The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code (20 page)

Rahn believed that Eschenbach was inspired to write his Grail romance by the Cathar story, citing the similarities between his hero Parzival, whose name means `pierce well' and the heroic Viscount of Carcassonne, Trencavel - `cut well'. Other characters were matched with real people from that time and place, including the Fisher King Anfortas22 with Ramon-Roger de Foix. And of course what else could the fictitious `Montsalvage' ('Mount Haven' or `secure mountain') be other than Montsegur? Moreover, Montsalvage is protected by a `Fountain Salvage', which Rahn linked to the fountain of Fontesorbes, while the forest surrounding Montsalvage, `Briciljan' in the tale, must be the wood known as Priscillien. Rahn noted triumphantly: `Yes: only the Cathar fortress of Montsegur, in the Ariegois Pyrenees, could have been the inviolable temple of the Grail.'23

To Rahn, the Grail was one of several stone tablets inscribed with runic writing, although he elaborated `The Grail is triple: it is a book of knowledge, a symbolic cup containing that knowledge and a stone ...' He believed it was a green stone, similar to the legendary emerald stone of the Hermetic master Hermes Trismegistus on which the greatest occult secrets are engraved. Rahn saw it as an emerald of 144 facets (twelve times twelve, the number of perfection), or 144 smaller stones inscribed in emerald. This stone had fallen from Lucifer's crown when he fell to earth - onto Montsegur.

As Arnaud d'Apremont writes in the Introduction to the French edition of Lucifer's Court:

Now, if for common mortals, Lucifer is synonymous with the devil, with Satan, it was not the same for Rahn. For the latter, Lucifer was Lucibel, the light bearer, Abellio, Belenos, Baldur, Apollo . . . A highly pure and luminous figure. Rahn . . . wanted to see himself recognized as a 'Light-bearer', a Lucifer .14

He adds: `There is nothing there that couldn't be written by Rahn the Cathar or Rahn the pagan.' Rahn himself claimed that as the stone that fell from Lucifer's diadem, the Church claimed it, `in order to christianize it'.25 The stone is believed to bestow nearimmortality: perhaps the literal-minded Rahn was seeking it as a gift for his Fiihrer - in which case we must be very grateful for the fact that apparently he failed to find it.

Rahn believed that:

the Old and New Testaments, even if they speak of different `anti-gods', have a single and unique knowledge. The Old Testament curses the `fair star of the morning'; the New Testament reveals to us in the [apocryphal] Apocalypse of John, that a certain `king and angel of the abyss' bears `in Greek the name of Apollyon'.

He explains: `Apollyon, angel of the abyss and prince of this world, is the luminous Apollo.' He links the two by citing the fact that the Greek for morning star is Phosphorus (or `Light-bearer'), which `passed for the faithful companion, the announcer and representative of Apollo, seemingly the sun,26 the greatest light bearer, and that Apollo himself was confused with the fair "Star of the Morning", the sun.' Of course the Church would consider an ancient solar god to be synonymous with Satan in any case.

Rahn believed that the crusade against the Cathars represented the war between `the Cross and the Grail', and that the Perfecti held the power of Lucifer in the form of the green stone. This is presumably the product of an over-heated romantic imagination, but there is reason to believe that the Cathars did possess a `Grail', although it may have been neither a stone nor a cup .. .

An unholy Grail

What is (or was) the Holy Grail, according to the medieval accounts? The earliest of the stories is Chretien de Troyes' unfinished Perceval (or Le conte del Graal), written in the 1180s, but whether he died or simply gave up with it is not known. It concerns a grail (or graal), introduced in this scene: `Two more youths appeared carrying candelabras followed by a fair maiden who held a bejewelled, golden grail in both her hands.' It only becomes the Grail as the story develops, and the only significance of the definite article is that it is this particular Grail that is at the centre of events. And neither is it a holy grail: although the story is set against a Christian background (how could it be otherwise?), Chretien's graal is given no religious significance, and certainly makes no connection with Jesus. It is simply an object with magical properties.

There is little mystery about the nature of Chretien's graal. Although later writers seem to have been unaware of the meaning of the term, Chretien clearly felt he had no need to elaborate because he assumed his audience would be familiar with a graal. Unromantically, the word is probably a variant of the Old French gradal, meaning a type of serving dish. He describes it specifically as scutella lata et aliquantulum profunda - `a wide and slightly deep dish' - in other words, something like a platter or salver, a conclusion supported by the fact that it magically produces food (in this version only for the Fisher King, but in later versions for the whole court). Its magical or mystical properties make it important, not the fact that it is a grail. (Just as the significance of a story about a magic teapot would lie in the fact that it was magic, not that it was a teapot.)

Chretien's tale was both popular and unfinished, presenting an irresistible challenge to other poets to compose their own versions, so the story - and the Grail - underwent a rapid process of evolution. The focus shifted away from Perceval, the hero of the Grail quest becoming Gawain (probably because Chretien's story breaks off in the middle of a subplot in which he features) and then Galahad, a newly invented, annoyingly perfect character who basically seems like a thinly-disguised Jesus.

The development of the Grail into the Cup of Christ happened quickly. In an anonymous continuation of Perceval, written within a decade or so of Chretien's original, the author fused it with quite separate legends - which, according to British author Andrew Collins ,27 date back to the eighth or ninth centuries - of Joseph of Arimathea bringing a cup containing Jesus' blood to Britain. Presumably this was inspired by the concept of the Grail as a vessel, the author casting around for something similar to link it with Jesus.

This line was followed by Robert de Boron in Joseph d'Arimathie, written in the 1190s or very early 1200s. This is when it becomes the Holy Grail - sangreal: Robert was aware of the pun of `San greal' and `Sang real' '21 although in his version the latter meant `true blood'. A major, influential telling of this version of the Grail story was the Queste del San Graal, part of a vast Arthurian cycle composed by Cistercian monks between 1215 and 1235 (in which Galahad makes his first appearance).

Clearly all this represents the Christianization of the Grail, and the development of the Grail story into a Christian morality tale. Whether this was a deliberate attempt to undermine the heretical elements of the original, or simply the result of the permeation of Christian thought throughout all medieval art and literature, is impossible to tell. (The legends of Joseph of Arimathea were not entirely devoid of the whiff of heresy, since the legend also claimed that Joseph carried secret teachings of Jesus, which he passed on to his family. Besides, the Grail quest never really lost its Gnostic flavour, with the hero finding his way to the divine through his own endeavours; but perhaps this was damage limitation by the Church.) It was this line that went on to influence Mallory's La Morte d'Arthur and even the Steven Speilberg/Harrison Ford classic, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

However, this was quite different from the line taken in the other major retelling of the Grail story, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, written between 1200 and 1210, therefore in parallel with the `Christ's Cup' concept. It would be interesting to know whether Wolfram was aware of, and deliberately ignored, the Christianized continuations of Chretien's tale.

A slight ripple was created by the anonymous Perlesvaus, written between the 1190s and 1220s, as the author - a cleric of some kind - claimed that he found the story in a book at Glastonbury Abbey, though most scholars believe this was just an attempt to gain credibility. Sitting between the Christianized version and Wolfram's, it is clearly based on Robert de Boron's version of the fused Grail/Joseph of Arimathea tale and, on the surface, follows the same Christian morality tale, but it has some very interesting heretical elements - an emphasis on severed heads, alchemical references and Gawain's parallel quest for the sword that beheaded John the Baptist.

In Parzival, the Gral is described as a stone. Why Wolfram transformed Chrdtien's dish or salver in this way is unknown - it has been suggested that he simply misunderstood the French word (he made other mistakes in translation, for example rendering `carving dish' as `carving knives'). However, his Grail does have the property of miraculously producing food and drink, so there is still the connection with a serving dish. Wolfram gives the Grail many other magical abilities - those who see it cannot die for a certain length of time, and instructions from Heaven appear on it.

However, if Wolfram's reason for making the Grail a stone remains unknown, at least we know where his idea originated: the medieval German poem Alexander, itself derived from popular legends of the Emperor Alexander, many variants of which circulated in the Middle Ages. Wolfram is known to have been familiar with Alexander and several elements of Parzival are clearly inspired by it. Most importantly, Alexander receives a miraculous stone - it changes weight and in some versions has rejuvenating properties - which is even described in some Latin copies as lapis exilis ('small stone'), which presumably became corrupted into Wolfram's term for the Grail, lapsit exillis. So Wolfram, too, has merged Chretien's Grail story with a separate legend.

Wolfram links the origins of the Grail - its being brought to earth - with the `neutral angels', i.e. those who took neither side in the war between God and Lucifer, although there is some ambiguity about whether the neutral angels or another group were responsible for bringing it down to earth (see below). In any case, since the angels departed it has been protected by an order of knighthood, explicitly described as Templars, and a bloodline of Grail kings.

Wolfram claimed not only to know the proper ending to the story, but also to have had access to a more authentic version than even Chretien - although if Chretien based his story on Peredur, then this claim is clearly false. Wolfram states that his version derived from the works of the `heathen' Flegetanis, via Kyot of Provens:

There was a heathen named Flegetanis who was highly renowned for his acquirements. This same physicus was descended from Solomon, begotten of Israelitish kin all the way down from ancient times till the Baptism became our shield against hellfire. He wrote of the marvels of the Gral. Flegetanis, who worshipped a calf as though it were his god, was a heathen by his father. How can the Devil make such mock of such knowledgeable people, in that He Whose power is greatest and to Whom all marvels are known neither does nor did not part them from their folly? For the infidel Flegetanis was able to define for us the recession of each planet and its return, and how long each revolves in its orbit before it stands at its mark again. All human kind are affected by the revolutions of the planets. With his own eyes the heathen Flegetanis saw - and he spoke of it reverentially - hidden secrets in the constellations. He declared there was a thing called the Gral, whose name he read in the stars without more ado. `A troop left it on earth and then rose high above the stars, if their innocence drew them back again. Afterwards a Christian progeny bred to a pure life had the duty of keeping it. Those humans who are summoned to the Gral are ever worthy.' Thus did Flegetanis write on this theme.

The wise Master Kyot embarked on a search for this tale in Latin books in order to discover where there may have been a people suited to keep the Gral and follow a disciplined life. He read the chronicles of various lands in Britain and elsewhere, in France and Ireland; but it was in Anjou that he found the tale 29

As we have seen, the original Grail was a large dish or salver, but what inspired Chretien with that idea?

Perceval is modelled on the Celtic folk tale Peredur, Son of Efrawg, part of the celebrated collection of Welsh tales known as the Mabinogion. The Grail itself is derived from the severed male head carried on a platter that features in that tale.

Peredur is entertained by the lord of a castle, a lame knight, who turns out to be his uncle:

Thereupon he could see two youths coming into the hall, and from the hall proceeding to a chamber, and with them a spear of exceeding great size, and three streams of blood along it, running from the socket to the floor. And when they all saw the youths coming after that fashion, every one set up a crying and a lamentation, so that it was not easy for any to bear with them. The man did not, for all that, interrupt his conversation with Peredur. The man did not tell Peredur what that was, nor did he ask it of him. After silence for a short while, thereupon, lo, two maidens coming in, and a great salver between them, and a man's head on the salver, and blood in profusion around the head. And then all shrieked and cried out, so that it was hard for any to be in the same house as they. At last they desisted therefrom, and sat as long as they pleased, and drank."

The fact that Chretien's tale lacks an ending reveals that the writers of the continuations were not familiar with Peredur, as both the Christianizing writers and Wolfram add endings that are quite different from the Celtic original. In fact much of the traditional mystique of the Grail romances derives from trying to provide explanations for the miraculous elements that, in the original Welsh tale, are entirely unnecessary. In particular, there is the mystery of the nature of the Grail, and of the Question that will lift the enchantment on the Fisher King.