The Holy Grail E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

From the Mysteries to Christianity; Death and Resurrection in Ancient Egypt - the Miracle of Initiation; The Mystery of Golgotha; The Mystery of the Higher Ego - the Holy Grail; The Grail and the Spiritual Evolution of Humanity; The Gnostic Crisis and the Loss of the Mysteries; Stages of Evolution - Archaic Clairvoyance; The Role of the Mysteries; The Secret of Evolution - the Holy Grail.

Leseprobe

THE HOLY GRAIL

POCKET LIBRARY OF SPIRITUAL WISDOM

Also available ALCHEMY ATLANTIS CHRISTIAN ROSENKREUTZ THE DRUIDS THE GODDESS

‘The Seal of the Holy Grail’ by Rudolf Steiner and Clara Rettich

THE HOLY GRAIL

The Quest for the Renewal of the Mysteries

selections from the work of

RUDOLF STEINER

Sophia Books

All translations revised by Christian von Arnim

Sophia Books An imprint of Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, East Sussex RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

Series editor: Andrew Welburn For earlier English publications of extracted material see Sources

The material by Rudolf Steiner was originally published in German in various volumes of the ‘GA’ (Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized edition is published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach (for further information see end of Notes Regarding Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures)

This edition translated © Rudolf Steiner Press 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 326 4

Cover illustration by Anne Stockton. Cover design by Andrew Morgan Typeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks.

Contents

Introduction: The Quest for the Renewal of the Mysteries in Christianity by Andrew J. Welburn

Part One: THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY: FROM THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES TO THE HOLY GRAIL

1. First Meditation: From the Mysteries to Christianity

Death and resurrection in ancient Egypt: the miracle of initiation

From the Mysteries to Christianity

The Mystery of Golgotha

The mystery of the higher ego: the Holy Grail

2. Second Meditation: The Grail and the Spiritual Evolution of Humanity

The Gnostic crisis—and the loss of the Mysteries

Stages of evolution: archaic clairvoyance

The role of the Mysteries

The secret of evolution: the Holy Grail

Part Two: THE HIDDEN STREAM

1. Mystery Streams in the Legends of the Grail

From the Eastern Mysteries to King Arthur’s knights

The deathly wound and the divided soul: the meaning of Amfortas

Parzival: the Mysteries of the consciousness soul

2. The Grail Among the Stars: A Personal Quest

The hidden stream

The enigma of Kyot

The Easter mystery and the appearing of the Grail

Notes

Sources

Suggested Further Reading

Note Regarding Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures

Introduction: The Quest for the Renewal of the Mysteries in Christianity

by Andrew J. Welburn

When we first meet with references to a holy ‘Grail’, beginning in the late twelfth century, it is in the popular chivalric romances about King Arthur’s knights. As they gallop about the country in search of ‘adventures’, it happens that these knights inspire the young boy Perceval to leave his mother and ride off in the hope of achieving knighthood. And it is of him that the first Grail-romancers such as Chrétien de Troyes relate a visit to a mysterious Castle, where he sees a procession of strange and solemn significance, in which among other things passes a maiden who carried a platter or ‘grail’. But the young hero fails to ask what it all means. Next morning he wakes to find the whole place deserted, and people in the surrounding forest whom he asks about it say that no such Castle exists. It is all very mysterious. Later literature tells of a ‘quest’, a heroic undertaking to rediscover the Grail and find out its meaning, involving other famous knights such as Gawain and Bors and finally the whole Arthurian court, and it tells us of the extraordinary history and destiny of this Grail or cup of the Last Supper of Christ—though it is by no means clear that the later story was that known to the original writers.1 In Germany the great poet Wolfram von Eschenbach took up the material in his Parzival, but Wolfram has mystified most readers further. Indeed he claims to know so many more things about the Grail that no other writer mentions, which his master Kyot (= Guillot, or Guillaume) had read (he says) in the oriental writings of one Flegetanis, that many scholars have despaired of a tradition and thought that he made most of it up (including the oriental source Flegetanis) himself.

Now Arthur and his knights belong to what is called ‘the matter of Britain’, or body of tradition reaching back into the Celtic prehistory of our island. Ultimately it reflects the myths of the gods and heroes told orally over many centuries, and Arthur is easy to see as in his origins a Celtic god-hero even if later he was associated with a local leader of late Roman times.2 And later still, when the Celts were driven out, defeated by the ruthless Saxons who were taking over England, the stories of Arthur and his heroic ‘knights’ (as they had now become) came to symbolize their spiritual heritage, their identity and spiritual home. That is why all the main Arthurian romances were written by poets from Brittany, where many of the dispossessed guardians of those ancient traditions now dreamed in exile of a Britain that was strangely compounded of native mythic exploits (their former glories magnified still more), of an idealized courtly society which they yet knew in their hearts was already passing away forever, betrayed it must be by decadence from within (the stain of sin between Lancelot and the Queen), and of an exotic landscape, ruggedly British but magically fused with the lusher, sunnier climes which they now knew in France. This literature, with its deep roots in the spirituality and mythology of the Celts, its heightened longings and regrets, and imaginative heroism, can still impress and move us today—even we English have so far forgotten that we were once the nasty and brutish enemy that we have adopted the myth as part of our identity too, and long for the return of the ‘once and future king’.