The Women of the Graal: The Christian Crusade Against the Feminine Archetype

Abstract

This article works as a riddle, offering several interpretations not only about what the Graal is, but also to whom it serves. Some specialists on Arthurian matters describe the image of a woman touching the Graal. Could it be that the Graal was an originally pre-Christian object? Why is it that this symbolic image of masculine theological, sexual, military and political discourse is guarded by women? To answer these questions, the paper discusses Celtic narratives to explain the extermination of Catarism and Occitan culture (where women had a defining role), touching on the Mediterranean and Indo-iranian origins of the myth. The riddle can only be solved weaving the above mentioned concepts with the symbolic and archetypal dimension of human existence. The narrative shows the thorough task of the Roman Cred to exclude systematically any traces of the feminine in the configuration of explicative models about the spiritual, emotional and social aspects of the individual.