W. F. Veltman - The Temple and the Grail: The Mysteries of the Order of the Templars and the Grail and Their Significance for Our Time

W.F. VELTMAN was born in Den Haag, Netherlands, in 1923. He discovered anthroposophy during the period of Nazi occupation, and later worked at a Waldorf school for 41 years where he taught French, Art History and the Humanities. He was also responsible for directing many theatrical productions at the school. Mr Veltman gave many lectures in the Netherlands and abroad and published books on cultural and historical subjects including Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe and Victor Hugo and hundreds of articles in the educational magazine Vrije Opvoedkunst (Free Education). He died in 2018.

THE TEMPLE AND

THE GRAIL

The Mysteries of the Order of the Templars and

the Grail and their Significance for Our Time

Willem Frederik Veltman

Temple Lodge Publishing Ltd.

Hillside House, The Square

Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.templelodge.com

Published in English by Temple Lodge in 2021

Originally published in Dutch under the title Tempel en Graal, Over de mysterin van tempelorde en graal en hun betekenis voor onze tijd by Hesperia, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2nd revised edition in 1992

W. F. Veltman 1992

This translation Temple Lodge Publishing 2021

Quotations from the New Testament were taken from The New Testament, A Rendering by Jon Madsen, Floris Books 1994; Old Testament quotations are from the Revised Standard Version (RSV)

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Inquiries should be addressed to the Publishers

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 912230 76 1

EISBN 978 1 912230 79 2

Cover by Morgan Creative featuring The Temple of the Grail

(Pach Brothers) from The Victrola Book of the Opera (1917)

Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Vishakapatnam, India

Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

1.Introduction

2.The Mysteries

3.The Temple and the Grail

4.Occult history

5.The Order of the Templars

6.World Future

7.Afterword

8.Notes

In 1928 Walter Johannes Stein published his book the English title of which is The Ninth Century. It has the intriguing subtitle World History in the Light of the Holy Grail. Stein was a history and literature teacher at the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart, Germany. In his voluminous book he traces the historical background of the medieval Parsifal saga as related principally in the epic by Wolfram von Eschenbach. It leads him to surprising results to which, by the way, literary historians have so far hardly paid any attention.

A most important conclusion of this study, however, is that behind the legendary figures in the epic, real historical personages are hidden who were related to each other by blood. The era in which the adventures took place was the ninth century. Unfortunately, a sequel to this book, which would have dealt with the tenth century and the founding of cities in Europe in relation to the figure of Lohengrin, Parsifals son, never went beyond some initial studies and one article.

Walter Johannes Stein died in 1957. Nine years later his masterly book was reprinted with a biographical sketch written by Herbert Hahn and a brief but most interesting article by Johannes Tautz about the author and his work. In the Prologue to his biography of Stein published in 1989, without using the words reincarnation and karma, Tautz hints at the relationship between Walter Johannes Stein and the figure of the hermit Trevrezent, brother of the unhappy Grail King Amfortas. I will come back to this point later in this book.

World History in the Light of the Holy Grail is a title that raises questions. Is it possible to write world history in the light of a legendary symbol that suddenly pops up in the medieval literature of the Christian Occident, and the origin and significance of which is already interpreted in different ways by the first Grail poets? Did Stein choose this title because he was visualizing a contemplation of history that would encompass in a wide arc the old pre-Christian cultures, the Middle Ages, and modern times, with the Grail as its Leitmotiv? In that case, the concept of the Grail would have to have a much richer content and farther-reaching significance for him than is usually attributed to it. Indeed, this clearly shows in his book. And when we make ourselves familiar with the greater reach of this concept which, by the way, Stein owed to his teacher Rudolf Steiner, the title he chose becomes a challenge. It is a challenge particularly for the historian who attempts to show that history is more than what is brought to light by documents, and that this more is to be found in spiritual motives, the only factors that can reveal meaningful connections between documented facts. These spiritual causes are accessible as ideas to human knowledge.

On the one hand, Walter Johannes Steins Grail book grew out of a practical situation, namely an important literary-historical course in the eleventh grade of the first Waldorf School for which, as he says in his book, he had to gather material. On the other hand, it came from an inner urge to immerse himself in this subject, an urge so strong that it bordered on a holy passion. It is indeed credible that there existed a deep personal destiny connection between Stein and the Grail theme.

Now, something remarkable occurred. Because of the personal destiny of Walter Johannes Stein the Parsifal block became an essential part of the eleventh grade curriculum of all the Waldorf Schools that developed after the first one in Stuttgart. The first block of literary history that Stein gave in the first eleventh grade in 1923 became more or less a model for that block in all Waldorf High Schools in the whole world. Every student experiences something exceptionally important from this material. It is undoubtedly one of the central themes of Waldorf education. You could say that the Parsifal block in the eleventh grade is a test that shows whether a Waldorf School is a real Waldorf School.

Isnt this a good example of how all historical events develop? History is no blind natural process, but neither is it a process caused by abstract ideas floating around in the air. Even if there were such things as ideas freely floating around, they would still have to be taken hold of by a human being; otherwise they remain ineffective. In most cases by far, streams in history arise because one human being has a spiritual impulse and, wrestling with it and suffering through it, makes it effective, with the result that it is then joined or taken over by others. We need only think of people like Martin Luther or, in more distant historical periods Alexander the Great and the patriarch Abraham.

Although since 1928 an impressive number of books have been published by Waldorf teachers, in my view The Ninth Century remains the quintessential book of the Waldorf School. The book is actually not at all easy to read, because of its huge chunks of study material, long quotations, contemplations that are not really worked through, and flashes of astonishing insight and genius. But whatever the shortcomings may beand Stein himself was well aware of themit breathes the living spirit of the Waldorf School, and by its content touches the essence of the historic stream which includes the entire work of Rudolf Steiner.