5 § The Sacred Heart and the Legend of the Holy Grail
In his article, 'The Ancient Iconography of the Heart of Jesus', [1] Monsieur Charbonneau-Lassay very aptly calls our attention to the legend of the Holy Grail as something belonging to what might be called the 'prehistory of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus', namely, the Grail legend which was committed to writing in the twelfth century, though in its origins it is much earlier, being in reality a Christian adaptation of very ancient Celtic traditions. The idea of this comparison had already occurred to us, occasioned by an earlier article (and one of great interest from our point of view), 'The Human Heart and the Notion of the Heart of God in the Religion of Ancient Egypt', [2] from which we cite the following passage: 'In their hieroglyphs, sacred writing wherein the image of the thing itself often represents the very word that designates it, the heart was none the less depicted only by an emblem: the vase. Is not the heart of man in fact the vase in which his life is continuously maintained by means of his blood?' It is this vase taken as symbol of the heart and standing for it in ancient Egyptian ideography, which made us think immediately of the Holy Grail, the more so because in the case of the Grail, beyond the general sense of the symbol (considered simultaneously under both its divine and human aspects), we see also a special and very much more direct relationship with the Heart of Christ himself. Indeed, the Holy Grail is the cup which contains the precious blood of Christ and which even holds it twice, having been used first at the Last Supper and then when Joseph of Arimathea collected in it the blood and water which flowed from the wound opened in the Redeemer's side, the wound made by the centurion's lance. In a way, therefore, this cup stands for the Heart of Christ as receptacle of his blood; it takes its place, so to speak, and becomes its symbolic equivalent, and is it not still more remarkable, under these
conditions, that of old the vase had already been an emblem of the heart? Moreover, the cup, under one form or another, plays an important part, as does the heart itself, in many ancient traditions; and so it was no doubt in particular with the Celts, for it is from them that the very core, or at least the warp of the legend of the Holy Grail has come down to us. It is to be regretted that we can know so little about the precise form of that tradition as it existed prior to Christianity, and the same applies to all that can be known of Celtic doctrine, for which oral teaching was always the sole means of transmission. But there is enough inter-religious concordance to enable us at least to establish the significance of the chief symbols which figured in those doctrines, and it is this after all which is most essential.
But let us return to the legend in the form in which it has come down to us. What it says of the origin of the Grail is particularly worthy of attention: angels had fashioned the cup from an emerald which dropped from the forehead of Lucifer at the time of his fall. This emerald recalls in a striking manner the urnā, the frontal pearl which in Hindu iconography often takes the place of the third eye of Shiva, representing what may be called the 'sense of eternity'. This comparison seems to us more apt than any other to clarify perfectly the symbolism of the Grail; and it shows us yet another relationship with the heart, which is for the Hindu tradition as for so many others (though perhaps even more so in Hinduism) the centre of the integral being and consequently the organ to which the 'sense of eternity' must be directly attached.
The legend goes on to say that the Grail was entrusted to Adam in the earthly Paradise but that at the time of his fall, Adam in turn lost it as he could not carry it with him when he was driven out from Eden; and that is also made very clear by the meaning we have just indicated. Man, separated from his original Centre by his own fault, finds himself henceforth confined to the temporal sphere; he can no longer regain the single point from which all things are contemplated from the aspect of eternity. The terrestrial Paradise was, in fact, the true 'Centre of the World', which is everywhere symbolically assimilated to the Divine Heart; and can it not be said that Adam, as long as he was in Eden, truly lived in the Heart of God?
What follows is more enigmatic: Seth was able to return to the terrestrial Paradise and thus was able to recover the precious vase. Now Seth is one of those who stand for the Redeemer, the more so in that his name expresses the ideas of foundation and stability, and in a way announces the restoration of the primordial order destroyed by the fall of man. Thus there was henceforth at least a partial restoration, in the sense that Seth and those who after him possessed the Grail were able thereby to establish, somewhere on earth, a spiritual centre which was the image of the lost Paradise. Furthermore the legend does not say where or by whom the Grail was preserved until the time of Christ, or how its transmission was assured; but the admittedly Celtic origin of the legend points to the probability that the Druids had a part in this, and that they must be numbered among the regular maintainers of the Primordial Tradition. In any case, the existence of such a spiritual
centre, or even of several centres-simultaneously or successively-cannot be questioned, wherever we may suppose them to have been located. What must be noted is that among other designations, that of 'Heart of the World' is always and everywhere attached to these centres, and that in all traditions the descriptions that relate thereto are based on an identical symbolism which it is possible to follow down to the most precise details. Does this not show sufficiently well that the Grail (or that which is thus represented) already had, prior to Christianity and even from all time, the closest of connections with the Divine Heart and with Emmanuel, [3] that is, with the manifestation of the Eternal Word in the bosom of terrestrial humanity, a manifestation which might be virtual or real, according to the times, but which was always present?
After the death of Christ, according to the legend, the Holy Grail was brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. Then began to unfold the history and exploits of the Knights of the Round Table, which we cannot follow here. The Round Table was destined to receive the Grail when one of the Knights should have succeeded in winning it and bringing it from Britain to Armorica, [4] and this Table is also probably a very ancient symbol, one of those associated with the idea of the above mentioned spiritual centres. The circular form of the Table relates to the 'zodiacal cycle' (itself a symbol which deserves special study) by the presence around it of twelve principal personages, a particularity which is to be found in the make-up of all the centres in question. That being so, cannot one see in the number of twelve Apostles one sign, among a multitude of others, of the perfect conformity of Christianity with the Primordial Tradition, to which the name 'prechristianity' is so exactly suited? And on the other hand, in connection with the Round Table, we have noted [5] a strange concordance in the symbolic revelations made to Marie des Vallées, [6] wherein is mentioned a 'round table of jasper which represents the Heart of our Lord', while at the same time there is mention of 'a garden which is the Holy Sacrament of the Altar', and which with its 'four fountains of living water', is mysteriously identified with the Earthly Paradise. Is not this a striking and unexpected confirmation of the relationships that we have pointed out above?
Naturally, we cannot claim that these all too hasty notes constitute a complete study of a question so little known as this, and we must limit ourselves here to mere indications. We are well aware that in all this there are considerations which, at first glance, may be somewhat surprising to those unfamiliar with ancient traditions and the habitual modes of their symbolic expression. But we intend to develop these considerations and justify them
more fully at some future date in studies where we may also be able to touch upon other points no less worthy of interest. [7]
Meanwhile we will mention, in connection with the Holy Grail, a strange complication which we have not taken into account so far: by one of the verbal assimilations which often play a far from negligible part in symbolism (assimilations which may have more profound reasons than might be imagined at first glance), the Grail is a vase (grasale) and a book (gradale or graduale). In some variants of the legend these two meanings are quite closely linked, for the book then becomes an inscription made by Christ or by an angel on the cup itself. For the moment we are not going to draw any conclusion from this, though there are connections easy to establish between the 'Book of Life' and certain elements of Apocalyptic symbolism.
In addition, the legend associates other objects with the Grail, and in particular a lance which, in the Christian adaptation, is none other than that of the centurion Longinus; but strange though it may seem, the lance, or one of its equivalents, already existed as a symbol complementary to the cup in ancient traditions. On the other hand, with the Greeks, the lance of Achilles was believed to heal wounds that it had caused; and the Medieval legend attributes precisely the same virtue to the lance of the Passion. And this brings to mind another similarity of the same kind: in the myth of Adonis (whose name, moreover, signifies 'the Lord'), when the hero is mortally gored by the tusk of a wild boar (here representing the lance), [8] his blood flowing out onto the earth, gives birth to a flower. Now M. Charbonneau-Lassay (in Regnabit, January 1925) has called attention to 'a mould [or press] for altar breads, of the twelfth century, on which is represented blood from the wounds of the Crucified falling in little drops which are transformed into roses, and in a stained glass window of the thirteenth century cathedral of Angers, the divine blood, flowing in rivulets, also spreads out taking the form of roses'. [9] We shall very shortly be speaking again of floral symbolism under a somewhat different aspect; but whatever the multiple meanings that nearly all symbols have to offer, it all fits together in perfect harmony, and this very multiplicity, far from being a disadvantage or defect, is on the contrary, for him who can understand it, one of the chief advantages of symbolism as a language that is much less narrowly limited than ordinary speech.
To bring these notes to a close, we will mention several symbols which, in different traditions, are sometimes substituted for that of the cup and which are ultimately identical with it. This is not a departure from our subject, for the Grail itself-as is clear from all we have just said-originally had no other signification than that of the sacred vase has wherever it is to be
found, as for example, in the East, the sacrificial cup containing the Vedic Soma (or the Mazdean Haoma), that extraordinary 'prefiguration' of the Eucharist to which we may perhaps return on some other occasion. [10] What is meant by Soma is the 'draught of immortality' (the Amrita of the Hindus, Ambrosia of the Greeks-two words etymologically similar) which confers or restores, for those who receive it with the requisite preparations, the 'sense of eternity' which has already been mentioned.
One of the symbols we wish to speak of is the triangle with the point directed downwards; it is a kind of schematic representation of the sacrificial cup and it is to be found in this sense in certain yantras or geometrical symbols of India. On the other hand, what is very remarkable from our point of view, is that the same figure is also a symbol of the heart, the shape of which it represents in a simplified form. The 'triangle of the heart' is a common expression in the eastern traditions. This leads to another question of interest: the representation of the heart inscribed in a down pointing triangle is in itself altogether legitimate, whether it be a question of the human or of the Divine Heart, and it has, in fact, a considerable significance when it is related to emblems used by certain Christian Hermetic groups in the Middle Ages, whose intentions were always fully orthodox. If, in modern times, some have sought to give a blasphemous meaning to such a figure, this is because, consciously or not, they have altered the primary sense of the symbols to the point of reversing their normal value. This is a phenomenon of which one can cite many examples, and which finds its explanation in the fact that certain symbols are actually susceptible of a double interpretation and have, as it were, two opposite faces. The serpent for example, and also the lion, can they not signify, as the case may be, both Christ and Satan? We cannot expound here a general theory on this subject, which would lead us too far afield; but it goes without saying that there is something in all this that makes the manipulation of symbols very delicate, and also that this point requires special attention when it is a question of discovering the real meaning of certain emblems and of interpreting them correctly.
Another symbol which is frequently the equivalent of the cup is a floral symbol: in fact, does not the flower, by its form, evoke the idea of a 'receptacle'? And does not one speak of the 'calix' of a flower? In the East, the symbolic flower par excellence, is the lotus. In the West, it is most often the rose that plays the same part. We do not say, of course, that this is the only signification of either the rose or the lotus; on the contrary, we have already indicated another one in this same chapter. But the cup symbolism is certainly to be seen in the design embroidered on an altar canon of the Abbey of Fontevrault, where the rose is placed at the foot of a lance along which flow drops of blood. This rose appears there in association with the lance exactly as the cup does elsewhere, and it seems indeed to be collecting the drops of blood rather than to be developing from a transformation of one
of them. But the two meanings are complements rather than opposites, for the drops, in falling on the rose, vivify it and make it bloom. They are the 'celestial dew', the image so often used in connection with the idea of the Redemption, or with the kindred ideas of regeneration and resurrection; but that, too, would require long explanations, even if we were to limit ourselves to pointing out the agreement of the different traditions with regard to this other symbol. [11]
On the other hand, since the Rose-Cross has been mentioned in connection with the seal of Luther, [12] we will say that this Hermetic emblem was at first specifically Christian, whatever false and more or less 'naturalistic' interpretations have been given it, from the eighteenth century onwards; and is it not remarkable that in this figure, the rose occupies the centre of the cross, the very place of the Sacred Heart? Apart from those representations where the five wounds of the Crucified are represented as so many roses, the central rose, when it stands alone, can very well be identified with the Heart itself, the vase which contains the blood, which is the centre of life and also the centre of the entire being.
There is still at least one more symbolic equivalent of the cup: this is the lunar crescent; but a full explanation of this would require developments which are quite outside the subject of the present study. We mention it, therefore, only so as not to neglect entirely any side of the question.
From all the relationships which we have noted we will even now draw one conclusion which we hope to be able to clarify later. When one finds such agreement everywhere, is this not more than a mere indication of the existence of a primordial tradition? And how can it be explained that in most cases, those who feel obliged to admit this primordial tradition in principle thereafter think no more about it, and in fact reason as if it had never existed, or at least as if nothing of it had been preserved over the centuries? If any one is prepared to reflect on how abnormal such an attitude is he will perhaps be less inclined to wonder at certain considerations which, in reality, only seem strange in virtue of the mental habits that characterise our time. Besides, a little unprejudiced research suffices to reveal on all sides the signs of this essential doctrinal unity, the consciousness of which has at times been obscured among men but which has never entirely disappeared. And as this search progresses, the points of comparison multiply as if of themselves, and new proofs appear at every moment. Certainly, the querite et invenietis (seek and ye shall find) of the Gospel is not a vain saying.