The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code (22 page)

Dr Dee's maverick assistant Edward Kelley and an accomplice seek to learn the future from a magically-reanimated corpse. Luciferan daring can often lead to dangerous or distasteful activities - the price we pay for being enthralled by extreme possibilities.

Sir Isaac Newton, alchemist and pioneering scientist, embodiment of the Age of Enlightenment, when the light of Lucifer finally began to sweep away the darkness of superstition.

In Peredur these are coherent parts of the overall plot. On that first occasion in his uncle's hall, Peredur fails to ask the identity of the severed head and what the procession is all about, and therefore misses (temporarily) his destined path. After going on to have many more, unrelated adventures (the basis of the perils encountered in the Grail quests), he is visited at Arthur's court by a hideous blackskinned woman - the original of the `loathly damsel' of the Grail stories - who upbraids him:

Peredur, I greet thee not, for thou dost not merit it. Blind was fate when she bestowed favour and fame upon thee. When thou camest to the court of the Lame King, and when thou sawest thou there the squire bearing the sharpened spear, and from the tip of the spear a drop of blood, and that running as it were a torrent as far as the squire's grip - and other marvels besides thou sawest there, but thou did not ask after their meaning nor the cause of them. And had thou so asked, the king would have had health and his kingdom in peace. But henceforth strife and battle, and the loss of knights, and women left widowed, and maidens without succour, and all that because of thee3'

In Peredur, the `meaning and cause' that the hero fails to establish has a much more direct significance than in the Grail romances: the dead man whose head is borne on the salver is Peredur's cousin, slain by the witches of Caer Loyw, who have also cast a spell on the kingdom. Peredur's task is to avenge him. Indeed, it has been prophesied that he will do so, but because he failed to find out that the man was a kinsman the fulfilment of the prophecy has been thrown into doubt. When he does find out, and slays the witches, their enchantment is lifted. In the story's own terms all this makes perfect sense.

However, in the Grail stories these elements have become detached from the plot and taken on a transcendental character. The `unasked question' becomes a mystical quest in its own right, and the mere speaking of it lifts the enchantment. (In Perceval the question is, `Whom does the Grail serve?' - because this tale is unfinished we never find out what the answer is - and in Parzival it is, `Dear Uncle, what ails you?')

The object in Peredur on which Chretien de Troyes based his graal is the severed head on a salver. This is supported by the conclusion that his graal was some kind of shallow serving dish. However, Chretien has chosen to omit the more significant part of the `prototype Grail' - the head - and highlight the mundane part, the dish. Clearly, Chretien has deliberately chosen to change or obscure this aspect of the Grail, but why?

The severed head motif was common enough in Celtic mythology and folklore, so it is hardly significant to find it in Peredur. However, in a Christian context, the severed head on the platter makes an obvious association with John the Baptist, and it seems to have been this association that appealed to Chretien. But then it is odd that he should obscure the very aspect of the tale that seems to have attracted him in the first place and would make sense of the platter.

If Chretien deliberately sought to obscure the severed head, the connection with the Baptist and the existence of the historical Johannite heresy might provide an explanation for this. (If Chretien were a Johannite, and modelled Perceval on Peredur specifically to produce a Johannite work, the question remains about where he learnt about the heretical cult of John. Chretien originated, as his name suggests, from the northern French town of Troyes, which was not only a centre of learning, but also the court of the Count of Champagne, who `sponsored' the founding of the Templars. Troyes was the site of the first Templar preceptory in Europe.)

The military order of the Poor Knights of Christ, or the Knights Templar, became enormously rich, powerful and arrogant, especially in France, and were consequently ruthlessly suppressed in the early fourteenth century, amid accusations and confessions - admittedly extracted from them by the application of hideous torture - of blasphemy. It was said that they worshipped, among other idols, a bearded severed head called Baphomet, and that they spit and trampled on the cross. In The Templar Revelation we investigated these claims and were astonished to discover that there might indeed have been some basis in fact. For the Templars, it seems, encountered `the Church of John in the East' - the Baptist's followers, or the Mandaeans, whom we have already discussed. According to the likes of Summers, they `infected' the Christian knights with their heresy, although it would appear that only the inner circle was so contaminated. The rank and file - the vast majority of the Templars - were simply Christian warrior-monks with little or no idea of what the upper hierarchy believed or practised. In the context of the Mandaean `contamination', the rumours of spitting and trampling on the cross, not to mention revering a bearded severed head, suddenly make perfect sense, tortured confessions or not.

When seen in Johannite terms, Chretien's choice of Peredur as his model becomes even more significant. The `secret' of the Grail lies in the identity of the beheaded man, and it is his death that has brought ruin and sterility to the kingdom, which recognizing his true identity and avenging his death will reverse. (Perhaps there is even significance in the fact that the dead man is a cousin of the main protagonist: John and Jesus were said to be cousins.)

None of this chain of reasoning would have been obvious to Chretien's audience unless they knew his source, so it becomes a neat way of passing on the Johannite message in `coded' form. Perhaps this is why Chretien failed to finish the story, or perhaps, having removed the all-important head, he was stuck for an ending. In Peredur it centres on working out whose head it is.

All this Johannite heresy is lost in the Christian `branch': the Grail becomes an explicitly Christian symbol, and the quest a Christian spiritual process. It was this branch that became the most familiar version. Wolfram, however, remained largely true to the Johannite line.

However, although there are specific references to Jesus as Christ, and to conventional Christian teaching and doctrines, in Wolfram's story, by the standards of the time and culture they are noticeably few - perhaps just the bare minimum to avoid raising suspicion. It has been noted by many scholars that Wolfram has deliberately minimized the role of the Church and clergy, to the point of removing certain characters and situations that appear in Perceval. Conventionally, this is explained by the idea that it was Wolfram's intention to write a morality tale aimed specifically at the knightly caste (to which he himself belonged), encouraging them to a greater spirituality. He therefore tried to show how they could change their ways without necessarily having recourse to the clergy. But while this may or may not be correct, the significant point is that Wolfram's marginalization of the Church is so conspicuous that scholars feel a need to explain it (although, of course, they have no reason to suspect that Wolfram was trying to deliver a heretical message).

On the other hand, there are many references that appear to be Christian, but which make more sense in Johannite terms: the frequent use of the term `baptized men' to describe the keepers of the Grail (although they are very occasionally called 'Christians', as in the above quotation concerning Flegetanis); a somewhat evasive appeal to `He whom painters still depict as the Lamb, with the Cross between His hooves', and so on.

Tobias Churton has argued for a Sabian `Arabic' influence on Wolfram's work32 - the name of one of the great Sabian scientists, Thabit ibn Qurra, even crops up, out of the blue, in Parzival. Such an influence would have come via Moorish Spain, so Wolfram's invocation of Flegetanis and Toledo makes sense. If equating the Sabians of that period with the Mandaeans is accepted (a link Churton would reject), then the source of the Johannite elements becomes clear.

But if Wolfram was aware of the hidden Johannitism of the Grail story, why did he change the Grail itself from a salver into a stone (although, as noted above, he kept the connection with the provision of food)? Is this, too, open to a Johannite interpretation?

Wolfram has Trevrizent explain the origins of the Grail to Parzival:

When Lucifer and the Trinity began to war with each other, those who did not take sides, worthy, noble angels, had to descend to earth to that Stone which is for ever incorruptible. I do not know whether God forgave them or damned them in the end: if it was His due He took them back. Since that time the Stone has been in the care of those whom God appointed to it and to whom He sent his angels.33

But then, at the end of the story Trevrizent admits:

I lied as a means of distracting you from the Gral and how things stood concerning it. Let me atone for my error [ ...]. You heard from me that the banished angels were at the Gral with God's full support till they should be received back into His Grace. But God is constant in such matters: He never ceased to war against those whom I named to you here as forgiven. Whoever desires to have reward from God must be in feud with those angels. For they are eternally damned and chose their own perdition.

So it has gone from `God forgave them' to `I don't know what happened to them' to `God damned them'. It has been suggested that this reversal was the result of Wolfram being censured by his local priesthood for the earlier comments. (Parzival is thought to have been composed in parts, which were circulated as they were completed, so a correction would have to be issued for any `doctrinal error' spotted in an early part.)

Whatever the reason, the twist makes the Grail an object belonging to condemned and damned angels, who God-fearing folk `must be in feud with' - maybe not as bad as Lucifer and his hordes, but nearly so.

So, although Wolfram fails to link the Grail and Lucifer directly, it could be argued that he does so indirectly, by association with the fallen angels (who, if God did damn them, must have ended up in Hell and therefore be subject to Lucifer in his Satanic mode anyway).

Undoubtedly, in medieval symbolism, John the Baptist was associated with the Morning Star, although the thinking behind this is obvious and conventional - the Morning Star heralds the coming of the sun as the Baptist heralded the coming of Christ. In the thirteenth century Jacob de Voragine would write in his Golden Legend (in Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger's translation) concerning John the Baptist:

For the Father calls him an angel, and says of him: `Behold I send my angel, and he shall prepare the way before my face.' But angel is the name of an office and not of a nature; and therefore he is called an angel by reason of his office, because he exercised the office of all the angels. First, of the Seraphim. Seraphim is usually interpreted fiery because the Seraphim set us afire, and they themselves burn more ardently with the love of God; and in Ecclesiasticus it is said of John: `Elias the prophet stoodup,as afire,andhis wordburnt like a torch'; for he came in the spirit and power of Elias. Second of the Cherubim. Cherubim is interpreted the fulness of knowledge; and John is called the morning star, because he put an end to the night of ignorance and made a beginning of the light of grace. [It goes on to compare John to various groups of angels ...]34

So there is a tenuous association of ideas that links John and Lucifer, via the Morning Star, but this stops far short of actually equating the two, as some did in the Middle Ages. However, in his book on the Templars, Michel Lamy quotes Jacob de Voragine's last sentence as: `John is called Lucifer or the morning star ...'

In context, Lamy's version makes sense. Jacob is comparing John to angels, and without a reference to an angel the connection between the Cherubim and the Morning Star is a non sequitur. And there is the other, albeit tantalisingly circumstantial association of ideas mentioned earlier: the Morning and Evening Stars are, of course, really the same - more accurately, the planet, Venus. The Morning Star was linked with Lucifer and the Evening Star with the planet Venus, which the heretics associated with Mary Magdalene.35 So if we accept Lamy's curious translation of John being Lucifer, then perhaps the story of the stone falling from Lucifer's head is not so far off the mark.