Am new here. Sent an email to Cecil who is likely very busy, on the ‘grail’ article on the home page.
What is most odd to me about it all is that in totally non-secret and often quite readily available literature on the ‘mystical’ tradition it is fairly common knowledge that the almost thousands of ‘names’ and ‘descriptions’ and ‘events’ and ‘places’ and ‘treasure’ etc, of the grail ALL stand for ONE-ONLY thing: The grail legend transmits a myth of occult anatomy in which the grail is an organ in the human head associated with what the tradition calls the "Sacred Marriage’.
In the same way, the New Testament legend transmits a myth of human perfectibility personified in “Jesus”.
This is also depicted by Leonardo in ‘The Last Supper’ which represents the ‘Sacred Marriage’ in the human brain, said in the tradition literature to be connected with the functioning of the Third ventricle - Pituitary gland - Pineal ganglia complex.
Whatever anyone thinks of it, this myth of occult anatomy keeps on keeping on reappearing in ever continuing new ‘legends’, and ‘operations’ such as Osiris, The New Testament, Gothic Cathedrals, Alchemy, *The Grail Legend *and Christian Rozencreutz.
Notwithstanding the fact that Dan Brown and friends got it wrong, it seems this legend-myth will not go away and is here to stay and reappear in another form another day.
Let’s get this clear. There was no mystical tradition of the Grail in ancient or medieval times. It was only a literary MacGuffin, with no more connection with medieval religious reality than Sauron’s One Ring has to do with modern religious reality.
In modern times, a few genuine mystics (especially Charles Williams) and a thundering lot of fake mystics have taken up the Grail as a symbol. (A lot of Protestants, such as Tennyson, have taken it up as an anti-symbol, too.) But that’s all recent, and done by people who knew (or should have known) the story’s true origins in medieval pop culture.
Correct: The grail legend is but another example of transmission of the myth of occult anatomy which underlies every known tradition and ideal and practice of human perfectibility.
It is nothing of the kind. It’s the One Ring. It’s the Sword of Shannara. It’s the Maltese Falcon. It’s the Death Star plans. It’s the Moonstone. It’s a plot gimmick, pure and simple. And insofar as it has any religious meaning on any level, it has to do with the Christian Beatific Vision, and not a load of content-free new-age “ancient wisdom” that was made up by a couple of con artists in the 1950s.
Why?
Why is it different from a surname?
Why is it better to use the potentially ambiguous name ‘Leonardo’ instead of something everybody understands?
Why don’t we call Vincent van Gogh just ‘Vincent’?
For comparison: A decade or so ago, a lady known as Theresa of Calcutta died. Would it be correct to refer to her as “of Calcutta”? Something like “Of Calcutta founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950”?
As for the legend of the Grail as a metaphor for the pituitary gland, I think it’s kind of hard to say that it’s “here to stay” and “will not go away”, given that there’s no indication anywhere of any connection whatsoever between the pituitary gland and the Grail.
The principle Western legend-myths of occult anatomy are -
The Egyptian Osiris,
The New Testament,
The Kabala,
Alchemy,
The Holy Grail,
and look very closely at Christian Rosecreutz.
While what you say is correct, it is safe to say that no-one with the slightest knowledge of Western art will not immediately know that “Leonardo” and “The Last Supper” refers to that great man!
The entire picture is the human brain, the Apostles are the twelve brain convolutions, ‘Jesus’ is the Pineal, and the sexually ambiguous ‘John’ is the Pituitary, as is ‘Mary Magdalene’.
Maatorc Is there any chance of you starting a new thread in the appropriate forum to explain your theory in exhausting detail? Such a thing seems to be beyond the scope of this thread.
Not really comparable. Different era, by which time surnames were a well-established concept - she had a name and surname anyway.
Plenty of surnames derive from place names (also well as trades or personal attributes). It may be technically correct not to consider ‘da vinci’ his surname, but it might as well be - it serves exactly the same purpose.
Insisting that he’s just called plain ‘Leonardo’ is absurd. Leonardo who?
In conversations with friends, if someone says the name Leonardo, there’s never any question who they are referring to. Someone else may throw in, “Leonardo … da Vinci?” as if to make sure.
Now, personally, I don’t like when people refer to him by “da Vinci” since, as you point out, it’s merely the place he’s from (town called Vinci in Florence). But, his father’s name was also da Vinci, presumably because he was also from there. His father’s full name (according to wikipedia) is Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci. So perhaps Piero’s father was Antonio and Antonio was also from Vinci.
So, technically, someone who says “da Vinci” to refer to a man could mean either Leonardo, Piero, or Antonio … or anyone else born in that town. Just like anyone who says “Leonardo” could mean da Vinci, DiCaprio, or even Leonardo’s Tuxedo (http://www.leonardos.com/) , but it looks like they’re in Puerto Rico. So that would make Leonardo de Boricua.
But usually when someone says either “Leonardo” or “da Vinci” they are referring to the Renaissance Man.
How did the Grail enter the Arthurian myths? I seem to recall the quest for the grail as being part of the stories-wasn’t the “perfect knight” (Sir Galahad ) all wrapped up with this quest?
Are these stories original, or were they additions from the 19th century?
It is hard to see what the big deal with the grail was-after all, it was just a cup that jesus used-Paul mentions nothing about it.