SCHOOLS OF THE GRAIL
A Brief History of an eternal Quest
The Seeker of the Grail from The Grail Tarot by John Matthews.
Image by Giovanni Casselli
I have been frequently asked over years of teaching and writing about the Grail if there is a school that shares its wisdom with the world. In a certain sense there is no such thing – at least not that I’m aware of - but in another there are many such schools, which have spread the message and wisdom of the Grail over several centuries.
The real inner history of the Grail has yet to be written.[1] Yet there are those who have already contributed chapters to the continuing story. The Grail has had a part in the esoteric life of the world for a long time. From the moment that Robert De Borron wrote how Christ spoke to Joseph of Arimathea “holy words that are sweet and gracious, precious and full of pity, and rightly are called the Secrets of the Grail,”[2] he assured that seekers would come who would desire to know these secrets, even to imagine they knew them when they did not.
During the Middle Ages, at the height of the Grail fever which attended the appearance of many texts dealing with the quest for the sacred vessel, both the Cathars and the Knights Templar were thought to possess the Grail in some form. In fact the idea of the saintly ‘pure men’ of the Albigensian heresy possessing any physical object is unlikely - though they certainly seem to have known of the inner mysteries which the Grail expresses. [3]The Templars, according to more than one authority, may have guarded for a time the Mandylion, a sacred relic which is thought to have contained the famous Shroud of Turin.[4] It has been noted that the description of the folded shroud, protected by a frame which showed only the face, is consistent with descriptions of the head in the dish found in certain Grail works then circulating. Whether the Templars actually possessed any secret knowledge of the vessel is less easy to prove, since so much calumny was directed at them at the time of their fall, and actual documents are few and far between.
However, certain modern Templar orders exist which claim the wisdom of the Grail as part of their heritage:
......it is a fundamental belief of the Templar tradition, a belief backed by long experience, that if a seeker after truth begins to work seriously on himself, he will start to radiate light on the inner levels ... Every man and woman who is stirred by stories, legends or films of noble heroes is merely reacting to the promptings of the True Knight who sleeps within the heart ... The task of awakening the True Knights within us is not an easy one. We will need first of all to look honestly at ourselves and then take the first steps with courage and determination. The spiritual impulses ... will then certainly respond to the likes of our aspiration and reveal to us that true will which guides us inevitably to the truth.[5]