Parsifal: wounded masculinity
Speranza
By courtesy of Richard A. Sanderson M.Ed., B.A (Psych).
There is a particular soul need in western minds for good to triumph over
evil in our external world.
Seldom do we internalize this soul need in terms of
our own daily actions, thoughts and feelings.
The mythic underpinnings of
today's western world can be found in legends and myths of the 12th century.
The
medieval knights, their chivalry and heroic duty was to find out evil doers and
run them through with their sword of righteousness.
"Good" versus "Evil", no
less!
Dragons and particularly the "infidel" (unbaptized men) were specifically
targeted as the foe as they were usually holding a land or castle under tyranny.
This sounds so familiar in light of the "Manhattan terrorist attack", September
11, 2001.
The task of our work is to take the current suffering of man as an
interior event (as something all men have in common) and not to blame someone
outside for this or that.
Without looking first at ourselves as men, there is
little chance of enhancing man's consciousness and ability to relate wholly to
one another.
A retelling of the most famous and effective myth of "Parsifal and the
Fisher King" (that Wagner sets to music, as it were) is the backdrop for this intended healing work.
Original medieval
versions of "Parsifal" by Chretien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach have
echoed down through time and many versions have been written such is its
attraction.
The myth of Parsifal (or Per-kyfaill, if we must speak Gaulish) perennially enlivens mans consciousness, fuels his desire
to be whole and is called a "living myth".
In the retelling we have not found it
necessary to look at each incident and adventure of Parsifal, but to choose
those aspects pertaining to healing hero's MASCULINITY.
We undertook this work as
part of our ongoing healing journey and out of disappointment that there are so
few healthy models for boys and men to emulate!
A contemporary man's whole sense of self-worth and potency in this world is
often based on his own and others perception of his masculinity-sexuality.
James
Wyly (1987) discusses that the central core to most men is
"his phallus, his
libido, his sense of potency and ability to potentiate his own destiny, to
create himself in accord with his inner image".
*********************
The Parsifal myth is a medieval
"man's story"
of restoring unity to misaligned masculinity
and for men to start
filling the emptiness that
results from adherence to collective sexual values.
************************
The myth is a tale so worth retelling and reading for today's modern man.
Women
will go "ah ha"!
The quest, or striving to merge with the fountain of one's life, is our
innate desire to be wholesome and happy.
In this sense we are all on the same
quest as our hero Parsifal.
Men are indeed modern heroes as each day we set off
on this quest to be happy.
The main players in the myth:
The main players are Parsifal, a young man from Wales, if you must. Gaulish: Per-kyfaill.
The Fisher King the
king of the Holy Grail Castle.
Kundry, the queenly, mysterious, mystic woman (a
female counterpart of Merlin).
Parsifal's mother Herzeleide, who carries the
sorrow of Parsifal's father's actions.
Parsifal's father, Gamuret, a man equally
wounded and absent in Parsifal's life.
The Holy Grail (a unity with God), that
bestows life and love upon the kingdom.
The Grail Castle, a castle and kingdom
"hidden" amidst the mists from all whom cannot see.
Lastly, the forces of
destruction "the dark side", that strives to pervert the flowing of The Holy
Grail.
At the heart of the Grail Castle a Holy Spear and a Holy Chalice lay.
The
two divine implements are needed daily for The Holy Grail enactment, the eternal
task of bringing light into the kingdom.
For that light is the source of the
cycle of life and death.
The two divine implements represent the masculine and
feminine principles which when combined in perfect wholeness produce light into
the kingdom of the Fisher King.
The Holy Chalice represents the feminine aspect
of feeling and beauty that both contains and transforms.
The chalice in
christianized versions is that which Jesus used at the Last Supper, containing
the wine and later his blood.
----
Longinus's Spear.
The Holy Spear represents the masculine strength
required to stand ‘erect' and guard the precious Grail.
The Holy Spear in
Christianized versions, is the same spear that pierced the side of Christ on the
cross (perhaps it pierced Christ's testicles?).
Each day every knight of the
inner order (of the Arthurian tradition) would renew his oath to defend the
Grail with his very life and affirm his service to the Holy Grail.
The Grail Castle has fallen upon hard times.
The spear has been stolen.
The
Fisher King was wounded in his TESTICLES by the Holy Spear as it was being
stolen.
The King was described as being henceforth ‘too ill to live but not ill
enough to die' (the modern malaise).
In some versions of the Parsifal myth it
speaks of Grail Castle disunity, as specific knights use all manner of trickery,
temptations and illusions to corrupt specifically The Fisher King and ultimately
The Holy Grail (the unity with God).
Kundry, the mysterious sorceress within the
Grail Castle was also corrupted and trapped as a result of the demise of the
Grail Castle.
Kundry was then used to help overcome good knights, using such
weapons as temptation and other alluring appeals.
As myth had it, many knights
had tried to win back the spear but were all corrupted by the forces of the
"dark side".
The wound to The Fisher King, via a spear through his testicles (to the
tenderest part of the male anatomy), signifies a wounding to man's sense of
potency and his self-esteem.
The wounding in this "private part" of himself will
not heal and equates to The Fisher Kings "Fall from Grace" (the noble part of
the king has fallen from grace).
The Fisher King is metaphorically expelled from the Garden
of Eden (The Holy Grail).
Interestingly, The Fisher King only gets relief from
his pain when he is fishing, meaning, doing reflective work on himself.
The
Fisher King's kingdom has been laid to waste, the meadows and flowers are dried
up and the waters shrunken.
The suggestion is that any malaise to the king is
mirrored in his kingdom.
This implies that if there is a wound to the
"kingly-inner man", then the whole personality (his whole world) will be
troubled!
As if by magic, whenever the Fisher King is healed the lands
surrounding the king will be healed instantly.
The healing of the king and kingdom will only take place with the coming of
"the good grail knight" an "innocent fool" (Parsifal, according to an erroneous etymythology from the Arabian that Wagner followed) who will restore health to
the Fisher King, his land, its people by asking a specific question.
Merlin is
thought to have prophesied that a pure knight who will do mighty deeds of arms,
of bounty and of nobility will ask the perplexing question "whom does the grail
serve"?
We wish to emphasize that Parsifal was attitudinally innocent and pure
and NOT PHYSICALLY PURE IN A CELIBATE SENSE or way.
Parsifal was brought up in the
instinctual realm of the forest and would not have acquired puritanical
injunctions against the beauty and naturalness of sexual activity.
Should the
"pure knight" fail to ask the question, then everything will remain wasted and
the knight in question will have to leave the Grail Castle to search and learn.
Should Parsifal finally learn, then again he may return to The Grail Castle and ask
the question.
The king and kingdom will then be restored to health, as the
waters of life will run.
The spear that caused the wounding is so integral to this myth and
the healing process for men.
The spear represents the masculine integrity and
feeling aspect which has been stolen and without it there is no protection, no
"holding" for the Holy Grail to re-emerge.
In psychology, author Robert Johnson
has observed that
"the Fisher King's wound [to his testicles] is symbolic of
men's difficulties in directly intimate and sexual matters."
What's in a name:
Why the Fisher King name?
The fish is such an ancient symbol of the
spiritual mysteries of life, the sign of Christ, Christians and "disciples"
being "fishers of men".
In Celtic myth, a strong link occurs between the salmon
and knowledge.
At breeding time, the salmon returns to the place of its origin,
fighting against the flow of the river, in order to breed (to create).
The crude
expression ‘that man is born out of the vagina and spends the rest of his life
trying to get back in there' (return to wholeness) takes on a new significance
in this light.
This is understood as a troubled human soul (in man), perpetually
struggling to reconcile itself to itself.
Astrologically the myth is also set in
the dualistic Piscean Age (symbolized as two fishes) of man's current stage of
evolution on this earth.
Parsifal's mother, Herzeleide was a "queen of two kingdoms," supposedly
North and South Wales, which may have meant of spiritual and material realms.
Wales had retained integrity and honor long before the English Knights emerged
with their codes of chivalry.
Herzeleide was just widowed when she gave birth to
her son Parsifal.
Herzeleide, meaning "heart's sorrow" left her noble home to
live in a forester's cottage far away.
She feared that a fate, which killed her
husband, would overtake her son, so she raised him to know nothing of knighthood
and to be ignorant of his name and heritage.
How many mothers try to instil in
their son's integrity,
to guard them from the foolhardiness of their fathers?
She specifically instructed him to be courteous to all women and not to ask too
many questions!
There is mystery surrounding the identity and heritage of Parsifal's father
and Parsifal grew up without a father (an absent father), which is often the
case for today's youth.
However, Parsifal's father was allegedly Gamuret and
some versions say he was the Fisher King's brother.
The young knight Gamuret
decided to journey to the Middle East to seek his glory and fortune, as was the
want of many a true knight.
After winning a great victory in a tournament he
attracted Belakane, the dusky Queen of Zazamanc.
They fell in love and were
married.
He shared the throne of Zazamanc for a time, but peaceful court life in
a foreign land was not suited to the young warrior and he stole away (ran away).
Following this, Belakane gave birth to Gamuret's first son, Feirefiz, the
"piebald" (half-cast), Parsifal's half brother.
Mythically the relationship
between Feirefiz and Parsifal implies the great brotherhood of man between all
races and cultures.
Gamuret arrived back in Europe and while jousting, his gallantry won him the
heart of Herzeleide, Queen of Wales. How many women fall for the exterior
gallantry to this day? Herzeleide eventually convinced Gamuret that he should
give up the love of the ‘unbaptized/infidel… Queen Belakane' and they were
married. Word then reached Gamuret that his old lord, in the Middle East, was
facing an invasion by the Babylonians. He returned with glee to assist his old
friend and while fighting in the intense heat, Gamuret paused to rest, briefly
removing his "charmed" head shield to drink. A lance blow pierced his head. When
Queen Herzeleide heard of this, she went to live alone in the forest and gave
birth to Parsifal while still mourning for her husband. Herzeleide's, ‘mourning'
was in knowing that her husband loved another and was married "albeit illegally
to Queen Belakane. His gallantry had amounted to nothing and resulted in grief
to all and ultimately death to himself. His "gallantry and charm" was bravado
and empty, as there was no relatedness to either, Herzeleide in Europe, Belakane
in the Middle East, or to his young sons!
Then Parsifal comes of age.
During Parsifal's upbringing, his youthful years were spent in the forest.
"He grew up handsome, strong, athletic, but with his rational thinking largely
undeveloped".
"He was later called "simple" or "innocent fool", not because he
was indeed unintelligent, but for his guileless innocence, his simple
perceptions and faith" (Oderberg, I.M., 1978).
It is also speculated that being
brought up in the forest with such a ‘queenly' mother, that he was able to see
into the mysteries of the "inner" world. Ultimately he would bring his
instinctual knowing into the every day realities of ‘the outer' world.
No sooner had Parsifal "come of age" when he encountered knights riding
through the forest.
He was so taken by their godlike appearance, that he
immediately wished to become one of them.
He told this to his mother and she
wept as she had tried to protect him from the wiles and ways of knights. She
begged him to stay with her; but his heart was set, and at last she gave him her
blessing to go. Sadly, some versions have it that Herzeleide, Parsifal's mother
died shortly after he left.
So off went Parsifal into the world where his naiveté and sincere enthusiasm
atoned for his social blunders. He rescued a fair maiden, Blanchfleur, fell in
love and "stole her ring". Deflowering of a lovely maiden no less!
Additionally,
Parsifal encountered, fought and overcame the infamous red knight. Parsifal did
so because the red knight had embarrassed King Arthur and because Parsifal
‘liked the look of his armour'. Parsifal wanted a façade, to bolster his ego and
to make a favorable impression. The "facing" of the red knight is the step that
young men take, symbolically standing up to the father image, the authority they
question and to exert their own emerging masculinity.
However, Parsifal wore his
mother's "homespun" garment underneath his ill-gotten armour, which indicates
that he had acquired only a knightly exterior! His own inner sense of maleness
was still shaky and adolescent! His overcoming of the red knight won him favor
and so it was that against all convention, King Arthur eventually knighted
Parsifal. However, his simplicity and grace remained intact largely due to his
mother, unconventional upbringing and early life. Many adventures subsequently
took place for the young knight and eventually ‘as if by chance' he found
himself at the bridge leading to the mysterious Grail Castle.
Parsifal is wounded in the Grail Castle.
Youthful enthusiasm, charm and early masculine accomplishments got Parsifal
to the drawbridge of the Grail Castle.
He had earned the right to enter the
castle and with young eyes filled wide with hope he walked in! Fueled with his
desire for fulfilment as a knight and to manifest his deepest hopes, Parsifal
enters the magical realm of the Grail Castle. Remember the Grail Castle is an
actual mystical experience "hidden" (like the castle itself) amidst the mists
from all that cannot see.
It is written in myth that men get two opportunities to enter the Grail
Castle.
The first time as youths, a "gratuitous" gift, (given by God?) to let
young men experience the potential of their "numinous self". The second Grail
Castle opportunity is not gratuitous and coincides with man's mid-life crisis; a
time when men re-evaluate their whole lives and hopefully re-discover meaning
and potency. To seek the actual outer location of the castle is to miss the
point, as it is always near and the two worlds (mystical-inner and outer world)
do cross at specific moments through meaningful coincidences and at specific
locations.
Inside the castle, Parsifal was astonished at the majesty he saw and he did
not understand what was going on. He tries to behave in a fashion according to
his mother and knighthood teachings, after all this is the rational way to
proceed. There was a hushed expectancy inside the castle, as everyone knew that
an "innocent fool" was prophesied to ask the healing question to revive the king
and The Grail. A knight asked Parsifal if he knew of the significance of what he
had just seen? Other knights chanted as one to themselves for "fulfilment of the
prophecy"; that would restore the Holy Grail to there midst. All attention and
compassion was focused upon Parsifal and he felt a great stirring within him to
speak, but alas he said nothing! He heard the ‘ladies of the court' snigger "he
is just a pure fool", laughing audibly and gazing upon a dumbfounded Parsifal.
Surely he was not the chosen one they mused! Parsifal again stood motionless and
speechless. Another knight rebuked Parsifal with the words "you are just a
common simpleton, get gone from here"!
Parsifal had repressed his instinct (his inner voice) to enquire what this
entire mysterious world was about; he was just overwhelmed by it all? His mother
had taught him not to ask too many questions and Parsifal believed that
obedience was a virtue. Remember Parsifal still wore his mother's homespun
garment underneath his armour! Parsifal now knew that obedience to his mother's
advice and collective opinion had failed him, so he vowed not to ignore his own
intuition and instinctual knowing again! But what youth at puberty can do that?
Parsifal was ridiculed and deeply wounded by the Grail Castle experience. A
heavy blow was taken to his masculinity, his early knighthood dreams of glory
and his whole sense of worth as a man. The Grail Castle vanished into the mists
and Parsifal found himself back in the world of time and space, on the edge of a
forest ‘licking his wounds'.
Every man shares this wounding experience.
How many young men come to this same point as Parsifal in their youth?
Seemingly, every young man experiences a wounded-ness to his masculinity at the
time of puberty; a sexual Fisher King wound, one could say?
"It is painful to
watch a young man realize that his world is not just joy and happiness, to watch
the disintegration of his childlike beauty, faith, innocence and trust"
(Johnson. R. 1989).
This step into maleness, into daily "work related" life is
so difficult and often so harsh.
To leave, in a sense, the wonders of a maternal
- primordial inner fairy-tale world or internal paradise for a "reality" that is
competitive and demanding is a rigorous transition. Puberty initiations in
tribal cultures, when boy becomes a man and viable member of the tribe are often
via severe and painful rites of passage. Puberty for western young men is an
unmarked "rite of passage"; therefore a painful and mainly unguided period of
adjustment to early manhood!
The onset of puberty in boys brings them face to face with the physical
reality of being a man.
Newly found biological urges and cultural fantasies
impact enormously on his sense of self. As boys grow up, their erotic self
(largely masturbation) is indirectly condemned to the toilets, posters,
pornography and fantasies of his life. This is due to masculine sexuality not
being successfully integrated by our cultural structures, family, schools,
professional training, religious instruction, etc. This sends sexuality
underground into the hidden, shadow, shady part of boy's life. There is often
such silence (no healthy discussion about his emerging sexuality) for young men
at this time and their sexuality may often be self perceived as being dirty,
sinful, disgraceful and hidden from his family's knowing.
"There is a bizarre
assumption that masculinity on one level excludes sexuality" (Wyly, J, 1989), as
his sexuality is not "openly acknowledged, integrated and clear!"
As a result,
young men split-off from themselves and start to act out their sexuality in the
shady shadows of their life.
It is speculated here that a boy's puberty
experience and wounding stays with him through life, to eventually be
consciously redeemed!
Other woundings around the time of puberty further impact on a young man's
fragile sense of masculinity.
Such ‘other woundings' are:
boys first love or
loneliness, first sexual encounter (often a disaster), parental or ‘authority'
sexual abuse, separation/divorce of parents, parental drivenness for them to
succeed, being rejected…. not one of the boys, a non-conformist attitude to
collective "male standards", being sensitive, different, a non-sporting person
in a sports mad country…etc!
Each man has his own story!