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'Fishy' Insights Into The Symbol Of The Grail |
 The Film "Big Fish" as a Grail Quest of Epic Proportions.
By hesper79
The Challenge
The challenge which originally prompted this article was to identify the symbolic parallels between the Grail myth and the mythical adventures of the character of Edward Bloom in the film "Big Fish". Pursuing this challenge turned out to provide me with some interesting insights into that most mysterious symbol of ultimate healing power: The Holy Grail.
The story presented in the film "Big Fish" suggests that the Grail’s ability to ’heal’ both the king and the land is based on an aspect of the Grail’s symbolism which represents the re-empowerment of the Feminine Principle, and there are definite parallels to this level of the ’Grail quest’ in the mythology presented in the film. This Grail/fish connection has appeared before in an Irish precursor to the Grail myth, called "The Salmon of Wisdom" in which the role of the Grail is played by a fish.
The Feminine Aspect of the Grail Symbol
In my own opinion, the recognition and honoring of the Feminine Principle (which is one aspect of what the symbol of the Grail represents) is exactly what we so desperately need at this point in our history if we hope to be able to disarm the out-of-control, so-called ’patriarchal’ reign of terror which seems to be well on its way now to actually destroying our planet.
I consider the situation we find ourselves in today to be the inevitable end result of at least two and a half thousand years of cultural domination by a developmental stage of human consciousness which reflects the value system of a now fully developed Masculine Principle which is not negative in itself, but which has become unbalanced because it has deprived itself of the necessary equal influence of the Feminine Principle. Qualities which the collective human consciousness represses often appear in symbolic forms which seem to possess a magnetic attraction because they represent elements which the conscious perspective has great need of in order to restore itself to balance. The symbol of The Holy Grail is a perfect example of this.
Although I believe it’s ultimately a symbol of enlightenment, my understanding is that the Grail primarily took the form of a feminine symbol, the Chalice, because until the Feminine Principle is consciously valued and lived out equally with the Masculine Principle, the Sacred Marriage of equals (alchemical cunjunctio), which is a primary prerequisite for the ultimate stage of the transformation of human consciousness which is enlightenment, cannot take place. The ultimate goal of the quest is expressed in the Grail Myth in the reminder given to the Grail King: "You and the Land are One" which represents the ultimate state of Unity which the Grail both represents and is able to awaken in the consciousness of the seeker who is prepared to encounter it.
The Symbolic End of the Quest in the Film
If you think of the various appearances of the Big Fish/Ladyfish/Lady-in-the-River in the film as a composite Grail symbol (of course the original Grail also took a triple form as Chalice, Platter and Stone), these symbols represent something which Edward intensely pursued all of his life, and ’caught’ only briefly on the day his son was born, when he used his wedding ring for bait. He finally achieves a state of ultimate ’union’ with this mythical ’Fish’ only at the end of the film, at the point of the symbolic ’death’ of his real-life self, when he then takes on the form which has represented for him the ultimate development of his ’mythical’ Self.
And at the conclusion of his successful quest, at the end of the film, Edward achieves the sacred marriage as he recognizes and honors his wife ("My girl in the river") as his true mate by offering her the wedding ring which was the means by which he gained his first brief experience of the Grail in the form of ’catching the mythical Ladyfish’. And through the agency of the mythical vision of their son, (the fruit of their mutual fertility and committed union), who is finally able to tell the mythical but true tale of Edward’s death, Edward himself finally experiences his ultimate transfiguration into the form of the long sought Grail/Fish.
The Wasteland and the Hero in the Grail Myth
The unbalanced state of the Kingdom at the point at which the Grail Myth begins is one in which the Land is desolate, and the Fisher King, guardian of the Grail, has been mortally wounded in "the thigh" (considered to be a euphemism for genitals, so the myth is telling us that he has been rendered sterile, just as his kingdom has become a wasteland). He languishes and suffers, unable either to live or to die.
In what is perhaps the best known version of the myth, Parsifal/Perceval is the unlikely hero who succeeds in the Quest. He starts out as an exuberant but naive youth, raised in a forest by his mother (which makes him an agent of the Divine Feminine). He is determined to become a knight but is ignorant of the ways of the world. As a novice knight, he finds the Grail Castle by luck the first time, and sees the Grail itself displayed in a strange procession after dinner, but since he is not properly prepared to respond to this experience, he fails to ask the question which is necessary, and so he is unable to awaken the power of the Grail to heal the king and the land. As he leaves the castle, it disappears.
He then goes back to King Arthur’s court, where a witch-like "loathly damosel" scolds him mercilessly for failing to ask the question and so failing to heal the king and the land. Perceval leaves the court in disgrace, vowing to find the Grail again and this time to ask the necessary question which, after many adventures, he does. Many of these adventures involve women and various tests on how to achieve the proper, honorable relationship with them. In the best known Arthurian story, Lancelot fails in the Grail quest because of the illicit nature of his union with Guinevere, and in the Christianized version, it is only Lancelot’s "pure" son, Galahad, who finds the Grail.
The Wasteland and the Hero in the Film
In the film "Big Fish", Edward also grows up in a backwater (as he sees it), aspires to great deeds and has to leave home to achieve them. If we take his adventures chronologically, rather than in the order in which we see them in the film, his first encounter with the feminine is a relatively dark one when, as a child, he and his friends visit the town’s "witch". As they approach her house, we hear Edward as an adult in voiceover explaining:
"Now, it’s common knowledge that most towns of a certain size have a witch, if only to eat misbehaving children and the occasional puppy who wanders into her yard. Witches use those bones to cast spells and curses that make the land infertile."
This is a pretty good description of the condition of the wasteland which exists at the beginning of the Grail quest. Later in the film we discover that this witch is actually a representation of the character of Jenny, who symbolizes Edward’s unsuccessful attempts at achieving the state of ’right relationship’ with the Feminine Principle which the Grail quest requires. But let’s address this question now: why is Jenny depicted as a witch?
An Encounter with the Repressed/’Dark’ Divine Feminine
Apparently, when it comes to children or puppies whose vulnerability would arouse the protective "mothering" instinct in most women, a witch has no mercy. She "eats" them, so that no such taunting reminders of the joys of ordinary domestic life exist in the witch’s world, only the "bones" of a fertility that might have been, but once denied, becomes a curse.
This lack of fertility (at least at the physical level) is the defining characteristic of the "crone", the woman who is past her child-bearing years. The crone is a feminine symbol which carries both positive and negative potentials, but the positive aspect of this symbol is almost unknown in our culture for the same reason that the goal of the Grail quest has still not been achieved: the positive potential of the Sacred Feminine has not yet been recognized.
The unbalanced condition which is the result of the denial and repression of the Sacred Feminine is reflected in the sterility of the wasteland and the physical sterility of the crone, whose negative symbol is the witch. But in Jenny’s case, her infertility, whether she is young or old, comes from what is lacking in her relationship with Edward: a full-hearted spiritual as well as physical commitment and union (which is represented in the film by the symbol of the wedding ring), which would make the union spiritually as well as physically fertile.
Spectre: A Once-and-Future ’Detour’ on the Quest
The first time that Edward arrives in the town of Spectre and meets Jenny, he is told that he is "early", and the "short-cut" which he took and which he says "almost killed me", was a long-abandoned, narrow, unpaved "old road" (the nice, straight, new ’highway’ which nearly everyone from Edward’s home town used instead, was not the ’way’ which Edward was intended to follow in order to reach his destiny). This "old road" winds through a "witchy" landscape populated by spooky moss-draped trees, crows, stinging insects and "jumping spiders". These are all negative feminine symbols which are a good way of describing the "wasteland" condition of the Land, deprived of the life-giving influence of the Sacred Feminine.
When Edward first meets Jenny in Spectre, she is young, unripe and innocent, as symbolized by her appearance as a prepubescent child, and as Edward tell us, he is "not ready to end up anywhere yet". He catches a first glimpse of the Lady/Fish/Grail in the river here, and in the snake which he also sees swimming towards her, we have a symbol of potential fertility, but Edward catches the snake before it reaches its goal, a fitting symbol for the incomplete nature of his premature, uncommitted connection with Jenny. Once Edward grabs it, the potential fertility which the snake represents turns into just a dead tree branch in his hand.
Edward’s aborted encounter leaves him not only without any creative result to show for it, but actually in worse condition than before: he is covered in leeches which may represent a symbolic draining of his lifeblood and vitality (perhaps caused by guilt or regret). This experience parallels Perceval’s first encounter with the Grail for which, like Edward, he was also unprepared, didn’t ask the necessary question, and so failed. Both Perceval and Edward come away from their first encounters determined to persevere until they succeed.
Young Jenny has been observing Edward’s interaction with the ’naked Lady’ form of the Grail from her position on the opposite riverbank, and she says to Edward "Nobody ever catches her." But this opinion is based on the only experience she has had with such encounters, which would all have taken place in Spectre where she lives.
I’ll try to be brief about Spectre. It’s a place where you don’t need your shoes because the ground is covered with nice soft grass. You can dance and play and flirt but nothing much else happens and even if you’re a great poet and you try for twelve years to write a poem, all you end up with is three lines of mediocrity. It’s a way of life which is uncommitted to any serious purpose, shallow and unproductive -- an illusory, make-believe kind of life which leaves you with nothing to show for the time that you spent there.
Spectre might represent an early, uncommitted and therefore unfruitful connection with an aspect of the Divine Feminine, or it might stand for a premature ’glimpse’ of the high goal of the Quest which is achieved through a mind-altering drug experience. In terms of either of these interpretations, if the encounter takes place in the context of a stage of consciousness which evaluates this experience from a self-serving perspective, the true fertilizing power of the encounter will be missed. Nobody ever catches the Ladyfish/Grail in Spectre because nobody ever ’offers her a wedding ring’. Edward leaves, but Jenny makes him promise to come back again.
Encounter with the ’True Wife’: A Foretaste of ’Heaven’
Edward’s next encounter with the Ladyfish/Grail begins when he meets his future wife, Sandra. He instantly commits to her when he first sees her and endures endless tests to win her. This attempt at "right relationship" with the Feminine holds a promise which is reflected symbolically in a scene in which, as an expression of Edward’s love for Sandra, he turns the entire landscape outside her window into a meadow of her favorite golden-colored blooms (a symbolic foretaste of the redemption of the wasteland which the fertility of the awakened Grail produces).
Finally he marries Sandra, which he describes as "catching the uncatchable woman by offering her a wedding ring" and with the birth of his son Will, he symbolically realizes his dream of possessing the Ideal Feminine/Grail in the form of the Ladyfish, but only ever so briefly. In the scene which represents the mythical version of this, the Ladyfish snatches the ring, but bites through the line and escapes.
Edward pursues her and catches her again but doesn’t want to keep/kill her because "she was fat with eggs, ready to lay. Didn’t want to kill future generations. This ladyfish and I had the same destiny." So he just holds her out of the water until she coughs up the ring, and then lets her go.
’Projecting’ the Grail
This may symbolically represent an attempt on Edward’s part to ’ground’ the transcendent qualities of the Grail symbol at the everyday level of his life in an external way, by attempting to convert his commitment to his quest for the Grail into a commitment to his wife. (He needs to get the wedding ring back from the mythical fish because it is a symbol of his sworn bond to his real-life wife.)
Although in the process of ’falling in love’ we may project the transcendent qualities of our own Soul onto our beloved, and this can actually produce a very fertile situation in terms of its potential for spiritual growth and increased self-knowledge, no human being can be expected to carry this kind of Divine projection for very long. Ultimately the projection must fail so that its energies can be integrated properly as a conscious part of our own ultimate wholeness at the level of Unity, which occurs at the final stage of the Grail quest.
Redeeming Spectre
Edward’s last unsatisfactory relationship with the Feminine takes him back to Jenny and to Spectre in an attempt to redeem his earlier experience there, and this may be symbolic of a last stage of his quest before reaching the final goal. This stage could be described as an attempt to integrate elements of his own ’shadow’ (in Jungian terms) or those aspects of himself which have been found to be ’unacceptable’ according to the standards of his conscious ego. The ego often denies that these shadow qualities even exist, and sees them reflected instead in the ’unacceptable’ aspects of other people and the world in general. This time, when Edward arrives in Spectre, he is "late". He is already married to Sandra, and Jenny has had to settle for a marriage that didn’t work out and is now alone with her cats (crone symbolism again). When they talk about the reason he is back, Jenny asks "Mid-life crisis?"
Although it was "the worst rainstorm of his life", which hit as he was on his way home from a sales trip, which detoured him to Spectre, (perhaps symbolizing a state of emotional grief over his failed marriage which he tried to assuage by allowing himself to be ’swept away’ in a storm of passion with Jenny), what started out as enough water to submerge and carry away his car, complete with a provocative encounter with Jenny as an underwater semblance of the Ladyfish, the end result of all of this drama is to leave Edward standing on dry land with his car stranded high and dry up a tree.
Left to proceed on foot, Edward discovers that this storm has transported him again to the town of Spectre. But the uncommitted, self-indulgent existence which this isolated hamlet represents, which had at first seemed so idyllic to him back in his youth, now appears as a run-down, worthless, and bankrupt shell of its former self. Now that he has something real and creative to compare it with (the idyllic early days of his marriage to Sandra at the time that she gave him his son), he realizes that an existence or a relationship without that degree of depth of commitment just doesn’t measure up.
But at this time in his life, he apparently needs something he is not able to find at home -- symbolically he needs to redeem his sense of failure, and so he tries to invest enough of his energies into his relationship with Jenny and the town to bring them both back to life again, to resurrect the fantasy of the perfect life, with Jenny as a surrogate for his wife. When he meets Jenny again, she is clearly bitter. He asks "Have I offended you?" She says "No, you did exactly what you promised -- you came back. I was just expecting you sooner."
She asks him to go, but he’s determined to win her back. He starts fixing up her house, spending time with her, making her laugh, investing himself in their relationship. The voice-over says "As the months passed, he found more and more things to fix", so this is a significant period of his life. He tries to redeem their relationship and turn it into a semblance of a real marriage, but as Jenny admits, "It was make-believe". So it’s not really satisfying for her at any deep level and the purpose it seems to be serving for Edward is to prop up his sagging mid-life male ego and maybe assuage his sense of guilt for his earlier decision to leave Jenny behind.
"Whom Does the Grail Serve?"
In the various versions of the Grail myth, the most commonly expressed answer to the question "Whom does the Grail serve?" is that it serves "the Grail King". But we should also remember that the Grail myth represents a symbolic story whose meaning has not yet been satisfactorily understood, probably because the consciousness of the patriarchal time in which it was written, which continues today, couldn’t adequately either represent or comprehend the symbolism of the process which actually leads to the final healing awakening of the Grail.
The fact that the myth presents a symbol of crippled male kingship as the ultimate beneficiary of the attainment of the Grail is a perfect representation of the situation in which we find ourselves now. The question which we are required to ask, "Whom does the Grail serve?", I believe is intended to direct our attention to the fact that this crippled male king and his desolate land are both a reflection of an unbalanced stage of consciousness which exists to some extent in all those who are drawn to the symbolism of the Quest for the Grail. I believe that recognizing and empowering the Feminine Principle within our own consciousness is the missing element which is needed in order to awaken the healing power of the Grail.
If we recognize that we first have to empower the Divine Feminine before we can celebrate the Sacred Marriage whose fruit is the ultimate, non-dual Grail and the healing of the king and the land, the first true answer to the crucial question has to be that the Grail first serves Itself, in the form of that aspect of its symbolism which represents the awakening of the healing qualities of the Divine Feminine.
The Eternal Cycle of Growth
And what is the essence of the Divine Feminine? It’s everything the wounded king and the wasteland lack: It represents fertility on every level, represented symbolically as the cyclical renewal of life in birth, growth, reproduction (producing the ’seed’ which lays the foundation for the next cycle of growth), the death of the form in which the energies of the current life cycle are embodied, which returns the energies and elements of life (and the new ’seed’) to the Land to feed the next generation of life, represented as resurrection and rebirth -- the beginning of a new cycle of growth.
The symbols which are generated by the (feminine) collective unconscious always portray a process of growth as repeating cycles of death and rebirth: the death of an outworn vision of life (or paradigm), followed by the release of the energies which had been invested in the now dying vision, which fertilize the ’seed’ produced during the previous cycle (a symbol of the creative potentials which were not able to be recognized or lived out during the previous cycle), followed by the death of the old vision and the transformation of the ’seed’ into the form of the new vision/paradigm which will be lived out in another cycle of growth until that vision too is ultimately outgrown.
’Flattening’ the Cycle (and the Planet)
This eternal, cyclically fertile aspect of the Feminine has been fatally misinterpreted by the linear perspective and value system of the unbalanced, nature-dominating, one-sidedly intellectual, patriarchal cultures, with their insistence on a one-time progression towards an ultimately final, fixed goal.
Patriarchal consciousness, at its present stage of development, is interpreting the symbols of the death/rebirth cycle in terms of a one-time-only ’End Times’ scenario which produces total destruction. The way in which this End Times scenario depicts the ultimately sterile outcome of this vision, is a reflection of the limited, polarized level of perception which this stage in the development of consciousness represents.
On "Judgment Day" (which polarized consciousness interprets as a fixed point in linear time), those who have opposed the prevailing culture’s attempts at ’world domination’ (based on their dualistic interpretation of the mandate of their ’God’), will get what’s coming to them in the form of fiery destruction while the would-be dominators are spirited off into the clouds to enjoy their eternal reward in ’heaven’. The destructive fall-out which is produced by this completely inadequate theoretical interpretation of the symbolic cycle is now on display in your local reality and can be expressed as: "Why worry about future generations?"
Here Comes the Bride: The (Long-Banished) Grail Queen
But it is the Spiritual dimension of the fertility of the Divine Feminine which produces the ultimate expression of the Grail symbol, the healing force which is released when the Heart opens and the soul pledges itself in a true Sacred Marriage. And it is in this true Sacred Marriage of equals that Heaven is wed to Earth, the Divinity of the Land and all its creatures is restored, and the wasteland is healed. The Divine Feminine first serves Itself, so that it may heal the sterility of the wounded Fisher King, remind him that "You and the Land are One", and make him a fit partner to enter into the Sacred Marriage with the long repressed symbol of the Grail Queen, which is the ’mechanism’ through which the Grail restores the lost Unity and makes the wasteland bloom again.
The ’Loathly Damosel’ Scolds the Tardy Perceval
A patriarchal society which attempts to subvert the Divine Feminine to serve its own unregenerate ego purposes -- sacrificing entire generations of its youth in the pursuit of ever more political power and profit for the few, raping and poisoning the natural world to exploit its resources while leaving only a wasteland behind with no sustenance for the future, profiting from the exploitation of the vulnerable and unjustly denying future generations the birthright which is due them -- such a society is only demonstrating on a larger scale the same imbalance and abuse of power which we see in the conscious attitudes of men whose lives reflect their either unattempted or failed Grail quests.
Not having achieved the inner Sacred Marriage (which represents the full activation and integration of both their masculine and feminine potentials), such men unconsciously believe that they have the right (some even seem to regard it as a ’privilege’) to pervert the outer expression of this union into a form of possession ("owning" a wife without offering her equal spiritual and material standing and fidelity). And this lack of fidelity is often also expressed as a form of exploitation without commitment (using a ’mistress’ to serve your needs while denying her the full respect which she both needs and deserves).
The Sacred Feminine ’serves’ the current power-mongering, sexually and socially exploitative, unbalanced, destructive stage of development of consciousness which we call ’patriarchal’, (which is represented in the symbol of the wounded Grail King) by *healing* it through restoring it to balance by making conscious the missing healing qualities represented by the symbol of the Grail Queen. Those who are not willing to sacrifice their self-serving power in order to receive this healing are the ones who are perpetuating the destructive situation which we see around us today (and these can be either men or women -- it is the degree of balance of the inner consciousness which counts).
Even the most positive aspects of consciousness, when repressed long enough, create ’dark’ symptoms because of the imbalances which this repression creates. The so-called ’wrathful’ aspect of the Divine Feminine, as symbolized by the Medusa face of the betrayed and outraged Goddess, unleashes the destructive forces of both Heaven and Earth, until She receives the honor which is due to Her and which is necessary in order to restore balance and heal the land. The wasteland and the witch are the two faces of the scorned Divine Feminine.
The Truth of Myth
There is another level of Grail quest which is being pursued by Edward’s adult son Will, who begins as a journalist who resents his father’s tall tales as irrelevant "lies" that prevent him from getting to "the truth" about his father’s life. In the end, he learns to appreciate that the higher level of truth which is expressed at the creative, feminine, mythical level (’inner’ reality at the level of one’s highest potential), actually provides him with the key to what he has always wanted most, an understanding of who his father ’really’ is.
And it is beautifully fitting that it is through Will, whose birth brought Edward his first taste of the joys of the Divine Feminine/Grail, that Edward is able at last, in the mythic but true tale which Will tells of his father’s death, to realize his true Sacred Marriage to Sandra and in this final transformation to become the Grail in the very form which had so tantalized and eluded him for his entire life. As all of us potentially ’are’ and always were the Grail, Edward becomes what he always was: a very Big Fish.
The Grail: ’Back to the Future’
The Grail Myth, like all powerful symbols of transformation, persists through the ages because it represents vital, life-renewing potentials which still need to be recognized and lived out by all members of the human race. Although the symbolism of the Grail myth predates the arrival of Christianity in Great Britain and Northern Europe, and so its Grail symbols of the cauldron, platter or chalice were originally identified with the Divine Feminine (or Triple Goddess) of the then existing pagan cultures, versions of the myth were rewritten later in Christian terms which equated the Grail with the Cup of Christ, the Chalice which Christ used when sharing his last meal with his disciples at the Last Supper and which Joseph of Arimathea is said to have used to catch a few drops of Christ’s blood at the crucifixion.
The Grail symbol actually bridges the transition between the pagan and Christian worlds very well, and even goes beyond that as it is incorporated also in the symbolism of the next Great Age of Aquarius in a very interesting way. (I think it is important to note that the myths which underlie the other great religions/cultures of the world (I am convinced) also contain symbolism which parallels that of the quest for the Grail, but I am not familiar enough with those systems at this point to be able to draw the necessary comparisons.)
The pagan Grail was known to serve as a kind of ’horn of plenty’ or cornucopia which would provide for each person the food he liked best, in endless quantities. This parallels its other function of healing the wasteland/king, bringing them back to life and restoring their fertility, as both of these functions reflect symbolically the life-giving, nurturing aspects of the Divine Feminine. The Christian Grail takes this basic Nature symbolism into a new, expanded Spiritual context in which all those who drink from the Cup of Christ are transfigured, saved and spiritually redeemed by this act of communion and through it receive the gift of resurrection into eternal Life.
Christ was the great teacher and exemplar of the healing force of Divine Love, the values of the opened Heart: "Love one another as I have loved you; Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. There are no greater commandments than these." He conspicuously valued those whom the patriarchal society of his time had rejected and excluded, including women.
Don’t expect the average patriarchal "Christian" church to come out and admit that Christ’s teachings presented to the world the values of the Divine Feminine, but this is nonetheless the truth, however much those core teachings may have been distorted and co-opted by the patriarchal institutions which have grown up around them.
And you don’t have to literally believe that Jesus was married and that the Grail represents the continuation of his "bloodline" through his and Mary Magdalene’s descendants in order to appreciate the value of this variation of the story at the symbolic level as a continuation of the Grail Myth. The Divine Feminine is, above all, fertile and confers Her powers of renewal of Life, Love and Spirit on all who discover Her within themselves and honor Her.
The blood of Christ, the great symbol of the redeeming power of Divine Love, when captured in the Grail Chalice, revivifies the already potent symbolism of the renewing power of the Heart-centered values of the Divine Feminine, and carries this precious symbolic cargo through all the centuries of the increasing darkness and violence of the unbalanced, ego and power-driven patriarchal wasteland, to where we stand now, on the cusp of the next Great Age of Aquarius. Here, as the symbols tell us, the healing power of the Divine Feminine is at last taken up by the symbolic figure of a "new man", the symbolic representation of the ’awakening’ consciousness of Aquarius: the Man with the Water Jar, who now becomes the vehicle through which the Life-renewing power of Divine Love is poured out to heal the Land.
On Becoming a ’Grail Knight’
The Grail, which I equate symbolically with the Alchemical Stone, can only manifest on a cultural level to the extent that each individual is able to achieve it in his or her own life and psyche by making conscious both the masculine and feminine potentials so that these, the symbolic alchemical King and Queen, may be joined in the Sacred Marriage which produces the transfiguring, renewing power of the Grail/Stone.
During our times of the dominance of patriarchal values, the first stage of "feminism" has given women a head-start on this process by encouraging them to recognize and put into use their internal masculine potentials. But this culture has so far empowered women almost exclusively in masculine terms. Women have been "allowed" to discover within themselves the same potentials for worldly achievement which were in the past the sole domain of men, but in order to exercise these in alignment with the model followed by ’successful’ men, women have too often found it necessary to sacrifice and denigrate the Heart values of the Divine Feminine in the same destructive way that most ’successful’ patriarchal men continue to demonstrate.
It still remains for women to take up the measure of worldly influence which they have gained and use it to re-empower the healing vision of the Divine Feminine. But they will only succeed in this once men also understand that if life on this planet is to be preserved, they must again take up the challenge of the Grail quest and discover and begin to live out the potential of the Divine Feminine within themselves as well as discovering it and honoring it within the women in their lives, so that both the Grail King and the Grail Queen may become fit mates for each other and achieve the "inner" marriage within the individual psyche.
The fruit of this inner marriage is a renewed vision of what this terrestrial life can be, as symbolized by the celebration of the macrocosmic marriage, the great Sacred Marriage/Hierosgamos of Heaven and Earth which renews, redeems, and heals the Land and makes it bloom. This is the challenge which is represented by the symbol of Aquarius -- the Man with the Water Jar -- in the new millennium.
Edward "Bloom" (coincidence?) -- always so thirsty and vulnerable to becoming ’parched’ and "dried out" by the patriarchal world in which he as a man was required to live, so much so that his highest mythic aspiration was represented by a transfiguration into the symbolic form of a fertile, hermaphroditic Grail/Fish -- surely he can be seen as a fore-runner of the "new man" of the Aquarian Age: chastened by the failures of his past, aware of his high destiny and ready to play his part in pouring out the Grail’s healing balm upon the Land as guardian of the Water Jar.
The Soliloquy of Edward Bloom -- "I Will -- Yes!"
So how do you go about becoming a Knight of the Holy Grail? I will close these speculations with one final note on the qualities which are represented by the ’mythical level’ of Edward Bloom as portrayed in the film. When Edward finally finds his future wife and discovers that she is already engaged to another man, he seems to accept this defeat gracefully at first, but then tells us the most essential fact about who he is. He says: "There’s a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost, that the ship has sailed, and that only a fool would continue. The truth is, I’ve always been a Fool."
Perceval/Parsifal, the unlikely but successful hero of the Grail quest, owes his success to the fact that he is an example of the "Holy Fool", one who succeeds by unconventional means which others might find dangerous, laughable or ignorant. He is guileless, innocent, and well-meaning, and his reactions to others are based on these inner qualities of his rather than on following any socially accepted notions about how he "should" judge the people he encounters or how he "should" react to them. All of these qualities reflect aspects of the nature of the Sacred Feminine.
He naively expects to succeed in the face of challenges which a more "worldly" person might consider impossible and so not even attempt, and it is this "foolish" confidence and innocence which make it possible for him to succeed where others would fail.
Even as a child, when the other children are dominated by their preconceived ideas about the evil nature of "witches", Edward addresses her politely and respectfully with the result that she becomes the first of his many benefactors. He is also predisposed to take the positive view when evaluating his circumstances. Confronted with the choice of whether or not he wants to see a vision of his future death, he realizes that it could have a negative effect on him if he let it, but he also understands that it could empower him, and his decision to look at this choice as a positive opportunity has a positive result -- this knowledge serves to fortify his courage in a way that contributes greatly to the success of his future adventures.
Where many are quick to leap to negative judgments of others based on outward appearances, Edward is compassionate. As he says after his encounter with a ’werewolf’, "...most things you consider evil or wicked are simply lonely and lacking in social nicities."
When he is attacked by the werewolf/ringmaster and he sees that the circus clown is about to (regretfully) shoot the wolf with a silver bullet, Edward stands between them, says "No!" and ends up taking the bullet instead. As a result of this compassionate response in the face of the wolf’s aggression, when Edward throws a stick in the wolf’s direction, the suddenly docile wolf takes this as an invitation to play "fetch" and his human counterpart, the ringmaster, is won over and becomes another benefactor, helping Edward to find his future wife.
This symbolism of Edward taking the responsibility for the wolf’s aggressive actions, "taking the bullet", also suggests that he is at a stage of being able to take back the negative psychological projections which he has previously made onto the outside world, and integrate these ’shadow’ qualities consciously as a part of himself, which ’wounds’ the ego’s previously out-of proportion sense of self-esteem. This exaggerated sense of his own personal importance is most likely represented by the figure of the ’giant’ who was Edward’s travel companion earlier in the film, until Edward finally left the giant behind at the very circus where his compassionate interaction with the ’evil’ werewolf took place.
No matter what situation he finds himself in, Edward’s instinctive response is to give the other person the benefit of the doubt and to try to help them out, achieving his own success by putting their best interests first. He converses politely with the giant, prevents him from becoming a destructive influence by helping him to get out of a too-small town, and later helps him to become a star at the circus.
Edward’s courage inspires Norther to leave Spectre, and later, as Norther is attempting to rob the (bankrupt) bank, Edward gives him his own deposit because he doesn’t want him to leave empty-handed, and then gives Norther the information he needs to pursue his success on Wall Street, again managing to convert initially destructive tendencies into constructive growth.
He also arranges for the Korean twins to find a successful career in America, and later all of these characters join forces to make it possible for Edward to redeem Spectre (Edward’s willingness to devote his energies to improving the well-being of others redeems his youthful illusion that the purpose of life is pleasure, ease, and self-indulgence).
This quality of Edward’s of being able to bridge the gap between notions of "good" and "evil", and between the "outer" circumstances of life and the "inner" world of its mythic meaning, is another mark of his destiny to succeed in the quest for the Grail, where all opposites are reconciled.
In fact, if we look at all of the mythical Edward’s unusual qualities -- he treats others as he would like to be treated, he has no fear of death, he has a childlike innocence, is honest, courageous, compassionate, hard-working and determined, is not discouraged by the appearance of "evil" but "overcomes evil with good", puts the well-being of others ahead of his own and never gives up -- the mythical Edward resembles nothing less than the ideal spiritual initiate who has awakened to his Higher Self (the fruit of the ultimately successful Grail Quest).
From the perspective of the Higher Self, the world is seen as it ultimately is: One, and all of its creatures are recognized as being Divine in their shared essence as parts of One greater Unity, which is why the highest good of one always contributes to the highest good of all.
You might even say that Edward’s mythic Self represents that part of him which has already achieved the Quest (his ’Higher Self’), and the terrestrial Edward -- spurred on by his unusual awareness of this mythic level of his own identity and aware of its potential ability to re-shape and redeem his experience -- simply spends his life ’catching up’ to the vision of what his mythic Self and its adventures have always represented to him: the nature of his own ultimate, and inevitable High Destiny as a true Knight of The Holy Grail.
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