Articles - Loretta Proctor
LORETTA PROCTOR
Does Britain hold the Grail King?
The Great Empire shall soon be changed, Which shall grow soon into an inferior place of small account, In the middle of which he shall come, To lay down his sceptre. Nostradamus Century 1 v. 32 The best of fairystories and myths are told in cycles and though the name of the hero or heroine may change from tale to tale, the essence of the heroic nature or the goal pursued is basically the same. The goal is individuation, spiritual wholeness and on the way to this Promised Land, the dragon of apathy and materialism has to be tackled; that atrophic death-like state which always threatens to pull us into a sleep from which we may never wake up. Every now and then a long-buried idea or archetypal myth seems also to awaken from the mists of time where, like Rip van Winkle, it has been quietly sleeping. As Krishna says in the Gita - I have been born again and again, from time to time . . . whenever spirituality decays and materialism is rampant then I reincarnate Myself. Such an archetypal cycle is that of the Arthurian Legends. These tales are rich in mythological, alchemical and psychological symbols. They are rooted in pre-Christian sagas and pagan legends which have been traced back to times when Stonehenge was built and no doubt go back further. Arthur is a figure which brings together many different ideas and traditions and on the whole builds up an image of unity and centredness, an archetypal image of the Anthropos, The Christ. During the Middle Ages, when the ideal of courtly love held sway, these tales were taken up by the French writers of the era, such as Chretien de Troyes, and became successively more and more Christianised. Much of the more down to earth, bawdy, often comic elements were removed from the old Arthurian tales and the love stories altered and sanitised to suit the dualistic Christian ethos. Lost was the original understanding that in these stories, sexual union and incest were symbolic descriptions of the alchemical movements of the inner being, an inner marriage of the Masculine and Feminine. Everything was taken literally rather than symbolically; everything had to be Light and White. Yet, the truth of it is that old tales of the Cauldron of Cerinnwen which was always full and ready to feed one, the Roman Cornucopia or the Horn of Plenty, New Testament images of the Fountain of Living Waters at which one’s thirst would be quenched forever; these are all fore-runners of the Holy Grail, a vessel that could give each person everything they longed for in their deepest soul. Stories told in the Stars? Essentially too we find the age-old biblical and fairy tale theme of the wandering hero, the Prodigal son . . . in Arthurian tales the wandering knight. . . . who like Lancelot, Parsifal, Galahad and Gawain and many others become restless in the stifling peace and delights of the court of Arthur and Guinevere, as the young become restless of the comforts and everydayness of home life and the protection of Mother and Father. The heroes wander almost aimlessly it seems in search of adventures but in fact follow what Jung called the circumambulatio, a sort of spiralling round and round a centre just as the stars and suns spiral with their galaxies about the Galactic Centre. Often in the tales, captured or overcome knights are sent back to Arthur’s court, to the Centre. They provide new stardust! And the heroes always return to the court for special festivals such as Holy Pentecost and the Solstices. In just such a way do we all follow the circulation of the solar year, the processes of youth, maturity and old age, the lifetimes of existence, returning to the same point of inner experience. Through our little lives we fight battles with our demons, neuroses, addictions and problems and if we manage to win a battle, the vanquished component of our nature and our unconscious world is integrated into the ‘Court’ of consciousness, no longer a potent and violent enemy but a source of new energy and wisdom. The more one considers the story of Arthur, the more one sees that there is something here connected with the Virgo-Pisces axis in particular. The star Arcturus is situated in the constellation of Bootes and this bright star rises just after the constellation of Virgo. In the old days a ceremony was held in honour of Demeter the Corn Goddess called the Proarktouria......and of course, the Virgin Mary also has her feast day of the Immaculate Conception on the 8th December just before Christmas, before her Holy Child is born. The whole theme of the Holy Grail centres around the virtue of purity and chastity or the lack of it. There is the purity of the King and his knights but underpinning this are the shadowy tales of incest, adultery and betrayal, far more Piscean themes. There is the chaotic Piscean sense of dream landscapes, castles rising in the mists, magic and faeries, madness and disintegration. This is a counterpoint to the orderliness and elegance of Arthur’s court with its knights all in their appointed places about the circle, their courtliness and gentle manners. Through the repeating cycle of Arthurian stories, told and then re-told, the original, human and rather lovable figure of Parsifal is eventually superceded by the mystical and almost inhuman figure of Galahad. Parsifal has a Piscean feel about him as he blunders about on his spiritual quest, while Galahad appears to be a Virgoan ideal of virginity and chastity. Both one another’s polar opposites, shadow figures, yet both have the mystical vision of the Grail awarded him. The true meaning of chastity is Love and the meaning of the word ‘virgin’ is someone who is whole in themselves, in a sense androgynous or hermaphrodite. In Jungian terms and in the ancient lore ofTarot cards, the Hermaphrodite is an important stage in the goal of alchemy, the mysterium coniunctionis or sacred marriage within. It seems that we need to learn to incorporate both the humanity and earthiness alongside idealism and mystical longings. Part of the Christian problem was that it never seemed to quite get the two together but split them into God and the Devil. Virgo with its connections with Demeter, harvest and cornucopia seems a fitting symbol for the Court of King Arthur in which feasts were especially important landmarks and the vision of the Holy Grail so connected with the image of food and drink of a magical and spiritual sort. According to Homer, Demeter was said to have lain with Jason in a “thrice ploughed field. Born from this union was Hades, the God of the Underworld, whose name means riches from the soil, or treasure. Remember the story of Arthur lying with his half-sister, Morgana, in the field to celebrate the rites of Beltane? And from this union came the dark, destructive, death dealing son Mordred whose name incorporates morte or death, Hades himself. The Land went the way of Mordred, as this is the natural dissolution, the downward flow of gravity which is nature, where all must end in death. But the Soul of the Court went with Sir Galahad, the virginal, “maiden knight” and was taken to realms we know not where. Arthur as an image of Unity was banished and lost to our view in Avalon . . . wherever that mystical place may be. Many say this place is Britain, the Isle Glastonbury. In ancient days these places were indeed surrounded by water, many little islands and lakes. Is someone likely to emerge now from the mists of Avalon in order to help us achieve a spiritual, alchemical goal for Mankind? Who knows, perhaps we have this very person here in Britain, still young, green, unformed but ready some time to rise up. A person hiding yet in the depths of the ‘forest’ like Parsifal, as yet unconscious of his true role, and who may some day have to arise to repel the foreign invader as it is promised that Arthur will do when his ‘honey island’ is threatened?
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