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Enter the Grail

“If knightly deeds, with shield and lance, can win fame for one’s Earthly self, yet also Paradise for one’s soul, then the chivalric life has been my one desire.” ….You are Parsifal! Your name means: Pierce-through-the-heart!…..Wolfram von Eschenback, 1205

Parzival und Condviramur. Handschrift aus der Werkstatt von Diebold Lauber, 1443

The grail saga first appeared in print In 1190, when Irish poet Chretien wrote Perceval or the Story of the Grail.  Understand, however, the story is much older, and was carried for centuries across Europe by wandering troubadours, the rock stars of their day. Real spirituality moves through music, and troubadours were some of the greatest performers not under Vatican supervison. For centuries, the Vatican claimed a monopoly on musical composition. And what many fail to realize is some of the first secular composers were also cannabis users. Some were involved in a movement called “The Society of Smokers,” whose song lyrics involved lines like “I love my smoke.” History has failed to identify what that smoke was, and it’s often mistaken for a reference to opium when it is obviously cannabis they were crooning about.

As this illustration shows, troubadours were not typically solo acts. The best players always prefer to work with other good players (on different instruments) because spirituality moves through telepathy, and the quality of your combo along with the quality of your audience greatly enhances the quality of your performance.

The Commedia dell’arte style of improvisational theater sprang later on from these troubadours, so it’s likely some were doing jazz in the Middle Ages. Improvisation is a doorway to spirituality, but the mainstream tends to despise its powers, preferring total control, lest more slip off the leash. No doubt that’s why they were so opposed to the Cathars, and also opposed to jazz when it emerged in New Orleans. And it was obvious there was a cannabis connection to Congo Square as well as the Cathars, although that’s been mostly wiped out of history.

Wolfram von Eschenback was a knight, composer, singer and lyre player in Germany, and also one of the first to put the grail story on paper. Since Wolfram was illiterate, the song had to be dictated. Wolfram was also the Bob Dylan of his era.

One glaring and notable detail in his grail story is the total absence of Jesus Christ. And that’s because the grail story did not start with Christians, but originated much earlier in ancient Scythia. The story was embellished by the Manichaeans, who were virtually extinguished from Europe in the 6th century by an ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Vatican. Although all texts and records of the Manichaeans were disappeared, the culture went underground, and continued on only through the efforts of troubadours like Eschenback.

Scythian culture was immensely savage, and had to be tamed as it evolved through Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism. The tempering was accomplished through the rise of a concept called chivalry. Armored knights had a responsibility to behave in a decent manner, and that was especially true when upholding the rights of the weaker sex. Chivalry ran on love power.

The quest for the grail is the knight’s rite of passage, in which he is transformed into a fully empathetic being, something accomplished by learning the secrets of the grail.

Around 1100, the Cathars appear across Europe, creating cities and villages, mostly in France and Germany. Their name meant “pure ones” in Greek. But when the Pope of Rome realized the Cathars were the dreaded Manichaeans rising from the grave, he launched the first crusade in Catholic history to demolish all their cities and towns while murdering all the occupants. No matter if a few Catholics lived there too, the Pope wanted everyone exposed eliminated. The Inquisition followed to clean up any traces. The only surviving history of any Cathars are edited confessions extracted through torture before death, none of which can be trusted as real. But it’s the same story for anything about Manichaeans. The only documents detailing their history come from persecutors.

One thing you’ll notice about cannabis as it secretly marches through history, the world’s most persecuted plant. Wherever you find cannabis use, you’ll find songs written about it, a line that stretches back through the ages to ancient Scythia and continues through early jazz, rock and hip hop. And that’s because real spirituality moves through music, and not through repressions.

The smoker smokes through smoke,
A smoky speculation.
While others smoke in thought,
The smoker smokes through smoke,
Because smoke pleases him greatly
As he meditates.
The smoker smokes through smoke,
A smoky speculation.

Fumeux fume by Solage, circa 1370

 

 

 

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The Real Secret of the Holy Grail

Mani was the greatest avatar of the ancient world and also the greatest portrait painter and calligrapher. He inspired the greatest religious revival of his time, but did not wear expensive robes, nor cultivate toadies. What Mani did was successfully integrate the best of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity.

Mani’s bible equated spiritual energy with light, and considered the light of the sun as Jehovah, and light of the moon as Jesus.

Mani used the Zoroastrian sacrament of mixing hot milk with cannabis flower to heal the blind and lame, serving this elixir in a sacred chalice. The origins of the grail story start in ancient Scythia, long before Mani’s time, and centuries before the arrival of Jesus.

Mani lived several hundred years after the mythical birth of Jesus, but he was the most famous Gnostic of his time, and considered himself one of Christ’s appointed agents on earth, just as many Buddhists in India considered him the living Buddha.

Execution of Mani

Mani was lured back to Persia under false pretense, skinned alive and decapitated for the crime of trying to end war over religion. The gate in Persia where his head was put on a pike still bears his name, although nobody seems to know anything about him. That gate is his only trace.

A holocaust soon followed on Mani’s followers, and it did successfully tamp down his philosophy for centuries, but eventually, all across Europe, a movement very similar to Mani’s appeared. It became known as Catharism. It had no leader. Cathars rejected the crass commercialization of Rome 300 years before Martin Luther came to similar conclusions. They believed in a connection between light and spiritual energy, and worshipped a form of Christianity with a Buddhist flavor, rejecting heaven and hell for reincarnation, just like Manichaeism.

The Pope in Rome at first tried to negotiate with the Cathars in France, around Languedoc. After that failed, he declared the first crusade, the Albigensian Crusade, which could have been an even bigger and more horrific ethnic cleansing than Mani’s. The closest thing I can imagine is the Rape of Nanking. Entire towns were destroyed, women and children raped, and then murdered. It didn’t matter if one was Cathar or Catholic. “Let God sort them out,” said the evil Pope.
 
The last hold-outs were in Montsegur. In 1244, their fort was stormed after a brutal 10-month seige. The 200 inhabitants were thrown on a bonfire.
 
But the night before the siege ended, a small group successfully slipped through enemy lines, carrying their greatest treasure to safety, a green-stained goblet. Perhaps this was an actual artifact from Mani, and if so, would have been the sole surviving possession from the greatest avatar of the ancient world.
 
Monument to the murdered Cathars.

Many decades earlier, Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote Parzival, a search for the grail. His grail castle is called Monsalvat, which is similar to Montségur and has the same meaning: “safe mountain.”

The book Crusade Against the Grail by Otto Rahn in the 1930s revived interest in the connection between Catharism and the Holy Grail, and painted Parzival as a veiled account of the Cathars. That research fascinated Heinrich Himmler, who made Rahn an archaeologist in the SS, which, later, helped inspire Raiders of the Lost Ark.
 
It’s a bit lonely connecting these dots from Scythians to Zoroastrians to Mani to Catharism to Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s been a solo adventure, but I’m hoping others will pick up and follow the trail. This is the true secret of the holy grail. It’s not about the actual chalice but the elixir that went inside.
Eventually the real story has to get out.
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A brief history of religion

Study the Scythians to help navigate the missing history of religion. Their religion was documented by Herodotus, the father of Western history.

Scythians believed god sent them three golden objects: a golden cup, a golden plough, and a golden battle ax.

The cup was too hot too touch, but one day a boy was able to pick it up. His offspring became the royal Scythians, in charge of appointing the Enares, who ran the ceremonies. The family with the plough was put in charge of planting hemp and other crops in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. During the summer, they moved their herds up the mountain fields to graze, and returned to the banks of the Black Sea during the winter. I could write a long time about their customs, even though they had no written language and everything we know comes from Persia or from Greece, in other words, their enemies. The Scythians built and controlled the Silk Road, which meant they were also involved in the slave, drug and spice trades. Silk didn’t appear until millennia later.

When the straits of Bosphorus were first breached, possibly due to a meteor strike, sea water flooded into the Black Sea burying all the towns and villages on the shore, as well as several islands. The survivors move away, some to Turkey, some to Persia, some to Afghanistan. They develop flood myths.

Meanwhile, in Bactria a new avatar emerges, Zoroaster, who is using the Scythian sacraments, and popularizes drinking hot milk mixed with cannabis, which turns out to be the most effective delivery system, both for medicinal and inspirational purposes. Zoroaster is a barefoot holy man, not a warrior like Heracles, the previous avatar. He carries a magic stick instead of a magic sword. He saves the tribe through feats of magic, not through feats of strength.

The first Zoroastrian king of Persia (Cyrus the Great) defeats the corrupt Babylonian empire and replaces it with a more enlightened form of government. He frees the Jews enslaved by Babylon and says, “Take this money and go back to Jerusalem and rebuild your temple and write down the history of your tribe.”

Naturally, they create a new avatar to update Abraham, named Moses, who is a composite of Zoroaster and Cyrus. Like Zoroaster, Moses goes to the top of “smokey” mountain and comes back with god’s rules after conversing with a burning bush. Like Cyrus, Moses was a foundling whose real identity was kept hidden.

Alexander the Great’s father becomes the first to defeat the Scythians in battle, opening the way for his son to march across the Silk Road and conquer Bactria. Meanwhile a new avatar emerged in India and became popular in Bactria. His name was Buddha. The great pantheons of Indian, Greek, Egyptian and Persian gods had been rejected by Zoroaster, who created the first monotheistic religion, but Buddha creates the first “no gods” religion in which your fate is ruled by karma, not by whims of some god.

Alexander embraces Buddhism before he dies and for centuries afterwards the entire Middle East becomes Buddhist with a Greek flavor. Judea borders the Greco-Buddhist empire, and soon the most advanced Jews are working on a new avatar, inspired by Buddha. Stories and scrolls are written to celebrate this new movement, which is vegetarian and seeks to stop the slaughter of birds and animals inside the temple.

This is a small, tiny movement, but one that troubles Rome, so they send one of their citizens to persecute these new Christians causing trouble in the temple, interfering with the slaughter of animals and birds, which makes a lot of profit (and Rome gets a cut).

The persecutor is unable to wipe out the movement, so he joins it and becomes its biggest influencer after the movement’s leader, James, is thrown off a tower and murdered. Thus ends any talk of vegetarianism.

Two hundred years later, a boy is born of a Christian father and Zoroastrian mother in Persia, and develops unique theories on religion at a young age, amazing the Magi while only 12. He successfully merges all religion to end war, and becomes a hunted man in return. He is such a vegetarian he won’t eat roots, only freely fallen fruits, nuts and vegetables. Lured out of safe haven in India he is skinned alive and decapitated for the crime of trying to end war. His murder makes him famous worldwide and the mercenary army of Rome begins flocking to his religion in droves, reading the bible he wrote by himself in his own unique calligraphy. He was the greatest portrait painter of his time. His temples spread over the world, until it got so big, Rome got worried again.

That’s when Constantine embraces a small cult designed to give comfort to the poor, and transforms it into an imperial juggernaut to take over the world. Many elements of Mani’s life are incorporated into the story of Jesus.

Not a single temple, bible, nor painting of Mani’s survives the great Inquisition, although pockets survive in modified form, like the Cathars in France. Eventually the Pope will order them all slaughtered to stop the spread of Mani’s dualism.

Mani had been healing the blind and lame, not with magic, but with the original oil of Moses, a mixture of cannabis resin suspended in olive oil with some spices, and a tad of opium and ephedra if available.

Rome disappears Mani and disappears cannabis at the same time. The Scythian holy grail, which was about the substance inside the cup, is transformed into the Christian Eucharist.

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True Origins of the Holy Grail

Strange the Holy Grail remains our central myth, yet few pay attention to its origins. Probably because those origins are steeped in cannabis.

Herodotus, the father of western history, first documented the three sacred golden gifts (plow/yoke, axe and cup) bequeathed to Greece’s ancient northern neighbors, the Scythians, who had divided into a caste system based around those three gifts.

Herodotus also documented the culture’s great affection for cannabis sweat lodges. By his time, they had already built the (poorly-named) Silk Road. (In truth, it was cannabis that built their highway; silk came along later in the game.)

Another myth is the Scythians conquered cultures with brunt force, when in reality, despite their superior weapons and highly militarized society, their culture was so incredibly advanced it was readily absorbed into the many cultures they traded with. And because they traveled from Europe to China and India, the Scythians absorbed elements from both east and west. Scythian priests (many of whom were transsexual) had best magic because their primary sacrament was the greatest medicine on earth.

A few hundred years after Herodotus, Quintus Curtius Rufus documented those same three sacred gifts as essential to the Zoroastrians, although the weapon had morphed into a spear and arrow.

In later Nart versions, it became a golden sword.

However, throughout history, the golden cup retained its importance in Zoroastrian and Gnostic traditions, and this cup was a symbol of spirituality long before the arrival of the cross.

Interestingly, the grail appears on Templar tombstones as well, indicating the powerful secret society had an early association with the grail.

In fact, issues with the Templars may have originated with their defense of the Cathars, and there is speculation that two of the original nine Templar knights were Cathars.

It’s worth noting that the Cathar grail was called “Mani,” leading me be believe the Persian prophet Mani, who lived around the year 200, was the source of their dualistic beliefs. Mani attempted to unify all known religions and his followers built temples throughout the Silk Road, all of which were destroyed or absorbed by other religions.

Unfortunately, the version of the grail told today has been completely sanitized from any association with cannabis, when in fact, it’s the substance in the grail that carries the magic, and not the metal itself. I find it interesting Southern France became a center for mysticism, launching many occult societies, and the greatly persecuted Cathars were undoubtedly the inspiration behind much of that.

Meanwhile, the growth of Islam displaced the Zoroastrians, but the haoma cup was easily morphed into Islam’s Cup of Jamshid, said to contain the elixir of immortality. In early European mythology the grail contains the key to bringing peace to the kingdom. In reality, both claims are true: cannabis is the key to long-life, and it has a soothing effect that helps tamp down rage and violence.