Tuesday, February 13, 2007
THE CATHAR HOLY GRAIL
Grail spirituality, according to the Antonin Gadal website
goes from mouth to mouth, travels from tradition to tradition. It is the magic cauldron of the Celtic druids. It appeared in Persia, reappeared among the first Gnostic Christians and the Manicheans and then animated the medieval Gnosis.
It may be found in Wales (Glastonbury), in Fécamp and Bruges, on the Rhine river and above all in the Pyrenees, the North of Spain and the Languedoc.
The oldest evidence of the belief dates to 1150: "‘Perceval, the Story of the Grail’ by Chrétien de Troyes (1150–1191) and ‘Parzifal’ and ‘Titurel’ by Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170–1220)" unless one includes the work of Kyot from Provins who discovered Arab-Jewish parchments at Toledo University which are attributed to the Pagan Flegetanis. From Flegetanis comes a belief in a pure race as the guardians of the grail, and presumably the source of Hitler's beliefs, though the Gadal website does not make this claim.
Gadal links the Knights Templar with the Cathar grail:
The spiritual stream that flowed through all the manifestations of the Western mysteries, ever since the Druids, the Manicheans and the first Christians, had been passed to the Knights Templars and the Cathars.
The Quest of the Grail was a symbolic representation of the Cathar initiation. The Grail was the supreme goal of the Perfect Ones. It provided access to the domain of the Spirit and gave the power of healing and of consoling mankind.
The website doesn't explain the "access to the domain of the Spirit" but given the flow of heresy that is the history presented here, one might assume it involves some sort of spiritism.
Whatever the spirit source might be, Gadal believed the enemies of the Cathars wanted to destroy the Cathar religion of love because of it. This is the thought presented together with the picture of the birdbath--a birdbath very similar to that symbol used by the John Main Seminar website.
The Cathars, according to Gadal, believed the spirit source was symbolised by the Grail or sacred cup, possession of which insures immortality and perfect healing. Those who drink from the cup are forced to reveal themselves, and thus Judas drank at the Last Supper and then betrayed Christ.
The twelve nights of the round table (the Grail Knights) symbolize the twelve apostles. Yet the Grail is not a Christian symbol:
It has often been said that the Grail was a material symbol of the Christian faith!
But that is not in accordance with the wisdom of the Pyrenean Cathars, since they rejected all material symbols, limiting themselves to the simplest forms of worship.
Rather, the Grail represents a secret doctrine of the Temple of the Spirit or the Universal Brotherhood, established in Egypt by Hermes Trismegistus, continued by the Neoplatonists, and linked by St. John to Christ. This is the tradition carried on by the Knights Templars of the Grail, by the Cathars, and by the Rosicrucians.
Finally, the Grail turns into a stone from heaven that feeds the Knights Templar--a stone called “Lapis ex caelis”. Is this, then, the Emerald Tablet? In any case, the source of the stone is explained this way:
‘While Lucifer, ambitious and arrogant, full of immoderate desires, was cast out of heaven, when falling from heaven, he chipped the corner of a star: which fragments rolled within space and were stopped by the earth. Stone from heaven, pure and perfect stone since it fell from heaven; it was the Lapis ex Caelis of the Grail!
