Who is the Grail?
But where is wisdom found? And where does understanding reside?
The abyss says, “It is not in me.” The sea says, “I do not have it.”
Only God understands the way to it, He knows where it is.
(Book of Job) [1]
Who is the Grail? [2]
The Grail is the Spirit of God, the eternal feminine, the heavenly gate through which God looks down on His creation. The Consciousness of the Universe is one, the maternal womb of all. It acts with its genetic power on all planes of reality. Wherever a new world is born, the power of the Grail is present there. Any being, corporeal or incorporeal, owes its existence to the Grail. Every star in the universe shines with the power of the Grail, for it creates a space of life around itself. Every earthly mother is permeated with the light of the Beginning, for she carries the love of the Holy Spirit in her heart. The mother is the mystery of God’s love, a mysterious lake from whose waters beauty and life arise. The Grail only gives, it takes nothing, it is pure innocence that bestows the gift of life. It is a well from which the light of being flows.
The eternal feminine pulls us upwards. Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan. [3]
The great poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe, with the last words of his Faust, aimed at one of the rays of the Grail mystery. The eternal feminine draws us upward. The divine chalice not only provides the gift of being, but at the same time overcomes this creation, conquers it with love and desire for the Breath of the Divine Beginning. The Grail contains not only the cosmogonic path down, but also the path of return, knowledge, and the gradual shedding of various layers of existence. One day, completely naked, we will return to the bosom of God’s consciousness, from which we once set out to meet an immeasurable cosmic mission. When we reach the end of our fairy-tale journey into the world for experience and back again, we will be naked again, but nevertheless filled to the brim with experiences from a very long pilgrimage of realities. We will place this experience of life on the altar of the One who sent us on this pilgrimage. The eternal feminine draws us upward. We have come out of the Grail, and the Grail is calling us back into its arms again. We are children of the Soul of the World, our cosmic mother is down here with us, breathing the breath of our life, but she herself infinitely longs for the love of the Son of God, for the love that she experienced in the womb of God’s consciousness at the beginning of time. Her longing is directed upwards. We humans also fly on the wings of this longing. Heavenly Sophia draws us upwards with her love.
There are four planes of reality. Spirit, soul, life and body. Each world comes from creative consciousness. Although there is only one Consciousness of God, we can still speak of four basic forms through which the Mind of God manifests itself.
In the highest chalice of the Godhead, the Father and the Mother merge and the Son, the Logos, is born. From the Son, high beings emerge, bearing the fiery seal of the Father: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. The Seraphim are the bearers of the fiery being of the Father, the Cherubim manifest the Father’s Wisdom and Love through the Son, the Thrones realize the gift of the Father’s Will and Life through the Holy Spirit. They stand at the beginning of our solar system, thanks to their work the foundations were laid for the first Saturnian birth of the Earth.
And yet another wondrous being originates from this source. Man. Since the Word of God creates the essence of the star of the core of the human being, we can say that the primordial source of humanity is the very fiery lake of the Holy Spirit. Each individualized star of the core is a spark that has sprung from this primal fire of God’s Consciousness. Man’s home is the region of the superheavens , not the inner worldly space of the inner spheres of our solar system. This pre-existence of man in heaven is spoken of by Saint Paul. [4]
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms, just as he chose us in him (in Christ) before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.
The Supreme Grail is part of the human energy system. It is apparently related to the point of individuation, as B. Brennan calls it. It is located about a meter above the head and thus creates an entrance gate to the mystery of humanity. It has the shape of a small chalice, which is turned downwards towards the crown of the head.
Let us listen once again to Steiner’s prophetic words:
But then it was pointed to the future: One day all sensuality and desire will disappear. Then a chalice will open from above, just as the chalice of a flower opens, and it will look down on man. As a ray bends into a plant, so man’s own purified power will unite with this divine chalice.
The calyx of a flower can be inverted in the mind, so that it bends downward from above, from heaven, and the sunbeam can also be inverted, so that it rises from man to heaven. This inverted calyx of a flower, as shown as a reality in the mysteries, has been called the Holy Grail. The actual flower of the plant is the inverted Holy Grail.
Perhaps through meditation this small chalice above our head can be enlarged and transformed into a beautiful golden bell, within which beats a heart woven from rays emerging from purified human consciousness. From the spiritual heart, a ray rises up through the seventh chakra and opens the chalice of the heavenly rose of birth. The Grail gift, which man once received into his heart, returns to God and thus closes the circle of birth and knowledge. The Grail is the womb where the beginning and the end are united, from the Grail we are born and towards Him we head in the eschatological pilgrimage of returning home.
From the head of the celestial man the ray of the Word of God moves into the heart of Adam Kadmon. In this center of all centers, which the Kabbalists call Tipheret Beriah, the beauty of the world of creation, according to Kabbalistic teaching all three upper worlds meet. Here the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are in harmonious unity ready to reveal their triumvirate through the birth of the Soul of the world. This is the Grail in the narrower sense of the word. In these waters the Daughter of Heaven emerges as Aphrodite Anadyomene [5] off the shores of Cyprus.
If we call the highest chalice in the head of Man the Grail of the Father, we can speak of this essential source in his heart as the Grail of the Son. Together with the Word of God, some of the gods of the 1st generation also descend into this kingdom of the air center. From one-dimensional beings of the spirit, they become two-dimensional beings: They acquire their soul here, they become spiritual-mental. These gods manifest the energy of the Word, they are derivatives of the Divine Logos, the Christian esoteric tradition calls them beings of the II. hierarchy: kyriotetes (dominions), dynameis (forces) and exúsiai (powers). In our universe, they operate within the framework of the second rebirth of the Earth, in the astral world of the inner sun. Christ is the leading personality of these beings of Love and Wisdom.
Man also finds his soul in the Grail. The original spiritual star of humanity gains another dimension, Sofia – Anima mundi spills out here and floods the spirit of man. From this moment on, the human spirit is a two-dimensional being. It no longer lives only in the head, the sacred human heart has shone in its chest .
The third source chalice of the Holy Spirit lies in the lower abdomen of Adam Kadmon. It is a fertilized cell from which the inner cosmos as a whole is born. Galaxies, solar systems, gods and other beings are created on the same principle. There is always a cell at the beginning, the mother of which is a being representing the Soul of the World and the father is a being emerging from the Logos. The original fertilized egg is always four-dimensional, because it contains the forces of the Divine Four. The fiery yolk embodies the Father, the air sac the Son, the watery white the Mother and the shell the Daughter. The beings emerging from this third Grail reflect the beauty and majesty of the Holy Spirit. They are the children of the Soul of the World, tradition calls them beings of the III. hierarchy: archai (rulers), archangels and angels . Within the human energy system, this source of consciousness manifests itself as tan tien. From it arise the seven inner layers of the auric field and eventually the physical body. Our outer personality (aura) is born from a single cell, just like the physical body. If we are children of our parents in the physiological sense, we are also children of our parents in the spiritual sense. Our mother is the spiritual heart (2nd point of the hara line) and our father is the spiritual head (1st point of the hara line about 1 meter above the physical head). The outer human personality is the child of its soul and its spirit. It reflects and manifests the beauty of its parents. Our earthly life has a retroactive effect on the spirit, enriching it, our experiences making it unique and precious. This gradual process of individualization of the spirit brings maturation and gradual shedding of the experienced patterns of collective consciousness. Individualization of the spirit brings inner freedom.
And finally, we have the physical world. Here the Spirit of God manifests through the nervous system of incarnated beings, but not only that. The entire physical body is ultimately a manifestation of the divine Daughter, or rather the Mother. The human head corresponds to the root of the celestial plant, the spine and torso to the stem, the hands and feet to the leaves, and the genitals to the flower. Rudolf Steiner used to say that man is an inverted flower.
When the disciple was initiated, and finally found sufficiently mature, another idea was presented to him. He was to become acquainted with that which is most beautiful, pure, and yet so fragile. Then he was told: Look at the flower. Its calyx is turned towards the sun. The sun’s ray influences it in its growth and sustains it. It stretches its sexual organs chastely towards the sun. What is now veiled in man and animal, and accompanied by shame in man, is directed chastely towards the sun in the plant. Look back to ancient times. Then man was on the stage where the plant remained. Then he too directed his sexual organs towards the sun. The head, the root, was in the ground. The mystics have always known that man is an inverted plant. Only in the course of further development did he advance further, first becoming horizontal like an animal and then assuming the upright posture of present-day humanity. It passed through the plant and animal kingdoms into the human realm. [6]
Let us look up to the point of individuation above us. Let us send the desire of our soul upwards towards the spirit. Let us connect the stella amoris in the spiritual heart and the stella polaris at the top of the auric field. The ray of love emanating from the human heart has the power to open the chalice of the celestial rose above our head. The soul longs for its home in the Grail, it longs for its own waters of birth. Up there in the chalice of the celestial rose it is at home, there it has experienced the happiness of union with its divine Twin. For it itself is the flower of the cosmic rose, no, it is the entire divine plant of birth. It itself is the Rosa coeli.
Beauty will always long for its beginning, for Truth.
And Truth will love Beauty, its own manifestation, for all eternity.
The Truth of the fiery ray and the Beauty of the water drop belong together. The Spear and the Chalice are the celestial Twins, if separated they wither. Together they create the mystery of being.
[1] Job, 8/12, 14, 23, 21st century translation.
[2] … Gurnemanz begins to suspect that things will be more difficult with this young man. He vividly remembers the sacred words entrusted to him by the ailing King Amfortas, mysterious words that once came from the Grail itself:
Powerful is compassion, that pure stray,
Wait for it, that’s my verdict.
The old monk gently puts his arm around Parsifal’s shoulders, saying:
The king returns home from his bath;
the sun stands high;
Now let me accompany you to the sacred meal;
for if you are pure,
The Grail itself will water and satisfy you.
Parsifal is confused: Who is the Grail?
Gurnemanz: That is not said; but if you are called to it, the secret will not remain hidden from you. And look! It seems to me that I have guessed you well: for no path leads to it by land, and no one could walk it who is not guided by the Grail itself.
Parsifal: I’m not actually walking, and yet it seems to me that I’m already far away.
Gurnemanz: You see, my son, time becomes space here .
Jan Provazník, The Holy Grail on Four Planes of Being, p. 31, adapted from Richard Wagner’s opera Parsifal, Act 1.
[3] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Act 5
[4] Ephesians 1:3-5.
Εὐλογητὸς ὁ θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ CHRISTοῦ, ὁ εὐλογησας ἡμᾶς ἐν πάσῃ εὐλογίᾳ πνευματικῇ ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις ἐν Χριστῷ, καθὼς ἐξελέξατο ἡμᾶς ἐν αὐτῷ πρὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου, προορίσας ἡμᾶς εἰς υἱοθεσίαν διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ εἰς αὐτόν, κατὰ τὴν εὐδοκίαν τοῦ θεληματοῦ αὐτοῦ, …
The anthroposophist Wilhelm Kelber (Die Logoslehre, p. 177) comments on this passage as follows: Paul speaks with all clarity in these verses of the Letter to the Ephesians of the pre-existence of man in heaven, during which he was endowed with the blessing of the Spirit (εὐλογίᾳ πνευματική ή) through Christ. And the capacity of man to sonship (υἱοθεσία, literally: laying on of the Son) bestowed by Christ, Paul assigns precisely to the pre-existing man.
God blessed us with the power of the Holy Spirit before the creation of the world in the heavens above . I translate the term epuranioi (ἐπουρανίοι) as heavens above, not heavens, to avoid terminological misunderstandings regarding the earthly plane (physical world, ether, emotional world, mental world) and the heavenly plane (astral plane, higher ether, higher emotional world, and the ketheric region of Saturn). The heavens above lie above the region of Saturn, and are therefore essentially older than our solar system. The human soul is older than this world. God chose us to be adopted as sons through the Word to himself (i.e., God). By making the Logos the essence of the human spirit, God accepted man as his child, choosing him to be adopted as his son. Through Christ we are children of God, born in the womb of the Holy Spirit.
Aphrodite Anadyomené (literally the emerging one ), Alexandre Cabanel, Naissance de Venus, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus_(Cabanel)
[6] R. Steiner, Die Musik des «PARSIFAL» als Ausdruck des Übersinnlichen, Kassel, January 16, 1907
An excerpt from the upcoming book „The Sun“.
Pictures: https://hkspolco.hys.cz/prays/show/18/zdravas_maria