The Lost Book of the Grail Quotes

“In her own appreciation of the work of Grail scholar Jessie Weston, the Arthurian scholar Janet Grayson has suggested that The Elucidation is exactly what it proposes itself to be, a complete introduction to the Grail myths: If it be the record of an insult offered by a local chieftain to a priestess or these rites, in consequence of which they were no longer openly celebrated in that land . . . would that not be the logical introduction to the tale of one who found or knew not what he had found?37 Like the nesting boxes of Tolkien's own world of Middle Earth, in which the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are contained within the even bigger framework of the Silmarillion so, too, the many Grail variants and continuations in their proliferation are somehow contained within the seemingly tiny text of The Elucidation.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“The pattern of the Grail quest is thus an ongoing and recurring action happening at any moment: as Sallustius said, “myth is something that never happened and is happening all the time.”35 The cause of unheeded or violent actions upon the world cannot be healed, we are told, “as long as the world lasts.”36 The solution then is to step outside of time in order that the restoration can be made:”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“In whichever part of the many variant Grail stories we chose to look, we find the same signature of the seven branches of the story: Once there was a wonderful and fertile time of peace. Then a violent deed broke that original image so that this plenty was withdrawn. The land was laid waste and evil things were abroad. Echoes of the original fertility show themselves in the shape of the Grail hallows to different people. The task of questers is to seek for the Grail and its accompanying hallows and to ask the all-important question that will interrupt the suffering caused by the violent deed that originated the Wasteland. When the hallows are discovered and the question asked, this brings to a halt the suffering, restoring the Wasteland and life returns to peace and plenty. Those who go on quest for the hallows rarely return to ordinary life but live in a withdrawn location . . . until the time of peace and plenty is again interrupted by a violent deed and the whole cycle begins again.34”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“The unvarnished truth of the Grail myth is that the evil wrought of bad decisions recurs and recrudesces: it is not obliterated. Small errors become larger ones as time wears on, and the fabric of the worlds falls apart as the communion of the Faery Accord is forgotten or violated. Like many mythic narratives that polarize the creative and destructive powers against each other, The Elucidation relates the consequences of self-serving actions that forget to listen to the “voices of the wells,” which continually are singing the vision of a world where our gifts of innate intelligence and common sense are bound by a love and compassion of all who are alive.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“On one level the loss of the voices of the wells signals the severing of the Faery Accord between humans and faeries, whereby those of different kinds and natures can meet together in the most basic common exchange of hospitality—what feeds, nourishes, and quenches our thirst, both of body and of spirit. On a deeper level, the yearning for Faery is not a narcissistic craving for nirvanic accomplishment after which we become perfect and pass out of life. It is an urgent requirement to be included within a perspective of the earthly paradise that exists outside of time, to enter a simple and tranquil unity in which every living being is equally respected as a child of the Earth. The goal of all spiritual enlightenment is to enter into a communion where the small individual is part of the greater and blessed whole. It is when people fall out of the communion with the Faery Accord or with these revelations of spiritual wholeness, that acts of violence re-create the Dolorous Blow. Every time the Grail procession and the awful lamentation is witnessed by any visitor in The Elucidation—and we are told that this happens three times a day for three whole hours—an opportunity is provided for something to be resolved over and over. So, when Perceval and other knights neglect to ask the Grail question, “whom does the Grail serve?” or about the details of the procession and what they signify, they let slip a chance to heal what is amiss.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“At the other extreme, we have seen how Gawain makes his way to the Castle of Maidens and is invited to be its lord and protector, a pattern that seems to follow the more ancient tradition of the bravest hero who makes it into the regions of Faery (chapter 5). When we turn to his career, we find Gawain is continually rescuing, if not sleeping with, young women, even forming relationships with faery women, according the lays of Marie de France. Sexuality is never far from the surface in Gawain's courteous championship of women.31 Gawain's line continues, following the fertile path of Faery, which renews all things through the changing cycles of nature in every season.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“We have likened the semimortal, semifaery peoples of Bleheris's company to representatives of the Seelie court, those faeries who are more kindly disposed to humans; while we have liked the Rich Company to members of the Unseelie court, half faeries like their cousins, but with more of our human acquisitiveness about them. As a secondary wave of “people of the wells,” the Rich Company are troubling. With the acuity of their faery omniscience they can outmaneuver Arthur's knights; with their human entrepreneurialism, they create a series of castles and retire into them in astounding luxury, but without a shred of compassion or humanity.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Faery Grail and Holy Grail are thus kindred vessels: one operating under the older dispensations of nature and Faery, the other under the newer dispensation of Christianity. The effect of them both is the same in the everyday world of court and castle: the world is regreened and made fertile, the wars stop, and peace returns. The spiritual communion within people's hearts is framed differently, but it is ultimately consistent in respecting one's neighbor.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“The Holy Grail is ultimately about the provision of food that feeds the body but also the spirit, bringing humanity into communion with the divine: this is a wisdom that makes kinship between God and humanity through the redemptive mediation of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross. When this communion is ruptured, Wasteland, violence, and terror rule the Earth, bringing war, famine, and depopulation. When this communion is reestablished, then Christendom is restored under a single ruler, King Arthur; under his suzerainty, the weak are once more protected from brigandage, commercial exploitation, and merciless depredation.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“The Faery Grail in The Elucidation is ultimately about the giving of food as a ritual of hospitality that creates communion between faeries and humans: the wisdom that it purveys is the neighborly consideration of all life that arises in human awareness as a consequence. Those who offer and drink from the cup in peace are the children of one universe, in communion with the natural world even as their ancestors were, who enjoy the ancestral feast. When the rules of faery courtesy are broken by violence, rapine, and theft, the Faery Accord is broken. This is ultimately what causes the blight upon the human world that we call the Wasteland: the riches of the Rich Fisher no longer flow. Humanity enters in a warfare with Faery, displaced people wander the land with out protection, and even the court of Arthur is visited by mocking and embarrassing tests. Fertility fails when the waters of the Faery Grail are withdrawn: but when they flow again, the land becomes fertile and is repopulated. People are brought once more into communion with their ancestral belonging.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“It is clear from our text that there are two appearances of the Grail at work: the cups of the Maidens of the Wells represent a primal hospitality that nourish the wayfarer, while the Grail of the Grail Procession in the court of the Rich Fisher feeds only those who dwell or visit there. So, are these cups the same vessel or a different vessel?”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Throughout world myth, special objects of power have been the object of quest, war, and healing. Jessie Weston was one of the first to note that the main objects of the Grail quest are similar to those found in other cultures, from the four emblems of the Dhyani Buddhas, right through the four treasures of the Irish faeries, the Tuatha de Danann, and to the emblems that characterize the tarot suits: the sword, staff, cup, and stone.1 These hallows represent aspects of the universal understanding, as adamantine objects that make their appearance both within the apparent world at certain moments, as well as within the human imagination.2 Within The Elucidation we view certain of these hallows, or holy things, during the Grail procession: the Bleeding Lance, the Sword upon the Corpse on the Bier, the Silver Cross that is processed, and the Grail itself.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Bran de Lis explains that the distracted knight he saw was none other than the Rich Souldoyer, or Rich Soldier or Mercenary. (Souldoyer gives us the English word “soldier,” literally, “one who takes the solidus or coin.”)”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“This musical gift from Faery comes into our world to relieve the human condition, bringing sleep after trauma, the catharsis of tears after pain, and the returning joy of laughter. Animals neither cry nor laugh, but humans do. These very abilities are often the flashpoint of friction between humans and faeries, according to many folk stories, for faeries see things through different eyes. We can perceive this best in the Welsh folk story of the Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach. A young man becomes the partner of a faery woman who emerges from a lake; the duration of their union is based on the understanding that if he strikes her three times, it will terminate. The three inevitable blows that he strikes involved two of the three strains: he slaps her thigh playfully the first time with a pair of gloves to encourage her to speed up as they ride; then he strikes her for crying at a wedding; finally, he strikes her when she laughs at a funeral.12 She returns to the lake taking away her dowry of cattle, but leaving their offspring to whom descend her healing gifts. They become the Physicians of Myddfai, folk healers for generations. These children's descendants lived on till their last scion, John Jones, died in 1739.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“He is also given by the angel “three grains from the hollow of an apple from that tree” and is instructed, after his father's death, to “place these three grains under the roots of [Adam's] tongue, and from them will grow three rods.” These will become a cedar for God the Father, a cypress for God the Son, and a Pine for God the Holy Ghost.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Looked at another way, the myth of the stealing of the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is very like the myths of the Greek Prometheus or the North American Haida, Raven, who both steal fire from heaven: they are the great thieves who bring knowledge into the world. Likewise, in the Gnostic scriptures, the great figure of wisdom, Sophia, departs from the pleroma or fullness of heaven, and from her is born the world that we inhabit.60 It is only the Western churches' theological insistence upon the guilt and retributive judgment within the biblical account that essentially changes the focus. These thieves of sacred powers—Prometheus, Raven, Sophia—do the world a great favor, for they bring down knowledge that we learn to live with and use properly without burning our fingers.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Under the ancient laws of traditional and nomadic societies, hospitality once received put the stranger under the protection of his hosts, changing him from a stranger into a guest. The violation of sacred hospitality, when the guest offers violence or steals from the host, or the host from the guest, is considered everywhere as the grossest offense. It is in such a light that we must view the violation of the Maidens of the Wells who unconditionally offer the resources of the land to travelers.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“In Welsh, the word bran means “raven.” This gives Bran's command to bury his body at the White Mount an additional resonance, for this hill has been long associated with Tower Hill at the Tower of London. The legends concerning the ravens that are still kept at the Tower relate that Britain will not be invaded while they still live on the hill. Bran's head thus remains in memory as a palladium against invasion.37 The Grail Castle, which goes unnamed in the earlier legends, is called “Corbenic” in the Lancelot-Grail. In the original British language, Corbenic also signifies the “the raven's head.” It is one of the many words associated with the Grail quest with which scholars and speculators have made hay: Corbenic, seen through French eyes, becomes le corps bénit, or blessed body; cors bénit, or blessed horn; or cor bénit, or blessed court. Bodies—sacred and other—drinking horns, and courts keep weaving the myth together, as we have seen. Truly, the legend of Bran underlies the Grail legends, providing a fertile seedbed for later development.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Keeping this in mind, we can understand the rationale behind the Wounded King and the Wasteland. Because the land and the king share one life, when the king is wounded, the land itself becomes infertile. If the king and the land are one, then we can see why The Elucidation's unique cause of the Wasteland is so remarkable: it refers to the wounding of the maidens, not of a king. In this scenario, the maidens are agents of the Goddess of Sovereignty, the embodiment of the land. It follows that the wounding of the spirit of the land's representatives must automatically result in the withdrawal of fertility. The gravity of this violation goes even beyond the immediacy of the Faery Accord, since it offends Sovereignty, the Goddess of the Earth herself, giver of all life.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Part of the king's contract with the Goddess of Sovereignty was outlined by the number of geasa laid upon him by men of wisdom at the beginning of his reign. A geis (plural, geasa) is a prohibition or obligation binding one on pain of the loss of honor, from the breaking of which a king might not only lose honor, but also harm the land. For a ruler, breaking one of the geasa imposed by Sovereignty implied fracturing the contract between king and land.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Known as Perceforest, it is a vast, sprawling epic that tells the history of the kings and queens, knights and villains, who predate Arthur. It is an astonishing feat of imagination with more plot twists and adventures than an average detective novel. It has, like The Elucidation, been neglected by Arthurian scholars partly on account of its length (over a million words) and because it has only survived in a fifteenth-century manuscript, despite its original estimated date of composition in the 1300s.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“De Boron's superb skill in seamlessly attaching the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus to the Arthurian legends by means of the Grail is unsurpassed. It has a shapeliness and symmetry that only a good storyteller can bring to it. By making the story of Christ's Passion and its major relic into a vessel that “delights the heart of all worthy men,” de Boron creates a healing of all ills. In two passages, he makes a play on the French words Graal and agréer—“grail” and “delight”—recalling the sense of hospitality that is part of the Faery Grail, yet also maintaining the sacramental and very Christian presence of the Holy Grail with its salvific healing.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“However, within the original old French of the Grail legends, there is one word whose three-way meanings cause an interesting confusion: the words for court (cort), body (cors), and horn (also cors), all pro nounced the same way, overlap to such a degree that the episode of Brangemor brings us into strange reverie. Can it be that Guerrehet is responsible for not just the avenging of Brangemor but also for healing the Faery Accord? Here the Joy of the Court, so longed for by Blihis and his fellows in The Elucidation, is echoed by the joy of Brangepart and the whole court who, we are told, are expecting her consort home, and where a great wonder is also expected. The implication is that, like Guingamor who nearly died of sudden onset mortality, Brangemor will somehow be restored to life. Here too, the insult of the taunting horn that was brought to Arthur's court to mock his people—in converse mode to the hospitality of Faery Grail of the Wells—is overthrown, just as Guerrehet's shame and mockery is turned to rejoicing. Here too, the body of Brangemor is restored. Indeed, we see a coming together of body, court, and horn in a mysterious way.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“After the Faery Accord is broken by Amangons's rape of the Maidens of the Wells, the only ones who come forth from the wells are the Rich Company who build their perilous castles and bridges, behaving in an oppositional way to Arthur and his knights. In Scottish faery mythology, faeries fall into two categories: the Seelie, or blessed court, and the Unseelie, or unholy court. This is echoed in the use of the Gaelic slaghmaith, or good host, as a euphemism for the faery kind. The Rich Company seem to partake of the Unseelie court. While the Seelie court maintain good relations with humans and largely do no harm, the Unseelie court tend to acts of malice or sorcery, as we have seen, with dubious gifts of testing vessels that cause upset and confusion. When humans like Amangons overset the primary hospitality of the Seelie court the Faery Accord is broken, and the Unseelie court alone remains to challenge.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“The sixth-century glossarist Isidore of Seville, who wrote the Etymologies, one the best and earliest glossaries, wrote of the Antipodes as a race of people who were literally “opposite footed” because, as if from under the earth, “they make footprints upside down from ours.”17 This extraordinary notion was later borne out in another manner by Rev. Robert Kirk who, in his Secret Commonwealth of Elves and Faeries in the 1690s, asserted that each person had a co-imuimeadh, or faery cowalker, who was their reflection or spirit double.18 By the Middle Ages, “the Antipodean realm” was understood to be beneath the earth, the place, as we shall see, also assigned to the Faery realms.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“The pilot tells how the hall is defended by magic, arranged by a clerk versed in astronomy and in service to the queen. No knight can enter the castle if he is full of lust, vice, greed, or lies. No coward or traitor can survive there, nor any disloyal or perjured man. This reads like the usual constraint placed upon any entrant into the realms of Faery.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“The ultimate prize of some of these adventures is to overcome a guardian knight who, like the slave devoted to Arician Diana in the Roman Forest of Nemi, is but the latest champion appointed to defend and protect an otherworldly maiden against all comers. We find such a story in The Lady of the Fountain, the Welsh parallel to Chrétien's Yvain, where Owain comes to a clearly liminal place guarded by a black knight, who is the champion of the Lady of the Fountain.6 By defeating and killing the champion, Owain automatically becomes the lady's new champion, just like the Roman Rex Nemorensis, the King of Wood who defended the shrine of Diana.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Behind The Elucidation lies the French tradition of the fées, as well as the Irish tradition of the Island of Women, and the Romano-Celtic triple goddesses who hospitably bear cornucopias, bread, and fruit upon their laps; these and many elements fuse together to create the Arthurian faery tradition.5 Taken together, these traditions give us the ladies of the lake, and a superabundance of faery women who come to invite, initiate, exhort, and irritate the Round Table knights.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“The Land of Women, or Tír na Mna, is part of an Atlantic coastal myth that is shared from France up to Scotland and Ireland and was already ancient when the first Classical scholars wrote of it. An island of just women may seem fantastic but Pomponius Mela reported that the island of Sein, near the Ossimiens, is known as the oracle of a Gaulish God. The priestesses of that God number nine, and they are called “Senes” by the Gauls. Possessed by the God's spirit, they believe that they can create storms in the air and at sea by their spells; that they can shapeshift into any sort of animal, cure grave illnesses, and know and divine the future, but only to those sailors who voyage over the ocean to visit them.2”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“While the shape of the vessel may change, the cup of accord remains one of hospitality: it satisfies hunger and thirst in appropriate ways, to the diner's taste, as well as being a symbol of the accord between humans and faeries, or between the living and the dead, since the cauldron of Annwfyn is in the custodianship of Pen Annwfyn, Lord of the Otherworldly Feast of the ancestral dead.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord