Percival would never have found the Holy Grail had he not repeatedly returned to the source in his soul (the ‘world egg’) and remembered that openness of heart is his greatest gift.
Many creation myths tell us that heaven and earth emerged from a world egg. From the One Thing in which the potential for all things is contained, creative diversity develops in its dazzling forms. We can still find a reflection of this myth in the Big Bang theory. Astronomers assume that the universe has expanded ever further from a single, highly compressed ‘point’ (or, as some say today, a ‘space bubble in quantum format’). Aspects of our existence have become more differentiated over the course of the development of civilisation. They are scientifically researched, but the archetype behind them has been preserved over the millennia. So, whether we consult the old myths or modern science, we encounter the idea that diversity arises from simplicity and is originally connected to it.
Returning to the first impulse
Consequently, evolution receives its first impulse from a state of unity, which, unfortunately, is hardly considered in today’s cultural world. But what happens when the One dissipates further and further into the Many, and there is no return to the origin? The idea of development then degenerates into dogma, becomes an obsession, a mania for optimisation. Development now only means increase and multiplication, and anything that deviates from this standard is seen as a step backwards. Particularly when it comes to power and capital, the increase should be infinite, even if that is a completely unnatural principle. The dissolving processes of wilting and decay, which the dark season lays over nature like a veil, could remind us of the cosmic world egg, to whose germ stage everything returns. Every unfolding must eventually turn into the silence of a retreat, which becomes a breeding ground for what is to come. In it, the forces gather for their regeneration, to finally flow out anew when the time is ripe.
The world egg is by no means somewhere in the distant past that no longer concerns us. It is always there and, from time to time, opens new spaces and initiates new rounds of development, whose dances we can only celebrate if we remain or become children again. We are called upon to allow a very atypical development that does not proceed linearly and does not insatiably strive for better, faster, higher or further. This particular development is characterised much more by conservation and sensitisation. The decisive factor is the rediscovery of an innate ability and not an insatiable desire to outdo or exploit creation. Development as a midwifery service, as the education and refinement of a sensorium that already exists in us, is present as a germ cell and always wanting to trigger new births.
Open to the world
Martin Heidegger speaks of ‘world openness’ and describes it as the ‘basic condition of human existence’. ‘Openness to what is present is the basic feature of being human.’ [1] When we speak of development in this sense, the most important Thing is to become permeable again, similar to a child’s mind, which encounters the world with amazed openness and feels connected to all things. The open-minded person resists the tyranny of development because they sense that every desire for development is, at the deepest level, a desire for openness. Our openness is the gateway through which the colourful diversity of the world can flow in and gather with us in a web of relationships, forming a unity.
What is suggested here in philosophical and poetic terms is vividly illustrated in the Percival myth. Percival is, after all, referred to as the ‘dumb fool’, and even though he naturally undergoes a development, it remains unmistakable that he retains a pinch of wildness well into his mature years and never completely breaks away from his impetuous nature or the intuition of his heart. Part of his maturing process is therefore characterised by his renouncing all educational measures to retain his impartiality (or to regain it). The way he is raised makes it clear that Percival will never be completely tamed. He is educated in the hiding place of the wild wasteland of Soltane, a realm ruled by his mother Herzeloyde, where he is protected from all worldly influences. Since Herzeloyde lost her husband, Gachmuret, in a bloody knightly duel, she wants to spare her son a similar fate at all costs. Despite all her attempts at protection, Percival grows into a lively, open-hearted boy who always feels sorrow when the birds’ song sweetly pierces his heart and awakens his desire for freedom. But Herzeloyde wants her son never to leave the nest and to always remain under her care. So she begins her cruel feud against the birds and orders the farmers and farmhands to catch and strangle them. Percival is dismayed by his mother’s dark intentions and implores her to spare the birds. Herzeloyde then comes to her senses and repents: ‘How could I dare to reverse his order, when he is the highest God? Should birds no longer be happy because of me?’ [2]
The black-and-white concept of God
The dialogue between mother and son continues, and they turn to speaking of God. Herzeloyde sees a good opportunity to instil her black-and-white view of God in her son: ‘So she showed the difference between darkness and light,’ whereupon Percival flees and runs ‘far away’, as if to distance himself as clearly as possible from his mother’s one-sided ideology. Percival cannot bear the moralising and takes to his heels. Despite all warnings, he rebels and even wants to challenge the devil in his arrogance: ‘Oh, if only the devil would come here with his wrath and rage – I’ll beat him, that’s for sure! Mother says he is frightening – I think she has lost her courage.”[3] From the very beginning, Percival’s opposition to the traditional ecclesiastical worldview and its iron attempts at protection are evident. Everything in Percival is designed to counter this one-sidedness and to rebel against it. He does not want to get stuck in the old dispute between the two-valued polarities. In keeping with the famous magpie parable from the prologue, he is equally ‘in heaven and in hell’.[4] For the Grail seeker Percival, it is important to find the middle ground in this interplay of forces and no longer take one side (and thereby fall out with the other), as his mother exemplifies.
In Welsh Peredur (a romance from the 12th/13th century), Percival’s wild nature is even more visible. He is so fast, powerful and agile that he is the only one who can catch deer and wild goats with his bare hands, something that no one else can do. Peredur is bursting with untamed power, and it may have been this trait that particularly frightened Herzeloyde. But although Percival grows up in the wild, it is not a place of self-fulfilment for him. It is a wilderness that is endangered on all sides, where he is constantly threatened with the clipping of his wings. That is why Wolfram von Eschenbach always refers to Soltane as ‘waste’, like the Waste Land. Although there are meadows, forests, and rivers in Soltane, the wasteland in this area reflects a deceptive inner freedom. The openness to the world is constantly under threat here. The black-and-white conception of God causes the soul to dry out in the long run, since it immediately applies a standard of judgement to all phenomena, making it impossible to perceive the phenomena in their essence without prejudice. To be truly open also means to be simple-minded, that is, to embrace whatever comes our way with open arms. This also requires a sense of light-heartedness that can free us from all divisive prejudices and belittlements.
Knight and Grail Seekers
When Percival encounters knights for the first time on one of his forays, he is so drawn to these mysterious men who have ‘shone more than God’ that he wants to emulate them and become a knight himself. He can no longer be held in the wasteland of Soltane, which he leaves head over heels. If he had begun to brood, he would probably have been overcome by indecision and abandoned his decision. But the thirst for adventure is stronger and lures Percival away from his mother, who dresses him like a fool in the hope that he will endure a lot of teasing and flee back into her protective arms: ‘People love to mock – my son shall wear the clothes of a fool on his beautiful body. If he is pushed and beaten, he may come back to me.”[5] But the malicious plan does not come to fruition. Perceval sets off in high spirits, whereupon his mother, heartbroken, collapses and dies. However, Herzeloyde’s plan does work to a certain extent – but in a completely different way than she had imagined. Although Perceval soon sheds the outward trappings of foolishness, inwardly he repeatedly seeks contact with his foolish side, which will yet prove to be a blessing.
The mother world continues to have an effect on Percival for a long time, because she not only forced the fool’s clothes on him, but also gave him all sorts of advice and rules of behaviour, which he naively follows and which later cause him to stumble from one faux pas to the next. In the third book of Wolfram’s Parzival, the Grail seeker is referred to nine times as ‘tumbe’, which means ‘simple’, ‘foolish’, ‘unwise’, ‘ignorant’, ‘uneducated’ or ‘inexperienced’.[6] Therefore, in the same book, he receives an exemplary courtly education from his teacher Gurnemanz: ‘I have seen that you need instruction. From now on, let your bad behaviour go its own way.”[7] To teach Percival good, cultivated behaviour, his “dullness” must first be dispelled. He must learn to hold back, to rein in his curiosity, to pay attention to this and that etiquette, and to stop asking so many questions. But as we know from the course of the plot, it is precisely this educational rule that proves to be Percival’s painful undoing. On his first visit to the Castle of the Holy Grail (when everything depends on it), he fails to ask about the Fisher King’s wound, thereby prolonging his suffering and plunging the entire land into mourning. Percival has proved unworthy of the Grail kingship. All his good manners and modest conventions are ultimately of no help to him on the Grail quest; on the contrary, they confuse him more than they benefit him. If he had followed his intuition, the spontaneous impulse of amazement at the wonderful, then he would have asked. Still, this childlike openness had been trained out of him, and so he first had to learn to trust his own (inner) voice and go through the world without prejudice.
A simple search
When Percival finally arrives at his uncle Trevrizent’s hermitage by the wild spring on a Good Friday after many arduous wanderings, he finds orientation and reassurance there. The wise hermit explains to Percival the spiritual connections of the world and reveals important biographical background about his kin. After the previous mother-and-Gurnemanz episode, Percival receives his third ‘education’ and matures into an understanding and insightful person. Nevertheless, he is still led astray in one matter and receives fateful advice once again. Trevrizent urges Percival to give up the search for the Holy Grail, saying, ‘You say you long for the Grail – oh foolish man! I pity you! For no one can attain the Grail whom Heaven does not (…) call to the Grail.”[8] In the Middle High German original, the hermit explicitly calls Percival a “tumben man” (fool).[9] But this time, Percival no longer pays attention to the advice that comes at him from all sides and continues to strive for the Grail, however unreasonable and hopeless it may seem. He finds the Grail later only because he retains a piece of ‘stupidity’ despite all the wise teachings. Percival does not allow his naivety to be dispelled but discovers in it the solution to the burning conflict.
At the end, Trevrizent confesses that he has lied to Percival: ‘To distract you from the Grail, I described its nature to you wrongly; let me atone for this sin.’ [10] Trevrizent thus admits that the search for the Grail is an unfathomable quest that cannot be passed through by adhering to moral principles or ideal stages of development alone. To find the Holy Grail, the sacred chalice of the heart, it turns out to be crucial that Percival trusts his innermost, childlike voice and even takes it more seriously than the words of his wise advisor. By taking this courageous step towards autonomy, he frees himself from restrictive doctrines. He reopens the place of simplicity within the soul. It is only at first glance a place of extreme isolation, because in the naked reflection on himself, Percival becomes again the world-open character, who he already was in his childhood, when playing as a child in Soltane, where the singing of the birds touched his heart. The knights seemed like gods to him. Without this dreamy sensitivity, he would never have set out into the world, and never would he have reconciled with his black-and-white half-brother, Feirefiz. Never would he have found the Grail in the end and redeemed the Fisher King if he had not repeatedly returned to the origin (to the world egg) in his soul and remembered that openness of heart is his greatest gift.
[1] Martin Heidegger, Zollikoner Seminare, p. 292 & p. 94
[2] Wolfram von Eschenbach, Percival, Book 3, 119
[3] Percival, Book 3, 119 – 120
[4] Percival, Book 1, 1,9 (‘as in the two colours of the magpie’)
[5] Percival, Book 3, 126
[6] cf. Percival, Book 3, 155,19; 159,10; 161,17; 161,20ff.; 161,25; 162, 1; 162,27f.; 163,24; 166,6
[7] Percival, Book 3, 171
[8] Percival, Book 9, 468,10-14
[9] ibid.: ‘ir sent iuch umben grâl: / ir tumber man, daz muoz ich klagn’
[10] Percival, Book 16, 798, 6f.
