Parzival and the Wounded King

What I learned from my journey through the Waste Land

Percival with the Grail Cup by Arthur Hacker

To kick this off I would like to share my personal experience with the Wounded Healer, and why specifically I choose the story of Parzival to understand and work through this. Around 13 years ago I had a profound mystical experience not long after starting a meditation practice. It was a complete dissolution of polarity where everything merged into a congruent whole, many years later I would have similar experiences with Psychedelics, but at the time it was a novel experience with no reference point to compare it to. This led me to reevaluating my beliefs, and catalysed a heroes adventure in search of a deeper truth of myself fuelled by a desire to return to this non-dual experience. Prior to this I was atheist and living an unhealthy life - I was suffering with addictions, poor relationships and a body that matched this. This experience served as a kiss from the divine, in which I could no longer deny that there is something beyond the physical reality. I wanted to know more!

Parzival and the Grail Castle

In Parzival there are two visits to the Grail Castle, with the castle symbolising the mystical inner world. They say you get two chances in the Grail Castle to ask the right question and if you fail to do so on the first try (as nearly everyone does) you are sent off on a journey to gain the life experience to be able to ask the right question the second time. If you fail on your second entry, they say this usually happens around the age of 35-50 then it is all downhill from there, life will not bear fruit and you will have to wait until the next lifetime to try again.

This is a pursuit worthy of your attention.

The Waste Land

Elijah in the Desert by Washington Allston

To give an example that most can probably relate to our cultural landscape - at 42 you become disillusioned with work life and realise you have been climbing the wrong ladder your whole life. This creates a fork:

Option one - to listen to this disillusionment as a message trying to guide you to course correct. This usually means a major upheaval and crisis, what is known as the waste land in Parzival. Joseph Campbell shares in Romance of the Grail “In the Waste Land, life is fake. People are living in a manner which is not of their true nature: they are living according to a system of rules” This is when you no longer want to live how you are living, but feel in some way obligated to do so. There could be financial commitments, a relationship that needs ending, or habits that have been lingering your whole life which need addressing. But in option 1 - you make the necessary changes and accept the consequences almost certainly upsetting many people in the process.

Option two - you try to be “normal”. In the modern day, it usually means taking medication to numb the longing, until it becomes so suppressed that it feels as if it is gone. But when this option is taken it manifests somewhere as an illness or addiction, or endlessly scrolling on Facebook Marketplace looking for a Campervan you wish you had plucked up the courage to buy.

Both options have their dangers. In the former, you can get stuck in the wasteland, not quite sure how to transition to the Grail Castle, some live here for their entire life, because they do not understand “Who the Grail serves?”. This manifests in endless self-help books, retreats and therapist visits. It is a very self centred approach to the spiritual life.

The latter is also what some people are here to experience, some people become content with not becoming deeply intimate with themselves. Either there is not enough energy available to make changes or the potential exile from the world they have come to know is too much to bear. It can be the safer option, as the transition from Waste Land to Grail Castle always comes with its dangers.

In Parzival when he crosses the castle drawbridge to both enter and exit, the bridge always clips the back of his horse’s hooves. This says, a few millimetres is the difference between entering or leaving the spiritual realm intact. As you enter you can experience “death by astonishment” as Terrance Mckenna puts it, or on leaving death by disappointment that you are back in the world of the mundane. It is a dangerous crossing to make.

For me the non-dual experience I had was my first visit to the Grail Castle, which became both a blessing and burden. It opened my eyes to the Mysteries - it pierced the veil (Par-zi-fal), but I became possessed by the experience wanting nothing more than to return to this place of unity. The paradox is, this was both the cause of my suffering and the call to heal it. I was coasting along in ignorance destroying myself which was shattered in an instant, but when the experience had finished I was still me, with addictions and an unsatisfying life. I had to change and I didn’t know how, but like Parzival I thought I did.

The experience I had was profound, but unearned, given by the grace of the creator. It is the kind of thing most people have to sweep the ashram floor for 12 years to achieve. This can, and in my case did, create inflation. A feeling of specialness. As if I had been chosen for something big, and my experience was exclusive, because if people were having these experiences surely it would be on the front page of every newspaper, and being sung from the mountain top. This leads to the spiritual equivalent of your drunk friend trying to explain why their football team is the best in the world, even though they are ranked 13th in the league.

This was my adventure in the Waste Land!

Parzival and the Forest

After Parzivals Father, Gamurat, dies in battle, his Mother Herzeloyde shelters him in the forest away from the dangers of courtly life and knighthood. But as things tend to go in Myth, she cannot. Parzival is walking in the woods one day and meets three Knights from King Arthur's court. They fill him with enthusiasm and stories of Knighthood, and in this moment he decides to make his way to Camelot and become a Knight. Of course his Mother is horrified, but seeing the look in his eyes she knows there is no dissuading him. She gives him a homespun garment to wear, dressing him like a fool, hoping he will be laughed out of court and sent home.

In his first battle he accidentally kills a masterful red knight, takes his armour, but places it on top of the homespun undergarment his Mother gave him to wear.

The Wounded King

When I first heard Parzival, the second character which spoke to me was Anfortas, the Grail King. Also known as the Fisher King or Wounded King. He has a wound in his genitals. As Robert A. Johnson puts it in He: Understanding Masculine Psychology:

“Our story begins with the Grail castle, which is in serious trouble. The Fisher King, the king of the castle, has been wounded. His wounds are so severe that he cannot live, yet he is incapable of dying. He groans; he cries out; he suffers constantly. The whole land is in desolation, for a land mirrors the condition of its king, inwardly in a mythological dimension, as well as outwardly in the physical world. The cattle do not reproduce; the crops won’t grow; knights are killed; children are orphaned; maidens weep; there is mourning everywhere—all because the Fisher King is wounded.”

In adolescence the king burnt his fingers after stealing a salmon that was roasting on a spit while walking in a forest, and to relieve the pain he put his fingers in his mouth, getting a small piece of the salmon in his mouth also. This could be seen as the adolescent who sees too much and is burned by the light of an experience he is not wise enough to be able to process, in my case it was an unearned non-dual experience. At that moment he was shot through the testicles with an arrow, a wound that does not heal. He is carried everywhere and is only happy when he is fishing. The water symbolises the deep unconscious mind and the fish is a symbol of the Christed experience he longs to return to. It was said he could only be healed from his wound when a fool rides up and asks him the question “whom does the grail serve?” or “what ails you?”.

That Fool is Parzival.

The Holy Grail

This article is part 1 of 2, in the next we delve into the world of the Wounded Healer and the relationship between this Myth and the Wounded Healer Archetype.

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Thanks for reading! Please join me for a live class this Tuesday February 4th 6:30PM-8:30PM BST to answer some of the questions posed in this article, and dive deeper into these concepts. This class will be interactive with the intention to help you nurture a relationship with your own wounded healer. The world is currently passing through an upheaval. Economies are threatening to collapse. People are becoming tired of the deception, and are looking for alternatives to the old paradigm. The solution is inside of you, it is just a matter of drawing out the gifts you have for the world and offering the uniqueness only you can offer in service to the planet. This is the seed we will be planting on this call, and I would love to see you there.

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