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BOOK VIII

MYSTIC ASPECTS OF THE GRAAL LEGEND

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THE ARGUMENT

I. THE INTRODUCTORY WORDS.--The Quest of the Holy Graal considered as a religious experiment--Counsels of Perfection in the Quest--Of poverty, obedience and virginity--Of partial success in their absence--Peculiarities in the election of Galahad--The state of sanctity--The descent of Grace--Perpetuity of conditions for the experiment--Further as regards virginity in respect of the Quest--The mystical idea of union--The term of the Quest--Separation of transubstantiation marvels from the final vision of the Graal--The experience of Nasciens--Collateral experience of the Mystics--After what manner grace manifested through the Eucharist--Of a gate of knowledge in the Eucharist--Declaration of the Graal in its mystic aspects. II. THE POSITION OF THE LITERATURE DEFINED.--A distinction concerning the literature--Of allegory in the Great Quest--A particular form of development in the Graal Legend--The Graal and the Official Church--The case concerning that Church--The implicits of the literature as elements of the mystic aspects--The Recession of the Graal--How this symbol was perpetuated from the beginning--A light from the Quest of Guiot--Meaning of the Stone in the Crown of Lucifer--The Graal and Eucharistic Wisdom. III. CONCERNING THE GREAT EXPERIMENT.--The wonder of all sacredness as the term of Quest--An analogy from Ruysbroeck--Term of the Experiment--External places of the Quest--Of helpers therein 

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[paragraph continues] --of Secret Orders--Communication of Divine Substance--The Channel of the Eucharist--Of Integration in Secret Knowledge--The Office of the Quests--Of Popular Devotions in the Church and of such Fatalities--Our Inheritance from the Past--The open Secret of Tradition Of things that stand in the way in respect of Christian Mysticism--Latin Christianity--The true way of Experience--An eirenicon in doctrine. IV. THE MYSTERY OF INITIATION.--Of the Graal in its correspondence with instituted Mysteries--The mind of scholarship on this subject--Analogies from the literary history of Kabalism and Alchemy--The sacramental message of the Graal--Points of comparison between Graal literature and other cycles of books--A distinction on the question of Initiation--The Hidden Knowledge--An illustration from Masonry--Of a certain leaven working in the texts of the Graal--Testimony to the existence of the Great Experiment--The failure of the external world--A caution in respect of interpretation--The indubitable subsurface sense of Graal books. V. THE MYSTERY OF FAITH.--A first summary of the whole subject--The Graal Mystery as a declared pageant of the Eucharist--Its distinctions from the official Sacrament--A profound symbolism--Of secret memorials--The Five Changes of the Graal--Of what remains over from the findings of scholarship--The Church teaching on the Eucharist--Limitations of Graal books--And of books of the Mystics. VI. THE LOST BOOK OF THE GRAAL.--Suggestion concerning a concealed Liturgy or Mass-Book--Superfluity of this hypothesis in respect of the present interpretation--General testimony of the literature to a primordial text--The schedule thereof--Whether the evidences are applicable to one book--The results obtained therefrom--Conclusion that the literature could not have arisen from a single prototype--Of admitted 

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and indisputable prototypes--The alleged Latin source--Southey's opinion--Statement of the Comte de Tressan--Middle ground occupied by Paulin Paris--A lesson from the literature of Alchemy--Of all which remains after abandoning the hypothesis of a single prototype in the ordinary sense--Further concerning the implicits and strange rumours present in Graal literature--Proof that these were not inventions of romance--Hypothesis of a Sanctum Graal which contained these elements--The negative view of its content--The positive view--The book not seen by those who wrote the romances--The presumable custodians thereof--The rumours thereof--How their prevalence does not involve the existence of any book. VII. THE DECLARED MYSTERY OF QUEST.--Exotics of the whole subject--Of faith and experience--Errors of the Mystic Quest--The Open Door--The Gates and their Wardens--A condition of progress in the Quest--The declared and the hidden knowledge--Suddenness of the Graal Wonders--Obiter Dicta--The expression of the whole Quest after a new manner.


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