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THE FEMININE ELEMENT IN MANKIND.
Leafing through a book written about my great-great-grandfather,
the composer Richard Wagner, I came across an account of his
death in February 1883 which I had missed on a previous reading.
It mentioned that the last thing he did in his life was to commence
an article entitled 'The Feminine Element in Mankind'. The author
of the account writes, "... after the words 'Liebe-Tragik',
the pen drops from his hand".
Just over one hundred years later I was reading
a book entitled The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail when I came
upon an early paragraph which related that Richard Wagner had
visited the little village of Rennes-Le-Château in the
Pyrenees before he wrote his last opera, Parsifal. This was extremely
strange to me as my family had only just moved to Wales, not
far from Nanteos Mansion, near Aberystwyth, where the famous
wooden Cup of Nanteos (sometimes known as the Welsh Grail) used
to reside. According to local tradition this eighteenth-century
residence was the resting place for the Grail Cup when the monks
of Glastonbury Abbey fled at the time of King Henry VIII's Dissolution
of the Monasteries.
Various accounts with which I was familiar
had referred to Richard Wagner staying at Nanteos just prior
to working on Parsifal, but why would modern writers wish to
link him very definitely to a little French village in the Pyrenees?
The answer came as I continued the book, which tells of a village
priest, Bérenger Saunière, who suddenly became
extremely wealthy after discovering some documents in a Church
consecrated to Mary Magdalene at Rennes-Le-Château. The
treasure was apparently linked to a secretive order called Sion
(originally connected with the Knights Templars) which was established
to protect the Holy Grail and certain secrets from being revealed.
In fact, the authors suggested that Holy Grail (from Sangréal)
means Blood Royal and that many writers, painters and composers
had been the guardians of these secrets, preserving them in their
respective art forms throughout the centuries. Codes and ciphers
had been used in their writings, while paintings and murals contained
numerous allegorical features. Most intriguing of all, however,
was a list of apparent Grand Masters of the underground stream
- a list which included names like Léonardo de Vinci,
Robert Fludd, Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, Claude Debussy and Jean
Cocteau.
I began to research into these connections
and especially into the seemingly heretical relationship between
Jesus and Mary Magdalene, whom the authors suggested had been
married and produced a child. This was the reason why the Order
of Sion was put into place: to protect the royal lineage of Jesus.
Coming from a strong background of the Church of England faith
(having been a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral) my immediate
reaction was one of horror! This was completely against the Church's
teaching and yet I constantly found supportive references to
the Magdalene in other texts.
The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail also put
forward the notion that the Crucifixion of Jesus was a staged
event. This idea seemed to be without any foundation and I could
not help feel that it was slipped in to gain maximum press exposure
(which it certainly accomplished) rather than realising the truth
and significance of the martyrdom of Christ. If the Crucifixion
had been staged, then it would surely have gone wrong at the
precise moment when the centurian's spear - the Spear of Longinus
- performed the Dolorous Blow which established the path that
is the Destiny of all Christians.
In the years 1945 and 1947 there were two
discoveries which made a considerable impact on our comprehension
of the Bible texts and have opened up a very interesting debate.
These are the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Dead Sea Scrolls. They
bring a new insight to the beginning of the Christian era and
to the period when the familiar Gospels were originally written.
The unearthed documents include gnostic writings which recount
a deep division within the early Church and offer a very different
perspective of many of the characters portrayed in the New Testament.
Most striking of all are the many accounts of arguments and jealousies
which prevailed between Mary Magdalene and the apostles Peter
and Paul.
In the non-canonical Gospel of Mary, the Magdalene
is described as the "woman who new All", but elsewhere,
in the Gospel of Philip, the jealousy of the male disciples comes
to light: "The companion of the [Saviour is] Mary Magdalene.
[But Christ loved] her more than [all the disciples and used
to kiss her [often] on her [mouth]. The rest of [the disciples
were offended by it...]. They said to him, 'Why do you love her
more than all of us?' The Saviour answered and said to them,
'Why do I not love you as [I love] her?'"
Another passage in the Gospel of Mary relates
directly to Peter's personality. After the Crucifixion, he refused
to believe that Jesus spoke to Mary Magdalene first, saying:
"Did he really speak privately with a woman, [and] not openly
to us?" Mary replies, "My brother Peter, what do you
think? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart,
or that I am lying about the Saviour?" Levi then tries to
stop the dispute from escalating: "Peter, you have always
been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman
like the adversaries. But if the Saviour made her worthy, who
are you, indeed, to reject her? Surely the Lord new her very
well. That is why he loved her more than us."
In the tractate entitled Pistis Sophia (Faith
Wisdom) Peter is bitter about Mary Magdalene's domination of
a conversation with Jesus, and urges him to silence her. Later,
Mary tells Jesus, "Peter makes me hesitate; I am afraid
of him, because he hates the female race." That last phrase
came at me like a bolt of lightning! What if Mary Magdalene actually
had been compromised when the New Testament was compiled by the
bishops! What if the truth of her story was suppressed to suit
the male domination of a Church founded upon the sexist attitudes
of the disciples, especially those of of Peter and Paul. They
were, as everyone knows, the main leaders of the early Christians
and the Church of Rome is, after all, called the Church of St
Peter. What if Peter's hatred of the Magdalene was sufficient
to meet out that sort of historical revenge upon her!
On thinking about this, it occurred to me
that many other females mentioned in the Bible have been given
a similarly hard time. Eve was the 'temptress' in the Garden
of Eden. To some people even Mary the mother of Jesus was a virgin
- denoting a sort of spiritual DNA genetic alteration. In fact,
the Church's refusal to afford her any measure of sexuality is,
in many ways, an insult to Mary. By Church decree, numerous women
have been burned as witches (Joan of Arc as an example) for daring
to have alternative beliefs. Clearly, the way that Mary Magdalene
has been depicted as a whore in Church teaching is extremely
questionable in view of the lately discovered accounts.
Another very curious story emanates from a
gnostic work entitled Questions of Mary [Magdalene] noted by
Epiphanies, which states: "Jesus gave them a revelation
when he took them with him up the mountain. He prayed, and then
took a woman out of his side and began to have sexual intercourse
with her. He caught his ejaculated semen in order to demonstrate
that such behaviour was necessary for us to live". The most
interesting passage of all, however, concludes the Gospel of
Thomas: "Simon Peter said to them [the disciples], 'Let
Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of Life.' Jesus said,
'I myself shall lead her, in order to make her male, so that
she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males. For
every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom
of Heaven.'" What struck me immediately upon reading the
Thomas section was that there was something very apparently wrong
with the English translation. But if the indefinite 'a' was placed
before the two entries where 'male' was mentioned, it would then
read: "Jesus said, 'I myself shall lead her, in order to
make her a male, so that she too may become a living spirit,
resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself a
male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
Throughout the centuries, women have been
dominated by men and treated as second-class citizens. The Church
has fuelled this endeavour in its determination to prevent full
priesthood for women. In defence of this, many male ministers
who oppose female priests cite a passage from Genesis 2-3, proclaiming
that "... a man ... is the image and glory of God; but woman
is the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman
for man.)"
In 1 Corinthians 14 (which might have been
written by Paul or perhaps inserted by someone else) it is said
that "... the women should keep silence in the churches.
For they are not permitted to speak, but they should be subordinate
... it is shameful for a woman to speak in church." In Roman
times women had little choice but to accept being bound over
in the newly devised forms of the legal marriage vows. However,
centuries before in Greece and Egypt, women were far more emancipated,
socially, politically and legally. Bishop Clement of Rome went
so far as to say that women should "remain in the rule of
subjection" to their husbands and, by the end of the second
century, woman's rights to worship were explicitly condemned.
Indeed, such female worship was branded as heretical.
Today, at last, we have arrived at a new understanding
of the prerequisite role of women. The Church of England is waking-up
in the face of a strong suffragette contingent of female lay
preachers, and the first ordination of women deaconesses took
place in Bristol in 1994. After years of argument the Anglican
Church is finally having to accept the natural balance. As seen
on TV, the scenes at the final meeting of the Synod in 1994 (with
some of the male ministers yelling at Archbishop Carey, behaving
like football-match hooligans) took many people by surprise.
The majority of onlookers cannot, of course, understand what
all the fuss is about, for this is supposed to be the enlightened
age wherein equality of the sexes manifests in all quarters.
How much better is the company whose executive management includes
women directors. Why, then, should the Church be so exclusive?
Currently, there is a good deal of talk about
the British Government's so-called Family Values, a politically
contrived concept which is preached if not practised. Additionally,
the Anglican hierarchy maintains that parish churches are going
to have to change, while many are going to be closed or amalgamated
with others. The congregations are falling in most areas and
yet many still fail to see the logic of female ministers taking
a full part in the parish communities. Many wives of vicars actually
work as hard as their husbands in parish work and many are loved
for their obvious vocational spirit. Would it not be far more
effective if husband and wife vicars were appointed to some parishes?
There are many occasions when parishioners would prefer to talk
to woman about affairs of the heart and women would, in many
respects, be more sympathetic listeners. This uplifting balance
would surely start to bring back the congregations. Meanwhile,
the right of women to now preside over the Communion is the most
significant advance of the Anglican Church in centuries. In South
America there are already great problems due to the lack of available
priests to administer to the needs of the population.
Of all hitherto unlikely measures, the Catholic
Church is now having to make special provision to accommodate
the numerous Church of England married vicars who wish to protest
against women officiates in the Church of England. Since Catholic
priests are prevented from marriage, this action creates a splendid
dichotomy which will doubtless fuel the disestablishment of male
domination in the Roman Church environment but, for the time
being, the matter is being strategically managed with as little
debate as possible.
To obtain a real balance and harmony in Christian
society, we must expect to see, and indeed welcome the ordination
of women arch-deacons and bishops along with female archbishops
and popes. Such appointments would surely take the Church into
the new millennium with a new strength and the potential for
increasing congregations. These days many individual church doors
actually remain closed for much of the time, locking out their
congregation for most of the week so as to facilitate a maximum
turn-out on the days of opening! Obviously, this defeats the
whole objective of a mission which should be available to people
at all times, and the practice must be changed if the Church
movement is to survive. Under such a circumstance, then maybe
the Church could regain some of the respect it so desperately
needs. In the meantime, it is the victim of its own politically
controlled hypocrisy and could not be further removed from the
desired concept of social ministry and service. Along with such
changes could emerge a much needed, heartfelt and sensitive debate
about the inner soul of the Church itself - a debate conducted
with an openness that would carry with it the chance of a popular
restoration. Currently, however, one sees only an establishment
in the course of erosion, for the Church's position in society
appears to be socially and morally devoid.
On the matter of openness, I have always regarded
one of the most significant aspects of the Crucifixion account
to be that moment when the curtain of the Temple of Jerusalem
was "rent in twain from the top to the bottom". This
has translated in my life to mean that if our supposed leaders
use the power of secrecy against society for their own benefit
(whether at a governmental or local level of community control)
then the practice has to be curtailed. The doors of secrecy should
be flung wide open, for greed operates freely behind closed doors
and ferments away the fruits of honest success. Openness, on
the other hand, generates the communication of free spirits with
the harmony of wisdom and the result is always the birth of creativity
- a state which is necessary for the success of any quest.
A deep instinct of humankind is the need to
make discoveries; our history and evolution are anchored by them
and revolutions, for good or ill, have resulted from invention.
We have, in our own lifetimes, experienced the many results of
discovery and invention, while the electronic age has paved the
way for the computer age. This is now heading, in turn, towards
the new age of Chaos Research coupled with Virtual Reality, which
will itself produce another new age. Some of us recoiled when
the term New Age became so wildly banded about in recent years,
as if it were the first age that was ever 'new'. In much the
same way, many would now have us believe, in their naivety, that
our entrance to the twenty-first century cements some kind of
ultimate achievement. It would, of course, be rather more appropriate
to focus our attention upon personal experience and the historical
past so as to generate a complete reexamination of where we stand
right now and where, perhaps, we are going.
By some standards, the present is a fairly
unromantic age which draws its romance from the myths and legends
of the past. In fact, much of our psyche embodies the remnants
of lore from times long gone - a culture that reflects upon our
innermost spirit. Even this, however, is now being literally
watered down to suit a politically geared mass requirement.
In the avaricious Western environment, the
1980s widened the division between those who 'had' and those
who 'had not'. Consequently, compassion and understanding are
not in great supply and many people are presently floundering
in what appears to be a no hope or small hope situation. This
is not only unacceptable, it is a potentially dangerous state
for any nation - a repeat of what occurred between the two Great
Wars which resulted in some of the lowest evil ever suffered
and witnessed by humankind. The seeds of this past are now growing
again, and many countries are seeing a revival of racial intolerance
with the dirty fascism that runs alongside. We have all of history
to learn from and yet we fail to comprehend the spirals of our
own destinies. How many times do we have to repeat the same basic
mistakes before we eventually do something to completely wipe
ourselves out?
Our planet is already sending us many warning
signs and yet there is an apparent resolve to perpetuate an obscene
pollution of the very Earth which supports our survival. We are
heading at brake-neck speed into a collision with everything
we hold so dear, and yet somehow persuade ourselves that we can
do little or nothing about it. For many, the ramification of
this is a depression of the soul with the result that some individuals
turn to drink, drugs or anything which provides an escape from
the reality of the circumstance. In such an environment our personal
need for discovery evaporates slowly away leaving our souls empty
and frustrated.
It is of little wonder that so many have now
reached a stage where they feel they have lost the ability to
discover and, without the hope of achievement, there is no need
for ambition. This is, however, where the ultimate requirement
for a Quest originates. It starts when the spirit has found the
bottom of the well - at the point where the light is only to
be found in a positive upwards course. To a Grail hunter this
state is known as the Waste Land - a realm in which to encounter
the ambassadors of enlightenment and to meet with others of an
open-minded questing spirit. Together with these fellow travellers
of the Grail highway one can find a rekindling of creativity
and a resurrected ambition from which follows heartening new
discovery. The quest for the Holy Grail is a heartfelt quest
for the Cup of Life which is, in essence, the womb of nourishment.
If Mary Magdalene was indeed compromised by
the disciples and, subsequently, by the Church establishment,
then the potency of the Holy Grail becomes extremely powerful.
The non-canonical Gospels of the Nag Hammadi Codices make it
quite plain that all was not harmonious in the early Church and
orthodox Christians demanded that women should "be the subject
in everything to their husbands". In fact, the dominance
of the male and the regulatory submission of women was so strong
that it would surely have been very tempting to alter the character
of the female elements in the Bible. This is, arguably, the reason
why numerous original texts were not included in the Canon and
why the Magdalene's character was literally refashioned.
An example of this type of manipulated portrayal
has recently become apparent in the discovery that King Richard
III Plantagenet of England had a spinal hump added to all his
portraits by a group of artists working for King Henry VIII of
the succeeding House of Tudor. Also that Richard could not possibly
have murdered the princes in the Tower of London as conventional
history tells. In fact, the social divisions created in England
by the Wars of the Roses and the subsequent Tudor accession are
still very apparent after some five hundred years.
The characters involved in the traditional
Quest for the Holy Grail are the archetypes which are contained
within our own innermost spirit, while the treasures are to be
found in the spirit of us all. Actually, we uncover them every
day, but most go unnoticed - lost within an environmental haze.
Other paths are to be found in the study of art and music. Many
of the deeper examples can only be present in these art forms,
since not everything can be put in words with the same impact.
There is a thread running through art and music which provides
that subtle, feminine aspect which we all need in order to keep
our souls in balance and equilibrium.
When openly pursuing the adventurous Quest,
unexpected things reveal themselves without explanation at particular
moments in time. An example of this this is the personal revelation
mentioned at the start of this essay whereby I had previously
failed to discover the account of Richard Wagner's death. In
practice, it is all a matter of timing; things can so often escape
one's attention if the moment is not conducive. Maybe, for all
my interest in my family's history, I was not meant to make that
particular discovery until that particular moment in time - the
moment when I was ready to accept and understand the reality.
I have now written a musical suite entitled
the 'Holy Spirit and The Holy Grail' in an attempt to reflect
some of the thoughts laid down in this essay and it contains
many things that are not possible to put into words. There are
numerous symbolic leitmotifs portrayed in this album; some clues
are immediate, whilst others require further consideration. It
is my hope that this music might help to rekindle the spirit
of the Quest in us all - a quest which can only be fulfilled
if the female and the male elements are balanced. I wonder (of
all the many conflicts which have violated this planet in the
name of religion) how many wars would actually have been fought
if the intuitive female nature was weighed in the balance against
the dominant male ego. Whichever way you choose to approach your
own inner quest, whatever your beliefs, religion or elected path,
I hope that the 'Holy Spirit and the Holy Grail' will aid your
reflections and be of some comfort along the way.
Some readers of this essay might ask why it
is that I, a male, am writing in such a way about the Feminine
Element. In answer to this, I can only say that in my opinion
we males have a lot to answer for, and it is time to redress
the historical balance. How curious it is that Richard Wagner
wrote the parting words ''Liebe-Tragik'' (Tragic Love) before
he died. Surely, the one person to whom these words should be
dedicated at the outset of our Quest is the central character
of the Holy Grail tradition, Mary Magdalene.
Adrian Wagner, F. Comp. ASMC.
Originally written 5th March 1994 - revised
on August 1999.
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