Caitlín Matthews > Quotes

“The Fall, so often considered a terrible thing, is a fall into experience; like falling of the epileptic to earth, it may also have its other face, for then we fall into the embrace of our dreams and fears and know them for what they are, face to face.

[...]the fearful face of the Black Goddess is really the veiled Sophia. The rebirth of the mystery initiation brings us into contact with our own power, which we have failed to take in our own time. Part of the reason for this is that we live in the shadow of the Judeo-Christian Fall for which Woman bears the blame. The experience of Psyche and Kore shows the vulnerable face of Sophia, who is not afraid to fall, to learn by seeming mistakes. They show that the descent into death is the only possible pathway to ascent or spiritual rebirth.”
― Caitlín Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God

“Add to this the imagery that Christian Kabbalists have heaped on the Tree of Life, which stands like an overburdened Christmas tree in some textbooks on kabbalistic practice, and finish with Aleister Crowley's book of correspondences, 777, and you have an ill-assorted relish tray from which to choose.”
― Caitlín Matthews, Walkers Between the Worlds: The Western Mysteries from Shaman to Magus

“Wisdom is neither good nor bad, male nor female, Christian or pagan: she is no one's personal possession. The Goddess of Wisdom reaches down to the depths of our need. Her simple being is so vastly present that we have not noticed it. Indeed, we have not known the depths of our need nor that any assuaging wisdom was near at hand.”
― Caitlín Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God

“As we trace the myth of the Goddess through her salvific guides, we are aware of a cohesive set of metaphors that suggest a family likeness, as though a great mirror has shattered, prismatically retaining the original image. Indeed, the way which wisdom appears in the Bible is by means of "reflective mythology"-not the representation of an actual myth, but by a theological appropriation of mythic language and patterns that have been repackaged from the pagan models. With the Goddesses Demeter and Isis, the myth of the Goddess takes on a greater urgency that resonates to our contemporary spiritual response to the Divine Feminine: we find a common theme of loss and finding, of seeking for pieces of the shattered mirror of the beloved. Only when the divine daughter or husband is found and reconstituted can earth function again. Kore and Osiris are lost and found again, but they cannot be reconstituted entirely as they were. It is with our own search for the Goddess. In the period of loss, exile, or death, something transformative has happened. In each of these saving stories, it is the urgency of love the enduring patience of the seeker that restores the beloved. These are the prime qualities of Sophia that remind us always that, though we do not see her face clearly because she is veiled or disguised, the Goddess accompanies us wherever we go.”
― Caitlín Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God

“The Holy Grail is ultimately about the provision of food that feeds the body but also the spirit, bringing humanity into communion with the divine: this is a wisdom that makes kinship between God and humanity through the redemptive mediation of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross. When this communion is ruptured, Wasteland, violence, and terror rule the Earth, bringing war, famine, and depopulation. When this communion is reestablished, then Christendom is restored under a single ruler, King Arthur; under his suzerainty, the weak are once more protected from brigandage, commercial exploitation, and merciless depredation.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“In Le Draco Normand by Étienne de Rouen we have an account of Arthur's passing that tells us how the underworld realm was seen: The grievously wounded Arthur requested healing herbs from his sister: These were kept in the sacred isle of Avalon. Here the eternal nymph, Morgan, helped her brother. Healing, nourishing, and reviving him, making him immortal. The Antipodes were put under his rule. As one of Faery, He stands without armor, but fearing no fray. So he rules from the underworld, bright in battle, Where the other half of the world is his.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“The pattern of the Grail quest is thus an ongoing and recurring action happening at any moment: as Sallustius said, “myth is something that never happened and is happening all the time.”35 The cause of unheeded or violent actions upon the world cannot be healed, we are told, “as long as the world lasts.”36 The solution then is to step outside of time in order that the restoration can be made:”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“While the shape of the vessel may change, the cup of accord remains one of hospitality: it satisfies hunger and thirst in appropriate ways, to the diner's taste, as well as being a symbol of the accord between humans and faeries, or between the living and the dead, since the cauldron of Annwfyn is in the custodianship of Pen Annwfyn, Lord of the Otherworldly Feast of the ancestral dead.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“The unvarnished truth of the Grail myth is that the evil wrought of bad decisions recurs and recrudesces: it is not obliterated. Small errors become larger ones as time wears on, and the fabric of the worlds falls apart as the communion of the Faery Accord is forgotten or violated. Like many mythic narratives that polarize the creative and destructive powers against each other, The Elucidation relates the consequences of self-serving actions that forget to listen to the “voices of the wells,” which continually are singing the vision of a world where our gifts of innate intelligence and common sense are bound by a love and compassion of all who are alive.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Known as Perceforest, it is a vast, sprawling epic that tells the history of the kings and queens, knights and villains, who predate Arthur. It is an astonishing feat of imagination with more plot twists and adventures than an average detective novel. It has, like The Elucidation, been neglected by Arthurian scholars partly on account of its length (over a million words) and because it has only survived in a fifteenth-century manuscript, despite its original estimated date of composition in the 1300s.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Curiously, although Chrétien is credited with “inventing” Lancelot (though the name possibly relates to older Celtic heroes) he calls him “of the Lake” though he did not include the story of how Lancelot came by this title in his own work: that fell to the pen of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven who wrote Lanzelet, which tells how Lancelot's mother has no sooner given birth to him than their castle catches fire and her husband dies. From a safe distance by the nearby lake, she temporarily puts her newborn baby on the ground to look back at the burning castle, whereupon Lancelot is abducted by a faery woman. She gives him an upbringing in Faery, including a knightly education.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“De Boron's superb skill in seamlessly attaching the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus to the Arthurian legends by means of the Grail is unsurpassed. It has a shapeliness and symmetry that only a good storyteller can bring to it. By making the story of Christ's Passion and its major relic into a vessel that “delights the heart of all worthy men,” de Boron creates a healing of all ills. In two passages, he makes a play on the French words Graal and agréer—“grail” and “delight”—recalling the sense of hospitality that is part of the Faery Grail, yet also maintaining the sacramental and very Christian presence of the Holy Grail with its salvific healing.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Sophia became the Goddess of philosophers. Hers is a philosophy of fire, for she kindles the fire within the soul; without her enthusiasm (literally "god-inspiration") there is no warmth m our actions. Although many ancient philosophers retained their allegiances to the mystery cults of the gods, even as some philosophers are still adherents of religions today, so many more took the gods back to their primal atomic principles into greater and greater abstraction; the result is that, for many people, philosophy no longer bears its original meaning - literally "love of wisdom" - but is split off from the realities of existence...Yet the study of wisdom means friendship with Sophia, and kinship with Wisdom brings immortality.”
― Caitlín Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God

“Keeping this in mind, we can understand the rationale behind the Wounded King and the Wasteland. Because the land and the king share one life, when the king is wounded, the land itself becomes infertile. If the king and the land are one, then we can see why The Elucidation's unique cause of the Wasteland is so remarkable: it refers to the wounding of the maidens, not of a king. In this scenario, the maidens are agents of the Goddess of Sovereignty, the embodiment of the land. It follows that the wounding of the spirit of the land's representatives must automatically result in the withdrawal of fertility. The gravity of this violation goes even beyond the immediacy of the Faery Accord, since it offends Sovereignty, the Goddess of the Earth herself, giver of all life.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Behind The Elucidation lies the French tradition of the fées, as well as the Irish tradition of the Island of Women, and the Romano-Celtic triple goddesses who hospitably bear cornucopias, bread, and fruit upon their laps; these and many elements fuse together to create the Arthurian faery tradition.5 Taken together, these traditions give us the ladies of the lake, and a superabundance of faery women who come to invite, initiate, exhort, and irritate the Round Table knights.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Under the ancient laws of traditional and nomadic societies, hospitality once received put the stranger under the protection of his hosts, changing him from a stranger into a guest. The violation of sacred hospitality, when the guest offers violence or steals from the host, or the host from the guest, is considered everywhere as the grossest offense. It is in such a light that we must view the violation of the Maidens of the Wells who unconditionally offer the resources of the land to travelers.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“The original mission of the Faery Accord is very simple: the act of sharing food or drink renders taker and giver into friends by the act of hospitality. Those who are used to reading about the Holy Grail as a sacramental vessel are invited here to consider this Faery Grail in a similar light. For the faery cup is a vessel that joins people of different dispositions into a state of accord and unity. Its withdrawal from our world marks the sad loss of an accord that bridges differences and breaks long-held trust between the human and faery worlds: a fracture whose environmental consequences can be easily appreciated, for the faery kind uphold the world of nature.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Within The Elucidation's own time line, the story moves from a time of peaceful accord wherein humans and faeries enjoy good, neighborly relations, to a time of Wasteland when no faeries can be seen, and where a state of distrust exists between the two races.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“The ultimate prize of some of these adventures is to overcome a guardian knight who, like the slave devoted to Arician Diana in the Roman Forest of Nemi, is but the latest champion appointed to defend and protect an otherworldly maiden against all comers. We find such a story in The Lady of the Fountain, the Welsh parallel to Chrétien's Yvain, where Owain comes to a clearly liminal place guarded by a black knight, who is the champion of the Lady of the Fountain.6 By defeating and killing the champion, Owain automatically becomes the lady's new champion, just like the Roman Rex Nemorensis, the King of Wood who defended the shrine of Diana.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Part of the king's contract with the Goddess of Sovereignty was outlined by the number of geasa laid upon him by men of wisdom at the beginning of his reign. A geis (plural, geasa) is a prohibition or obligation binding one on pain of the loss of honor, from the breaking of which a king might not only lose honor, but also harm the land. For a ruler, breaking one of the geasa imposed by Sovereignty implied fracturing the contract between king and land.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Throughout world myth, special objects of power have been the object of quest, war, and healing. Jessie Weston was one of the first to note that the main objects of the Grail quest are similar to those found in other cultures, from the four emblems of the Dhyani Buddhas, right through the four treasures of the Irish faeries, the Tuatha de Danann, and to the emblems that characterize the tarot suits: the sword, staff, cup, and stone.1 These hallows represent aspects of the universal understanding, as adamantine objects that make their appearance both within the apparent world at certain moments, as well as within the human imagination.2 Within The Elucidation we view certain of these hallows, or holy things, during the Grail procession: the Bleeding Lance, the Sword upon the Corpse on the Bier, the Silver Cross that is processed, and the Grail itself.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“What are the origins of the name? We might think immediately of the Scottish expression “blether” or “blather” for talking rubbish, which comes into the language from Old Norse blathr, or nonsense, which is certainly the sense in which Gerald of Wales uses it above, for a teller of nonsense. Jessie Weston derives blio from the Breton for “hairy.” Blehuc, Old Breton, bleuak, Cornish, and bleuog/blewog, Welsh, all have the same hairy meaning.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“On what is the Faery Accord based? The standard contract can easily be recovered from reading any of a multitude of faery stories that tell us, over and over, the exact clauses and the small print entailed in any relations between faeries and humans: speak kindly, never strike, respect mutual boundaries, never show greed, do not steal, keep your word. As soon as one of these is fractured, it breaks the accord and from this point friendly relations cease.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“After the Faery Accord is broken by Amangons's rape of the Maidens of the Wells, the only ones who come forth from the wells are the Rich Company who build their perilous castles and bridges, behaving in an oppositional way to Arthur and his knights. In Scottish faery mythology, faeries fall into two categories: the Seelie, or blessed court, and the Unseelie, or unholy court. This is echoed in the use of the Gaelic slaghmaith, or good host, as a euphemism for the faery kind. The Rich Company seem to partake of the Unseelie court. While the Seelie court maintain good relations with humans and largely do no harm, the Unseelie court tend to acts of malice or sorcery, as we have seen, with dubious gifts of testing vessels that cause upset and confusion. When humans like Amangons overset the primary hospitality of the Seelie court the Faery Accord is broken, and the Unseelie court alone remains to challenge.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“ln imitation of Zeus' conception of Athene, gnostic Sophia produces a self-conceived offspring. As we read on, it may be thought that the Goddess has perpetrated a great joke. In the Valentinian Gnosis, the Demiurge-the alleged creator of the world-thinks that he has created everything out of himself. However, Achamoth (Sophia) wishes to be seeded everywhere without his knowledge. Accordingly, she conceives an embryo and secretly inserts it into the Demiurge, "that it might be sown into the soul created by him and into the material body .. . and might become ready for the reception of the perfect Logos." Accordingly, humanity does not derive its soul from the false Demiurge, but from the Mother Above. This gnostic joke may perhaps be translated into Athenian terms, for Metis is pregnant with Athene when Zeus swallows her, and Zeus remains forever afterward in her mighty shadow. Metis is derived of an earlier breed of gods, like gnostic Sophia, and her influence is absorbed by Zeus. Zeus acts like a divine creator, though it is his foremothers who are the real shapers.”
― Caitlín Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God

“Even for those who could read, words were usually read aloud or muttered under the breath, since few people could read absolutely silently—this was regarded as a rare skill in the Classical period. Plutarch tells us that Julius Caesar could do it. In the fifth century, Saint Augustine was astounded that Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, could read tacite, or silently.9 In the Middle Ages, reading may have fallen into three categories: reading in silentio (not moving your lips), reading sotto voce (under your breath) when memorizing or as an aid to meditation, and reading in public (projecting your voice) such as monks did at mealtimes when reading martyrologies to their fellow monks while they ate in refectory.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Within the Grail legends a lingering trace of gnostic ideas is present. According to the gnostic thought, there were three kinds of people in the world, each of whom was generated by the Anthropos, the heavenly Adam or Adamas. This being is not the earthly Adam, but the “Adam above,” the Primordial Man. The Mandaeans called him “the Secret Adam,” and he comes into Kabbalistic lore as Adam Kadmon, the heavenly template for all humanity.70 These three kinds of human being were thought of by the gnostics as: Hylics: hedonist materialists Psychics: people who sought for spiritual connections Gnostics: people who were in a state of understanding (literally, “knowers”)”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“Looked at another way, the myth of the stealing of the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is very like the myths of the Greek Prometheus or the North American Haida, Raven, who both steal fire from heaven: they are the great thieves who bring knowledge into the world. Likewise, in the Gnostic scriptures, the great figure of wisdom, Sophia, departs from the pleroma or fullness of heaven, and from her is born the world that we inhabit.60 It is only the Western churches' theological insistence upon the guilt and retributive judgment within the biblical account that essentially changes the focus. These thieves of sacred powers—Prometheus, Raven, Sophia—do the world a great favor, for they bring down knowledge that we learn to live with and use properly without burning our fingers.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“However, within the original old French of the Grail legends, there is one word whose three-way meanings cause an interesting confusion: the words for court (cort), body (cors), and horn (also cors), all pro nounced the same way, overlap to such a degree that the episode of Brangemor brings us into strange reverie. Can it be that Guerrehet is responsible for not just the avenging of Brangemor but also for healing the Faery Accord? Here the Joy of the Court, so longed for by Blihis and his fellows in The Elucidation, is echoed by the joy of Brangepart and the whole court who, we are told, are expecting her consort home, and where a great wonder is also expected. The implication is that, like Guingamor who nearly died of sudden onset mortality, Brangemor will somehow be restored to life. Here too, the insult of the taunting horn that was brought to Arthur's court to mock his people—in converse mode to the hospitality of Faery Grail of the Wells—is overthrown, just as Guerrehet's shame and mockery is turned to rejoicing. Here too, the body of Brangemor is restored. Indeed, we see a coming together of body, court, and horn in a mysterious way.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Lost Book of the Grail: The Sevenfold Path of the Grail and the Restoration of the Faery Accord

“No mystical system or divinatory tool can ever replace personally observed patterns, since these alone are the inner messengers which convey to us the guidance and sustenance which we need. However, sometimes a divinatory tool can help us *trigger recognition* of these patterns. It is only the innately lazy who rely upon the Tarot as a daily crutch or decision-making process. Hence the warning in many Tarot books about over-use of the Tarot for divination.”
― Caitlín Matthews, The Arthurian Tarot: A Hallowquest Handbook