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    Spain Avalon Member Javblanc's Avatar
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    Default The Quest of The Grail

    Far from worrying exclusively about their personal Quest, the Arthurian hero is committed to the fate of the entire Universe. Nothing and no one is foreign to him. Perceval’s initiation stages in his pursuit of the Grail are marked by the progressive softening of his hardened heart before the suffering of others. On his way towards the Grail Castle, the Arthurian heroes will not think twice before stopping to help an unfortunate peasant, or before putting themselves in the service of every just cause that crosses their path. They will even stray from the Quest if they receive news that their help is needed somewhere else. Although in reality, that does not divert them, it does not delay them or distract them from their Quest. On the contrary: it’s precisely in their altruism, in their unconditional selflessness where the Quest takes place.
    Because the Grail Castle has no exact location: it’s an enchanted castle. A castle that will only allow itself to be found by the knights who have honoured the ideals of wandering chivalry: namely, to help those in need, to defend the weak against the powerful. The famous question that is expected from the knights who enter the Grail Castle and that will prove to be the cornerstone of their suitability is very simple. According to Wolfram, it’s a display of compassion towards the wounded King: “What ails you? What do you need?” The path to God, which is definitely the path to one’s self, paradoxically but without fail passes by other people. In such a way that it’s not possible to find the Grail if you’re wearing blinders, so to speak, ignoring the rest of the world. Look, in Wolfram’s Parzival, a friendly ambassador bids farewell to the Knights of the Round Table by saying “…may God allow you to feel the sadness of your fellow man!”
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    My soul is from elsewhere

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    Default Re: The Quest of The Grail

    The Holy Grail appears in an enchanted castle, a castle of uncertain location and difficult access, inhabited by a King who has lost his Integrity as well as his Kingdom. The scenography of these apparitions has the magic, supernatural quality of dreams. And maybe that is precisely it. The expressing of the dream, the expressing of the diminished King’s nostalgia -the Fisher King who dreams of restoring his lost Integrity.

    This holy object fell from Heaven. The legend links it to Adam and Eve’s Fall, and Wolfram labels it lapis exillis (“exile stone”), a Latin expression in which we can also observe the contraction of lapis lapsus ex coelis, “stone fallen from Heaven”. I would like to mention another variant of the legend, as well, one that claims the Grail was originally an emerald embedded in Lucifer’s (the “light bearer”) forehead. When he plunged into the abyss along with the other fallen angels, the precious stone detached from his forehead, and the other angels took it and sculpted it in the shape of a cup.

    The Holy Grail appears for the first time as a literary subject in the context of medieval chivalric novels, and it does so in the hand of a legendary sixth century Breton king. According to the legend, King Arthur summoned the bravest errant knights to his Camelot court, and he gathered them around a round table, thus the chivalric Order they founded came to be known as the “Round Table”. Said Order, like every self–respecting chivalric Order, was devoted to protecting the weak from the powerful. However, with time, the Knights of the Round Table began feeling that such noble mission had become too small for them, and so they decided to aim higher: earthly chivalry drifted towards the spiritual one. This was triggered by rumours that had been going around the court, rumours about an enigmatic object: the Holy Grail.

    What is this object? Maybe you understood it to be a sacred cup, a golden chalice, or, according to other stories, a precious stone. But it does not matter. The physical object is of no importance. What’s relevant is what it symbolises, and that is Divinity, Unity, Integrity, and Androgyny. The Grail symbolises man’s lost Paradise. Wolfram von Eschenbach defines it in his Parzival as “Wunsch von Pardîs” , which is Old German and can be translated as “the Consummation of the yearning for Paradise” or “the ideal of Heaven”. That is what the Knights of the Round Table are chasing. Now then, this had belonged to them before. The Grail is nothing new for man, who had enjoyed its bliss in the past –hence he keeping its reminiscence more or less buried in his memory. “No one shall know the Grail if he has not yet seen it in Heaven”, as it’s sentenced in one of these stories. This reminiscence and nostalgia have become a constant for the hero. He feels an unspeakable yearning for the Grail and so he goes off in search of it. In search of the glorious title it confers: Mystic Royalty.

    Mystic Royalty is like saying true nature, man’s original condition. Once again, a beggar becomes Grail King; or, in other words, returns to the Origin, to the primordial Fire, to the Kingdom of Heaven: such is the goal of the arthurian heroes. In short, the quest is about unravelling the thread that lowered God to the rank of human. This descent –as I believe I know– had consisted of the loss of divine Unity in favour of human Duality. In light of my theory: Of the “divorce” of the two spouses, whose heavenly marriage conceived God in the Origin.
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    Default Re: The Quest of The Grail

    THREE DROPS OF BLOOD IN THE SNOW
    A quest is an adventurous, dangerous journey undergone by an hero in order to complete an important task. The word comes from the Latin questa, “search”. Usually, the hero sets out on a quest to find a symbolic object. The most famous example of quest in western literature is the literary cycle that revolves around a mysterious sacred object fallen from Heaven, sought by many, found by very few: the Holy Grail of the Arthurian legend. This quest features the knights of the Round Table. One of these is a wandering knight named Perceval, who at the beginning of the story lives in a cabin in the middle of the woods without knowing that he is a knight by heart. In the course of his quest, Perceval meets his twin soul -Blanchefleur- but after spending time in her company (after marrying her, according to Gerbet de Montreuil’s and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s versions), he forsakes and forgets her. Perceval gets his memory back in a subtle and surprising circumstances: the sight of three drops of blood in a snowy meadow. The mix of red and white invokes in him the rosy complexion of his wife, Blanchefleur. The knight atop his steed, engrossed in the contemplation of a rose–coloured stain in the snow that reminds him of his lover, is perhaps the most beautiful passage in all Arthurian Literature. It goes like this:
    That night, out in a field, they slept alongside a wood. And as they slept snow fell, and the country was cold; Perceval had arisen early, as he always did, wanting to hunt for adventure and the chance to prove how brave he could be. And riding across the fields, beneath the frigid sun, he came to the king’s camp but saw, before he reached the tents, a flock of wild geese, dazzled by the heavy snow, fleeing as fast as birds can fly from a diving falcon dropping out of the sky. It struck at a single goose, lagging behind the others, and hit it so hard that it fell to the earth. But the hawk didn’t follow it down, not hungry enough to take the trouble, Too lazy to chase it. So the falcon flew off. But Perceval rode to where the goose had fallen. The bird’s neck had been wounded, And three drops of blood had come rolling out on the snow, dying it vivid red. The bird had not been badly hurt, just knocked to the earth, and before the knight could reach it it had flown away in the sky. But its body’s oval shape was printed in the snow, the blood dyed colour suffused inside it, And Perceval, leaning on his lance, sat staring at the sight. Blood and snow so mixed together created a fresh colour, Just like his beloved’s face, and as he stared he forgot what he was doing and where he was. The red stain against the white snow seemed just like her complexion. The more he looked, the happier he grew, seeing once again the exact colour of her beautiful face. The morning slowly passed away, and still he sat there musing, Until at last squires and pages emerged from the tents and saw him, and thought him asleep. (Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval or the Story of the Grail)
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