Excerpted from Symbols of Sacred Science
Modern civilization appears in history as a veritable anomaly: of all known civilizations, it is the only one to have developed in a purely material direction, and the only one not based on any principle of a higher order. This material development, already underway for several centuries now, and continuing at an ever-accelerating pace, has been accompanied by an intellectual regression for which it is quite unable to compensate. We are speaking, of course, of true and pure intellectuality, which could also be called spirituality, for we refuse to give this name to that which modern people have primarily applied themselves, namely the pursuit of the experimental sciences with a view to their possible practical applications. A single example will allow us to measure the extent of this regression: the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas was, in its time, a manual for the use of students; where are the students today who could fathom and assimilate it?
This decline has not come about all at once; one can follow its stages throughout modern philosophy. It is the loss or the forgetting of true intellectuality that has made possible two errors which, although seemingly opposed, are in reality correlative and complementary: rationalism and sentimentalism. From the moment all purely intellectual knowledge came to be denied or ignored, as has been the case since Descartes, the logical end was positivism and agnosticism, with the attendant 'scientistic' aberrations on the one hand, and on the other all those contemporary theories which, not content with what reason can produce, set out after something else, but do so in the direction of sentiment and instinct, that is, beneath reason and not above it, until, along with William James for example, they come to regard the subsconscious as the means by which man may enter into communication with the Divine. The notion of truth, after having been reduced to no more than a simple representation of tangible reality, is finally identified by pragmatism with utility, which amounts purely and simply to its suppresion; for of what importance is truth in a world whose aspirations are solely material and sentimental?
It is not possible to develop all the consequences of such a state of affairs here; let us simply point out some of those which relate more especially to the religious point of view. And first of all, let it be noted that the contempt and repulsion that other peoples, especially Easterners, feel toward Westerners, stem in great part from the fact that these latter generally seem to be without tradition, without religion, which is truly monstrous in their eyes. An Easterner cannot accept a social organization which does not rest upon traditional principles; for a Muslim, for example, all legislation is no more than an appendage to religion. And so it once was in the West also: we need only recall what Christianity was like in the Middle Ages. But today the relationships are reversed. Religion is in fact now looked upon simply as a social phenomenon. The entire social order is no longer linked to religion, but rather the latter, where it is still accorded some place, is regarded as no more than one element among those that make up the social order; and how many Catholics, alas, accept this way of viewing things without the slightest difficulty! It is high time we reacted against this tendency, and in this connection the affirmation of the social Reign of Christ is a particularly opportune manifestation; but to make this a reality, the present-day mentality must be reformed.
We must not let pass unnoticed the fact that even those who sincerely believe themselves to be religious have for the most part a greatly diminished idea of religion: it has hardly an effective influence on their thoughts or actions and is as if separated from the rest of their life. Practically, belivers and unbelievers alike act in almost the same way; for many Catholics, the affirmation of the supernatural has only an altogether theoretical value, and they would be quite embarrassed to have to admit the occurrence of a miracle. This is what might be called a practical materialism, or the materialism of fact. And is this not still more dangerous than an avowed materialism, precisely because those whom it affects are not even aware of it?
For most people religion is in any case only an affair of sentiment, without any intellectual import; they confuse religion with a vague religiosity, reducing it to morality; the place of doctrine, which is however what is essential, is diminished as much as possible, despite the fact that it is from doctrine that all the rest should logically derive. In this respect, Protestantism, which ends by becoming no more than 'moralism' pure and simple, is quite representative of the tendencies of the modern mind; but we would be quite wrong to believe that Catholicism itself is not affected by these same tendencies, not in its principle, certainly, but in the way in which it is usually presented: under the pretext of making it more acceptable to the present-day mentality, the most unfortunate concessions are made, concessions which encourage what should be on the contrary energetically combatted. We will not belabor the blindness of those who, under the pretext of 'tolerance', make themselves unwitting accomplices of counterfeits of religion, the hidden intentions of which they are far from suspecting. In passing let us just note the deplorable abuse frequently made of the word 'religion' itself: is it not used ceaselessly in such expressions as 'religion of patriotism', 'religion of science', or 'religion of duty'? These usages are not simply careless language but are symptomatic of the confusion we see everywhere in the modern world. For language, after all, only faithfully represents states of mind, and such expressions are incompatible with the true religious sense.
But let us come to what is most essential. We wish to speak of the weakening of doctrinal teaching, which has been almost entirely replaced by vague moral and sentimental considerations, which, although perhaps pleasing to certain people, can only discourage and alienate those who have any intellectual aspirations—of whom some still remain today despite everything. The proof of this is that more people than one might think deplore this lack of doctrine; and we take it as a favorable sign, in spite of appearances, that this lack is more widely recognized now than it was only a few short years ago. It is certainly wrong to claim, as we have often heard it done, that nobody could understand an exposition of pure doctrine. First of all, why wish to restrict oneself to the lowest level on the pretext that this is the level of the greatest number, as if it were always necessary to consider quantity rather than quality? Is this not one consequence of that democratic spirit which is one of the characteristic aspects of the modern mentality? And besides, can they be so sure that so many people would be incapable of understanding, if they had been familiarized with a doctrinal teaching? Should we not think that even those who would not understand everthing would nevertheless derive some benefit from it, and even more than might be supposed?
But the gravest obstacle is doubtless the kind of mistrust toward intellectuality in general that one finds in so many Catholic circles, even among ecclesiastics; we say gravest, because this mistrust is a sign of incomprehension found even among those on whom the task of teaching is incumbent. They have been touched by the modern spirit to the point of no longer knowing, any more than do the philosophers mentioned above, what true intellectuality is, to the point of confounding intellectuality with rationalism at times and thus unintentionally playing into the hands of their adversaries. We are absolutely firm in our conviction that what is important above all else is the restoration of true intellectuality, and with it the sense of doctrine and of tradition; it is high time to show that there is in religion something more than moral precepts or consolations for the help of souls weakened by suffering, and that one can find in it that 'solid food' spoken of by St Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
We are well aware that this has the drawback of going against certain fixed habits which are difficult to overcome, yet it is inevertheless not a question of innovation—far from it—but on the contrary of returning to the tradition from which one has strayed and of rediscovering what was allowed to disappear. Would this not be better than making the most unjustified concessions to the modern spirit, such as those found in so many apologetic works that strive to reconcile dogma with all that is most hypothetical and least well founded in contemporary science, an effort that must be repeated every time these so-called scientific theories come to be replaced by others? It would be quite easy, however, to show that religion and science cannot really enter into conflict, for the simple reason that they do not refer to the same domain. How can one not see the danger of even seeming to seek a basis for doctrines that concern unchangeable and eternal truths in what is most changeable and most uncertain? And what is one to think of those Catholic theologians who are affected by the 'scientistic' spirit to the point of feeling obliged to take into account, to a greater or lesser extent, the results of modern exegesis and 'textual criticism', when for anyone with only a reasonably sure doctrinal foundation it would be so easy to show their inanity? How can one not see that the so-called 'science of religions' such as is taught in the universities has in reality never been anything else but an instrument of war directed against religion and, more generally, against everthing that may still subsist of the traditional spirit, which those guiding the modern world in a direction that can only end in catastrophe naturally wish to destroy?
Much more could be said on all this, but we have only wanted to note very summarily a few of the points on which reform is necessary and urgent. Let us now conclude with a question of particular interest to us here: why do we encounter so much more or less open hostility toward symbolism? It must be because it is a mode of expression that has become entirely foreign to the modern mentality, and because man is naturally inclined to mistrust what he does not understand. Symbolism is the means best adapted to the teaching of truths of a superior order, both religious and metaphysical, that is, of everything that the modern spirit rejects or neglects; it is entirely contrary to what is in accord with rationalism, and all its adversaries, conduct themselves, some unwittingly, as true rationalists. For our part, we think that if symbolism is misunderstood today, this is all the more reason to dwell upon it, by expounding as completely as possible the real significance of traditional symbols, by restoring them to their full intellectual import, instead of simply making them the theme of sentimental exhortations for which, in any case, the use of symbolism is altogether futile.
This reform of the modern mentality, with all that it implies—namely the restoration of true intellectuality and of traditional doctrine, which for us are inseparable from one another—is certainly a considerable task; but is that a reason for not undertaking it? It seems to us, on the contrary, that such a task constitutes one of the loftiest and most important goals that can be proposed for the activity of a society such as the Society for the Intellectual Propagation of the Sacred Heart, so much the more that in all efforts in this direction will necessarily be oriented toward the Heart of the Incarnate Word, the spiritual Sun and Center of the World, 'in which are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and science'; not of that vain, profane science which is all that is known to most of our contemporaries, but the true sacred science which, for those who study it in the proper way, opens unsuspected horizons that are truly unlimited.
We have already had occasion to speak of the importance of the symbolic form in the transmission of traditional doctrinal teachings. We now return to this subject to add some complementary details and to show more explicitly the different points of view from which it can be considered.
First, symbolism seems to us to be particularly well adapted to the exigencies of human nature, which is not a purely intellectual nature but requires a sensory basis from which to raise itself to higher spheres. We must take the human make-up as it is, one and multiple in its real complexity—something all too apt to be forgotten ever since Descartes attempted to establish a radical and absolute separation between soul and body. For pure intelligence, of course, no outward form or expression is needed in order to understand truth, nor even to communicate to other pure intelligences what it has understood, in the measure that this is communicable; but this is not how it is for man. Fundamentally, every expression, every formulation whatever it may be, is a symbol of the thought that it expresses outwardly, and in this sense language itself is nothing but a symbolism. There should be no opposition, therefore, between the use of words and the use of figurative symbols; rather, these two modes of expression are complementary (and can in fact be combined, since writing is ideographic in origin, and has sometimes, as in China, even retained this character). Generally, the form of language is analytic, or 'discursive', as is the human mind of which it is the proper instrument and the pattern of which it follows or reproduces as closely as possible; on the contrary, symbolism in the strict sense is essentially synthetic and thereby 'intuitive' as it were, which renders it more apt than language to serve as a support for intellectual intuition. This latter is higher than reason and we must be careful not to confuse it with that lower intuition to which certain contemporary philosophers appeal. Consequently, if one is not content merely to note a difference, but wishes to speak of superiority, the superiority will be on the side of the synthetic symbolism (whatever some may claim), which opens possibilities of conception that are virtually unlimited, whereas language, with its more definite and fixed meanings, always sets more or less narrow limits to understanding.
Let no one say, therefore, that the symbolic form is good only for the common man; rather the contrary is true, or, better still, it is equally good for all, because it helps everyone to understand that truth it represents more or less completely and more or less profoundly, each according to the measure of his own intellectual possibilities. Thus the highest truths, not communicable or transmissible in any other way, can be communicated up to a certain point when they are, so to speak, incorporated in symbols which will no doubt conceal them for many, but which will manifest them in all their brilliance to those with eyes to see.
Does this mean that the use of symbolism is a necessity? Here we must make a distinction: as such and in an absolute way, no outward form is necessary; each is equally contingent and accidental in relation to that which it expresses or represents. Thus, according to the teachings of the Hindus, any figure whatsoever, a statue symbolizing one or another aspect of the Divinity, for example, should be considered only as a 'support', a point of departure for meditation; it is therefore simply an 'aid' and nothing more. In this connection a Vedic text gives a comparison which perfectly clarifies the role of symbols and of outward forms in general: these forms are like the horse which enables a man to make a journey more rapidly and with far less effort than if he had to make it on foot. No doubt, if this man had no horse he could still reach his destination, but with how much more difficulty! If he is able to make use of a horse, he would be quite wrong to refuse it on the pretext that it is more worthy not to have recourse to any aid. Do not the detractors of symbolism act precisely in this way? And although there is never an absolute impossibility of making the journey on foot, however long and arduous, there may nevertheless be a truly practical impossibility of succeeding in doing so. So it is with rites and symbols; they are not necessary in an absolute way, but they have a sort of expedient necessity, given human nature.
But it is not enough to consider symbolism from the human side, as we have done so far; to understand the full extent of its significance, it should be looked at as well from the divine side, so to speak. Once we have seen that symbolism has its basis in the very nature of beings and of things, that it is in perfect conformity with the laws of that nature, and bearing in mind that natural laws are after all only an expression and as it were an exteriorization of the divine Will, does this not authorize us to affirm that symbolism is of 'non-human' origin, as the Hindus say, or in other words, that its principle goes further back and higher than humanity?
It is not without reason that in reference to symbolism we recall the first words of St John's gospel: 'In the beginning was the Word.' The Word, the Logos, is at once Thought and Word: In Itself, It is the Divine Intellect, which is the 'place of possibilities'; in relation to us, It manifests and expresses Itself by Creation, in which certain of those possibilities are realized in actual existence, while as essences they are contained in It from all eternity. Creation is the work of the Word; it is thereby also Its manifestation, Its outward affirmation; and that is why the world is like a divine language to those who know how to understand it: Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei ['The heavens declare the glory of God'], Ps. 19:2. The philosopher Berkeley was thus not wrong when he said that the world is 'the language that the infinite Spirit speaks to finite spirits'; but he was wrong to think that language is only a collection of arbitrary signs, when in relaity there is nothing arbitrary even in human language, all meaning at its origin necessarily having its foundation in some natural conformity or harmony between the sign and the thing signified. It was because Adam had received from God the knowledge of the nature of all living beings that he was able to give them their names (Gen. 11:19-20); and all ancient traditions agree in teaching that the true name of a being is one with its nature or very essence.
If the Word is Thought inwardly and Word outwardly, and if the world is the effect of the Divine Word uttered at the beginning of time, then all of nature can be taken as a symbol of a supernatural reality. Everything that exists, in whatever mode, having its principle in the Divine Intellect, translates or represents that principle in its own manner and according to its own order of existence; and thus, from one order to another, all things are linked and correspond with each other so that they join together in a universal and total harmony which is like a reflection of the Divine Unity itself. This correspondence is the true foundation of symbolism, which is why the laws of a lower domain may always be taken as symbolizing realities of a higher order, where they have their profound reason, which is both their principle and their end. Let us here call attention to the error of the modern 'naturalistic' interpretations of ancient traditional doctrines, interpretations which purely and simply reverse the hierarchy of relationships among the different orders of reality: for example, it has never been the role of symbols and myths to represent the movement of the stars, the truth rather being that in myths one often finds figures inspired by these movements and destined to express analogically something altogether different, because the laws of that movement translate physically the metaphysical principles on which they depend. The lower may symbolize the higher, but the inverse is impossible; besides, if the symbol were not itself nearer the sensible order than what it represents, how could it fulfill the fucntion for which it is destined? In nature the sensible can symbolize the suprasensible; the entire natural order can in its turn be a symbol of the divine order; moreover, considering man more particularly, is it not legitimate to say that he too is a symbol by the very fact that he is 'created in the image of God' (Gen. 1:26-27)? And let uas add further that nature acquires its full meaning only if we regard it as furnishing a means of raising ourselves to the knowledge of divine truths, which is also precisely the essential role which we have ascribed to symbolism.1
These considerations could be developed almost indefinitely, but we prefer to leave it to each individual to do this for himself by an effort of personal reflection, for nothing could be more profitable; like the symbols which are their subject, these notes should serve only as a point of departure for meditation. Moreover, words can express only imperfectly what is in question here; nevertheless there is still one aspect of the question, and not the least important, that we shall now try to make clear, or at least to set forth in a brief discussion.
The Divine Word is expressed in Creation, as we said, and speaking analogically and bearing in mind all due proportion, this is comparable to thought being expressed in forms (here there is no longer any need to distinguish between language and symbols properly so called) which at one and the same time conceal and manifest it. The primordial Revelation, which, like Creation, is the work of the Word, is also incorporated so to speak in the symbols which have been transmitted from age to age ever since the origins of humanity; and this process is again analogous in its own order to that of Creation itself. Moreover, can we not see in this incorporation in to symbols of the 'non-human' tradition a kind of anticipated image, a 'prefiguration' of the incarnation of the Word? And to a certain extent does this not also allow us to see the mysterious relationship that exists between Creation and the Incarnation which is its crowning?
We will end with a final remark relating to the importance of the universal symbol of the Heart, and more especially of the form which it takes in the Christian tradition, that of the Sacred Heart. If in its essence symbolism conforms strictly to the 'divine plan', and if the Sacred Heart is the center of the being, both really and symbolically, then the symbol of the Heart, in itself or in its equivalents, must occupy a truly central place in all doctrines issuing more or less directly from the primordial tradition—something we will try to show in some of the studies to follow.
In his article 'Iconographie ancienne du Cour de Jésus' [Regnabit, June 1925] Louis Charbonneau-Lassay very rightly points out that the legend of the Holy Grail, written down in the twelfth century though originating much earlier—since in reality it is a Christian adaptation of some very ancient Celtic traditions—is something belonging to what might be called the 'prehistory of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.' The idea of this comparison had already occurred to us when reading an earlier, and from our standpoint extremely interesting, article entitled 'Le coeur humain et la notion du Coeur de Dieu dans la religion l'ancienne Égypte',1, from which we cite the following passage: 'In hieroglyphics, a sacred writing wherein the image of the thing itself often represents the very word that designates it, the heart was however represented only by an emblem, the vase. is not the heart of man indeed the vase in which his life is continually maintained by means of his blood' It is this vase, taken as a symbol of the heart and substituting for it in Egyptian ideography, that at once called to mind the Holy Grail, all the more in that we also see here, beside its general symbolic meaning (considered, moreover, under both its human and its divine aspects), a special and much more direct relationship with the very heart of Christ.
Indeed, the Holy Grail is the cup that contains the precious blood of Christ, and which even contains it twice, since it was used first at the Last Supper and then by Joseph of Arimathea to collect the blood and water that flowed from the wound opened in the Redeemer's side by the centurion's lance. This cup is a kind of substitute for the heart of Christ as a receptacle of his blood; it takes its place so to speak, and becomes its symbolic equivalent; and in this connection is it not still more remarkable that the vase should already in ancient times have been an emblem of the heart? Moreover, the cup in one form or another, just as the heart itself, plays an important role in many of the traditions of antiquity, particularly so among the Celts no doubt, since the very content of the legend of the Holy Grail, or at least its plot, came from them. It is regrettable that we cannot know with any precision what form this tradition took prior to Christianity, and so it is for everything concerning the Celtic doctrines, for which oral teaching was always the sole means of transmission; but there are enough concordances for us at least to establish the meanings of the principal symbols that figured in them, this after all being what is most essential.
But let us return to the legend in the form in which it has come down to us, since what it has to say of the Grail's origin is particularly worthy of our attention: the cup was fashioned by angels from an emerald that fell from Lucifer's brow at the time of his fall. This emerald is strikingly reminiscent of the urnā, the frontal pearl that in Hindu iconography often takes the place of the third eye of Shiva, representing what might be called the 'sense of eternity'. This comparison seems better suited than any other to clarify exactly the symbolism of the Grail; and it illustrates yet another relationship with the heart, which, for the Hindu tradition, as for many others—though perhaps in Hinduism more clearly so—is the center of the integral being, to which consequently this 'sense of eternity' must be directly linked.
It is then said that the Grail was entrusted to Adam in the Terrestrial Paradise, but that at the time of his fall Adam lost it in his turn, for he could not take it with him when he was driven out of Eden; and this also becomes very clear in light of what we have just indicated: man, separated from his original center through his own fault, found himself henceforth confined to the temporal sphere; he could no longer regain the unique point from which all things are contemplated under the aspect of eternity. The Terrestrial Paradise was in fact the true 'Center of the World', which is everywhere symbolically assimilated to the divine Heart; and can it not be said that, as long as he lived in Eden, Adam truly lived in the Heart of God?
What follows next is more enigmatic: Seth was able to return to the Terrestrial Paradise and was thus able to recover the precious vase. Now Seth is one of the figures of the Redeemer, the more so as his very name expresses the ideas of foundation and stability, and he announces in a way the restoration of the primordial order destroyed by the fall of man. From then on there was at least a partial restoration in the sense that Seth and those who possessed the Grail after him were able thereby to establish, somewhere on earth, a spiritual center that was like an image of the Lost Paradise. The legend does not say where or by whom the Grail was preserved up to the time of Christ, or how its transmission was assured; but its manifestly Celtic origin suggests that the Druids probably had a role in it, and that they must be numbered among the regular guardians of the primordial tradition. In any case, the existence of such a spiritual center, or even of several centers, simultaneously or successively, does not seem to be in doubt, wherever we may suppose them to have been located. What should be noted is that, among other designations, 'Heart of the World' was always and everywhere applied to these centers, and that in all traditions the descriptions of these centers are based upon an identical symbolism which can be traced down to the most precise details. Is this not sufficient to show that the Grail, or what is represented as such, had, already prior to Christianity, and even for all time, a very close link with the Divine Heart and with Emmanuel, that is to say with the manifestation, virtual or real according to the epoch concerned, but always present, of the Eternal Word at the heart of terrestrial humanity?2
According to the legend, after the death of Christ the Holy Grail was transported to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus; then begins to unfold the story of the Knights of the Round Table and their exploits, which we do not intend to take up here. The Round Table was destined to receive the Grail upon one of its knights having succeeded in winning it and bringing it from Great Britain to Brittany; and this table is also probably a very ancient symbol, one of those associated with the idea of the spiritual centers to which we have just alluded. Moreover, the circular form of the table is related to the 'zodiacal circle' (another symbol that merits a special study) through the presence around it of twelve chief personages, a feature that is also to be found in the constitution of all the centers in question. This being so, may one not see in the number of the twelve apostles one sign among a multitude of others of the perfect conformity of Christiantiy with the primordial tradition, to which the designation 'pre-Christian' so precisely fits? And we have also noticed in connection with the Round Table a strange concordance in the symbolic revelations made to Marie des Vallées3 in which there is mention of a 'round table of jasper that represents the Heart of Our Lord,' while there is at the same time mention of 'a garden that is the Holy Sacrament of the altar,' which, with its 'four fountains of living water,' is mysteriously identified with the Terrestrial Paradise. Is this not still another rather astonishing and unexpected confirmation of the relationships we have pointed out?
Naturally, we cannot pretend that these cursory observations constitute a thorough study of a subject so little known as this; for the moment we must confine ourselves to giving mere indications, fully realizing that at first sight these are likely to be something of a suprirse to those unfamiliar with the ancient traditions and their customary modes of symbolic expression. But we intend to develop and justify them more amply later through articles in which we may be able to touch on many other points no less worthy of interest.
Returning meanwhile to the legend of the Holy Grail, let us mention a singular complication that we have not yet taken into account. Through one of those verbal assimilations that often play a far from negligible part in symbolism, and that may moreover have deeper reasons than we may imagine at first sight, the Grail is simultaneously a vase or cup (grasale) and a book (gradale or graduale). In some versions of the legend the two meanings are very closely linked, for the book becomes an inscription engraved by Christ or by an angel upon the cup itself. We do not intend to draw any conclusion from this at the moment, although parallels may easily be found with the 'Book of Life' and certain elmeents in Apocalyptic symbolism.
Let us also add that the legend associates the Grail with other objects, notably a lance, which, in the Christian adaptation, is none other than the lance of the centurion Longinus, but what is very curious is that this lance, or one of its equivalents, already existed as a sort of complementary symbol for the cup in ancient traditions. Among the Greeks the spear of Achilles was credited with the power to cure the wounds it had caused; and medieval legened attributes precisely the same power to the lance of the Passion, recalling another similarity of the same kind: in the myth of adonis (whose name, moreover, signifies 'the Lord'), when the hero is mortally gored by the tusk of a wild boar (which here replaces the lance), his blood, flowing to the earth, gives rise to a flower. Now, Charbonneau-Lassay has pointed to 'a twelth-century press-mould for altar bread on which the blood from the wounds of the Crucified can be seen falling in droplets that are transformed into roses, and a thirteenth-century stained glass window of the cathedral of Angers, in which the divine blood, flowing in rivulets, also blossoms into the form of roses.'4 We shall return later to the topic of floral symbolism, viewed under a somewhat different aspect; but whatever may be the multiplicity of meanings presented by nearly all the symbols, they fit together in perfect harmony, and this very multiplicity, far from constituting a disadvantage or shortcoming, is on the contrary, for anyone who can understand it, one of the chief advantages of a language far less narrowly limited than ordinary language.
By way of concluding these notes let us mention several symbols that sometimes take the place of the cup in various traditions and are in fact identical with it. This is not to depart from our subject, for the Grail itself, as may easily be realized from everything we have just said, originally had no other significance than that generally attributed to the sacred vase or vessel, whever it is encountered, notably the significance attributed in the East to the sacrificial cup containing the Vedic Soma (or the Mazdean Haoma), that extraordinary eucharistic 'prefiguration' to which we shall perhaps return on another occasion.5 What the Soma properly represents is the 'draught of immortality' (the Amrita of the Hindus and the Ambrosia of the Greeks, two etymologically related words), which confers on or restores to those who receive it with the requisite disposition that 'sense of eternity' to which we have already referred.
One of the symbols that we wish to mention is the downard-pointing triangle, which is a kind of schematic representation of the sacrificial cup and is encountered as such in certain yantras, or geometrical symbols, in India. But what is also very remarkable from our point of view is that the same figure is also a symbol of the heart, the shape of which it reproduces in a simplified way, the 'triangle of the heart' being an expression current in all Eastern traditions. This leads to the interesting observation that the figure of a heart inscribed in a triangle thus oriented is in itself altogether legitimate, whether it be a question of the human heart or of the Divine Heart, and that this is very significant when it is related to the emblems used by certain Christian Hermeticists of the Middle Ages, whose intentions were always fully orthodox. If in modern times some have sought to attach a blasphemous significance to this figure,6 it is because, consciously or not, they have altered its primary sense to the point of reversing its normal value. This is a phenomenon for which many examples could be cited and which moreover finds its explanation in the fact that certain symbols are indeed susceptible of a twofold interpretation and have, as it were, two opposing faces. For example, do not the serpent and the lion both signify, according to context, Christ and Satan? We cannot set forth here a general theory on this subject, for this would lead us too far afield, but it goes without saying that in all this there is something that makes the handling of symbols a very delicate business and that also calls for quite special care when it comes to discovering the real meaning of certain emblems and of correctly interpreting them.
Another symbolism that is frequently equivalent to the cup is that of flowers: does not the form of a flower indeed evoke the idea of a 'receptacle', and do we not speak of the 'calyx' of a flower?7 In the East, the symbolic flower par excellence is the lotus; in the West, the rose most often plays the same role. We do not of course mean to imply that this is the only significance proper to the rose, or to the lotus; quite the contrary, for we ourselves have just pointed out another, but we willingly see this significance in the design embroidered on the altar canon at the abbey of Fontevrault,8 where the rose is placed at the foot of a lance along which flows drops of blood. There this rose appears in association with the lance exactly as does the cup elsewhere, and it does seem to be collecting the drops of blood rather than issuing from a transformation of one of them. Even so, the two meanings complement far more than they oppose each other, for in falling on the rose these drops of blood vivify it and make it bloom. They are the 'celestial dew', according to the expression so often used in connection with the idea of the Redemption or with the associated ideas of regeneration and resurrection; but that again would call for lengthy explanations, even if we were to limit ourselves to bringing out the concordance of the various traditions with respect to this one other symbol.
On another front, since the Rose-Cross has been mentioned in connection with the seal of Luther,9 we will say that this Hermetic emblem was at first specifically Christian, whatever may be the false and more or less 'naturalistic' interpretations given it from the eighteenth century onward, and is it not remarkable that in this figure the rose occupies the center of the cross, the very place of the Sacred Heart? Apart from the representations where the five wounds of the Crucified are figured as so many roses, the central rose, when it stands alone, can very well be identified with the Heart itself, with the vase that contains the blood, which is the center of life and also the center of the entire being.
There is still at least one other symbolic equivalent of the cup, the lunar crescent; but to explain this adequately would demand further elaborations quite outside the scope of the present study. We only mention it therefore in order not to neglect entirely any aspect of the question.
From all the comparisons brought forward above we can already draw one conclusion which we hope to be able to further clarify in the future: when one finds such concordances everywhere, is this not more than a mere indication of the existence of a primordial tradition? And how is it to be explained that even those who feel obliged in principle to admit that this primordial tradition exists more often than not think no further about it, and in fact go on reasoning as if it had never existed, or at least as if nothing of it had been preserved in the course of the centuries? Some reflection on how abnormal such an attitude is will perhaps render one less disposed to wonder at certain considerations which, in truth, only seem strange by virtue of the mental habits of our time. Besides, only a little unprejudiced research is required to discover on all sides the signs of this essential doctrinal unity, a consciousness of which may sometimes have been obscured in humanity, but has never entirely disappeared. And in proportion as one advances in this research, the points of comparison seem to multiply of their own accord and new proofs appear constantly: to be sure, the Quaerite et invenietis [Seek and ye shall find] of the Gospel is no vain saying.
We will add a few words here10in answer to an objection that was made to our view of the relationship between the Holy Grail and the Sacred Heart, even though the reply already given at the time seems to us fully satisfactory.11
It is of little importance that Chrétien de Troyes and Robert de Boron did not see in the ancient legend, of which they were only the adapters, all the significance contained in it. This significance was nevertheless really there, and we claim to have done nothing more than make it explicit without introducing anything 'modern' into our interpretation. It is quite difficult, moreover, to say exactly what the writers of the twelfth century saw or did not see in the legend; and given that they doubtless only played the part of 'transmitters', we readily agree that they did not see all that was seen by those who inspired them, that is, the real custodians of the traditional doctrine.
On the other hand, as regards the Celts, we were careful to recall the precautions that are necessary when speaking of them in the absence of any written documents. But why should it be supposed, despite the contra-indications that are nevertheless available, that the Celts were less favored than other ancient peoples? We see everywhere, and not only in Egypt, the symbolic assimilation of the heart andthe bup or vase. Everywhere the heart is considered to be the center of the being, a center that in the many aspects of this symbol is both divine and human. Furthermore, the sacrificial cup everywhere represents the Center of the Heart of the World, the 'abode of immortality'.12 What more is required? We are well aware that the cup and the lance, or their equivalents, have had yet other meanings, in addition to those we mentioned, but without wishing to dwell any further on this point, we cna say that all these meanings, no matter how strange some of them may appear to modern eyes, are in perfect agreement among themselves, and that they really express applications of the same principle to diverse orders according to a law of correspondence on which is founded the harmonious multiplicity of meanings included in all symbolism.
We hope to show in other studies not only that the Center of the World is in fact to be identified with the Heart of Christ, but also that this identity was plainly indicated in ancient doctrines. Obviously, the expression 'Heart of Christ' must in this case be taken in a sense that does not coincide precisely with that which could be called 'historical', but it must be said yet again that historical facts themselves, like all the rest, translate higher realities in their own way and conform to the law of correspondence we have just alluded to, a law that alone enables us to explain certain 'prefigurations'. It is a question, if you will, of the Christ-principle, that is, of the Word manifested at the central point of the Universe. But who would dare to maintain that the Eternal Word and Its historical, terrestrial, and human manifestation are not really and substantially one and the same Christ under two different aspects? We touch here again on the relationship between the temporal and the timeless, and perhaps it is not appropriate to dwell further on this, for these are precisely things that symbolism alone can express, in the measure that they are expressible. In any case, it is enough to know how to read the symbols in order to find in them all that we ourselves have found; but unhappily, in our age especially, not everyone knows how to read them.