As we've established, it was a spiritual power that unified Europe in order to counter the Huns. It is no coincidence then that in legend the Grail appears to Percival and allows him to push back the Huns. It is said to bestow the powers of the Holy Spirit and reveal 'the beginning of all great deeds and the reason behind courageous feats,' or what can identified as inner awakening, purification of the self. Like alchemical fire it is a test, and terrible things fall upon the weak man who sets out to take it but fails. The Grail symbolizes victory in the inner war. Victory in battle, from the Catalaunian Plains to Las Navas de Tolosa to the Seige of Vienna, comes to those who first pass the test of the Grail. Those who fail the test, lose.

The Grail means more than a symbol of the inner war of course; it is also a romantic symbol. The full significance of the Grail is in the combined relation of both war and romance to spiritual fulfillment. As in war, outer love comes to those who first pass the test of inner love. As in war, it is a spiritual force that unites and empowers lovers and brings them true love, 'what a tongue could never express and the heart fail to realize.'

There is an idea that constantly recurs, in one form or another, in the traditions of many peoples: that of a mighty “Lord of the World” and of a mysterious realm above any visible one, a residence serving as a pole or axis, in the higher sense; an immutable center, depicted as a terra firma in the middle of the ocean of life, a sacred and intangible country, a land of light, or a solar land.

Metaphysical meanings, symbols, and obscure memories are inextricably mixed here. A central motif is the idea of Olympian regality and the “mandate from heaven.” Confucius says: “He who rules through the Virtue (of Heaven) resembles the pole star. He remains immobile while all things turn around him.” The idea of the “King of the World” as cakravartī dominates a series of secondary themes: the cakravartī—King of kings—turns the wheel, the wheel of the Regnum, of the “Law,” while he himself is unmoving. Invisible as the wind, his action has the irresistibility of natural forces.

…“Prester John” is not a name, but a noscript: there is mention of a dynasty of “Prester Johns” who, like the descendants of David, held both the kingly and the priestly office. The realm of Prester John often has traits of the “primordial place” and the “earthly paradise.” It is there that the Tree grows, which in some versions of the legend appears as the Tree of Life, in others as the Tree of Victory and universal dominion. There too is found the Luminous Stone, a stone that has the power to resuscitate the imperial bird, the Eagle. John subdues the peoples of Gog and Magog—the elementary forces, the demons of the collective. Various legends tell of symbolic journeys to Prester John’s country or to lands of similar meaning, taken by the greatest leaders of history in order to receive a kind of supranatural sanction for their power. For his part, Prester John is said to have sent symbolic gifts to emperors such as “Frederick,” which had the significance of a “divine mandate.” One of the heroes supposed to have reached the legendary land was Ogier the Dane. But in Ogier’s legend Prester John’s realm is identified with Avalon, hence with the Hyperborean island, the solar land, and the “white island.”

It was to Avalon that King Arthur retired. Tragic events, variously described in the sources, forced him to seek refuge there. This retirement of Arthur’s really means that a principle or a function became latent. According to legend, Arthur has never died, but lives on in Avalon and will come again. In the figure of King Arthur we have one of the many versions of the “polar ruler,” the “king of the world.” The historical element here is charged with a suprahistorical one. The old etymology already derived Arthur’s name from arkthos, meaning “bear,” which brings us back to the idea of the “center” via the astronomical symbolism of the polar constellation. The symbolism of the Round Table, of whose knightly order King Arthur is the supreme head, is both “solar” and “polar.”

…Those who consider the story of the Grail solely as a Christian legend, or an expression of “pagan Celtic folklore,” or the creation of high chivalric literature, will only grasp its most external, accidental, and insignificant aspects. Every attempt to trace the themes of the Grail to the spirit of a particular people is equally mistaken. For example, one may well claim that the Grail is a Nordic “mystery,” but only on condition that by “Nordic” one means something far more profound and comprehensive than “German” or even “Indo-Germanic”: something identical with the Hyperborean tradition itself, which is one with the primordial tradition of the present cycle. It is in fact from that tradition that all the chief motifs of the Grail legends derive.

…Moreover, the old Grail king has become impotent and unable to reign, due to a fatal wound from a poisoned lance while he was in the service of Orgeluse. It is obvious enough that this Orgeluse is a female personification of the principle of “pride.” However, other Grail knights such as Gawan (Gawain) are tested in Orgeluse’s own castle, but they do not succumb. They win and marry—“possess”—her. The meaning of this trial is the realization of a pure force, a spiritual virility; it transposes the heroic qualification onto a plane aloof from everything chaotic and violent. “The earthly chivalry must become a heavenly chivalry,” says the Quêste du Graal. This is the condition for opening the path to the Grail, for occupying the Siege Perilous without being thunderstruck—as the titans were struck by the Olympian god.

However, the fundamental theme of the whole Grail cycle is as follows: the hero of all these trials is given a final and decisive task. Once admitted to the Grail castle, he must feel the tragedy of the wounded Grail King, paralyzed or only seemingly alive, and he must take the initiative for an action of absolute restoration. The texts express this in various enigmatic forms: the Grail hero must “ask the question.” What question? It seems that the authors have chosen to remain silent. One has the impression that something prevents them from speaking, and that a banal explanation would hide the true one. But if we follow the inner logic of them all, it is not hard to understand what is really at stake: the question to be asked is the question of the Empire. It is not a matter of knowing —reading the texts literally—what certain objects in the Grail castle mean, but a matter of understanding the tragedy of decadence, and, having “seen” the Grail, to pose the problem of restoration. Only on that basis can the miraculous virtue of this enigmatic question become comprehensible: since the hero has not been indifferent and has “asked the question,” he thereby redeems the realm. He who only seemed to be alive dies; he who was wounded is healed. In every case the hero becomes the new and true king of the Grail, succeeding the last one. A new cycle begins.

According to some texts, the dead knight who seems to summon the hero to his mission and to vengeance appears in a coffin drawn on the sea by swans. Now, the swan is the bird of Apollo in the land of the Hyperboreans, in the primordial Nordic land. Drawn by swans, the knights depart from the supreme center, in which Arthur is king: from Avalon.

In other sources the Grail hero is called the knight of the two swords. In the theological-political literature of the time, especially on the Ghibelline side, the two swords signify no less than the double power, temporal and supranatural. In one Grail text the sword that is reforged has a guardian, whose name is memoria del sangue (memory of the blood).

The inaccessible and intangible realm of the Grail is also a reality in its form, in that it is not bound to any one place, to any visible organization, or to any earthly realm. It represents a native land to which one belongs in a different way from physical birth, by having the sense of a spiritual and initiatic dignity. This land unites, in an unbreakable chain, men who may seem scattered in the world, in space, in time, in nations, to the point of appearing isolated and unknown to each other. In this sense the realm of the Grail—like that of Arthur and Prester John, like Thule, Midgard, Avalon, and so on—is ever present. Following its “polar” nature, it is immobile. Consequently, it is not sometimes closer and sometimes further from the current of history; it is rather the current of history itself, which men and their realms may approach more or less closely.

…The whole Grail literature seems to be compressed into a relatively short period: no text seems to predate the last quarter of the twelfth century, and none to postdate the first quarter of the thirteenth century. After the latter period, mention of the Grail suddenly stops, as though on command. Writing about it only resumes many years later, and then in a different spirit. It seems (as Jessie Weston says) that at a certain moment an underground current surfaced, then as suddenly vanished again. The epoch of this sudden disappearance of the first Grail tradition coincides more or less with the tragedy of the Templars. Perhaps that was the beginning of the fracture.

…Like scattered channels, secret organizations seem to have preserved the ancient symbols and the Grail traditions even after the fall of the ecumenical imperial civilization. The Ghibelline “Fedeli d’Amore,” the troubadours of the later period, the Hermetists. Finally, we come to the Rosicrucians. There again the same myth appears: the solar citadel; the Imperator as “Lord of the Fourth Empire” and destroyer of every usurpation; an invisible fraternity of transcendent personalities, uniquely united by their essence and their intention; and, finally, the strange mystery of the resurrection of the King, a mystery that turns into the realization that the King to be resuscitated was already alive and awake. He who assists in this process bears the sign of the Templars: a white standard with a red cross. The Grail bird, the dove, is also present.

But a watchword seems to have been given in this case, too. Suddenly no one is talking about the Rosicrucians. Tradition tells that in the period when absolutism, rationalism, individualism, and illuminism were preparing the way for the French Revolution, and the Treaty of Westphalia sealed the definitive collapse of the autonomy of the Holy Roman Empire, the last Rosicrucians abandoned the West to retire to “India.”

“India” here is a symbol, equivalent to the home of Prester John, of the King of the World. It is Avalon; it is Thule. According to the Titurel, dark times have come for Salva Terra, where reside the knights of Monsalvat. The Grail can no longer stay there. It is transported to “India,” to the realm of Prester John, which is “near Paradise.” Once the Grail knights have arrived yonder, Monsalvat and its citadel appear there, magically transported, because “none of that must remain among the sinful peoples.”

— EA, Introduction to Magic III, The Legend of the Grail and the “Mystery” of the Empire

Ninurta's double-headed eagle sumerian

Sphinx Gate at Alaca Höyük

Rock sanctuary of Yazilikaya, 13th c B.C.

Inauguration scene, on the right two princes standing on a two-headed eagle

After the Hittite two-headed eagles there is a gap of almost two millennia to be filled. In the meantime the emblem of the supreme commander in the Hellenistic world was a monstruous head, being the head of the army personified by Medusa, Nike or Victoria. After the introduction of Christianity in the Roman Empire the cypher of Christ consisting of the greek letters XP (chi-rho) became the emblem under which the army would conquer (In Hoc Signo Vinces). The supreme commanders attached this cypher to their shields, sometimes surrounded by a bordure set with precious stones, sometimes with a garland of laurel.

The XP-cypher as a symbol of the armed forces was maintained in the West by the Carolingians but seems to have been abandoned afterwards. It is striking that the two-headed eagle appeared for the first time at the borders of the Christian world and thus may have been of pagan or muslim origin, later also adopted by Christian commanders. The first pieces showing a two-headed eagle may have been booty, captured by Christian commanders in the Reconquista in Spain and may have been the emblems of the Umayyad supreme commanders.

Early European two-headed eagles date from the early time of the Renovatio Imperii of the House of Saxony in Germany, from Umayyad Spain and from Bulgaria.

Alchemical symbols, 18th century

"Some omens of his future greatness appeared at [Alexander's] birth. Two eagles sat the whole of the day on which he was born on the top of his father's palace, giving indication of his double empire over Europe and Asia [East and West]."

- Justinus, Epitome of the Phillipic History of Pompeius Trogus

C.S Lewis on the problem of the conformist midwit:

“Why you fool, it's the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything.”
― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength