The Modern Search for the Holy Grail
Finding peace and happiness with 3 hints from Arthurian legend
Mythology isn’t myth.
The cryptic symbolism and archaic dynamics are stories of the inner world. 21st century society has been an experiment showcasing the disastrous consequences of up-rooting mankind from its spiritual inheritance.
We’ve created a hole so vast and terrifying, no amount of media, alcohol, and pornography can fill it.
Mythology is a collective dream, and dreams are rich in wisdom.
The legend of Parsifal and his quest for the Holy Grail originated in France in the 12th century (about the time our modern world began to emerge). The equally legendary Jungian psychology, Robert A. Johnson, believed this myth contained the pathology and cure to our age’s loss of meaning.
It aligns with Carl Jung’s theory of individuation: the pursuit of becoming who you really are.
He: Understanding Masculine Psychology by Robert A. Johnson is a hidden masterpiece.
Here’s 3 hints from the greatest myth of our time to help you complete your life’s quest…
“Every person must live the inner life in one form or another. Consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily, the inner world will claim us and exact its dues”
– Robert A. Johnson
👨🌾 Hint #1: Innocent Fool
Our legend begins with a young man living in remote Wales with his mother.
One day, Parsifal sees 5 knights of King Arthur’s round table passing through the woods. Thinking he’s witnessed angels, he runs home to tell his mother. In despair, she tells him of his heritage: his father and 2 brothers lived and died as knights.
Her intention was to shelter him from the same fate.
It’s too late.
Parsifal (which translates as “innocent fool”) is overwhelmed by the idea of heroics and action that makes boys to swing sticks like swords, and men to go to war. He resolves to follow his father’s footsteps. Finally his mother relents, and gives him 2 gifts: a peasant overall garment and the advice: “don’t ask too many questions.”
The young fool leaves his mother, whose name is Heart’s Sorrow.
What does this mean?
All good heroes come from humble backgrounds:
Luke Skywalker from Tatooine
Harry Potter from under the stairs
Odysseus from the innocuous Ithaca
Wales at the time (and perhaps today) was a little known place on the fringes of people’s awareness.
Symbolically, it means the solution will come from somewhere you don’t expect. “Nazareth! Can anything good from there?” . . . “Come and see,” said Philip.
To become good at something, you first have to accept being bad at it.
“The fool is the precursor to the hero” Dr Jordan Peterson tells us. We Westerners have a faulty belief that if you’re born to do something, you should show incredible promise at it from the beginning.
This is cowardice fuelled by laziness.
Hemingway was born illiterate
Jimi Hendrix once didn’t know how to solo
Picasso’s first drawing was properly terrible
If you study the greats, you’ll realise the only thing they possessed that we don’t is an enthusiasm (a great word meaning “in god”). The love they had for their art surpassed any shame they felt for being inadequate – so paradoxically, nothing stopped them from becoming efficient very quickly.
There’s no lack of intelligence or good schooling for English in Japan.
But few Japanese speak good English, because everyone’s too shy to look foolish.
The fool might get sneered and laughed at. But really, we’re the idiots for doing so. The innocent fool will, as we’ll see, become the hero – the rest of us, projecting our insecurity onto her, will live stagnant lives.
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👹 Hint #2: The Red Knight
Parsifal travels to Camelot – the castle of King Arthur.
Dressed in peasant garb and looking well in over his head, obviously no one takes him seriously. Eventually, his determination lands him a hearing with King Arthur, who graciously informs him that to become a knight requires many years of study and training.
As it’s all looking uncertain for poor Parsifal, a miracle happens.
There’s a maiden of the court who hasn’t laughed, or even smiled, for many years.
It has been prophesied only the greatest knight of the age can break her spell. As Parsifal stands there, a gormless youth wearing a onesie his mother made him (the Welsh accent probably didn’t help), she bursts into tears of laughter.
The room goes silent.
Taking Parsifal more seriously now, when he asks for armour and weapons, Arthur thinks “hell, I know how to test this guy.”
The Red Knight is as much trouble as he is big and powerful. He’s stolen priceless trinkets, thrown a cup of wine in Queen Guinevere’s face, and generally pissed everyone off. But no one can kick him out. The King tells Parsifal that he can have the Red Knight’s armour (if he can get it off him).
Due to his unexpectedness, ingenuity, and swiftness, Parsifal kills the Red Knight.
A David and Goliath situation.
What does this mean?
The laughing maiden reinforces our Divine Fool motif.
Killing a Red Knight is our initiation. Our first major victory against impossible odds. For me, this was getting through basic training and becoming a paratrooper. It could anything:
Graduating university with good grades
Standing up to bullies or relatives
Writing your first book
It’s not so much what you do – but what you’ve overcome to do it.
When a big problem is defeated, all the energy caught up in it is released back into us. Confidence grows, fear is vanquished, and we realise we’re capable of great things.
Parsifal also gains a great mentor: Gornemant.
(Who begins instructing him in those years of study and training the King mentioned).
A mentor or godfather/mother is a fantastic thing for a young person. It’s very rare for a parent-child relationship to evolve into something productive past a certain age. They’ve reared them, even wiped their butt, now they’re all grown up and don’t want to be reminded of it. Communication breaks down. The son or daughter is too familiar with their parents to listen to any “tough” real world advice – and the parents probably can’t give it.
Parsifal returns to his mother one day as a knight, and finds out she died of a broken heart the moment he left.
These things aren’t easy.
That’s why it’s so important to find mentors, or anyone we can learn about the big bad world from. Parsifal takes Gornemant’s advice on everything but taking off his mother’s handmade garment (which is unbefitting of a Knight). He wears it awkwardly under his armour.
A mistake that will cost him dearly.
🏰 Hint #3: The Grail Castle
Parsifal sets out and does many brave deeds blah-blah.
Eventually, he comes across the Fisher King. Injured in his thigh, he lives in constant agony except when he’s immersed fishing (hence the name). Politely discoursing, the Fisher King invites the good knight back to his castle to spend the night:
“Just go down the road, and turn left across the drawbridge.”
A strange ritual is carried out each night in that castle.
Many magic items are carried through procession towards the broken King on his throne, but lastly, none other is brought out than the Holy Grail (the cup Jesus drank from at the last supper). In true fairytale fashion, an ineffectual King equals an ineffectual Kingdom. The Grail offers abundance and healing to whoever drinks from it.
In a cruel twist of fate, the Fisher King (whose true title is the Grail King) is unable to drink from it.
It is said this curse will be lifted by a fool who asks the right question at the right time.
In his training, Parsifal was told by his mentor, Gornemant, that if he ever finds himself in the Grail Castle, he should ask: “whom does the Grail serve?” The Grail reaches the King, the moment comes for Parsifal to speak the magic words, but he remembers his mother’s advice from all those years ago: “don’t ask too many questions.”
The moment passes.
Everyone else enjoys the gifts of the Grail, and the Grail King is carried away for another long night of suffering.
When Parsifal leaves the castle the next morning, once over the drawbridge, he turns around to see it’s gone. Further along the road, he comes across an old woman. He enquires about the castle, and she informs him about its true nature. She also scolds him for not asking the all important question.
What does this mean?
Like after Jacobs fight with the angel in Genesis, the Grail King is injured in his thigh.
Symbolic of a deep and troubling womb that is caused by a confrontation with God (or the greater will of reality). Robert A. Johnson discussed the 3 levels of consciousness in his book: Transformation (read my letter on it HERE or grab it for yourself HERE):
Simple consciousness
Complex consciousness
Enlightened consciousness
Childhood is like being in Eden.
A confrontation with reality takes us out of that state of bliss, and places us in psychological complexity. This is the desert, the long road, the exodus we spend most of our adult lives fighting with ourselves in.
It’s suffering, plain and simple.
The Grail represents the panacea to our womb, the reconciliation of trauma.
From it goodness in abundance spring. But here’s the catch. To work, you have ask the question: “whom does it serve.” God, the power above human ego-consciousness and self-centredness. It’s worth noting you don’t have to answer the question, because a good question answers itself.
Parsifal, still wearing his mother’s clothing, doesn’t ask the right question.
He’s wearing knights armour, and to all appearances looks like a man.
But underlying his masculine facade is a boy with a mother-complex. Lamenting his mistake, he vowels to never sleep in the same bed twice until he’s re-found the Grail Castle, and asks the right question. 20 years of tireless questing follow.
Parsifal is an old jaded knight.
Many good things have been achieved, yet he’s restless and bitter.
Finally, he finds it again. The story ends here. Some say the author died, others that he couldn’t think of an ending. I think there was nothing more to be said. He likely entered, watched the procession, asked the right question, the King was healed, the Kingdom flourished, everyone lived happily ever after, and Parsifal found the peace he was searching for.
After all, it was only down the road and left across the drawbridge.
“The object of life is not happiness, but to serve God or the Grail. All of the Grail quests are to serve God. If one understands this and drops his idiotic notion that the meaning of life is personal happiness, then one will find that elusive quality immediately at hand”
– Robert A. Johnson
That’s it!
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