It starts with a wounding

Searching for the grail

This story begins at no particular time. It has also begun many times. Perhaps it will never end; this search for that most precious thing, the bringer of healing to the deepest wounds

On this occasion a journey begins with a woundimg at the Ashmolean Museum. I have been striving to persuade the museum to publish a book of poems i have collected, which are based on objects in the museum galleries that I have been encouraging people to write over these last three and more years. The museum has decided that it does not have the resources to print the book. It has also declined to create an App which would enable people to hear the poems as they walk around the galleries.

This may not turn the museum into a wasteland, but it robs the place of the creative production of so many fine poets. These things may yet be created and published, but they will need the help of other errant Knights who have the will to find a way.

The quest for the grail always begins with a wound. Arthur suffered a deep spear wound in his groin which made him unable to command his Kingdom.

“I and the Kingdom are one.” When the King cannot rule, the Kingdom cannot thrive. 

Such is the state of mythic Kingship. When the King is deeply wounded the land becomes a wasteland. Crops fail. Rivers dry up. The myth tells us that the King can only be made well again by a drink from the Holy Grail. And only when the King is healed will the land grow green again. But the Grail is a mystery. It cannot be found, except by a questing Knight who is willing to search inner and outer worlds to the ends of the earth in order to find it. Arthur summons all his Knights of the Round Table and bids them go in search of this mystery, this marvel.

So it was that I stumbled upon an old and battered, broken cauldron in a gallery dedicated to early British prehistoric archaeology. This particular vessel was discovered in the river Cherwell close to Banbury in the north of the county, not far from where I have lived these last twenty years. A cauldron like this one would have been at the centre of a feast among the ancient British people, a Celtic people, who would later be driven West into Wales and South West into Cornwall by the invading Angles and Saxons. 

This piece of history or prehistory put me in mind of the ancient literature of Wales and Ireland, old stories once recited by bards or druids by the firesides of great Lords and Kings, and only written down much later in books such as the Mabinogion. 

My last poem at the museum was on "Christ reborn meeting with Mary Magdalen; her bowl of ointment falling on the ground beneath the master’s feet". 

How curious to come across a questing TV reporter’s television tale at the same moment; a tale of finding a jar such as this one  in Shropshire, and claiming it might be the Holy Grail. 

Such a jar is not the kind of Grail I seek. I am not at all concerned with any Christian Grail. Everything to do with the Grail in Christian mythology is contaminated with an obsession with sex. Put very simply, no man who has anything to do with women and sex can ever hope to find the Grail.

You may be able to guess that I would not be one of those perfect Christian Knights, with at least an outside chance of becoming the Grail Winner. I confessed, briefly, last month, that I had been successfully seduced by my own personal version of the Magdalen, twenty years ago, when I was at the height of my powers as a teacher and healer of souls, (a psychotherapist and teacher of that profession). 

With perfect Jungian synchronicity, the very same woman presented herself to me at the exit of the museum, just as i was thinking of words for my poem. 

She was visiting her grandchild from Tenerife. I had seen her just once in fifteen years at the funeral of a mutual friend and colleague.

In some respects my life from that time until this has been a wasteland. My sexual transgressions were sufficient to damn me permanently in the eyes of a profession whose morals are suffused or contaminated with these Christian ideas and values.

No more of that now. This is not about a Christian Grail. This one was never used to collect the blood squirting from the side of Christ on the cross, nor was it the vessel bearing the shared wine at his Last Supper. This Grail is the cauldron of Ceridwen, the Great Goddess of the Old Religion. This cauldron was kept over a fire for a year and a day, brewing a potion strong enough to make the idiot a savant and the ugly monster into a great beauty.

Nor is there in this story a great and worthy Knight who discovers the resting place of the Grail after a long and painful journey through the dark nights of the soul. No. This Grail winner is an urchin thief. 

His job was to tend the fire and keep 

it burning night and day, never free

to sleep or go away. He knew that when 

at last it became the finished brew, 

three drops of it would heal, 

the rest would make a poison stew. 

And when the moment came 

he took his chance, 

becoming wise beyond an old man’s years 

and so advanced 

he knew how to escape the Goddess’ wrath.

He turned himself into a hare to flee from her. 

But fast as ran his hare, her greyhound ran 

as fast and sought to slay. 

Next he transformed himself into a bird, 

and flew into the realms above, into the sky. 

She chased him there inside a hawk, 

pursuing him with talons, beak  

and evil eye. He changed again. 

This time he hid himself within a seed 

among a million others. But now 

she chose to feed, and ate him as a hen. 

She knew, before too long, they’d meet again.

Our hero Gwion finds himself reborn, 

from deep inside the Goddess’ womb, 

eventually, he’s torn. She has him now, 

a babe once more. This is her chance 

to settle this, her score.

Her magic potion stirred so carefully, 

has done its work so well 

that she cannot destroy a child 

so beautiful, more beautiful than any other boy.

So, to the sea she goes and wraps

him in a leather bag. She throws 

the thing into the water, 

lets it take him to his fate. 

She might have stayed to watch, 

but does not. That was her mistake. 

This is something Gwion will appreciate.

The sea lands Gwion on some human shore, 

where he is rescued by a King who takes him in. 

The rest of this old tale is called the tale of Taliesin. 

For Gwion now takes on this other name 

and grows to be the greatest bard there’s ever been. 

I dream that I might find the Grail 

and end my life as wonderful as him.