THE MEANING OF MEANING

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32703, 4 September 1971, Page 10

THE MEANING OF MEANING

The Grail Legend. By Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von , Franz. Hodder and Stoughton. 417 pp. .

One expects a Jungian treatment of legend to be complex in levels of interpretation but when it has been developed by Jung’s late widow and ’ fellow scholar, it becomes as difficult to put together in the understanding as a jigsaw puzzle with its pieces badly damaged and with a large proportion missing. The Grail Legend was always a fascinating subject for Jung’s psychological consideration because it incorporated in it the features of many myths and fairy tales. The story has been retold in numerous versions of a wounded King guarding a mysterious healing substance in a wonderful vessel in his castle. The King can be brought back to health if an excellent knight finds the castle and asks a certain question. If the question is omitted or wrongly asked, the castle disappears and the land stays barren and the knight must set out on his adventures once more. Once the question is correctly put, the land flourishes, the King is well and the knight becomes the new guardian of the Grail. These simple features of a folk tale are, according to Jungian thinking, direct expressions of the soul and the shadows of psychic content similar to those expressed in the dream life of men. They are determined by preconscious psychic dispositions, common to mankind, known as archetypes. The Grail Legend attains another dimension, however, in that it is not only archetypical but carries the imprint of particular ages and attitudes of mind when it was changed in its components and development. From the archetypical through the evolution of alchemy and Christianity the symbols of the Grail story have meanings attributed to them. The noble knight, sometimes known as Perceval, grows up fatherless in a forest, this forest symbolising the barely-conscious nature of the child and also the allembracing mother. In his seeking for the castle, which is very similar to that portrayed in the legends of late antiquity, he is trying to find a paradise on earth, and battling with his own psychic problems. In this he is attempting to make his extensive inner nature conscious, being faced with the problem of evil and his own relation to the internal feminine that is present in all man. Various characters that he meets and,kills or misuses, or. avoids, show these facets of his inner self. For example, the daughter of the Grail King represents aspects of his female self which in conquering develops his breaking away from his attachment to

his mother. A fish symbolises a content of his unconscious as well as the figure of Christ. The Grail King himself is Christian Man viewed from the unconscious aspects and also the conflict within the Christian Church of the Middle Ages. A stag encountered by Perceval is the animal aspect of the holy soul of Christ. A tree which plays its part is symbolic of the process of enlightenment. Some of the knight’s opponents are Lucifer in various forms and the magician Merlin is unchristianised England with its barbarous customs. The Grail Legend when viewed through such eyes loses its pure entertainment value and becomes a slightly misty glass through which we can see into the essential deep wells of Man’s creative mind. The intellectual exercise involved is exhilarating but one wonders if such symbolic questioning may not itself come under the microscope of the psychological researcher m the future, and that such books may become legendary quests into the meaning of meaning.