The Holy Grail Origins, Secrets & Meaning

Was the Holy Grail Christ’s lost cup from the Last Supper, or originally a pagan Cauldron of Rebirth? Did Joseph of Arimathea bring the Chalice to the Isles of Avalon in Britain, or was the Grail the secret treasure of the Cathar heretics? Did the Grail cause the demise of King Arthur’s Fellowship of the Round Table, or was it the inspiration for the Knights Templar to tell its legend in the early Tarot cards? Was Mary Magdalene the lover of Jesus who carried his child in her womb as the first of a holy bloodline of the Grail, or was she a priestess who was known to the Gnostics as Mary the Light-giver, the Harlot and the Virgin, three names of the triple goddess, the Great Whore of Babylon worshipped in the Temple at Jerusalem? Although the Christian versions of the legend insist on its sanctified holiness why was so much of the material in their romances deemed heretical by the Church of Rome and yet somehow avoided being censored? And why was the Grail never mentioned as "Holy" in any of the early versions of the legend in which it was really a magical artefact?

These are just a few of the questions raised in this provocative reworking of the original printed version called “The Holy Grail, Its Origins, Secrets & Meaning Revealed.”
The enigma of the Grail is explored through nine versions of the legend that emerged at the turn of the twelve-century in a uniquely creative period of only 25 years. The variants of the legend are from sources as diverse as the violent pagan Celts, the courtly troubadours of the French and German courts, the prim scholars in the sanctified cloisters of Cistercian monasteries, to the greatest novelist of the 13th century.
This is set in a Europe in crisis and the timing of the Grail legends is hardly a coincidence. A strange wave of hysteria had swept Europe at the turn of the eleventh century, swinging between horrendous prophecies of doom and those of an ecstatic paradise on Earth. The world was supposed to have ended by the year 1000, bringing the long-awaited New Kingdom of Heaven. But instead of being surrounded by the promised paradise, most people found themselves in barren and hopeless wastelands. It was an age of tremendous turmoil, on the one hand full of spiritual experiments and on the other violent repression from the Church of Rome. Faith and heresy walked side by side. The romances of the Grail fulfilled the thirst for a legendary story with which a Europe that was poised to take a radical leap of the spirit, could identify.
Yet the reality was that the Holy City of Jerusalem had been won but then promptly lost. The Christian armies proved no match for the "Saracens" who appeared to have a far more paradise-like and wondrous culture than Europe's own backward culture. The representatives of the Christian God in Rome were divided and blatantly corrupt and had engaged on a cruel crusade against the only sane and paradise region of Cathar controlled France resulting in a genocide with over 13,000 innocents slaughtered. Within the threads of actual historical events and legendary fantasy that interwove to create the wondrous Grail tapestry, many completely unexpected and hidden messages emerge that are as compelling and valid today as they were almost a thousand years ago.