Whitsunday: Pentecost Continued

Pentecost, or Whitsunday is also the day that the Holy Grail Quest was said to have begun.  In Arthurian legend several events occur around feast times.  The Green Knight comes to Arthur’s court at Christmas and it is then that Gawaine chops off his head and must meet him again at the next Christmastime to offer up his own head. But it is at Christmas the Sword in the Stone appears, and on New Year’s Day Arthur pulls it out.  New Years Day would have been, of old, the feast of the Circumcision of Jesus, and even though Arthur pulls the sword from the stone that day, he is not granted the crown. The nobles insist the act be repeated on the feast of Candlemas and next on Easter and finally on Pentecost where the people have enough of this and threaten to riot, Arthur is made king. It is not new to see Arthur as a Christ type, but what does the story say about Christ or about Arthur where each of the Christian feasts is his attempt at ruling and it is only on Pentecost that the sword is pulled and the new reign begins? On New Years some acknowledge Arthur has kind and Arthur makes royal promises to his brother Kay and his foster father Ector, but it is on Pentecost that the promises are fulfilled and the nobles—some of them---resentfully agree to make Arthur king.

So, many years later on Pentecost, when the boy Galahad arrives and pulls his own sword from the floating red stone.  Galahad’s sword has some link to the swords of Arthur’s surely. Arthur’s first sword, never given a name, just called the Sword in the Stone was a blades in a stone on an anvil placed on the sacred earth of a church yard. Much of this has been looked upon on my passage on The Castle of Air and Stone.  Galahad’s sword is in fine red stone, marble, that is founded on the waters, and floating, a mystical stone and a stone even having to do with baptism and new life, with a kingdom not of this world. What is more, we know that the sword that replaced Arthur’s first blade, Excalibur, was also gifted from the water, The Lady of the Lake’s hand reaches up from the water and gives it to King Arthur making it also, in a effect, a floating sword.

I don’t want to stay on the subject of swords too long, but, even though the stories of Arthur and Galahad are taking place in a pre English Britain, they were composed in the Middle Ages. and one had to remember that Germanic heroes had encounters with swords as well. Sigmund pulled his sword from the tree Branstock, and in time it too was broken, though eventually reforged. Beowulf also takes his sword from the water, swimming to the depths to take it from the cave of Grendel’s mother.

Within the story of Christianity Pentecost is moment when the Apostles of Jesus, living in the old world of Jesus, born, died and risen in the flesh, now enter into the new world of His Spirit, and cease turning inward, living in the Upper Room around the table of the Last Supper and turn outward to, as it were, do battle with the world and bring the light of Christ into it. The newest article at Frithguild points to this as well, though, as usual, it fails to flesh out the repercussions or so much explaining.

Ah, but I am uncomfortable with this war metaphor, and the truth is, by the standpoint of regular war the Apostles, most martyred, lose. This is actually the very  point of the  story of the coming of Galahad and the Grail Maid to the Round Table at Pentecost. At this Pentecost there are not one hundred twenty disciples and the mother of Jesus. There are the knights of the Round Table, and Queen Guinevere, and there is the old and almost worn out dispensation. At this moment there enters, to a King who would not eat till he saw a wonder, but did not know what the wonder would be, the veiled Grail, bestowing all the good foods imaginable to the knights and born by the Grail Maiden, she who is the priestess, the Mediatrix of grace, the model of Mary and of God the Mother, The Grail Maiden is the facilitator of the floating stone, and the bringer of Galahad. Her gift of sweet and fiery does not bring rest, but ultimately restlessness, a vision of what could be, what was longed for but has been forgotten. Now the search is on. Now the quest must begin. But swords from stone cannot achieve it, The knights of the old dispensation will fail. This is why ultimately the patriarchal Christianity espoused in scripture and twenty centuries of orthodoxy ultimately fails. Only Grace and the presence of the Spirit, who is Lady Wisdom, Mother Council and Sister Understanding will suffice. The Grail Maiden is the reminder of woman as mother, sister, lover and comrade missing from the narratives of bringing light to the world and finding redemption via the sword. The Grail Maiden is the Motherhood of God as well as Mary, Mary Magdalene and the forgotten mystical sisters of Jesus. Now we need the new knight, and now we need the blade from the stone that floats on water, a new type of battle, a new type of cutting through old forms, one that is baptized in the deep waters of grace.