4 - Esoteric Mysticism: Actualization of a Grail Redefined

Summary

The Grail quest has been through a process of secularization, from skeptical reaction against its supernaturalism to acceptance of its use as metaphor, but it has also been through a process of re-spiritualization in Grail scholarship and fiction that come out of the Aquarian and New Age movements. Even though twentieth-century skepticism has transformed the Grail from a material and supernatural Christian or Celtic pagan object to a metaphor, some twentiethcentury scholars and writers of fiction maintain that the Grail actually exists. To them it is a supernatural reality and not just a metaphor. Yet many assertions of a real Grail paradoxically acquiesce to views that deny a real Grail in that those who believe it is real often allow it only an immaterial reality, even to the extent of making it an abstraction that, nevertheless, is somehow still real in a spiritual sense. In the 1930s, the occultic archaeologist and Grail seeker Frederick Bligh Bond called it “a reality spiritual but not material” (Gospel 225). A spiritualized Grail is open to universal application like the metaphorical Grail and can likewise be personalized. It has the flexibility of metaphor, as well as an actual existence in the spiritual realm. This transformation of the legend coincides with a fascination with esoteric mysticism and the Aquarian and New Age movements' quest for alternative spiritualities.