Image description: A hand holds a Tarot card—Ace of Swords—in front of some plants on a window sill, which depicts a hand coming out of a cloud on the left hand side of the image, holding a sword in the sky above mountains. The sword has a crown on it, and some herbs dangling from the crown.
This is part two of a two-part Offering. If you aren’t familiar with the Grail Legend, you can read or listen to part one (links at the bottom of this post) to catch up.
In Chretien de Troyes’ version of the grail legend Perceval, the young knight’s first visit to the grail castle is described in such a way that it could have easily been a dream. Perceval sits silently as a glowing, mysterious object supplies food and drink for everyone in the hall. He vows privately to ask questions come morning. But when he wakes the next day, all that’s left from the night is the one-of-a-kind sword he’d been gifted the night prior, and his trusted horse to ride out on.
That he wakes with the sword strikes me as meaningful. Because in my world a sword has to do with discernment and meaning-making. It bestows upon those who possess it the power to make stories. And this always includes a process of picking and choosing which details to keep, and which to omit. To overlook the sword is to overlook the opportunity it gives us, to revise and imagine new versions of our stories if they’re not adequate to the moment, as-is.
You should know if you don't already that Perceval’s first visit to the grail castle is not (to my knowledge) commonly read, if ever, as having actually been a dream. The scenes that come after certainly seem to elaborate and confirm that it was, in fact, not.
Still, when you think about memory, it seems we all pluck snapshots from the past out of context to carry with us; images that we recall and recite again and again regardless of whether the surrounding scenes support or refute them. So who's to say we can't do that here?
What happens if we imagine that the grail castle is in fact a dreamscape, that the narrator simply forgot to mention Perceval’s falling asleep, and that the story ends when he wakes from the night, having glimpsed the grail in a dream.