Now let us turn our attention for a moment to the history of the Holy Grail, or the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper and which was said to have caught his blood when he was dying upon the cross. Ancient legends tell us that this cup was made from a sacred stone which had been the crown jewel of Lucifer, the dynamic energy of the universe. It was said that the green stone had been struck from the crown of Lucifer by the archangel Michael during the famous battle in heaven. After the death of Christ it is said that Joseph of Arimathea took the sacred cup and the spear of the Passion and carried them into a distant land. He wandered with his sacred relics through Europe and is said to have finally died, and those who came after him after many centuries of tribulation carried the sacred relics to Mount Salvart in northern Spain where they remained until Parsifal finally took the grail and spear back to the East where it is to be now preserved. It is around this cup and spear that the legends of Parsifal and King Arthur have been written, and it is through study of this fact that we are able to better understand the mystery of the Great White Lodge of which the Round Table of Arthur and the circular temple of the knights of the Grail is a symbol. Although we no longer have the cup as a physical symbol, it is not gone from among us, and as in the days of old the brave knights of the Round Table went out to fight for right, so those knights of today who belong to the Great White Brotherhood go out into the world in the name of truth and labor with mankind and seek to right the wrongs of the world. It is said that the knights of Arthur’s court always fought for virtue and purity, and so did those who rode out of Mount Salvart. The grail cup is the symbol of the creative force of nature; it is also the symbol of the human race which is slowly learning the mysteries of creation. Within the cup is the blood of Christ, that force which is transmuting the body into soul, fast or slowly as we give it greater or lesser opportunity. In the sacred spear we find symbolized again the creative force, which in the hands of Klingsor, the evil one, wounds and causes suffering, but which when held by the pure Parsifal heals the very wound that it caused. A great lesson is being taught to man through these allegories, but the average person is unwilling to stop and consider them. They do not realize that they themselves are the ones whom the Elder Brothers of humanity must use in the fight against the forces of evil. They do not realize that the dragons and ogres of the legends are their own lower natures which they must overcome. They do not see in the hand to hand combat of the knights of old for a lady’s hand the higher and lower man fighting for the soul within.