The Grail Legend: What was in the Cup?

Questioning the Grail Myth

by Anodea Judith

The first sip from the Grail is free. Whether as sweet nectar from our mother’s breast or the bliss of our first adolescent love affair, the initial taste of ecstasy is a divine gift, naively unquestioned. Such a drink, by definition, kicks open doorways to unseen possibilities. It inspires the heart to fly, the mind to reel, the feet to dance. Once exposed, we are never quite the same. It gives us a taste of what could be, whets our appetites for possibilities, and creates a gnawing hunger that annihilates our illusion of complacent satisfaction.

Ah, but the second taste – now that is quite costly. To drink again requires a distinct sacrifice of the familiar. Its allure beckons us into a world unkown, beckons us like a dream just beyond our reach, a dream of wholeness we had learned to live without. To pursue a further sip requires that we make generous payment with our old ways of being, ways that might be sacrificed for all time. To turn back and go without – once we have had that initial taste of perfection — exacts the price of perpetual dissatisfaction. As such the first taste of the Grail brings initiation. But it is the subsequent tastes that bring transformation.

The Grail first appears when we least expect it. It might be a stroke of luck that lands us a new job, or even that first seductive taste of an addictive substance or relationship. It generally comes from unsuspecting sources and appears most often in the depths of despair, when we think there is no possible way out of our situation. When we are stripped naked of our defenses, dissolved of our ego, pushed and prodded beyond our capacities to a place where there is no turning back, there comes a point where we eventually break open. In the 12-step programs designed to help people overcome addictions, it is the step where we come to admit our own powerlessness, and turn the solution over to a deeper source. In admitting we don’t know, we stop trying to work from the old mind. We let go. And in letting go, we let something beyond our ordinary awareness answers our prayers. You may call it God, Goddess, Spirit, the Force, Higher Power, Fate, or Destiny, but its appearance is generally marked by an unexpected presence of Grace.

Jospeh Campbell described this experience as a stage in the archetypal Hero’s Quest, which he called “Supernatural Aid.” Once we have made our commitment to the quest itself, and begun to walk along the path, aid from unseen sources miraculously appears. In myths and fairy tales, it appears as a wise old man or crone, or a fairy presence who gives magical amulets to protect against future battles.

“What such a figure represents,” writes Campbell, “is the benign, protecting power of destiny. The fantasy is a reassurance. . . . that protective power is always and ever present within the sanctuary of the heart and even immanent within, or just behind, the unfamiliar features of the world.” 1

Psychologically, this experience represents joining forces with the underground waters of the collective unconscious. When we tap into this underlying unity, we awaken our connection to the collective destiny. It comes when we surrender our conscious mind, when we let go of control, of trying to figure it out, and satisfy ourselves with simply reveling in the mystery.

It may be a dream, a chance encounter, an unexpected check in the mail. It may be a lover or a friend with just the right advice. It may be a brief break in the storm, a celestial clearing, a boon of grace that restores hope in a greater underlying benevolence. Even if illusionary, such as the feather held by the elephant Dumbo that allowed him to believe he could fly, it gives us the strength that comes from believing we just might succeed after all. In the crucial beginning of a sacred journey, when we are besieged by doubts, this reassurance is essential to cementing our commitment.

It is an experience of grace to have our prayers answered in the depths of sorrow, to receive cooling salve for our burns, compassion for our woes, a boon from an unknown source when it is most needed. But this grace can only come when we are open. It is this hunger for grace, for the elixir of healing, to which the myth of the Holy Grail speaks.

The Grail is a mythic symbol of the deep feminine, the vessel from which we drink to nourish our souls. The element water has long been associated with the soul and the unconscious, the drinking of liquids, reflecting the ancient Dionysian rites of ecstasy, where the liquid imbibed brought about a change in consciousness. The loss of the Grail symbolizes the loss of magic and mystery in our world, the loss of the divine feminine, the loss of a potent means of healing and renewal.

The Grail Mysteries, which emerged during 12th century Medievalism, are myths of heroism and transformation, loss and renewal, from a time when the religion of the Goddess was retreating into the mists, and the establishment of patriarchal culture had become firmly embedded in the Christian myth. The Grail mysteries speak of the Hero’s Quest, poignantly standing out against the priestly authority of the church where, as Joseph Campbell describes,

“The priests were not required, or even expected, to have had spiritual experiences of their own; indeed, those who had had such were in danger of the stake. They were installed by anointment and appointment, and their personal power derived not from the dignity of their person, but from the institution they served. . .” 2

The Grail, as the tales have come down to us, is said to be the cup from which Christ drank in the Last Supper, as well as the cup that caught his blood when his wounds were cleansed by Joseph of Amimathea after removing him from the cross. Here it represents the blood of the savior, or perhaps of the fallen hero who undergoes death and resurrection. The blood of life is a substance that we all share, a substance that is precious as nectar, a symbol of life itself.

In actuality, the Grail harkens back to earlier Celtic mythology, where it represented the cauldron of rebirth, from which new life was born. In addition, scholars have ascribed to it the significance of the begging bowl of the Buddha, in which the four quarters were united, the Kaaba of the Great Mosque of Mecca, the Greekkrater, or cup representing the matrix of creation. 3 It is also the alchemical vessel of transformation, from which the raw stuff of life, the prima materia, is continually heated and cooled in an evolving process until it brings about the elusive gold, or philosopher’s stone of enlightened understanding. As the cauldron of plenty in Celtic lore, it was possessed by the Dagda, father of the gods, a vessel that would only cook food for a hero. 4 As symbol of the feminine, it also represents the roundness of the circle, the original wholeness, which is lost to each of us in childhood, and sought for ever after in our dreams and waking life.

In each story of the Grail, however, the theme was the same. The Grail was not a common object that existed in ordinary experience. Rather it represented the object of a spiritual quest for inner wholeness, union with the divine, self-fulfillment, and healing for the the ills of the world. The Quest was by definition dangerous, and was undertaken initially as a means to an end — that of finding a cure for an ailing ruler, known in the Medieval tales, as the Fisher King.

The Fisher King’s ailment was a wound to the leg, said to be made from a spear, some say in reflection of the spear that pierced Christ while he was on the cross. A spear is a masculine symbol — piercing, aggressive, a weapon of war. War brings a wound to the soul of a people and ruptures the land in which they live. It is said that the wound of the Fisher King would not heal and had made him lame, so that he could no longer hunt, but only fish, hence his name. The wound also suspended him interminably in a place between life and death, where he could neither expire and leave his kingdom to the next virile hero, nor regain his vitality and rule the kingdom himself. As the health of the King was considered synonymous with the health of the kingdom he ruled, his healing was necessary for the renewal of the land. The elusive Grail contained the elixir of healing, the spiritual key to what was missing in a culture wounded by war, becoming dangerously divorced from the natural world, and dominated by the masculine at a time when the numinous feminine was rapidly being vanquished from the collective conscious,.

What was the wound to which the king and his kingdom could not heal? When the body does not heal itself, the ailment usually represents a deeper wounding of the soul. Was it that war had irrevocably torn the fabric of the interconnected web in we live? Was it the loss of the feminine, and with it the loss of an essential balance that made our wholeness impossible? Was it our removal from Nature which was moving the locus of consciousness into walled settlements? Water is also the element associated with emotions and sexuality. Most interpretations of the Grail myth regard the Fisher King’s wound to the leg as symbolizing wounded or impotent sexuality. And what does wounded sexuality imply but an inability to connect with otherness on a deep and meaningful level – in this case – the inability of the ruling masculine principle to connect with the mysterious waters of the feminine. Therefore, to connect with the Grail was to experience the Goddess, the erotic and sensuous, the realm of feeling. It was this passion – the passion of romantic love – that inspired the chivalrous and lofty ideals and deeds of the knights.

Only those knights who were purest of heart could survive the quest for the Grail. None returned the Grail to civilization, for that part of the story has not yet occurred. Three succeeded in participating in its mysteries, the most successful being Perceval, one of the knights of Arthur’s round table. Perceval’s first encounter with the Grail was innocent, and in that aspect, his first taste was free. In this encounter, however, he failed to realize what he had seen, failed to ask the essential questions – in fact he failed to question at all. It was precisely this failure to question that prolonged the king’s ailment, thus perpetuating the sorrows of the land.

If we fail to challenge our assumptions, then we fail the Quest and we fail to heal. Failure to appreciate the numinous, the miraculous, the nectar of sweet juicy life in its natural state, brings about certain decline and prolongs suffering. After the first taste a gratis, our naive assumption that further tastes will come just as freely only brings frustration and the addiction to cheap substitutes. Appreciation of the mystery allows it to open even deeper.

After wandering in the wilderness for five years, and having many knightly adventures, Perceval finally finds the Grail again, and heals the king, only because he remembers to ask the important question the other nights had failed to consider: “Whom does the Grail serve?” Some say the answer is that it serves the King and the kingdom, meaning that it serves the higher conscious awareness that brings order and understanding. Others say that the Grail serves the realm of the Goddess, who is Nature, mystery, and love. I believe it is both and that the Grail is the circular container of wholeness wherein these polarities are made one, hence its healing power. The King is, however, served from the Grail, and once served, he is healed. He can then die peacefully and the waters in the land spring forth once again. Perceval remains with the Grail as its guardian and keeper for the rest of his days, and the Grail still remains a mystery to the civilized world.

If failure to question perpetuates wounding and sorrow, then there is still another important question that has still not been asked of the Grail. What was in the cup? We know only that it was liquid and that it produced a profound change of perspective, connecting one spiritually to realms beyond description. In a repressive era, where these realms threatened the impending paradigm, it is not surprising that this question may have been avoided or feared. But in a time when we are rapidly falling into the event horizon of this paradigm’s black hole, we can hardly afford to ignore it.

Perhaps the Greeks will give us a clue, to whom the krater represented the cup of Dionysios, the vegetation god who represented growth and renewal through paths of ecstasy. Ecstasy is the foundation of shamanism, though the method of attainment may differ from one culture to another. Ecstasy opens us naturally to the transcendent, to union with the divine, to harmonious blending and surrender. And it does so in a state of ultimate surrender.

As a means of transformation, ecstasy balances the inevitable descent into pain and illuminates what may be hidden in the dark shadows. While the descent into the Underworld is a mainstay of most transformational journeys, it is most certainly made more difficult by the denial of ecstatic states that are able to lift us out of our swamps of sadness and generate a new perspective. In the path toward wholeness, we need to embrace both our pain and our joy in order to restore the full range of experience that makes us most empathetically human.

So perhaps the Grail brought a return to ecstasy. If so, what did it contain that brought about this magical healing?

Ancient cultures, connected with the earth, knew of the sacred power of plants to change consciousness and open the human soul to the ecsatic mysteries of nature and spirit. Unlike recreational “party drugs,” these substances were used ritually, in a sacred and precious manner, for the sole purpose of accessing the deeper pattern that connects.

When something basic to the fabric of being is suppressed, its shadow side is invited. In suppressing the ancient knowledge of sacred plants, we have invited the shadow side of drug abuse – of drugs used dangerously, without regard to their sacred context, without using them as allies in the spirit world. And in so doing, we have robbed the culture of one of the most potent and rapid means of evolving consciousness, given to us by Nature, Herself.

If the Grail was the sought after magical container for the elixir of transformation, then its question, “Whom does the Grail serve?” is the conceptual container that unlocks the magic of the substance within. By knowing who we serve, by knowing our purpose to any endeavor, we have structure, definition, and direction, that gives meaning to all that unfolds. Without that structure, our experience may open us to a wide assortment of mysteries, but they may lack meaning and be difficult to integrate. The use of drugs as party recreation, without a thought as to “Whom does the vessel serve?” may open doors, but does not unlock the same mystery. Yet, we must remember that the first taste is free, and it is this taste that makes us long for another. The first taste reveals a possible answer to the question – it reveals the “full force of the howling Tao,” as Terence McKenna would say. But to drink again is to dedicate our quest to the service of a greater purpose. It is also to become familiar with what we are drinking.

The repression of spiritual pharmacology, loosely grouped under the heading of “drug wars” is founded on hypocrisy. In a drug infested culture, where the medical establishment prescribes countless drugs that are often harmful and addicting, where fully legal alcohol and cigarettes dull our awareness and create massive deaths, we culturally sanction substances that allow us to remain in ignorance and denial, out of touch with the greater fabric in which we are woven. We condone the very actions that keep us from awakening, and forbid the ones that might catalyze the end of this collective dreamspell that is rapidly creating a biospheric wasteland.

Yet the innate tendency of humans to alter their consciousness and look for spiritual experience outside of their mundane realm is as endemic to the race as is sexuality and the search for meaning. As quoted in The Paradigm Conspiracy, journalist James Mills tells us that:

“the inhabitants of earth spend more money on illegal drugs than they spend on food. More than they spend on housing, clothes, education, medical care, or any other product or service. The international narcotics industry is the largest growth industry in the world. Its annual revenues exceed half a trillion dollars – three times the value of all United States currency in circulation, more than the gross national products of all but a half dozen major industrialized nations.”5

Meanwhile, the battle over the right to possess handguns continues, as if a pistol, whose only purpose is to maim or kill, is safer and more ethical than a substance that just might make us think.

Whom does this Grail serve?

While the alteration of consciousness through chemical means is not the only way to surrender to a new perspective, it is perhaps the quickest and despite what we may have been led to believe, most foolproof in terms of something tangible actually occurring in a short, determined time span. Meditation, fasting, dancing, sexuality, singing, or other shamanic techniques do indeed produce a change over time, and it is precisely this change that is intended by these practices. They are highly recommended as tried and true methods that support exploration in consciousness or personal growth. Yet, there is never any guarantee that these methods will actually work in every case, and their effectiveness only occurs as a result of years of practice in developing these techniques. As a result there are too many people without the discipline, belief, or interest in applying them. And therefore, too many people who remain mired in a consciousness that may support their ultimate demise (and the demise of others).

Plants that alter consciousness however, do so on a far more predictable basis than the drug wars would have us believe. While the contents of consciousness that are revealed cannot be predicted (if they could, what would be the mystery?), the fact that consciousness will be changed in some way is nearly 100% guaranteed. Such is the nature and fear of the experience, especially from the perspective of a controlling paradigm that is desparately fighting to remain in control. As ethnobotanist Terence McKenna states in his manifesto from Food of the Gods:

“Our culture, self-toxified by the poisonous by-products of technology and egocentric ideology, is the unhappy inheritor of the dominator attitude that alteration of consciousness by the use of plants or substances is somehow wrong, onanistic, and perversely antisocial. I will argue that suppression of shamanic gnosis, with its reliance and insistence of ecstatic dissolution of the ego, has robbed us of life’s meaning and made us enemies of the planet, of ourselves and our grandchildren. We are killing the planet in order to keep intact the wrongheaded assumptions of the ego-dominator cultural style. It is time for a change.” 6

McKenna goes on further to sport the possibility that psychedelic mushrooms, growing in the grasslands of Africa at the retreat of the Ice Age, could have been a common element in the food our ancestors collected in the prairies. In this way, mind-enhancing plants, abundant and natural in the garden of Gaia, may have been the very key that spawned the evolution of consciousness from the instinctual mammalian brains of our forebears to the self-reflective intuitional leaps of our present evolutionary iteration. While his theory remains unprovable, it is thrown into a cauldron, occupied only by the distinct vacuum of other plausible theories for the relatively sudden leap in conscious evolution and brain development that are now part of our current apparatus. If we are on the brink of yet another evolutionary leap, as it seems that we must be at this precarious time, then perhaps this radical ally is necessary to befriend once again.

“If the ego is not regularly and repeatedly dissolved in the unhounded hyperspace of the Transcendent Other, there will always be a slow drift away from the sense of self as part of nature’s larger whole. The ultimate consequence of this drift is the fatal ennui that now permeates western civilization.” 7

In addition, research has suggested the previous use of such substances in some of the most venerated rituals of our cultural history. The Eleusinian Mysteries, practiced annually in Greece for nearly 2000 years, and boasting thousands of initiates per ritual, were suspected of using either hallucinogenic mushrooms, or ergot (from which LSD is derived) in their sacred drink, the Kykeon. The grain goddess, Demeter, in her grief over the loss of her daughter Persephone, refuses the draft of wine she is offered, and instead demands the creation of Kykeon, a recipe made of barley, water, and pennyroyal, which she gives to humans as a way of reconstituting her worship. Her worship is of the grain itself, the staff of life, from which humanity is able to learn the mysteries of life and death, and through which the continuation of life is guaranteed. Ergot grows naturally in the mold of decaying grain, and would likely have been known to the priests and priestesses of the ancient world.

And so the breaking open of the soul, the call for help, the thirst for answers, for a new way of seeing, are all necessary elements of transformation. As Einstein has said, “We cannot solve the problems we face today with the same kind of thinking that created them.”

The combined questions of “Whom does the Grail serve?” and “What does the Grail contain?” integrate subject and object, substance and essence, container and contained. They provide both the lock which protects the mysteries and the key which opens them. And with that distinguished combination, the door becomes a portal to the possible.

1. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series, XVII, p. 71

2. Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology, New York, Viking Press, 1964, p. 507.

3. Op. cit. p. 508.

4. John Mathews, The Grail: Quest for the Eternal, New York, Crossroad, 1981, p. 9.

5. Jame Mills, The Underground Empire: Where Crime and Government Embrace, New York, Doubleday, 1986, p. 3, as quoted in The Paradigm Conspiracy. Denise Breton and Christopher Largent, Minnesota, Hazelden, 1996, p. 2.

6. Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge, New York, Bantam Books, 1992, p. xxi.

7. op.cit. p. 53.

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