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Welcome to the presentation the grail is found. A tour of science and spirituality with Alex
Caldon. This is the story of a few years of research,
and a lifetime of wondering. Looking through the
histories of the Grail, it appears that the story that we are going to discuss today has
been previously lost. I am going to take you through
a journey, through the steps that I have been through and hopefully by the end of the presentation
you will discover the reality of the holy grail,
the reality which was known to others who came before us.
The presentation this evening is based on the explorations of Alex Caldon described
in the book – The Quest for Truth. We are not going to have
the chance to touch on everything in the book ;
what I will be presenting to you is the edited highlights, to get a better idea of all the
evidence and research which led up to this discovery, please
do take a look at the book.
The story of the grail is some thousand years old, though it could be much longer. Records
may have been made and then lost throughout history.
The story must have been told and retold by word of mouth from generation to generation,
over the centuries. The fact that we still have the
story with us in the 21st Century is little short of a miracle. Fortunately some written
records have survived the passage of time. One of the first
recorded stories to feature the Holy Grail that we
are aware of was by Robert de Boron which was written some time between 1191 and 1202.
In his book, “Joseph d’ Arimathie” , he tells
the story of Joseph of Arimathia who, legend has it, first
brought the chalice to England. The story has it that Joseph of Arimathia took the chalice
that Jesus used at the last supper and collected the
blood of Christ as he was dying on the cross. Joseph
asked Pontius Pilate if he could have Christ’s body after the crucifixion. The wish was granted
and with Mary Magdalene and Mary, Christ’s mother,
Joseph buried Christ’s body in his own prepared tomb. Joseph then took the chalice and Christ’s
blood to England. One legend has it that Joseph found his way to Glastonbury and left the
chalice there.
Another early record of the Grail story was Perceval; The Story of the Grail, written
by Chretien de Troyes, around 1180-1191. In this story Perceval
is staying at the Castle of the Fisher King where
the Grail is first revealed to him as a Graal or platter in a procession of young men and
women carrying magnificent objects from chamber
to chamber. The graal bears a communion wafer. Afterwards Perceval returns to the court of
King Arthur. However, although the Grail appeared to
Perceval, he lost it again as he was not spiritually grown enough to hold it. In time, Perceval
continues his quest for purity and the grail. It’s important to note that this is one
of the first associations of the Grail with purity of spirit
which recurs again and again throughout the Grail
romances we are going to find that this spiritual aspect of the Grail has great importance.
This Grail was closely linked to the Christian religion
but there is also a Celtic strand to the story.
Some tellings of the Arthurian romances have it that Arthur and his knights were Christians
and some say that they were Celts. In the Celtic
tales, the grail was described as a cauldron, which like
the Christian Grail was thought to have mystical properties. The cauldron could bring dead
warriors to life, other tales claimed that the cauldron
could lead to all knowledge. We could if we wanted to
spend years researching just this one aspect of the Holy Grail but that’s not what we
are going to do here. We are going to pull out some of
the common threads from all of these Christian and
Celtic tales and see if we can make sense of them, so bear with us if we don’t spend
too much time on the Celtic tradition.
The story was carried on through the milenia – being told and retold – sometimes maybe
parts of the story were forgotten and sometimes perhaps
people added new threads. The legend was resurrected again by the pre-raphaelites at
the turn of the 20th Century. Alfred Pollard told the
story again in his bookThe Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table
in 1917. It’s clear that the legend and the fascination
have never faded away. If anything the mystery has
grown. We all love a secret and a puzzle. This one
surely has to be one of the greatest puzzles in
history. Is it possible to solve it? Have the facts all been lost in the mists of time
or is it possible for us to penetrate back through history and
rediscover the truth?
Although there are so many variations of the story and it is a complicated mix of plots
and characters, there are some parts of the story
that recur again and again throughout two milenia
of story telling. These are what we are calling the Spiritual Themes of the Grail. The Grail
was thought to have a number of mystical powers.
They are Provides communication with God, leads to enlightenment, provides all knowledge,
Is available to all, Found by the pure in heart.
Invisible to evil or unworthy eyes, May call those who are worthy of it, Can heal the sick,
Can feed the poor, decides the future King, Provides
immortality, May raise the dead, Can enlighten the masses.
Some of these themes recur more often than others but we are going to look at them and
see if there is anything to be gained from the themes.
The question we are asking is – why are these
themes here? Were they just parts of fictional stories or could they have been something
more? Is it possible for us to delve back in time
and find out what was going through the minds of the
people who wrote those stories. They were after all real people with real life experiences.
What does it all mean? We are going to take a slightly
scientific view of spirituality, and see if there is
some common ground to be found. We are going to make a hypothesis and put it to the test.
We are asking whether these spiritual themes
are in fact real. If we find proof that they are not real,
then that’s for the best. But it is worth asking the question. We shall come back to
these themes throughout the presentation and see if they
have some basis in fact. But before that, we are going
to take a look at some of the past interpretations of the Holy Grail. If somebody else has already
found the Grail then we need look no further so it would be sensible to look at a few other
ideas top begin with.
It is going to be convenient to divide the interpretations into three distinct groups.
They are an ancient relic or other object, the bloodline
of Christ, a spiritual path. The first group we are going to take a look
at is the interpretation of the holy Grail as an ancient
relic or other object.
Now, most of the interpretations of the Grail are as a relic. There is a myriad array of
relics which people have claimed are the true Holy Grail.
Again, our presentation is not going to give us time to
analise each individual object, so we are going to take an overview of the most common
interpretations. In fact, we don’t need to look too deeply here as we shall see in
due course. So, let’s take a lightening tour of some of
the Grail relics.
As we saw in the story of Perceval and the Grail procession, the Grail in that story
was a Graal or platter, on which was placed a communion wafer.
This is the first recorded reference of the word
Grail deriving from a corruption of the word Graal.
Incidentally this picture and other pictures of grails are not necessarily the genuine
artefacts. These are used to illustrate the points.