TODAY'S QUEST FOR THE HOLY GRAIL
The well is cleaned, but no one drinks of it.
This is my heart's sorrow,
For one might draw from it.
If the king were clear-minded,
Good fortune might be enjoyed in common.
What those Chinese sages said of the well several thousand years ago would also describe the situation today with respect to the Holy Grail. It is still here for each of us to find, yet most of us no longer seek out its mystery. This is my heart's sorrow, for we might all partake of its healing energy. If the collective consciousness of today were to turn away from war and violence and search again for spiritual renewal, then perhaps we could all enjoy our simple lives once more in peace and good fortune.
Together with the story of King Author and the Knights of the Round Table, the legend of the Holy Grail first appeared in a book written by Chretien de Troyes in the twelfth century. Europe had just experienced the end of the first millennium. Many had expected the world to end. Some had anticipated a profound and long-awaited spiritual awakening.Afterwards, however, when they all looked around, instead of the expected paradise on earth, they found themselves surrounded by a wasteland, a land that had been looted and raped, a social system based upon might of arms and rank injustice, and a decadent and immoral church that saw women as the epitome of evil. "It was a tremendous age of turmoil. Europe was poised to take a radical leap of the spirit." (The Holy Grail, by Malcolm Godwin, p. 10.) People desperately wanted a way to heal the land, to heal the wounded king (the hierarchical and unjust social system), and to restore balance and a sense of awe and mystery to their spiritual lives. The Holy Grail offered all this and more.
To speak of the Grail as the object of a single legend is misleading. "It is more a central mystery, interwoven with multi-colored strands belonging to different authors, written at different times, and arising from widely differing backgrounds." (Godwin, p. 12.) "The unfolding story is one of a dream-like journey into the unknown." (Godwin, p. 11.)
King Arthur and his knights are in court one day, when the Grail suddenly appears in their midst, announced by a loud roar of thunder. The hall is then filled with a great light, and each knight experiences bliss and receives his heart's desire. Then the Grail disappears. Gawain immediately rises to his feet and swears to quest for this Grail so that he might look again upon its mystery. Soon, all the knights have joined him in his quest, leaving King Arthur and his round table behind. They have chosen the spiritual path over Arthurıs way of war.
There are various heroes who succeed in their quest for the Holy Grail, but the main focus is always upon Perceval, the perfect knight. In the Celtic versions of the legend, Perceval is searching for the Grail so that he may heal the wounded king of a mysterious wound. Doing so, he will also heal the land that has become a blighted and barren wasteland. In these versions, the Grail provides for spiritual renewal.
Christians, adapting the Grail story to their own one-sided way of looking at reality, saw Perceval as a man searching for personal salvation. In their versions, he is seeking the Grail so as to become worthy enough to commune with Christ. In these versions the Grail contains the blood of the crucified Christ.
In the alchemical version, the author, Wolfram von Eschenbach, sees the quest for the Holy Grail as one of the individual hero struggling towards wholeness of being. In this version, The Grail symbolizes this healing wholeness.
In all the versions of the Grail legend, Perceval wins through to the Grail by asking the right question, by asking the king why he is wounded. If enough folks living in the twelfth century had asked this question, Europe might have avoided the tyranny of the armed knights, the unholy Christian Church, and an overwhelmingly one-sided and increasingly destructive way of life. It is still the right question to ask, even today. Why are we still living in a wasteland? Why are we still letting ourselves be governed by violent and greedy men? Why have our spiritual lives remained barren and empty in spite of our best intentions?
Today, how may we find this Holy Grail and heal our own environmental wasteland, heal our own mean spirited social system, and heal especially the dangerous and hurtful rift that still exists between men and women? We would do well to begin by rereading those old stories. The various Grail stories themselves still offer us a plenitude of clues that we can follow to the Grail itself and the mysterious and healing energy that it contains.
These stories speak of a time before the land had become a wasteland. In those earlier days, there had been maidens at each of the wells in Britain. They had provided freely for whatever one would wish. However, an evil king named Amangon raped the queen of these maidens. His men, following suit, soon raped the rest. Because of this violence directed at the feminine and the natural, the land lost its ability to provide the abundance that had long been a fact of life. The land became barren. Armed thugs, calling themselves knights, roamed the countryside, looting and raping at will. It became death for common folks to try to defend themselves. War and violence became rampant.
This mirrored and continued an even deeper and older hurt that had begun some five thousand years before. In those times, an insane masculine culture, separated from nature and identified with its righteous anger, came thundering out of the north, together with its vengeful Sky God, and destroyed all that stood before it, including the Earth Goddess and the peaceful and prosperous society that had long followed Her ways. In one stroke, the world went from balance and partnership to violence and tyranny. (See The Chalice and the Blade by Rian Eisler.) Women and the feminine principle were soon labeled evil by this conquering dominator culture and still are even today. As late as the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church proclaimed women to be wicked. "All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of woman." And if you think that this is just the Catholics, remember that it was Martin Luther who said, "If women get tired and die of bearing children, there is no harm in that; let them die as long as they bear; they were made for that." (Godwin, p. 212.)
Today, we must heal this rift that has long divided the human race into two opposing camps. We must do this by embracing and empowering both the feminine and the masculine within ourselves. We must honor both the Earth Goddess and the Sky God. In particular we must heal the wounded king, the masculine principle within each of us that has been wounded by its unconscious and one-sided fear of women and womenıs mysteries.
We have to heal the land too, the wasteland that we have created by our one-sided masculine attitude and its resultant destructive culture. We have to stop global warming. We have to stop driving everywhere in our unnecessary cars. We have to stop making so many unnecessary things. We have to stop polluting our air and water, and our bodies too. We have to stop destroying our home.
Before the Grail appeared in King Arthurıs court, the various knights had seen themselves as heroic warriors, and killing, looting, and raping were the accepted, even expected modes of the day. However, after these one-sided and violent men had experienced the power of the Grail, each and every one of them turned away from war and embarked upon a spiritual quest. Today we must do as they did and let go of our fear and anger. We must turn away from war and violence. Men must accept their feminine, nurturing side, letting it interact with and heal their one-sided and frightened masculinity. We must turn from all our negative emotions towards the light. If we do so, all those violent and greedy men, like King Arthur and the George Bushes and Bin Ladens of today, as well as the insane social systems that spawned them, will no longer find anyone to play their demented and destructive games.
And we will still be heroic, in the truest sense of the word. "Both the true hero and the mystic have to die to their egos, die to an idea of who they are in order to be reborn as something else and something greater." "It is the fate of heroes to lose their old way of living in order to allow a new higher, or mature life to enter the empty space left by their old selves." (Godwin, p. 228.) It isnıt the Grail as a vessel that is important. It is what is contained within it that is important. By emptying ourselves of our little egos, by becoming empty vessels ourselves, we allow Spirit to live within and through us.
In our time, finding our way to the Grail probably wonıt mean going off on our horses, looking for the hidden Grail castle. Itıs doubtful that the Grail will be found in the outer world. Most likely, it will be found within ourselves. It might be as simple as realizing that fear is always behind our anger and then dealing with our fears. Better this than always being unconscious and angry with everyone and everything. It might be as simple as finding our own unique balance between freedom and love so that we will be free to love. It might involve finding our own lifeıs myth so that we are can live it without fear and with full consciousness. It might involve joining with others to explore consciousness, spirit and reality. There are many paths leading to the Grail. They all involve letting go.
For me, finding the Grail has meant learning to live simply and close to the land. It has meant coming to love Mother Earth and all life upon Her. It has meant letting go of my anger so I can be kind and loving. It has meant learning to love enough to stay married to the same wonderful woman for more than seventeen years now. It has meant loving the two beautiful little boys that we have created together with our love. It has meant finding my own creative and productive place in the world. It has meant finding the courage to accept that I am a wizard, and that, when I get out of the way, magic always flows through me.
Nowadays especially, finding the Grail has come to mean staying strong and healthy so that I will be around to raise my two boys. I am sixty-nine years old now, and, by the time they reach their twenties, Iıll be in my nineties. I plan to be a miracle.
(İ 2002 Eugene Marks)