Appendix 1. The Grail Symbol

1^st Excerpt from From Grail Christianity to Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy

In my book How the Grail Sites were found – Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Reality of the Grail the thought was already expressed that Wolfram’s Grail can be compared with the cosmic foundation stone of the earth. An expert in the history of the earth’s evolution asked in this context, if this foundation stone was perhaps the human being. We regard this question as justified, because the human being as the image of God or as a reflection of the Cosmos, as a microcosm could very well be viewed as the foundation stone of the entire evolution of the earth. But let us leave this question open and first examine Wolfram’s information concerning the Grail…

The Grail in Kyot’s factual report (Parzival) is definitely not the dish of the Last Supper, neither is it a cup, but exclusively that fully defined stone, of which we believe today that Wolfram in his Parzival called it lapsit exillîs (P. 469:7). This term, however, cannot be right for the following reasons: Wolfram never fails to elaborate a concept, if it is not clearly understandable. Quite often he leaves us over long stretches in doubt about something, but when the proper time comes he enlightens us fully (P. 453:1-10). This pedagogical-didactic method is a symptom par excellence for recognizing Wolfram’s style.

The concept lapsit exillîs, which nobody understands anymore, is never mentioned by Wolfram again. It can hardly be argued that he, the exact historian, wants to purposefully keep us in the dark of all things about the nature of the Grail stone, which is indeed the most important element of the whole history of the Grail. When Wolfram does not elaborate on an unknown concept, it may be concluded that it requires no additional elaboration. Since Wolfram does not explain it in this concrete case, it can only mean that the stone has another name. Wolfram must have used a concept that required no further explanation.

As a matter of fact, there are beside the concept lapsit two other traditional names for the Grail. The (handwritten) manuscript “d” reads lapis, which is just as puzzling as lapsis. The manuscript “gg”, on the other hand, contains a concept which Wolfram, and with him the rest of the world, uses to denote a semi-precious stone. This stone is called iaspis (P. 469:7, note). Of all the traditional names of the Grail the concept jasper (High German: Jaspis) is the only one that requires no additional explanation, because it is generally known. We have no reason in this point for not following the manuscript “gg”.

Although we now know that the Grail is a stone called jasper, we have no insight yet into the connection between this semi-precious stone and the supreme Grail symbol. We must first get to know this stone better.

The mineralogist reckons jasper together with hornblende and firestone (flint) to the class of chalcedony. The formula for the jasper material is SiO₂, i.e. silicium-dioxide or silicic acid. The stone is amorphous, has a mussel-like crease, shines pale or wax-like on the surface and gleams like glass when polished. It cannot be melted down and like quartz it is insoluble in acids. It is assumed that during rock formation boil-like hollow spaces were formed that were filled, through spinning holes, with silicic acid. This silicic acid would then later have petrified into pebbles of stone.

The neutral jasper has a milky grey colour. Depending on its mixture with metals, it changes colour and depending on the colour, it also changes its name. When yellow-brown it is called cornelian. With white or black layers, its name is onyx. The sardonyx has brown- or black-white layers. When the stone is brown or reddish to honey-yellow transparent, it is called sardius. This honey wax brown jasper, which is found in India, is called that way, because it was imported in antiquity from the city of Sardis, the fifth apocalyptic family in Asia, to Greece, where it was especially used for the production of engraved gems. Engraved gems were also cut from differently coloured jasper. What is remarkable about jasper is that its delicate layers are not laid parallel to the earth’s gravity. The misty layers were rather laid as concentric spheres around a core. The whole jasper bulb is not only shaped like an egg, but also, like an egg enclosed by its shell, covered by a white skin. Its inner structure of delicately tinted layers can only be recognized when jasper is cut. A cross-section shows in fact, in the style of the organic-biological realm, the picture with which the astronomers from antiquity and the Middle Ages represented the world of the planets. They pictured this archetypal cosmic egg, like the stone jasper, composed of more or less concentric spheres. On the surface of polished jasper can be recognized, in addition to a clearly visible spherical system around a dark core, a second identical, but somewhat less clearly drawn system, which is laid in lighter veils around a lighter core. If one sees in such markings an archetype of the planetary system, we would have two systems within jasper that, like the heliocentric and the geocentric planetary systems, fill in a common frame. Both systems interpenetrate without disturbing each other. Such a system is physically inconceivable. It can only come about when two qualitatively different force fields, which structure the original protein-like matter, are active in the same space. This is only possible in the case of living beings.

Just as there are eggs on rare occasions with two yolks, there are also jasper bulbs with two such double systems. With this type of abnormality, each system influences the sphere of the other. Lemniscate shapes are formed by such abnormal twins. Such sheaths inwardly structured by morphic fields can only have an organic nature.

We shall now look in still more detail at the spatial form of jasper. Jasper is, like an egg, an ellipsoid. But it is not a rotational ellipsoid that can be turned around on its sectional axis. An egg is defined by two axes. The third spatial axis has the same size as the second one. One cross-section in a right angle to the sectional axis is always circular. With jasper such a cross-section is ellipsoidal. The third axis is shorter than the second one. We therefore call such a spatial form a triple axis ellipsoid.

The form also changes, with the exception of deviations, depending on the axial relation. Jasper can be bulky or almost spherical; it can also have long or thin shape or be more or less flat. We can recognize jasper always by its shape as a triple axis ellipsoid, but because of the various relations between the lengths of the axes, an infinite number of jasper shapes have been formed in nature. Its shapes and sizes are so variable that, in contrast to an egg, no jasper stone is ever the same. Each jasper stone has – and here the expression may be used – an individual form.

The most beautiful form is felt to be the one where the axial relations correspond to the golden section, i.e. if the ratio between the smallest and the middle axis is equal to the ratio between the middle and the greatest axis.

I had the opportunity of studying the jasper reserves in the coral atoll of Isteinerklotz at the place in Germany where it is mined. Sometimes fractures of jasper bulbs are also found there, which are baked around and about in lime. This leads to the conclusion that before it petrified, jasper must have had a jelly-like consistency. The surface of the fractures is mussel-like, of the sort that comes about when soft organic jelly or gel matter (aspic) is broken.

While studying these jasper reserves, I became convinced that the jasper inside the coral atoll of the Isteinerklotz must have lived in whole colonies. These living beings had not as yet formed any physiologically recognizable bodily organs. Jasper was, simply put, a “vitalized sheath”, i.e. an organic complex at the stage of an archetypal organism with its gel-like body of protein enclosed by an egg-like skin. These liquid creatures enclosed by a glassy transparent but malleable skin inhabited the lagoon of the coral atoll. They floated about in the water or watery mist like jellyfish today in the sea and nourished themselves with the micro-organisms from their environment. When they died, their corpses sank to the mineralised bottom where they became embedded in the lime banks of the deceased micro-organisms.

This vitalized sheath as the archetype of the organic-biological-earthly realm would, physically speaking, not be a bad symbol for a group of people following Grail objectives. The Grail family strove not only to perform physical research into nature, but also research into the super-sensible formative forces that generate nature. A petrified organism that is similar to the archetype of the formative forces body (ether body) would in this sense be an inspiring Grail symbol. Jasper would then also fulfil Wolfram’s condition that it be in existence since the time of Adam.

This is an indication of the direction that research must take to discover something concrete in Wolfram’s Grail symbol. During this quest it will turn out that the stone mined in the Isteinerklotz area and popularly called jasper, is not called jasper in mineralogical terms, but Neolithic silica (formerly silex). We are striving to broaden this concept, and with the name jasper we denote all semi-precious stones whose nature is organic and which on the basis of their structure are “vitalized sheaths”. In this sense, not only our jasper or Neolithic silica would be a sort of jasper, but also chrisopas, sardius, sardonyx and onyx.

The philologist could object here that the question concerning jasper merely appears to be resolved in such a simple fashion, because only half of this mysterious concept has been explained. Wolfram’s stone is not just called jasper. His concept includes a second word: exillîs, which is such a riddle that until now nobody has given it any concrete meaning, even though whole books have been written about it since Albrecht von Scharfenberg designated the stone “Jasper from the Heights”.

I have to admit that none of the manuscripts known to me give a clear and concise meaning for this second word. Unfortunately, I cannot indicate the right name in such a simple manner as was done in the first part with the concept jasper or iaspis (P. 469:7 in the manuscript ‘gg’).

We have already come across the name jasper. The miraculous bed in which Gawain had to fight his battle in Schastel Marveil, rolled on a polished jointless floor composed of (P. 566:21-22):

Jaspis, von crisolte, | Jasper, of chrysolite
Von sardîn, als er wolte | Of sardius according to wish.

What we have here are the Middle High German names for the above-mentioned semi-precious stone jasper, chrisopas and sardius. Iaspis is the Latin form of the Middle High German jaspis. The whole concept must hence be Latin.

If we assume that the second part specifies the first, then there are good mineralogical reasons for thinking of the substance, of which jasper or Neolithic silica is made. This is silica or flint with the chemical formula SiO₂= silicium-dioxide. In English, the stone could be called flint jasper or jasper from silica, or in Wolfram’s Latin: iaspis ex silex. I suspect that Kyot called the stone in Latin iaspis ex silice, but that the wording became more and more French in the course of tradition (oral history). There are semantic grounds for this. The Latin ex silice, pronounced in French (ce becomes phonetically s), is now called ex silisse or ex sillîs. Rhymed with Fenix (Phoenix) it is then called ex silix, which could very well be in line with Wolfram’s representation.

I hereby request philological experts to assist me and to come forward with professional, properly formulated evidence. I did not come to this solution from the philological aspect, but from the mineralogical one. Above all, I have absolute confidence in Wolfram’s historical sensibility. I know his character and also his semantic idiosyncrasies. He would have elaborated on the concept, if it could not have been understood in a completely self-evident manner. I am convinced that it is right to identify the Grail or the stone iaspis (P. 468:7) as iaspis ex silice or ex sillix, thus as jasper made of silica.

The mystic will criticize this – in his eyes – profane treatment of the supreme Grail symbol. We beg him to exercise a little more patience. The physical stone made of silica is only a symbol for the real Grail. The Grail itself is not a physical object, but the supreme aim in life of the Grail family. But the Grail symbol as a physical object is already something very special.

Our idea to treat jasper or iaspis ex silice as a petrified organism or fossil is not yet current today. It is assumed that jasper originated “physically” or “by itself”. If this were the case, the Grail family would hardly have chosen such jasper to be the central symbol for their aspirations. The Grail family wanted to view the world in such a way that the primordial ideas underlying the creation of nature could be recognized. The Grail seekers aspired to decipher the meaning of nature and to organize their life in harmony with the intentions of the Creator.

Whoever would like to get to the bottom of this is asked to turn to an expert in the realm of “organic evolution”. We refer in this professional field of genesis to the life work of the natural biologist Gunther Wachsmuth. This close colleague of Rudolf Steiner made a scientific study of the evolution of the cosmos, the earth and the human being and has described the evolution of the organic-living realm due to the etheric formative forces. It was he who coined the words “vitalized sheath” (German: Vitalisierte Hülle) used here for the evolutionary phase in question. Wachsmuth aspires, like the Grail family, to recognize the supersensible, creative spirit in the universe and to make its intentions transparent. The books containing the results of his research are published by the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing Co. at the Goetheanum in Dornach.*

The Grail symbol jasper refers therefore not only to the purely mineral realm, but also to the organic, to the “vitalized sheath” living in the sea during the Mesozoic, i.e. the late Lemurian epoch, whose former gel-body we find in mineralised form in the Jurassic formations.

Like every organism, jasper did not only consist of matter. Part and parcel of an organism is what created and enlivened it. There must in advance be formed a structured morphic field in space in which matter can be deposited. This vital force is physically invisible, but it becomes apparent to living thinking by means of its effects on visible bodies. The present-day human being does not normally possess an organ with which this morphic field or ether body can be “seen” directly. The supersensible, non-physical sheaths of his entelechy remain invisible for him. He recognizes their presence, however, in the physically visible realm by their effects through thinking about the perceptible forms, thereby generating living concepts.

Now there have at all times been people who had in addition to physical organs also organs for the direct perception of the supersensible realm. These “divine seers” “saw” images: they had Imagination. One must turn to such exceptional persons for advice in the realm of imaginations.

But what does the stone jasper have to do with the world of imagination?

In the introduction to Grand St Graal, it is described how the Master of the Grail enables an unnamed hermit “to behold God”. This hermit “sees” the risen Christ in (his) imagination, whom we cannot see with our eyes because there is nothing physical about Him.

The hermit from Grand St Graal indicates with a reference to the apostle John the conditions for exercising this type of vision:

And though I also said now that I saw three Persons and that I saw them separated from each other, this may be no grounds for envious and jealous folk, who do nothing but rebuke and find fault with people, to come to me and say that I have spoken against the authority of Saint John, the Apostle most high; for he declares that no human being ever saw the Father nor could see Him – and I agree with him. For not all who heard that, know what he meant. He wanted namely to say this about mortal human beings: the human being is mortal only to the extent that he is corporeal, and what dies is only the flesh. But when the human being has laid down his body, he can certainly see and recognize spiritual things and from that you may well understand what Saint John wanted to say to mortal human beings, that nobody can see the majesty of the Father.

This comment by the hermit, whom we identified as Titurel, comes directly after the supersensible experience, which the hermit describes as follows:

Then he took me to another level, which was a hundred times more transparent than glass and coloured so exquisitely and so mild and so luminous that no human being could have any presentiment of these colours. There he showed me the power of the Trinity, for there I saw and distinguished the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – so that I could differentiate one Person from the other. And then and there, I saw clearly how Three Persons united themselves into one Substance, one Godhead and one Power.

Such words are not phantasms. The hermit describes things that he experienced himself. The hermit and founder of the new Grail guardianship in the West “sees” a crystal clear structure in exquisite colours, like the structural image of jasper. He does not see this structure at rest, but in motion. Moses saw this supersensible stream of colours as moving clouds or blazing fire. But because these flames were not physical, the burning bush did not burn down. Titurel too saw his body as on fire, but it did not burn and he did not burn himself. He was afraid, however, and that hindered him at first from observing quietly. He must have taken a hold of himself and have distinctively observed, so that he was able to recognize that he did not “see” flames of fire, but streams of light and colour. He must in any case have been reminded by what he saw of the inner structure of Jasper, for he chose this stone iaspis ex silice to be the Grail symbol (P. 469:7).

The Grail Christians were Christians of the apostle John. But John too is an expert in supersensible cognition. He too had “beheld God”. Just as the Master of the Grail commended the guardianship of the Grail to Titurel, so John was initiated by that same Master and directed to write to the seven communities (parishes) in Asia. John sees the throne of His Majesty and Glory of the Father and writes to the people from Sardis (Revelation, Ch. 4:2-3):

And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and One sat on the throne. And He that sat there was to look upon like a jasper and a sardius stone.

In the description of his imagination John compares “He who sat there” metaphorically with the stone jasper. Because we know this stone now, we can deduce the form and structure of the physically imperceptible image seen in the imagination from the egg-like shape of this stone and its cloud-like veiled spheres. God appears to him with respect to His formal structure in a sea of cloudy veils laid in spheres around a core and enclosed by an egg-shaped sheath.

John also mentions Sardius, which is structurally jasper as well, a petrified “vitalized sheath”, but it has a special colour. The stone named after the Asian community and addressed by John is very special transparent beeswax brown. The beheld supersensible image of the “Father”, who is identical to God the Creator, would therefore have to be imagined in these honey tints.

We have now highlighted next to the physical-sensible side a second one, the etheric-supersensible, which need be studied more thoroughly to render the choice of jasper as Grail symbol even more understandable. From what has just passed the review arise unusual, perhaps even shocking consequences: God looks in the supersensible realm like the stone jasper and sardius in the sensible realm. We have known this from reading the Apocalypse for a long time, but who can believe that? God Himself would thus have looked like the whole macrocosm, the cosmic egg. The human being created in the image of God would have had in the period of creation the same form and structure that John compares with the image of jasper. Jasper would therefore, on the one hand, be something like the physical reflection of the supersensible cosmic plan, of the cosmic word or the Logos; a symbolic foundation stone of the earth embedded in the whole solar system. It would, however, also be a reflection of our human progenitors and a comparative image in stone with the plastic imagination of the supersensible Trinity. That way the structural image of jasper also becomes the symbol for supersensible imaginative vision.

In view of the complexity of these things, one feels compelled to think of Casper Hauser, the enigmatic 18^th century “Child of Europe”, and his simple interpretation of his imagination, about which he says that it appeared to him “as if all was one, humanity together with nature, but so that it is actually first humanity that makes it into a whole.”

If we consider that the Grail Christians distinguished themselves from the other Christians of the time by including the whole cosmos and an astronomy with a supersensible background reaching from beyond the moon to the fixed stars in their research into the meaning of Creation, then the decision to make the stone jasper into the Grail symbol no longer appears so unfounded. If the initiate John compares the Trinity in his imagination with the stone jasper, then we may assume that he wanted to say the same thing as the Grail Christians. The significance of jasper lies in the fact that it is not only a symbol in the mineral world, but also in a Grail Christianity founded on supersensible knowledge of a higher world, which can only be experienced in the realm of Imagination. The egg had this significance in the ancient mysteries. Occultists spoke also with reference to human beings of the auric (golden) egg. Jasper would be the first physical condensation point inside the much greater auric egg.

We have thus taken Wolfram von Eschenbach with regard to the Grail symbol seriously and by studying the structure of this iaspis ex sillîs have gained access to the forms of the etheric world perceptible by the imaginative vision of Man. The majesty of God looks in that world like the stone jasper, which in the Revelation of John is called a stone most precious (Rev. Ch. 21:11).

In evaluating precious stones according to their value or appearance, there are more precious stones than jasper. If we view this stone, however, as the petrified bodies of the archetypal human living beings from the Mesozoic period, and at the same time as the symbol for the etheric world, we have found a standard of comparison enabling us to regard the stone jasper in the sense of the Apocalypse as the stone most precious and the stone iaspis ex sillîs as Grail or as metaphor for the supreme aspirations of humanity. The most fervent wish of the Grail family was to achieve saelde (bliss or blessedness), i.e. that state judged in the Christian Beatitudes to be the goal of human education in Christianity, a state which is identical with the supersensible recognition of the Will of God.

The meaning of this symbol for the etheric world would be, that also the one unable to “see” should make a clear mental picture of how the supersensible world is seen and how it manifests itself in the world of the senses such as when human beings like Titurel stand before the highest Guide of humanity, the Master of the Grail of the Visio from 750. Those unable to see the world of Imagination as yet, should at least be reminded of this still elusive supersensible world and be prompted to examine the knowledge of their visionary teacher with logical thinking and, provided it makes sense, to acknowledge it.

The Grail symbol should, however, also motivate one to cultivate those paths that lead to a state where one can see for oneself. With jasper as the Grail symbol the actual nature of Christianity becomes apparent. The main characteristic of Grail Christianity lies in the fact that its knowledge is found along the way of Imagination.

We have gone through the trouble of recognizing Wolfram’s descriptions as realities. We have not uttered a word yet about the fact that what is said about Gawain’s experiences in Schastel Marveil or about the miraculous power of the Grail appears more than unrealistic. Now, however, the time has come for asking the realist, historian and geographer Wolfram von Eschenbach how he can explain the function of a miraculous pillar or a wondrous bed that rolls around by itself.

Wolfram would probably have used a metaphor from the Revelation of John to help us get rid of our zwîvel (doubt). It was revealed to John that at the end of the earth’s evolution – when our earth will have passed away – a New Earth and a New Heaven will come, of which the spiritual researcher says that it will not contain anything physical. The lowest plane of this New World is supersensible-etheric. John lets us in on this by saying that one of the seven angels showed him this New Earth – New Jerusalem. The angel led him in the spirit up a high mountain. Everything that John sees from there is thus supersensible. The city, its walls and towers are not to be imagined in a physical, but in an etheric way, even though the concepts used in the description are taken from the physical world. John expresses this by using jasper again as the symbol for this future world.

The lowest plane of the supersensible world, the etheric, is the foundation of New Jerusalem. Revelation (Ch. 21:19):

And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald.

The ground floor, the etheric world, is again called jasper. When we read by Wolfram that the floor on which the lit marveil (magic bed) rolled around was made of jasper, then this realist – for whom the spiritual world is also a reality – wants to indicate that the miracles he describes in Schastel Marveil (Magic or Wondrous Castle) should not be conceived of in physical terms. They occur on a higher plane, on a jasper ground, thus in the etheric world. We are not dealing here with physical events, but with imaginations or supersensible experiences on the part of Gawain. The Grail must be conceived of in a similar way. It is not the physical stone jasper that nourishes and keeps us alive, but the Grail itself, i.e. the etheric world for which since the days of antiquity the Grail stone jasper has been its symbol.

Since the baptism in the river Jordan another Christian symbol has been added to the Grail symbol existent since the time of Adam: The dove of the Holy Spirit. Wolfram says (P. 470:1-5):

ez is hiute der Karfrîtac | Today is Good Friday,
daz man für wâr dâ warten mac, | When one can infallibly see
ein tûb vom Himmel swinget: | A Dove wing down its way from Heaven.
ûf den Stein diu brenget | It brings a small white Wafer to the Stone
ein kleine wîze oblât. | And leaves it there.

The dove, the symbol for the spirit of the sun descended down to earth, completes the Grail symbol in the Christian era. The turtledove is the mark, the insignel (insignia) of the Grail family. Cundrie carried this sign in Arabian Gold on her black cape (P. 778:19-23):

ir kappe ein rîcher samît | Her hood was of rich samite
noch swerzer denn ein gênît. | Blacker than genet.
arabesch golt drûffe schîn, | On it there gleamed a flock of Turtle-doves
wol geworcht manc turteltiubelîn | Finely wrought in Arabian gold
nach dem insignel des grâles. | In the style of the Grail insignia.

Next to jasper, the symbol for Imagination, comes the dove, the symbol for Inspiration and Intuition. Expressed in Biblical terms: since the mystery of Golgotha, the reception of the dove, the pre-Christian experience of Jonah (Matt. 12:39-40), which leads to the Holy Spirit inhabiting the human being is possible without the three day stay “in the belly of the whale”.

* * *

* Books by G. Wachsmuth available in English at your local Anthroposophical Library are: Cosmic Aspects of Birth and Death; Etheric Formative Forces in the Cosmos, Earth and Man; The Evolution of Mankind; The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner; Reincarnation as a Phenomenon of Metamorphosis.

Appendix 1. The Grail Symbol

1st Excerpt from From Grail Christianity to Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy

1^st Excerpt from From Grail Christianity to Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy