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Texts>The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
VIII
THE QUEST OF THE HIGH PRINCE
Having passed through many initiations, I can say with the sincerity which comes of full knowledge that the Graal legend, ritually and ceremonially presented, is the greatest of all which lies beyond the known borders of the instituted mysteries. But it is exalted in a place of understanding of which no one can speak in public, not only because of certain seals placed upon the sanctuary, but more especially, in the last resource, because there are no listeners. I know, however, and can say that the Cup appears; I know that it is the Graal cup; and the wonders of its manifestation in romance are not so far removed from the high things which it symbolises, whence it follows that the same story is told everywhere. It is in this way that on these subjects we may make up our minds to say new things, but we say only those which are old, because it would seem that there are no others. If Guiot de Provence ever affirmed that the Graal legend was first written in the starry heavens, he testified to that which is the shadow of the truth, or more properly its bright reflection.
Let us now set before our minds the image of the Graal Castle, having a local habitation and a name on the mountain-side of Corbenic. The inhabitant-in-chief of this sanctuary is the Keeper of the Hallows, holding by lineal descent from the first times of the mystery. This is the noble King Pelles, behind whom is that undeclared type of the consecrated royalty which was--the maimed King Pellehan, whose hurt has to be healed by Galahad. The maiden who carries the Sacred Vessel in the pageant of the ceremonial rite is the reigning king's daughter, the virgo intacta Helayne. To the Castle on a certain occasion there comes the Knight Lancelot, who is the son of King Ban of Benoic, while his mother Helen is issued from the race of Joseph of Arimathæa, and through him is of the line of King David. It is known by the Keeper Pelles that to bring to its final term the mystery of the Holy Graal, his daughter must bear a child to Lancelot, and this is accomplished under circumstances of enchantment which seem to have eliminated from the maiden all sense of earthly passion. It cannot be said that this was the state of Lancelot, who believed that his partner in the mystery of union was the consort of Arthur the King, and to this extent the sacramental imagery offers the signs of failure. In the case of Helayne the symbolism only deflects from perfection at a single point, which is that of a second meeting with Lancelot under almost similar circumstances. I must not specify them here, except in so far as to say that there was a certain incursion of common motive into that which belonged otherwise to the sacramental side of things, so far as she was concerned. I can imagine nothing in the whole course of literature to compare with the renunciation of this maiden, on whom the pure light of the Graal had fallen for seasons and years, and who was called upon by the exigencies of the Quest to make that sacrifice which is indicated by the great romance. It is at this point that the Book of the Knight Lancelot sets aside finally all sense of triviality and is assumed into the Kingdom of the Mysteries.
The motherhood of King Pelles' daughter, because of her consanguinity with the mysteries, of which she is an assistant-guardian under the Hereditary Keeper, occurs as the result of an intercourse which has some aspects of a magical marriage, and, considering all its circumstances, it is difficult at this stage to speculate about all that which lies behind it. We may almost say that the Lesser Mysteries took flesh for a period under an ordained enchantment and were ill at ease in their envelope. Having regard to Galahad's election, the response which he made thereto, and the achievement which in fine crowned it, the manner of his birth is no longer even a stain; it is a triviality, the sufficing cause of which removes the suggestion of profanation in respect of the Holy Place which by that unusual conception drew to the term of its ministry. I can understand that the mind unversed in the harmony of the whole scheme may think that the generation of Galahad should have been left in a cloud of uncertainty and himself without declared father or mother, like the mystic King of Salem. We have, however, to remember that what we now term bastardy does not rank in the romances exactly as a stain upon origin; it is almost a conventional mode of begetting heroes-in-chief, and that which obtains for Galahad obtains for the ideal hero and king who was the son according to the flesh of Uther Pendragon. As no romances ascribe a higher importance to chastity, and even to virginity, than the Graal legends, so--antecedently at least--their writers had every reason to attach its proper degree of value to the pre-eminence and sanctity of the nuptial bond; but there was that in the antecedents of Lancelot which made him the only possible father for the most exotic flower of chivalry who was the predestined Graal winner, but at the same time nothing could insure that possibility, except in the absence of his marriage.
So, therefore, Galahad is begotten in the fulness of time, and over all connected therewith falls suddenly the veil of concealment. Though on one occasion he was seen as a babe by Sir Bors in the Holy Place, we do not know certainly where he was born or by whom nurtured; but if we are guided by the sequel, as it follows in the Great Quest, it was probably away from the Graal Castle and with mystic nurses. When we first meet him he is among the pageants and holy places of the mysteries of official religion. Subsequently he is led towards his term by one who seems a steward of other mysteries, and when the quest begins he passes at once into the world of parable and symbol, having firstly been consecrated as a knight by his own father, who does not apparently know him, who acts under the direction of the stewards, while Galahad dissembles any knowledge that he might be assumed to possess. He has come, so far as we can say, out of the hidden places of the King. He bears the outward signs of the Mysteries, and has an imputed prescience of events in a certain chain of cause and effect. He passes through adventures as a man passes through visions, and he has many combats, but they are chiefly of such an order that the alternative title of the Great Quest might well be the Spiritual Combat. In the quests which he undertakes, although there is nominally one castle in which the Graal has its normal abode, it is yet a moving wonder, and a studied comparison might show that it is more closely connected with the Eucharistic mystery than it is according to the other romances, the Longer Prose Perceval excepted. Still, an efficacious mass is being said everywhere in the world. The Graal is more especially the secret of high sanctity. Galahad himself is the mystery of spiritual chivalry exemplified in human form; his history is one of initiation, and his term is to see God. As compared with the rest of the literature, we enter in his legend upon new ground, and are on the eminence of Mont Salvatch rather than among the normal offices of chivalry. It is more especially this legend which is regarded by scholarship as the last outcome of the ascetic element introduced into the Graal cycle; but it is not understood that throughout the period of the middle ages the mystic life manifested only under an ascetic aspect, or with an environment of that kind. The Galahad romance is not ascetic after the ordinary way, or as the term is commonly accepted; it has an interior quality which places it above that degree, and this quality is the open sense of the mystic life. But the gate of the mystic life is assuredly the ascetic gate, in the same manner that the normal life of religion has morality as the door thereof. Those who have talked of asceticism meant in reality to speak of the supernatural life, of which the Galahad romance is a kind of archetypal picture. Though Wolfram, on the authority of Guiot, may have told what he called the true story, that story was never recited till the creation of the Galahad legend. The atmosphere of the romance gives up Galahad as the natural air gives up the vision from beyond. It is the story of the arch-natural man who comes to those who will receive him. He issues from the place of the mystery as Lancelot came from fairyland, or at least a world of enchantment. The atmosphere is that of great mysteries, the odour that of the sanctuary withdrawn behind the Hallows of the outward Holy Places. Galahad's entire life is bound up so completely with the Quest to which he is dedicated that apart therefrom he can scarcely be said to live. The desire of a certain house not made with hands has so eaten him up that he has never entered the precincts of the halls of passion. He is indeed faithful and true, but earthly attraction is foreign to him, even in its exaltation. Even his meetings with his father are shadowy and not of this world--a characteristic which seems the more prominent when he is the better fulfilling what would be understood by his filial duty. It is not that he is explicitly outside the sphere of sense and its temptations, but that his actuating motives are of the transmuted kind. In proportion, his quest is of the unrealised order; it is the working of a mystery within the place of a mystery; and it is in comparison therewith that we may understand the deep foreboding which fell upon the heart of Arthur when the flower of his wonderful court went forth to seek the Graal. In this respect the old legend illustrates the fact that many are called but few are chosen; and even in the latter class it is only the rarest flower of the mystic chivalry which can be thought of as chosen among thousands. Of the Perceval Quest there are many versions, but of Galahad there is one story only. So are the peers of the Round Table a great company, but Galahad is one. So also, of the high kings and princes, there are some who come again, and of such is the royal Arthur; but there are some who return no more, and of these is Galahad. He has not been understood even by great poets, for there could be scarcely a worse interpretation of his position than a poem, like that of Tennyson, in which he celebrates his strength on the ground that his heart is pure. Let me add, in conclusion of this part, that at the time of his coming the Graal went about in the land, looking for those it belonged to, and that in this respect Galahad had the true secret of Le Moyen de parvenir. It has its secret place of abiding, its altar of repose, at Corbenic, the Graal Castle, but it appears at the King's court--and this is exclusive to the story. The voice of the Quest passed through all Britain, in part by common report--because all the Arthurian knighthood bound itself to assume the task--but in part also by the miracle of unknown voices and of holy fore-knowledge. The Graal itself is not the official sacrament, or it is that and something which exceeds it. If it were otherwise there would be no sense in the declaration made by a hermit that certain knights may seek but shall never find it. On the Eucharistic side, it is the vision of Christ Himself, and the mystery of Divine Providence is manifested strangely therein; it works through faith, represented as the way of vision and the gate of things unseen. In the poem of De Borron and other early versions, the Sacred Vessel is invisible--and that utterly--to persons of evil life; but, though still under its due veils, it is shown in the Quest more openly, and on one occasion even to all who are present--good knights and indifferent. The vision imposes silence, and this seems to have been always its office, but it is that kind of silence which comes about by the mode of ecstasy, and in the case of Lancelot it is described rather fully, as if there were a particular intention discernible in his advancement through those grades of his partial initiation, when he sees without participating. One form of this ecstasy seems to be connected with the working of the Holy Spirit. But there is no assurance to be inferred from favour to further favour, since, on another occasion, the Graal is invisible to Lancelot when it is seen at the same time and in the same place by a company of white knights.
Of such is the Vessel of the legend and as regards the search after it, the elect knight is told that God entered into this world to free men from the wearisome adventures which were on them and from the evil belief. A close parallel is instituted between the Knight and Christ, since Galahad came to terminate the adventurous and evil destinies in this island of Britain. For this reason he is likened to the Son of the High Father, who brought souls out of thrall, and even a demon confesses to him as the way of truth.
I conceive that there is little occasion to recite the story of the Quest which is available after so many manners of English vesture to young and old alike. At the Vigil of Pentecost, Lancelot was carried by a gentlewoman to a Holy House, where he was required to knight the son of his own body, but, as we have seen, without learning his name or recognising him after any manner. Galahad, who "was semely and demure as a dove, with all maner of good features," was acquainted, undoubtedly, with his geniture, but he made no claim on his father. After this mode, at the beginning of his progress, was he consecrated by the secular order and received into the degree of chivalry. He came forth from the sacred precincts, being a convent of white nuns, wherein it is said that he had been nourished, and was brought to the Court of King Arthur by "a good old man and an auncyent clothed al in whyte," who saluted the company at table with words of peace. Against this arrival the palace had been prepared strangely by the emblazonment of letters of gold on the Siege Perilous--testifying that the time had come when it should be at length occupied--and by the appearance of a great stone in the river outside, with a sword embedded therein, which none present could withdraw. The ancient man uplifted the draperies of the chair, and there was found a new emblazonment: "this is the Sege of Galahalt the haute prynce." The youth is seated accordingly, as a prince who was not of this world, and it was seen that he was clothed in red arms, though without sword or shield. But he had begun to move amidst enchantments; the sword implanted in the stone was to him predestined, and by him it was withdrawn, after which he revealed by the word of his own mouth that it was that weapon wherewith the good Knight Balyn had slain Balan, his brother. At the festival which followed this episode the Graal, under its proper veils, appeared in the hall, illuminating all things by the grace of the Holy Ghost and imposing that sacred silence--already mentioned--in the presence of the Great Mysteries. As the light enlightened them spiritually, and to each uplifted the countenance of each in beauty? so the sacred vision fed them abundantly in their bodies; but because of those draperies which shrouded the vessel; the great chivalry vowed to go in quest thereof, that they might see it more openly. After this manner began the mystic inquisition which, by a messenger from Nascien the Hermit--who was the early Keeper of Galahad according to the Vulgate Merlin and the recipient of those revelations contained in the Book of the Holy Graal--was forbidden to natural women, like that of Masonry, though the ministers of the Graal were maidens, and if Masonry had retained its secrets in conscious memory they would be served by women who were virgins.
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