place—the same reason that the other mystery traditions (Eleusinian Mysteries, Orphic Mysteries, Mithraism, etc.) were suppressed. These traditions promoted direct, personal experience of the divine—what we now call “Gnosis”—which made them uncontrollable by the state.
When Christianity was adopted as the official religion, it was not the esoteric, mystical Christianity of Jesus but the institutional Christianity of Paul and the Church Councils. The formation of the Creeds codified a version of Christianity that was state-approved, hierarchical, and designed for control, making the populace more docile and disempowered. Jesus himself did not promote passive obedience to authority—he openly challenged the religious elite, disrupted the Temple economy, and preached a Kingdom of God that undermined earthly rulers. Rome executed him as a political threat, not just a religious figure. And yet, when the empire co-opted Christianity, the rebellious, mystical elements were stripped away, leaving behind an obedient, manageable faith.
What makes this even more blatant is that the Bible itself states that Jesus had secret teachings meant only for his disciples (Mark 4:11, Matthew 13:11, John 16:12), and yet the Church, which claims to be a direct successor of the apostles, teaches none of it. If Jesus had an inner doctrine distinct from what was given to the masses, where did it go? Why did the Church suppress esoteric Christianity while allowing exoteric, rule-based faith to dominate?
Of course, we know that the suppression didn’t stop there. The burning of the Library of Alexandria wasn’t just some random act of destruction—it was part of a broader effort to erase competing knowledge systems and consolidate power under a single religious authority. Later, the Inquisition, book burnings, and witch hunts continued this pattern, ensuring that whatever remnants of the old esoteric traditions remained would be eradicated. The Cathars, who preserved their own Gnostic lineage, were wiped out in a genocide that killed half of France.
The more I look into Western esotericism, the more I see how fragmented it is—not because the West lacked depth, but because any structured, initiatory traditions were repeatedly burned, outlawed, or absorbed into exoteric institutions. It makes me appreciate that systems like Daoist internal alchemy (Neidan) survived in lineage-based traditions, while Western equivalents were systematically erased before they could be passed down in full.
The Piscean Age seems to have birthed the era of institutionalized religions, where spiritual teachings became centralized, guarded, and often controlled by hierarchical systems. These structures, while meaningful to many, also restricted direct access to deeper wisdom and practices. In contrast, the Aquarian Age appears to be ushering in a more open and decentralized approach to spiritual learning, where teachings are being shared more freely and openly. Examples like your Golden Section Fellowship and Nathan Brine’s detailed volumes on Neidan training reflect this shift, offering comprehensive systems of knowledge that are accessible to anyone with the readiness and commitment to learn, helping to reclaim what was lost and make it available for future generations.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, particularly regarding how much of Western esotericism—whether Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Gnostic Christianity, or the remnants of the Western mystery traditions—reflects an authentic survival versus a modern reconstruction. Do you think what we have today comes close to what was lost or erased? And if so, what does that mean for our practice? Should we be drawing more from other, more complete systems and integrating them into our Western occult traditions?
Looking forward to hearing your perspective.
JMG,
As a follow-up to my previous comment and question, I’ve reflected further on these esoteric traditions and their potential for spiritual awakening. I’ve come to see them as more than just a personal path to enlightenment. I now view these teachings as a means of transforming ourselves into “Grail Kings”—individuals who not only possess deep spiritual wisdom but also take on the responsibility of using that wisdom for the benefit of others.
The Grail, as it’s often portrayed in myth, symbolizes divine wisdom, spiritual fulfillment, and the sacred task of bringing healing to the world. It’s a fitting metaphor for what these esoteric systems teach us: the pursuit of higher knowledge, mastery over ourselves, and alignment with divine will. In many ways, I see the process of learning and practicing esoteric traditions like Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and even Neidan as a path of inner alchemy. It’s about refining our own consciousness, purifying our hearts, and making ourselves worthy vessels for divine wisdom—just as the Grail King must be worthy to wield the Grail itself.
The path of the Grail King is not about personal power or status, but about serving as a conduit for a higher purpose—whether through inner transformation, assisting others, or acting as a steward of knowledge. Just as the Grail legends describe a king who must heal the land, I see a direct parallel in how we can use the insights and practices from these traditions to not only elevate ourselves but also contribute to the healing and awakening of the world around us.
In this light, I believe that drawing from multiple traditions, including those that have survived intact like Daoism, could offer a holistic approach to becoming such a Grail King. These teachings, when practiced with sincerity and dedication, help us build inner strength and resilience—qualities that seem essential for anyone who would undertake the responsibility of bearing and sharing divine wisdom with the world.
So, as I contemplate these esoteric practices, I’m beginning to see them not just as tools for personal growth, but as a way of preparing ourselves for a much greater calling: the task of becoming Grail Kings, walking the path of inner alchemy, and offering the fruits of that transformation to the world.
What do you think of this vision? How might we draw upon these traditions in a way that supports not only our own growth but the collective healing and awakening of humanity? Do you see this as a significant trend within the second religiosity that you’ve spoken about?
Bruno, basically, yes. Another way of saying it is that they saw through the grail to the archetype at its core.
Patrick, that’s what the Grail finder does in the early versions of the legend. He finds the Grail, uses it to make the Waste Land green again, and then becomes the guardian of the Grail.
Phutatorius, everyone I knew personally in the early 90s who was deep into the men’s movement was either a world-class sleazeball, out to get whatever he could, or was one of those soft, rather sickly men whose gentle affect had incandescent rage a tenth of a millimeter below the surface. A few of them were both. It didn’t leave a good impression on me.
Slithy, bingo. Mustn’t let people think that there’s something to be found back there in the discarded wisdom of the past!
Clark, er, the Eleusinian, Orphic, and Mithraic mysteries weren’t persecuted at all until the Christians started persecuting them; it was quite common for influential Romans, including some emperors, to go to Eleusis to get initiated. You’re right, though, that the version of Christianity that was instituted by Constantine and his heirs didn’t have all that much in common with the very diverse world of pre-Nicene Christianity. (Hint: there’s a word for that older and more diverse tradition: “Gnosticism.”) One of these days I need to write a book about the extraordinarily complex spiritual situation of late antiquity, focusing on what people at the time thought the future held in store and why so many people decided that something like Christianity was the only viable option. It really is an intriguing story.
With regard to your vision, it’s certainly one option. I’d encourage you, though, to start off by choosing one tradition and mastering it in its entirety before you start adding other things to it. Otherwise there’s a serious risk that you’ll simply assemble a hodgepodge that reflects your own personal imbalances and incomplete understandings, and this will hinder you in ways you won’t be able to realize. In effect, before you try to become a Grail King, you need to be become a Grail seeker, and follow the path to the Grail castle.
Hi John Michael,
A curious question for you: If you could heal the wasteland, why wouldn’t you? And how can the lure of wealth, power and control be the greater quest?
It’s just an odd goal, and self defeating don’t you reckon.
Cheers
Chris
I havent read any of Robert Bly’s poems. Do people think they suck as much as Iron John did? I read that, dont remember much. But I have a poet friend who loves Bly, and Stephen Harrod Buehner liked him quite a bit. Goes on and on about him in Ensouling Language – which I didnt finish reading. A lot of Bly quotes, though I liked what he was hinting at about following golden threads.
The Christian version, Promise Keepers and the like were odious from my brief enforced encounter with that as a teen (church influence).
Instead of a mens movement I think dudes should just get together and do things they like doing. I.e. male friendship.
Maybe its hiking and cooking over a fire. Maybe its soldering radios. Maybe its slam dancing at a metal show. Maybe its reading slam poetry. Maybe I dont know.
On that note – I picked up a magazine called First Things, which turned out to be a highly intellectual and readable Catholic magazine. Its cover story was “Against Christian Civilization,” by Paul Kingsworth. His thesis was that the Way of Jesus was incompatible with civilization. [As was the Way of Francis of Assisi … and note that the Franciscan order, sworn to a life of poverty and simplicity, ended up as a intellectual powerhouse, probably because the early ones lived in the student quarter near the university in Paris. My opinion.] And that’s it’s extremely incompatible with Western, i.e. Faustian civilization. Though, as also pointed out, the Christian Church was at the heart of Western culture. He also points out that our current religions attitudes are (1) scientific atheism, (2) liberal relativism, (3) serious religion, (4) cultural religion, and (5) civilizational religion, which sounds a lot like the Second Religiosity: using religion to rebuild a culture in crisis.
John, I’ll be enclosing this in my next mailing, I was that impressed.
“Elixir Stone” = Philosopher’s Stone. Do you think Dumbledore et al really have the power to unmake it?
Bernard Cornwell wrote a trilogy about Arthur. At the end of the third book, he and several of his Briton followers sail to Brittany. IIRC, I read somewhere that many of the Britons fleeing the Angles and Saxons sailed to Brittany. If Arthur really existed, and Cornwell seems to think he did, the Britons likely carried the stories of him to Brittany. Cornwell wrote of Arthur as a warlord, not as a king.
Cornwell also wrote another trilogy about the Grail. At the end of the third book, the hero who has possession of the Grail, looks at it and thinks of the battles, suffering, and everything else he has had to endure and wonders if the Grail was worth it. He flings the Grail into the ocean and walks away.
It’s been decades since I read those books, but I still remember the endings.
Chris, granted — and yet the Waste Land is always there, and most of us will do just about anything other than asking the question that will heal it.
Justin, or becoming a Freemason. You learn a little bit about manhood when the old guy sitting next to you in lodge can’t walk very well because he suffered frostbite as a combat infantryman during the Battle of the Bulge.
Patricia M, I’ll look forward to it. It’s always entertaining for me to watch Christian intellectuals try to disown a civilization that their tradition created; for example, all the arguments currently used by scientific atheists were pioneered by Christian missionaries who were trying to disprove the existence of every god but theirs.
AllenAllen, nope. Everything you read about magic, alchemy, and occultism in those tacky books is wrong; Rowling had a genius for getting things backwards.
Annette2, interesting. He’s right about Brittany, of course — it was one big refugee camp after the first big wave of Saxon invasions.
@Clark (#97):
You might take a look at Margaret Barker’s chapter 1, “The Secret Tradition,” in her book The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian LIturgy (2003), which you can read and download at archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/margaret-barker-the-great-high-priest-the-temple-roots-of-christian-liturgy-2003_202409/page/n5/mode/2up
Barker has an excellent grasp of the substantial evidence for the former existence of secret “inner” tradition of early Christian doctrine and practice, which the various present-day institutional Christian Churches have wholly lost any trace of. (There may be a single surviving exception that I know of, namely, the highest level of monastic ordination in the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the so-called “angelic schema.” Yet Barker seems not to know of this ritual practice.)
Morton Smith, who later wrote Jesus the Magician (1977), discovered a significant early text, a formerly unknown letter by Clement of Alexandria, which strongly supports this claim of a now lost secret tradition, and he published two books on his discovery: a massive scholarly tome, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (1973), and a brief and somewhat sensational popular account of his discovery, The Secret Gospel: The Discovery and Interpretation of the Secret Gospel According to Mark (1973).
One implication that Smith drew out of the letter that he had discovered was that all historic forms of institutional Christianity have wholly lost the secret core of Jesus’ own teaching, and thus have not been truly “Christian” for very many centuries.
As one can imagine, the vast majority of current academic specialists in Biblical scholarship and/or the history of Christianity, cannot bring themselves to accept this implication, no matter what the evidence might be; and their current consensus is that Smith himself must have forged the document that he claimed to have discovered. (As a person, Smith made an easy target for such outraged attacks, because of his own quietly avowed atheism and also his non-heteronormative sexuality; and, indeed, one can see traces of both aspects of his personal life in his interpretations of Clement’s letter. And his later book maintaining that Jesus was a magician rather than any sort of Son of God, only added fuel to fires of all this outrage.)
I have a degree of hands-on expertise in the study of early manuscripts and also in the detection of forgeries of such manuscripts, and I have also kept up with all the published scholarship on the document that Smith discovered. I do not think that the document he published can be regarded as a modern forgery, whether by Smith or any other person. Whether Clement of Alexandria’s claims in his letter are true or not is a wholly different question.
Barker is much less controversial, being a (now retired) Methodist minister herself, and a married woman. But her scholarship points in the same direction as Smith’s.
Somewhat alarmed at this material going way too deep for my carbon-fiber skull, I’ve been distracting myself playing with pop music lyrics instead. Apologies for the following.
I’m a grail watcher, I’m a grail watcher
Watchin’ grails go by
My, my, my
I’m a grail watcher, I’m a grail watcher
Here comes one now
Mm mm mm
Oh, won’t you take me home tonight?
Oh, down beside your red firelight
Oh, and you give it all you got
Fat bottomed grails
You make the rockin’ world go ’round
Is there anybody going to listen to my story
All about the grail who came to stay?
It’s the kind of grail you want so much, it makes you sorry
Still, you don’t regret a single day
Ah, grail…
I wish they all could be California grails…
JMG–Since I’m Wiccan, my reaction to people saying that Harry Potter taught witchcraft was “No it doesn’t” (imagine John Cleese accent please.) Having said that, are you familiar with Diane Duane’s “So You Want to be a Wizard” series? The portrayal of magic isn’t any more accurate, but I admired the concept that the power was given to the novice wizard to serve life, not for self-aggrandizement. Of course, there is a heavily dualistic (Christian) thread with the Dark Power clearly Satan. Interestingly there are occasional hints that the Dark Power is not totally doomed.
I would welcome comments by others about the series.
Rita
Justin Patrick Moore,
After I posted my comment about Kingkiller, I quickly thought “oh well there’s the whole tragedy aspect to the character”.. I’m not sure this doesn’t make him a Mary Sue though.. He does, of course, excel at almost everything besides getting the girl (besides his revenge problem). Maybe he’s a Mary Sue lite. I’m pretty sure I’ll like the third book when it comes out, and then come around to being wryly amused by it. The whole Law of Rhythm and all that. Who knows, maybe it will be mind blowingly good and that’s why it’s taking so long. I also read Robert Bly’s Iron John and thought it was a huge let down. I went into it with high expectations.
JMG, question for you: Would you count Harry Potter as a Mary Sue? I probably would, although maybe I’m ignorant as to what a Mary Sue really looks like in the wild.
“One of these days I need to write a book about the extraordinarily complex spiritual situation of late antiquity, focusing on what people at the time thought the future held in store and why so many people decided that something like Christianity was the only viable option. It really is an intriguing story.”
Pretty please with sugar on top.
Just now reading Charles Freeman and would love to read the book you described.
On the subject of Harry Potter and magic, I found Vita Nostra by Sergey Dyachenko and Marina Dyachenko an enjoyable read. It is basically what Harry Potter would be if set in a country that did not have English boarding schools but had had Stalin’s purges. Not sure if the magic is any closer to real but the story is far earthier.
The Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin is, among other things, about a society in which mages are so feared that society kills them as young children before their (deadly) powers can emerge. The magic in this trilogy is completely unreal but it does at least have gravitas and the hero is psychologically far deeper than the boy who survived.
There is a scene early in the first Harry Potter book in which Harry unknowingly lets loose a huge snake while imprisoning Dudley in the snake’s cage. What if Rowland’s imaginary muggle society took such dangers seriously?
I liked the NK Jemisin trilogy, but her subsequent books have been execrable.
Getting back to the main topic, I am mulling over grail myths in which the hero uses the grail for good, those in which he only blocks its used for evil, and Tolkien’s legendarium in which the Ring can only be used for evil, even by those who are good.
@Renaissance Man #83
Strongbow’s invasion force was led by a small handful of Normans, and the rest were ethnic Welsh mercenaries, the ‘Cambro-Normans’. They were fellow Celts so they very easily became ‘more Irish than the Irish’. Unlike the Welsh, the Normans tried their very best to avoid assimilation, but Irish culture was just too strong, because it had such deep and ancient roots. The Normans ended up adopting Irish laws and customs and they entirely forgot their continental heritage. The same thing happened to the Irish Vikings and to later waves of English settlers.
@ JMG # 67
> Do you think there’s any chance that some competent pandits and lawyers could work together to work out some kind of theory of religious Hinduism that could pass legal muster, and safeguard the religious rights of devout Hindus?
Well, that is what J. Sai Deepak and his team were able to do, at least for the Lord Aiyappah temple case. However, these instruments have so far been built on a case-by-case basis, each one aimed at protecting the religious rights of Hindus in one specific situation. Its a lot more challenging to build a general legal framework to protect Hindu religious practices and sentiments.
The first challenge is the discrepancy between the Hindu religious worldview on the one hand, and the worldview of the people who coined the legal instruments that go into a standard Western constitution, of the sort that ours borrows ideas and terminology from. The terms used in our constitution and by-laws are utterly alien to the jargon of Hindu theology. It is not really possible to resolve the concept of “Fundamental Rights” into Hindu theology. Moreover, since the Indian constitution is “secular” in the Western sense, any legal operation based on it will implement a kind of “ontology filter”. Many of the core components of Hindu ontology can simply not be proved to exist or mean anything within the confines of the courtroom.
This is acceptable for some theological entities like “karma”, since a court case scarcely involves them. But consider “brahmacharya”, the ritual celibacy that is considered essential for education and certain kinds of spiritual activity in Hinduism. This entity simply cannot be defined in the context of the legal framework established in our constitution. A lawyer can, on the basis of law, argue for the sanctity of the Bible or the Quran, or even the Vedas for that matter, since a religious scripture can be defined. But can a lawyer establish that “brahmacharya” is sacred, and it is a religious offense for someone to try to seduce a young initiate who is trying to learn the practice “brahmacharya”? That doing so is on par with any other anti-religious action, such as burning a quran? Not easily, not without going by a roundabout way.
The second challenge, of course, is that Hindu upper castes have not always been the nicest people (and I say this as a scion of brahmins myself). As late as in the 1960’s, there were temples that practiced caste-based discrimination and explicitly denied entry to Hindus of lower caste. Political activists fighting for the rights of lower-caste Hindus advocated for powerful legal provisions to protect themselves from discrimination, and many of the landmark decisions made in those legal battles continue to exist in our times. There is a distinct possibility that any legal instrument developed to protect Hindu rights can be repurposed by nasty parties to bypass those protective provisions. J. Sai Deepak himself pointed this out in one of his talks.
I think you are right about the Freemasons, and it points to the way a lot of people since Gen X don’t rub elbows as much intergenerationally. I wouldn’t say that is true across the board, but with the dissolution of extended families and the way the nuclear-plutonian family ideal, and the ideal of moving around the country for work, has left a lot of people without the ties to the tough experiences people had. For me, it was hanging out with my uncle who was a Vietnam vet, and came back schizophrenic, but he and I had a close bond.
The uranian influence on youth subcultures also tends to isolate people from their elders. This isn’t totally true across the board either. There are other influences at work too. I tended to hang out with older kids and people quite a bit myself. I looked to the older punks and skaters, and then to the people who had been hippies I met later. My fellow friends my own age didn’t so much as I did. I hear in Japan that the elders within their subcultures are really respected: that they will teach everyone who gets interested say, in a certain form of extreme music, or whatever thing they are interested in, the young people will really respect them for all the knowledge they have accumulated over their life.
@Luke Z: I do understand your criticism of the Kvothe. I was thinking about it too after I wrote my comment, that perhaps even his parents getting slaughtered was a Mary Sue thing, because it allowed him to play the part of the pitied orphan. Or that was a wish fulfillment on Rothfuss’s part. We all have our own things to wrestle with, and writing a book seems to be a better way to work it out than some others though!
One of the other old timers I’ve hung out with is the Heathen & Druid, Owen Knight, who has shared some of his experiences as a vet in the Korean war with me. He did get involved in the counterculture quite a bit, and neopaganism. His albums under the Blacklight Braille moniker are truly something, and he is a real Arthurian scholar. Now in his mid-90s. Plus he plays the saw, and how cool is that:
All their albums have some Arthurian themes, but the Zauzomaunk Castle, Avalon Tower, and Camelot Palace albums might be good places to start with this “fringe rock” as they called it…
Also features, Louis Martinie of the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot fame…
https://blacklightbraille.bandcamp.com/
JMG (#99) wrote
“I need to write a book about the extraordinarily complex spiritual situation of late antiquity, focusing on what people at the time thought the future held in store and why so many people decided that something like Christianity was the only viable option. It really is an intriguing story.”
Part of the “why,” I think, was that Christianity during its first centuries was an exorcistic religion in a demon-haunted world. That is, it offered every baptized believer complete freedom from the acts of any and all demons. The rite of baptism itself included a comprehensive exorcism. After baptism there were also simple rituals that any Christian could practice without the aid of a priest to banish any demon that might intrude on one’s life. And any baptized Christian, not just priests, might also be formally ordained as an exorcist (which was one of the minor orders, along with door-keepers, readers and acolytes ). Later, of course, the institutional churches made a really big thing of being able to exorcise demons, but this was certainly not the case in early Christianity.
This was important to a world that generally accepted the existence of malevolent demons both large and small.
All right, back into the abyss. We talk about finding/having the Grail to heal the Fisher King and the Land, but in de Troyes’ poem the Fisher King already has the Grail, it’s right there in the room, but it’s only sustaining the Grail King’s existence, not healing either of them. Three different characters, the grieving woman near the Grail Castle, the “hideous damsel,” and the holy hermit all confirm that it’s questions, not the Grail, that would heal (would have healed) the Kings.
Well, you don’t have to lecture me about the importance of asking the right questions. But unless the whole complexity of the myth resolves into that one simple aphorism (which it definitely does not), there has to be a lot more to it. I can’t seem to assign meanings to symbols like some kind of paint by numbers here, so I start with a different (possibly right) question: what is this story about?
What I’m seeing, but can only partly justify, is that Troyes’ story is about the continuity and sustainment of life on earth, being told from the context of a faith that preaches rejection of worldly things but can no longer justify that within the framework of the apocalyptic doomsday cult it started out as a millennium earlier. Themes of parentage, motherhood, food, healing, aging, (in)fertility, generational succession. Redemption, too, but this isn’t about people trying to get into heaven, though it could be (and apparently was) mis- or re-interpreted that way in later versions. It’s about—heretical indeed—establishing and upholding things of meaning and value in the world.
In this context I can try to fill in one version (incomplete and crude) of the meaning of the spear and grail. The grail is the will to nurture and sustain, and the spear is the acceptance of suffering and giving way to successors. Without both being not only possessed but apprehended, the world languishes.
Jessica @ 111, ” her subsequent books have been execrable.” I can’t stand Jemisin. I can manage one or two chapters before succumbing to the urge to chuck the tome through the nearest window. The continued shelf space she gets at B&N and some public libraries raises questions in my suspicious brain about how lousy authors manage to keep being published.
Luke Z @ 109, Rowling used stock characters and situations, common property of storytellers since before the days of Homer.
He is a blind man/He lives on rocky Chios/His songs are the best.
Harry was the young hero, the Jack who wins through by luck and pluck, Ron the faithful friend (Horatio) and I think Hermione Grainger was the person Rowling would like to have been. Rowling is no great thinker nor does she pretend to be one. I doubt she is aware that the occult is in any way a real thing. Her strengths are storytelling and the creation of fun details. Her children’s and adult fiction do contain quite a bit of social commentary. For example, the wicked teacher in one of the later books was pretty clearly, I thought, modelled after Maggie Thatcher. Her A Casual Vacancy, her one attempt at a serious novel is actually quite good, IMO. I took my daughter to stand in line at Borders for the latest Harry Potter book, released at midnight. I thought that an improvement on waiting all night for a glimpse of the Beatles motorcade from airport to hotel.
@108 Rita
On HP being a Mary Sue:
In the HP universe, Hogwarts students are as excited to learn more magic as Muggle students are willing to learn more reading, writing, and math– that is to say, not eager at all. Even Rowling was not eager to have Harry applying new spells in his fights– in the last book, he was using the same handful of spells he learned in Book 4.
So every time Harry comes across a serious threat, the universe has to bend over backwards to let him come out alive. Harry would have come across as less of a Mary Sue (especially in later books) if he was more talented.
“Esoteric Christianity” Well it’s right there out in the open in the New Testament. An experiential encounter with it described below by George Fox, the main leader of early Quakerism which was an explicitly biblical, Jesus, trinitarian thing tinged by Pentecostal phenomena including many miraculous healings.
https://www.quakerinfo.com/quak_jc1.shtml – “What Quakers labored against was a prevalent unbelief in the immediate presence of Christ.”
And in George Fox’s words. His meeting with the Spirit of the Lord after seeking advice from the institutional church of his day.
“As I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition”; and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give Him all the glory; for all are concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus when God doth work, who shall let (i. e. prevent) it? And this I knew experimentally.” ( experientially)
This has been my knowing also. As it says – “Jesus Christ the same, yesterday, today and forever” He still baptizes in and gives the Holy Spirit and enables us to know the Father as he did.
Clark- re: institutionalizing Christianity.
After being a Protestant Christian for about 50 years, I suddenly heard two verses in a different light: John 11:49-50: “But one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish .” Given the Roman position toward leadership conflict (“kill them”), this seems like practical advice. It’s also a message that any government might want to promote among its subjects. We Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus through faith, but no one needs faith to take seriously the reminder that “even if you’re the Son of God, you’ll be crucified before you can effect regime change. Even if that’s not what you intend to do, if there’s a chance that those around you will misunderstand… you’ll be killed anyway.” Lest we forget, we are reminded every year. Self-censor any hint of revolution.
>Do you think there’s any chance that some competent pandits and lawyers could work together to work out some kind of theory of religious Hinduism that could pass legal muster
I’d start with the question – what kind of religion do you think a bunch of lawyers would create? And would you want to worship there at all? Who exactly would be the deity of a bunch of lawyers?
Asking the really uncomfortable and disturbing questions. It’s OK if you don’t have an answer or don’t want to find an answer.
Walt, Freud would definitely approve of those.
Rita, no, I didn’t read that series — I think it came out after I started losing interest in fantasy.
Jessica, I’ll consider it. It’s a strange story. I’ll consider Vita Nostra, but Jemisin isn’t someone I’ll ever read; her loud praise of bullying in the SF community during the Racefail ’09 business reminded me rather too much of the bullying I suffered as a child. I still remember rather too well what asphalt feels like when your face is slammed repeatedly into it by other children, so my tolerance for bullying (whatever the ideological excuse for it) is rather low.
Rajarshi, the broader framework is the thing that’s needed, of course, but I recognize the huge barriers such a project would face.
Justin, oh, granted. One of the reasons I mentioned the Craft is simply that for young men, it’s one of the best ways to break out of the generational ghetto.
Robert M, and that’s certainly part of the story. I’ll be citing Valerie Flint’s fine book The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe, with its focus on Christian sacramentals as protective magic, in that context. I see all this, however, in the context of a much larger crisis of faith across the literate Eurasian world, in which the pervasive belief in astrology and the precession of the equinoxes played a massive role. You’re familiar with Ulansey’s book on the origin of the Mithraic mysteries, right? That’s another glimpse at the broader context.
Walt, a fine meditation. Have you considered factoring in Jessie Weston’s theory that the whole thing reflects seasonal rituals from an ancient mystery cult?
BeardTree, of course it is. When Jesus said “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you,” he made the esoteric dimension of the religion he was founding impossible to miss. Nonetheless it’s impressive how many people manage to miss it!
Other Owen, that’s not what I was suggesting, as I think you know quite well.
Hi John Michael,
Oh, but to put the cursed gold back into the Rhine. What a fine thing that would be. If I may say so, the stuff probably served a useful purpose by being there. A little whisper of intuition suggests that Arthur chose to heal the waste land, and presumably through sheer force of personality was able to bring many others along for the ride, thus why he’s remembered today.
Have we delved into the sphere of mysticism with that question?
Cheers
Chris
“The kingdom of God” While Paul is commonly portrayed as a villain in the Christian tale his writings are throughly laced with open esotericism saying in Romans 14:17 “the Kingdom of God is rightwiseness (older English word for righteousness) peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”. An implicit assumption in his writings is that the early Christians he was writing to had a felt known inner experience of the Holy Spirit in their bodies in the here and now given as gift through Jesus from the Father. But I won’t pour out a flood of verses showing this unless requested to.
“I’ll consider Vita Nostra, but Jemisin isn’t someone I’ll ever read”
I just found out that there is a sequel to Vita Nostra, called Assassin of Reality.
I only learned about her bullying from you now. It is consistent with her more recent work, which I saw as some very old-fashioned racism simply inverted. I am not sure that I would have enjoyed Jemisin’s award-winning trilogy if I had known anything about her as a person.
Mary Bennet, Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy won the Hugo Award three years in a row. That should make it the finest piece of science fiction ever. It is far from that. I am not aware of much else what was clearly great in recent years, but I assume her winning three times was political. Sigh
I assume you’ll cover this in your upcoming post(s) on the opera, but the thing that still intrigues me is the idea that the Grail alone is not enough: it brings peace, but not joy. Specifically, the knights long for reasons to quest and fight again (at least in the version I read). Only when it’s combined with the Spear, a weapon of war, can it bring new life to the kingdom.
It seems like the Grail by itself is simply too much of a good thing. But given Wagner’s Buddhism-by-way-of-Schopenhauer worldview, I’m not sure if I’m reading that properly.
The Grail, for me, always seemed to have a luminous ambiguity, not-quite-here-but-not-quite-there, somewhat similar, in that aspect, to fairies. C. S. Lewis explained in “Allegory of Love” that, if you could photograph fairies (I would add: without their consent), they would lose that luminous quality and become just ordinary creatures, though doubtless very interesting. Just imagine if Auberon in Little, Big could capture fairies on film whenever he wanted. I feel the same way about the Grail. Even considering it is gone today, if we just had a realistic painting or lithography of the Grail, that would already rob it of its suggestive power.
As Lewis also pointed out, even if a Christian believed that fairies existed (and of course most have), that is quite distinct from believing in, that is utterly trusting and relying on, God or the saints. Fairies belong to a “third world”, in addition to the world that can be photographed and the world of existential foundations. One believes in fairies (or the Grail) as an option, an aesthetic choice almost. I have never thought it made sense to consider the ceremony of the Grail the exact equivalent of a mass.
Now the women of Auberon’s family in Little, Big have no reason to doubt the existence of fairies, and their whole lives are structured around interacting with them. Outside the book, there do seem to be people who feel that way about fairies, and maybe there are people who feel that way about (their interpretation of) the Grail. In that case, they will see no ambiguity there.
[LLM-generated drivel deleted by blog owner]
> it’s quite common in certain initiation rituals for the candidate to be refused on a first try due to not being able to answer a question correctly; — JMG #24
This doesn’t only apply to lodges. In certain South African circles you can gain status by claiming to be a member of one of the feared prisons-based numbers gangs. But you can be caught out by a real member if you don’t know the origin story, an interminable tale that you have to spend many hours hearing from a prison bunkmate to master. Some elements are known: a cave, a rock, a river, words written on a dried-out ox-hide, but mostly it remains a secret known only to initiates.
Clark (#130):
I see a necessary addition to your excellent outline. Under “Symbols of the Path” add:
The Spear of Limitation → the sharp and hard limits placed upon life by the material world, the School of Hard Knocks; and the ultimate and wonderful blessing of one’s own unavoidable death.
“It’s our limitations that keep us sane.” (from Starhawk’s mother).
I was so caught up with the lack of a word for ‘religion’ in Hinduism that I almost forgot to discuss the main topic.
I suppose the irrational hope people pit on lotteries has something to do with wealth being the secular fragment of the archetypal treasure? I have often wondered why people behave so irrationally about wealth, but an ethological prerogative to sanctify wealth does explain it.
Also, in Troyes’ original work, Fisher King sounds like an embodiment of Faith? After all, “fisher of men” is a title the Christians have for God. The maiden, likewise, might be Innocence?
Faith does not like any questions asked in it’s territory, and so the mysterious of religion remain mystery. But faith is wounded – likely by doubt – and soon vanishes from its own fortress. The only way to save it, the lost and twisted Innocence berates Parsival, is to question Faith about its own deepest mysteries?
Clark – The path to full knighthood sounds plausible, in the abstract. Are there any living examples of people living according to these principles? Where would you expect a high-level knight to apply his (or her) power, wisdom, and virtue? Electoral office? Small business owner? Non-profit leadership? I’m curious how the abstract becomes concrete.
A few folks here have commented upon Robert Bly’s Iron John and offered their opinions about the men’s movement. As JMG supports dissensus, I’ll share my take, one that differs from some others recounted here.
I found the book Iron John to be substantial and meaningful and, at moments, brilliant. To me, Bly masterfully presents a mode of life-giving manhood that forges a middle ground between a disconnected, destructive machismo and the self-hating rejection of the masculine that modern mainstream culture would propound. His meditations upon the old tale of “Iron John” showed me how vital ancient mythic stories can be, how deeply they can resonate with and feed the psyche. His poetic elucidations of the images of this story and other works he mentions (such as those of Blake, Yeats, Lorca, Rilke, and Jung) have provided me with profound psychic nourishment.
His book—to say it in a way that’s not especially sophisticated–contains a lot of feeling and heart. To me, the heart contains tremendous intelligence, and one of the modern psychic diseases seems to be the widespread male disconnection from the heart. Maybe the men here don’t suffer from such a malady, but this disconnection seems to be all around me and the cause of much harm psychic and otherwise.
One great line of Bly’s that sticks with me still is that “grief is the door to deep feeling.” I love how Bly talks about wounds as initiatory and suggests that working with wounds in a soulful way involves neither suppression nor indulgence but imagination, deep feeling, and discipline. I appreciated his speculation that the “wild man” is not only an archetypal figure pointing to an important instinctual and intelligent part of the deep psyche, but also a numinous being—a god–and that disconnection from this god deracinates and damages modern men greatly.
Bly also offers intriguing ruminations about the role of initiation in male life, and suggests that in traditional (i.e. non-monotheistic/pre-industrial) cultures, a boy could and would not make the treacherous passage from boyhood to healthy, vital manhood without the active and spirited intervention of the older men.
As far as the men’s movement go, my limited experiences with it have been positive. I did a Mankind Project retreat 20 years ago and met men with whom I still fraternize today. In fact, I do a bimonthly men’s group based on my work at that retreat. This is a space in which I can feel and express freely and receive heartfelt listening and honest feedback from my fellows. In my men’s group, I get a break from having to talk about sports or pop culture or superficial things that I don’t really care about. I get to reveal things—such as psychological or spiritual reflections and sensitive, intense inner concerns—that are difficult to talk about in everyday life. I don’t deny that there’s plenty of things that aren’t healthy or substantial in the so-called men’s movement, but of course, everything and everyone in life has some element of bullshale and shadow.
I met Robert Bly after one of his poetry readings 20 years ago or so. He was friendly and gracious and said something to me that still inspires. And as a side note, he also wrote another provocative book called The Sibling Society, in which he discusses the loss of adulthood in the United States and the pernicious effects of the flattening out of the vertical dimension of life.
For reasons I won’t go into here (as I’ve already said my peace), modern/secular/smug liberal culture loves to make fun of the men’s movement and related efforts to reimagine a more earthy, generative masculinity. I invite interested folks here—of all genders—to check out Iron John and come to your own conclusions about what’s real and true about all this.
Pierre
Chris, depends on how you define that very slippery word “mysticism”…
BeardTree, it’s interested me that a lot of 20th century Gnostic writers spoke highly of Paul. I suspect the current portrayal of him as a villain is largely a product of the rise of second wave feminism, which took offense at his portrayal of women.
Jessica, my late wife paid close attention to what was going on in fandom — it was one of her self-assigned duties as my publicity manager — and so I heard about Jemisin’s essay “Why I Think RaceFail Was The Bestest Thing Evar for SFF” very nearly as soon as it hit the internet, and read it not long thereafter. She has the right to her opinions, but I have the right to mine — and the right to let that play a role in determining which writers I read.
Slithy, good. There’s a very important point in that — the grail without the spear is no healthier than the spear without the grail.
Aldarion, one of the secrets of magic is that the entire world, and each one of us, also have the potential for that “luminous ambiguity,” as you so well called it. It requires will and imagination to dissolve the photographic world and enter into the world of the fairies. Auberon finally does it, as Smoky never could; it takes him a long, hard, bitter process of transformation to get there.
Clark, ahem. You’re trying to map out the route to the Grail Castle. Have you been there yet? If not, drawing up maps may be a little premature…
Martin, the parallels between lodges and criminal gangs are very close. The Mafia has an initiation ceremony that’s practically a lodge ritual, and the Chinese tongs are poised exactly on the border between the two. Thus this doesn’t surprise me.
Rajarshi, the Fisher King’s a very complex figure. Some writers have identified him as an image of established Christianity, wounded and unable to heal until someone asks the right questions…
Pierre, I’m glad to hear this. I certainly don’t claim that my own experiences are universal — they’re simply my experiences — and it’s good to know that the movement did help some guys. I know one of the founders of the Mankind Project, btw, and turned down (repeatedly) an invite to do the retreat; it seems to benefit many men, but there’s an ugly side, measured in nervous breakdowns and at least one suicide on the part of men who went through it and were not well suited to it — and I don’t respond well at all to the kind of peer pressure that verges on bullying, which by all accounts is part of that and similar retreats. So your mileage may vary.
Thanks for that very interesting twist to my comment! I will have to think about that. In Paul of Tarsus’ terms, that would mean seeing peoples’ resurrection bodies simultaneously with their very fallible and earthy existence as photographable persons. I think having this kind of sight is part of what makes somebody a saint. Seeing one’s own resurrection body seems to me particularly fraught with risks of pride and folly, but I understand your point.
In Kristin Lavransdottir, Kristin’s father Lavrans is seen in this way by all who love him, existing as a frail body and simultaneously as something shining through, when he is on his deathbed. Lavrans is one of the most memorable good characters I know in literature.
By the way, I meant the older Auberon, who spends his life trying to photograph the fairies, but never manages to actually interact with them.
Hi John Michael,
You’ll get no argument from me there!
To use the grail without the spear is to take the role of the passive will and vice versa. Man, I see that going on all the time. Our species current relationship to the environment is a classic example.
By the way, I’d perhaps incorrectly assumed that Clark’s map was generated by the unmentionable. But that may be just me, my brain doesn’t work in bullet point form.
Cheers
Chris
Yes, from things here and there in Paul’s New Testament writings it seems he was cognizant of the Gnosticism of his day. And this is apparent to me with the rather superficial knowledge of Gnosticism I possess. And perhaps he was also familiar with neo-platonic theurgy and the Mystery religions. After all he speaks of the mystery of Christ, and the gnosis of Christ. The Greek word for mystery is mysterion – meaning truth reveled to the initiated. In my experience this gnosis and mystery is quite available and accessible in the classic protestant Jesus Son of God, Savior come to him, Pentecostalish understanding of the New Testament, though I accept as you often say “your own mileage may vary”
@Pierre on the “men’s movement”: This is not related to my experience in the UU men’s “study group” that I mentioned above; it’s from another church that I attended for a few years, on the other side of the city. There I knew one guy who frequently talked about his visits to his men’s group. My impression of him was that he was the most beaten-down looking man I’d ever met. His body language reminded me of Gollum in the “LOTR” movie.
JMG wrote
there’s an ugly side, measured in nervous breakdowns and at least one suicide on the part of men who went through it and were not well suited to it — and I don’t respond well at all to the kind of peer pressure that verges on bullying, which by all accounts is part of that and similar retreats.
That all makes sense.
I’m not a big fan of the peer pressure thing either and strongly agree that the Mankind Project isn’t a good fit for everyone. In fact, I prefer gentler approaches that can go equally deep. I’m grateful for my retreat experience with them mostly because I met a couple men there who would become good friends/support people and I also got the inspiration to create a men’s group/circle that has worked well for me.
Pierre
Ha! That was actually AI’s take when I asked what the most effective esoteric traditions with the strongest lineages would look like if combined to produce a Grail King. Some of those traditions aren’t even on my radar. I tend to agree that deep practice in one tradition is best, though my philosophy remains broadly syncretic. My greatest challenge, as a perpetual seeker, is remaining content with my own path, instead of constantly looking over the hill to hear the cock crowing in the next village.
JMG,
I hope I am not going to far off topic, but something suddenly made sense to me when you said “bullying” and “initiation” in the same sentences a few times, that I might have been foolish to misunderstand. Every time you talk about initiation, I have a fear in the back of my mind you might be talking about bullying. I may be insufficiently initiated in this lifetime, but I have repeatedly seen situations that promise to be initiatory for myself or others turn out to be more similar to bullying. Over the past few years, in particular, I have been floundered by things that seem like bullying in my community, affecting myself and others, which I suspect are more common than they were a few decades ago when I was growing up. I have been flabbergasted by how little appreciated my criticisms have been, when in the past I usually at least got lip service for the notice that bullying is not endorsed by the authorities here. The other word that tends to show up when things that promise to be initiatory seem like bullying to me is “hazing”. The word “hazing” is probably closer to why I accidentally thought of “bullying” when you say “initiation”. Sometimes when I’ve discussed the topic in the past people tell me I didn’t have it bad. No one slammed my face into the asphalt. My parents tell me the other kids kicked and punched me, but I don’t remember it. I had always thought I had been bullied, and that it felt very bad, and that it shouldn’t have happened, but that it had not involved physical fighting. I wonder what it means that I remember the emotional hurt, but not the violence? I don’t mean to burden you with questions, because you just dissolved 90% of a major block toward me understanding and appreciating your work the particular way you juxtaposed the thoughts of “bullying” and “initiation” just now. What characteristics should one look for to distinguish between “bullying”, “hazing”, and “initiation”? How could one tell that at attempted “initiation” is more likely to be bullying? How could I reduce the extent that efforts to reduce bullying of people younger than me do not worsen a condition of “insufficient initiation” that is likely common among them?
I wonder what would happen if someone actually found the artifact itself, that short of having “Holy Grail” inscribed on it, really did look like the real McCoy, you know, maybe given the archaeological setting, the age of the artifacts, correspondence with biblical accounts, that sort of thing.
A while back I read that someone found ancient, stone, funerary boxes in a tomb with all the names of Jesus’ family inscribed, including Jesus himself if I remember right. Imagine the odds against such a thing happening purely at random, that is, a Judean family having that exact combination of names as found in the bible. Anyway, I expected a storm of epic proportions to come out of this discovery yet I remember hardly a peep.
I suppose that given the life and death import of what Jesus told his followers at the last supper that it isn’t surprising that nobody thought to scoop up the chalice or plate or whatever. I guess that tableware wasn’t a high priority given the circumstances. And funny how some of the account has the ring of truth, ie the three-time disavowal by Peter, plus a snitch who sold him out, and that only his women followers (the three Mary’s) were at the crucifixion. Doesn’t it figure?
Are we surprised that Pilate washed his hands of the whole mess? I read that the Romans took possession of that patch of land mainly to keep the Persians out. The Romans wanted unfettered access to India and Sri Lanka for the lucrative spice trade, especially pepper. What did a religious squabble among Jews matter next to all those riches?
Has anyone ever found gold in the Rhine in real life? Did the legend have any basis in reality?
It would be amusing to start a legend that you can find oh, let’s make it Uranium – in the Mississippi.
Best headline of the morning;
“We All Know The Winds Of Winter Is Taking A Long Time, So Read These 6 Fantasy Book Series While You Wait”
Not six books, six series. You will have plenty of time. Did GRRM write himself into a hole and now can’t get out since the previous books are published?
Siliconguy,
I’ve never read A Song of Ice and Fire or watched Game of Thrones, so take that into account when you hear my opinion, but the most plausible explanation I have seen is that the TV show’s ending was actually Martin’s planned ending for the series, but fans hated it and he has no backup plan. It may well cast less disrepute on him to never finish the series than to finish it poorly — the former at least allows for readers to project their hopes onto the unfinished series.
Off topic for this week, but…
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/homeless-deaths-2023-1.7477742
JMG, some years ago you mentioned that you’d expect a worsening of conditions among homeless people to result in markedly higher death tolls. That’s been happening in BC in the past few years. Total deaths of unhoused people went up by 23% in 2023 (458 deaths) from 2022, and approximately tripled from 2020. 2020 was a very weird year, and is going to producing all kinds of weird base effects, but still. The number of deaths was pretty steady 2016-19 av162/year, but rose markedly starting in 2021.
Most of the increase in deaths is due to a) fentanyl and downright poisonous illegal drug supply since 86% of the deaths among the homeless were due to drugs, and I’m guessing to a lesser extent b) a larger population of homeless people.
Have you considered factoring in Jessie Weston’s theory that the whole thing reflects seasonal rituals from an ancient mystery cult?
It’s obvious that the Grail Castle scene in Perceval (de Troyes) depicts a ritual, and that other aspects of the story depict elements of the myth associated with that ritual. I’ve read most of From Ritual to Romance since you mentioned it earlier in this comment thread. Jesse Weston was very thorough in tracing out the ritual elements and symbols. But she was asking where the story originated. I’m considering a different question: what meaning de Troyes intended for the version he wrote.
(I note in passing that you’ve written a book about Grail mysteries that I haven’t read, so I’m risking looking very foolish expounding on that topic here. At least I won’t be making Perceval’s mistake.)
It’s clear de Troyes omitted and altered many elements of the story he learned from his source (or his source had already done so). Weston ably identifies various aspects of de Troyes’ version as corruptions of older source narratives, such as: the two infirm Kings instead of one; the injury to the Land arising from Perceval’s failure in the ritual instead of directly from the Kings’ sins or infirmities; and the rather pythonesque justification of the title Fisher King. Others she flags as vestigial traces of deprecated aspects of the older narrative, such as Gawain’s out-of-nowhere healing abilities.
Weston doesn’t raise as evidence of a ritual origin (unless I missed it in my reading) how the sudden closure and abandonment of the Grail Castle at Perceval’s departure re-interprets the qualities of an invoked liminal ritual space (in a more literal way that seems on the surface to transform it into whimsy). That feature might well have already been in the source narratives; there are many ways the myth associated with a ritual might be expected to differ from the ritual itself, and that’s one of them. Another such case is the role of the questioner and the question in the myth. Any ritual, initiatory or not, might include a novice or initiate asking a question (“Why is this night different from all other nights?”) or being asked a question they may or may not be able to answer. If a participant is expected to answer a non-obvious question (not in the context of an eligibility test) they’ll usually be coached on the answer (even if in the associated myth the questioned struggles with the answer), and I would bet money that if they’re expected to ask a question, they’ll be coached to do so (even if in the associated myth the questioner asks unprompted). Who above the age of ten speaks up with curious questions during a ritual? A ritual that depended for successful completion on that happening spontaneously would… well, would probably soon change so it didn’t.
So I have to figure de Troyes emphasized (via three different characters repeating) attributing dire consequences to Perceval’s silence because that’s the Grail story he wanted to tell, not because he was trying to repeat an older mythic story or its associated ritual and got it wrong. In de Troyes’ story the motif of generational cycles appears to predominate (hence for instance the “extra” generation of Kings involved), while for instance seasonal cycles are barely referred to, even to the extent that one might normally expect in a story where so much of the action happens out of doors. (Seasons, weather, the sun, all only occasionally mentioned.)
The idea of a veiled critique of a moribund religion that can only be healed by asking the right questions certainly fits in well here. Previously I mentioned the possibility of a needed shift from apocalyptic beliefs focused on the afterlife to concern for the well-being of an enduring world, without considering one detail of the timing that might be relevant: the wave of apocalyptic fervor that accompanied Anno Domini 1000, not exactly recent in the 1180s but within transgenerational memory.
We’ll see if any of this is helpful when we turn to Wagner’s version.
Fisher King: I’ve read that his wound that would not heal was, in fact, castration. There seems to be symbolic significance there, but I’m not familiar enough with this topic.
Cathars: I won’t deny the past excesses of my Catholic Church, which at times amalgamated other traditions, but other times purged them violently. If I recall correctly, the late, great Sara was a Cathar in a past life, so perhaps this is a bit personal.
JMG #105: Regarding the Battle of the Bulge, I remember visiting a hospital years ago, and an old veteran was rambling on about war stories (as they’re wont to do). He said that the Germans had white camouflage, we had standard green/brown (I forget exactly), and it had snowed in the Ardennes, so their camo was far more effective. Pretty interesting anecdote, which I hadn’t read before.
Enjoyer, JMG:
Could it be that the Cathars really had the dualism projected onto them by those persecuting them, a medieval church living quite opulently on the spoils of having successfully suppressed its dirty secret?:
That domination through religious expertdom and the tapping of the flows of secular money through tithes etc. had been the two sides of a single coin, the church – and what we call modernity?
@Clark #142:
“That was actually AI’s take when I asked what the most effective esoteric traditions with the strongest lineages would look like if combined to produce a Grail King.”
That explains it. I had an extremely negative reaction to your post, and went around for a while, grumbling to myself about people mashing up incompatible traditions. It helps me to know it was machine-generated.
Smith, you’re remembering James Tabor, author of “The Jesus Dynasty” (2006). Tabor–yes, that’s his real name–associates the James Ossuary discovered in Silwan (“Siloam”), in Jerusalem’s Kidron Valley, with the Talpiot Tomb, and conjectures that it belonged to Jesus’s brother James (Jacob) the Righteous. The James Ossuary calls its James “the son of Joseph, the brother of Yeshua.” Tabor argues that this conjunction of names (and others in the Talpiot tomb) are mathematically unlikely to be the result of chance. (Others have proposed the inscription to be a modern forgery.) Tabor also attempts to trace Jesus’s human parentage to Roman soldier ben Panthera.
Tabor is otherwise famous for being peripherally involved with the Branch Davidians (he tried to facilitate negotiations between them and the BATF).
By the way, a new wave of Pauline scholarship rejects the earlier consensus–that at least seven letters are “authentic”–in favor of a Ciceronian type rhetorical reading which interprets even this core as a kind of epistolary novel, possibly composed in 2nd century Roman Marcionite circles. (Marcion’s collection may be the first “New Testament” to exist, and is known to have had eight Pauline letters plus a version of Luke-Acts.) On this reading, the character of Paul comes from Acts, which the authors of the epistles used as the basis for what we might think of as a fanfic expansion!
Clark- I will read nothing more under your byline. If you let an AI write for you, you can have an AI read it.
Aldarion, gotcha — I thought you were discussing the younger one. As for the double vision, it may be more a matter of recognizing the body of matter as a partial expression of something far beyond it — in William Blake’s words, “that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.”
Chris, bingo. As for Clark’s excretion, indeed it was, and I’ll be dealing with that momentarily.
BeardTree, if that works for you, by all means.
Pierre, I’m glad it worked for you, and — as I noted above — glad to hear from someone who benefited from the men’s movement. It’s good to know that what I saw of it wasn’t necessarily representative.
Clark, so noted. I’ve deleted the text. If you ever do that again you’ll be IP-banned from this blog permanently. Do not waste my time and the time of my other readers with machine-generated drivel.
Chicory, understood. Hazing is one of the standard pathologies of initiation, and it’s all too common in traditions that have been corrupted. A properly done initiation in the Western tradition is always dignified and respectful; the initiate may be startled or challenged briefly, but never hazed. If you want to understand traditional initiation, and how it differs from hazing, I really recommend joining an old-fashioned lodge such as the Freemasons or Odd Fellows; if that’s not an option, my book Inside a Magical Lodge covers the ground fairly well.
Smith, there are half a dozen Holy Grails in various corners of western Europe; I once had the chance to handle one at Glastonbury — and yes, I asked the young woman who carried it whom the Grail serves. (Her answer was classic: “I think each of us must decide that for ourselves.”)
Other Owen, that’s a good question to which I don’t know the answer. Anyone?
Siliconguy, erm, I think I’ll pass.
Pygmycory, many thanks for the heads up!
Walt, thanks for this. Another bit of timing that may be relevant is that the Grail legends flourished just as the Crusades were failing. Helen Adolf’s Visio Pacis, Holy City and Grail made, I think, a good case that this was a core element of the subtext of the legend.
Xcalibur/djs, it’s pretty widely held that yes, the Fisher King had been castrated, and there’s a very powerful symbolism there. As for the Battle of the Bulge, I believe that that’s correct — the Allied troops in the Ardennes sector weren’t expecting any serious action that winter and so weren’t issued snow camouflage.
Michaelz, that would be plausible, except that more than enough Cathar literature has survived to show that they did in fact come from the dualist end of the Gnostic movement. The Book of the Two Principles is especially clear on this.
Ambrose, interesting — but I have to say that I have my doubts about almost anything that comes out of Biblical scholarship these days. The sound of axes being ground is deafening!
“Most of the increase in deaths is due to a) fentanyl and downright poisonous illegal drug supply since 86% of the deaths among the homeless were due to drugs,”
Tell me about it; From today’s news,
“SPOKANE COUNTY, Wash. — At least two toddlers in Spokane County overdosed on fentanyl and were brought back to life with Narcan [so far this year].
Both toddlers got ahold of their caregivers’ fentanyl and ingested the drug. ”
The other cause of increased mortality locally is bad driving. Winter is over but the accident rate is not dropping off.
Bad driving seems to be spreading to the North Sea too. 16 knots through a fog right into the side of an anchored oil tanker. The ramming ship was tracked by its transponder and it made no attempt to slow or swerve to miss the tanker. Was no one on the bridge? Was the watch asleep? Major negligence however you look at it.
I’m asking because academics in that field seem to have been busy discussing whether the Cathars even existed, or were turned into a target by inventing their “abhorrent” belief system.
JMG, I find AI helpful for kicking around ideas, and that thought experiment had value for me. I thought you and the commentariat might find it interesting. I acknowledged that it was AI generated in my follow up comment, as I wanted to be transparent. In my excitement to share, I forgot how much you don’t want to talk about AI. My appologies.
Wer here
Late to the discusion but I will say only this. Nowhere in the Bible it is said that the cups for whatever untensils the Lord and his disciples used were gifted with any sort of powers. In fact I firmly belive that in the gospel an completely different image is shows as Jesus says to not ” gather treasures of this earth” for it is not divine to do so”
The obsesion with treasure hunting and speculation with the grail and it’s true nature remind me of this godawful movie and book series made by Dan Brown and his made up interpretations of secret hiding in plain view and conspiracies. I always balk at the idea that an all powerful secret society would literally leave clues everywhere to eplain it’s existence and not simply hide > Like the proponets of alien/UFO/reptilian theory are claiming on the internet and ranting about on the internet…
It make opnly for badly written fanfiction that misses the point of scripture when people are more obsessed with finding “magic” artifacts than actually follow the teaching in the scripture.. Especialy since it was invented of other stories like you just shown.
I couldn’t help myself, I had to go panning. Euweka! Gold at wast!
I guess it’s not just a legend – you can actually pan for gold in the Rhine. It’s a thing. And like with all things European, you need to fill out paperwork before you start.
https://www.dinersclub.ch/en/sustainability-meets-tradition-gold-washing-in-the-rhine/
Form 4001-B, Section F:
[x] Oh Suzanna, now don’t you cry for me /
[x] Oh, I’m off to the Rhine River with a gold pan on my knee
For all of you creative people out there, I can’t recommend enough the book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by the late David Lynch.
I got thinking of this after a brief discussion with JMG about AI yesterday for Magic Monday. The surrealists had automatism. Todays would-be “knowledge workers” (I hate that term) would rather just generate a bunch of stuff than look inside for their own ideas.
Lynch says, “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful… The beautiful thing is that when you catch one fish that you love, even if it’s a little fish—a fragment of an idea—that fish will draw in other fish, and they’ll hook onto it. Then you’re on your way. Soon there are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges. But it starts with desire.”
I love this metaphor, and I think if we wish to heal the Fisher King we need to start trawling the dark waters of our unconscious again. That’s where the real answers will be generated -and regenerate- not by some computer.
I also think the advice of Captain Beefheart is appropriate here, and it also relates fishing. In his 10 Commandments for Playing Guitar, we find the second commandment: “Your guitar is not really a guitar. Your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you’re good, you’ll land a big one.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m taking the rest of the day off to go fishing.
@Siliconguy #146:
@SlithyToves #147:
“Did GRRM write himself into a hole and now can’t get out since the previous books are published?”
“the most plausible explanation I have seen is that the TV show’s ending was actually Martin’s planned ending for the series”
GRRM has absolutely written himself into a corner. By Book 5, he’d killed off or neutralized almost all of his good characters, and started introducing new characters that… well, I certainly have no fond feelings for them. ‘Utterly irrelevant’ would be an apt term.
I highly doubt he ever had an ending planned. His guiding ethos for the series seems to include a wholesale rejection of traditional storytelling, so anything resembling a satisfying ending would have been ruled out from the start. And indeed, the books veer away from anything that might lead towards such an unfashionable development.
JMG,
“There’s a very important point in that — the grail without the spear is no healthier than the spear without the grail.”
Something that hit me last night before sleep: has Western civilization since WWII tried to have the grail without the spear?
So I didn’t think it was so important to mark at first when I saw your image of Perceval that it is more or less just the same as this weathered and damaged painting I found on a HUD foreclosure clean out/’maintenance’ job we did w my old handyman company. This place was special, next to a Masonic cemetery and, like the houses of a big handful of elderly men with HUD-backed loans, usually veterans, who had no next of kin, it had Masonic handbooks and related paraphanelia. But this one in a massive well-built barn also had a white grail cup, this painting of Perceval, a glass vial of mercury, and seems like remains of a sacrificed sheep. I had to rescue the initiatory elements and cleaned their less-dense fields best I could and have had them ever sense. Anyhow, I assumed for whatever reason that this was a real common image of Percival but when I searched initially it doesn’t seem to be so the synchronicity feels stronger. Then, I ended up in this long docuseries by William Henry called ‘Ascención keepers’ that makes historical lineages to and from the essenes. Ended up today with the cathars. Really interesting. Do you have any special advice what I should do with these rescued initiatory elements?
@JPM #162: “Trust us — we love you.”
Capt. Beefheart and David Lynch. A few guilty pleasures from the past, but off topic. They were both painters, too.
JMG #156: That confirms it, then. I figured he was telling the truth, being a veteran and all, it’s just that I hadn’t come across that in my extensive readings of WWII. Maybe Western sources suppressed that minor blunder to save face, since after all, the winners write the history books.
As for the Fisher King, something just occurred to me. A few Mondays back, I asked you about the role of Satan, and you explained that he is Pan, the goat-god who represents all the repressed aspects of Christianity. Could it be then, that the Fisher King’s castration represents the very same repression of nature, wildness and sexuality? If so, the original Grail legend is a profound insight into the Christian religion — perhaps a bit too insightful, which is why it was rewritten. And then, the Grail and bloody spear represent what could fix Christianity and make it whole again, if I’m following this correctly…
Hi John Michael,
Interesting! This morning a chunk of insight hit me on the side of the head. The unmentionable is actually papering over declining literacy rates. What I’m observing of the motivations of people who use that thing, is that they’re being relived of the burden of thinking, creating and/or putting their ideas into a form which can be communicated to other people. That’s what it looks like to me that the users get out of the system.
Trust me, this insight does not inspire me with confidence for the future, but truly you know what the historical rates of literacy were. Ah, what we give away without even noticing…
Oh, and one final observation, proving that no benefit comes without a cost, the time saved gets consumed with greater (not to mention more invasive) administrative burdens.
My mind is recoiling slightly at the implications. It’s not good.
Cheers
Chris
@Slithy Toves #164: “Something that hit me last night before sleep: has Western civilization since WWII tried to have the grail without the spear?”
Yup. And she’s buying a stairway to heaven.
Hi JMG,
Things are afoot regarding Ukraine and Russia. It feels like what you have talked about for decades is happening, like the next 48 hours. I feel vibrations. The first ice of winter is breaking up.
💨Northwind Grandma💨❄️🌥️
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA