| The Grail has also been treated in works of
non-fiction, generally of dubious historical value,
which frequently connect it to conspiracy theories and
esoteric traditions. According to the notorious Italian
traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola (1898-1974), the
Holy Grail mythos is interwoven with an initiatory
"Hyperborean mystery" of the knightly or warrior-Kshatriya
class and represents "a symbolic expression of hope and
of the will of specific ruling classes in the Middle
Ages (namely, Ghibellines), who wanted to reorganize and
reunite the entire Western world as it was at that time
into a Holy Empire, that is, one based on a
transcendental, spiritual basis."
In The Sign and the Seal, Graham Hancock asserts that
the Grail story is a coded description of the stone
tablets stored in the Ark of the Covenant.
For the
authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, who assert that their
research ultimately reveals that Jesus may not have died
on the cross, but lived to wed Mary Magdalene and father
children whose Merovingian lineage continues today, the
Grail is a mere sideshow: they say it is a reference to
Mary Magdalene as the receptacle of Jesus'
bloodline.
Such works have been the inspiration for a number of
popular modern fiction novels. The best known is Dan
Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, which, like
Holy Blood, Holy Grail, is based on the idea that the
real Grail is not a cup but the womb and later the
earthly remains of Mary Magdalene (again cast as Jesus'
wife), plus a set of ancient documents telling the
"true" story of Jesus, his teachings and descendants.
In
Brown's novel, it is hinted that Jesus was merely a
mortal man with strong ideals, and that the Grail was
long buried beneath Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, but that
in recent decades its guardians had it relocated to a
secret chamber embedded in the floor beneath the
Inverted Pyramid near the Louvre Museum.
The latter
location, like Rosslyn Chapel, has never been mentioned
in real Grail lore. Yet such was the public interest in
this fictionalized Grail that for a while, the museum
roped off the exact location mentioned by Brown, lest
visitors inflict any damage in a more-or-less serious
attempt to access the supposed hidden chamber. |
