THE HOLY GRAAL IN THE LIGHT OF THE CELTIC CHURCH
By ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE

                                  I

         STATEMENT OF A POSSIBLE IMPLICIT ACCOUNTING FOR ALL
                                CLAIMS

AMONG all external institutions there is one- and there is one only-
which by the way of analogy offers exactly those signs and warrants
that we should naturally expect in a society, a sodality, a body- let
me say, at once, in a church- which on any other consideration might
be connected with the idea of the Holy Graal- as something nearest to
its source, if not indeed that centre from which the entire mystery
originated.
    The early history of the Holy Graal, as distinguished from the
several quests undertaken for the discovery of that sacred object, is
one of Christianity colonizing.  We know already that it was a mystery
which was brought into Britain, and seeing that the legend, as a
whole, is presumably of Celtic origin, its religious elements, in the
absence of any special and extrinsic claims, must be accounted for
most readily by the characteristics of the Celtic Church.
    This is much closer to our hands than anything which has been so
far suggested alternatively, and it was unquestionably that
environment in which the legends, whatever their roots, developed into
their present form. Those who have previously recognized, in their
imperfect and dubious way, that these legends have a mystic aspect,
and that hence they are probably referable to something in instituted
mysticism, have put forward some bare possibilities and, independently
of these, scholarship has itself gone much further afield. It has
thought of the far East as the home of the Holy Graal, and those who
are more than mystics by a predisposition on the surface, know
certainly- though it is in a certain sense only- that there is a
country deep in Asia. Now, although the limits of our evidence
concerning thc Celtic Church are somewhat narrowly circumscribed there
seems no doubt that it bore distinct traces of eastern influence- by
which I mean sQomething much stronger and plainer than resides in the
common fact that Christianity itself came to us from the oriental
world. If, therefore, the Holy Graal has any marks and spirit of the
East, it might be accounted for in this manner by the way of most
colourable inference. If, however, we appeal to the veiled suggestion
of pre-eminence in the Graal priesthood in respect of an exfra-valid
form of consecrating the Eucharistic elements and of a super-
apostolical succession, it may be advanced that this is simply an
exaggerated reflection of that which was actually claimed by the
Celtic Church and more especially by this Church in Britain. That is
to say, it had a title to existence independently of Rome,
Christianity having been established in these islands for a long
period prior to the arrival of St. Augustine, which, from this point
of view, was an incursion upon territory already conquered and held to
a certain extent, rather than a sacred endeavour to spread the gospel
of Christ, and it brought spiritual war rather than the light of
truth. I have classed these two points together- that is to say, (I)
the Oriental marks, and (2) the Celtic development- not because I
regard the first as important in comparison with the second, but
because, as a fact, the Celtic Church had a particular claim upon an
origin independent of Rome long before the legend of Joseph of
Arimathaea had been devised in the local interests of Glastonbury. I
propose now to set forth some other specific analogies, from which we
shall be enabled in fine to draw a general conclusion whether we can
be satisfied with the evidence as it so stands, or whether we must go
further, more especially if we are to account for the claims which are
found as implicits in the literature. Let us remember, in the first
place, that Oriental traces in the literature, if they can be taken
apart from similar traces in the Celtic Church, would probably mean an
origin for the Holy Graal independent of Celtic environment, like that
of some eastern heretical sects which passed into southern France, or
alternatively a derivation through Spain. But if we abandon the
earlier and are compelled to have recourse, or this mainly, to the
later point, then the legend of the Holy Graal belongs to that class
of fable which has grown up in an external interest, and though it is
not in the position of forged decretals, nor even of a decretal in
literature, it would be useless to look therein for any secret
intention beyond that of the particular pretence which it was designed
to support. With the merits and defects of Celtic Christianity in
Britain, we are sufficiently acquainted to deal rather summarily with
the value of any mystical suggestions that are discernible in the
cycles or remanents of literature which must be regarded as thereto
belonging. The suggested implicit with which I am dealing, if found to
obtain, would signify therefore, the closing of the whole inquiry.

                                  II

               THE FORMULAE OF THE HYPOTHESIS SCHEDULED

    There are traces in the Anglo-Norman romances of a certain fluidic
sense in which Britain and its immediate connexions, according to the
subsurface mind of their writers, stood typically for the world. They
were familiar enough with the names of other regions- with Syria,
Egypt, Rome; but their world was the Celtic world, comprised, let us
say, by Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Brittany. This region came, I
think, to signify symbolically, and so we hear that the failure to ask
"one little question" involved the destruction of Kingdoms, while the
belated interrogation seems to have lifted the veil of enchantment
from the world itself. The cloud upon the sanctuary was a cloud over
that world; its lifting was a glory restored everywhere.  But as the
enchantment, except within very narrow limits, was only of the imputed
order, so the combined restoration of Nature in common with Grace was
but imputed also; the woe and inhibition were removed as secretly as
they were imposed. The whole position reminds one of that chapter in
the Apocalypse which presents a sheaf of instructions to the Seven
Churches of Asia. No one knew better than the Jews concerning Rome,
Greece and Alexandria, but when the great book of the secret Christian
mystery was written, the world of Christendom was confined within
narrow limits in Asia, and this was the world of the Apocalypse. It
was actually all Assiah of Kabalism, though the few who have dared to
institute a philological connexion between the one name and the other
have gone, as usual, astray. Recurring to the fact from which this
analogy arises, let me add, out of justice to the hypothesis which I
seek to present adequately, that within this Celtic world the first
and most natural sympathies in the religious order would be
indubitably with its own aspirations. The chief points of the
hypothesis may be collected into a schedule as follows:--
    I. It is certain that the Graal Legend is of Celtic origin and
making, because of the Celtic attributions of the romances and their
Celtic <I>mise-en-scene</I> and characters; because of the Celtic
names, disguised and otherwise, which are found in the romauces, even
in those which belong to the Teutonic cycle; and because of the
undoubted derivations in the Graal Legend from Welsh folklore. This is
agreed on all hands and will therefore call for no extension or
comment in this place.
    2. The romance of the Holy Graal, regarding the cycle
synthetically, is a glorified ecclesiastical legend of Celtic origin;
there are other ecclesiastical legends, referable to the same source,
which suggest the Graal atmosphere. The "Graal Church" was in its
earlier stages the Celtic Church contrasted with the Saxo-Roman.
    3. The nucleus is to be found in the story of St. David and his
miraculous altar. The apostle of South Wales, with other saints, made
a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where the patriarch consecrated him
archbishop and gave him "a consecrated altar in which the body of our
Lord had lain." It performed innumerable miracles, and after the death
of St. David it was covered with skins and was never seen by any one.
According to one legend, this altar, and possibly some other hallows,
was carried through the air to Britain, and hence was often described
as <I>e coelo veniens.</I> Though apparently it was the rock-hewn
sepulchre mentioned in the New Testament, no man could specify its
shape, its colour, or of what material it was fashioned; in addition
to its other wonders, it gave oracles, that is to say, a voice spoke
therein, as it did, according to the romances, in the Graal itself.
St. David died about A.D. 601; he gave the Mass to Britain; he was of
the lineage of Our Lady; and his birth having been foretold by the
finding of a great fish, he was termed the Waterman, which recalls the
Rich Fisherman of the later legends.
    4. The secret words of the Robert de Borron cycle refer to the
Epiclesis of tbe Celtic Rite. The act of Eucharistic consecration in
the Latin rite is actually the words of Institution, that is to say,
the New Testament's account of the Last Supper. In the East, however,
consecration is effected by Epiclesis, that is, the invocation of the
Holy Spirit, the change in the substance of the elements being
referred to the work of the Paraclete. The liturgy of St. John
Chrysostom may be consulted on this point. The priest prays, after the
Epiclesis, that the gifts, which have been changed by the Holy Spirit,
may be to the participants for the "purification of soul, forgiveness
of sins, communion of the Holy Ghost, fulfilment of the Kingdom of
Heaven," etc. The evidence is, however, confessedly somewhat indirect,
as no Gallican or other Celtic liturgy gives the words of institution,
but they are found in full in a North Italian, perhaps a Milanese,
work, and elsewhere, as we shall see shortly. Between A.D. 750 and 820
the Celtic rite vanished, and was replaced by the Saxon.
    5. The hereditary Graal Keepers, so strongly emphasized in the
romances, are derived from the Hereditary Relic Keepers of the Celtic
Church. Mr. J. Romilly Allen, in his <I>Monumental Hislory of the
Early British Church,</I> has said: "The vicissitudes through which
the relics passed in the course of centuries were often of a most
romantic description. The story was generally the same. The book, bell
or crozier belonging to the founder of the Church was supposed to have
acquired peculiar sanctity and even supernatural properties by
association with him; and after his death it was often inclosed in a
costly metal shrine of exquisite workmanship. Each relic had its
hereditary custodian, who was responsible for its safe keeping and who
in return received certain privileges, such as . . . the title to
inherit certain land, of which the relic constituted the tenure." The
preservation of relics under hereditary guardianship seems to have
been common among Welsh families. So also the relics of certain saints
belonging to the Scoto-Irish Church were placed in the care of
families of hereditary keepers; they were consecrated objects, not
human remains, and they were regarded as of great virtue when borne in
battle by a person who was free from any deadly sin. The general
characteristics of the Celtic relic may be enumerated as follows, but
it is not intended to say that every sacred object possessed all the
qualities: (a) It came from heaven, like the Graal; (b) it was of
mysterious and incomprehensible matter; (c) it was oracular; (d) like
the Graal, it had the power of speech; (e) it healed the sick, as the
Graal did also occasionally, though this was not its specific office;
(f) like the Graal, it must not be seen by unqualified persons; (g) it
had the power of miraculous self-transportation, and the Holy Cup, in
certain romances, was also a wandering vessel; (h) it acted as a
guide; (i) it was a palladium; (h) it executed judgment on the wicked
and profane, which is the characteristic in chief of the Graal in the
metrical romance of De Borron.
    6. In the Panegyric of St. Columba, a document ascribed to the
last years of the eleventh century, it is recorded among his other
good works that he provided a Mass Chalice for every Church in the
Western Hebrides. Readers of the great prose Perceval Le Gallois will
reniember that chalices were so uncommon in Arthurian days that the
King, during a certain quest, seems to have met with one, and that
miraculously, for the first time in his life. It is possible that
wooden bowls were used for purposes of consecration. It is only at the
close of the Graal cycle, that is to say, in the romance which I have
just mentioned and in the Galahad quest, that, in spite of all claims,
the sacred vessel is expressly connected with the administration of
the Eucharis4, though it is not the vessel of communion except in the
quest itself.
    7. There are historical memorials of mystic and holy cups,
possessing great virtues and preserved in old Welsh families. Among
these is the Holy Cup of Tregaron, which was made of the wood of the
true cross, and its healing virtues were manifested so recently as the
year 1901. The curious thing in the romances is that the Holy Graal
heals every one except the Keeper himself, who in the Perceval cycle
can only be cured by a question, and in the Galahad legend by the 
magnetic touch of his last lineal descendant.
    8. In England during the middle ages the Eucharist was reserved in
a Columbarium, or Dove-House, being a vessel shaped like a dove. This
was the Tabernacle of its period, and it recalls (a) archaic pictures
of a Cup over which a dove broods; (b) the descent of a dove on the
Graal stone in Wolfram's poem; (c) the passage of symbolic doves in
connexion with the Graal procession, as told by several romances, but
especially in the Quest of Galahad; and (d) the office of the Holy
Spirit in the Graal legend.
    9. The vanishing of the Graal refers (a) to the actual
disappearance of St. David's altar; (b) to the disappearance of the
Celtic Church before the Roman; and (c) to the subjugation of the
British by the Saxons. The Welsh Church was pre-eminently a monastic
church and, in spite of the existence of Bishops, its government was
in the hands of monks. The claim of the ancient British Church
generally, with its final evolution in the eleventh century into a
legend that the first Church of Glastonbury was consecrated by our
Lord Himself, may help us to explain the undertone of dissent from
Rome which may be noted in the subsurface of so much of the Graal
literature, but especially in the great prose Perceval. To appreciate
the position fully, we have to remember that the Latin rite gained
ground and influence with the Norman conquest, but independently of
that rite there were monasteries in remote valleys where the ancient
form of consecration may have been still used and where also the
ancient wisdom of the Druids was preserved, though it was never
considered consistent for a man to be a mystic Druid and also a
Christian. The druidic secret was symbolized by the term Afalon, which
means the Apple Orchard. The last Welsh Arch-bishop of St. David's
died in 1115, and his successor gave allegiance to Canterbury, which
right had not been established previously.
    10. Cadwaladr is Galahad. This chieftain, who loomed so largely in
the Welsh imagination, who, like Bran of pre-Christian legend, was
termed the Blessed, was regarded as of the royal line of David; he is
thought to have been the custodian of holy relics belonging to his
family before him, and when he died of the Yellow Sickness in 664 his
return was confidently expected. So many legends grew up around him
that he seems to have gathered up in himself all the aspirations of
Celtdom. His return is associated with the second manifestation of his
relics and with the final felicity of the Celts. I may note here that
a great Welsh revival began in the year A.D. 1077 with the return of
RHYS-AP-TEWDWR from Britanny. Bards and Druids were at white heat, and
Rhys himself was a descendant traditionally of CADWALADR the Blessed,
who was to return and restore all things. He even claimed identity
with that departed hero. He assumed the sovereignty of South Wales and
has been said to have brought with him the system of the Round Table,
"as it is with regard to minstrels and bards." In this connexion we
may remember that Cadwaladr and not King Arthur was the mystic hero of
Wales. Paulin Paris was the first who sought to identify him with
Galahad of the Great Quest.

                                 III

             IN WHAT SENSE THE PLEA MUST BE HELD TO FAIL

    If this hypothesis can be taken with such high seriousness as to
suppose that it is put forward- shall I say ?- as an equivalent by
analogy of that which has offered St. Dominic and the enchanting fable
of a question which should have been put to the Pope as a real
explanation of the Perceval-Graal myth, we may be forgiven for dealing
with it along some of the following lines. Let us put aside in the
first place all that part which is purely in the region of supposition
and take the actual facts as things for valuation in the schedule. As
regards the Epiclesis, it is obvious that the oriental terms of
consecration, when those prevailed in the West, were the secret of no
particular sanctuary as distinguished from all other holy places in
Brittany, Britain and Wales. They were catholic to these countries and
also to a great part of that which we understand by Scotia, Ireland
and Gaul. They connect in themselves with no keepership and with no
hallows. We know that the Roman rite colonized all these countries and
that in the course of time it prevailed. But the period between the
public use of these words and their final abrogation was one of
centuries, and although during a portion thereof they may have been
perpetuated in concealment, there is no doubt that they had fallen
practically into desuetude long before the third quarter of the
twelfth century. It is impossible to suppose that there was at that
time any one concerned in them sufficiently to put themforward as a
great mystery of sanctity inherent in the heart of Christianity. They
do not appear in the metrical romance of Joseph as in any sense the
material of romance; they appear with all the marks of a particular
claim put forward for a special reason and maintained through more
than one generation by the successive production, firstly of a prose
version of the early metrical Merlin, and secondly, or in all
probability, by the independent invention of the Didot prose Perceval,
which carried on the same tradition, though it is left unfinished both
from the standpoint of narrative and of the term of its intention. In
the second place two concurrent claims appear, and the second, which
is stronger than the first, abandons the claim in respect of secret
words. It does this so explicitly that it makes public the words of
consecration, by which we are enabled to see at once how little they
could have ever signified, if these indeed are the lost words of Graal
literature. In their place, as we know so well already,we have the
claim to a super-apostolical succession- as I have said, a much
stronger claim, and one for which there is no precedent in the dubious
history of the Celtic Church. It is out of this claim that the Galahad
quest arises, though at a period when the claim itself appears to have
lapsed. We are agreed that so far as there is a true story at all, it
is that of Galahad, and the question of secret words never entered
into the heart thereof. It is, therefore, useless to put forward the
assumed fact of their existence in the Celtic Rite of Institution as
something which is explanatory of the literature. In this connexion it
is of importance to remember (a) that the only prose Perceval which is
of any importance mystically is that which depends from the Greater
Holy Graal, not from Robert de Borron; and (b) that the only metrical
romance of Perceval which mystically is also important is that of
Wolfram. The first has abandoned the words and the second all
Eucharistic connexion. The first puts the Roman dogma of
transubstantiation in its most materialized possible form. It will be
seen, therefore, that the Celtic hypothesis fails along what must be
regarded as the most important line. I submit, therefore, again that
which I have stated from the beginning- that the pretension to a
super-apostolical warrant is part of a scheme for pre-eminence, the
details and motives of which are wanting on the historical side of
things; and, this being the case, if we can supply them from certain
hidden sources we shall be in possession for the time being at least
of a provisional explanation concerning things which are most
important in the literature and- <I>donec de medio fiat</I>-it must be
allowed to hold.
    The distinctive note of the Latin Eucharistic Rite is that, like
the gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, it gives the first words of
institution thus : <I>Accipite et manducate ex hoc omnes. Hoc est enim
corpus meum</I>; "Take and eat ye all of this. For this is My body."
Hereto certain oriental rites added other words, which would read in
Latin; <I>quod pro multis confrangetur</I>- "which shall be broken for
many." The Greater Holy Graal gives: <I>venes, si mangies et chou est
li miens cors qui pour vous et pour maintes autres gens sera livres a
martire et a torment</I>- the substantial equivalent of <I>pro multis
confrangetur.</I> Compare the gospel of St. Luke in the Latin Vulgate,
which uses the present tense: <I>quod pro vobis datur.</I> But there
is no direct evidence nor presumption that the <I>Epiclesis</I> ever
entered into the Celtic liturgy.
    The truth is that analogies and possibilities of the kind with
which we have been dealing are a little taking and they are caught at
rather readily, but they seize upon a single point, where they can be
made to apply, and all the other issues in a long sequence are
ignored. The name Cadwaladr naturally suggests that of Galahad, and on
the appeal to certain laws of permutation, it seems for a moment
justified; but it is not justified in the legends. The last King of
the Britons had the hallows of his family by the right of inheritance;
there was no antecedent keeper whom he was required to heal; there was
no quest to undertake in order that he might secure his own, But this
healing and this quest inhere in the Graal legend and are manifestly
at the root of the design, so that there is no comparison possible
between the two cases. The same remarks will apply to all the
traceable instances of hereditary Keeper-ship in Celtic families,
whatever the object reserved. It is even more certain that any
comparison of St. David the Waterman with the Rich Fisherman who is
wounded is highest fantasy, though it is curious to note the connexion
which apparently existed in Celtic minds between sanctity; fishing and
fish; neither physically nor symbolically did the Saint suffer any
hurt, but, again, one of the foremost Graal intentions resides in the
King's wounding. The Lesser Holy Graal may create a comparison between
the sacred vessel and the sepulchre in which Christ was laid, but it
does not for this reason institute any analogy between that vessel and
St. David's altar, nor is the appeal to Wolfram useful except in the
opposite sense, for the Graal stone of the Parsifal which was once in
the crown of Lucifer can tolerate still less the institution of its
likeness to "a sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein never man
before was laid."
    It remains therefore that in this literature we are shown how evil
fell upon the House of the Doctrine; how it overtook also the Keeper of
secret knowledge; after what manner he was at length healed; how the
hidden treasures passed under the care of his saviour; and how at the
term of all they were removed because of a fell and faithless time.
That would be a very pleasant scheme of interpretation which could say
that the House of Doctrine was the Celtic Church and that the wounded
Keeper signified that Church in desolation, but it remains that we must
go further in our search for a key to these mysteries.
    If the legend of the Holy Graal were the last light of the Celtic
Church before it expired in proscription, one would say that it was
glorious in its death. But the most that we can actually say is that
it left elements which in fine served a better purpose. The great
prose Perceval, the great poem of Wolfram, and the sacred and
beautiful quest of Galahad, these are three records which bear witness
on earth of the secret things which are declared only in the heavens.
They are three tabernacles wherein transfiguratidn takes place.
    In the extrinsic Celtic remains, the only substitute which offers
for the great legend of the holy and sacramental cup is an obscure and
nameless vessel which is subject in its latest history to the
irreverence of a pedlar, and this it was deemed worth while to avenge.
From such inefficiencies and trifles it is certain that we must have
recourse, even if for a moment only, to the Glastonbury legend, which
did invent high fictions to glorify the British Church. This resource
must, however, in its turn fail us, because Glastonbury knows nothing
of the Second Joseph and there is no need to add that so far as the
Greater Holy Graal is concerned, it seems to know little of
Glastonbury. The legend was for the praise and exaltation of a
particular monastery. It represented Josesph of Arimathaea as the
chief among twelve apostles sent by St. Philip to Britain, and the
first church built on the spot is said to have been dedicated by
Christ Himself. While it is thought that Henry II was gratified by the
general tradition, it is suggested that it was a weapon which could be
used against St. David's and the Welsh as well as against the Pope.
But of the Joseph claim, as we have it in the Graal romances, there is
no trace in William of Maimesbury or any of the other authorities. We
have indeed the alleged burial of Joseph at Glastonbury, against which
the Greater Holy Graal represents it as taking place in the north of
England, and the Abbey of Noirmoutier in France laid claim to its
original possession, but it disappeared or was stolen, as some say, by
the monks of Glastonbury. We have also in William of Maimesbury the
story of a phial containing the blood of Christ and said to have been
brought overby Joseph. This may have been the source of the Graal Cup
as it appears in the romances, which in this case began to be invented
deliberately about 1150, or a little earlier. De Borron, the putative
Map and all the quest versions are a generation at least later. It may
be said that the second Joseph, who is a creation of the Greater Holy
Graal, signifies some move in the strange ecclesiastical game which
was played by Henry II, but the evidence is in the opposite direction,
so far as it can be said to exist: it is obvious that any game would
have worked better with the original apostolical Joseph than with his
imaginary son.
    I do not much care on what materials the makers of the Graal
romances may be agreed to have worked, since it is clear that they
imported therein a new spirit. If anyone should like still to think
that Cadwaladr, who went to Rome or Jerusalem (as the eighth century
equivalent of Rome), is to be identified with Galahad, who went to
heaven, they can have it that way, since they so please, understanding
that, on my part, I may reserve my judgment. I know that the one has
suffered a high change before he has passed into the other. I know
that every literature has its antecedents in some other literature,
and that every religion owes something to a religion that preceded it.
Sometimes the consanguinity is close and sometimes it is very far away.
Only those who affirm that the one accounts for the other, and this
simply and only, seem to be a little unwise. Christianity arose within
Jewry and doctrinally out of Jewry, but this fact only brings their
generic difference into greater relief. So also the Graal literature,
whether or not it rose up in the Celtic church, has its analogies
therein, but there are also many ways in which the one as we know it
does not account for the other as we actually have it.
    The Celtic Church has, however, assisted us to see one thing more
plainly, though we know it on other considerations, namely, that in
fine there is but a single quest, which is that of Galahad. We must
make every allowance for the honest findings of scholarship, to whom
the Holy Graal, as it was and it is, has never spoken, for whom it is
only a feeding dish under a light cloud of imagery, and by whom it is
thought in their hearts that the intervention of Christianity in the
wild old pagan myth is on the whole rather regrettable. They turn
naturally to those quarters whence issue the voices of purely natural
life, and therefore they prefer Gawain and Perceval in his cruder
forms, because these speak their own language. It is to be trusted,
and this devoutly, that they will find more and more evidences for the
maintenance of their particular view. Unmanifested now but still
discerned darkly, if the true proto-Perceval should be at length
found, that which went before the Peredur and the English metrical
romance, and if, as there is no doubt, it should be devoid of all
elements belonging to Graal or quester, our case will be the better
proved which is (I) the natural succession of the Galahad quest after
the Graal history in its longer recension; (2) the succession of
Perceval in the sequence of Robert de Borron, but rather as the scion
of a false legitimacy; (3) the introduction of the late prose Perceval
le Gallois as a final act of transmutation in the Anglo-Norman cycle
concerned with this hero, which introduction so far assists our case
that it manifests the unfitness, realized at that period, of Perceval
as he was known by the earlier texts; (4) the derivation of the
Wolfram Parsifal in part from Celtic elements, in part from some which
are or may have been Teutonic, but also with derivatives through
Provence from Spain.
    It follows, in fine, that we must go further, and in the next
section I feel that, as one who has been in exile among <I>disjecta
membra,</I> like Marius among the ruins of Carthage, I shall re-enter
into my own patrimony. To my old friend, Arthur Machen, himself of
Caerleon-upon-Usk, I owe most of the materials which have been
collated for the presentation of the hypothesis concerning the Graal
and the Celtic Church.

___
Scanned from the periodical "The Occult Review", Vol. V, No. 6; June
1907. Formatted and corrected by hand.