The French legendary history that interests mystery writer Milt Walters in Deepest France: A Novel of the French Grail and in Mysterious Days: Return to Deepest France affirms that the Grail was/is a woman. It is not a cup made of expensive metals.
In the two novels (now in production) the woman is Mary from Magdala. This Mary is said to be imperfect in the same sexual way the Gnostics' Sophia is flawed, but just as Sophia brings the divine spark of philo-Sophia into the world, Mary carries the divine blood of the sky gods from the eastern Mediterranean to western Europe. In contrast to sky gods in general, she does not command men, or women. But her fundamental humanity nonetheless commands their respect.
In the legend, Mary was the disciple and consort of (perhaps) the least patriarchal of the sky gods, Jesus. In competing versions of the account, she is either pregnant by him at the time of the crucifixion or assists him in escaping the crucifixion altogether (probably by having the Cypriot Simon, from Kyreni, not only carry the cross but take Jesus' place). In the second version (the 'Laughing Jesus' version), during their stay in Egypt she conceives a daughter named Black Sara(h). In both versions, Mary then travels on to Marseilles to join the sizable Jewish community living there in the first century AD. Sara's offspring eventually mix their 'divine' blood with the royal blood of the Visigoths in the south of French just north of the Pyrenees. Finally they marry into the Merovingian royal line, thus giving a literal meaning to the so-called Divine Right of kings. Although the Merovingian royalty was thought to have been eliminated by the forces of Charlemagne, members of the royal group survived and passed on their blood to a family that still lives in the region and in other parts of France--and is the focus of the events portrayed in Deepest France.
Both the French Grail legend and the English Grail stories attempt to bridge the gap between the earth and the sky. The Anglo Grail consists of metals found in the earth that are refined to gleam like celestial bodies. In the French version, Mary is a biological vessel created by one of the fundamental human acts, sex, which in this case allows the living blood of a deity to reside in a (despised?) woman's body for nine months before it becomes an ordinary human.
Rather than re-fashion a metal to suggest sky entities, Mary Magdalena brings the sky down to the earth in a form totally familiar to humankind. The degree to which this familiarity brings great comfort is apparent in the type of Madonna known as the Black Virgin. In the numerous churches of the Black Virgin scattered about the earth, many in France, the Blue Sky Virgin of the Roman church has often been blackened by the soot from candles burned in her devotion. When the priests threaten to clean her up, make her white as new, the parishioners are said to rise up against the effort. Apparently they find the Black Virgin more comforting to them because she is more human and flawed, closer to themselves. The same impulse seems to exist for those African and Asian parishioners who prefer their Mary (and their Jesus) to be made of dark materials or colored with dark paints.
The Madonna that impresses Milt Walters in Mysterious Days resembles the African versions made of dark materials. But she is a special case. She is carved in a dark wood that has long lain in the earth. And she holds a dark child in her lap. Because she seems to mirror his own parental and sexual drives, he feels she is the necessary antidote to the madness of all the high-minded infanticides in the novel. Since the church where Walters sees her lies so close to Rennes-le-Chateau's church of Mary Magdalena, he suspects this is a statue of that Mary with Black Sara, whom some view as her daughter. In the midst of a desperate search for a missing child, Walters finds the two figures very comforting.
Sara, however, has her own heritage in addition to that she received from Mary and her consort. Gypsies who gather at the shrine of the Three Maries in the Camargue, in the delta of the Rhone river, call her Kali and observe rituals that their ancestors in India devoted to Kali-Durga. Like her 'mother,' Mary, Sara represents the wisdom, the philoS-ophia, the often-affirmed, ancient 'wisdom of the serpents,' which comes from the earth. Since she was conceived in Egypt, some feel she also possesses the healing energy of Isis.
Although Walters knows nothing of the Kali, Sophia, and Isis connections, he nonetheless senses she is a mighty, syncretic symbol who combines the forces and values needed to remedy the evils of the particular idealists who in their confusion seem responsible for the atrocities occurring in Deepest France. For him, she is a necessary fiction--and one of the comforting forces in the two novels.
No comments:
Post a Comment