Truls Ljungström’s Reviews > The Grail Legend > Status Update

Vem betjänas av den, som gralfrågan.

(Saturnus) is here portrayed as being himself the sol niger of the alchemists, as the dark shadow of the principle of consciousness

Så långt oerhört lärt nonsens.

the stone in alchemy signifies the inner spiritual man.
Its divine attributes distinguish it as a particle of God concealed in nature, an analogy to the God who, in Christ, came down to earth in a human body subject to suffering. On the other hand the “cheapness” of the stone (lapis exilis, vilis) alludes to the fact that every human being is its potential bearer, even its begetter.

When the priest says, “‘Per omnia saecula saeculorum”, the deacon comes before him and elevates the chalice. He covers a portion of it with a cloth, then returns it to the altar and covers it with the corporal, enacting the part of Joseph of Arimathea who took the body of Christ down from the cross, covered his face with a sudarium, laid the body in the grave and covered it with a stone.

When the priest says, “‘Per omnia saecula saeculorum”, the deacon comes before him and elevates the chalice. He covers a portion of it with a cloth, then returns it to the altar and covers it with the corporal, enacting the part of Joseph of Arimathea who took the body of Christ down from the cross, covered his face with a sudarium, laid the body in the grave and covered it with a stone.

Although the figure of Christ, the Son of Man, can be regarded as one such representation of the Self, it lacks certain features which form part of the empirically known symbolism of the Self. The heart of Jesus which is depicted as the centre of the mandala is, on the other hand, a quaternary symbol of the Self and it is therefore not by chance that it has gradually
become the object of a specific ritual veneration.

Interpretations of the sword which make of it a symbol of the divinity concealed in man, an inner psychic god-image which transforms itself in and through itself, are also to be found in texts of the Gnosis of the Ophites and in Simon Magus.