Quest Magazine

By Gary Lachman

Antoine Faivre is a professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Religious Studies Section, Sorbonne; he is also University Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Haute-Normandie and the author of several books, among them Access to Western Esotericism (SUNY Press, 1996), The Eternal Hermes (Phanes Press, 1996) and The Golden Fleece and Alchemy (SUNY Press, 1996). With two colleagues, he edits a journal, ARIES, for the Association pour la Recherche et l'Information sur l'Ésotérisme and is director of the series Cahiers de l'Hermétisme (Albin Michel).

Those achievements are impressive enough, one would think. But Faivre is notable for an additional reason. He holds the Sorbonne's chair in the History of Esoteric and Mystical Currents in Modern and Contemporary Europe. Along with Joscelyn Godwin, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Robert McDermott, and a few others, Faivre is among a group of modern university scholars for whom the words "esoteric" and "occult" are not anathema. In recent years, the study of esotericism has made inroads into areas of academic respectability. Nevertheless, among his colleagues, Faivre's position is unlike any other. As a friend remarked, if there's such a thing as a "professor of esotericism," he has to be in Paris.

Inaugurated in 1965, the chair in the History of Christian Esotericism was first held by Faivre's predecessor, the aptly named François Secret, a specialist in Christian Kabbalah. Back then, the idea of "esotericism" was familiar at most to a few readers of René Guénon and followers of G. I. Gurdjieff, who had left his mark on Paris in the 1930s and 1940s. But by the time Faivre assumed the chair in 1979, times had changed. The "occult revival" of the 1960s and 1970s had taken place, and the roots of what became the New Age and a global hunger for spirituality had begun to stir. For the postmodern academic climate, eager to challenge canons and plough new fields of research, the rich history of the western esoteric tradition must have seemed a ripe territory to explore.

For readers familiar mainly with popular literature on the subject, Faivre's approach can be sobering. Rigorously historical, his aim is to rescue esotericism from obscurity and obfuscation, and situate it as a legitimate current in the cultural heritage of the West. This means, first of all, to define exactly what we mean by the term.

One thing he does not mean is a "tradition." He says, "I don't know what it means, the 'esoteric tradition'. I prefer to speak of 'currents' and of esotericism as a 'form of thought'." For Faivre, esotericism is less a body of received doctrine than a way of looking at the world, a way that is pluralistic, eclectic, open to different ideas, and, oddly, modern. Postmodern, even. What Faivre calls his "humanist path" to esotericism shares much with poststructuralist thought.

This summer, researching a book on the modern occult revival, I had an opportunity to meet Faivre in Paris. At the Salon de Les Trois Colleges, on Rue Cujas near the Sorbonne, we had a conversation about esotericism, hermeticism, and the occult revival of the 1960s and 1970s.

GL: I've been reading The Eternal Hermes and Access to Western Esotericism, and I like very much your talk about esotericism as a "state of mind" or sensibility, rather than a doctrine.

Faivre: I call it a form of thought. An English translation of a second volume of Access is currently being prepared by SUNY. It's entitled Theosophy, Imagination, and Tradition, which are the 3 main chapters, and subtitled Studies in Western Esotericism. I'm currently going over a copy-edited version.

GL: SUNY's been doing very good work, producing many titles. Ten years ago you didn't see as many texts devoted to esotericism.

Faivre: Speaking of that, something very interesting has happened in Germany, almost for the first time, because German scholars since World War II have hardly busied themselves with the historical study of esotericism. But it seems things are undergoing a change. A symposium devoted to esotericism in the eighteenth century was organized by Monika Neugebauer-Wolk in Germany, the proceedings of which have just been published this year, entitled Aufklarung und Esoterik. She has written a long introduction dealing with the methodological approaches used by Hanegraaff and me.

GL: I mentioned that I am writing about the occult revival of the 1960s. It's odd that in 1965, only a few years after the very popular Le Matin des magiciens (The Morning of the Magicians, by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, 1960) appeared, that a chair of Western Esotericism was established at the Sorbonne. Do you see any connection?

Faivre: Not at all. There's no connection, or only an indirect one. You could look at it as I do in Access to Western Esotericism, in terms of "periodization"—how certain things happen at the same time—but to be honest, one must say that there was really no direct connection. The Section des Sciences Religieuses at the Sorbonne is designed to cover a wide area of religious phenomena. It was realized little by little that too many things under that heading were neglected, despite the fact that in 1965 we had forty chairs in that domain. Too many things pertaining to religious phenomena were borderline, and didn't fall under a classical definition of "religious." Call it "mysticism" if you like. And so in 1965 a chair of Christian Esotericism was devised to cover at least some of these things. The creation of this chair was not due to some impetus to "keep abreast of the times," but just to fill in a horrendous gap.

GL: Were you interested in esotericism then?

Faivre: Yes. You see, in 1958 I was twenty-four, in the army, most of the time in Algeria, during the war. I read Le Matin des magiciens then. It was a big change from what I busied myself with at the university. I was interested in German Romanticism and animal magnetism, which plays a role in some aspects of German philosophy. I discovered Goethe's long poem, The Bride of Corinth, which is a vampire story. At the same time I saw the Terence Fisher film, The Horror of Dracula. I made a connection and immersed myself in the study of the vampire story in Europe, which I traced back to the beginning of the eighteenth century. I worked and worked on this idea and shortly before going into the army had a big manuscript, which I gave to a publisher. A few months later, on leave in Paris, I discovered to my amazement that he had published the book, which was only a draft! I was simultaneously pleased and disappointed.

That book, Les Vampires: Essai historique, critique et littéraire (1962) has been considered a kind of mythological work. I was really interested in things that had very little to do with the classical academic curricula. I decided then to work on esotericism. As a Germanist, I was in a rather good position. So many things had been neglected. I began studying esoteric currents in the Renaissance, Pico, Paracelsus, and so on. I studied mostly esoteric currents in Germany in the eighteenth century—Karl von Eckartshausen (1752-1803), who was the subject of my PhD work, Theosophers, people dabbling in magic or alchemy in the pre-Romantic and Romantic periods.

GL: Was this considered an odd pursuit?

Faivre: An interesting question. I was dealing with authors from two hundred years ago, who hadn't been recognized, who couldn't be found in the general books of literature. Most Germanists worked with authors with a certain academic recognition. But fortunately, and for the first time, I must say, in the French academy, the kind of work I was doing became something of a trend. At the end of the 1950s, in the early 1960s, there were more and more professors who considered that research should be devoted to minor people writing at the time the historians were studying. And that's what happened. In 1969 my study on Eckhartshausen was published. My director received a few phone calls from his colleagues, basically saying, "We don't even know the name of the guy this thesis is devoted to." But then came the trend. This wasn't the beginning, but it was starting to spread.

GL: And where does that place the study of esotericism today? It definitely seems more academically respectable, but is there any danger of its becoming just another academic subject, and of losing its heart?

Faivre: A danger? Why a danger? You can apply that to any subject in religious studies. Why should esoteric studies be an exception? We would never vote an individual into our institute who approached us with a thought like that. Within the academy studies have to be academic. And nothing else.

GL: But it seems you're balancing between wanting to do a very thorough, rigorous historical study, so that it's much more serious than much New Age writing, and trying to retain the heart of esotericism somehow. From your writing I get the idea that it's more than a subject for study.

Faivre: I would do exactly the same thing in any other subject. I would write with my heart. By no means is what I do designed to spread esotericism. We are not proselytizing. Absolutely not. I'm not someone who writes or speaks with a view to propagating these ideas.

GL: One aspect of the occult revival of the 1960s and 1970s is that so much of it looked back to the occultists and esotericists of the late nineteenth century. It seemed that in the late nineteenth century, esotericism and the occult made inroads into areas covered by literature and the arts. Why do you think this was so?

Faivre: It was the first time esoteric ideas reached the masses. That didn't happen until the end of the nineteenth century. The Theosophical Society was really sociologically a great movement. Anthroposophy was a bit later. At the end of World War I there were many other societies—such as AMORC, the Rosicrucian society. This accounts for the spread into popular culture and the arts. Then in the 1960s, you could say it was already the dawn of postmodernism. We were coming out of the period of the great ideologies. There were many people dissatisfied with Marxism, existentialism, and so on. Things were very bleak. Then there was this strange medley of all sorts of things, such as the book by Pauwels and Bergier. It wasn't so much what was in it, as how it was arranged, how it was laid out. It's a bad book. But it's of great interest to sociologists.

Being interested in esoteric currents doesn't mean being interested only in the period when that current was supposed to have reached its "perfection," but in the genesis, developments, shiftings, derivations. When I first staring reading this sort of literature, names like Crowley, the Golden Dawn, and Gurdjieff sounded mysterious. Now they're no longer mysterious. They ceased to be so as early as the 1970s. But one of the tricks of Le Matin des magiciens was to present religious mysteries as scientific enigmas, and scientific enigmas as sacred mysteries.

GL: As Erich von Daniken would do soon after in Chariots of the Gods. The gods are spacemen.

Faivre: Daniken represents one of the extreme forms of euhemerism. There is a strong euhemeristic trend in all this. [Euhemerus, 3rd century sc, believed the gods were humans divinized after death.] In order to make sacred things palatable in our culture, which has lost its interest in established religions, we need to find actual, physical explanations. I find that very clever, in the sense of how our cosmological images are shaped.

[In The Eternal Hermes, Faivre traces the history of the fleet-footed god in the Western imagination. In one strongly euhemerist view, Hermes-Thoth was an actual historical person, responsible for some 36,525 books. I told Faivre how much I liked his view of Hermeticism as a pluralistic, eclectic way of looking at things.]

Faivre: There is an opposite way of looking at esoteric currents, a way that tends toward dogmatism, and that unfortunately has got a great deal of attention. Think of René Guénon. Consider for example the notion of universal correspondences. It's extraordinary how different or opposite discourses on that can be. It boils down to the question of hierarchies. If you say that what is above is like what is below, and what is below is like what is above, you can have a very hierarchical view of humankind, of nature. And this lends itself to an approach that describes higher and lower levels of reality, for example Vedanta, or rather the dogmatic way in which Vedanta is presented in some perennialist discourses.

On the other hand, the very notion of universal correspondences can be understood in a way that is absolutely different—in a democratic way, for example, when William Blake says, "To see the world in a grain of sand." The Copernican revolution did not make problems for the hermeticists. So the earth is no longer the center. So? Okay. Hermes speaks of the center, but there is not only one center, there is an infinity of centers, and there the notion of hierarchy tends to disappear.

You have two ways of looking at things when one speaks of esotericism. One way can be used to the advantage of certain right-wing political movements. Here the emphasis is on hierarchy and authority. It's led to esotericism being associated for the most part with right-wing politics. This is one reason why esotericism hasn't been a major study in Germany. It has the association of the Nazis and the occult and so on. And some esotericists have been right-wing. But there is also a strong left-wing, socialist history in esotericism. Éliphas Lévi, who began the occultist current in the nineteenth century, was a utopian socialist.

GL: It seems this aspect of esotericism is getting the most attention these days. You tend to see more and more that it gets lumped in with fascism and right-wing politics, and obviously there is some of that. Julius Evola, for example.

Faivre: Of course, yet many people see only this, not the other. Because of these misunderstandings, an interesting, scholarly academic association was created here. Politica Hermetica, to which I belong, has a conference every year, each time on a different subject, and the proceedings are published. We've had topics such as "Hermeticism and the French Revolution" and "The Politics in Evola and Guénon." Wouter Hanegraaff, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, is seriously thinking of a big international symposium on the subject. So there is some positive work on esotericism and right-wing politics.

All this has to be discussed and thoroughly studied. There have been excellent books, like Nicolas Goodrick-Clarke's The Occult Roots of Nazism. But most books that deal with this don't deal with the fact that the people who are presented as sources or references for the Nazis don't by any means represent all the esoteric currents.

GL: I was going to say that the whole Alexandrian atmosphere that fostered Hermeticism was one of tolerance and plurality. I don't think many of us would enjoy living under a theocratic social system, like the kind Guénon would have approved of.

Faivre: Exactly.

GL: I want to say that you are doing good work, reclaiming aspects of Western culture and history that have been unavailable for many people—aspects that many people would be interested in if they knew about them, but they don't.

Faivre: I have been trying for a few years to present a methodology for studying particular aspects or currents of esoteric thought. This methodology has, I hope, contributed to opening the field of esotericism to academic research. What is important is that one tries, always tries, to define more and more thoroughly what one is speaking about. Not to confuse esotericism with mysticism, or religion, or intuition, or secrecy, and so on. Of course, there are lots of overlapping areas. But one must proceed methodologically, otherwise one does not do service to the things one studies.

Gary Lachman has written for the Times Literary Supplement, Lapis, Gnosis, and ReVision, as well as the Quest. He is currently writing a book, The Mystic Sixties, and lives in London with his partner and their son.

By James M. Somerville

John Hick, a noted British philosopher of religion, estimates that 95 percent of the people of the world owe their religious affiliation to an accident of birth. The faith of the vast majority of believers depends upon where they were born and when. Those born in Saudi Arabia will almost certainly be Moslems, and those born and raised in India will for the most part be Hindus. Nevertheless, the religion of millions of people can sometimes change abruptly in the face of major political and social upheavals. In the middle of the sixth century ce, virtually all the people of the Near East and Northern Africa, including Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt were Christian. By the end of the following century, the people in these lands were largely Moslem, as a result of the militant spread of Islam.

The Situation Today

Barring military conquest, conversion to a faith other than that of one's birth is rare. Some Jews, Moslems, and Hindus do convert to Christianity, but not often. Similarly, it is not common for Christians to become Moslems or Jews. Most people are satisfied that their own faith is the true one or at least good enough to satisfy their religious and emotional needs. Had St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas been born in Mecca at the start of the present century, the chances are that they would not have been Christians but loyal followers of the prophet Mohammed.

Realizing how dependent on circumstances one's religious commitment is, many well-informed Christians today are inclined to be relativists. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why mainline churches are suffering a loss of membership or at least a diminution of active participation. University-trained churchgoers tend to be less enthusiastic about their faith than were their predecessors. They distrust the ancient scriptures, created by men with little knowledge of science and cosmology or the size and age of the universe, reflecting an archaic worldview that does not speak to our contemporary concerns and understanding. What we are witnessing, then, is a shift in the composition of church membership. The evangelical and fundamentalist communities are growing while the mainline churches are losing members.

Where have the dropouts gone? Some, nowhere at all. They have simply given up on religion. Others have taken up Eastern meditative practices, which they find more rewarding than the verbal prayer they were accustomed to in their mother churches although they may still regard themselves as Christians or Jews. Some in the Jewish community call themselves a "Ju-Bu." They are Jews by birth and upbringing who have studied Buddhism and find it a useful supplement to their own Jewish faith and practice. It is also not uncommon today to find a Hindu ashram headed by a swami or guru who is not an Indian but an American or a European.

The invasion of the East represents a reversal of what Christian missionaries had in mind in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when they went to Asia and Africa to convert the infidel, though with no great success in Asia. Now purveyors of the Asian religions have come to the West and are enjoying a notable success, not so much in making converts as in convincing Americans and Europeans that Western religions are not the only spiritual paths of worth.

Proselytism and Responses to Diversity

When people in one part of the world want to make their faith palatable to those elsewhere, they often make an attempt at acculturation. Nonessential elements of the faith that would be distinctly foreign to others are suppressed, and the religion is made to look more like what the natives are accustomed to. So recently Christian missionaries in Asia and Africa have adapted their practice to the expectations and preferences of the people they have chosen to live with. In the same way, practitioners of Eastern religions try to modify their systems so they will not seem too bizarre to Westerners.

With or without adaptation, however, the aim of the zealous missionary is to make converts. As might be expected, that aim does not sit well with the natives. India does not welcome Catholic and Evangelical missionaries who have come to India with the intention of winning souls away from Hinduism or any of the other Indian religions. Russia has recently limited the stay of European and American missionaries to three months. The Russian Orthodox Church, which is gradually recovering from seventy-five years of persecution under an atheistic regime, is not at all pleased with the arrival of foreigners bent on luring Russians away from Orthodoxy to embrace some other form of Christianity. People are very sensitive about their traditional religion. Intruders are not welcome.

Churches are instinctively conservative. Catholics used to hold that a person who abandons his childhood faith, even to join another Christian denomination, has committed a grave sin. Orthodox Jews often deal severely with those who marry non-Jews, especially Christians. One response is to hold a symbolic funeral service for "the departed" and exclude the offenders from all contact with their family until they return to the fold. Author Salmon Rushdie has learned to his sorrow that any criticism of things dear to Moslems can result in a death sentence with a reward for his execution. Some Hindus maintain that those who leave India for the West to make their fortune and never return are disloyal to the Vedic tradition. Thus religions have a way of exerting moral pressure and imposing penalties on those who fail to conform.

Given the fact that the largest religions have gone their separate ways and are not likely to merge, it is clear that there is never likely to be a single world religion. Consequently the adherents of every religion are faced with the necessity of deciding how to think about other faiths. Scholars in religious studies, such as John Hick, Paul Knitter, John E. Cobb, Jr., and Raimon Panikkar, have distinguished three differing approaches to the existence of many religions in the world. These approaches are often called "exclusivism," "inclusivism," and "pluralism." To them I would add a fourth---"convergence."

Exclusivism

In the face of the diversity of religions, those in the exclusivist camp maintain that there is only one true religion, their own, and that all the others are in error to a greater or lesser degree. Many feel an obligation to work diligently to convert those in error for their own good and bring them to a knowledge of the truth. Hence, making converts is often a major concern of religious fundamentalists. After all, St. Peter declared, when he was arraigned before the Temple authorities some days after Pentecost: "There is salvation in no one else [other than Jesus], for there is no other name given among mortals by which we must be saved" (Acts 4.12). Those who hold this view are not likely to devote much time and effort to learning about the many false religions. Since they are all false, why should anyone want to cram their heads with a knowledge of things that are not true? Doing so might even lead to a temptation to abandon one's own true faith or to the weakening of faith by an exposure to error.

Until quite recently, Catholics were not supposed to read works on the Index of Forbidden Books. Even professional educators were expected to obtain special permission if they felt the need to read them. The Index was meant to warn the unsuspecting that certain ideas were in conflict with the authentic teaching of the Catholic faith, a conflict they might not be fully aware of unless they were alerted to the danger. The effect of the ban on books---the Church had given up burning them---was to situate the Catholic Church squarely on the side of exclusivism.

The mentality of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries was that there is no sustainable religious truth outside the teaching of the Church, and the only reason scholars should bother to study the works of forbidden authors was to refute them. Sometimes, however, such opposition can turn out to be counterproductive. Origen, the third-century theologian and scholar, wrote an entire treatise attacking the writings of Celsus. But Origen was honest enough to report the words of Celsus with reasonable accuracy, thus immortalizing Celsus and his thought for generations to come.

Needless to say, Catholics have not been the only ones to maintain that they alone are right, that all others are wrong, and that error has no rights. Luther is well known for the raw language he used in anathematizing the Pope of Rome, other Protestant reformers, and, in his later years, the Jews. Ask any zealous Moslem and he will assure you that Islam has superseded both Judaism and Christianity as the true religion. Even within Judaism, the ultraorthodox are hard pressed to recognize as true Jews those who espouse the ordination of women and engage in ecumenical efforts which might seem to relativize God's teaching or the Torah.

Doctrinal absolutism and exclusivism are characteristic of the three Abrahamic religions, though they all also have their liberal and moderate wings. Because of that internal diversity, it is inaccurate and quite unfair to propagate a stereotypical view of any of those religions, including Islam. Only a minority of Moslems support terrorism, while the vast majority are peace-loving and prayerful people, more prayerful, in fact, than most Christians on a day-to-day basis.

The more one learns about a second or third faith other than one's own, the greater is one's appreciation of them. And nothing helps one gain a deeper understanding of one's own religion than travel abroad, coupled with the broadening effect of reading about the teaching and practice of other religions, even those that are themselves exclusivist.

Inclusivism

Troubled by the fact that, after nearly two thousand years, some 80 percent of the people on earth are not Christian, some Catholic theologians began to feel that they had to deal with the question of the salvation of so many nonbelievers outside the true Church. What of the old axiom, Extra ecclesiam nulla salus—Outside the church there is no salvation?

As long ago as the Council of Trent (1545--1563), it was suggested that people who lead moral lives but have no knowledge of the saving grace of Christ can be saved by a "baptism of desire." This is not the ordinary means of salvation intended by God, but for people ignorant of Christianity yet who have good intentions, a baptism of desire can substitute for the baptism of water and provide access to salvation. Those who are saved by this extraordinary means still owe their good fortune to the mercy of God and the grace of Christ purchased by his death on the cross. Although the concept of baptism of desire thus retains the belief that there can be no salvation without Christ, it goes a step beyond exclusivism in seeking a way to include non-Christians on the path to salvation. A more contemporary version is Karl Rahner's concept of "the anonymous Christian," a righteous non-Christian who, without knowing it, lives a life in accord with the basic moral principles of the Christian faith.

In spite of such efforts, the basic premise of inclusivism may seem condescending, only a disguised form of exclusivism. That is true if inclusivism means that Christians have nothing to learn from non-Christians. If, on the other hand, what is meant is that the Christ principle is everywhere present and active in the world, whether as Logos or as Divine Wisdom, inclusivism is not so condescending. Then, while it would be true to say that the Christ was in Jesus, it would also be true to say that Jesus was in the Christ, implying that the Christ is broader than the Jewish idea of the Messiah, viewed as a particular individual. The Christ would then be seen as everywhere present and active, that is, as the Wisdom of God in which the great teachers of humanity have all participated. Then we might ask with Raimon Panikkar, "Whose Christ is he?"

Christians have a share in the divine revelation, but so too have others. May not these others have certain aspects of revelation not found explicitly and immediately in the Christian deposit of faith? In that case, while it would be true to say that Christianity provides its adherents with adequate means for salvation, that fact should not deny that other religions are "equal opportunity" sharers in leading their members to salvation. Panikkar might agree with this in principle but would probably want to add a cautionary note, "not quite so equal." In other words, this is not yet what is known as pluralism, the recognition that distinctively different religious traditions are paths to God and are worth preserving.

James M. Somerville taught philosophy for many years at Fordham University, where he was chair of the department and co-founder of the journal International Philosophical Quarterly. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy from Xavier University in Cincinnati and a Quest Book author (contributing to The Goddess Re-Awakening, 1989). His most recent book is The Mystical Sense of the Gospels (Crossroad, 1997).

By Clarence R. Pedersen

Tell me please--what do I do when all the games have been played? When all the songs have been sung? When all the books have been written and all the books have been read? What do I do when I have done all this and I have done all that? When dialogue becomes monologue and the monologue slowly disappears into the mists of the Great Silence? What do I do if the omnipresent "why" of existence does not answer my question?

Am I empty then? Or is it that "my cup runneth over"? Or what? And why?

Is there perhaps an informed but unformed reality that lingers a fraction of a micromoment beyond my consciousness? Perhaps a reality that needs expression as it clamors silently for validation? Surely it needs substance.

No! Not so! It needs nothing! I--I am the one doing the needing, the longing, the aching. Reality is my rock. And I am comforted by my belief that, in spite of its nothingness, it is there. But of course this is only a belief. It is not an experience. Still I smile in inner contentment and gratitude when I believe that I feel its touch; when I feel its blessing.

But define it for me, please. What is this whose touch I cannot return? With whom I cannot discuss? And thus I can easily refute it. Yet I cannot refuse it. Whether I call it a dream, or a fantasy, or a moment of wishful thinking—still I cannot refuse it. Why is this? What is this I cannot refuse? Except when it interferes with my daily tasks or pleasures--my outreach to the world. (I am endlessly busy reaching.)

Yet even then I don't refuse it. I am simply unaware of it. It passes me by like a comet in a distant galaxy. Not noticeable. It is beyond my Umwelt--my capacity of awareness. I am oblivious to it.

It cannot be proven. Nor can it be denied. It is as enigmatic as eternity. As senseless as spacelessness. It is nonsense.

And so I leave it in the closet of my consciousness—with the door tightly closed—in pure darkness (where the light is brightest). And every now and then, in a rare unbusied moment, I glance surreptitiously at my closet door, wondering, "Could this be where my answer is hiding? And if so--why?"

But I have misplaced the key, and there is nobody to help me find it. But then perhaps there is nothing to find. A miracle of nothingness. Who knows?

One day, when my mind was empty, I discovered to my surprise that the closet door was never locked, and so I peeked inside and was engulfed with total tenderness. And it was really, really hard not to smile. And feel blessed.

It all fades away quickly of course. Fades from my enquiring and acquiring mind. My mind--the inquisitor.

I ask myself, "Will it return? This powerful, all knowing nothingness?" But that's the wrong question. It never went anyplace. How can it return? Go! Open the door again!

Clarence Pedersen is currently the president of the Theosophical Book Gift Institute. He is the former Publications Manager for the Theosophical Publishing House and in the 1970s served six years on the Board of Directors of the American Section.

Originally printed in the November - December 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Ralls, Karen. "Legends of the Grail: The Chivalric Vision." Quest  91.6 (NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2003):210-215.

By Karen Ralls

The Grail and the quest for it have gripped the Western imagination possibly more than any other legendary tradition. It "is the embodiment of a dream, an idea of such universal application that it appears in a hundred different places . . . Yet, although its history, both inner and outer, can for the most part be traced, it remains elusive, a spark of light glimpsed at the end of a tunnel, or a reflection half-seen in a swiftly-passed mirror" (Williams, Elements 1). Though usually thought of as a medieval theme, it is very much alive today like the memory of the Knights Templar, which also continues to hold our fascination. Both the Grail legends and the Templar mythos have resonated through the centuries. And despite the lack of concrete historical evidence, people have tried to link the two in various ways even believing that the Templars had the Grail.

Like the Ark of the Covenant, the Grail is presented as profoundly mysterious. It can be dangerous, even deadly, to certain people with good reason, tradition says. Some people see the Grail, but others don't. To those who do, it often appears surrounded by brilliant light, sometimes carried by a beautiful maiden, in other accounts moving by itself in midair. In the end, it may be not an object at all but a spiritual treasure—the truth and love of God.

The era of the Grail Romances

Despite the enormous antiquity of the Grail material, it did not appear in literary form by and large until the Grail romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Given the complexities of medieval dating, scholars cannot always determine the precise date for a manuscript; they can say, however, that many Grail romances were written between 1190 and 1240—within the Templar Order's era. Many were authored by monks, in particular, Cistercians and Benedictines. These two Orders, though associated in some ways, were distinct from each other as well as from the Templar Order. There is no historical evidence that a Templar wrote a Grail romance, although some romances have Templar-related themes and details.

The years 1190-1240 fall during the High Middle Ages, one of the great experimental and creative epochs in European history. This period saw not only the writing of the Grail romances and the rise and fall of the Templar Order but also—among other things—construction of the High Gothic cathedrals, the peak of the cult of chivalry, a tremendous upsurge in pilgrimage, the great popularity of the Black Madonna shrines, the troubadours and the Courts of Love, and the rise of certain Hermetic and alchemical themes after a period of dormancy in the West. This cluster of cultural phenomena, expressing the spirit of the times, was contemporaneous with such political and social developments as the Crusades, the signing of the Magna Carta, the time of the Cathars, and the growth of the famed universities of Paris, Oxford, and Bologna—and the lives of such figures as Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionheart, and St. Francis. Historians note that the quest for knowledge and the arts during this time was nothing short of phenomenal. It was an era of extraordinary flowering.

The notion of a single Grail story is a common present-day misconception. There is no such thing.The Grail romances are many and varied and often do not agree with each other. One could say there is a general, prototypical Grail story, but even that must be an amalgamation of themes, people, and places from different manuscripts. Another popular misconception is that the Knights Templar are the same as the Arthurian knights of the Round Table. This is not the case.

Remarkably, however, the first Grail romance, like many of the first Templar knights, came from the area around Troyes, Champagne.

With both subjects—the Templars and the Grail legends—Troyes seems to figure prominently.

Chrétien de Troyes and Robert de Boron

One of the earliest known instances of the Grail motif in writing is Le Conte du Graal,written by Chrétien de Troyes in 1190, just a few decades after the Templar Order's founding.Chrétien's main character, Perceval, is a guileless knight, the archetypal Fool, whose primary trait is innocence. He sees the Grail during a feast at "a mysterious castle presided over by a lame man called the Fisher King . . . Chrétien calls the object simply 'un graal,' and its appearance is just one of the unusual events which take place during the feast . . . at this time, Perceval is also shown a broken sword which must be mended. The two objects together, sword and grail, are symbols of Perceval's development as a true knight" (Wood, The Holy Grail 171).

Unfortunately, Chrétien died before he could finish his story, so other writers attempted to complete it. These versions, called the Continuations, embellish the tale and bring in other Grail themes, such as the Grail floating on a platter in midair, the bleeding lance, the broken sword, and the curious theme of the Chapel of the Black Hand, where a mysterious hand continuously snuffs out the candles. As more Continuations were written, other details—such as the magic chess board, the spear, the cup, and the Precious Blood—were added, and Perceval has even more challenging adventures. In one Continuation, a lady at the Chapel of the Black Hand offers Perceval a white stag's head and a dog, which he loses and must find again before he can return to the Grail castle. Once a certain broken sword is mended, Perceval "as grail ruler heals the land. After seven years he retires to a hermitage, and when he dies, the grail, lance and dish go with him"(Wood 171).

Burgundian poet Robert de Boron wrote two Grail romances, Joseph d'Arimathie and Merlin—his most famous works—sometime between 1191 and 1200. Walter of Montbeliard, his patron—who, like Chrétien's patron, was a crusader—commissioned de Boron to write both. De Boron gives a definitively Christian tenor to his Grail story, presenting the knights' quest as a spiritual search rather than the usual courtly adventure undertaken for a lady's love or the king's honor. In Joseph d'Arimathie, which scholars now believe may have been written in Cyprus, Pilate gives the cup used at both the Last Supper and the Crucifixion to Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph is later put in prison, where he has a vision:

Christ brings the grail to Joseph in prison where it sustains him and teaches him its secrets.Joseph is freed by the emperor Vespasian who has been cured by Veronica's veil (another mysterious relic associated with Christ's passion) . . . Joseph establishes a second table of the grail, and Bron catches a fish which is placed on the table and separates the just from the unjust. The object is called the Holy Grail

Alain, the leader of Bron's twelve sons, goes to Britain to await the "third man" (Perceval?) who will be the permanent keeper of the grail (Wood 172).

Bron then becomes the Fisher King, and Joseph returns to Arimathea. Bron himself eventually goes to Britain, taking the Grail with him.

Early thirteenth-century prose versions of Robert de Boron's works link the Grail story more closely with Arthurian legend. Diu Krone, by Heinrich von dem Turlim, presents Sir Gawain as the hero, while the Cistercian Queste del Saint Graal features Galahad. In the latter, the quest for the Grail becomes a search for mystical union with God. Only Galahad can look directly into the Grail and behold the divine mysteries. The Queste presents Galahad as the son of Lancelot, thus contrasting chivalry inspired by divine love, as with Galahad, against that inspired by human love, as between Lancelot and Guinevere. This is the best-known version of the Grail story in the English-speaking world. It was the basis for Sir Thomas Malory's famous late-fifteenth-century prose work Le Morte d'Arthur—in turn, the story-line source for much of the film Excalibur and the musical Camelot.

The Many Forms of the Grail

Various Grail romances present the Grail as different objects: a cup or chalice, a relic of the Precious Blood of Christ, a cauldron of plenty, a silver platter, a stone from Heaven, a dish, a sword, a spear, a fish, a dove with a communion Host in its beak, a bleeding white lance, a secret Book or Gospel, manna from Heaven, a blinding light, a severed head, a table, and more. Indeed, a truth about the Grail is that it takes different forms. In Chrétien's Le Conte du Graal, the Grail is a platter bearing a single Eucharist wafer. Robert de Boron's account introduces the Grail as the chalice Jesus used at the Last Supper. In the Queste del Saint Graal it is the dish from which Jesus ate the Passover lamb, which now holds the Eucharist wafers. Wolfram von Eschenbach presents it as a luminous pure stone. The anonymously written Perlesvaus describes it as five different things. There is no single Grail story, and no single Grail—this point cannot be emphasized enough.

The Grail can manifest differently to each seeker. It can be an earthly object, which may or may not be endowed with sacrality; it may be the goal of a spiritual search. Ultimately, it remains a mystery."So the pointers to the Grail may only suggest a path to a beatific vision of its manifestations. Each finder discovers a unique insight into the divine . . . Through the control of the body and the refining of the spirit, an understanding of self might be followed by a revelation of the divine. To attain the ever-changing Grail is to search deep within and so reach out to a personal path to God" (Sinclair, Discovery of the Grail 124).

The Grail as a Stone

Wolfram clearly identifies the Grail in his account as a stone: "A stone of the purest kind . . . called lapsit exillas . . . There never was human so ill that if he one day sees the stone, he cannot die within the week that follows . . . and though he should see the stone for two hundred years [his appearance] will never change, save that perhaps his hair might turn grey" (Matthews, Elements 52-3). The term lapsit exillas can be translated as either "stone from Heaven" or "stone from exile"—which some scholars believe could mean a meteorite. Later in the story Wolfram says the Grail stone is an emerald that fell from Lucifer's crown during the war in Heaven; angels who took neither side in that war brought it to earth, where it remains.

The hermit Trevrizent tells Parzival that the Grail guardians, the Templeisen, living at the Grail castle exist by virtue of this stone alone. Some analysts believe this relates to the idea of manna, the special food from Heaven that sustained the ancient Israelites as they wandered in the desert. So also, the Grail knights receive their only nourishment from a divine source. They exist on its luminosity and holiness, and it sustains them physically, rewarding them, as Wolfram points out, with perpetual youth. It can also heal the sick.

When Parzival arrives at Trevrizent's hermitage, he seems unfamiliar with Christian customs.Trevrizent shows him the chapel and stresses that it happens to be Good Friday, so the altar has been stripped bare and no consecrated Host is left there. (The centuries-old custom in the Catholic Church was to "banish the Host" on Good Friday. Since the Vatican II Council, the Host is no longer banished but is removed to a darkened "altar of repose" until Easter morning.) Trevrizent says that on Good Friday at the Grail castle, a dove descends from Heaven and deposits a wafer on the lapsit exillas. This empowers the stone to provide continual nourishment for the Templeisen.

Various writers through the centuries have suggested that the Grail as a stone refers to the famed philosopher's stone, lapis elixir, mentioned in alchemical writings. French Celtic scholarJean Markale comments:

There is first of all an alchemical allusion, lapis exillis being quite close tolapis elixir, which is the term used by the Arabs to designate the Philosopher's Stone. Next the stone of the Grail guarded by angels irresistibly summons thoughts of the Ka'aba stone in Mecca . . . One is reminded in particular of the tradition that states that the Grail was carved into the form of a vessel from the gigantic emerald that fell from Lucifer's forehead . . . In addition, Wolfram's Grail/Stone bears a great resemblance to the Manichaean jewel, the Buddhist padma mani, the jewel found in the heart of the lotus that is the solar symbol of the Great Liberation and which can also be found in the Indian traditions concerning the Tree of Life (Markale, Grail 133-4).

Wolfram's stone could also derive from the legendary lapis exilii, the Stone of Death. Wolfram tells us that a phoenix sits on the luminous stone and is burned to ashes and reborn there—an echo of the alchemical theme of death and rebirth.

Templar-Related Elements in the Grail Romances

What kinds of connections exist among the Templars, the Grail, and the Grail romances? The historical record provides no evidence that a Templar wrote a Grail romance—or that the Templar Order ever possessed the Grail, though people through the centuries have been certain they did have it. We do know, however, that some of the romance authors' patrons were crusaders, though not necessarily Templars, and that these writers certainly knew of the Templars'achievements in the Holy Land. And a number of Templar-related themes and details appear in some Grail romances, ranging from symbolism to the portrayal of the perfect knight to important concepts of chivalry and chivalric behavior.

The Grail and Templar themes mingle the most closely in Wolfram's Parzival. Wolfram is the only Grail romance writer to intimate that his Grail guardians were Templar knights. The medieval German word for "Templars" was Tempelherren, but scholars generally acknowledge Wolfram intended his Templeisen to be viewed as Templars. Parzival's unique focus on the Templars may be partly because both Wolfram and his patron, Hermann I of Thuringia, were drawn to the East. In an earlier work, Willeham, Wolfram shows sympathetic interest in Muslim culture. Hermann I, a promoter of the knightly ideal, himself took up the cross and went on the German crusade of 1197-98. He was also fascinated by astrology, which was gaining popularity in twelfth-century European courts following the influx from Spain of Arabic texts in Latin translation (Nicholson, Love, War, and the Grail 108). Scholars believe Wolfram's Mount of Salvation—on which the Grail castle sits and where the Templeisen live—is a veiled allusion to Mount Sion in Jerusalem, since the original nine Templars lived on the Temple Mount. However, unlike the Templars, his Templeisen's shields bear a turtle dove—a symbol of peace, not holy war.

Wolfram portrays Parzival as related to the Arthurian line through his father and to the Grail family through his mother. Wolfram's Grail family is not the courtly society of Arthurian legend but a divinely chosen vehicle in world affairs, comprising the Templeisen and others whom the Grail silently selects to carry on its tradition. Women are included in the Grail family. Although Wolfram mentions a Grail succession, he also says the Grail lineage derived from it is a secret only the angels know. Certain people are assigned, by God through the Grail, to guard the Grail for posterity, thereby reuniting humanity with God, that is, "restoring the wasteland."

The early-thirteenth-century Old French Arthurian romance Perlesvaus, known also as The High Book of the Grail, was authored by a cleric with Benedictine connections (Bryant). In this tale, the Grail castle sits in both the earthly and the heavenly Jerusalem—an idea with obvious Templar connotations. Perlesvaus (Perceval), is a knight of Christ, though not explicitly a Templar. He travels overseas to an island where he visits the Castle of the Four Horns. Here he encounters thirty-three men in white robes with red crosses on their chests, like the medieval Templars' dress. His own shield displays a red cross with a gold border around it, similar but not identical to the historical Templars' shield. Perlesvaus stresses throughout the idea of holy war against the infidel—clearly mirroring the Crusades, in which the Templars played a starring role. It relates Arthur and his knights' efforts to impose by force the New Law of Christianity in place of the Old Law. Atypically for a Grail romance, Arthur's knights are portrayed collectively as a kingdom, not as individuals on their own quests. This resembles the Templar Order's underlying ethos, where the group's intention is more important than an individual's personal quest.

The Queste del Saint Graal, written by a Cistercian monk in 1215 for another crusader patron, Jeande Nesle, makes numerous allusions to the Templars. The star of this romance is Galahad—here a descendant of King Solomon—who is devout, chaste, and destined from birth to achieve the Grail.Galahad isn't called a Templar; he is a secular knight. However, at a monastery of white brothers he receives a white shield with a red cross on it that once belonged to Joseph of Arimathea—perhaps because he is portrayed as a direct descendant of Joseph through his mother. The medieval Cistercians were called the White Monks, and the Templars' white mantle was marked with a red cross.

While in Perlesvaus the Grail castle is Jerusalem, in the Queste the Grail knights go to Jerusalem with the Grail, but only after they complete their quest. When Galahad, Perceval, and Bors reach the Grail castle, they encounter nine more knights who have achieved the Grail. One has to wonder if this is a veiled reference to the original nine Templars. All twelve knights then celebrate communion, and Christ himself is the priest—a reenactment of the Last Supper. Galahad, after eating the consecrated host administered by Christ, has a vision of himself as Christ crucified and dies in ecstasy before the altar. Grail scholar R. S. Loomis comments: "In this celestial liturgy Christ is the officiant as well as the victim . . . Presumably it is [the] well-established belief in the presence of angelic visitants at the celebration of the Eucharist and in the assumption of the priestly office by Christ Himself which has led to the introduction of these two features . . . [in the Queste's] reenactment of the Last Supper" (Loomis, The Grail 193-4).

The great Cistercian abbot St. Bernard in mystical states sometimes experienced himself as Christ crucified. In his famous Sermons on the Song of Songs he discusses extraordinary mystical experiences, some involving the mysteries of the consecrated Host, or Eucharist "bread." He refers to "Solomon's bread," an Israelite forerunner of the Christian Eucharist that often induced mystical experiences." Seeing oneself as Christ crucified, especially after ingesting the consecrated Host, was central to the Syriac Mystery of the Cross. Theologian Dan Merkur writes:

It is significant that Bernard began the very first of his Sermons with series of allusions to the Eucharist. Among them was a discussion of Solomon's bread . . . Bernard was privy to the mystery of manna. He knew of a bread that had had use as a mystical sacrament in the temple of Solomon. How did Bernard come by his knowledge of manna? A passage in the fifty-second Sermon tends to indicate that Bernard was familiar with internal controversies in the Syriac mystical tradition. By the late seventh century Syrian mystics had developed alternative techniques for the performance of the Mystery of the Cross (Merkur, The Mystery of Manna 106).

That Bernard knew of mystical experiences concerning the consecrated Host with roots going back to the time of Solomon's temple is amazing enough. Note too that the Queste's author was also a Cistercian; the Templars and Cistercians were closely connected, especially in France; and Bernard was active in both Orders. Clearly these links formed a web of associations. We know some Templars spent time in Syria; they may have learned about the Syriac Mystery of the Cross from fellow Christians there.

The figure of Galahad in the Queste underscores the secular ideal of Christian knighthood and chivalrous behavior. It is the nonmonastic Galahad—not a Templar—who is the successful Grail knight. He embodies the perfect Christian knight, perhaps even as the Templars conceived this. Yet he dies not in glory on a battlefield but in the Grail castle. Perhaps the Queste's Cistercian author is saying one can reach Christian chivalrous impeccability without joining a military religious Order. Or perhaps he is suggesting that a knight must seek salvation on his own, not as part of an enclosed community. Rather than fighting the enemies of Christ on the battlefield, the task is to slay one's own demons within and perfect one's character.

Bernard's teachings describe a person's progress toward spiritual perfection as a series of states of grace. The Queste, heavily influenced by Bernard's views, presents Galahad's quest for the Grail in similar terms. He is portrayed, as the Templars are portrayed, as striving for knightly perfection in word and deed. However, the mystery of the Grail is in fact found at another level of experience, as an ineffable inner knowing. Nearly all the romances agree on this. It is this aspect of the Grail that beckons many to their own spiritual journeys today.

Karen Ralls, Ph. D., FSA Scot., is an Oxford based medieval historian and Celtic scholar. She was Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh and Deputy Curator of the Rosslyn Chapel museum exhibition. She lectures worldwide and is author of The Quest for the Celtic Key, Music and the Celtic Otherworld and Indigenous Religious Music. This excerpt is from her latest book The Templars and the Grail (Quest Books, 2003).

References

• Loomis, R.S. The Grail: From Celtic Myth to Christian Symbol. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963, 1991.
• Markale, J. The Grail. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1999.
• Matthews, J. Elements of the Grail Tradition. Shaftesbury, Dorset: Element, 1990.
• Merkur, D. The Mystery of the Manna. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2000.
• Nicholson, H. 2001. Love, War, and the Grail: Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights in Medieval Epic and Romance 1150-1500. History of Warfare Series, vol. 4.
• Sinclair, A. The Discovery of the Grail. London, England: Random House, 1998.
• Wood, J. October 2000. The Holy Grail: From Romance Motif to Modern Genre. Folklore 3:171.