GRAIL AS VESSEL
The Central Symbol of the Legend
That the vessel is so frequently considered to be life-giving or
life-maintaining is readily understandable when we realize how extremely
important it must have been for earliest man to possess a receptacle in which,
for instance, water, the stuff of life par
excellence, could be transported or stored.
According to Jung’s definition, the
archetypes represent innate predispositions
to human behaviour in certain life situations and the ability to grasp their
meaning. The image of the vessel could therefore correspond to such a
“pattern,” to a possibility inherent in the
psyche of finding or producing a
vessel and of discovering its uses. TGL 114
Thus,
in nearly all
mythologies there is a miraculous vessel. Sometimes it
dispenses youth and life, at other times it possesses the power of healing, and
occasionally, as with the mead cauldron of the Nordic Ymir, inspiring strength
and wisdom are to be found in it. Often, especially as a cooking pot, it
effects transformations; by this attribute it achieved exceptional renown as the
vas Hermitis
of alchemy. TGL 114
Thus F. Locke asserts quite rightly that the symbol of the Grail is an archetypal image of polyvalent meaning. TGL 121
Like
the vessel, the grave has a maternal meaning, since the mother is not only the
place of birth but also, as Mother Earth, that which receives the dead back into
herself. TGL 127
As
Jung has pointed out, the vessel (vas)
in alchemy is a true
symbol, representing a mystical idea and exhibiting
correspondingly extensive connections of meaning. The legendary writer of
antiquity, Maria Prophetissa, says of it that “the whole secret lies in knowing
about the Hermetic vessel.” The vessel is always One, and it must be round
like the vault of heaven so that celestial influences can contribute to the
work. It is also often called a matrix or uterus in which the
filius philosophorum
(son of the philosophers) is born, and at the same
time it is, in a mysterious way, identical with its contents. For
instance, it is simply the aqua permanens
itself. Mercurius is “our
true hidden vessel, and also the
In this sense it is a theoria
in which the unconscious explains itself. Modern depth psychology has
rediscovered a similar way of using the manifestations of the unconscious
psyche
as a “vessel” in order to assimilate its contents. This is the method
known as “active imagination”, which Jung defines an “an active evocation of the
inner images secundum naturam.”
This means that one does not fantasy aimlessly into the blue but, on the
contrary, tries to grasp the meaning of the inner object in its quality of a
faithfully reproduced mental image. It is a very real achievement of
thinking and imagination. The process produces symbolic stories or
dialogues with an inner partner who personifies the unconscious, and these
activities bring about a mutual rapproachement and synthesis of the conscious
and unconscious halves of the personality. At the same time there arises
in consciousness an attitude that is willing to take the contents of the
unconscious into lasting consideration and, as far as possible, to understand
and incorporate them into real life. In a way, the individual becomes like
a vessel for the inflowing contents of unconscious. In this sense the
German mystics use the word vaz
(vase) as a designation of man.
That
the alchemical vessel has to do with visual understanding is also seen in a
statement by Senior quoted in a treatise by Theobald de Hoghelande (sixteenth
century) to the effect that “the vision” of the Hermetic vessel “is more to be
sought” than the “scripture.” By beholding it, man attains (vous), the
higher consciousness, which is found in the vessel. So the vessel also
becomes a uterus for the spiritual renewal or
rebirth of the individual.
TGL 143
In early times, the contents of the vessel, the arcane substance, had already
been compared to the waters of the
In
this connection it should be note that to the nations of northwestern
As Jung has shown in
Psychology and Alchemy and
Mysterium
Coniunctionis, medieval
alchemy, like the Grail legend, also mirrors a similar process in the
assimilation of Chrisianity, a process
which at the same time represents a reshaping and a
further development of the Christian contents.
For this reason, the vessel signifies
not only the possibility of psychic assimilation, but is also
a matrix in which the
archetype of
the Self is transformed
even further. TGL 145