The conspiracy of the false legend of the Grail

reply to post by poet1b

Um, they need better writers? Don't know, never made it through an entire episode of either.

Me either actually.

That is different than what is going on here. This is expanding a tiny element in a developed story, and sliding in completely different elements. It would be like Hermine showing up in a Star Wars movie carrying Harry Potter's baby.

Harry Potter is a Star Wars movie with a different conceit. They are both use the same framework - a hero's journey - to tell a tale of overcoming hardships to gain a measure of personal salvation. If a medieval story teller heard the Star Wars story in France and then went to England and adapted it to local experience, he might well come up with Harry Potter. Why not?

Have you read the Mabigonion? Do you know what I am talking about? You might want to add a little weight to your reading material.

No I haven't, but I'll look it up sometime. I have read plenty of other 'weighty' stuff, what makes you think a mention of a couple of (rather weighty) TV Science Fiction shows defines my reading habits? Have you read Gilgamesh? The Bible? Why did the authors of the Bible change and add otherwise unrelated elements of Sumerian and Babylonian stories to their narrative? Why did the early Jesus movements model their stories on Egyptian mythology? Do you know what I am talking about?

I have already recommended rather weighty scholarly works, works by the way would go a long way to answering your question. One of Joseph Campbell's central themes, explored in great detail in the Masks of God volumes, is how mythology is adapted over time by incorporating new elements and combining memes from variouis stories to give them renewed meaning and relevance to later generations. There is no one 'official' version of a myth. Chretien wrote what he wanted to write (and didn't finish it), later authors used aspects of his story, expanded the framework, changed the actors, what ever. That is part of what good story tellers do: add freshness to familiar stories to keep their audience interested.

Specifically with regard to the Grail story, Campbell has this to say about its development (actually he goes on for something like 50 pages of analysis in Masks of God Volume IV and this is from somewhere in the middle of that discussion): (any transcription errors are mine)

In sum: by Chretien's time, c. 1160-1190, there was a floating body of Celtic lore available in French, both in oral and in written form, from which the poets of the age were deriving the matiere of those masterworks of poetic romance that stand at the headwaters of our modern creative tradition. Back of all lay Celtic myth. Next, as a consequence of historic crises, new names and personalities - Arthur, Gawain, Tristan, Mark, et cetera - became the focal centers around which a new folk tradition developed, renewing the timeless archetypes of old: the well-known Celtic mythic and legendary patterns of hero birth and death, tragic loves and magical deeds. The composition of these folk materials into masterful oral epics followed, as the work of professional fabulators - some, no doubt, in the cottages of the peasantry, others, we know, in the palace halls of kings. Presently, c. 1150, written version began appearing and what is known as the "history of literature" began - almost chemically, on every hand simultaneously, with inspired authors at work on identical themes: everywhere the same matiere, but in each case a different san

In other words, story tellers 'stole' ideas from the story tellers that went before embellish it to make it their own.

And that, by the way, explains why Stargate Universe is similar in basic conceit to Battlestar Galactica, but not identical in story.

reply to post by rnaa


Do you know that all songs, except for a rare few exceptions, are written with the same 12 notes?

This doesn't mean that all songs are the same, or all stories, and in almost every story there is a hero, and they are not all the same.

If you think so, then you are tone deaf. No, Harry Potter is NOT a Star Wars movie with a different conceit. While they may share the same notes, good verses evil, they have different beats and different story lines, different main character conflicts, different arcs. Yes, in both movies, 15 minutes into the story the main character conflict is introduced, and half way through the movie, the point of no return is reached, but the way these are done are completely different.

I am not interested in defining your reading habits. The Mabigonion happens to be a critical part of this discussion. If you want to participate in this discussion, you should familiarize yourself with the work.

What I am pointing out here is that the whole Grail story slapped into the Arthurian tales is like the lead guitarist doing the solo in the key of G when the song is written in the key of D. Capice?

Why did the authors of the Bible change and add otherwise unrelated elements of Sumerian and Babylonian stories to their narrative?

Because they were heavily influenced by these cultures. They were even more influenced by Persian culture, and Zoroastrianism.

Doing genealogy research, I unexpectedly came upon some very interesting information.

According to some of the family trees that I used for researching my own, Mary Magdalene and her (second?) husband, James the Just (Jesus's half brother?) left to Glastonbury with Joseph of Arimethea and some others...and possibly Joseph might have been the Joseph who was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

They arrived there shortly before the crap hit the fan in Jerusalem. The oldest child of Mary and James was named Anna of Judea and she married a man native to their new home and their offspring were the first Kings of whatever they called that part of England in those days - Briton I guess it was. The spelling of the names is very Welsh, imo.

Anna of Judea's grandson or great-grandson was the actual King behind the nursery rhyme Old King Cole.

The line went on and remained aristocracy until somewhere within the last 2 or 3 hundred years...including Eleanor of Aquitaine and Anne Plantagenet.

reply to post by queenannie38


Wow, that is an amazing find. Where did you get this information?

Any online sources?

reply to post by poet1b


Well, I do my own research mostly at Ancestry.com and there is a new website called One Great Family that does something different in that they put all member's submitted trees into their database in order to make the connections that are missed by individuals...and it goes way back...all the way to the people in the bible.

What is amazing, to me, is that those people in the bible eventually descend into what might be called "regular" people - real people that aren't biblical or mythical or even Jewish or Hebrew....

I can post some of the bloodlines that I've found, but I'll have to do it this evening when I have more time. I was amazed to the point that I looked into the sources of some of the trees - and they seem legit. There are minor variations in comparison but it appears that this is mostly due to the old tradition of naming children after their parents and grandparents...and then there are second wives that aren't always listed on a tree but that had children with a widowed father and it is that line that carries on that particular lineage. Sometimes, too, it is just a single child!

Anna of Judea had a daughter, Penardun Verch Bran, who had a son named Coel ap Cyllin. This is "Old King Cole" and his line descends into the family of the King Dagobert (there were at least 4 King Dagoberts)...then onto Marcomir of the Franks, Clovis, the house of Saxony, then Mathilde Carolingian marries into the family...and it goes on and on until it gets to immigrants from Wiltshire who moved to Pennsylvania.

reply to post by queenannie38


I didn't know that ancestory.com had access to records that go back that far. I wonder where their sources come from.

Does anyone know how far back the Census goes in Britain?

I know my family tree was traced back through county records of births, and online communications. A quick search brings up wiki which puts a start of 1801, and these is mention of a census taken as early as the 7th century.

At a certain point, most of this information must have came from an oral tradition.

reply to post by poet1b


Hi,
Great post. As we know though, all good stories have some truth, and then a stretch of the truth, some stories more than others. It's like the game of Chinese whispers, for some reason there always needs to be one person that changes the path, of what was said Namaste

reply to post by poet1b

I am not interested in defining your reading habits. The Mabigonion happens to be a critical part of this discussion. If you want to participate in this discussion, you should familiarize yourself with the work.

And I am not interested in derailing your discussion of the Mabigonion, but that doesn't seem to be what you are discussing. It appears to me that you are 'complaining' that 12th Century story tellers expropriated elements of earlier stories, specifically the Celtic mythology from Britain and the Grail mythology from the Continent to produce something new and meaningful to them. You 'seem' to be arguing that this is an illigitimate theft of intellectual insight. On the other hand, I am pointing out that this process happens all the time, and has done so since man first began telling campfire stories.

Edit:
I find that I have been 'introduced' to the Mabigonion tales through my readings of 'The Quest for Merlin' by Nikolai Tolstoy, and "Celtic Myths and Legends" by T.W. Rolleston. The Tolstoy book mention was very brief, and the Rolleston book was an overview of all Celtic Myth, not just Welsh. So I have not focused on the Welsh versions on their own. The Rolleston book especially points out my thesis, the legends described in the Mabigonion were not anything like 'an official' version, they are just the version that someone wrote down in Welsh.

All Celts had similar legends, told in their own way, with local events and identities thrown in. Identifying the unifying core of the various versions is what makes mythology scholarship; attempting to tie down one particular version as the "one true version" is taking away the entire point of story telling and removing its power to inspire.

What I am pointing out here is that the whole Grail story slapped into the Arthurian tales is like the lead guitarist doing the solo in the key of G when the song is written in the key of D. Capice?

More like a producer taking a pop ditty and adding a gritty blues line to give it some additional emotional content. The Arthurian story line and the Grail story line are not 'out of key' with each other; they complement each other and extend the meanings of each. Capice?

Sure I understand that music in the Western Tradition only has 12 basic notes and story telling has a limited number of 'notes' too.

Harry Potter and Star Wars are both hero quests, from start to finish. Of course they are different stories, but they follow exactly the same template. Different aspects of the template are given different emphasis by the respective authors, that doesn't invalidate the concept.

The bare bones skeleton of the hero quest template common to both includes the following "notes":

• Call to Adventure (and initial refusal)
  
• Supernatural Aid
  
• Threshold Guardian(s)
  
• Threshold (beginning of transformation)
  
• Challenges and Temptations (with interactions with Helpers and Mentors)
  
• Abyss - death and rebirth (can be metaphorical - Luke into the waste shute for example)
  
• Transformation
  
• Atonement
  
• Return to the 'Real World' with the 'boons' earned during the quest
  

Of course there is a lot of discussion involved in understanding what these steps involve, just as there is a lot of music theory behind your 12 notes.

Many, many, books and films follow this template explicitly or implicitly. Though some focus on a small part of the cycle for their particular artistic conceit, just as not all music pieces use all 12 notes, it is the single most common template by a wide margin. Perhaps the film that most explicitly and rigidly follows this template is "Eyes Wide Shut", which could literally be taken as a text book example, just as "Do-Re-Mi" is an obvious exposition of the C-major scale.

Just as in music, where there are other scales than the 12 notes we in the west are familiar with, in story telling there exist other templates. But you would be hard pressed to find an example of one, as this template is seemingly hardwired into our brains and consequent societies. We all go through various permutations of this cycle at many levels in our lives, and that is its universal power and appeal.

For more information about how seemingly impossibly different films are fundamentally quite alike in this regard (how about "Sleepless in Seattle" and "The Lion King" and "The Godfather") you could check out "Stealing Fire From the Gods", by James Bonnet, "Myth and the Movies", by Stuart Voytilla, or "The Writer's Journey", by Christopher Vogler.

Another source you may be interested in for background information on story telling archetypes, (the 'notes') is "The Mobile Jung" edited by Joseph Campbell. I have found this book quite approachable, though one would hardly call it a 'rousing read'.

reply to post by rnaa


No. not "an illigitimate theft of intellectual insight", but a legitimate attempt to hide the original story.

It is one thing to be influenced by earlier tales, but to completely rewrite an existing story, and replace the original with the vastly altered version, is strange indeed. That British writers would prefer the French version where King Arthur's greatest knight is a French man who is sleeping with his wife is even stranger. Then Arthur's knights, for reasons unexplained, suddenly go on the grail quest.

I think the most interesting part of the grail version is, why would these amazingly interesting characters of King Arthur's court go on a grail quest.

What is the conspiracy here? That it seems history has tried to hide the richness of the mythology of the Isle of the Mighty. It is hard to claim that these people were so backwards in comparison to the parts of the world that we are told is the true path of the development civilization, when their mythology is so much more richer than that of supposedly superior civilizations.

reply to post by poet1b

No. not "an illigitimate theft of intellectual insight", but a legitimate attempt to hide the original story.

In what way has the story been hidden? You have open access to it do you not? The T.W. Rolleston book I mentioned before was written in 1911, he certainly had access to it (he probably read it in the original Welsh, I suppose). Lady Guest did her translation from Welsh to English in the mid 1800's. So if it was hidden, it wasn't hidden very well.

I notice that the written version of the Mabinogion are dated to the late 1300's, as the White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest. Of course the oral versions are older, apparently sometime between 1050 and 1200 (can you think of some important upheaval that occured in that time frame? hint look up 1066). Geoffrey of Monmouth in was writing in the early 1100's, Christien de Troyes was writing in the late 1100's, and Robert de Boron slightly later, maybe the early 1200's.

So whose story has the legitimate claim to originality?

The answer is, of course, none of the above. They are all legitimate, and were very close to being done in parallel. Neither is hiding anything from the other. The story lines were competing for ears in the post Norman Conquest era. Mythic ideas from the continent were brought to Britain with the Normans, and blended with ideas from the Celtic tradition.

Monmouth's History of Britain was immensely popular, Christien added the Grail stories, de Boron made the overtly Pagan tales acceptable to the Christian orthodoxy. Each author added his own personality and motives to the story in order to gain an audience.

What is nefarious about that in any way? Why is it Monmouth's problem that he 'published' his version before the Red and/or White books? Or that they were popular and written in (medieval) English (Edit: actually Monmouth probably wrote in medieval French, I haven't checked) for the much larger readership that entailed?

The fact that the Red and White books were published speaks against them being hidden. That it took 500 years for them to be translated speaks perhaps more to the Welsh desire to keep their own culture on a small island dominated by the Normans and, later, the English, than to hiding anything, I think. Anyone who could read Welsh was capable of reading the tales, that isn't hiding, that is ensuring the language survives.

Edit 2: Here is another essay that explains the dynamic growth and some of the politcal and religious background behind that growth.

reply to post by poet1b

That British writers

What British writers?

would prefer the French version where King Arthur's greatest knight is a French man who is sleeping with his wife is even stranger.

Ever hear of the Norman Invasion of 1066? The Normans are from Normandy, which is on the coast of France. After the Norman Conquest, French was the official language in Britain. The Rulers were French (that is Normans).

Monmouth was writing in the early 1100's less than a century after the Conquest. Christien de Troyes was writing in the middle to late 1100's and was from (wait for it) Troyes France.

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by queenannie38

 

I didn't know that ancestory.com had access to records that go back that far. I wonder where their sources come from.

Well, it is from that One Great Family site that the earliest records come from - these are from other family trees that have private records such as the genealogies in family bibles.

Ancestry, I think, has a lot of records not yet converted to their database format; they do a lot of the work through volunteers, online. I did a few myself but it was too tedious for my mind...I admire and appreciate those that have done this work, for sure. All the time there are notices of new records, having been completed in that process of transcribing for the database.

The present interest in doing family trees is actually a revival of something that was traditionally one of the most important responsibilities of the family head - usually the oldest who inherited the family estate and name, and handing it down to their heir. These family records are a big source of historical knowledge, especially the small details that wouldn't be known or of interest to the historical scholars who kept up with larger histories such as national and world events.

In considering sources of family lineage documentation, citing two or three other trees, with shared members, is considered legitimate and reliable for names and dates that took place before there were things such as censuses, court dockets, and tax records,to record such information.

And then, also, the Jewish community is very diligent in keeping their own records of that type up until this very day. Besides it being a very important thing to them culturally, it is also a religious priority - their Messiah will be a direct descendant of the line of David and so they have kept their trees for this reason. And now that there is DNA verification, it turns out that their recorded information correlates with what is found through the DNA testing.

Does anyone know how far back the Census goes in Britain?

I don't know, for sure. I do know that one of the very first kings, maybe even William the Conqueror, began keeping records of the taxable property of his citizens.
But at Ancestry, the earliest UK census they have in their database is 1841.
There is a US census as early as 1790.
Ireland has a religious census from 1766.

I know my family tree was traced back through county records of births, and online communications. A quick search brings up wiki which puts a start of 1801, and these is mention of a census taken as early as the 7th century.

At a certain point, most of this information must have came from an oral tradition.

Well, it isn't oral, actually, but written down, like I described above. At least as far as in the Western world, including Western Europe.

reply to post by rnaa


I didn't say the story was hidden, I said they attempted to hide the story.

The thing is, they have pretty much succeeded. Most people do not know about the Mabigonion.

Even your source states that Chretien based his story on an earlier manuscript.

www.sangraal.com...

While the scope of Perceval, or the History of the Grail is broad enough to encompass the entire medieval world view, it is riddled with difficulties and inconsistencies. Chretien himself claimed that he was merely reworking the material that he had found in an old manuscript. Perhaps the marvels and strange doings of his Celtic original simply proved too much for Chretien's more down to earth approach. At any rate, his version ends after Gawain's adventure of the Perilous Bed.

And that the tale comes from the Mabigonion.

Perceval's early life echoes the boyhoods of the great Celtic Solar Heroes Culchuin and Finn. His entry to the great hall of Camelot is taken from the tale of Kulwich in the Welsh Mabinogion.

It is completely clear, and from your source, taken that the Welsh tales were Christianized.

As has already been discussed on this thread, these tales are filled with double meanings. Had the Grail version not been promoted, essentially replacing the original Welsh tales, people might have started examining the stories for their deeper meaning centuries ago.

As it is, I am surprised that no one has yet started doing just that.

Thanks for the link, it greatly boosted my point.

reply to post by poet1b


It's an allegory meant to conceal and reveal mysteries suppressed by the Catholics. Essentially, it was concocted by Cathars and other Gnostics, blending some local legends with some older material.

This was all delved deeply into by Waite about 100 years ago, in his excellent book "The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal: Its Legends and Symbolism" which you should probably read if you want to consider yourself informed on the matter.

You don't have to agree with his conclusions or premises, but he has done all the legwork for you.

Originally posted by HattoriHanzou
This was all delved deeply into by Waite about 100 years ago, in his excellent book "The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal: Its Legends and Symbolism" which you should probably read if you want to consider yourself informed on the matter.

You can get a copy here from the Robarts Collection - University of Toronto. It is not under copyright and is available in many forms including Kindle

www.archive.org...

PDF version 746 pages 42 megs Color
ia700408.us.archive.org...

reply to post by HattoriHanzou


Yes, that seems to be a big part of why the Grail was inserted into the Arthurian tales. I just wonder if there isn't another better concealed reason, like maybe Christ was taught by the Druids?

I have to wonder what Arthurian tales were completely lost or destroyed.

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by HattoriHanzou

 

Yes, that seems to be a big part of why the Grail was inserted into the Arthurian tales. I just wonder if there isn't another better concealed reason, like maybe Christ was taught by the Druids?

I have to wonder what Arthurian tales were completely lost or destroyed.

"Christ" was an anti-Roman revolutionary Jew, and can be fairly well assumed to be an ordinary man at this point. At least, he is by me. The whole Christian religion was created as a reaction against Roman occupation, and can best be seen as a historical aberration. At least that's my opinion now.

A lot of the tales of the Troubadours were indeed recorded and saved, and if you look on Google Books with the search term, Troubadours, and then click "full view" on the left side you can find a good number of those tales in books from the late 1800s and early 1900s. They are interesting, but of course speak in allegory in order to conceal pre- and non-Christian beliefs in a time when those beliefs would get you killed. Most of the authors of the studies on the tales were Christian themselves, and labor to imply that the Troubadours themselves were concealing Gnostic Christian allegory, but in fact it is much more plausible that they were concealing pre-Christian, pagan or druid tales.

If you view the traditional scholarship through the lens of de-Christian-ification, and see that almost all scholars of religion attempt to impose their own religious identity on subject matter such as the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish tales, and the French and Spanish romances, and the Balkan tales, you can delete their superfluous additions and erase the color they add in an attempt to use scholarship to justify and enhance their own religious views. The "Judeo-Christian" studies movement started in the 1970s is, again, best viewed in this light, but it is even more ironic.

reply to post by poet1b


I strongly recommend you listen to rnaa. He is right, you are wrong. I see the same sort of mistakes in many conspiracy theorists. You guys just don't understand the true nature of myth or mysticism and so you don't see how they can take your paranoia and weave a reality tunnel out of it that traps you like a fly in a web.

I recommend that you give up conspiracy theories to study Campbell, Jung, Armstrong, and others. There are no "conspiracies" in esoterica and myth and legends. There are only archetypes of the collective unconscious and their dynamics and symbolic manifestations. Stick to conspiracies in politics and business where the unenlightened and the greedy reign supreme.

Originally posted by poet1b
There is even a religion based on the belief that Mary Magdalena traveled to Briton. Of course there is the popularity of the Da Vinci Code, and the book it was based upon and all the tales of the Knights Templar.

Great thread...A star and flag for the OP! I have noodled around with the legends myself, and I figure that the Grail Romances simply embody universal themes and that we can find the equivalent tales in any culture, likely as far back as the Sumerians.

These stories have elements that extend into modern times, too. Just to poke a stick in the spokes of the Da Vinci Code/Holy Blood and the Holy Grail folks, I submit this little-known bit of 20th Century 'heresy' from THE SPOILS OF WAR: The Secret Story of WWII Japanese & Nazi Gold by David Guyatt.

Pierre Plantard, the central character of the Rennes le Chateau mystery and supposed head of the ancient Order, the Prieure of Sion, is reported to have transferred a “large quantity of gold to Switzerland in 1952.” [21] Despite claims that the Priory of Sion has a 1000-year history dating back to the Order of warrior knights, the Knights Templar - chartered in 1151 - it only surfaced in 1956. It is said that the founding of the Priory of Sion was an artful ploy by Charles de Gaulle to conceal the true activities that were taking place in France at that time. These had more to do with laundering suspect gold bullion and political intrigue than ancient treasure, religious cults or biblical bloodlines. The latter were an accrual of old myths and legends cobbled together to form a diversionary cover story www.deepblacklies.co.uk...

Now there's another rabbit hole...the Vatican, P2...

reply to post by poet1b


There is nothing fictional about the Grail story if one digs deep enough. The Grail Cup is simply a metaphor, the actual Grail is what the Templars found while digging in King Solomon's stables, and it is that that people have died to protect, and the Church would give anything if it could be forever destroyed. I'm talking about the Bloodline of Christ and Magdalena, which is still alive today. If Christ could see what has happened to his bloodline, he would roll over in his grave.