I have been thinking about the Grail traditions and the present world situation holding together in my awareness a sense of T S Eliot's wasteland, The High History of the Holy Graal, the experience of the world wars and the sense of being alive here and now.
I am reading what I might call my local Grail text, The High History, which was said to have been written in Glastonbury Abbey. I am reading it in the Sebastian Evans translation, which while not the most accurate, is in wonderful English.
This text draws on potent ancient welsh traditions as well as drawing in Templar imagery. It shares with the Master Blihis text, The Elucidation, the experience of the Wells of Joy having dried up and that all cups and chalices have vanished. It is a remarkable work deeply interwoven with the fate of the Land.
We learn that there are no chalices to be found in all of Arthur's land until Arthur experiences the Grail mass. We are told that in the Mass, the Grail appears in 5 forms that are not named but are concealed in other places in the text–the Lance, the Sword, the Stone, the Child and finally the Chalice.
At this mass, the grail priest rings a magical bell cast by Solomon long ago and this becomes the prototype for all church bells in Arthur's realm. He brings the chalice back to his land and magically every church now has a chalice and the bells ring from each church tower. The incorporation and the embodiment of the chalice is the key and pivot point of the grail story and the answer to the wasteland.
The drying up of things in the wasteland is wonderfully described by Eliot:
"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock)
And I will show you something different from either
|Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
It is this situation, we find the Grail seekers addressing in the High History of the Holy Graal. Each has to find a way to deal with their personal wasteland: Lancelot has to address his fixation with Guinevere and find a way to look beyond her, Arthur must renew vision and bring this vision back to Logres, Gawain must resolve the tension of the opposites, while Perceval must remain true to his innocent nature like the Fool of the Tarot–it is by simple being that he prevails.
Another great description of the Wasteland is given by David Jones in his 1974 poem A,a, a Domine Deus, in which he addresses the robotic mechanical nature of modern life:
I said, Ah! what shall I write?
I enquired up and down.
(He's tricked me before
with his manifold lurking-places.)
I looked for His symbol at the door.
I have looked for a long while
at the textures and contours.
I have run a hand over the trivial intersections.
I have journeyed among the dead forms
causation projects from pillar to pylon.
I have tired the eyes of the mind
regarding the colours and lights.
I have felt for His wounds
in nozzles and containers.
I have wondered for the automatic devices.
I have tested the inane patterns
without prejudice.
I have been on my guard
not to condemn the unfamiliar.
For it is easy to miss Him
at the turn of a civilisation.
I have watched the wheels go round in case I
might see the living creatures like the appearance
of lamps, in case I might see the Living God projected
from the Machine. I have said to the perfected steel,
be my sister and for the glassy towers I thought I felt
some beginnings of His creature, but A,a,a Domine Deus,
my hands found the glazed work unrefined and the terrible
crystal a stage-paste ...Eia, Domine Deus.
In his great poem The Anathemata, he gives us his sense of the grail Mass:
We already and first of all discern him making this thing other. His broken syntax, if we attend, already shapes:
ADSCRIPTAM, RATAM, RATIONABILEM. . . and by preapplication, and for them, under modes and patterns altogether theirs, the holy and venerable hands lift up an efficacious sign….
The cult-man stands alone in Pellam’s land: more precariously than he knows he guards the signa: the pontifex among his house-treasures, (the twin-urbes his house is) he can fetch things new and old: the tokens, the matrices, the institutes, the ancilia, the fertile ashes —the palladic foreshadowings: the things come down from heaven together with the kept memorials, the things lifted up and the venerated trinkets…
Within the railed tumulus
he sings high and he sings low.
In a low voice
as one who speaks
where a few are, gathered in high room
and one, gone out…
In the prepared high-room
he implements inside time and late in time under forms
indelibly marked by locale and incidence, deliberations made
out of time, before all oreogenesis
on this hill
at a time's turn
not on any hill
but on this hill."
Here we see the preparation for the rite the gathering together of the heap of broken images and the stepping into the sacred enclosure. This is followed by the gathering of all who need to enter into the communion with the healing presence of Christ. Jones makes reference in one of the notes that in the rite of the fourth century Egyptian Bishop, Serapion, the Eucharist is regarded as a recalling of all the dead so that as the Mass is made it touches all space, all time, and all the living and the dead. The manifestation of the chalice is the great moment of recollection and redemption. In the words of Sarojini Naidu the 20th century Indian writer and political activist:
“The Divine Chalice
The hearts of true worshippers,
emptied of self,
form a perfect chalice,
wherein Divine power can be outpoured.
A group of souls meeting together in some holy sanctuary of God can, week by week, form a nucleus whereby the Divine power may be captured in the empty cup of their hearts,
From this Divine Chalice can go forth a mighty power, or spiritual ray, to help this suffering world.
First the empty cup, then the divine outpouring, and then the absorbing whereby the body of
Christ may be strengthened to give out to others from this Divine Chalice.”
In a sense the absence of the chalice that the High History of the Holy Grail speaks of is the fundamental reason that the wasteland comes to be for without the capacity to make space, resonate and create communion we find ourselves in a world without colloquy and conversation–a dead and deadening world.
The IS gestures of awareness in which we enter into Sovereignty, connect with Self-Light, and practice Grail Space brings the chalice of communion into operation. My Sidhe companion Melusine uses a phrase that sums up the heart of this practice, ”The one Tree that is a thousand Trees, the thousand Trees that are one Tree” or, to put it another way, the relationship of the All with the Small. This speaks of the way in which we exist within a series of nested interconnected fields. As we enter sovereignty in an act of conscious incarnation we become present and we experience ourselves at centre and edge, giving us an experience of both our own unique generativity and our connection of the field of all life. As we bring this sense of uniqueness (the small) into relationship with the universe (the All), we align with the presence of the Christ–here experienced as a living force that promotes development and coherence. This alignment deepens our connection with the Generative Mystery at the heart of our being and our capacity to embrace all that we touch.
As we move outwards in response to the intention of incarnation the ability of the body to map and include (which is a reflection of the incarnational impulse) comes into play and there is a meeting between our vector and the vectors of the manifest and subtle worlds that are closest to us. In that meeting a conjoined field is formed which is in itself a creative beginning, a star of life, which as in the fertilised egg creates a new being with a new DNA (to use that metaphor) configuration formed from the inter-twining of the incarnational fields.
My own practice of Grail Space always begins with entering into Sovereignty and acknowledging whatever I am sitting on. There is a sensation of taking my seat in a way that is much more than physical; the sense of being supported and of there being a sense of space for me to rest in operates at so many levels physically of course but also psychologically and spiritually. There is also a sense of me receiving the seat’s capacity to hold space and offer support which assists me as I acknowledge the other forms around me such as the candle on my shrine, a wall hanging etc.
To give another example as I hold my tea cup in my hands, allow myself to become present and enter the felt sense of Ian holding the cup and invite the cup to be present with me, there is a moment of meeting and vibration which includes the sense of "this is my cup, which I like.” I am aware of the history of the cup and the potter who made it etc. Then I start to feel its cupness, the sense of clay and fired earth that is its substance, I feel its energetic form also so as well as its solidity I feel its vibratory nature meeting it as both particle and wave.
At the same time, I sense it responding to me and I have a sense of my cup-ness in response, as this becomes more vivid I have a wider and deeper sense of myself and the cup as aspects of both Gaia and the sacred and as this happens there is an intensity of life and presence that appears which becomes a wave of expression moving in all directions.
At the heart of this expression is a non-sentimental love and care that is both the root of the experience and its currency, a mutual mirroring that enables a star of blessing to appear. As the experience dissipates the intensity goes away but I, and the cup are changed subtly. My colleague Melusine comments,
“It is the meeting of two standing waves in which the standing wave that is my constancy makes room for and is enriched by the standing wave of the other–when you spoke of the exercise with the cup you showed the process in which the cup receives Ian-ness and Ian receives cup-ness. There is a transmission and augmentation that arises and a bond that is created that is permanent. The creation of such bonds of connection is a creative art with the Sidhe, a setting up of webs of union which enables new life to flower in new ways–it is a meeting beyond time and space in which the all is enfolded and made visible in the small.”
Grail Person, by Jeremy Berg
The Lorian image of the Grail Person shown above visually sums up the whole process we have been looking at. As we embrace our human form we become rooted in the green and golden universe like a tree and like King Arthur in the High History of the Holy Grail, bring the radiance and blessing of the chalice back into the world causing the Wasteland to be irrigated and to flower. In this way we enter our deeper more complex form as the mediating presence and as the living Grail but the doorway for me at least is always through the apparently simple act of becoming present to my 68 year old body just as it is and being able to listen to its music even when seemingly out of tune or creaky.