II. The
Grail Symbol As the Basic
Form of the Grail ‘
2nd Excerpt from From Grail Christianity
to Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy
|
I |
f art is – as Goethe says – the revelation of secret laws of nature that
would not be revealed without this art, then we can ask ourselves what kind of
natural laws are woven into a building like the one designed by Titurel.
From Wolfram’s
description of the events in Munsalvaesche we know that the surface area of the
hall in which the Grail was ‘shown around’, was elliptical.*
In the centre of the hall was the stage. Its wooden floor was
covered with a great round or more exact: oval carpet. Placed around this
carpet were sofas for the spectators. Above the seats a hundred chandeliers
hung from the ceiling. Behind the seats led a passage, which allowed the
spectators to get to their seats. From there they were served during the Grail
meal. Also the lance was carried through this passage. Beyond the passage was
the windowless outside wall with the “kleinen kerzen umbe an der want” (small
candles on the wall). This wall was interspersed in the south, west and north
with great marble fireplaces. In these drî vierekke fiwerrame (three
square fireplaces) the aloe wood was burning that heated the hall. In the east
was the steel door leading from Titurel’s living quarters to the temple room
proper. In the front, the fires and the door of the safe, which divided the
surrounding outside wall in four parts, the row of seats was interrupted. The
four radial shaped passages together with the concluding fireplaces and
temple-door constituted a cross. Opposite the small steel door in front of the
western central fireplace, but still on the stage – on the western focus of the
elliptical stage as it were – stood the bed of the main character Anfortas.
Next to him on this excellent seat on the stage also sat Parzival.
From the described
set-up, it is apparent that the palace was not conceived as a temple, but as a
temple theatre. Wolfram accordingly never calls this space a temple. The actual
temple space with the font in which 5½ years later Feirefiss was baptized, was
situated behind the small steel door and Titurel’s living space and was – this
may be concluded from the position of the palace in front of the rock wall on
the Hornikopf hill (in the Arlesheim Hermitage) – cut out of rock. That the
place of worship, thus the temple proper, is to be found there and not in the
palace, is not only evident from the fact that the Grail was carried out of
this door to Anfortas and afterwards returned therein, but also by the fact
that Wolfram treats this space, so to speak, as the most Holy of Holies of
Munsalvaesche. Wolfram changes his stance, as it were, depending on whether he
speaks about the Grail or the lance. The bleeding lance is carried into
the hall through the only door from the outside or from an adjoining room,
which we may suppose to be situated next to the northern fireplace. The Grail,
on the other hand, is not carried into the
small steel door, but from a storage room inside Munsalvaesche onto the stage. After the Grail ceremony was over, the Grail
is not carried out of the palace, but
into the rocky interior again. Wolfram says (P. 240:21):
si brâhten wider în zer tür They carried back through the door
For his baptism, Feirefiss is asked to take the same way into the Grail
temple that the Grail took. In this temple stands the font made out of ruby
mounted on a round pedestal of which the layers are made of jaspes
(jasper). Wolfram says that Titurel fashioned it thus at great cost (P.
816:23). The room in which the font was placed must not have been large, for
the many knights who were awaiting Feirefiss as he went to be baptized were not
in the temple, but in front of it in the palace. From there Feirefiss then
proceeded into the interior to the place of baptism. This must be concluded,
because Wolfram says (P. 816:18-19):
Sarjande, rîter, grôziu schar dâ stuont. Companies of men-at-arms and knights
stood there.
And then continues:
nu
gienc der heiden în. Now the Infidel entered.
The knight thus went – away from the other knights in the palace – into
the temple. The position of the Grail in this temple was probably on an altar
cut out of ‘jaspes’
It can be concluded from
something Wolfram said that the font must have had a size that one would hardly
expect from a vessel made of ruby. Titurel “plunges” the persons to be baptized
– in any case the children – into the font (P. 817:9-10). The original text
suggests that also the adult Feirefiss must have been covered by the water from
the baptism. I leave it open as to whether only his head was “plunged” into the
water, or whether the font was big enough for completely immersing Feirefiss in
the water. A classical German scholar would have to translate the baptism scene
literally. As I understand the text, the one to be baptized must have in one
way or another with at least his head completely disappeared under water
according to the practice by John the Baptist, for Wolfram says (P. 818:21):
ê der touf het in
bedecket. Until the holy water covered him.
Note that the circular or
elliptical layers winding around the pedestal of the font were again made of
jasper.
One could perhaps begin to
suspect that I had in a psychoanalytical sense some sort of jasper-complex and
that I am continually bringing up this jasper in order to wrongly transform
something of minor importance into the essence. But I see in the description of
the jasper a further indication of the supersensible goal of the baptism: the
achievement of “saelde” (bliss). The pedestal of the font could with good
reason be made of jasper, for the stone jasper was a true symbol of the etheric
for the Grail Christians. Jasper is in the physical world of course only a
symbol. In the etheric world on the contrary, that which is symbolized in the
physical world by jasper, is a supersensible reality.
Titurel, the architect of the temple, apparently had at that time in the
woods of Bertane when he stood in the spirit face to face with the Trinity, not
only received the impulse to choose jasper as the Grail symbol; he must in his
vision also have had construction details of the temple situated behind the
small door and probably also of the whole principle of construction of the
palace.
Titurel’s
This drawing is also taken from Greub’s second volume Willehalm-Kyot as Wolfram von Eschenbach’s
Source. It shows a side view in east-west
direction of the former Roman quarry located three quarters up the Hornichopf
hill at the back of the Arlesheim Hermitage at an elevation of about 500 meters
above sea level. The vertical view shows the oval stage with the three
fireplaces (Kamin), small steel door (Türlein) between the stage und the
subterranean rock temple, and the adjoining chambers. The front view shows the
construction with the oval shaped ceiling and roof. According to Greub this
subterranean steel door must still be there.
The oval ground plan of the palace suggests a definite relation with the
form that jasper has. This symbol of the etheric must constitute the basis for
the architectural design of the whole palace.
The question as to how this can
be pictured concretely can be answered as follows: if we imagine placing a huge
jasper on the stage floor, then this ellipsoid with three axis must just touch
the furthest end of the outside-wall of the palace. The ceiling arched over
this cylindrical wall would have to cling to the hypothetical jasper like the
shell to an egg. The height of the outside wall would correspond accordingly to
one half of the smallest, perpendicular jasper axis. The height of the
nut-shaped ceiling would be the same, so that the total height of the room from
the ground floor to the highest point in the partition of the dome would
correspond with the smallest perpendicular axis of the ellipsoid. The east-west
axis of the elliptical ground surface of the palace would thus correspond to a
projection of the longest jasper axis on the ground floor of the palace. The
cross axis between the southern and the northern fireplace would be a
projection of the central jasper axis on the ground floor, and the third,
smallest axis would be identical with the greatest height of the hall. Such an
enclosure of a merely represented jasper form is inconceivable without supports
and braces, which uphold the nut-shaped ceiling and absorb the median thrust of
the roof construction.
Wolfram mentions no supporting
columns, nor architrave’s or braces. We may therefore conclude that in
Munsalvaesche these constructions built for the sake of static were situated
outside the hall. The best way to uphold the wooden enclosure of an ideal
jasper form from the outside would have been by triangles made of wooden beams
with Pythagorean proportions. We therefore imagine roundabout on the outside a
number of triangles in the ratio 3:4:5 that absorb the weight of the dome and
on top of everything a roof structure with braces that support the rain-canopy.
The vaults would thus be hanging from this roof. This wooden structure, seen
this way, would approximate the profile of an Egyptian pyramid.
In the second part of my research report Willehalm-Kyot – Der
Gewährsman Wolframs von Eschenbach (Willehalm-Kyot as Wolfram von Eschenbach’s
Source, not yet translated), I
derived the fundaments of the palace described here from Wolfram’s text and
mentioned that already the Egyptians saw the etheric foundation of the universe
in the form of jasper or the cosmic egg with the proportions of the Pythagorean
triangle (5:4:3). If the axis of the ellipsoid on which the building is based
are also in the ratio 5:4:3, then we have the ideal shape which Titurel must
have given his palace in order to make it look like a physical reflection of the
spiritual universe. Titurel would thus have designed his mystery theatre in
such a way that the aspirations of the Grail family – to achieve “saelde”
(bliss) or knowledge of the higher worlds, which amounts to the same thing –
could also be seen with physical eyes. The palace corresponds in its form to
the spiritual archetypal form of organic evolution during the time of creation,
thus to the actual plan of creation.
As such Titurel would have
created in the sense of Goethe a work of art that makes the laws of the etheric
world – in terms of the building blocks of the organic-biological realm – also
visible to the physical eye. This homogenous, in its succinct simplicity, most
beautiful and profound mystery stage is only conceivable, when “spectators” and
“players” are not only that, but when they form a company in which everyone is
involved and engaged in the same way, dining together like “diu werde
gesellschaft” (that entire noble company) of which Wolfram also says (P.
239:7): they “hete wirtschaft vome gral” (wined and dined from the Grail). A
closed society, which had set itself the task of keeping a Christian stream
alive and which was absolutely not yet meant for the general public, allowed
this intimate unity among the participants.
The
consciousness of humanity has developed today to such an extent that what was
intended for an elite in the 9th century and only understandable by
an elite, now seeks its way to all human beings. A mystery theatre must
therefore also have another form today….
* * *