Sangreal, The Cosmic Grail: The Cauldron of Lugh – Part 9

Sangreal, The Cosmic Grail: The Cauldron of Lugh – Part 9

In concluding last month’s article I quoted from 12^th century Perlesvous describing the appearance of the Holy Grail: “The Grail appeared at the ceremony of the mass, in five different forms that none ought to tell. For the secret things of the sacrament should not be told openly, except by him given by God to tell them. King Arthur beheld all the changes; the last of them was a change into a chalice.”

This quote clearly highlights the protean nature of the Grail. I have been building a case for the Grail as a multi-layered symbol, but one that has a very specific interpretation when viewed in the context of cosmic science. I have shown how there are extraordinary parallels between the Grail symbolism and the life cycle of comets, which, I have explained falls naturally into five phases. In the quote from Perlesvous we are told that it is only in the fifth and final transformation of the variable and dynamic Grail that it assumes the form of a chalice, the most recognizable image popularly ascribed to it.  Remaining ever cognizant of the admonition to refrain from speaking openly regarding the secret things of the sacrament, nonetheless, I believe that the time has come to declassify at least some of the ancient Arcanum in the hope that inevitable disaster might be at least forestalled, if not circumvented altogether, or even transformed into a tremendous opportunity for advancement of the Great Work.

I gave a hint to the perceptive reader to utilize the Language of the Birds to uncover concealed meanings. Let us recall that the language of the mysteries employs a variety of techniques for encoding alternate meanings into what might otherwise appear to the uninitiated as innocuous everyday speech. The troubadours were masters of this language, able to convey, through their songs, poems and stories, hidden meanings which those possessed of the keys could decipher. Legend has it that it derives directly from the ancient, cosmic language spoken prior to the great dispersion, or scattering abroad, that followed the ‘confusion of tongues’ inflicted upon humanity by ‘the Lord’ for their audacious attempt to build a tower ‘whose top may reach unto heaven.’

[pullquote]Is it that we had not yet demonstrated sufficient spiritual maturity to wield such power and additional millennia of training and testing was needed before we would be permitted to graduate to the cosmic level?[/pullquote]

The King James Bible makes it clear that the employment of this universal language conferred enormous power upon those capable of using it, for as the Old Testament God exclaims in Genesis, Chapter 11 ‘Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language, and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” Employment of this sacred language by humankind at large rendered them so capable and powerful that they could accomplish whatever they could imagine, even to the point of threatening the security of heaven. The precise wording of these verses carries profound implications to one who can read them stripped of centuries of dogmatic theological accretion. Here the plural nature of God is clearly indicated in the English rendering of the text, when the Lord says, in verse 7: “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their tongue.” It should here be noted for those unaware of it that the Old Testament word for God is Elohim, which is plural by the rules of Hebrew grammar as indicated by the final letters Yod Mem. However, in orthodox reading of the Bible the word God is assumed to be singular, but to be grammatically consistent it would be more accurately translated as ‘Gods.’ Allowing this possibility throws the Judaeo-Christian scripture into a whole new dimension of meaning, but that is a topic that must be taken up in another place.

So, the unambiguous interpretation of these verses is that humankind, unified in our ability to communicate through the use of the cosmic language could potentially attain the rank of the Gods. Why we were deemed unfit for that advancement has yet to explained. Is it that we had not yet demonstrated sufficient spiritual maturity to wield such power and additional millennia of training and testing was needed before we would be permitted to graduate to the cosmic level?

Whatever the answer, as the Great Wheel revolves the time once again comes around in which it becomes necessary and prudent to reconnect with things long buried and forgotten. So let us return to the Grail and see what the language of the mysteries might reveal.

The great Grail Scholar Sebastian Evans (1830 – 1909) clearly grasped that there were multiple dimensions of meaning in the very language of the Grail stories.  “We feel as we read that the words employed are intended to convey some deeper meaning than the fiction bears on the face of it . . . It is also a secret written in cipher . . . Throughout, there is a continual suggestion of hidden meaning.”

Through the methods of the Language of the Birds we can gain insight into this ‘hidden meaning.’ We will trace the evolution of the term “Grail” back to its source, as near to the ancient language as possible, and we will discover that lying concealed at the etymological root of the name of the Grail is the forgotten cosmological meaning, the revelation that transforms the Grail from an abstract, idiosyncratic symbol into a tremendous world altering reality.

I quoted Louis Charpentier in part 7 of this series describing the origins of the term Grail as being a pre-Celtic derivative of the word “Gar” meaning “stone”, to which was appended “el” or “al” the name of God, thereby yielding the meaning “Stone of God.” But the term Gar-el also means urn and it is in this context that Charpentier associates “Grail” with the word cauldron and invokes the image of the cauldron of Lug (pronounced Lu) in which “universal medicines” were cooked over a “special fire.”

Also in Part 7, I included a quote by Andrew Sinclair from his 1998 book The Discovery of the Grail:

“All the marvels of that castle of the Fisher King were further to be found in the castle of the divine Lug, which had held the treasures of the Celtic gods, including a bleeding lance . . .”

Lug or Lugh was the name of an Irish deity and hero god. He is described by a number of epithets that translate from the Gaelic with such meanings as “long arm,” “fierce striker” and “The Bright One with the Strong Hand.” The appellation “long arm” refers to Lug’s wielding of his principal weapons, a mighty spear and a sling. It is said in the tales that with this spear Lug could vanquish his enemies. Grail scholar Roger Sherman Loomis, (1887 – 1966) associates Lug’s spear specifically with the blood dripping lance that appeared in the procession in the castle of the Fisher King. He asks “What better explanation is there for the functionless lance in the Fisher King’s castle?” and then remarks “Later Chrétien informs us that it will destroy the whole realm of Logres (the name of King Arthur’s realm, and hence England) — a prophecy which accords with the origin of the lance in the spear of Lug, noted for its destructiveness. . . “

So, here we are getting close to the crux of the whole matter. The spear, or lance, has enormous destructive potential, with the power to destroy the whole of England in a blow. Nikolai Tolstoy, an author and historian of Russian descent, born in England and distant cousin of prominent author Leo Tolstoy, has written extensively about matters Celtic.  In his 1985 book ‘The Quest for Merlin’ he writes: “The name ‘Lug’ derives from a Celtic root meaning ‘light’ and the god was conceived as bright, youthful and glorious above all the other gods . . . and like to the setting sun was his countenance and his forehead; and they were not able to look in his face from the greatness of his splendor . . . the glory of his appearance was like that of the sun itself.”

Consider these brief reports from eyewitness to the great Tunguska cosmic event of 1908 in light of what you now know of the Spear of Lug:

“At the beginning of the ninth hour in the morning . . . a most unusual phenomenon of nature was observed here. In the village of Nizhne-Karelinsk…in the north west quite high above the horizon, the peasants saw a body shining very brightly (too bright for the naked eye)” Krinov, E. L. (1966) Giant Meteorites. Trans. from Russian by J. S. Romankiewicz. Pergamon Press

“Suddenly before me I saw the sky in the north open to the ground and fire pour out. We were terrified . . . The fire was brighter than the sun.” (From letters to Kulik in 1935-36 by a certain Naumenko in the village of Kezhma.)

“. . .when I turned quickly in the direction of the crash I saw that the Sun’s rays were crossed by a broad fiery-white band . . . On the left side, towards the north, an irregularly- shaped brilliantly white somewhat elongated mass was flying into the taiga…with a diameter far greater than the Moon’s…” (Letters to Kulik)

“In the north a pale bluish light glowed, and from the south a fiery body that was considerably larger than the Sun and left a broad bright streamer behind it flew across the sky.”

“On 17 June in the north west of Kirensk an extraordinary phenomenon was observed…At 7.15 a.m. in the north west a pillar of fire appeared…in the shape of a spear.”

“…an elongated body narrowing towards one end . . .  torn as it were from the Sun; its head was bright as the Sun . . .”

Or ponder these remarks from eyewitnesses to the meteor explosion over the town of Chelyabinsk, Siberia on Feb. 15, 2013:

“All the residents saw blinding flashes, very bright ones. Suddenly it was very, terribly bright.”

“I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day.”

“It got bigger and bigger . . .  it became brighter and brighter, until it became blindingly white, and I turned away to save my eyes.”

“…suddenly the sky lit up with a bright light and something that looked like the Sun fell somewhere to the south.”

Reread the passages about Lug. The glory of his appearance was described as being ‘like the Sun’ but not the Sun itself as most conventional scholarship assumes. His spear was believed to be capable of laying waste to the whole of Arthur’s Britain.[pullquote]His spear was believed to be capable of laying waste to the whole of Arthur’s Britain.[/pullquote] Remember the appearance of the Grail in the Castle Corbenic, too bright to look upon with the naked eye. Now think about the final and most dramatic stage in the life of a comet or its meteoritic offspring when it encounters a planet directly, before it dissolves into a stream of celestial dust, wreaking havoc on the environment, delivering its ‘Dolorous blow’ and leaving as a testimony to its coming a great excavated basin in the face of the Earth that we call an impact crater.

Here we have the cosmic meaning concealed within the ancient tales of the Cauldron of Lug, the vessel in which ‘universal medicines’ were concocted with a ‘special fire’, for in the strange and exotic alchemy catalyzed by the fusion of celestial and terrestrial matter within the crater, under conditions of extraordinary heat and pressure, is to be found the secret of evolution.

Remembering that the final change in the 5-phase transformation of the Grail was into a chalice, or more commonly a cup, or even a bowl, we conclude our excursion into the etymological origins of the name of the Grail by referring to the American College Dictionary:

The term Grail comes from the Middle English grayle, which is taken from the Old French as a modification of graal, taken in turn from Middle Latin, a modification of the stem of gradāle which means ‘plate’, and this derives from the Latin modification of the Greek word for bowl.

And the Greek word for bowl is crater!

Continue on to Sangreal, The Cosmic Grail: Sacred Language and Cosmic Alchemy – Part 10