Reasons for their Power:

              As one of the greatest of the Grail Scholars said, "-of this one thing we may be sure, the Grail is a living force, it will never die; it may indeed sink out of sight, and for centuries even, disappear from the field of literature, but it will rise to the surface again, and become once more a theme of vital inspiration even as, after slumbering from the days of Malory, it woke to new life in the Nineteenth Century, making its fresh appeal through the genius of Tennyson and Wagner." 1

12th Century

              Suddenly, in the midst of the greatest flowering of Arthurian romance, in the mid 12th century, a strange phenomenon took place; the mystical legend of the Holy Grail not only linked up with the Arthur legends, but in an instant of something like nuclear fission, overshadowed them, becoming the potent center around which the stories of Arthur and his knights later orbitted; the Grail theme seemed to provide them, not only with a pivotal core, by means of which they could interrrelate, but produced the dynamic purpose for their heretofore random adventures. The sparks produced by this amalgamation were so intense that one almost feels that somewhere in the distant past they had once been united and then forcefully sundered, waiting with a kind of magnetic tension for the opportunity to reunite.

Source of the Legends: Christian legends? Ancient Near East Rites? Celtic Mythology? The Collective Unconscious?

              Viewed historically, some scholars have assumed that the Celtic 1egends of Arthur, originating in Cornwall and Wales, travelled to France by way of Brittany, meeting there an Eastern legend of the Grail, carried, perhaps, by returning crusaders, or by Arabs through North Africa and Moorish Spain, to be joined together in 12th Century France, probably at a court of Queen Eleanor

               The quest for the Holy Grail is thought to have changed not only the tone of the various heroes' adventures, elevating them to the highest spiritual ideals, but to have provided such a mysterious aura for the combined cycles that scholars, ever after have not been able to resist the quest. For several hundred years the Grail legend had been accepted at face value, as a Christian legend of the knights' search for the Cup of the Lord's Last Supper. But in the last century, when the minds of researchers were so much turned to scientific studies of Mythology and folk traditions most authorities began to turn to the possible source of both the Arthur and Grail legends in Celtic Mythology.

               Further investigations by the Myth and Ritual School in the early days of this century convinced them that the potency of the legends was only explained by the assumption of origins in the intense experiences of ancient Near Eastern religious rites. More recently still psychoanalysts have tried to explain the dynamism of the legends by seeing their source in the electrifying capacity of the archetypes of the human unconscious mind. I believe New Churchmen should also take up the challenges applying principles from the deepest Source of all, the Heavenly Doctrines conveyed by Swedenborg, to answer the question why have these legends hung on so tenaciously throughout hundreds of years, continuing to capture the imaginations of poets, story tellers and readers alike?

A Christian Symbol

            There are numerous accounts of the Grail legends involving different heroes and different forms assumed by the Grail itself, such as a dish, a stone or a cup. The best known accounts are those that give it a Christian origin, the Grail being the vessel from which the Lord drank at the last Supper. Joseph of Arimathea, so the story goes, caught the blood of the Crucified Saviour in that same cup, treasured it and carried it with him to England; through various persecutions and trials, the Grail was said to have provided him with food, drink, and spiritual sustenance even to the very last days of his life. It was handed down from generation to generation of his spiritual, if not natural, descendants, guarded only by those who were pure in heart.

Percival

        The Grail seems to have first appeared in romance, as a Christian symbol united with the story of Perceval. In very simple composite form, the story goes something like this: Percival was brought up by his widowed mother, far from the court, in a secluded forest, in complete ignorance of the sophisticated ways of knights and ladies and chivalry. There is an aura of sadness and mystery in regard to who his father was and what had happened to him. (You will already recognize the early pattern of the typical hero.) One day, he meets some knights and follows them, fascinated by their armour and the excitement which surrounds them. This is entirely against the mother's wishes, and, in fact in many versions he looks back to see her lying on the ground, prostrate, possibly dead from grief. After various adventures he comes to the mysterious castle of the Fisher King, who lies wounded and, in some versions, speechless. A strange procession passes by carrying highly significant objects including a bleeding lance and a sacred vessel. Percival finds out later that if he had asked the right questions about what he saw, the king might have been healed. After many wanderings and temptations he returns to the castle able to ask the right questions, curing, and later succeeding the aged king as Keeper of the Grail Castle.

Poems

        The earliest manuscript which we still possess which gives the Grail a Christian significance as a mysterious and holy thing, is the 12th cent.romantic poem started by the trouvere, Chretien de Troyes, Perceval or Le Conte de Graal. In this story, Perceval is a guileless, rustic knight, extremely innocent and ignorant, who leaves his home and his prostrate mother to be knighted at Arthur's Court. In a later adventure he comes upon a lame fisherman, in some versions two fishermen, either fishing from the bank or sometimes in a boat on the river; he is told to go to the Castle Caybonik for lodging. Here he finds his host lying upon a couch. A strange procession passes before him involving a squire carrying a bleeding lance, two more squires carrying ten branched candlesticks, a damsel carrying a silver cup which gives off a great light, and another damsel carrying a silver platter, all passing between the couch and the fire; he asks no questions.

        The next day Percival wakes up to find the castle deserted. A damsel he meets tells him that his host had been the Fisher King, who, wounded in both thighs by a spear, would have been cured, and good would have come to the waste land round about if Perceval had asked the right questions about the meaning of the bleeding lance and shining grail; she also told him that the reason for his failure to achieve this quest was his sin to his mother who had died of grief. Chretien never finished this, his last romance, but several writers of his time put their hands to finishing his story. Many of their versions seem to dip back to their own knowledge of the source or sources, with the result that they make no pretense about being consistant; indeed some seem to have had better sources than Chretian had.

          The earliest form, so far as the subject matter is concerned, is that embodied by Wauchier de Danain in his continuation
of Chretien's Perceval. Wauchier cites his source as one Bleheris, an intriguing character, otherwise referred to by various writers as Master Blihis or Breri; he is Bledhericus to Giraldus Canibrensis, and Bleys to Tennyson. This Bleheris seems to be a key figure in the quest for the sources of the stories. One scholar believes that at least Bleheris understood the meaning of the mystery; he was thought to be a nobleman of North Wales, with long family traditions in the mystery rites, which were the living link between the ancient eastern ceremonies and their romantic revival during the Middle Ages. Whether he was an historical figure or a collectlve name for a bardic tradition, or someone like Enoch, who represented, in correspondential terms, a group who collected and preserved truths from antiquity, is hard to say, but he does seem to be the source of inspiration for many of the writers .(The fact that he is sometimes called Master Bleys, and Breri adds evidence to my theory that it was the Knights Templar who, having settled back in Templecomb, near Shaftsbury, Glastonberry and Cadbury, having treasured and preserved the Tradition of the historic Arthur of the 6th Century, passed it on to be romanticized by the Twelfth Century Romantics like Marie de France, who was Abbess of Shafsbury Nunnery at that time. See my Search in Ancient Wessex.("Breri" is French for Brotherhood, the Grand Masters were leaders of the Knight Templars--well known as a "brotherhood.")

Gawain

             Wauchier's continuation plays up Gawain, more than Perceval as the real Grail hero. This Gawain version seems to have more of the early, animistic atmosphere of the Welsh countryside, including a rude knight riding by, insulting Guenevere, and a knight being killed by an invisible hand. In this version, Gawain rides out on his quest, stops at a mysterious chapel, then dashes through a waste land and toward the seashore; then over a causeway to a lighted castle where the guests seemed to expect him. Later the guests leave him because he was not the one they expected.

            In the center of the hall is a bier on which is the body of a huge knight, covered with crimson silk, sword on his breast, and lighted candles at head and foot. Gawain watches a procession, lead by a cross of silver, accompanied by sounds of great lamentation. There are tables spread for a feast; the king of the castle places Gawain beside him and they are served here by the rich, food producing Grail, not a holy object, but mysteriously coming and going at will. Later on, he sees a Cup into which a stream of blood flows ceaselessly, from the point of a Lance fixed upright within it. Both objects are explained as Christian objects of the Crucifixion. The Grail seems to be more canny and dangerous than holy, more of a taboo; none can speak of the mysteries of the Grail without trembling and changing color. The king is explaining to Gawain about the lance bleeding until the day of doom, and of the sword of the Dolorous Stroke by which Logres and all the countryside were destroyed, he is in the middle of telling him through his weeping, who smote the blow and who died, when Gawain falls asleep.  He wakes up to find the castle vanished, his horse tied to a rock by the shore. The land is now green, people come by both blessing him and cursing him because he partially restored the land by asking about the Lance, but it was not complete because he did not ask about the Grail. You can see the archaic dreamlike quality of the Gawain legends.

         Another Gawain mss. tells of the formal Grail procession in which a youth is carrying the "bleeding lance, a maiden with a silver platter, another maiden weeping bitterly who carries the Grail in her raised hands. (Gawain does not know what she carries.) There are four men carrying a bier, holding a dead body and a broken sword.  Gawain cannot join the two halves, falls asleep, and wakes up in a morass.

        In still another Gawain version, called Diu Crone, the hero comes to a goodly land, green like Paradise, he passes a castle of glass, whose entrance is guarded by a fiery sword where he meets Lancelot and Calogreant. The three come to the Grail castle. They find an old King, ill, in a goodly hall bestrewn with roses; his vesture is white wrought with gold. Gawain sits by the king on a cushion of rose- colored silk. The other two drink wine and fall asleep, but Gawain has been warned not to drink When they are all asleep Gawain sees the Grail procession. The maiden had already warned him that if he saw her in a procession with other maidens he should ask what they did there. Obediently Gawain asked the right question, and the king sprang up with a cry of joy. It seems that the king was really dead but retained a semblance of life until the quest was achieved. At day-break the king and his knights vanish and only the Grail bearer and her attendants remain. They were the only living beings in this dwelling of the dead; this was the cause of their grief. (p.37Quest)

Parzival

        One more important and varied version of the story is the outstanding poem, The Parzival by a Bavarian minnisinger, Wolfram von Eschenbach, witten in about 1215. According to his version the Grail is a precious stone  which came from heaven after the fall of the angels. It is guarded by a group of knights, Templars, chosen by the stone itself; the knights are celibate, and only the king is allowed to marry; if any land is in trouble it prays to heaven for aid, the name of the designated knight appears on the stone and he will go and be their king. This is where the German tradition of the Swan Knight and the story of Lohengrin originated. Critics believe that this German poem ranks higher than other works of the cycle, as far as corstructive literature is concerned. Poetically beautiful, it keeps a constant relationship between Parzival and Gawain, unlike the more fragmented work of Chretien.

             Some compare the relationship of Chretian and Wolfram to that of Tennyson and Browning, the former light and idyllic, the latter more organized and unified. The importance of the Chretien version is not so much the style of the poem but the substance. He says he found the story in a book given to him by Count Philip of Flanders, but so far scholars have not located this source, and many wonder if there was such a source. Chretien never tells us what the Grail is, whether a cup, or a dish, or a reluquary; there is no mention of it as a Christian object, only that it gives off great light; although the content tells us it is holy, he never tells us why it is holy; nor does he tell us what the relationship is between the Grail and the Bleeding Lance.

            Chietien died having; written about 10,000 lines. Wauchier adds another 20,0000 lines, and, as we have said, includes Gawain joining Perceval on the quest, and showing much internal evidence of having an earlier source than Chretien's; in his version the Grail seems to be less holy, but more of a rich food producing object which comes and goes when needed; a different object from the cup which Gawain sees in the castle into which blood flows from the lance. The mystery builds up in this version to the point that none can speak of it without trembling; it is too dangerous to mention. The lance here is definitely associated with the spear that pierced the Lord's side: John XIX: 34: "One of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water" The Grail in this version definitely caught the blood of Christ. It is impossible to detail here all the research that has been done to show how certain parts, like these Christian elements, were probably written into Gauchnier's continuation  after someone had read a writer known as Robert de Borron. Several people seem to have added to Chretien's manuscript until it reached 60,000 lines including countless variations and details, many of which are quite significant and obviously relaying the stories from well known sources.

        One fragment attached to Chretien's poem refers to a seven- fold quest of the Grail and of mysteries learned at the Fisher King's court which none may reveal. Wolfram says his source was a certain Kiot, a Provencal, adding that Chretian mistold the tale. Both the style and the moral content of the von Eschenbach Parzival are remarkable. Not only does Parzival confess to the hermit regret at not asking the proper question at the Grail castle, but he confesses regret that he has left his wife for so lone. The hermit tells him it is better to go back to his wife than to continue seeking the Grail. So when Parzival turns his mind in that direction he becomes King of the Grail Gastle of Munsalvach in Spain. and all success and happiness comes to him.Wagner's opera Parsifal was based on this poem of Wolfram.

Prose

        Many prose versions were written at about the same time; the earliest, and most interesting of which were the four pieces of Robert de Borron, Joseph of Aramathea, Merlin, Perceval, and Mort Artis. In these the Grail is a dish from the Last Supper, given by Pilate to Joseph, which miraculously fed Joseph while in prison. Joseph brought it to Britain where it acts as an oracle distinguishing between good and evil; it elects its own guardian and foretells future events. At Joseph's death the Grail is committed to his brother-in-law, Brons, and then goes to his grandson, who is son of Alain. Thus there are three Grail Keepers and also Three Tables in this version. One is the Table of the Last Supper, one the Grail Table and the third one is Arthur's Round Table. The threefold symbolism is insisted upon. Merlin is very important in these stories because he constructs the Round Table after the other two; he reveals to Arthur that the Grail is in England, that it is preserved in the house of Brons, the Fisher King, who is waiting for his grandson Perceval. If Percival asks the right questions Brons will be restored to health and become Keeper himself.

        There is an obvious time problem here; if Bron is the brother-in-law of Joseph of Aramathea, who tells of having seen the Lord when He was a baby, then he is indeed quite old, several hundred years, if he is still alive at the time of Arthur. However, we are no doubt dealing with mythical time here. The Borron version, however, seems to be the model which developed the combined Grail and Arthur themes as a tremendous body of cyclical romances, the Arthur element having taken a comparativeley unimportant position in the poetic versions of the legends.

Lancelot

        The Perlesvaus is another prose version coming out at about the same time as Robert de Borron's Perceval. It can be called a Lancelot quest; Lancelot was not mentioned in the poem of Chretien, and just barely mentioned by Wolfram. Galahad is just appearing as an excrescence on the cycle in this Perlesvaus. Another striking characteristic of the Perlesvaus is its militant spirit against Pagans, quite contrary to the warm tones of the Parzival of von Eschenbach, where the Saracen knights and ladies are genteel and chivalrous. (p.19 Grail)

        The last outstanding romance of the early Medieval cycle is the Quete du Sant Graal, in which Galahad figures as the pure hero of the Queste; this is the basic story upon which Malory's translation and Tennyson's poems were written. This Galahad story is entirely new, involving separate adventures. Like Parsifal, he does go to a castle of maidens and visits a mysterious cemetary and the Castle of the Fisher King; but the king is not wounded and the land is not wasted. Parceval is in the story but is colorless, unlike the natural, impetuous, unrestrained youth of the earlier stories. Gawain, the original hero of the Grail legends has been debased beyond recognition.

        The spirit of these later Grail stories and Galahad romances involves the highest ideals, the purest Christian morals and mystic Grail symbolism; there are beautiful images of the perfect Christian knight in Galahad, but somehow they have lost a lot of substance. Galahad is not a real, growing man, resisting temptation and achieving the great glimpse because he had earned it; he seems to be more an innocent child with his thoughts more on the glory of achieving the Grail than human sympathy for the wounds of the Fisher King. He is virtuous, faithful, pure, but something of a fanatic who wants only heavenly bliss.

Summary

        To summarise then, the Grail legends can be classified in several ways, according to form, that is poetry or prose, but more interestingly according to heroes: The earliest texts belong to the folk tale perioid, tending to have the rugged Gawain as hero; Gawain is also connected with the earliest of the Arthur legends; he is one of Arthur's first knights. The Gawain texts have more of an early archaic, quality, involving an ominous mood of death and lamentation; the Grail is mysterious and unidentified; the adventures are much more varied in incident and setting. A dreamlike quality of suddenly switching scenes pervades; in fact, falling asleep enters into the scenes quite frequently.

          In the period of greatest popularity, the period of the highest romances, Perceval is the hero. These romances are the most numerous and yet have the least variety of detail; they are elaborate but lacking in variety of adventure and and scene. Although the mood seems more refined than that of the rustic Gawain adventures, still Perceval does retain some of the untamed, vigorous manliness of Gawain; he is far from the perfect chivalrous knight of the later Galahad stories. In the Gawain stories there is often a dead King, but in the Perceval stories he is usually replaced by a maimed king lying on a bier, carried in a stately procession. There are usually no weeping women in the Perceval story and the quest usually fails for Perceval the first time. Perceval usually finds the Grai1 king fishing and he almost always turns out to be a relative of Perceval.

        Galahad becomes the hero at a time when the populareity of the legends has already peaked and the vitality of the theme, as a source of inspiration had already waned. Galahad does not have the rugged background of Gawain or Perceval; he was brought up at the Court of Corbenic, in the very shadow of the Grail; in fact his mother is often the daughter of the Grail King, and is the Grail Bearer; Galahad knows what the Grail is and where to find it. In this version it is an automatic, food-producing talisman, associated with the Christian Eucharist; this is obviously an. ecclesiastical version, far removed from the wild and picturesque Gawain and the romantic and mysterious Perceva1 versions. Galahad is not the typical mythical hero, whose father is unknown, brought up far away from court in lowly surroundings, cared for by simple folk. In the three heroes, and the mood of each set of stories we seem to have three degrees of Grail stories: The mythical and legendary Gawaln stories, the constructed literary romances of the Perceval stories, still retaining many mythical and legendary fragments, and then finally the Galahad stories, retaining almost nothing of the mythical and legendary, losing some of the vitality and excitement of the romances, but adding the more ascetic and relgious quality of the Christian Church of the Middle Ages.

Literary Critics: Weston; Neither Basically Christian or Celtic.  

        Multitudinous as are the original mss.of the Grail legends, and varied as they are in form, mood, and context, their quantity does not hold a candle to the number of critical theorists who have written on the subject.of these, one of the finest is, I believe, Jessie Laidley Weston, fifty year student of the legends and the theories, who wrote The Quest for the Holy Grail in 1913 and From Ritual to Romance in 1917. Highly organized and precisely scientific in her methods, she seems to have had unusual insight into the true nature of the Grail mysteries. She has become a basic source and reference for most of the more recent studies. T.S. Elliot got much of his material for his Wasteland from Jessie Weston's findings. As to the high tone and spirit of her undertaking, she expresses it so beautifully in her own words: "The secret of the Grail I hold to be above all a human problem, a subject of profound human interest, and one which touches such deep springs of human thought and need that it requires to be handled by those whose interest lies in the dealing with the workings of the soul, as much as with the expression of literary intelligence.2 “ After extensive study of the material and theories on a Christian origin of the legends, she concludes: "Whatever the Grail may be it is not a Christian relic, whatever the source of the story, it is not any ecclesiastical legend."3 After admitting that the case is much more plausible for a Celtic Folk lore origen of the legends, she concludes here, too, that there is too much that is unexplained by this theory also. Her final conclusion is summed up in these words; "The Grail Story is not the product of imagination literary or popular. At its root lies the record, more or less distorted, of an ancient ritual, having for its ultimate object the initiation into the secret of Life, physical and spiritual." 4

Sebastion Evans: Christian Origen.

 Introducing his 1898 English translation of the French Perlesvaus, under the title: of the High History of the  Holy Grail, Dr. Sebastian Evans says, "Here ye the history of the most holy vessel that is called the Grail, whein the precious blood of the Saviour was received on the day that He was put on rood and crucified, in order that He might redeem His people from the pains of Hell". A little later, "Dr. Evans says:" The High Book of the Grail beginneth in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. These three Persons are one Substance, which is God, and of God moveth the High history of the Grail"5. After that kind of treatment of the legends for hundereds of years, how could anyone doubt that the Grail story is a Christian legend? A number of scholars have put this theory forth with certainty. "What Perceval sees in the Grail procession, says Prof. Burdoch." is the Christian Eucharist procession as performed in the Byzantine Mass. The assumption is made by most of those proposing this theory is that the legend of Joseph of Aramathea bringing the Grail to England is a genuine, early Christian legend."6

        Weston amasses her evidence against this; she says ecclestical tradition knows nothing of this; it never connects Joseph of Aramathea with a cup of the Last Supper. There is one apocryphal story of the Lord coming to Joseph and sustaining him with nourishment while he was in prison. But if Joseph had been connected with the Last Supper in legend and tradition it would have appeared in the graphic arts or in other than the Grail stories. There are many great works of art, one in our Glencairn Museum, showing Joseph taking the Lord down from the Cross; the Deposition and burial connections are numerous. A church official in 126O denounced the whole Grail legend as far as Christian church tradition was concerned, saying that the church knew nothing of it. Weston feels that the whole mystery of the Grail is based on the object itself, whether cup, stone or terible light. She feels that, if it were a Christian legend the most important emphasis would be on what the vessel contained, the Saviour's Blood, not just the container; in fact, sometimes it is not even a container. The Grail, Weston says, posseses attributes completely out of harmony with the hypotheses of a Christian origin. No Eucharist chalice comes and goes leaving rich food and drink in its train, giving everything one wishes. No Christian tradition can explain the lonely castle by the sea; it is neither a temple nor a church; the Wasteland, the atmosphere of tension and terror, the Dead Knight, and the Weeping Women, have no part in a Holy Supper Scene. After a thorough study of Glastonbury and its sister Abbey on the Continent, Fescamp, Weston concludes that these monks of 12th century Glastonbury were responsible for the manufacture of the Joseph story, and that the Grail was quite something else.

Celtic Origin

        On the other hand there is quite a good case for the origin of the Grail legends in Celtic mythology, both in symbol and mood. There were the food supplying porridge pots of folklore, the cauldrons which  restored heroes to life and, perhaps most convincing the Four Treasures of the Tuatha de Danaaan. These famous treasures of the Irish gods were: the Stone of Destiny which proclaimed the future king, the Magic Sword and Spear, and the Cauldron, corresponding with singular accuracy to the objects of the Grail Castle processions. We can match a lot of separate symbols and incidents: the Dead or Wounded King can be related to Arthur on Avalon, the Maimed King can be related to the story of the mutilation of Kronos and his taking refuge on a Western Island. There is the general pattern of the typical hero seen in the early adventutures of Gawain and Percival; the Percival character is closely associated with the "Great Fool" tradition of folk lore; especially important is the story of Perronek, the Welsh name for Perceval. Many other Celtic Myths and legends could be cited which obviousy provided some material for the Grail legends. But none of these more crude and rugged stories or elements explain the aura of reverence, holiness, and also terrible fear and tension that we find in the Grail legends. Weston asks how a simple food producing  pot  could become so speedily and radically Christianised and surrounded by an atmosphere of ecstacy and yet death and sorrow and danger.

Source in Ancient Fertility Myths

        Weston's solution is not only convincing and exciting to scholars, I believe it opens up a wonderful avenue of research for New Church scholars.. She sums up her considerations of the Christian and Folk Lore origins of the Grail legends with the statement that the weakest point in each theory is that each fails to ex-plain the presence of elements which oppose their own hypotheses and indeed invite the opposing theory; she gives examples of the contradictions: If the Grail were a purely Christian vessel it ought not to behave like a mere food-providing talisman; conversely if it is the latter it ought not to be surrounded with the atmosphere of mysterious sanctity typical of holy relics. The only theory that will fit the case, then, is that the Grail was something which was pre-Christian but an object of great reverence, i.e. that it was Christianized because it was already basically religious internally, rather than forced into a Christian mold from without. She traces what she sees to be the roots of the tradition back through comparative mythology to ceremonies involving the ancient Babylonian fertility god, Tammuz and to those involving the better known hero, Adonis. Ceremonies celebrated in the Egyptian colonies of the Greeks.

        Briefly stated, Adonis was a fair youth beloved of the Goddess Aphrodite. Dying a violent death, as a result of being bitten in the thigh by a wild boar, Adonls went to Hades where he became the lover of Persephone, the Queeen of Hades. Aphrodite prevailed upon Zeus to allow Adonis to return to her every Spring when his return was celebrated with rejoicing; "his annual depart -ture to the shades was the signal for widespread mourning, of a character and intensity that has left a peculiarly enduring mark upon popular tradition.7'8" Frazer's Golden Bough cites countless variations of these celebrations held throughout the world and even up to modern times; the essential elements practiced in the earliest rites correspond to the main elements of the Grail legends: the dead body on the bier, the Maimed King on the litter, corresponding with the god, dead, or wounded in such a manner, that he is deprived of his reproductive powers. This, Weston goes on to explain, is an analogy which has hitherto been too much ignored, though cetain scholars have been aware of it: the use of the term "maiming" or "wounding in the thigh" is simply a well known euphemism for the loss of reproductive powers.8 This is a very important consideration because it helps to explain a lot of the mysteries connected with the legend. It explains how the wounding of the Fisher King is connected with the wasting of the land. It is a central belief in ancient times and more recent primitive societies that the king holds in his individual life and power the health and welfare of the country; if he is sick or wounded or old, it was often felt necessary to slay him or otherwise drive him off so that a younger, healthy king might take his place. This is indeed the theme of the monumental work, The Golden Bough.

        This explains how the achieving of the Quest, restoring the king to health or youth restores fertility to the land. This is the reason for the sacred marriages, the king for a day and right down to the crowning of the May Queen, the Marriages of the King and Queen bringing fertility and prosperity to the people and the land.

        Weston also believes that this explains the importance always given to the Weeping Women; sometimes the festival itself was referred to as the Festival of the Weeping Woman, the king is dead or dying and the Queen and her maidens are mourning. In the prose version called "Lancelot", Gawain, in the middle of the night, "heard the sound of bitter weeping and lamentations, he deemed well 'twas the voice of women,' and beheld twelve maidens,'who made the greatest lamentation in the world, "kneelng before the door of the chamber wherein the Grail has entered, they 'made prayers and orisons and withal wept bitterly.9

        Here Weston puts together some fascinating pieces of the puzzle. In the particualr version referred to above, describing the weeping women, there was a Grail, but the Grail King is neither dead nor injured! In other words, there was no obvious reason to weep. Weston sees this as indication of the fact that this version reenacts a fraction of the original ceremony, the rest of it being lost or forgotten. She then quotes from part of a 'Percival manuscript which tells that the hero will learn, as a result of the successsful achievement of the quest, why the maiden who carries the Grail weeps ceaselessly. But in that particular version no one is weeping. In other words, different versions, taken from various sources were parts of an original whole ceremony, those who had experienced this ceremony retained some of the sense of terror and grief or joy and exaltation; but those who recorded it only did so in fragments, not understanding the complete mystery. As Weston says, "No prejudiced critic of the Grail literature can avoid the conclusion that in the weeping women of the texts we have a feature, the true meaning of which was no longer understood by those who recorded it."10

    Point by point, elements in the Grail legends can be explained as parts of an ancient fertility rite.the spirit of vegation is often carried on the bier and then thrown into the water, possibly explaining the location of the Grail Castle on the sea coast or near some water. Also, many elements are explaining the basis that there are at least two levels of meaning within these rites, one that the people could see in grosser external form, the other understood only by the priests and the elect. Dr. G. S. Mead, a contributor to the Quest Series, says: “The ancient higher mystery institutions had two main grades, in the lower were shown the mysteries of generation, or physical birth and death, in the higher the mystery of regeneration, or of spiritual birth and life."11 "To sum up the position in a few words", says Weston, "sympathetic magic, an element the presence of which is in all these cults, must be held as fully proven.”12 To us, readers of the Heavenly Doctrines, the presence of a fully operative Science of Correspondences in ancient ceremonies can be assumed..

            Although not integral to her theory, Jessie Weston traces the religious mysteries, to which the legends owe their origin, back to the door of Tennyson's Master  Bleys, teacher of Merlin and recorder of such things as the secret of Arthur's birth; the same Bledhericus, the story teller referred to by Geraldus Cambrensis, who had lived shortly before his time. Evidence has been gathered to indicate that he is the same as the Welsh prince, Bledri ap Caditfor, who lived between the Years 1070 and 1150, descendant of a noble family which may have preserved the ancient mystery tradition and rites on their estate in Northern Wales. It is believed that Bleheris, as some of the poets have called him, had experienced the rites himself and was therefore able to tell about them, preserving some of the original feeling. It is also believed that the ancient Adonis- Attis rites were combined with Persian ideas of Mithraism and were further combined with early Christianity by the Gnostics. It is thought that possibly the Roman legions had brought some of these mystery cults to Britain where they mixed with ancient traditions of the Druids in the back country of Wales. This all sounds very speculative, but apparently Pliny comments upon the similarity existing between the ancient Magian Gnosis and the Druidical Gnosis of Gaul and Britain. An important idea here is that in these Gnostic cults, the dying god Attis or Adonis, was thus early identified with the crucified Lord of the Christians; in other words the pagan-Christian connection may have been made in the very early days of Christianity in Britain, ripe then for later, more external connections at the time of the Crusades. According to this theory, then, the tradition of knights guarding the sacred mystery of the Grail may have involved Roman soldiers, later to be replaced by the Knights Templar and Arthur’s knights. (From Ritual to Romance pps. 132,190,193., 199.

            The most emphatic reasons given for finding the source of the stories in ancient ritual seem to be that the otherwise contradictory Christian/Folk Lore elements are explained in the connections with the Tammus-Adonis-Attis ceremonies, the piecemeal survival of unexplained parts of a once whole story, but having all the emotional content, the intense experience of mystery. As Weston says “the groundwork of the story, the kernal of the cycle, is not invention but tradition; it is the legendary record of something that really happened, of an experience at once terrifying and exalting, which left an indelible impression upon the mind of him who underwent it.” 13 

Psychological/Archetypal Power

            It is this matter of the high emotional content of the experiences of the Grail knight that brings us to consider the work of one more Grail scholar. She is Emma Jung, wife of the psychiatrist Carl Gustaf Jung. Because the Grail legends were so intracately tied in with alchemy, the hermetic traditions and other mystical traditions which he had explored, the world wondered why Jung himself had never written about the legends. The explanation came out when his wife died, that she had been working on the Grail legends for thirty years, this was her thing, and he had not wanted to steal her thunder. He asked one of his most capable followers, Dr. von Franz to complete Mrs. Jung's book. The English translation of Emma Jung's Grail legend just come out in 1970, and represents one more great area of study connected with the legends and the reasons for the psychological interpretations of the legends and the reasons for their persistent survival and appeal.

        Quoting from the book jacket: "The Grail, and the events involved in the search for it, is one of the most powerful symbolisms operating in the contemporary man. It represents the quest for the supreme value which makes life meaningful, and it is modern man's special need to find meaning in a world where most conventional values have all but disintegrated." 14

        Emma Jung has asked the challenging question which we have addressed ourselves to in this series of lectures, not whence came these legends so much as why have they survived with such vitality? Mrs. Jung's question, steeped as she and her husband were in analytical psychology, is what deep seated unconscious psychic process had kept the legend alive through the centuries? The wealth of Jung's materials and theories, especially in his studies of myth and archetype, were at her fingertips. Contrary to Freud who seemed obsessed with the pathological and negative aspects of the unconscious mind, Jung believed that there are creative forms in our conscious minds which operate continually and positively - ever striving to fill out and make healthy the human psyche. He believed that there are characteristically human ways of behaving, symbolic formula, which, when we consciously become extreme in one way or another, function to round out and balance our behavior. For instance, if we refuse to acknowledge the feeling side of our nature, continually trying to escape into thought, a balancing archetype may reach out from the feeling part of our psyche and, as it were, "take us by ambush,"15 so that we find ourselves behaving in inexplicably emotional or obsessive ways.

        As Jung says, archetypes are essentially undefinable, being phenomena of the unconscious mind; whenever we try to define them, they become ideas or thoughts of the conscious mind which by so ultimating have severely limited the concept of the archetype. So, if we cannot define it, we only try to describe what it does. As I understand it, it is due to an archetype of the unconscious mind, an inherited pattern or psychic force, which, when triggered by certain symbolic things of the phenomenal world, causes us to have sometimes intense emotional experiences, far more than the sight of the object would ordinarily be expected to produce. Sometimes an emotional experience is, like the Gestalt, a sense of wholeness greater then the sum of the parts seen in the outside world. Inadequately we may call such an experience nostalgia or deja vu, or we may describe it much more accurately as the tapping of remains. One writer described it as a response which makes your heart leap up, a cry of the blood that says I've known this thing before. When someone says there is a full moon tonight it somehow stimulates a more mystical or emotional response or romantic excitement than that very predictable monthly phenomenon should elicit. In short, Jung theorizes, that there are archetypes of the collective unconscious, passed down to us from time immemorial, just as our physical gene patterns come down, mental or spiritual patterns reaching out hungry for certain kinds of mental or emotional food to feed and fill out the hungry soul. Just as dreams are said to be produced in order to reorganize and bring back to balance the disarray produced by our sometimes contorted conscious life, so Jung feels, myths and legends with their universally attractive elements and patterns are responded to universally by human beings and, if objective correspondence does not exist out there, we daydream, spin a tale, or write a romance; not just any old haphazard story, but a story with certain essential human elements.

        In the Grail legends, then, Emma Jung sees the story of the destiny of the individual human mind. Like Percival, we start out in the emotionally secure forest, a semiconscious twilight zone surrounded by the warmth of primitive nature, the animals and birds, under the total protection of the mother. Unskilled, uncouth and thoughtless we leave our grieving mother only to be buffeted about by mind boggling and bizarre adventures and oft repeated and oft failed trials. Mrs. Jung goes on in this vein suggesting possible parallels, weaving in remarkable insights into what emerge as definitely the same story, the individual's life story and the story of the Grail hero. Remarkable explanations of the meanings of the all important symbols of the story, this study opens a treasure trove of study of correspondences and symbols, the meaning of the round table, the meaning of the grail, too complex to explain in a paragraph, and too significant to summarize.

        Although we can see that the individual human mind is not the creator or mechanized computer spinning out the same old story, we cannot help seeing in this magnificent work the beginnings of a tremendously fruitful study coming out of the connection between the story of the growth and development of the human mind and psyche and the story of this most typical hero, Perceval.

Challenge to New Church Scholars

        These wonderful, enlightened scholars have, I believe, challenged us, indeed shamed us into getting to work and seeking in the treasure trove of the Writings for the answers to these age old mysteries. As I see it, we can embark, right away, on the three avenues of study, first whence came these legends, including all the mysteries of the Hermetic tradition, alchemy, the secrets of the Roza Crucians, the Cabalists, the Free Masons; the second area of study suggested would have to do with the question why have these mysteries captured the imaginations of men through the ages. And the third area would be, of course, what are these mysteries, what is the secret of the Grail, what are the mysteries of faith that we are now permitted to understand?

        Jessie Weston and the other scholars of the myth and Ritual school have, I believe, led us right to the door of the temple of knowledge, when they suggest that most genuine myths and important legends originated in ancient rites, the myths are simply fragmented tellings and teachings which are the only remnants of these rites; what rites? The secular scholars have even taken us beyond the first materialistic theories that all ancient rites were primitive, savage vegetation rites; scholars now see that there were at least two levels of meanings, some even see three meanings within these rites; 1) the mysteries of procreation and birth and death on the physical plane, including the transfer by means of sympathetic or homeopathic magic, or life or death from man, or the king to the seeding and the harvesting of the crops; 2) the enactment of some sort of reformation and regeneration teaching on the mental or spiritual plane, 3) and some  have seen in the sacred marriage ceremonies of so-called primitive peoples the remnants of the once understood union of the Divine God in the Heavens with the Human God who came to earth to save mankind; the Atonement of the Divine and Human God. Horribly perverted and confused within one ceremony we can see the elements of a sacred marriage and human sacrifice, the original explanation of which has been lost.

1) What rites and ceremonies are we talking about here?
            Certainly we are talking about the perverted versions of the once genuine ceremonies of the Ancient Church. The Writings have told us that this was a Church Specific, acting as heart and lungs to the whole ancient world, but I wonder how often we reflect on what that means. The ritual and the ceremonies of that Church must have been beautiful beyond belief, with the richness of their love of the neighbor, their ruling love. How flat and one-dimensional are even our New Church studies of the ancient world. Old church mythologists, again, have been way ahead of us, they have coined the phrase, "era of incarnate myth", the times that the myths were lived and made. The myths were once real happenings, life experiences of charity and adventures in regeneration, repeated and reenacted in joyous rituals for the purpose of remembrance; later perverted and fragmented, until we have only the flat story to remind us. And yet, even here, we are inspired and renewed. What clues can we follow to give us a glimpse of the reality of the ceremonies and thence life of the Ancient Church? Without spending more than a few minutes with the Concordance I turned up these clues to the original Grail legends:
        AC 4292:5 "The case is similar with the external of the Church, for these are like a body the internal like a soul, as the altars and sacrifices upon them, which as is known, were external things; in like manner the show bread; also the lampstand with its lights; and likewise the perpetual fire; that these represented internal things maybe known to everyone; and it is the same with the rest of the rites."
        AC 4786 "Wailing and weeping over the dead was a representative external in the Ancient Church by which was signified interior mourning."
        E 617:26 "Weeping represents lamentation because truth is destroyed." Wailing represents lamentation because good is destroyed.
        E 6030:14 "To weep between the court and the alter represents lamentation over the vastation of Divine Good in the Church."

        Recall how Gawain, in the middle of the night "heard the sound of bitter weeping and lamentations, he deemed well twas the voice of women, and beheld twelve maidens who made the greatest lamentation in the world, kneeling before the door of the chamber wherein the Grail has entered, they made prayers ariasons and withal wept bitterly."

            The echo of weeping in the empty castle at night seems to have come through a dark tunnel all the way back to a time toward the death of the Ancient Church when there was weeping over the vastation, the wasting of the Divine Good in the Church, the Death of the King and the consequent wasting of the Land.

        Further clues can be found as to the significance of the swords and spears, the nature of the wounds suffered by the Grail King.The original meaning having been lost, the Ancient Church ceremonies seemed to have been preserved by the Jews in the circumcision rites, and later perverted initiation rites.
        A3021 "The thighs themselves together with the loins, correspond to Conjugial Love. These things were well known to the men of most ancient times; and therefore they had a number of rites based on this correspondence."
        A 3195  "Knees and thighs, things pertaining to Conjugial Love, thus things that belong to the conjunction of truth of faith and the good of charity."
        A 4496 "Where they were in pain. That this signifies cupidities is evident from the signification of the Pain after circumcision, as being cupidities. The reason why this pain signifies cupidity is that circumcisings signifies purification from the love of self and of the world and all the cupidity of the flesh when a man is being purified from these loves as is the case when he is being regenerated, he is in pain and anxiety, and it is the cupidities then being removed which are in pain and anguish. When any mystery is being represented by a ritual, each particular of the rite, until it is completed, enfolds something of the mystery. Such is the case with the lances or knives with which the circumcision was performed, in that they were of stone, with the blood shed at the time with the manner of the operation, and consequently with the state. This may be seen further from the processes of cleansings, inaugurations, and sanctifications, and all other ceremonies."

        Are we beginning to see from this, glimpses of three possible levels of meaning involved with what we can now call the Grail ceremony? The weeping over the death and/or wounding of the Grail King and the Wasting of the Land being the grieving over the loss of Divine Good in the Church; the pain and anxiety that is involved in the purification from the love of self, possibly symbolized by the hero failing to ask the right questions for the first trial, he was curious but did not yet feel human compassion for the suffering of the Grail King; and, on the lowest physical level was the Grail knight being initiated by some sort of a circumcision ceremony involving knives and lancets? Sight of these tools could have caused the terror and anxiety described in the legends.

        There is one more clue from the Grail legend which is explained by the Heavenly Doctrines which seems to confirm our findings as to the substance of the Grail ceremony. Scholars have been baffled by the seemingly isolated tradition of referring to Perceval, not always by name, but more often as the Widow's son. Indeed he was a widow's son in the story; you recall the aura of mystery surrounding the death of Perseval's father; in some versions the father's death at the hands of his mysterious enemies is the reason why Perceval's mother wants to keep him hidden away and protected, away from the battles and dangers of knighthood or court life. But the term, 'Widow's Son' seems to be used as a definite symbol. Freemasons today have a character in their ceremonies called the Widow's Son, and I'm sure have no more idea than literary critics as to its significance; they only know that it is significant, not why it is significant.
        A 4844:2 "A widow also signifies the truth of the church without its good" - "In the Ancient Church such persons were understood in the good sense by widows, whether they were women or men. For the Ancient Church distinguished the neighbor toward whom they were to exercise charity into a number of classes." - "and consequently when they spoke of widows they had in mind no other than such as were in truth without good and yet desired to be led by good." Does this not give us one more clue as to the nature of the Grail hero, a self centered young man, rash and careless of people's feelings, searching for adventure and knowledge, but not having any idea of what the good is he is looking for?

        From whence came the Grail legends? Surely out of a ceremony of the Ancient Church! 

. 2.         The second question is why do the legends have so much appeal that they have survived for centuries and do not seem to lose their potency? Emma Jung and all the psychoanalytical school with their studies of archetypes and their relation to myths certainly gave us all the help we should need to get further into New Church studies of the human mind, why do certain things affect us as they do? And the enormous field of study involving correspondences, symbols, discrete degrees, the keying in by symbols of the natural world to corresponding affections of the spiritual world; the subject of influx, and the presence of spirits is involved here. The potency of the ceremonies themselves gives reason enough for their fascination by those who experienced them and even a generation or two of those who heard the stories from their lips. But that is not quite enough reason for the continual perpetuation and recreation of these stories. There must be something in our human nature which not only responds to these universals but almost seems to recreate them in a time when they seem to be absent from the external world. A Christmas sermon preached by Bishop N. D. Pendleton in 1921 provides an eloquent explanation of the origin of the hero myths as well as an eloquent description of the state of longing of the race for the Coming of the Lord and by inference, the longing of the individual for union with his Maker.
        "Frolm the beginning, the wise perceived the nature and meaning of the fall, and their hearts were inexpressibly saddened. But their sadness was relieved by a glorious hope; and in this hope there was given them 'a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness' This was the hope of the coming of the Messiah, when, when the race should be redeemed to God, when the seed of woman would bruise the head of the serpent, that old serpent which had tempted men to their fall."
        "This hope was the living thing in all the ancient religions, the heart and the soul of them. The time of its fulfillment was not known. Could men have known the long delay, they must have despaired. Mercifully this was hidden. It might occur at any time; each generation thought it possible to them. Their ears were ever open, listening for the glad tidings; their eyes scanned the heavens for the new star. This hope was most alive and most potent for good in the earlier days after the fall. Gradually it weakened, at length was almost lost; but while it lasted, - so long as it throbbed in the hearts of men, - it was powerful to save; and so long also its fulfillment was delayed. But when this hope was all but gone, then the coming in fact became imperative."

        From the first prophecies of the Lord's promised Coming to the last scanning of the skies for the promised star, men had been given clues as to the nature of this Hero and the circumstances of his birth to a virgin, his journeys and temptations, and his eventual death on a hilltop, and his resurrection or Return. Told and retold the Name of the Hero was always there, together with the built in, correspondential and physical growth of the individual. The correspondential relationship the cause and effect relationship of this correspondence would create an affinity for the hunger for the reunition that would certainly account for fascination for this age old story. The Lord created man in His Own Image and therefore there would be a dynamic pattern or form  in the human mind and soul which would reach out longingly to match up with and be reunited with their Creator. Each Aspect of God would have its counterpart in man, finite, free distinct, but always yearning and aspiring. The closer the myth or legend comes to the original story, the more magnetic would be its attraction; the story of Arthur matches up with the story of the Typical Hero on many points, and couple with the human involvement of such an important Ancient Church ceremony, the story could hardly be less than fascinating.

        We have attempted an answer as to the real origins of the Grail legends that would indicate the source as a living Ancient Church ceremony carried by tradition at least to the 12^th century. As to the reasons for survival, we offer the theory that the affinity of the archetypal patterns in the human mind for the corresponding attributes of the Lord's Life would produce this magnetism and attraction to the heroic Arthur adventures, culminating in the quest for the Grail.

        Our final question is what, exactly, is the Secret of the Mystery of the Grail? The Grail was lost and can be found. Perhaps the Grail is the Ancient Word. Something else that was lost and can be found is Conjugial Love, not just the teaching about it in the Word, but Conjugial Love itself. Perhaps on he highest and deepest plane, the Grail represents the uniting of the Divine with the Human. Perhaps it is all three and more and better besides. To repeat Weston's words: "The secret of the Grail I hold to be above all a human problem, a subject of profound human interest, and one which touches such deep springs of human thought and need that it requires to be handled by those whose interest lies in the dealings of the workings of the soul, as much as with the expression of literary intelligence."16

             I do not feel qualified to say what is the real secret of the Grail since, to know the answer one would, no doubt, have to be regenerated.