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!

Pantheacon (2) – Pagans? Heathens?? Witches???

So, speaking of Pantheacon, some of you may be wondering just what this is all about?  A convention for Pagans, Heathens, Witches and such?  Surely this must be a joke.  Perhaps you cannot imagine what such an event would be like.  You can’t imagine people in the year 2013 calling themselves Pagan and the other names.

I’ve been a Pagan for over thirty years.  You may ask:  How can that be?  Surely these things have been left behind long ago, hundreds or even thousands of years ago, by civilized people.

No.  I was baptized a Lutheran and grew up hearing Bible stories, it is true.  Then, in grade school, I also heard the legends of Greek heroes.  In high school I heard about Greek tragic heroes.  So that I was familiar with the so-called “Pagan” authors before I ever got to college.  About the same time, I became interested in Wagnerian opera, eastern religion, and the psychology of Carl Jung.

I was inclined towards nature and mysticism.  When I discovered books about Wicca, and Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon, it didn’t seem particularly foreign to me.

I confess, I read Adler’s book because I’d been studying mythology.  I’d spent a lot of time with Joseph Campbell’s four-volume The Masks of God.  I was interested in modern approaches to myth.  When I noticed that most of Adler’s book dealt with modern-day witches, I was a bit put-off.   Witches?!  I wasn’t interested in witches!  I thought that anyone calling themselves a witch nowadays must be either extremely shallow or extremely weird.

But it appealed to me.  It was not what I had expected.  I’d believed stereotypes.  You may have ideas of who these people are; and you may be wrong.

I’ve been surprised, over the years, by how many other people have also felt attracted to these things.  

So—I’m going to tell you a bit about Pantheacon—what I saw and heard there.

Stay tuned.