The Meaning of the Quest for the Holy Grail

This is a crisis moment in history. It is a time of highly destructive iconoclasm when it is demanded of Western civilisation that it denounce and demean itself before a clamour of pseudo-historical and crypto-mythological accounts of the past made up largely of wishful thinking and blatant opportunism. It is vital therefore to return to the truly ancient cultural wellsprings of the West, and to explore and re-assert their brilliant—and unsurpassed—intellectual, cultural and spiritual resources. This article is an attempt to do this, exploring the Grail archetype as an example of these multi-faceted riches. 

The Great Mystery The Holy Grail is one of the greatest mysteries in the entire history of Western civilisation. It seems to have emerged almost from nowhere in the twelfth century and to have then been everywhere, in literature and art, before fading, only to surge forth again in the modern era. And while the Grail appears as a prize beyond price, right from the start…