The Global Wounds of the Fisher King, Past and Present

Today's religious wars in the Middle East remind me of when the grail legends first appeared in Europe. The entire continent was in turmoil. On the surface, there were pilgrimages and free access to many cultures, but the only established central authority was the Church of Rome.

Today, Islam holds that position in the Middle East. Kingdoms then were bickering over (and conquering and coveting) land, as are tribal areas today, and emphasis on any other kind of secular equivalent was not — and still is not — a priority. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were the latest religious-secular leaders, much like the Roman popes of yesterday.

During the Crusades, persecution was aimed at all those who did not bow to the letter of the Roman Church's dogma and invariably included the most innovative minds of the age and, predictably, the spawn of Eve. The big campaign during the eleventh and twelfth centuries was, of course, the Crusades. It has been estimated that the Crusades cost about ten million innocent lives.

Today's campaign, including September 11, 2001, is international terrorism in the name of God. Both religious systems, past and present, reacted to what they declared as heresy with an increasingly fanatical and dictatorial zeal, virtually unhindered in their purges through bombings and biochemical annihilation of innocents.

Science and the female principle of yin, and loving relationships disappeared out of sight then and now. Our spiritual evolution also disappeared with these losses.

The two major wounds, then in Europe, and today and yesterday in the Far East (today's Middle East) are still bleeding. These wounds are the following:

1. The repression of women (as in Afghanistan); the yin, female principle of feeling-centeredness, physical security, and safe nurturing; and the feminine principle of the right of each human being to receive agape love exemplified by the concepts of I wish you well and Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

2. The creation of the wastelands of war zones and the wounding of the individual self.

Myth Speaks the Language of Eternal Returns, Cycles Renewed, and Heroes Reborn

The archetypal elements of the Arthurian Grail and the bleeding lance are the classic sexual symbols for the masculine yang and feminine yin principles. It is only when these two are united that the wasteland of war (the barren realm of the Grail castle of the Earth) can be restored. This is the wound that must be healed before there can be a return to paradise in both a global and individual sense. The quest for the Grail can also be interpreted in psychological terms as the return of the son to the mother.

In the Parzival scenario, the hero leaves his mother to join the knights, despite her fear that he will die — as her brothers and father did before him in the mongerings of war. He leaves the figurative womb of his mother when he follows the knights from the wilderness.

In other words, every baby is a hero passing through psychological as well as physical transformation from a water creature (in an amniotic paradise) to an air-breathing mammal (reflected in the age of Aquarius) that has to face a dangerous unknown without boundaries. With his egocentric drive, he doesn't notice his mother's death as he leaves the childhood paradise. He is intoxicated with the birth of independence, a new existence, and a sense of freedom.

In many versions, it is his sin that first prevents him from curing the Fisher King wound by failing to ask the question "What ails thee, Uncle?" In his excitement of attainment, he has failed to keep within him the nurturing caretaker of the feminine principle.

This also prevents him from healing the earth of its wounds (the wasteland of bombings, war, violence, and rape of resources) by not cherishing the internal yin soul and what was given to humankind to enjoy and share.

When he leaves his own queen, it is to seek his mother, but he finds the Grail instead. He cannot return to the womb of his mother, so he must find the internal mother of the universe within him — his soul, his yin energy, his anima — the castle in which the hero is invisible to all but the worthy (with water being a metaphor for womb and spirituality). This can be seen as the womb of the new mother who is now rediscovered by her son/lover inasmuch as every lover/yin is a son and every mistress/yang is a mother.

Sexuality and sensuality lead to an internal power that bodes castration to the power of religion, then and now. Cover yourself; hide away, and be quiet. Passion, even in its academic sense — or as motivation for advancement of the human condition — was and is today greatly feared in the Middle East, for it knows no boundaries, no rules of order. It is pure, passionate emotion in laser focus.

The patriarchs jeered at it and called it obsessive, but the troubadours and all the Romantic poets who revered its power loved it. William Blake spoke of obsession as being the doorway to wisdom, which led Jim Morrison to name his band The Doors.

E-motion (energy's motion)

The brain is set up to chemically reward each new insight, revelation, epiphany, and creative expression. We are genetically engineered to be motivated to not just preserve the species, but also to help it evolve. To deny passionate emotion's chemical value is to diminish our potential for progress. Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring...