Parzival

“Consciousness is moulded by the sacred story to which it awakens.”

Perhaps the story of Parzival is still relevant to modern man because it carries both mystery and living symbols, and provokes the very questions that men, old and young, have struggled with for centuries. Eternally current and flowing from nameless sources of the dark forests of the old Celtic world, the medieval troubadours, at a time of religious persecution, fitted this tale with encoded wisdom and made it ready for the timeless sea. Still now the story of Parzival and the search for the Grail is a living myth with which to feed the spirit.

Perhaps what it really means to be a True Knight was only ever a mythological fantasy.However, to be one who would be willing to offer a challenge for what he believes to be right, whose word can be relied upon absolutely, and who would respect the feminine and protect the weak is surely an honourable and meaningful aspiration for all men.

        Indeed the very form of the Parzival story seems to offer a metaphor for life as a mythic journey into meaning. The story portrays the transformation of a young man from an insensitive and naïve fool into a wise and compassionate King, matured in self – knowledge. If one can imagine any life as an unfolding story in a spiraling set of experiences, this is precisely Parzival’s path, and perhaps like him, the young modern day questor comes to know himself and his calling only through making mistakes and undergoing a variety of trials with increasing insight, courage and faith. His is not the path to perfection but rather,towards forming a healthy relationship with his imperfections. So, on another level it’s a story of the difficult road to masculine fulfillment and so perhaps it is apt that it requires the power of the feminine, rendered angry and monstrous by neglect and indifference, to be the transforming source of the story.

So Parzival differs considerably from other epics because it is less a story about what happened in humanity’s past, and more about what could happen in its future.