The search is over. We know where it is. Women have always known.
Oh, we play plenty dumb, and try to be helpful with questions like, “Where did you last see it?” and “Can you remember if you had it when you were fighting the Black Knight?” But we totally know. And we’re not telling.
We know that the Grail is a symbol, and that it’s way older than even Arthur and Merlin and Lancelot. It’s older than recorded history. It’s so old … (How old is it?) … it gave birth to Betty White and Keith Richards.
It’s so old that the very first mammalian mama of all time ever had the very first one, according to National Geographic magazine. She was called a morganucodontid. They were tiny shrew-like creatures that lived 210 million years ago. Yes. The Grail is that old, even if the idea of it is not. But so interesting that the name “Morgan” shows up in our name for this very first mama ever. The Goddess of Death and Rebirth herself. Hmm. Divine inspiration? Druidic hocus-pocusery? Gotta wonder.
In ancient Ireland, according to Caitlin Matthews, it was known as The Cave of Stars. I’ve always really loved that name. So poetic and so true. Wonders. Miracles. Stars bursting behind the eyes when the timeless moment catches you by surprise. Oh yes, women have always known.
But we keep it a secret, mostly because we want to know that brave sir knight can find the clitoris before we let him have the Grail. You know it’s true.
It is breathtakingly appropriate that in the Grail legends, which were written, or at least written down, starting in 796 BCE and continue up until … well, now and into the vastness of future possibility, access to the Grail is always, always, through a woman. You cannot get to the Grail unless you prove yourself worthy to a maiden, a mother, or a crone, or three, or three times three of them. And very frequently, if you do prove yourself worthy the crone turns into a maiden because she was “under an enchantment,” right … she was just sitting there, and suddenly she was a crone, which has nothing whatsoever to do with her being the shape-shifting embodiment of the ever-changing land.
Women, cis, trans, or otherwise woman-identifying, are the Grail, and the Grail writers were right to require their questing knights to have to treat all women with reverence and kindness in order to make any progress toward their goals. The ones who didn’t remained in a debased state, often subject to punishment, pain, boils, disfigurement, or imprisonment in the deepest dungeon until – yes – they had an epiphany and realized that women are inherently sacred and then they could be redeemed … by performing another dangerous, impossible and nonsensical quest.
It’s also fascinating that kingship was not only conferred by women, but the potential king had to be born of a woman of a certain bloodline. Arthur was eligible to be a king because he was born of Igraine, but the kingship was conferred (no matter Merlyn’s trickery with the Sword in the Stone) by the watery tart who passed out swords, the Lady of the Lake. (If you take umbrage at my use of “watery tart,” get thee a copy of Monty Python’s Holy Grail and all shall be made clear.) So even though women were quite effectively oppressed at this point in history, the fact was, you couldn’t be a king if your mother wasn’t of a certain bloodline, and you had to have the approval of the Goddess of the Land, Sovereignty Herself, or it was not happening. So the Sword in the Stone was a bit of trickery – or was it? Stone represents Land, and the Goddess of the Land is the empowering, activating force deciding who the next king is going to be. Pulling a sword out of such a symbol when no other knight could was a pretty darn clear sign: Here’s your new king, guys.
This is not to say that there is anything remotely feminist about most of the Grail literature. We have to shift and squint and read it upside-down in order to find it. But when we do, look out, we are gonna go straight up Marion Zimmer Bradley all over it. There are many single, sovereign women in the Grail stories, but they are representations of the Land, or aspects of the Goddess, or loathly ladies, and so not subject to the rules and “protection” of men. Wives get treated like crap, which fosters the big lie that if we just meet all abuse with gentleness and acceptance that husband will see how much we twuwy twuwy wuv him and change his ways. Yeah, that always happens. (That was sarcasm, in case you couldn’t see the eye-roll.) Those stories clearly got tacked on after the Church came down on women with a reign of terror and an iron fist.
We are the effing Grail, and that used to mean something.
Too many women bought into the helpless maiden bullshit over the years, and believed the lies that men could be softened if you just love them enough, and we have forgotten that we are the Grail. We represent life and vitality and fertility and growth. We are the hills and the valleys and the mountains and the islands and the softness of the land at its most lush and glorious. And we are the volcanos and the desert and the wasteland and the bottom of the ocean and the tip of the iceberg, too. And there was a time when we knew we had the power to be all of that. None of that makes us passive, or it shouldn’t.
And it doesn’t matter if we are cis or trans or gay or straight or any other permutation of all the wonderful ways to be and express being. It doesn’t matter if you have had kids or never wanted them and didn’t, or if you adopted, or aborted, or miscarried, or tried and couldn’t. It doesn’t matter if you are female or male or any point between; if you are the Grail, you are the Grail, no questions asked. You are the Grail. Because we, with our Sacralizing, Nurturing Powers, are the Grail. We will always be the Grail. We just have to remember.
Rise, rise, rise.
Do you need help getting back in touch and in tune with your inherent power? SoundWorks can help.