Post
Script:
Grail Knights of North America?
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he morning after the night of my talk to members
of the Anthroposophical Society in Montreal on the subject Social Organics
as a Grail Impulse for the 21st century, on the day that I
finished the above introduction, September 11, tragedy hit America.* This resulted in a ten-day delay of my
return flight to Amsterdam. While thus stranded in Montreal, I learned that
since his Holy Grail Across The Atlantic Michael Bradley has written two
sequels, namely The Columbus Conspiracy – An Investigation into the Secret
History of Christopher Columbus (Hounslow Press, Toronto, 1991 and Grail
Knights of North America – On the Trail of Grail Legacy in Canada and the
United States (Hounslow Press, Toronto 1998).
In these books, Bradley brings a wealth of
further “Grail-related” details about what he terms “the noble conspiracy of
the Holy Blood to create a New Jerusalem in the New World, a world of religious
toleration between Jews, Christians and Moslems.” This was, according to
Bradley, the real driving force behind Godfrey de Bouillon and the crusades as
well as Columbus‘ voyage of discovery, but whereas both of these movements
failed due to the opposing powers of intolerance, ignorance and oppression, the
alleged Grail Sites in Nova Scotia and Montreal were a success in the sense
that they allowed the Holy Grail to escape and survive from the persecution of
these opposing powers, in this latter case the Vatican supported by Spain.
One
finds a lot of repetition from his first book; what is new, among other things,
in the book Grail Knights of North America is that its author apparently
underestimated the number of Knights Templar present with Prince Henry Sinclair
at the Grail refuge in Nova Scotia. These knights in the course of time then
spread out further inland, creating settlements, some intermarrying with the
natives and leaving behind various traces and monuments. All this is
interesting, even fascinating and as facts or findings cannot be denied, but:
are they really to be interpreted as Grail-related?
As in his first book, Bradley’s
crown witness for matters pertaining to the Grail is again Wolfram von
Eschenbach; indeed his last book begins with a quotation from Parzival
about Kyot: “Kyot the master of high renown, found, in confused pagan writing,
the legend which reaches back to the prime source of all legends.”
And again, the whole-sale acceptance
of the geographic identification of Wolfram’s Anschouwe
as Anjou in France – which Werner Greub shows should be Andlau
in Alsace, where Kyot found the first traces of the Grail family – plays an
important role in Bradley’s “Secret of the Holy Grail”: the divinely inspired
bloodline of Jesus surviving throughout the ages and now claiming the ascent to
its long lost thrones.* In the
Grail Knights book he writes (on p. 246): “Anjou, in Brittany, was one other
place where Merowingian descendants of Jesus found a
haven. Indeed, according to Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, the ‘Tale
of the Grail’ began in Anjou, at least as far as France is concerned, with
incoming Holy Blood refugees from Arthur’s doomed Britain.” In the Columbus
Conspiracy he writes (on p. 64) that this secret “may not be true, that is
not really important. What is important is the fact, and it is an undoubted
fact, that many people believed it to be true. Their belief moulded a faith,
lives and motivations in a way that was completely unorthodox according to the
tenets of the dominant Roman Catholic Church.”
With How The Grail Sites Were Found, another, quite different reality of the Grail has now found its way across the Atlantic; one that may turn out to be as equally unorthodox to Michael Bradley and his fellow Holy Blood believers as their belief is unorthodox to the “tenets of the dominant Roman Catholic Church”, the Holy See. For this research-report – based as it is on a thorough, pain-staking but unbiased and loving examination of the work of Wolfram von Eschenbach – in fact knocks down many of the pillars on which this already “nebulous idea about the European history of North America” (Bradley in his Acknowledgements at the end of his last book) is standing. As such, it may well come as an unpleasant surprise, if not a real shock. Will it prompt Holy Blood believers to reconsider and revise their ideas or beliefs? This can be asked of the establishment academics and writers as well for whom this volume will be no less of a big pill to swallow, requiring strong powers of digestion. Or will it be met with a deafening conspiracy of silence?
Whatever the reaction may be, it will in any case be a test distinguishing genuine Grail seekers aspiring to the truth from those who are consciously preparing or unconsciously supporting quite a different agenda: not a Second Coming of the Redeemer in the etheric, but a First Coming on earth of the Illegitimate Prince of this World.
Robert J. Kelder,
Lachine, September 19, 2001
* In the next edition of Munsalvaesche in
America – Towards The New Grail Community I will attempt to deal with the
background and implications of this catastrophe and give a report on what I
brought to bear on the subject of my talk the night before the catastrophe.
Suffice it to say that never has the need been greater for a strong mediating
force of the middle between two hostile, opposite camps that are both convinced
that they are involved in a (holy) war, a crusade to eradicate evil, i.e. each
other. As portrayed by the symbol on Wolfram von Eschenbach’s coat-of-arms,
this task of balancing, i.e. neutralizing two opposing (divine) forces has
always been the task of Grail knights.
Is it too much to say that this tragedy could have been averted, if
there had been a really new Grail Community centred around a modern Grail
castle Munsalvaesche in the world and therefore also in America? Averted in the
sense that the conflict could have been diverted from the physical arena to the
soul realm where the differences could have been ironed out by peaceful,
spiritual means.
* This is not directly implied by Bradley,
indeed writing in the Columbus book (p. 51 ff.) on the divine dispensation
through the royal blood, he says: “We modern people of a democracy may not be
able to muster much sympathy for such a view.” But in the foreword to Laurence
Gardner’s Bloodline of the Holy Grail Prince Michael of Albany, head of
the Royal House of Stewart, writes: “This work offers an incredible insight
into centuries of strategic governmental alignments, together with their
associated deceits * This is not
directly implied by Bradley, indeed writing in the Columbus book (p. 51 ff.) on
the divine dispensation through the royal blood, he says: “We modern people of
a democracy may not be able to muster much sympathy for such a view.” But in
the foreword to Laurence Gardner’s Bloodline of the Holy Grail Prince
Michael of Albany, head of the Royal House of Stewart, writes: “This work
offers an incredible insight into centuries of strategic governmental
alignments, together with their associated deceits and intrigues. For around two thousand years, the destinies
of millions of people have been manipulated by unique, though often whimsical,
personalities, who have perverted the spiritual aspirations of our
civilization. With marvellous detail, the author has removed the constraints of
vested interests to related numerous suppressed accounts of our heritage. In so
doing, he resurrects the politically silenced history of a resolute dynasty,
which the Church has long sought to vanquish in order to further its own ends.
Now, in this new age of understanding, may the truth prevail, and may the
Phoenix rise again.” What else can this last sentence refer than to a
bloodline-based claim to a long lost throne? This is, as we have tried to show
earlier, with all respect, an old Grail impulse. Nowhere in the voluminous work
of Gardner is there any reference to the Star of Munsalvaesche and the miracle
of Parzival’s Grail kingship or anthroposophy as the science of the Grail,
heralding a new Grail monarchy, a new way of governing and government. Yet,
oddly enough, in Bloodline (p. 5 ff.) Gardner, who is the Presidential
Attaché to the European Council of Princes, says this book “is all about good
government and bad government.”