The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal: Book VII: I. Statement of a Possible Implicit Accounting for All Claims

I

STATEMENT OF A POSSIBLE IMPLICIT ACCOUNTING FOR ALL CLAIMS

AMONG all external organisations there is one institution--and there is one only--which, on the principle that the best is the nearest, might be expected to offer some of those signs and warrants that we should expect in a society, a sodality, a body--let me say, at once, in a church--which could and did connect with the idea of the Holy Graal--as something nearest to its source, if not indeed that centre from which the entire mystery originated.

The early history of the Holy Graal, as distinguished from the several quests undertaken for the discovery of that sacred object, is one of Christianity colonising. We know in the French cycle, by the universal voice of the texts, that it was a mystery which was brought into Britain, and seeing that the legend, as a whole, is--apart or otherwise from anything involved by the implicits thereof--assuredly of Celtic origin, its religious elements, in the absence of any special and extrinsic claims, must be accounted for most readily by the characteristics of the Celtic Church.

It is much closer to our hands than anything which has been suggested alternatively, and it was unquestionably