Parsifal and the grail as bloodline

[Sean]

Before writing Parsifal Wagner visited Rennes-le-Chateau in France, the place where the 19th century priest Sauniere may have found something of great significance to the Vatican; the grail is a concept largely unrecognised by Christian churches but Wagner helped establish popular interest through featuring it in Lohengrin and Parsifal. Moreover he may have been aware of theories of the grail as Christ's lineage in speaking of the need for social and religious regeneration through the agency of Christ's pure blood, and some his thoughts on racial purity may refer to the bloodline, as perhaps do his characters who have great significance but are unsure who they are. The opera is set in Montsalvat in northern Spain near France.

Kundry parallels Mary Magdalene: one of the most complex figures in all opera, a seductress figure who was present at the crucifixion and the only woman in the realm of the Templar like knights, practicing arcane rituals and safeguard the grail as the cup from the Last Supper. Parsifal parallels a bloodline figure to restore the order's true religion to the world and Kundry's kiss with him over eight sensuous bars blends motherly, ie Magdalene as the church's mother and bloodline from that time, with sexual, ie as Jesus's wife. Wagner and Schopenhauer held that the ancient sources of oriental religions also gave rise to Christianity, and Parsifal is a syncretic blend of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity: Enlightenment through carnal knowledge then provides spiritual enlightenment, both on personal and religious levels, all as in the fusing of sacred and sexual in Hindu and early pagan and Gnostic Christian understandings. Also Kundry's laughing at Christ on the cross may refer to the Dionysian pleasure taken in the torture and destruction of another, or that it might have been a charade where Christ wasn't killed.

Klingsor like Alberich renounces love but becomes an evil not enlightened figure. His castle and keeping of the spear that pierced Christ's side to determine if he was dead may represent the established Church and its bloodline secret. He castrated himself in a failed attempt to join the order of knights, such self-denial being a flawed path to renunciation or detachment from the senses, this paralleling the church's use of sexual denial and misogyny to detract attention from the idea of a married Christ and enforce its patriarchal power based on fear. Klingsor tries to destroy the order as the Church would destroy the bloodline's protectors or Priory of Sion.

As Klingsor represents the mistake of self-denial, Amfortas represents the mistake of affected desire or being lost in the senses. Klingsor recognizes Parsifal as the redeemer and tries to ruin him like Amfortas with Kundry and the flower maidens- but he understands on the sensory as well as religious ideological levels, having detachment from both and gaining the true spiritual perspective. He's cured at the end by Parsifal's spear taken from Klingsor after kissing Kundry- by Parsifal's understanding of the need for both spiritual and sensory or absolute and relative life together. Also the spear rights the idea of Christ as dead when he didn't die, or at least his offspring and royal claims continued: the correction of Amfortas's suffering is the correction of the problems in the religious situation. Parsifal makes the sign of the cross and Klingsor or the Church disappears, the true values restored.

Rather than affected detachment or affected attachment, Parsifal finds redemption for all, including the redeemer or Christ redeemed, through unaffected action. Full engagement in life paradoxically issues from detachment- he understands lust after Kundry's kiss but acts under truth and what needs to be done, not affectation; his innocence is that of the unclouded mind. He doesn't know his role until the kiss and sexual enlightenment, also referring to descendents of Christ via sex, and moreover he rejects Kundry when she appeals to pity for her because, operating from the Dionysian base, he knows empathy is misguided. Kundry then washes Parsifal's feet as Magdalene washed Jesus's, subdued by him rather than vice versa; she falls dying at the end ie when her role as a secret and the slander of her as a prostitute is superseded by the new order.

Also in this is Wagner as the real redeemer- the new order being art as religion and an aesthetic within life encompassing sensory and spiritual.

Here's a nice five minute synopsis of Parsifal- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv_Xcgate1M

[head-case]

You have two explanations for Sauniere having having more money to spend than his salary would justify.  1)  He had discovered Jesus Christ's grave and the vatican was playing him to keep quiet.  2) He was a two bit swindler.  Which seems more likely to you?  The answer will tell if you have the makings of a true conspiracy theorist.