By Poke Runyon
This poem traces the history of the Holy Grail and the Western magical tradition, from its origins in ancient Canaan with the yearly death of Ba’al, through King Solomon’s temple, to the Harranian Sabians and Persian Magi, the Gnostics and Hermetics of first-century Alexandria, the Kabbalah of medieval Spain, the Cathars and Troubadours of southern France, and the Rosicrucians of the Renaissance.
Published in The Seventh Ray in 1976, with commentary added in 1998, the poem and its commentary together reveal the depth, scope, and spiritual compass of the Order of the Temple of Astarte and the Crata Repoa Reformatus.
(may not be completely accurately transcribed. Check here: https://www.scribd.com/document/433169947/Lesson-1A-rtf)
Cult of the Sangreal
It was scribed on tablets at ancient Ugarit in the days of Melchizedek, of a golden goblet of the gods brimming with life’s liquor upon the high place, in the time when Abram made souls in the far land of the Star Kings, even in the dreaming temples of Haran.
Most of our knowledge of ancient Canaanite mythology and religion comes from the Ras Shamra archaeological discoveries in the late 1930s. These clay tablets from the ancient city of Ugarit on the Syrian coast gave us the epic of Ba’al and his sister Anath, who eventually became the goddess Astarte.
The myth speaks of Ba’al having a goblet so great as to awe mortal men, brimming with liquor, probably mead rather than wine. This account was written hundreds of years before the Hebrews appropriated the Semitic all-father El, or Elohim, and gave him a new name, YHVH or Yahweh.
The biblical Melchizedek was actually a Canaanite priest-king of Jerusalem in those days, a priest of the Most High God, Father El, who was always called compassionate, in marked contrast to the appellations of jealous and vengeful so often applied to Yahweh. El did not meddle in the affairs of humankind; he was not a punisher. This aloof and benign deity was much closer to the impersonal Neoplatonic god-force conceived by later Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and Gnostic philosophers. In those days, Abram, the mythical founder of both the Jewish and Muslim religions, set out from his native city of Ur and trekked northward to the mysterious city of the moon god, Haran, of the pagan planet-worshiping Sabians. There, it is written in the Bible that he “made souls,” perhaps the earliest reference to the magic of golem-making.
To Khem did he journey, and thence to Canaan, where the Zaddik, who was high priest of El, created in the womb of Asherat. Even he who was king in Salem did give old Abram to drink of the dew of heaven and eat of the cakes of light, his dispensation. How soon his sons forgot their gift from the mount of Armageddon.
This verse reprises and amplifies the first. Abram went south from Haran, which lies between the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, into Egypt, and retraced his steps northward into Canaan, where he met Melchizedek, the Zadik or adept, who was the high priest of El in Jerusalem. Jewish tradition holds that Melchizedek was Noah’s son, Shem, from whom all Semitic people descended. The communion Melchizedek gave to Abram was recorded as bread and wine in the Bible, but we hold that it was the life sacrament of honey-mead. Armageddon refers to the sacred Canaanite mountain of Megiddo, not to the last battle.
And yet King David sang of the mystery of Wand and Cup. And Hiram, priest-king of pagan Tyre, did he not rejoice in the building of the temple of Solomon? In the lusty embrace of the cherubim, Sun-God, symbol of mighty emanations, begetting prince and princess upon the mother-of-the-sea, Lords of Fire and Water, Air and Earth, the very Tetragrammaton!
The 23rd Psalm refers to the Grail powers in the Book of Kings. Tyrian priest-king Hiram praised the Lord when Solomon asked for help in building the great temple in Jerusalem. The Lord in this case was El, and there is sound reason to believe that Solomon built the temple for El and all his Ba’als, including Yahweh. See the Ba’al-Astarte mythos in the Book of Solomon’s Magic. The cherubim of the ark are traditionally male and female, and there is an inner tradition that recounts they were locked in sexual embrace. The most ancient formula would have been El and Mother Asherah begetting Ba’al and Astarte, in effect: father and mother, son and daughter, fire, water, air, and earth—Sha Ma or Ma Sha Au, the original Tetragrammaton.
Was not Solomon called a wise and even Wizard King, who did confine the two and seventy rebellious spirits in the vessel of brass, metal of the sphere Mercurial, with mastery of brazen shield and sword of iron. Did he not call them to appear in the Triangle of his Art, led by the first of their number, Lord Cloud Rider, whereafter Solomon did build a temple to his consort, the Fair Astarte?
Arabian and Talmudic legends hold that Solomon was a master magician and founder of the art-science of ritual magic. The idea of 72 celestial gods of the decans of the zodiac was ancient Egyptian and predated the time of Solomon, around 800 BC. During the Dark Ages, around 600 AD, these spirits were said to be the fallen angels whom Solomon sealed up in a vessel of brass, a metal attributed to the planet Mercury, which could be polished to form a reflective surface and was also a philosophical analog for the human braincase, the skull. They were evoked into a triangle, which was a Pythagorean geometric demon-trap. See the Book of Solomon’s Magic, Chapter 3 and Appendix 4. The first spirit of the medieval Lesser Key of Solomon, the Goetia, is Baal, who was obviously the Canaanite god Ba’al. It is a matter of record that Solomon built a temple to Ba’al’s consort, the goddess Astarte.
Her prince, the very dying god born of the myrrh Tree, whose funery resin invokes the planet of resurrection from sacred Aphaca,, high in the Lebanon. His yearly blood reddens the river Adonis and stains the Mare Internum, even to this day, when from summer solstice to autumn equinox he lies entombed in the back-o’-beyond, awaiting the nectar of life sparkling in her chalice, spiraling down through the seven gates of seven worlds, borne by the dancing maiden, eternal princess of the Grail!
An ancient Egyptian myth recounts that Astarte helped the mourning Isis to discover the body of her slain brother Osiris, imprisoned in a myrrh tree in Lebanon. The sacred resin of the myrrh tree was used in embalming and as a funeral incense, Kabbalistically attributed to the planet Saturn, whose glyph is the tau cross of resurrection. In her classic study of the ancient origins of the Holy Grail myth, From Ritual to Romance, Jessie Weston held that the idea of the holy cup of the Year King’s blood originated at the ancient shrine of Ba’al-Astarte, called Afqa, thousands of years before the death of Christ. At that location in the mountains of Lebanon, a waterfall emerges from a cave and drops into a wild gorge of the river Adonis, the Nahr Ibrahim. Every spring, the water rises to reach a hematite layer, making the river run red as blood all the way out to the sea. Traditionally, Ba’al is killed by the dark lord Mot at the summer solstice. In the season of parching drought, the Year King lies entombed in Mot’s cavern kingdom, called the back of beyond, to be rescued and reawakened at each autumn equinox, heralding the return of the rains by the goddess Astarte. Like her Babylonian counterpart Ishtar, Astarte passes down through the seven gates, but in the Canaanite version, which we reconstruct from clues surviving in the biblical tale of Princess Salome’s dance of the seven veils, the goddess leaves a colored veil, attributed to the power of each Sephirah of the Tree of Life, at each portal. We should not forget that in medieval legends, the Grail was always borne by a maiden.
Not a cup of wine, blood of death, and mournful memory of a pale lord, returning not to Earth herself, lies doomed under the wormwood star, but a cup of mead, sunborn honey-dew of heaven! the very Zraa of Macroprosopus for a green and horned prince of thunder and his winsome, vernal bride.
She dances her way down to the underworld, bearing the nectar of life, the azoth of ambrosia, the honey-mead seminal sacrament, quite literally the seed of the stars, to revive the dead prince Ba’al. This pagan life-renewing conception is more in harmony with the idea of reincarnation than the depressing Christian notion of one brief lifetime, not rewarded or punished until some distant doomsday.
These same Tyrian mysteries traveled thence to Egypt of the Ptolemies, even to learned Alexandria, where thrice-greatest Hermes did declare in his Pymander that he had caused to descend earthward a great chalice, ”a prize for the souls” thirsting after wisdom, the only Gnosis of Immortality.
Our Hermetic religion was classical paganism’s last desperate effort to save its deepest and most profound secrets from the destructive rampage of Christian fanaticism that swept the Mediterranean world in the fourth and fifth centuries. The great university and library in Alexandria, Egypt, was the birthplace of the Hermetic tradition. The Crata Repoa initiatory system that we use in the Order of the Temple of Astarte is an amalgam of Alexandrian Hermetic rites and teachings from this era. According to Hermes, the Crater, or Hermetic Grail, was sent down to Earth and stationed in the midst, as it were, a prize for the souls. In other words, look within yourself. The Crater is also an ancient symbol of rebirth written in the stars, Plato’s cauldron of becoming. Souls returning to Earth must drink from it before completing their spiral course to the sign of their nativity. The quest of the early Grail is forever linked to an understanding of the celestial veil.
Is it not true that the theurgic masters from far Haran, heirs of these ancients who passed the golem secret to venerable father Abram, those who yet worshiped the seven wanderers of the starry vault, Sabian wizard-lords of zodiac and magic, who were sages to the caliphs of Islam, Did honor Hermes Trismegistus as prophet and preserve his teachings with their own arcanum at the courts of Moorish Spain, in the years of the holy Kabbalah, by the word of She-Who-Blackens?
This passage refers to a fascinating series of connections and reconnections in our Western magical tradition. In the seventh century, the mysterious cult of moon and planet worshipers who had lived for thousands of years in the city of Haran were confronted by the leader of an Islamic army. This emir demanded, in accordance with the Quran, that the Harranians become Muslims, Christians, Jews, or Sabians. The Sabians had been an obscure sect of star-worshipers from southern Arabia whom Muhammad had exempted from forced conversion to Islam for political reasons. Naturally, the Harranians picked the Sabian option, but the Arab emir also demanded that they produce a holy book to prove their claim. The wise Harranian Sabians submitted not one but two books for consideration: the writings of Hermes Trismegistus and the more biblical Book of Enoch. These works thus became fundamental writings of our tradition. These Harranian Sabians were then in a unique position. Unlike Muslim Sufis, who had to obscure their arcane arts in coded poetry, the Sabians could openly practice and teach astrology, alchemy, and ritual magic. They were very much in demand at the courts of the caliphs and sultans of Islam, from Baghdad to Moorish Spain. In the Spanish universities of the early Middle Ages, the Sabian star magicians and Jewish Kabbalists came together and exchanged ideas. Before King Solomon’s time, the Kabbalah had originated in pagan Assyria, where the gods and their planetary palaces had been placed on a Tree of Life design. During the era of pagan Samaritano-Gnosticism in Palestine and Alexandria, Pythagorean geometric and mathematical elements were added. Jewish rabbinical scholars then monotheistically sanitized the system, but when they encountered the Sabians in Spain, the inevitable process of repaganizing a Hermetic Kabbalah began. The reference to “she who blackens” refers to a strange book of Arabian and Sabian celestial magic called The Aim of the Sage or Picatrix, which contains all that survives of Sabian star-lore and ritual.
Did not these same Sabian Magi entrust their key unto the knights and ladies of Montsalvat, companions of the Sangreal in lost Languedoc, in the bygone days of the Troubadours… And was it not written in the Parzival that in the season of Saturn, the wounded Amfortas did lie in cruelest agony, the land laid waste and barren about the castle, the ancient curse of Mot demanding of the hero a forbidden question.
Modern scholars have found a fascinating connection between the star-lore and magic of the Sabians and that most mysterious of the medieval Holy Grail accounts, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. The enlightened civilization of early medieval Moorish Spain was equaled in the southern French province of Languedoc. This was the prosperous and cultured society that gave birth to European chivalry. Arthurian and Holy Grail literature first flowered there, and the famous courts of love of the Troubadours, where our concepts of romantic love originated, flourished in this actual counterpart of a medieval Camelot. But in the 13th century, the popularity of mystical Gnostic Christianity in the area brought down the wrath of the Mother Church in the form of an unholy crusade that laid waste to the beautiful land and slaughtered its gentle, cultured people. Over a million were killed. The Gnostic Christian Cathars were exterminated, along with the less known and more secretive Cult of the Sangreal, whom we have reason to believe had rediscovered the origin and significance of the Grail as written in the stars. The season of Saturn refers to the last and most remote of the medieval planets, the final place of divestiture before rising to the Ogdoad, or eighth sphere. The earthly analog is the parching drought of summer before rebirth in autumn, brought on by the dark lord Mot. The forbidden question is simply, “What ails you, father?” And the answer is equally simple: “I’m afraid to die, my son.”
If darkness be the everlasting Chalice of Light, why then do we fear Death as an ending? Rather should we but respect it as a voyage beyond, perhaps to service at the Circle Round. If, therefore, the call sounds clear in thine heart, Enflaming the Diamond of thine own Rose-Rayed Star, know then that thou art of the twice-born, and the Great Work lies before thee. Initiation is but an awakening and a coming home.
Wolfram von Eschenbach described the Grail as a glowing green stone having its origin in the stars—in other words, the human soul. We all have this divine soul within us. It whispers to us in our quiet, reflective moments. Most humans die without ever finding the Grail within. They have immortality, but they can’t share it because they are not aware of that element of their own nature which survives. The “diamond of thine own rosary star” refers to this Holy Grail stone within each of us. The great work of Western magic is literally the quest of this inner Grail, the allegory of purification and the ordeal of the quest. Myth is symbolic of the transcendence of selfish physical vanity and emotional gratification necessary to behold the inner divinity and eventually merge our consciousness with it.
The secret of the Grail is the four-fold nature of The Work, four-fold within as without - and in subtle realms beyond. Man, even as God, writes with the wand and emblazons with the sword, letters and symbols in a spectrum of fire. Woman, like unto goddess, nurtures the glyphs in her cup, giving them substance from her pentacle, the ineffable vowels. And yet there is that in man which is womanly, and that in woman which is manly. Hence all tools of The Word should be thine in tasks of The Art.
Hermes teaches us that our soul is androgynous. Therefore, the first task of a magician should be to develop and balance both the male and female aspects of his or her personality. In psychological terms, this is the Jungian process of individuation. In the OTA, we symbolically accomplish this on our astral journey up the 31st path to the sphere of Hod. This fusing of the four elements into the integrated spiritual identity that can come to be known—that is, that shining being within—is the secret purpose of the four Grail powers. These are the traditional working tools of the magician. We may also speculate that these implements in their most primitive form—the spear, the knife, the cup, and the dish—are the very weapons and tools that once made us human.
Who so enlivens the microcosm shall transcend as a free and winged soul to follow the raven beyond the western gate, where the dragon rides the quarter, marching in procession with the Grail to equinox. Even as the seven-veiled goddess brings death unto Death, so shall the epic of the self-borns be soon adawning, when the seekers shall be Masters… and the Life Blood shall be Light.
This final passage reveals the great mystery and prophecy of the celestial Grail, or Crater of Hermes. In the summer of 1976 issue of our journal, The Seventh Ray, we published the revelation of the return of the Holy Grail in the Age of Aquarius-Leo. We can briefly summarize this phenomenon by pointing out that as we enter the new astrological Age of Aquarius-Leo at the turn of the millennium, the autumn equinox meridian of the heavens will precess to bisect the constellation Crater. While on the other side of the celestial sphere, the vernal equinox line will bisect the stream pouring from the jug of the Water-Bearer. Thus, by the doctrine of astrological polarities, the Grail is symbolically filled. Following the raven refers to the constellation Corvus, the raven, the bird of death, which rides behind the Crater on the back of the great sea dragon, Hydra or Leviathan. In Canaanite tradition, the seven-veiled goddess who brings death unto death refers to Astarte’s annual victory over Mot. The French magus Éliphas Lévi once remarked that death is man’s way of conquering immortality. The American author H.P. Lovecraft wrote that with strange aeons, even death may die. The mystic Terence McKenna suggests that we are approaching the end of history. Our revelation confirms this while declaring the coming dawn of the glorious new Aeon, when the gods will walk again among us, and yet remember with compassion that they were once more human than divine.
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Main Ideas
- Ancient Origins in Canaanite Mythology:
- The Grail’s roots lie in ancient Ugarit (Ras Shamra tablets, late 1930s), where Ba’al’s golden goblet, brimming with life’s liquor (likely mead), symbolized divine vitality. This predates Hebrew adoption of the Semitic god El as Yahweh, with Melchizedek, a Canaanite priest-king, administering a life sacrament of honey-mead to Abram, linked to golem-making and the “making of souls” in Haran.
- The poem connects Ba’al and Astarte (Anath) to the Grail’s life-renewing symbolism, with Astarte’s descent through seven gates (mirroring the seven-veiled dance) to revive Ba’al at Afqa, where the river Adonis runs red, prefiguring the Grail’s blood imagery.
- Transmission Through Sacred Traditions:
- The Grail narrative evolves through King Solomon’s temple, where El and Asherah, with cherubim in sexual embrace, represent the Tetragrammaton (fire, water, air, earth). Solomon, a wizard-king, masters 72 zodiacal spirits (Goetia’s Baal as Ba’al) in a Mercurial brass vessel, linking ritual magic to the Grail’s esoteric power.
- The Harranian Sabians, star-worshipers preserving Hermetic and Enochian teachings, bridge ancient wisdom to Islamic courts and medieval Spain, where they influence Jewish Kabbalists, repaganizing the Kabbalah with celestial magic (Picatrix).
- Medieval and Arthurian Flowering:
- The Grail’s mythology flourishes in Languedoc’s Troubadour culture, where Gnostic Cathars and the secretive Cult of the Sangreal rediscover its stellar origins. Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival portrays the Grail as a glowing green stone, the human soul, tied to the “forbidden question” (“What ails you?”) that heals the wasteland caused by Mot (death).
- The Cathars’ extermination by the Church’s crusade highlights the Grail’s hidden, rebellious spirituality, preserved by knights and ladies of Montauban.
- Hermetic and Alchemical Symbolism:
- In Alexandria, Hermes Trismegistus’ Poimandres describes the Crater, a celestial chalice of wisdom, as the soul’s prize, echoing Plato’s cauldron of rebirth. The Grail symbolizes inner divinity, accessed through initiation and self-discovery.
- The poem emphasizes the androgynous soul, requiring balance of male (wand, sword) and female (cup, pentacle) aspects for individuation, a Jungian process central to the Order’s astral journey to Hod and the four Grail powers (magician’s tools: spear, knife, cup, dish).
- Cosmic Prophecy and the Age of Aquarius-Leo:
- The poem prophesies the Grail’s return in the Age of Aquarius-Leo (millennial shift), when the autumn equinox bisects the constellation Crater, and the vernal equinox aligns with Aquarius’ stream, symbolizing the Grail’s filling. This heralds a new Aeon where seekers become masters, and “lifeblood shall be light,” conquering death through immortality (per Éliphas Lévi and H.P. Lovecraft).
- The Grail as a Universal Symbol: The Sangreal evolves from a Canaanite goblet of life to a Hermetic Crater, Arthurian chalice, and inner soul, uniting ancient mythology, ritual magic, and spiritual quest across cultures and eras.
- Esoteric Continuity: The Western magical tradition—spanning Canaan, Egypt, Alexandria, Spain, and Languedoc—preserves the Grail’s transformative power through Sabian, Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and Gnostic teachings, despite Christian suppression.
- Inner Transformation: The Grail’s quest is internal, requiring balance of elemental and gender polarities to awaken the divine soul, symbolized by the “rosary star” or glowing stone, aligning with alchemical and magickal individuation.
- Celestial Destiny: The Age of Aquarius-Leo fulfills the Grail’s prophecy, with celestial alignments (Crater, Corvus, Hydra) signaling a new era of enlightenment where death is transcended, and humanity merges with the divine.