| Arthur Edward Waite | |
MYSTIC ASPECTS
OF THE GRAAL LEGEND
I
THE VICTORY OF THE LATIN RITE
IN the last paper there was put forward the hypothesis of the Celtic
Church as it has never beeu expressed previously; nothing was
diminished, and any contrary influences were offered so far
emperately; but the issues are not entirely those of the Graal legend,
and, in view of that which comes after, a few words in conclusion of
the previous part may perhaps be said more expressly. It should be on
record, for those who have ears, that the Welsh church, with its
phantom and figurehead bishops, its hereditary priesthood, and its
profession of sanctity as others profess trades, seems a very good
case for those who insist that the first Christianity of Britain was
independent of St. Augustine, which it was, and very much indeed, but
on the whole we may prefer Rome.
When we have considered all the
crazes and heresies, all the pure, primitive and unadulterated
Christianities, being only human and therefore disposed to gratitude,
it is difficult not to thank God for Popery. But it would also be
difficult to be so thankful, that is to say, with the same measure of
sincerity, if we were still in the school courses, and belonged
officially thereto. I mean to say, although under all reserves, that
there is invariably some disposition to hold a fluidic and decorative
brief for Rome in the presence of the other assemblies. Let therefore
those who will strive with those who can over the dismembered relics
of apostolical Christianity; but so far as we are concerned the dead
can bury their dead. We have left the Celtic Church as we have left
carved gods.
A pan-Britannic Church may have been the dream of one
period, and if so, seeing that it never came to fulfilment, we can
understand why it is that in several respects the Graal literature has
now the aspect of a legend of loss and now of a legend of to-morrow.
The Anglican Church seems under the present aspect to recall for a
moment that perverse generation which asked for a sign and was given
the sign of Jonah. It has demanded apostolical evidences to enforce
its own claim and it has been given the Celtic Church. Let us
therefore surrender thereto the full fruition thereof. There may be
insufficiencies and imperfect warrants in the great orthodox
assemblies, but in the Celtic Church there is nothing which we can
regret. The Latin rite prevailed because it was bound to prevail,
because the greater absorbs the lesser.
On the other hand, but now
only in respect of the legends, let it be said lastly that the
ascension of Galahad is, symbolically speaking, without prejudice to
the second coming of Cadwaladr. It does not signify for our purpose
whether Arthur ever lived, and if so whether he was merely a petty
British prince. The Graal is still the Graal and the mystery of the
Round Table is still the sweet and secret spirit of universal
knighthood.
Seeing, therefore, that wehave not found in the Celtic Church
anything that suffices to account: for the great implicits of the
literature and that the watchwords call us forward, it is desirable at
this point to consider the position of our research at the stage which
it has now reached. I have to justify my statements that
(a) the Graal
is a legend of the soul, and is, in some respects, a history which is
personal, namely, to all souls at a certain epoch of their experience;
(b) its root-matter is annalogous with that of mysticism;
(c) the
chalice, to speak of that only which is the hallow-in-chief, is from
the mystic standpoint, a symbol;
(d) a better explanation must be
found for its feeding properties than has been so far offered by folk-
fore;
(e) the four epochs of the legend-being (I) institution, (2) the
Keepership, (3) the enchantments and wounding, (4) the close of the
adventurous times- must be held to manifest in part the secret
intention;
(f) the remanents of the Graal mystery must be sought not
in a castle of the Pyrenees, not in a Spanish church, though there is
one in that country which claims to have been its last custodian; nor
in respect of its traces at Sarras, that is to say, at Cesarea, or
elsewhere, but in certain instituted mysteries, the reflection of
which remains to the present day. Before entering into the
consideration of these matters, there is a word in fine to be said
about official scholarship.
How admirable is the life of the scholar, how zealous the devotion
which impels him, and how sorrowful it seems that it enters so seldom
into his heart to have concern for the great subjects! Yet there is
one respect in which he does excellent service towards things that are
really important; he is in some cases devoted with great seriousness
and all-ruling honesty to the elucidation of old literatures.
The work
is often final, or tends in the direction of finality, when these
literatures have no consanguinity- absit omen, in the name of
all folk-lore societies!- with the decried mazes of mystic thought.
With such possibilities on the hill-tops, the work on the lower ground
is still precious, but it is necessary at times and seasons to dissent
from the official conclusions and the official attitude, because it is
not to be expected that scholarship- crowned with "the simple senses"
and saying: "Omega, thou art Lord," to many phantoms which for us are
mere idols- should be in touch with these possibilities, or should
deal with them fully and justly. May it exercise in the present
instance a certain reasoning tolerance towards an investigation which,
in differing from its own, offers a grateful recognition of all that
has been so far accompished!
II
THE MYSTERY OF INITIATION
Like those who said in expectation of an imminent onslaught:
"Gentlemen of the guard, fire first!" I will now makewhat must be
certainly considered a fatal admission, as follows: The great
literatures and the great individual books are often at this day to
the mystic as so many counters, or heaps of letters, which he
interprets after this own manner and so imparts to them that light
which, at least intellectually, abides in himself.
We know in our
hearts that eternity is the sole thing which ultimately matters and
true literatures should confess to no narrower horizon. It happens
sometimes that they begin by proposing a lesser term, but are
afterwards exalted, and this was the case with the Graal books, which
were given the Perceval legend according to the office of Nature and
afterwards the legend of Galahad according to the law of Grace.
Recurring now to the brief schedule of points which call to be
dealt with and may be preferably taken at this, rather than at a later
stage, I will make a beginning with that which comes last in the
enumeration itself, because it is obvious that I can be concerned- for
what it is worth- with simple affirmation only, and not with evidence.
There is behind the great quests a Mystery of Initiation and
Advancement, to the nature of which I can approximate only in reviews
and in printed books, but that which it is possible to say will be
expressed, under proper veils, at the close of the present paper. The
warant of it is in the secret fraternities which lie behind the
surface-pageant of mystic literature.
At this day and for many
generations backward, the great secret rites have been like the Rich
King Fisherman, either wounded or in a condition of languishment, and
it is for the same symbolic reason, namely, that there are few
prepared to come forward and ask the required question, on account of
the external stress and disillusion.
At the same time, they have been
saying, after their own manner, for many centuries: Ask, and ye shall
receive. If these statements can be tolerated on the faith of one who,
from the writer's standpoint, has perhaps more to lose than to gain by
making them, it will follow that the mystic element in the Graal
literature cannot be understood at first hand by those who are
unacquainted with the interior working of those secret societies of
which the Masonic experiment, let us say, is a part only, and
elementary at that. The important lights are not in printed books, but
in the catholic motive which characterizes secret schools that have
never entered into the knowledge of the outside world, and in the
secret body of doctrine communicated by these.
It is there only that
the student can learn why that sacred and mysterious object which is
termed Graal is (I) A stone which is not a stone, and, like that of
alchemy, at once a medicine and an elixir; (2) a cup of knowledge and
a cup of memory; (3) a symbolic vessel or lamp, wherein is the light
of the world and from which that light is transmitted. These memorials
have been always in the world and their rumour has been heard always;
in so far as the Graal literature can be called a concealed
literature, there were other concurrent and more express witnesses,
each of them claiming to draw from high authority in the past, in the
main always oral but in part also written.
III
THE LOST BOOK OF THE GRAAL
Now, if there is one thing which is clear from the whole
literature, it is that the Graal romances claimed to follow some book
which has not come down to us, and those who are concerned with such
matters might, from the sole consideration of the texts, reconstruct
in respect of its accidents the kind of apocryphal gospel which could
have served as the proto-Graal book of the whole literature.
It would
have comprised many curious elements, a few of which may be hazarded
in this place: A, power of words, reflected perhaps through gnosticism
from the old mysteries of Chaldea; B, Magical elements brought over by
nomadic tribes deriving from Egypt; C, an eschatology with a motive
akin to that of Origen; D, a special legendary interest in Pontius
Pilate and Judas Iscariot; E, an expectation of the final redemption
of Jewry symbolised bythe deliverance of an unfaithful disciple named
Moses, who appears in the metrical Joseph and in the texts which
follow therefrom.
This apocryphal gospel-book would, however, and
above all, have included the particular great implicits which
constitute the Graal literature. It may have been a manifesto of some
secret sanctuary or school within the Church, of some hidden sect in
Christendom, or some illustration of the Greater Mysteries of
Initiation in Christian times. On this assumption, it contained
materials and put forth warrants which, falling into the hands of
romancers, or being heard Of indirectly and by rumour, were gravely
misconstrued.
Indeed, this Sanctum Graal, this Vas insigne
electionis, Calix inebrians, in a word, this Liber Gradalis
was as much a mythical object to the putative hermit who wrote the
Grand St. Graal as it was to Robert de Borron, who specifies his
dependence upon this book but who may even have owed his acquaintance
with its story to Walter Montbeliard, in whose service he tells us
that he was. At what distance therefore he drew, whether, in the
speculative case mentioned, his patron was clerk enough to read it in
the Latin tongue, whether he, too, knew it by report only, as a
tradition communicated in some order of chivalry, are things which we
shall never know.
Walter Montbeliard was possibly a Knight Templar; he
took the cross, as a consequence of which he died in the Holy Land,
and it was subsequent to this that De Borron wrote his poem, or at
least its concluding part. On his metrical romance there follows the
early history of Merlin, and we can assume that its prose version is a
moderately fair presentation of the lost poem. It has brought the
mystery of all sanctity into a wild kingdom of the west and many
centuries have elapsed, during all which period the Keeper of the Holy
Graal has continued alive in the flesh, but serving absolutely no
purpose, so far as any official church or the claims thereof are
concerned.
From his secret place he exercises no pontificate; he
ordains no one; he teaches nothing. His undeclared asylum is one of
uttermost refuge, and the scribe of the enchanter and prophet is
promised repose therein when he has completed his records. In the
meantime, the only consequence following from the presence of the
Graal in Northiimbria is that it enables Merlin to appropriate it in
all obscure manner to his own use and to connect himself with it in
every possible way.
What was to have depended from this we do not
know, for the tertium quid of De Borron's trilogy is repeaented
by a forged conclusion, or perhaps I should rather say, by an
authorized transcript in prose, which reduced the whole cyde to
complete nullity. Alternatively, if De Borron never produced his
pars tertia et ultima, then the Didot Perceval is an attempt to
fill the gap. Therein the secret words are indeed communicated to the
questing hero, but the Graal is taken from his custody; no one knows
what becomes of it; no one hears of his own fate; all the offices are
voided. This, therefore, is the history of the Lost Book in the Lesser
Chronicles- one doubtless of long and grievous misconstruction- from
which one thing only arises- that there was a secret office of the
Eucharist, but outside its custodians no one knew what it was.
On this
cycle there follows that which begins with the Grand St. Graal, a work
which, whoever was its author, recalls in so many ways the treatise De
Nugis Curialium, written by Henry the II's archdeacon, Walter Map. It
prsents to us great fictions to account for its origin, but it
confesses in fine that it depends from a Latin source, or the hemit of
the prologue rendered what he saw miraculously into that tongue. This
is only another way of saying that the author spoke as he could of
that which he had read or seen as little as Robert De Borron. Now,
either a stream of continuations followed from this document or
alternatively it constituted an introduction to these.
In the first
case the continuations do not present conclusions which conclude, and
in the second the limits of the existing texts are exceeded.
Alternatively, there is a lost quest of Galahad which may have
embodied so much of the Lancelot story as was necessary to its
purpose, and no more. In any case, after all the stories have been
told, all the adventures achieved, and "the dragon of the great
Pendragonship" has been plunged in a sea of blood, we are left with
the chief implicit of the cycle, allocated, as it must be
irresistibly, to the Lost Book, still undeclared as to purpose. We
have indeed the Galahad legend as presented in the Great Quest,
forgetting all about Secret Words, all about Apostolical Succession,
reverting apparently into the hands of the orthodox church, and
thereby re-expressed as a great mystery of sanctity.
We must therefore
set aside for the moment the question of implicits and see what we can
make of this simply as a sacramental legend, having insufficiencies of
its own kind, but still offering the second sense of the Eucharist
amidst the decorations of allegory, the glory of spiritual chivalry
and the enchantments of romance.
IV
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH
Now the mystery of faith in Christianity is above all things the
Eucharist, in virtue of which the Divine Master is ever present in his
church and is always communicated to the soul; but the Graal mystery
is the declared pageant of the Eucharist which, in virtue of certain
powers set forth under the veil of consecrating words, is in some way
a higher mystery than that of the external church.
We have only to
remember a few passages in the Grand St. Graal, in the great prose
Perceval and in the quest of Galahad, to understand the imputed
distinction as (A) the Communication in the Eucharist of the whole
knowledge of the universe, from Aleph to Tau; (B) the communication of
the Living Christ in the dissolution of the veils of Bread and Wine;
(C) the communication of the secret process by which the soul passes
under divine guidance from the pageants of this world to heaven, the
keynote being that the soul is taken when it asks into the great
transcendence. This is the implied question of the Galahad legend, as
distinguished from the Perceval question.
There are those who are
called but not chosen at all, like Gawain. There arethose who get near
to the great mystery but have not given up all things for it, and of
these is Lancelot. There is the great cohort, like the apocalyptic
multitude which no man can number- called, elected and redeemed in the
lesser ways by the offices of the external Church- and of these is the
great chivalry of the Round Table.
There are those who go up into the
Mountain of the Lord and return again, like Bors; they have received
the high degrees, but their office is in this world. In fine, there
are those who follow at a long distance in the steep path, and of
these is the transmuted Perceval of the Galahad legend. It is in this
sense that, exalted above all and more than all things rarefied into a
great and high quintessence, the history of the Holy Graal becomes the
soul's history, moving through a profound symbolism of inward being,
wherein we follow as we can, but the vistas are prolonged for ever,
and it well seems that there is neither a beginning to the story, nor
a descried ending.
We find also the shadows and tokens of secret orders which have
not been declared in the external, and by the strange things which are
hinted, we seem to see that the temple of the Graal on Mont Salvatch
is not otherwise than as the three tabernacles which it was proposed
to build on Mount Tabor. Among indications of this kind there are two
only that I can mention.
As in the prologue to the Grand St. Graal,
the anonymous but not unknown hermit met on a memorable occasion with
one who recognized him by certain signs which he carried, giving thus
the unmistakable token of some instituted mystery in which both
shared: as in the great prose Perceval we have an account of five
changes in the Graal which took place at the altar, being five
transfigurations, the last of which assumed the seeming of a chalice,
but at the same time, instead of a chalice, was some undeclared
mystery: so the general as well as the particular elements of the
legend in its highest form, offer a mystery the nature of which is
recognized by the mystic through certain signs which it carries on its
person; yet it is declared in part only and what remains, which is the
greater part, is not more than suggested.
It is that, I believe, which
was seen by another maimed King when he looked into the sacred cup and
beheld the secret of all things, the beginning even and the end. In
this sense the five changes of the Graal are analogous to the five
natures of man, as these in their turn correspond to the four aspects
of the Cosmos and that which rules all things within and from without
the Cosmos.
I conclude therefore that thc antecedents of the Cup
Legend are (I) Calix meus quam inebrians est; (2) The Cup which
does not pass away; (3) The vas insigne electiorns. The
antecedent of the Graal question is: Ask, and ye shall receive. The
antecedent of the enchantment of Britain is the swoon of the sensitive
life, and that of the adventurous times is: I bring not peace, but a
sword; I come to cast fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it
should be enkindled?- The closing of these times is taken when the
Epopt turns at the altar, saying Pax Dei tecum. But this is the
peace which passes understanding, and it surpervenes upon the Mors
osculi- the mystic Thomas Vaughan's "death of the kiss "- after
which it is exclaimed truly: Blessed are the dead which die in the
Lord, from henceforth and for ever. It follows therefore that the
formula of the Supernatural Graal is: Panem coelestem accipiam;
that of the Natural Graal, namely, the Feeding Dish, is: Panem
nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie; and the middle term: Man doth
not live by bread alone. I should add: These three are one; but this
is in virtue of great and high transmutations.
V
THE DECLARED MYSTERY OF QUEST
And now as the sum total of these mystical aspects, the desire of
the eyes in the seeking and finding of the Holy Graal may, I think, be
re-expressed as follows:--
Temple or Palace or Castle- Mont Salvatch or Corbenic- wherever
located, and whether described as a wilderness of building, crowded
burg or simple hermit's hold-there is one characteristic concerning
the Graal tabernacle which, amidst all its variations in the
accidents, is essentially the same; the Keeper of the great hallows
has fallen upon evil days; the means of restoration and of healing
are, as one would say, all around him, yet the help must come from
without; it is that of his predestined successor, whose office is to
remove the vessel, so that it is henceforth never seen so openly.
Taking the quest of Galahad as that which has the highest significance
spitually, I think that we may speak of it thus:- We know that a that
in the last analysis it is the inward man who is really the Wounded
Keeper. The mysteries are his; on him the woe has fallen; it is he who
expects healing and redemption. His body is the Graal Castle, which is
also the castle of Souls, and behind it is the Earthly Paradise as a
vague and latent memory.
We may not be able to translate the matter of
the romance entirely into mytical symbolism, since it is only a rumour
at a distance of life in the spirit and its great secrets. But, I
think, we can see that it all works together for the one end of all.
He who enters into the consideration of this secret and immemorial
house under fitting guidance shall know why it is that the Graal is
served by a pure maiden, and why that maiden is ultimately
dispossessed. Helayne is the soul, and the soul is in exile because
all the high unions have been declared voided- the crown has been
separated from the kingdom, and experience from the higher knowledge.
So long as she remained a pure virgin, she was the thyrsis-bearer in
the mysteries, but the morganatic marringe of mortal life is part of
her doom.
This is still a high destiny, for the soul out of earthly
experience brings forth spiritual desire, which is the quest of the
return journey, and this is Galahad. It is therefore within the law
and the order that she has to conceive and bring him forth. Galahad
represents the highest spiritual aspirations and desires passing into
full consciousness, and so into attainment. But he is not reared by
his mother, because Eros, which is the higher knowledge, has dedicated
the true desire to the proper ends thereof. It will be seen also what
must be understood by Lancelot in secret communication with Helayne,
though he has taken her throughout for another. The reason is that it
is impossible to marry even in hell without marrying that seed which
is of heaven.
As she is the psychic woman, so is he the natural man,
or rather the natural intelligence, which is not without its
consecrations, not without its term in the great transcendence.
Helayne believes that her desire is only for Lancelot, but this is
because she takes him for Eros, and it is by such a misconception that
the lesser Heaven stoops to the earth; herein also there is a sacred
dispensation, because so is the earth assumed. I have said that
Lancelot is the natural man, but he is such nearly at the highest; he
is born in great sorrow, and she who has conceived him saves her soul
alive amidst the offices of external religion. He is carried into the
lesser land of Faerie, as into a garden of childhood. When he draws
towards manhood, he comes forth from the first places of enchantment
and is clothed upon by the active duties of life, as by the vestures
of chivalry.
He enters also into the unsanctified life of sense, into
an union against the consecrated life and order. But his redeeming
quality is that he is faithful and true, because of which, and because
of his genealogy, he is chosen to beget Galahad, of whom he is
otherwise unworthy, even as we all, in our daily life, fall short of
the higher aspirations of the soul. As regards the Keeper, it is
certain that he must die and be replaced by another Keeper before the
true man can be raised, with the holy things to him belonging, which
hallows are indeed withdrawn, but it is with and in respect of him
only, for the keepers are a great multitude, though it is certain that
the Graal is one.
The path of quest is the path of the upward
progress, and it is only at the great height that Galahad knows himslf
as really the Wounded Keeper and that thus, in the last resource, the
physician heals himself. Now this is the mystery from everlasting,
which is called in the high doctrine Schema misericordiae. It
is said: Latet, aeternumque latebit, until it is revealed in
us, but as to this: Te rogamus, audi nos.
Scanned from the periodical "The Occult Review", Vol. VI, No. 2; Aug.,
1907.
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