The castle for all it was illumed in light, presented a bleak forbidding visage, hoary with age. My feet were leaden and cold to the bone. Tendrils of shimmering opal hued mist coiled about my legs, my heartbeat quickened. The frosty air hushed and still as though it awaited some portentous moment preordained when the first stone of that vast cathedral like castle was laid. As for who built it maybe god did or at the very least divinely inspired energetics. The odd thing was, during my early years of research I came across a mysterious obscure passage in a two thousand year old manuscript I found mouldering away in the library of St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Desert that suggested in an oblique way that originally the castle had nothing much to do with god or the sacred and that it was in fact built to the glory of something else entirely, something spiritual I might add but what, who can say? Then again there are numerous spiritualities so I guess the document, vague as it was, simply eluded to some undisclosed aspect of the state itself, not the condition you understand but the state, to view it as a condition is a grave mistake indeed, and might very well be the reason why those who vociferously claim otherwise display lamentable lack of progression in spiritual matters. It smacks of absolutism and that’s an error you really don’t want to make.
The castle reared high above low clinging streamers of mist shrouding the landscape in a shifting cloak of opacity. Streaming down from out a pale blue sky, early morning sunlight, bright as fool’s gold softened the brooding, melancholic mass of the castle, hooding the sere gaze of its intrusive impacting presence on the quiet green of the countryside. The castle walls built of squared, massive blocks of stone affording mute testimony to the skills of ancient hands. Even so, the bleak forbidding look of the castle glared like an anomaly in all that quiet of meadow and mist, soft and clinging as any spiders web might be. A solitary raven perched atop the castle keep, shone like burnished jet against the pale, almost blue-white winter sky. The sun shone cold, a distant golden ball shedding warmless rays that filled the mist with hazy, opalescent light as though it burned within, igniting flameless incandescent fires shimmering and shifting through the mist like an ethereal rainbow. And yet, for all the magic of that enchanted morning smote my vision with awe, fear gripped my gut in cold, tightening hands; tapping away inside my chest to the increasing beat of my heart soaring through me like some wild, untamed melody. And that, I thought with increasing worry, is not good, it is not very good at all. But then I have never laid claim to being a brave man. I began to soundlessly repeat over and over as fast as I could a steady, calming mantra to bolster my faltering courage. I cannot say it worked but I forced myself on towards the castle anyway.
The castle loomed above the mist. The blocky, stupendous mass outlined against the sky dominating the surrounding meadows and woodlands with authoritative investiture. Yet for all its revered, if not legendary sacral existence in myth, legend and romance it was real enough, and yet in my mind’s eye it seemed to cast oppressive gloom. The sheer mass of the ancient castle intimidating in its very presence. If not downright menacing, I thought with a nervous gulp of frosty air shivering down my throat. I had given up eight years of my life to get here. Eight years of search and discover. Enduring the ridicule and scorn of academics and mythologists. Pontificating endlessly on what they claimed to know, whilst at the same time disclaiming that what they studied might actually, once upon a time, have been true or that some remnant might still exist in this brave new world of ours. Now here I was confronting the evidential conclusion of my search and feeling none too sure that I should be here at all. It was a bit like meeting ones god, and I the sacerdotal wanderer standing awe struck in the presence of divinity, only it really wasn’t like that. Truth to tell I was damn near scared to death. I mean really, how was it possible for me to even be here when for centuries so many expended their lives searching for this place but never arriving, never homing in so to speak on its location. And now I was here I really wish I was some place else. You might think my fear to be irrational but I can tell you, it was real enough, right down to the shiver in my soul. After all, this place might very well be sacred but that in no way implies it is also safe. And so I trembled, maybe from fear, maybe from the chill winter air, a little of both I suspect or was it from something else entirely.
The castle for all it was illumed in light, presented a bleak forbidding visage, hoary with age. My feet were leaden and cold to the bone. Tendrils of shimmering opal hued mist coiled about my legs, my heartbeat quickened. The frosty air hushed and still as though it awaited some portentous moment preordained when the first stone of that vast cathedral like castle was laid. As for who built it maybe god did or at the very least divinely inspired energetics. The odd thing was, during my early years of research I came across a mysterious obscure passage in a two thousand year old manuscript I found mouldering away in the library of St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Desert that suggested in an oblique way that originally the castle had nothing much to do with god or the sacred and that it was in fact built to the glory of something else entirely, something spiritual I might add but what, who can say? Then again there are numerous spiritualities so I guess the document, vague as it was, simply eluded to some undisclosed aspect of the state itself, not the condition you understand but the state, to view it as a condition is a grave mistake indeed, and might very well be the reason why those who vociferously claim otherwise display lamentable lack of progression in spiritual matters. It smacks of absolutism and that’s an error you really don’t want to make.
Keep moving I urged myself, before you turn and run away. Not that I would, but it was tempting I can tell you. I walked on, my mouth suddenly dry and for all I wore clothes a plenty my flesh grew cold and clammy as I followed a barely discernable trail winding through woodland and meadow. And then so abruptly It damn near scared me to death the trail petered out and I found myself standing in the shadow of the castle gates. Huge were they, weather stained and thick, and reinforced with rusting bands of iron riveted in horizontal strips across the width of the ugly, formidable timbers inset in the great stones of the castle itself. Somewhat bewildered I stared at the massive portal in morbid fascination and wondered how I had actually gotten here, when no more than a heartbeat ago I was still a goodly distance from the castle; at the very least twenty minutes brisk walk. How then was it possible for me, between one footstep and the next, to be distant then near, translocation perhaps, but no it wasn’t possible. I simply have no idea, no actual recollection of having travelled, of footslogging the distance so to speak. It simply wasn’t possible, but obviously it was.
I looked around at tree and meadow, at thinning wisps of mist. All was quiet and still. Amber radiance streamed down. The sky a very pale blue-white colour. The air cool and hushed. The frosty ground hard and unyielding, patches of ice and frozen puddles, gleaming like grey blind eyes. Bare trees stood in the mist, skeletal limbs ugly in their thrusting nakedness. The castle loomed above me, sombre and aloof and of its sacred nature, of its supposedly shrine like quality I could detect nothing at all, only the cold indifference of hard, obdurate stone. I shivered, chill hands walked my spine. The frosty air nipping my ears. My breath billowed out in clouds of white vapour. The moment edgy and fraught. My heart racing like a bloody train. I have it to do, I told myself; now I am here I have it to do. If I turn and walk away I’ve wasted every minute of the past eight years of my life. Do it, I goaded myself. Just bloody well do it. Otherwise why bother journeying here in the first place. Stalked by vagabonds and thieves, nameless haunts and the sheer bloody minded who rob and harm simply because they can. The castle was the end of my pilgrimage. Do it, I willed myself to just do it with no thought given to consequence. Foolish I know. I took a deep breath, bolstered my flagging courage as best I could and rapped my knuckles smartly against the huge wooden door. Silence. Trying again I used my fist to pound against the door. My pummelling setting up a hollow, booming sound within the keep that seemed to my ears to reverberate with a loudness of sound out of all proportion to the impacting force of my blows against the iron banded door. I wish I had never found this place, I thought somewhat grimly as tendrils of fear tightened in my belly, and a sudden premonition of horrors to come all but shrivelled my resolve to remain. And then suddenly one half of the castle’s massive portal slowly swung open and to my complete and utter astonishment I found myself staring into a pair of luminous, deep blue eyes set in a pale, hauntingly beautiful face, whose very openness hinted at mystery. She stood as tall as I, a slim, fragile young woman with her head cocked to one side as she gravely studied me from head to toe with the ghost of a smile hovering about her lips. Her eyes, I thought to myself, are the kind that haunt the mind, round and wide spaced, luminous seeming in their depth of blue against her pale, translucent flesh. A thick mane of burnished copper coloured hair tumbled about her shoulders, the colour of autumn I thought incongruously. She stepped back into the shadow cast by the open door, her long water green gown clung to her body like a second skin. I am not by nature a lascivious man but I could not help but stare at her small, pert breasts straining against the thin clinging material of her gown. Her ghost smile deepened. Tearing my eyes away I drank her in. The very gown she wore was cause enough for wonder in itself. The pale green material patterned in strange eye baffling concentric designs of vibrant blue and gold with here and there hints of shimmering orange straining through. The oval neck and the hemline of her gown were bordered with a Celtic design picked out in twinning bands of deep green and silver. The long sleeves were caught at her wrists in what looked like thin enamelled bronze circlets. The enamel work gleaming a deep rich red in the shadowed light. The effect was stunning, almost bemusing to such a one as I. Her lips though full, were oddly wan as though bloodless beneath high cheekbones. That along with the rest of her lent her an exotic almost otherworldly look of fragile containment, as though she did but hold to this earth with tenuous grasp. But oh, it is her eyes, I thought with an inward sigh, knowing the look of them in the sheer beauty of her face would haunt my mind just about forever. Oddly, about then I realised my fear had slipped away and I felt kind of warm and safe inside. It was a spiritual thing I later came to know, a sort of projection of inner calm and warmth one may allow another to borrow or bask in for a while. It’s like a stream of particles, of visionless light one encodes with ones own composite, of self that is, as one conceives self to be in the encoded diametrics of all this streaming particle continuum. Aspects of physics I later came to learn, that were often postulated in temples devoted to the worship and study of Light Theology and the recognition that spirituality is a state and not a condition. Unruly thought jostling and tumbling inside my head, unlooked for thoughts, undreamed ideas and elusive concepts, and it seemed as thought I knew I faced towards her but she was not actually there, only the idea that she stood there remained, along with a sense of shimmering energy, of streaming particles replicating form. The concept was too much, too high and wide and finely tuned for me to take in. I began to tremble and then she spoke. My vision cleared. I again felt warm and safe and of course she was still standing there, in front of me. She was however no longer standing in the shadow cast by the door. The sun had swung along its upward arc. She stood in sunlight. The sun almost directly above. I had been standing there for hours! It was almost noon, but I had no impression of time having passed. It wasn’t possible, I thought, it just wasn’t possible, but again, seemingly it was.
“I wish I’d never come here. I wish I hadn’t spent eight years of my life searching for this place” I whispered softly to myself.
“But you did”, a small voice replied, “but you did. Answers are questions” said the voice “and the grail is a composite of both question and answer without end. And you thought the grail was dead” the voice chided softly “but it cannot die if it never was, only if you conceive it to be what it is not, but is. Do not think you threw yourself away. No”, continued the voice, “you brought yourself here. You carried yourself to this place and like the ghost on your back, here is where you meet yourself and perhaps from this moment forth your journey begins. Everything is contained in beginnings” said the voice. “When you understand beginnings you will know about endings. To understand how something will end you must understand how it began. When you know how the universe began you may then conceive how it will end and in it’s ending what will then begin. You have much to learn” said the voice, “one day when you are ready you really must begin. It never ends”, the voice trailed off, “it always begins. You can always return but you can never go back, not once you begin”.
‘Riddles’, I thought helplessly, ‘that’s all I need, bloody riddles’, and then she spoke in a choral voice that seemed to imbue my senses with emotive sound and shifting, fragmenting colour. Yet for all of that, for all the beguiling lilt of the sound, the very seduction of her voice and presence her words were plain enough, almost dismissive one might say. And I wondered about that, beguiled I might be but a fool I was not, at least I didn’t think so, not then. Later when my thoughts turned to beginnings it seemed to me that I had played the part of the fool most all my life, until I sank deep and deeper in beginnings that is and opened the Fourth Gate.
She said in that incredible choral voice of hers. “What do you want? Why are you here? Who are you? How did you find this place? What”, she demanded, “do you want?”
Well excuse me for living, I thought sourly. Aloud I said “Is this not the Castle of the Grail?”
Her eyes clouded, she stared at me in silence for a moment and then suddenly she began to laugh. Harsh, derisive, accusatory laughter that had a high, brittle edge to it, devoid of choral sound and colour. Winter crouched in her voice and then her laughter fell down in the fey, wild ringing of a cracked rusty bell that seemed to echo and linger in the air with a sound of breaking glass. I shivered in fear and dread. The warm, safe feeling inside me hollow and cold. Acid churned in my gut. Even so I determined to stand, and that was a wonder because about all I really wanted to do was turn and run like hell.
And then midst all the discordant clamour she smiled, beatific radiance, revealing small, even white teeth that seemed for all the gloomy portentous moment, to gleam like lustrous pearls against the wan, bloodless flesh of her lips. And then, as though she divined my innermost thoughts she said in a somewhat melancholy voice. “You stand before the Tomb of the Grail. The Castle of the Grail is the romance of your own heart’s longing, your own heart’s need flaring out from the want of your desolate soul. Beginnings” she said, “return whence you came and begin. Your world is awash with pious men. Piety” she said “is but an extension of yearning want. Piety”, her voice sank down to a whisper “might very well cripple the soul and blind questing spirit to what it is, it so ardently seeks that for all piety’s benign mien it ever turns the quester aside who in piety’s name stumbles down an unmarked path to nowhere. No”, she said, “you stand not before the Castle of the Grail but in the shadow of its tomb. There is no Baptist here” she declaimed in a rising voice, “no James or Jesus bones, no reliquary of saint or martyr, no cup, no chalice, no spear, no shroud, no splinters of the cross, no vial of Sangreal blood. There are no David’s here, no Judas no Solomon or Moses stones, no yesteryear hallelujahs, only beginnings she said, only the hint of beginnings will you find here, and you are not ready to learn of beginnings”.
“Well”, I said somewhat lamely, “if I’m such a dunce then tell me what I am ready for?” I had a sinking feeling inside my gut that I’d spent eight years of my life in pursuit of really not very much at all.
“Beginning” she said.
“Bloody beginnings means I’m going to have to start all over again. Still”, I sighed ruefully, what else is new?”
Her deep blue eyes sparkled as though swirling stars lurked in their depths. She said softly, “there are no curdled prayers here, no dissatisfactions, no envies or greed, no shame, no humiliation, no rage or debasement. Pilgrim” she said to me in a return of her ringing choral voice, “The tomb of the Grail is the Fourth Gate, though it be not the last you will find no other on all this earth. Though you be not yet ready, know you this, when you pass through the Fourth Gate you may never go back. Return, oh yes you can always return but you can never go back”.
Oh that’s cute, I thought, that’s real cute, that’s just what I need. Riddles, more bloody riddles as if her spiel about beginnings wasn’t enough. Yea, real cute. And then she said something that just about froze my blood.
“Billy Bones went mad before he died. Darkness and Light” she said, “you can deny, but you can never run, you can never hide from what resides inside, Darkness and Light” she said “are aspects of each other, they are one and the same, it is you who determines the difference. It is you who determines to become what you choose to be, Darkness and Light are indifferent, and like prayer it is you who accord direction and intent. Darkness and Light are aspects of One, they are neither good nor evil. You alone determine and shape such. You alone give form to their intent. Knowledge” she said enigmatically “may very well be found in both, it is up to you to deicide in which direction you may want to go”, adding “when you reach the Fourth Gate and thou enter, madness and death will be thy reward, spiritual decay” she said “should thou in error pass through the Three Gates that come before. The Fourth Gate” she said in a final chilling tone “may very well allow one who is in error to enter, but it will never allow such a one to pass through. Go”, she said, “return whence thou came and think on Beginnings, and mayhap one day thou shalt awaken to find light leaking from thine eyes. Go”, she said, “the Fourth Gate is not for you, not yet”, she added with a ghost of a smile. And like an obedient school boy I turned and set my footsteps back along the way thinking I might very well spend the remaining years of my life trying to return here again.
‘You can always return’ she said ‘but you can never go back’. Riddles, I thought with a rueful grin, oh that’s cute, that’s real cute, more bloody riddles”.
And when I turned to catch my last glimpse of the castle and its haunting eyed keeper there was nothing there, absolutely nothing at all, and that was a worry to me I can tell you. Something to do with Beginnings I expect.
Oddly, years later I was reminded of my words as I trudged away from where I thought the castle to be. That was when I finally reached the Fourth Gate knowing I had not in error passed through the three preceding gates, and stepped through. My words proved to be prophetic even as the castle’s keeper, with her hauntingly beautiful eyes proved to be prophetic when she said, of course you can always return but you can never go back. Physically perhaps, spiritually you may not. Passing through the Fourth Gate does not allow for that. Of course there are exceptions, but not until one reaches the Ninth Gate. And I might add aspects of this story you have read have long been regarded as secret. Revealed only to purposeful initiates as they pass through each gate.
And of the Ninth Gate, I am yet oath bound not to reveal to any who are not initiate. One day perhaps when there rises a genuine need to know. One day, but not yet.
“We’re going to use nine megaton warheads in space and we’re not sure they’re large enough to be effective. Why would you even consider using kiloton-range surface-to-air warheads as back-up?” The answer was succinct. “Because they’re all we have.”
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