Pantheacon (8) -- “But...Who Is This Grail?”

Just a few words for people who read the post about the Chalice/Grail, and have no idea what it was about.

 

Many stories were told, back in the 1100s-1300s, about the search for an object called The Grail.  Since the 1800s, many of these stories have been retold.

In Richard Wagner’s stage work Parsifal, at the first mention of the Grail, Parsifal asks, “Who is the Grail?”  The reply is, “That can’t be told.”  Not because it’s forbidden, but because it is a mystery impossible to express in words.  Perhaps this isn’t just a story, perhaps it’s actually true.  Let me tell you the story as I understand it…

A “grail” is a something like a chalice or shallow bowl.  “The Grail” is supposedly the cup that Jesus drank from at his Last Supper.  After he was executed the following day, a Roman soldier, Longinus, stabbed him with his spear to confirm he was dead; and water and blood flowed from the wound.  For unexplained reasons, the cup from the supper was there and caught the blood.  Later, the cup was taken to England (a rather Anglo-centric idea!).

But in other versions of the story, the Grail is something else:  Part of a meteor fallen from the skies?  The Philosophers’ Stone?  A jewel from the crown of Satan, that dislodged as Satan was thrown into Hell?

In John Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur, shortly after King Arthur realizes that his wife Guenevere is involved with his best knight Lancelot, Arthur is struck by lightning.  When he regains consciousness, his first words are: “We must find what was lost—the Grail.  Only the Grail can save us.”  Thus far in the film, the Grail has never been mentioned.  Arthur’s knights exchange embarrassed looks, then one of them says, “Um—where do we look for it?”  They don’t have a clue—and neither does Arthur!  He just knows they need to find it.

The Grail exists in another place, a parallel kingdom, a psychic realm.  In that “place,” a wounded king is perpetually ill, perhaps because of some past transgression, possibly sexual; or perhaps because he has failed as leader?  Healing the king, and the kingdom, involves coming (back) into proper relationship with…something:  The Grail?  The land?  Sexuality?

The Grail quest usually takes the seeker out of the Mundane into this Otherworld.  Finding the Grail, psychologically, involves understanding the sickness of the King in this Otherworld, and understanding how to heal him.  Having achieved this in the psychic realm enables the successful Seeker to return to Ordinary Reality and bring the healing with him/her.

In Excalibur, Arthur is reminded of his proper role as king:  “The Land and the King are one.”  As Merlin told him earlier:  “You will be the Land and the Land will be you.  If you thrive the Land will thrive.  If you fail the Land will fail.”  Arthur had forgotten this.  But Perceval, by making the psychic journey into the Otherworld, has recovered this psychic knowledge; the “Grail” that can heal the king and restore balance in the land, changing what was a Wasteland into a new-blooming, renewed, restored kingdom.

For Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, the Grail Quest represented the quest for the Self—a very important quest indeed:  The attempt to understand ourselves and our proper role in society and the universe.

And you can see how the Grail might be connected with Hermes Trismegistus, associated with the sayings:  "As Above, so Below.  As the Body, so the Soul.  As Without, so Within."