love

The whole series of these tales surrounding the Fisher King and the legend of the Holy Grail are enormously complex and full of symbolism, but the way I read these tales – what I think is the true meaning of them – is actually quite simple: The Fisher King is the Church, specifically the male dominated, patriarchal church as we know it today – the church that tells us “God is a man.” The land over which this king presides, which is essentially the whole Western world, lies in waste specifically because the feminine aspect of God has been suppressed and hidden from view for so long. The Holy Grail is that feminine aspect. The quest for it is the quest to reinstate the feminine aspect of God in it’s rightful place, alongside the masculine, within our society and in the world as a whole. Not to replace the masculine, but to hold it up, in balance with the masculine, as equal to and inseparable from it. The Goddess is merely the backside of God, and vice versa – two sides of the same coin. What ails the king, the Church, is the refusal to fully acknowledge this feminine aspect of God. The Church has “glimpses” of this feminine aspect – the saints, Mary, etc. – but this is enough only to prolong its suffering. The Church (and with it, the world) will continue to ail, to suffer, to flounder and destroy itself, until this feminine aspect is reinstated in its proper place, until the feminine aspect of God is fully acknowledged. Only then will the king (the Church) and his wasteland be healed.

Because this is my view, I can very much appreciate and identify with the “mission” to which the seminarist and Pilar aspire – to reinstate the feminine aspect which is missing, to heal not just individuals but the entire world through this great quest of the spirit.

As Alexandra points out, there are many names associated with this feminine aspect, but for me personally, she takes the form, most often, of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (Our Lady of Guadalupe). But I don’t think of her as just an apparition of the Virgin Mary, just a “saint” or “the mother of” God. To me, she IS God. She is a vision that has been offered to the people of the Wasteland of what is missing – she is The Grail itself, the abundantly compassionate potential healer of the Wasteland. All that she asks is that we acknowledge her and restore her to her rightful place. For me, she represents so many things, not the least of which is an end to global oppression and world poverty, institutionalized disparity and injustice, the destruction of nature and our environment. She is the Mother of a New World which, at this point in time, is in the birthing process. I truly believe, in all sincerity, that the present holds the promise of a future in which the world will know a balance between the masculine and feminine aspects of God. Many people are working toward this all over the world – each with their own unique mission, guided by the Goddess in any one of her myriad forms. It isn’t just one knight who will come to heal the Fisher King and his Wasteland, but many knights, each in his or her unique pursuit of the Grail.

Thank you, Paulo, for addressing this in your novels.

With Much Love,
Savita

I cannot begin to imagine how it would feel for a woman to give birth to God, to be the Mother of God. Although, each woman who has ever given birth, probably always think the little miracle being born, is in fact a divine creation. ‘The most sacred moment in a woman’s life is to give birth’, the Seminarian says. Again and again we see a belief in the feminine face of God in Piedra. To me, I find the Virgin, the Mother of God, in the dogmatic Church too, and cannot quite understand what is different with the Charismatic understanding of the Mother of God, and the understanding of the official Church? Guess I believe in balancing the masculine and the feminine faces of God. Occult, which I understand simply means hidden, represent in some ways the personality of the Mother of God, as her knowledge in many ways are hidden and unknown. The child she brought to the world is much more than she could possibly do by her own powers. It is a gift from above. Even though the Son of God is God, she had to raise him to be of service, to give His life. We cannot find better protection or support than the Mother of God to our daily life or at the hour of our death. Ave Maria. Amen.

Thank God, I put this thought aside long ago. I didn’t do this at once, but little by little aknowledged the importance of women. Anyways, this way of thinking about a Goddess was difficult to grasp at the beginning. However, later it did made sense. Everything is made up of two opposite sides, and seeing God as both father and mother is just completely right.

Despite that, the female face of God has been denied and hidden for such a long time that it will take a while for people to see Her in this light.

I must say that I picture male energy as The Reason, and female energy as The Intuition. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like that.

In my personal experience,as a teeneger and young person I was caught in the trap of the reason. Reason was the god and I couln’t accept anything that had no explanation. That’s why , I nearly lost my faith, or chose not to bother thinking about it.

Just later , gaining experience and being sent an Angel I understood that there was much more to the eye. Much more beyond my senses that even though I was not able to see , I felt it had to be there.

It is the battle between heart and mind. And for me, Intuition and Love have been much more rewarding and enlightning than the realm of mind.

i think you beautifully and accurately gave name and credit to the other side of God that is so often egnored, suppressed and rejected.

How can anyone say they believe in a limitted God?

Thank you for your work. And thank you for helping to acknwledge and spread acknowledgement of the equal value the feminine and the masculine truly hold in our existance.