Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [67]
—Julius Evola, Il mistero del Graal, Rome, Edizioni Mediterranee, 1983, Chapter 23 and epilogue
“You mean the Grail also comes into this?” Belbo asked.
“Naturally. And I’m not the only one who says so. You are educated men; there is no need for me to go into the legend of the Grail. The Knights of the Round Table, the mystical quest for this miraculous object, which some believe was the chalice in which the blood of Jesus was collected. The Grail taken to France by Joseph of Arimathea. Others say it is a stone that possesses mysterious powers. The Grail is often depicted as a dazzling light. It’s a symbol representing power, a source of immense energy. It nourishes, heals wounds, blinds, strikes down...Some have thought of it as the philosopher’s stone of the alchemists, but even if that’s so, what was the philosopher’s stone if not a symbol of some cosmic energy? The literature on the subject is endless, but you can easily distinguish signs that are irrefutable. In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival the Grail is said to be kept in a Templar castle! Was Eschenbach an initiate? A foolhardy writer who revealed too much? But there is more. This Grail kept by the Templars is described as a stone fallen from the heavens: lapis exillis. It’s not clear whether the expression means ‘stone from heaven’ (ex coelis) or ‘stone from exile.’ But in either case, it is something that comes from far away, and some suggest that it could have been a meteorite. As far as we’re concerned, however, it is definitely a stone. Whatever the Grail may have been, for the Templars it was the symbol of the objective, or end of the plan.”
“Excuse me,” I said, “but the document indicates that the knights’ sixth meeting would be held near or above a stone. It doesn’t tell them to find the stone.”
“Another subtle ambiguity, another luminous mystical analogy! Yes, indeed: the sixth meeting is to be held near a stone, and we shall soon see where; but at that stone, where the transmission of the plan is fulfilled and the six seals opened, the knights will learn where to find the Stone! It’s like the pun in the New Testament: Thou art Peter and upon this rock...On the stone you shall find the Stone.”
“It’s all quite obvious,” Belbo said. “Please go on. Casau-bon, stop interrupting. We’re all eager to hear the rest.”
“Well then,” the colonel said, “the reference to the Grail made me think for a long time that the treasure was a huge deposit of radioactive material, perhaps of extraterrestrial origin. Consider, for example, the mysterious wound in the legend of King Amfortas. The account makes him sound like a radiologist who has been dangerously exposed. He is not to be touched. Why not? Imagine how excited the Templars must have been when they reached the shores of the Dead Sea, whose waters, as you gentlemen surely know, are so dense that on them you float like a cork. It is a sea with curative powers. They could have discovered a deposit of radium or uranium in Palestine, a deposit they weren’t in a position to exploit then and there.
“The relationship between the Grail, the Templars, and the Cathars was investigated scientifically by a valiant German officer. I’m referring to Otto Rahn, an SS Obersturmbannruhrer who devoted his life to rigorous, scholarly study of the European and Aryan nature of the Grail. I won’t go into why and how he lost his life in 1939, but some insist that...Well, how can I forget what happened to Ingolf ? In any case, Rahn demonstrated a link between the Golden Fleece of the Argonauts and the Grail.