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Le Cri De Merlin Page 269 Chapter XIV Le Cri de Merlin Through all the ages poets and artists have often been prophets, because their work, or the material for it, comes to them from the same depths of the collective unconscious in which the major transformations of a particular era are in process of creation. Thus in the Middle Ages and on up to the seventeenth century, it was not only alchemy whose symbolism anticipated the problems of the new age; there was also a considerable number of poetical works, flowering largely at the same time as knighthood and chivalry, namely the legends and works of poetry which revolved around the vessel of the Holy Grail and the Grail stone.1 The greatest poet to have dealt with this theme was probably Wolfram von Eschenbach, and in his Parzival there is a direct connection with alchemical symbolism. In this epic the Grail vessel is replaced by a stone which has fallen from heaven. Wolfram calls it the lapis exilis, the term used by the alchemists for "their" stone. In other versions the Grail was originally a leaden vessel in which Nicodemus caught the blood of the Crucified as it flowed from his heart. There is also a version in which the Christ is supposed to have appeared to Joseph of Arimathea in prison and to have entrusted him with the vessel containing his blood. This is the reason Joseph was chosen as the first Guardian of the Grail; he was then succeeded by a series of Grail Kings. In antiquity and in the Middle Ages blood was thought of as the seat, or home, of the soul, and the real life principle of any creature. Seen from this point of view, the Grail vessel, which is also compared with Christ's tomb in some texts, contains the living soul of Christ, the mysterious essence of his being. Although his transfigured body dis­ 1 For the following cf. especially Emma Jung and Marie­Louise von Franz, The Grail Legend. Copyright © 1998. Inner City Books. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Copyright © EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/8/2015 7:39 AM via UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX AN: 20428 ; Franz, Marie-Luise von.; C.G. Jung : His Myth in Our Time Account: s9814295 Page 270 appeared from the world, the living essence continues to work this side of eternity and gives forth the healing effect of his presence. Certain versions of the history of the origins of the legend and of the symbolic meaning of the Grail motif point to connections with the Egyptian Osiris myth. The Egyptian Pharoah during his lifetime was an incarnation of the sun­god Ra; when he died he became the god Osiris, who represented the passive, dark, feminine side of the godhead and of nature.2 According to the legend, when Osiris was murdered by the demonic god Seth, the latter shut him into a lead coffin and threw it into the sea. The coffin was washed up onto the shore and hung suspended from a heath bush. The lead Grail vessel containing the blood of Christ was lost in a similar fashion, according to certain versions of the legend. It fell into the sea and was washed onto land in France, where it hung from a fig tree. It began to work miracles and was thereby discovered. Osiris' lead coffin was identified with the alchemical retort as early as the third century of this era, and was described as the real "secret of alchemy."3 It also played a part in the Isis mysteries of late antiquity. In the cultic ritual Osiris was represented by a round vessel filled with water from the river Nile. The Roman Apuleius describes it as "a symbol of the sublime and ineffable mysteries of the Goddess, which are never to be divulged."4 A curved or curled­up snake was often engraved or carved on the handle. This snake is the numen who guards the tomb and protects the transformations of the god. Psychologically it symbolizes the deepest levels of the collective unconscious, where the transformation of the god­image occurs. This mythological motif of the god who continues to live after his death in a vessel filled with a living substance (blood, water from the 2 Cf. H. Jacobsohn, "Der altägyptische, der christliche und der moderne Mythos," Eranos­Jahrbuch 38, pp. 411ff., esp. pp. 431ff. and "Das Gegensatzproblem im altägyptischen Mythos," Festschrift zum 80. Geburstag von C. G. Jung, II, pp. 171ff. 3 Cf. Jung, "The Visions of Zosimos," CW 13, par. 97. 4 The Golden Ass, trans. Robert Graves, p. 233. Copyright © 1998. Inner City Books. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Copyright © EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/8/2015 7:39 AM via UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX AN: 20428 ; Franz, Marie-Luise von.; C.G. Jung : His Myth in Our Time Account: s9814295 Page 271 Nile) adds a new aspect to the previously discussed motif of the death of the god and the transformation of the aging king. When the accepted god­image ages and dies in collective unconsciousness, then the psychic substance, or elements, which had in him become visible sink back there, to the region whence all revealed god­ images which command belief once originated, into the psychic background and into the hidden life of the unconscious psyche. During the first millennium of this era the image of Christ was "the sun of righteousness" for our culture. It was kept alive in and by its participation in the inner psychic life of men and women—through the dreams and visions of the faithful and of the martyrs5 (one thinks of Paul on the road to Damascus) which were regarded as living witnesses to the reality of the Redeemer. With the institutionalization of belief, however, the repression of individual symbol formation, discussed above, began to set in. Dreams and visions were censured and the king began to age and grow rigid. But the living continuity of psychic life preserved that which was lost to collective consciousness. Both poets and common people began to weave fantasies around the idea of the tomb of Christ6 (one thinks at once of the Crusades) and the vessel which contained the living psychic mystery of Christ. The image of the vessel is a feminine symbol, a maternal womb in which the figure of the god­man is transformed and reborn in a new form. This motif has historical connections with the gnostic religions as well as the Osiris myth. According to gnostic tradition one of the highest gods, one who stood above the ambiguous creator of the world, sent down to mankind a mixing vessel (krater) in which those who sought a spiritual transformation and a higher consciousness must be immersed.7 This gnostic teach­ 5 Cf. also von Franz, "Die Passio Perpetuae," included in the German edition of Jung's Aion but omitted from the English version, CW 9 ii. 6 Cf. Helen Adolf, Visio Pacis, Holy City and Grail. 7 Cf. Memories, p. 201/193. Jung writes: "The motif of the Gnostic Yahweh and Creator­God reappeared in the Freudian myth of the (footnote continued on next page) Copyright © 1998. Inner City Books. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Copyright © EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/8/2015 7:39 AM via UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX AN: 20428 ; Franz, Marie-Luise von.; C.G. Jung : His Myth in Our Time Account: s9814295 Page 272 ing was taken over by one of the most important of the early alchemists, Zosimos of Panopolis, and from Zosimos onward the alchemists continued to work with the motif of the mysterious vessel of transformation. "One the procedure, one the vessel, one the stone" is unceasingly emphasized in the texts. Paradoxically the vessel and its contents are identical, are fire, water, Mercurius and even the lapis itself.8 In medieval mysticism the vessel became an image of the soul, which receives divine grace,9 and Caesarius of Heisterbach says that the soul is a spiritual substance and round like the sphere of the moon, "like a glass vessel provided with eyes both in front and in back," which can see the whole universe.10 The Grail vessel also possesses a ''seeing" quality since, according to the saga, the voice of an invisible presence issues from it, reveals what is hidden and foretells the future. When Jung was in India early in 193811 he was overwhelmed by the "grandeur of India and its unutterable need, its beauty, and its darkness" and was once again concerned with the problem of evil.12 While there he had an unexpectedly impressive dream: I found myself, with a large number of my Zürich friends and acquaintances, on an unknown island, presumably situated not (footnote continued from previous page) primal father and the gloomy superego deriving from that father. In Freud's myth he became a daemon who created a world of disappointments, illusions, and suffering. But the materialistic trend ... had the effect of obscuring for Freud that other essential aspect of Gnosticism: the primordial image of the spirit as another, higher god who gave to mankind the krater (mixing vessel), the vessel of spiritual transformation. The krater is a feminine principle which could find no place in Freud's patriarchal world." 8 Cf.
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