The European Mysteries and Their Initiates

It was only in small circles of Initiates that this sacred Christ Mystery was preserved. A man who was initiated into this Mystery experienced the overcoming of the Ego that functions in the world of sense. This is how he experienced it.—He asked himself: ‘What has been the manner of my life hitherto? In my quest for truth, I have turned to the things of the outer world. The Initiates of the Christ-Mystery, however, demand that I shall not wait until outer things tell me what is true but that in my soul, without being stimulated by the outer world, I shall seek the invisible.’—This quest of the soul for the highest was called by the outer world in later times: The secret of the Holy Grail. And the Parsifal or Grail legend is simply a form of the Christ Mystery. The Grail is the holy Cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper and in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the blood as it flowed on Golgotha. The Cup was then taken to a holy place and guarded. So long as a man does not ask about the invisible, his lot is that of Parsifal. Only when he asks, does he become an Initiate of the Christ Mystery.