To introduce this quest, the following announcement of a study trip with images and a map made in the summer of 2014 may suffice in order to gain the necessary interest and means to realize this project. This summer a project for a travel guide called Grailways based on the same book as the study trip, namely "How the Grail Sites Were Found - Wolfram von Eschenbach as a Historian" by the Swiss Grail researcher Werner Greub (1905-1997) had to be postponed to next year.
Amsterdam, August 11, 2014 - In the framework of the "Munsalvaesche
Project - Quest for the Underground Grail Rock Temple" a small group
of motivated grail researchers will embark from August 16 to 24, 2014
on a study and exploration journey from the Netherlands via Alsace, cradle of
the medieval grail family, to the Arlesheim Ermitage (see map) just south of
Basel, Switzerland, site of the proposed Grail area Terre de salvaesche with as its center the Grail palace Munsalvaesche from Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival.
To be conducted by Robert Jan Kelder, founder of the budding "Willehalm
Order of Knights of the Word" and
translator and publisher of the book "How the
Grail Sites Were Found - Wolfram von Eschenbach As a Historian", the final goal of this excursion is drawn from the
groundbreaking research of this book by the Swiss anthroposophist Werner Greub
(1909-1997). For in this thorough research report, based on an
indication by the founder of the science of the Grail or anthroposophy,
Rudolf Steiner (1863-1925), the location of Wolfram's Grail palace
Munsalvaesche is shown to be in the Arlesheimer Ermitage, an ancient Celtic
holy place and cultural landscape. Accordingly, this excursion endeavors to
again draw attention to – and also to eventually confirm by archaeological
research – the scientific hypothesis that on an ancient Roman quarry in this Grail
area the architect Titurel in the 9th century built this wooden Grail palace
with an underground rock temple. Here the Grail brotherhood would have guarded
and beheld the Grail and staged Christian mystery dramas, the climax of which would
have occurred, according to Greub, in 848 underneath the Star Munsalvaesche,
when Parzival became king of the Grail through the spiritual guidance of
Wolframs enigmatic Master Kyot the Provence, who would be none other than
Willehalm from Wolframs epic poem by that name, the Frankish William of Orange,
founder of the original House of Orange and patron saint of Celtic Christianity
– a truly momentous albeit largely unrecognized event in the living tradition
of the Mystery of Golgotha, the incarnation, crucifixion and
resurrection of Christ, heralding a new chapter in the spiritual history of
mankind ...Or, as the hermit Trevrizent exclaimed to Parzival after he became
Grail king (P. 798:1-15),:
“A greater marvel never occurred, in that, after all, with your defiance
you have wrung the concession from God that his everlasting Trinity has granted
you your wish.”
And as Werner Greub comments:
“With these words, Trevrizent indicates the actual new impulse in history, which
became possible during the triple great conjunction in the constellation of
Pisces. Until then all striving for the Grail was of no use. One had to be
divinely summoned by Heaven to the Grail. This changed with Parzival. Through
independent thinking and conscious striving for the Grail, Parzival himself
created the preconditions so that the Grail could become his own. This is an
absolute novelty, the actual great miracle of the history of the Grail. That is
why Trevrizent says: groezer wunder selten ie geschah. - A greater marvel never occurred.” (p. 190 of his Grail Sites book)
Detailed Introduction to and
History of the Munsalvaesche Project
The following introduction to this project is an
adaptation of the detailed introduction written on May 28, 2009 on the occasion
of the presentation in the Amstelkerk in
Amsterdam of the Grail sites book by Werner Greub (the letters and
articles in the original German and Dutch included have been translated into
English). This introduction with arguments both forward and against was mailed
on the eve of Michaelmas, September 29, 2009 with an accompanying letter and
enclosure to the management of the firm TAUW. This company published on
September 5, 2006 a note under the title "Ground Tracer Reveals Soil
Secrets Without Drilling" , of which the first two paragraphs went as
follows:
"The
Consultancy and Engineering firm Tauw is now employing ground tracer technique
to more precisely locate underground objects and contaminants. After
archaeological finds, Tauw at the request of the municipality of Utrecht made
measurements with this new technique to obtain exact images of the remains of a
Roman military bath house located on the Hoge Woerd.
Using the tracer and
radar engineering excavations, old locks, landfills, foundations and
archaeological remains can be quickly and efficiently identified. The great value
of this is that at an early stage an informed plan for the location can be
drawn without costly drilling activities Research and final data processing can
be carried out quickly and efficiently. Ground Tracer research is a highly
important part of a research project. Continued drilling work can thus be used
very specifically. Also, a similar coupling can be made with a representative
surface, so that the overall picture becomes much more reliable. The final
output is better and more accurate than other non-destructive research
techniques."
The accompanying
letter to "the honorable board of TAUW", which remained unanswered,
read as follows:
"Following the
above TAUW note from 2006, I now contact you about The Munsalvaesche Project. This
archaeological project, based on the pioneering Grail Research of the Swiss
anthroposophist Werner Greub in his book" William of Orange, Parzival and
the Grail - Wolfram von Eschenbach as a historian ", I have introduced in
the enclosure. I hope this project can count on your interest and that on the
basis thereof an even fruitful as interesting collaboration may occur, which
can lead to the Hornikopf hill in the Arlesheimer Ermitage in Switzerland finally
revealing its secret: namely that on an ancient Roman quarry half way up this
foothill of the Jura mountains in the 9th century once stood Wolfram von
Eschenbach's Grail castle Munsalvaesche with an underground temple, as
indicated in Werner Greub’s book with the help of precise typographic
instructions and detailed proofs (on the displayed map of Arlesheimer Ermitage
the number 7 indicates the location of the Grail castle)."
The authority, which for the first time exhibited the
Grail research by Werner Greub and made it public to the world at large was
not the original publisher, the Goetheanum, School of Spiritual Science in
Dornach near Basel, but the local museum Trotte of the adjacent village of
Arlesheim. This small museum celebrated in 1985 with a six-month-long
exhibition the 200th anniversary of the once famous Arlesheim Ermitage as an Old
English Garden, in which also attention was given to the findings of Werner
Greub’s research on this ancient Celtic holy place as a Grail area. This was
done by an exhibition text mounted above a display case with a copy of the book
by Greub, tours of the Ermitage led by myself and an evening conversation with
the author, which was repeated because of great interest. My text written for
the exhibition was published on April 4, 1985 in the local weekly
"Wochenblatt für das Birseck und Dorneck” with an illustration of a 18th
century print of the Ermitage under the title "Arlesheim in the 9th
century". The text (without the footnotes) read as follows:
Arlesheim possesses a more than thousand year old mystery tradition. For the Celtic Druids, Ottilia and Irish-Scottish Christianity, the knights of King Arthur and
the Grail, the Friends of God, Rosicrucians and Freemasons have all left their
mark in the Ermitage. In his booklet Arlesheim and Ottilia – History and Legend
of a Village and its benevolent Patron Saint (Arlesheim, 1967) the author
Hermann Jülich has described this.
The designation Grail landscape for this ancient mystery tradition of Arlesheim can become a living experience, if in the company of Rudolf Steiner 1 one tries to understand under the term Holy Grail all that is associated with the Christian renewal of the mysteries of the Orient that have reemerged since the 4th century within the mysteries of the Occident.2 Then also the supposition that the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate was the one responsible for the construction of the irrigation system and the hollowing out of the rocky caves for the purpose of building a mystery center in the Ermitage gains credibility. For Julian, who around the middle of the 4th century resided for some time in his palace nearby Kaiseraugst on the Rhine, was passionate in striving everywhere to connect the pagan mysteries with a cosmic, sun-like Christianity.3
Among
those conceding that the Grail events possess at least some kind of earthly
reality, it is now generally accepted that the Grail Landscape Terre de
Salvaesche as described by Wolfram von Eschenbach in his Parzival romance is situated in the Pyrenees (Montségur) where
the essential Grail events are said to have occurred in the 12th
century.4
Indications attributed to Rudolf Steiner, however, point to the
direction of Arlesheim and the 9th century.5
But because no conclusive documentary evidence was thought to exist, this
question remained unresolved.
With the
publication of Werner Greub’s work ‘How The Grail Sites
Were Found – Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Reality of the Grail’ 6, however, this situation has since then
changed considerably. For with this research report based on a careful
comparison of the original [Middle High German] Parzival text with the geographical and topographical reality
of Arlesheim and surroundings and by means of numerous philological,
astronomical-astrological and religious-historical studies, Werner Greub has
attempted to verify what has been handed down by Rudolf Steiner from a purely
anthroposophic mode of spiritual scientific research. As such, Werner Greub has
made the results of his research on the Ermitage available as a basis for
discussion for those interested:
The Arlesheim Ermitage was in the 9th
century the Grail landscape Terre de salvaesche, the center stage of the Grail
events that occurred during that period.
Robert J. Kelder
The exhibition was well attended and well received by
the Swiss press. The Tages-Anzeiger in Zurich published a number of articles as
well as the Basler Zeitung, which on June 12, 1985 reported on the evening
conversation with Werner Greub, ending as follows:
"There are no documents
nor ruins substantiating the thesis that the grail history has actually
occurred. Consequently, Eschenbach's poem forms the ‘missing link’. But the
audience seemed convinced that Greub was right., No critical voice, just a
question of whether on the Hornikopf in the back of the Ermitage, where
according Greub the Grail castle Munsalvaesche was located, there are ruins are
quite. ‘The rock,’[where Parzival on his path to the Grail castle had to turn
right] said Greub, ‘is gone, because gypsum was mined there.’ ’The Grail castle
was a wooden building with room for four hundred knights. ‘Perhaps,’ Greub suspects,
‘there are some remains under the ruins in the quarry further down.’ One would
therefore have to dig, but that requires a lot of money. That would be a case
for UNESCO, which after all has funded the rescue of Abu Simbel in Egypt. Salvaging a location that is as significant
as the Grail castle in Europe, would have to be possible. But Greub’s research
is very controversial."
How controversial Greubs findings are, mainly from
academic quarters, is shown by the following letters (with enclosures) from
June 7, 1985 by Dr. J. Ewald, the then active archeologist of the "Amt für Museen und
Archäologie" of the Canton Basel Land in Liestal, which he had delivered
in Arlesheim, after I had, next to a request for information, also invited him
to attend the evening conversation with Greub that day in Museum Trotte. Under
the title Arlesheim and the "Grail"
he wrote (in my translation from the German):
"You have on very
short terms urgently asked about documents or inquired about our ‘Grail quest’
prompted by Mr. Greub in the summer of 1977. A newspaper article does not exist
in our files.
I have made an effort to
briefly survey the whole affair again including the files. Perhaps I would have
even driven tonight to Arlesheim, if only to explain what archeology really is,
and what people like Mr. W. Greub understand "archaeology" to be and
wreak havoc on it!
Although I myself could
to some degree sympathize with some of Greub’s notions such as descriptions of
Orange, Arles, etc. (just because, or even though I have studied Middle High
German and earned my degree in it years ago), the ‘archaeological evidence’ of
W. Greub I must vehemently reject. What one is likely to suspect, is simply
declared to be late-Roman and then one searches desperately for ‘Roman stone
carving' on the rock steps, which arguably are partly caused at the end of the
18th century; because the ponds behind the Ermitage not dated, they must be
'Roman', the carp ponds constructed for the Druids, which are therefore also simultaneously
proved to be such.
At the time I agreed to
the request by W. Greub in order not to fall prey to the common E. v Däniken
judgment: archaeologists would anyway be
blind and not dig where the real 'wise' and 'insiders' recommend it. We have
dug and found no human artifacts. The conclusion of Greub, that this shows how
good the Grail is hiding, has unfortunately nothing to do anymore with
archeology and science.
From any reverent
entering the site together with other believers and disciples, to whom I laboriously
would have to show how and with what tools an archaeologist can work, I
unfortunately do not expect anything. This has nothing to do with history and realistic
considerations of finds. I must unfortunately say to you that my time for this
is too precious for me.
Sincerely,
(Is signed) J. Ewald
"
The first enclosure consisted of the description of
four incisions or cuts done according to the instructions of Werner Greub on
the western part of the Hornikopf below point 555.8, but which yielded nothing,
hence the conclusion, "The quest for
Munsalvaesche was temporarily discontinued."
The second enclosure was a topographical map showing
where the four cuts were made.
Well, the now technologically obsolete soil survey of
the district archaeologist J. Ewald is not decisive, because it only proves
that nothing was found in the four specific cuts. The size of the Grail castle
was much larger that surveyed and therefore Werner Greub may well have been
right in saying that the Grail, or at least the Grail castle, " knew well how
to hide itself." But from now on it should be possible, without spending
too much money and effort, by means of “ground penetrating radar" and
infrared spectrometry to renew the abandoned quest for the Grail castle Munsalvaesche
and once and for all determine whether Werner Greub’s hypothesis is right that
Wolfram von Eschenbach's Grail castle Munsalvaesche once stood on the Hornikopf.
Because if this turns out to be true, the underground
rock temple, to which according to Wolframs Parzival,
a steel door at the rear of the stage of the Grail palace was the entrance,
must still exist and therefore findable.
In order to encourage this quest, which the Willehalm
Institute want to restart under the name “The Munsalvaesche Project” with the required
technical means (and staff), we provide a letter by Adalbert Count von Keyserlingk,
son of the Count on whose estate Koberwitz Rudolf Steiner in 1924 held his
course course on biodynamic agriculture, a letter written in Stuttgart on
September 5, 1985:
Dear Mr. Kelder, and at the same time, My Dear Friend
Greub,
Many thanks for your information that you sent me on
April 17, 1985 regarding the exposition on the occasion of the 200th
anniversary of the Ermitage in Arlesheim.
From my youth on, I have occupied myself with just
that area, made countless walks at all times of the day and night and came back
each time enriched and endowed.
The accounts by His Excellency (General) von Moltke,
Emil Bock and many others, also about their conversations with Rudolf Steiner
concerning the Ermitage, I experienced partly at first hand and with Mr.
Grosse, my school friend, I discussed the questions concerning this Grail area
intensively.
Thus I was glad when the book by Werner Greub – to
begin with, as announced, the first, exoteric volume – appeared. His destiny
happened to lead him as an officer of a corps of engineers just into that this
stretch of land that he was interested in, with the result that after thorough
research he was able to motivate his hunches and experiences. A real knowledge
of the truth of this ancient Mystery place arose in him – an important event in
the entire field of Grail research.
At the time that the opinions about this first volume
on the reality of the Grail began to diverge, I made a point of visiting Mr.
Greub. We compared our studies concerning Mystery places, established that they
were completely in agreement and confirmed our mutual sympathy.
The work of the publisher, however, this I had to
counter, was such that if I had been the publisher, I would have been ashamed. But
this has nothing to do with the contents.
After the destructive, yet in no way professionally
motivated criticism by a schoolmaster appeared, I was angry on two counts. On
the one hand, it seemed to me to have less to do with the actual contents of
the book than with a general subjective, different approach, and on the other
hand, it maintained generalities that were not in line with the thoroughness of
the work. This reminded me of my own experiences with my book Koberwitz 1924*, although a negative review of it with passages quoted out of context
suddenly caused an increase in sales.
If the writer of the criticism of Greub’s book, Mr.
Lindenberg, would have taken up contact with the author and would have
evaluated the first volume as part of a work that included a second volume,
then untruths would have been avoided in the world to make room for an
objective cognitional attitude, which is more than necessary in spiritual life.
One is instinctively reminded of the destiny of the Parzival story (Willehalm)
that apparently is only revealed to those who are inwardly connected with the
secrets of the Grail.
I convey my best wishes for your plans and am with
heart-felt greetings, your
Signed: A. Count Keyserlingk
For the so-called “Day of Ideals”, which was organized
by, among others, the Dutch Christian-orientated daily newspaper TROUW on
October 10, 2009 at the Passenger Terminal in the port of Amsterdam, I posted
the first version of this introduction to the Munsalvaesche Project on the website of TROUW and entered it along
with six other idealistic endeavors, such as “The New Position of Amsterdam – A
Social Organic Civilization Offensive” and “The New Kingship – A Contribution to
the Modernization of the Monarchy” hoping to make them better known and win over other
potential co-workers and sponsors. However, it was all in vain…Were these
projects aiming too high at the time?
Perhaps this Munsalvaesche Project will now, in view the
threatening world situation and danger of a Third World War, no longer be overlooked.
From a broader and deeper perspective, it can in the light of "The New
Christianity" namely help raise awareness of the possible salvation of mankind
on earth. The following anthroposophic-Christological thoughts drawn from The
Gospel of John and the Fifth Gospel of Rudolf Steiner, with the help of the reference
to the indicated links, can elaborate this to some extent:
With His crucifixion and resurrection, Christ became
the spirit of the earth and the planet as a new sun His Body. Therewith the
house-keeping of the earth i.e. the world economy has become an essential part
of the task of The New Christianity characterized
by Rudolf Steiner in 1924 Arnhem, Holland in the first of his three his lectures on “The Karma of
the Anthroposophical Society and Content of the Anthroposophical Movement” as being the source of the
inspiration in the spiritual world (in heaven) of anthroposophy (on earth). In this light, the statement by Rudolf Steiner
to Walter Johannes Stein, author of “World History in the Light of the
Grail – The Ninth Century”, can be understood that the contemporary Grail
impulse of our time consists in turning the current global economy based on
greed and misguided by short-sighted materialistic thinking into a world
economy driven by the love of mankind and the earth and guided by holistic
social-organic thinking. This is the objective of the Willehalm Order of Knights of the Word, which on 28 May last
filed a petition to Dutch King Willem-Alexander to supplement the Military William Order with a Civil one. How
this new economic order can be realized Rudolf Steiner has shown in his course on World Economy in Dornach held for students
of economics in 1922, and that one of his main students, the philosopher,
writer and industrialist Herbert Witzenmann (1905-1988) further elaborated, e.g.
in his introduction to the World Economy course: “The Just Price – World Economy as
Social Organics”. It follows from this budding science of world economy that the whole
earth, seen from a religious point of view
as of the body of Christ, has become from an economic perspective, the
social organism with its three production factors nature, labor and capital, a
social organism that through the formation of a world-wide network of economic
associations consisting of consumers, traders and producers could ensure that
through the balance of economic values just prices are generated. A misunderstood, unjust world economy,
particularly the rising tension between the main industrial powers of Great Britain
and Germany was, besides the still unresolved problem of nationalities,
especially in Eastern Europe and now also in the Middle East, the main cause
for the outbreak exactly 100 years ago, of the catastrophic First World War.
The
possible confirmation by an archaeological soil survey of the location of the
subterranean temple of the Grail palace Munsalvaesche in the Arlesheim Ermitage
in Basel, Switzerland and the accompanying metamorphosis of the Grail story of
Parzival as mere legend to the historical reality of the Grail and Wolfram
spokesman Kyot the Provençal as the medieval William of Orange, would be a
powerful incentive to now finally take the Grail impulse of the 21st century seriously.
But even in the unlikely case that nothing were to be found to collaborate Greub’s
hypothesis or that no attempt at all will be undertaken to do so, the
transformation of the present world economy based on the groundwork laid down
by Rudolf Steiner remains a challenging enterprise with the highest priority
for all men and women of goodwill and clear thinking.
Hopefully
it is not already too late to thereby banish and outcast the dark forces that
are under the leadership of the “unjust prince of this world” feverishly and
incessantly at work to again unleash "a war of all against all.”
1 In his basic book Occult
Science – An Outline Rudolf Steiner has named anthroposophy also science of
the Grail.
2 Rudolf Steiner The
Mysteries of the East and Christianity. For another approach, see Rudolf
Steiner’s lecture cycle Christ and the
Spiritual World and the Search for the Holy Grail, both available from the
Anthroposophic Press (USA) and the Rudolf Steiner Press in England.
3 This supposition is made by Werner Greub in his
manuscript Vom Gralschristentum zur
Anthroposophie Rudolf Steiners (From
Grail Christianity to Rudolf Steiner‘s Anthroposophy) which has not yet
officially been published.
4 See e.g. Otto Rahn Kruezzug gegen den Gral (Crusade against the Grail, Germany
1933). In the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by M. Baigent, R. Leigh and H.
Lincoln (first published in London, 1982, Pocket ed. p.56) it is maintained
without any precise reference that “Wolfram von Eschenbach, in one of his Grail
romances, declares that the Grail Castle
(Munsalvaesche) was situated in the Pyrenees.”
5 In her memoirs Selbsterlebtes
im Zusammensein mit Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner (Personal experiences
in the company of Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner, published in Basle, 2nd ed. 1977) Ilona Schubert writes that Rudolf Steiner designated the whole area of
the Arlesheim Ermitage as Grail territory where Parzival’s meetings with Sigune
and his schooling with Trevrizent had taken place. According to Rudolf Steiner
there were not one but several Grail castles. A further remark by I. Schubert,
however, according to which Rudolf Steiner said that “the Grail Castle where
Trevrizent and Anfortas guarded the Grail was situated in northern Spain and
later on at Montségur in southern France” is difficult to rhyme with the location of
the Grail castle as described by Wolfram. For it is clear from the whole Parzival context that Trevrizent as well
as Sigune lived in close proximity to Munsalvaesche (e.g. “a mile or more”). If
one comes to regard Parzival not as a
fairy-tale, but a true geographically and historically based poetic document,
it follows that Wolfram’s Munsalvaesche could not have been in Spain or France,
but only here in Arlesheim. See also Emil Bock Studien zum Lebenswerk Rudolf Steiners (Stuttgart, 1961) and Walter
Johannes Stein The Ninth Century – World
History in the Light of the Holy Grail (London, 1991).
6 Werner Greub writes in this book that he was aware
from the time of his youth of the historical truth of Wolfram’s epics. During
World War II he had as a Swiss army officer his command post in the Goetheanum
building from where his task was to reconnoitre the whole terrain in and around
the Hermitage with its many grottos and caves for defense purposes, the same
area that he was later to identify as the central Grail area Terre de Salvaesche.
* Koberwitz 1924 – Geburtstunde einer
neuen Landwirtschaft, Verlag Hilfswerk Elizabeth, Stuttgart 1974. This book about the birth of a new biological-dynamic
agriculture through Rudolf Steiner in 1924 contains memoirs of Adalbert’s
mother, Countess Johanna von Keyserlingk, her son and other participants such
as Wilhelm Rath and Rudolf Meyer. In 1968, the same publishers brought out Gralburg (Grail Castle) by J. von
Keyserlingk which included conversations with Rudolf Steiner and epilogues by
R. Meyer and A.von Keyserlingk.