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."

Pantheacon (7) – The Grail

After staying up on Friday night with Pomba Gira, I took my own good time recovering the following morning, and didn’t make it back to the second day of Pantheacon until the early afternoon.  I found a good seat right near the front for a presentation on The Grail and Cauldron.  This was intended to include a visual presentation but, alas, technical difficulties intervened.  However, I liked the presenter and she discussed one of my favorite topics:  The Grail legend.  She dealt mainly with the French versions of this medieval legend and epic, particularly the version by Chretien de Troyes.  I found myself close to tears as she described the life of Perceval, mentioning also the women Blanchefleur and Repanse de Schoye.  She mentioned the question that the seeker must answer to find the Grail:  “Whom does the Grail serve?”  She also dealt with connections between the Grail and Hermes Trismegistus.  This all was very emotional for me, because of my long study of the Grail legend.  I shared this with the presenter later on in the conference.

My own study of the Grail began decades ago with Richard Wagner’s “opera” Parsifal (he himself referred to it as a “Stage-consecrating Festival Play”).  This is a magical work, and during the Chalice workshop it entered my mind that I should present a workshop next year built around the idea of Wagnerian Witchcraft or Wagnerian Magic.

Wagner led me eventually to Joseph Campbell’s four-volume The Masks of God, which includes a ninety-page retelling/analysis of the Parzival poem of Wolfram von Eschenbach, my second personal source of Grail material (though I don’t know it nearly as well as Wagner).

My third source of Grail material is John Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur, which is allegedly based on Thomas Mallory’s Morte d’Arthur.  I went through a period where I watched this film repeatedly.  I made extensive notes for an essay I never wrote (maybe later?) on why the film was actually about finding authentic masculinity.

Of course, most people nowadays know about the Grail from Monte Python and the Holy Grail.  Well—any great work deserves a great parody.  It keeps the story alive, even if ironically.

For myself, I can say that the Grail legend appeals to me on some deep level.  The fact that people have told different versions just makes the whole story richer.  Something of worth is being sought in a world that seems tainted.  You have to look for it even when you have very little idea of what you are looking for or how to find it.  You have to ask the right questions and answer them.  We need something authentic.

So I was moved into a state of contemplation during Pantheacon.  I looked for my own authenticity, sought to realize and acknowledge my own emotions and grasp the meaning of what moves me.  While envisioning a workshop on Wagnerian Magic, I wondered whether I wasn’t heading, rather, towards a future as The Sacred Curmudgeon.  Maybe it comes with my age.

Or maybe not.  There is a cure or healing for the curmudgeon; and the Grail legend is about the healing of the Waste Land.  For several years now, I’ve entertained the idea that (gasp!) Wagner got the Grail legend wrong.  Campbell himself hints at this.  Wagner’s Parsifal finds the Grail after renouncing sexuality in the form of the woman Kundry.  Campbell prefers Wolfram, where Parzival eventually finds mature adult love and marries.  But I, after my dancing with Pomba Gira—“in service to the Goddess?”—wonder whether perhaps we can revise Wagner’s story so that Parsifal can celebrate sacred sexual love with the goddess Kundry?  That could be the true Grail Incarnation!