The Holy Grail

From antiquity to the present day

Giles Morgan

• Publisher: Pocket Essentials
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781904048343
• eBook ISBN: 9781843447900
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The Holy Grail is a subject that fascinates and intrigues. Through its various guises as magic cauldron, cornucopia, horn of plenty and chalice cup it has remained at the centre of popular culture from antiquity right up to the present day. An object of marvel and mystery it inhabits a place in mythology that has its roots in historical facts. The Grail has been a major inspiration and catalyst for literature and the arts in Western Culture. From Celtic mythology to the flowering of the medieval romances it has in many ways fulfilled its mythical role as a nurturing and regenerative vessel by providing such a rich and seemingly perpetual source of interest to writers and artists.

Charting the emergence of the story of the Grail offers a revealing insight into the cultural shift from Celtic paganism to the emergence and domination of Christianity in Western Europe. The influence of Eastern mysticism emerges in the Grail romances as a result of the medieval crusades with its clash of cultures and subsequent cross-pollination of ideas. The Grail has come to symbolise the ultimate achievement in the modern mind and it became an object of fascination for the psychologist Carl Jung and the poet TS Eliot. Wagner, William Blake and the Pre-Raphaelites are just some of the artists to have fallen under its enduring spell.

The Holy Grail

The Holy Grail is a subject that fascinates and intrigues. Through its various guises as magic cauldron, cornucopia, horn of plenty and chalice cup it has remained at the centre of popular culture from antiquity right up to the present day. An object of marvel and mystery it inhabits a place in mythology that has its roots in historical facts. The Grail has been a major inspiration and catalyst for literature and the arts in Western Culture. From Celtic mythology to the flowering of the medieval romances it has in many ways fulfilled its mythical role as a nurturing and regenerative vessel by providing such a rich and seemingly perpetual source of interest to writers and artists.

Charting the emergence of the story of the Grail offers a revealing insight into the cultural shift from Celtic paganism to the emergence and domination of Christianity in Western Europe. The influence of Eastern mysticism emerges in the Grail romances as a result of the medieval crusades with its clash of cultures and subsequent cross-pollination of ideas. The Grail has come to symbolise the ultimate achievement in the modern mind and it became an object of fascination for the psychologist Carl Jung and the poet TS Eliot. Wagner, William Blake and the Pre-Raphaelites are just some of the artists to have fallen under its enduring spell.

Giles Morgan is the author of the Pocket Essentials on The Holy Grail, Byzantium, Freemasonry, Saints and Saint George. He currently lives in Harrow.

THE HOLY GRAIL

Giles Morgan

POCKET ESSENTIALS

For my wife Georgina with love.
To my Mum, Dad and Gareth for help and support.
Thanks to Suresh for encouraging words

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

Pre-Christian Sources. World Mythologies. Shamanism. The Mabinogion. The Celtic Cauldron.

Chapter Two

The Christian Grail. The Matter of Britain. Geoffrey of Monmouth. Wace. Chrétien de Troyes. Chivalry. Courtly Love. Troubadours. Robert de Boron. The Vulgate Cycle. Parzival. Malory.

Chapter Three

Glastonbury. Joseph of Arimathea. Chalice Well. Underworld

Chapter Four

King Arthur. Merlin and the Grail Quest. The Sword in the Stone. Excalibur. Camelot. The Isle of Avalon.

Chapter Five

The Templars. The Cathars. Rosslyn Chapel. Rennes-le-Chateau. The Turin Shroud.

Chapter Six

The Grail in the 18th and 19th Centuries. William Blake. Tennyson. Wagner. The Pre-Raphaelites. Aubrey Beardsley.

Chapter Seven

The Grail in the 20th Century. T. S. Eliot. Jung. Tolkien. T. H. White. Joseph Campbell. Hitler and the Nazis.

Chapter Eight

Representations in Film. George Lucas. Steven Spielberg. John Boorman. Monty Python. Lord of the Rings

Bibliography

Websites

Introduction

For all its iconic properties there remains something fundamentally elusive about the subject of the Holy Grail. An enigma wrapped within a mystery, it seems at times to move out of reach when approached by the quester, the visionary or simply the curious. As immediately recognisable as the figures of King Arthur, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table with whom it has come to be identified it nonetheless confounds expectation and presumption on closer analysis. The roots of a Grail tradition can be found deep in ancient Western history but can also be found to contain elements of Eastern mysticism. It has in turn been an object of reverence, devotion, yearning and a powerful tool for political and religious propaganda.

It can be seen to possess a mirror-like quality as it reflects the people and belief systems that have incorporated it into their worldview. The complexity of its origins is matched by its enduring appeal as a metaphor for quest, struggle, ultimate achievement and sometimes painfully, ultimate failure. Unpicking the strands of its development is a telling account of the dreams and ambitions of humanity, its triumphs, obsessions and darkest cruelties. But the grail does not merely belong to the past as a redundant artefact of antiquity; its tradition is alive and evolving in the modern world.

The French poet Chrétien de Troyes from Champagne was instrumental in crystallising the story of the Grail as we know it today. Working between around 1170 to 1190 he produced a series of romances which drew heavily on the British Arthurian tales. The immense popularity of King Arthur in the medieval period is borne out by the fact that no less a figure than Richard the Lionheart himself christened his own sword Excalibur. Whether this might be construed as what we would call today an attempt at 'spin' or reflected an ardent belief in the values which Arthur seemed to enshrine, it is difficult to gauge. Nonetheless it indicates clearly that they were powerful stories and myths that would have been known at all levels of society.

De Troyes introduced the symbol of the Grail in his final tale Conte del Graal or ‘story of the grail’. It introduces the idea of a physical and spiritual quest to the court of King Arthur. A Welsh youth called Perceval undertakes a series of adventures in his quest to become a Knight of Arthur’s court in one of which he meets a mysterious Fisher King and encounters the Grail at his castle. The Fisher King has been wounded or crippled and makes a gift of a sword to Perceval. At this point the Grail Procession enters the castle. The procession is made up of a young man bearing a ‘bleeding’ lance, a young woman carrying a shining Grail made of precious materials and a maiden with a carving dish. Through the asking of a ritual question the Grail has the power to heal the king and his kingdom, the ‘wasteland’, which has been directly affected by his injury. Perceval fails to ask the question and, after he later realises his failure, he devotes the rest of his life to finding the Grail. This also precipitates later quests by other Knights.

At this point the Grail is not a specifically Christian artefact and the story remained unfinished at the time of Chrétien's death. It is possible to find many parallels between this story and Celtic Arthurian stories. Both the Christian and the pre-Christian versions contain a dream-like quality in which they seem to function on the level of pure symbolism. In this sense they represent an encoded, unfolding mystery tradition.

The Holy Grail becomes an explicitly Christian symbol in Robert de Boron’s Joseph of Arimathea, which appeared in about 1190. Here it is specifically described as the cup of the Last Supper and the chalice in which Christ’s blood is caught by Joseph of Arimathea. But de Boron was at this point adding to an already existing storytelling tradition, which dated back to pre-Christian Celtic cultures and beyond. The body of literature, which has come to be known as the Matter of Britain, combines Celtic mythology and the Arthurian tales with the Grail, matching the development of Christianity in Britain and Europe. Joseph of Arimathea is said to have brought the grail to Glastonbury and established the first Christian church in Britain. The Grail becomes a symbol of Celtic Christianity fusing pagan beliefs with the new religion brought from the Middle East.

In Celtic mythology the Grail has parallels with other magical vessels like the magic cauldron which makes many appearances in tales such as 'The Spoils of Annwn', collected in the Mabinogion. Significantly, it can bring the dead back to life and provide limitless food echoing many of the properties later said to be possessed by the Grail. The sacred vessel, such as the Greek cup of Dionysos, provider of inspiration, and the cauldron of the Dagda, an ancient Irish god who owned a cauldron of plenty, can be found in many world religions and cultures. The cauldron can be seen as a central motif of Shamanic cultures and their associated ritual ceremonies. Illustrative mouldings on the Gunderstrup cauldron dating from 1st or 2^nd century BC Denmark appear to show an antlered God surrounded by animals and it has been suggested that this could represent a shamanic figure communicating with the spirits of the natural world. By creating hallucinogenic mixtures many shamanic cultures attempt to gain supernatural skills and abilities and the role of the cauldron in this process is both practical and symbolic. The Gunderstrup cauldron also shows a depiction of dead warriors who may be waiting to be brought back to life by the horned god Cernunnos. By dipping them head first in his cauldron they can be re-born. The recurring theme of re-birth in pagan and Christian cultures is a powerf...

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