Antonio Gadal

Поскольку о Граале говорится и пишется много, каждый ищет что-то значимое для себя. Самое загадочное здесь то, каким образом эта священная реликвия вообще оказалась связанной с альбигойцами? Ведь мы знаем так же и рассказ о том, что Иосиф Аримафейских лично отвез Чашу – если это была действительно чаша – в Англию, в Гластонбери…
(Кажется, что каждая страна по своему трактовала легенду о Граале, с учетом местных фольклорных особенностей и легенд... Проходя «сквозь» местную мифологию, эта легенда - и сам артефакт – обретали форму, в которой были наиболее приемлемы и священны в данной местности? В Англии, в Британии, где кельты и друиды почитали богиню Керрридвенн и ее священный котел – Грааль так же принял форму чаши. А в Пиренеях, где поклонялись Кибеле в пещерах и гротах, где находили метеориты, упавшие с неба, с их целительными свойствами – Грааль стал камнем, упавшим практически тоже с неба, из короны Люцифера. Не забудем, что легенды о Граале имеют больше литературное происхождение, скажем так, а не фольклорное.)

In the early 20th century, a series of palm leaves, containing anomalous writing, were apparently discovered within a hidden cache of the walls of the Cathar castle of Montségur. Though without any intrinsic value, the “wooden book” – as it became known – would become the centrepiece of the esoteric and metaphysical community; its discoverers even labelled it “the Oracle” and said it was able to contact the hidden masters of Agharta.

Montségur is seen as the final stronghold of the Cathar faith, a bastion of true devotion besieged by the worldly ambitions of the papal troops. In March 1244, the Cathars that had been locked inside the castle for months finally surrendered; approximately 220 were burned en masse in a bonfire at the foot of the pog when they refused to renounce their convictions.

Otto Wilhelm Rahn (February 18, 1904—March 13, 1939) was a German medievalist and a Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant) of the SS, born in Michelstadt, Germany.

Speculation still swirls around Otto Rahn and his research. From an early age, he became interested in the legends of Parsifal, Holy Grail, Lohengrin, and the Nibelungenlied. While attending the University of Giessen he was inspired by his professor, the Baron von Gall, to study the Albigensian (Catharism) movement, and the massacre that occurred at Montségur. Rahn is quoted as saying that "It was a subject that completely captivated me''".
Work

Berlin between the wars was a city known throughout Europe for its bohemian subculture of young intellectuals.  Amongst the personalities who hotly debated the many modernist “isms” that were fracturing the old ideological certainties that had glued together the 19th century, few individuals were more colorful or conspicuous than a febrile dark-haired, green-eyed young man called Otto Wilhelm Rahn.

 Rahn was welcomed in the cafes and nightclubs of 1930’s Berlin because he was a hyper-intense intellectual – a brilliant talker with a great deal to say but he was also a conspicuous outsider in that he was unfashionably dismissive of the emergent modernism that so excited his peers. Moreover, he had even less empathy with the cynicism and decadence that colored there lifestyle. Rather, like that of most Germans outside of Berlin, Rahn’s sensibility had been molded by influences wholly incompatible with the café society avante-garde.