knight of the Grail
The mysterious guardians of the Grail. If the Grail had a home, wherein it was preserved for people who could come in search of it, that home needed guardians. This seems to have been a given from the very earliest grail testimonies, and when we look at the work of Chrétien de Troyes and Robert de Boron, Wolfram von Eschenbach or the writer of Sone, we are able to see...
In search for the Grail and Grail Temple … Now, we have heard how Lancelot fared when he entered the chapel of the Grail to help the “man dressed like a priest” who was serving at the Mass. Even though his intention is good, he is not permitted to touch or look upon the mystery. So, too, in the story of the Ark’s journey from Gebaa, described in the biblical...
The name of Hermes, whether or not qualified as Trismegistus, henceforth served as guarantee or signature for a host of esoteric books on magic, astrology, medicine, etc., throughout the Middle Ages, and this despite the fact that, with the exception of the Asclepius, the Corpus Hermeticum was unknown. Picatrix At the same time, an inspired imagery unfolded in both Latin and Arabic literature in a succession of “visionary recitals” (as Henry Corbin calls them), constellated around this key figure. The […]...
Gral Relic
The mysterious relic —which could be at one and the same time a chalice, a book, a stone, or a person— was seen as existing both on the earth and at a remove from it. In the poem The Later Titurel, it hovers above the world, untouched by human hands and supported by angels. In the Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes and the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, it is...
In 1934 the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung published in Issue 48 an article by Otto Rahn entitled: Jehans Letzer Gang (Jehan’s Last Steps). The piece told the story of one Jehan Tessenre, a young family man moments away from his execution by Hugeunot troops in reprisal for the death of sixty—two of their brethren. They had been betrayed by Jehan to the townsfolk of Tarascon who lost no time in tossing...
Lohengrin to manhood grew And gave the Grail his service true … Across the sea a maiden dwelt … She a princess of Brabant. From Munsalvach he was sent Whom the Swan did bring … Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival   Swan Knight The Swan Knight tale occurs in the thirteenth-century Grail document Sone de Nansay. And Wolfram von Eschenbach links him, under the name of Lohengrin, with the Grail family members. As it was obviously crucial to the writer to […]...
Grail Prent
In the early 1180s, as the shadow of Saladin lengthened over the Holy Land, a nobleman with Merovingian ancestry, Philip d’Alsace, count of Flanders, commissioned the greatest poet of the age, Chrétien de Troyes, to do a French reworking of a strange tale about a poor knight, the son of a widow, who attains the kingship of the Holy Grail. Philip d’Alsace Philip supposedly found the tale in an ancient...
Water spring
The Elucidation is an anonymous Old French poem of the early 13th century, which was written to serve as a prologue to Chrétien de Troyes‘ Perceval, le Conte du Graal. It is preserved in only one manuscript, Mons 331/206 (olim 4568), and in the Prose Perceval printed in 1530. Moreover, a German translation by Philipp Colin and Claus Wisse appeared in the Nüwe Parzefal of the 14th-century. Goethe The poet,...
Parzival logo Maier files
Teutonic legend. a music drama by Richard Wagner: composed 1877-82; premiere 1882 a male given name: from Old French words meaning “pierce” and “valley” comparable to Percival a knight of King Arthur’s court who sought the Holy Grail a German mythical military division   What lies beneath the noun Parzival? In Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach tells us that the Grail is a stone that was brought from heaven to Earth by ‘neutral angels’, so called because they refused to take […]...
Albruna rune sequence
From his seat in Asgard, Odin, observed the Norns at the base of Yggdrasil, and envied their skills and their foresight. The god twisted his will toward the undertaking of coming to know the Runes. The native home of the runes is the Well of Urd with the Norns and since the runes do not reveal themselves to any but those who prove themselves worthy of such fearful insights and...
surfacing U-boat Scotland WW2
  U-boat missions in Scotland. The Maier files story mentions a special U-boat mission into Scotland (Maier files Unternehmen Kelch). Could there be any trace found about such secret mission, and were there any German submarines spotted around early December or late November 1939 at Carradale Bay, Firth of Clyde or the isle of Arran? The Firth of Clyde forms a large area of coastal water sheltered from the Atlantic Ocean by the...
Templar cross and Cathar Cross
The French historian Raimonde Reznikov’s book ‘Cathares et Templiers’ can be something of a scholar’s antidote to the wilder extremes of conspiracy mongering. As reported by Reznikov, besides the evident link that Templars and Cathars were suppressed by shared conspiracy between state and church, the solely genuine sympathetic link originated from the imaginations of eighteenth-century Freemasons. She writes: The Templar mythology, fabricated in the 18th century in the bosom of German lodges by the vanity of Freemasons, desirous to join […]...
Maier files books