CHESMAYNE
Grail - the legend
Appearance of the Holy
Grail at the Round Table
Stained glass of
Thanksgiving
01 Reflects the developing
consciousness of a Christian man in the 1st Millennium, and
describes the inner journey. Often seen
as the vessel which contains the Host or a Communion cup/vessel. Within reach and obtainable by those of the
highest level of spiritual maturity.
02 The
03 The KTs sword:
shows that you are no longer governed by brute passions.
04 The old Fisher KI
is wounded: dark
primitive impulses from within threaten the old ways.
05 The Grail itself: is that
which preserves life, the inner idea of the vessel. In the inner realm man can adapt to
circumstances. The vessel is the mind of
man balancing and reconciling the opposites. It is symbolically like Mother Earth as
womb and tomb giving birth and receiving back her dead. The Grail was the grave where death was
turned into life, where inanimate wine was turned to living blood. In the legend, the Grail was the cup used by Christ at
the Last Supper, where he identified with the wine that was drunk, thereby
identifying the one life with its many manifestations. When approached by anyone not of perfect purity
it vanished, and its quest became the source of most of the adventures of the knights of the Round Table.
06 The lance and the Grail,
which must always be together: are all contained in the union of
opposites.
Left: Holy Lance Relic, Patriarch’s Museum,
Echmiadzin.
Right: Stone Sanctuary Of Holy Lance Church,
Gegard.
Left: Cave Chapel, Holy Lance Church,
Gegard. Right: Entrance door.
07 Blue flames reveal where the
treasure is: the conscious fire of the celestial spirit, which combines feeling
and thinking, reveals what is of ultimate worth and value.
08 The Sangreal in the Arthurian
legends was the dish used by Christ at the Last Supper. Joseph of Arimathea brought it to
And did those feet in ancient
time, Walk upon
[
09 The Grail Question: ‘what
does this mean?’
10 Wasteland: the country
surrounding the Castle of the Grail which became waste. It is often represented in the Grail cycle
in the person of the Loathly Lady, Cundrie or Sovereignty.
11 Chess in its various forms
throughout the centuries. Film: ‘Monty
Python and the Holy Grail’.
12 Lohengrin by Richard Wagner:
a mysterious unnamed KT arrives in a boat pulled by a swan to champion Elsa. If she does not ask his name he will marry
her. Lohengrin reveals that he is a KT of the Holy Grail. The swan is released from the spell cast by
Telramund’s wife Ortrud, and is turned back into Elsa’s brother Gottfried,
rightful heir to the dukedom.
13 Jung
called the Grail legend the most recent of the great myths to
surface from the collective unconscious (the primary myth of Western
civilization).
THE WASTE LAND
These notes are taken from: Representative Poetry
On-line:
Editor, I. Lancashire; Publisher, Web Development Group, Inf. Tech. Services,
Univ. of Toronto Lib. Edition: RPO 1999. © I. Lancashire, Dept. of
English (
What is a Waste Land
The ancient
legend of the Fisher King, the ruler of the Waste Land, so-called in the Perceval versions of the Grail legend
because it was doomed to barrenness until the King, who was wounded in the
sexual organs, was healed by a knight of great purity. The legend exists in many versions, pagan and
Christian, and originated in pagan fertility rites celebrating the movement of
Nature from barren winter to fertile lifeful spring and often involving human
sacrifice to bring about this natural rebirth.
Usually the King was killed, his flowing blood being taken as the power
that rejuvenates the land. In the
Fisher King legend, however, there is no human sacrifice: the King stands for
the land, in his barrenness, and his healing accordingly comes to symbolize the
land’s healing. In the English Middle
Ages the Fisher King legend became associated with the Arthurian legends, especially that of the quest
for the Holy Grail (the vessel supposed to have been used by Jesus at the Last
Supper). One of Arthur’s knights, on a quest, endures temptations and agonies in
the Waste Land, all of which culminate in the ordeal of the Chapel Perilous; then, through the Grail, he becomes able to heal the Fisher King, and
the land regains its fertility. In some
versions, the knight’s final test is his arrival at a castle where a beautiful young girl brings
him the Grail (or other symbols), and where he must ask certain
right questions; failure to do so sometimes causes the previously fertile land to
become waste; Grail Castle must be reached by crossing a water-filled moat; the
questor must be motivated by a desire to save the land, not to attain some
personal end. The Grail is symbolically
associated with the lance, the female and male symbols.
In connection with the Fisher King, Miss Weston
emphasized the use of the fish as a symbol in early Christianity; the title “fishers
of men,” bestowed by Christ on his apostles; and the immemorial connection of the
fish symbol with pagan fertility deities and their rituals.
II. A GAME OF CHESS
The title has many associations.
1. It recollects the chess game
in Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware
Women, in which a widow is distracted by the playing of a game of chess
from the duke’s seduction of her daughter-in-law Bianca in the next room (on a
stage balcony visible to the audience) (almost described as a rape, and in double entendre imaged as a chess game.
The dramatist contrived that the
accomplice should checkmate the mother at the moment when the daughter-in-law
surrendered to the seducer). (The play satirized a marriage based on
political expediency)
2. The chess game often
represents man’s mortality - for example, Igmar Bergman’s film, The Seventh Seal, shows life as a chess game with Death.
3. In the Grail legend, the
knight sometimes visits a chessboard castle, where he meets a water-maiden.
4. At the end of Shakespeare’s The Tempest the two ancient rival kingdoms of Milan and Naples
are united in the promised marriage of Prince Ferdinand and Prospero’s
daughter, Miranda, who are discovered together playing a game of chess -
signifying the rational basis of their love, their pre-marital
chastity, and their marriage as the reduction of a real war to a mere game
between lovers.
5. In chess, two kings strive
for supremacy by manipulating and sacrificing their
The Quest of the Holy Grail
by
Elizabeth
Siddal
(British,
1829-1862)
[Biography] [Recommended
Reading] [Browse Paintings]
[Paintings Index]
Picture
Details:
Painted circa 1855-57; Watercolour; 28 x 23.8 cm
Location: Private Collection
Also known as ‘Sir Galahad at the Shrine of
the Holy Grail’.
Click painting to
view enlargement
Above: the rendering of the Ark of
the Covenant on the Sword of Solomon shows that the two Cherubim are
NOT “on” the Mercy Seat - THE CHERUBIM ARE POSITIONED ON THE *SIDES* OF
THE ARK !!!
EXACTLY WHERE RON WYATT SAID THE CHERUBIM STOOD!
ON THE *SIDES* OF THE
Below: Sandra outside of the Garden Tomb, her
hand reaching up to the metal shaft that’s embedded in the wall that held the
tomb door in place when Jesus was buried in this tomb.
