Don Mario Roso de Luna, the illustrious Theosophical writer, when commenting about the third act of the Wagnerian Parsifal textually writes the following:
The third act is developed again in the domain of the Grail, a pleasant, open, spring landscape with a background of gently rising flowery meadows. The edge of the forest forms the foreground, and extends to the right to rising rocky mountains of the Grail. In the foreground, by the side of the wood is a spring; facing it, a little further back is a humble hermit’s hut, leaning against a mass of rock.
It is the first hour of Good Friday. Gurnemanz, now a very old man, clad as a hermit with only the tunic of the knights of the Grail, comes out of the hut and listens from yonder to some deep groaning, as if from somebody who within a profound slumber fights against a nightmare.
Gurnemanz walks firmly to a densely overgrown thorny thicket at the side, he forces the undergrowth apart and then stops suddenly. He finds Kundry, cold and stiff, the rough wintry thorns (the sad moral night of the sinner) have been concealing her for who knows how long…, without knowing that the redeeming spring has arrived…
The Elder drags Kundry out of the bushes, carries her to a nearby grassy mound and starts to reanimate her with his breath. When at last she opens her eyes, she utters a cry. Kundry is in the coarse robe of a penitent, her face is paler and the wildness has vanished from her looks and behavior.
She gazes long at Gurnemanz, as someone who evokes ancient memories. Then, she rises, walks towards the hermit’s hut and she sets to work like a serving- maid, as she did in the past with the holy Knights.
Kundry carries a water pitcher and goes with it in order to fill it in the spring. She then moves into the hut, where she busies herself as accustomed, as a gift of the last survivor of the Grail.
Meanwhile, Parsifal emerges from the forest, entirely accoutered in black armor; with closed helm and lowered spear he strides slowly forward with his head bowed under the weight of his uncertain thoughts.
Gurnemanz draws nearer to him in case he needs to be guided. Parsifal does not respond to the ascetic’s greetings. Yet, he reminds Parsifal that it is the supremely holy Good Friday, a day whose sanctity must not be scoffed at with weapons.
The ineffable idyll commonly called the Enchantments of Holy Friday resounds triumphantly in the space, joyfully greeting the Redeemer amidst the august joy of the mount and the meadow, where everything smiles to the approach of the supreme moment of liberation…
The bells of the Grail sound increasingly again, as of yore, calling for the holy ceremony. Gurnemanz has brought out his mantle of the Knights of the Grail, and invests Parsifal, the new King, with it. Then, they slowly start on their way up to the castle, whose splendors, thanks to the sacred, sexual Spear, will return without delay.
The great hail of the Grail is filled with Knights and Squires who from one side enter bearing Titurel’s body in a coffin, and from the other carrying Amfortas on a litter, who comes to receive the last blessing of the Grail.
Amfortas, the grieving son, who alone longed for death’s repose, has unconsciously brought death to his father by depriving him of the immortal contemplation of the divine radiance of the Regenerating Cup.
All Knights pressing closer to Amfortas exhort him for the last time, so that he can be mindful of his charge.
Amfortas, foreboding the approaching of the sweet darkness of death, resists turning towards the life that the uncovered Grail shall grant him. Thus, he leaps up in wild despair and in a tremendous paroxysm, tears open his garments asking for death in shouts…
All the Knights recoil, overwhelmed by the sight of his dreaded, gushing wound.
Parsifal has appeared unobserved among the Knights and now steps forward and extends the Spear, touching Amfortas’ side with its point. The wound finally, miraculously, heals.
Parsifal steps towards the center, holding triumphantly the Spear aloft before him. All gaze and prostrate themselves in supreme rapture at the uplifted Spear, while Amfortas taking the sacred relic from the shrine falls to his knees before it in silent prayer and contemplation. The Grail then gradually glows with a soft light, imbibing the whole environment with its glory. Parsifal, raised from that instant as a supreme Dignitary, waves the Grail in blessing in that moment and forever over the worshipping restored Holy Brotherhood of Knights.
Parsifal rises after a further silence, thrusts the Spear into the ground before him, lays shield and sword beneath it, opens his helmet, takes it off from his head and lays it with the other arms. He then kneels ecstatically before the Spear in silent prayer.
Gurnemanz watches Parsifal with astonishment and emotion. He beckons to Kundry, who has just emerged from the hut. She recognizes in him the one who once killed the swan, the sinner who has come, as the man, to the Holy Precinct, throughout the ways of desolation and confusion, hundreds of times damned, through passages without end and innumerable battles…
The hermit informs him at once about the state of disgrace on which the Knights of the Grail had fallen upon. All have been dispersed or are dead except him, since Amfortas in maddened defiance craved only for death while fighting against the damnation of his wound, which brought torment to his soul. No entreaties, no misery of his Knights could move him to uncover again the sacred Cup, for the covered Grail ceases to prolong his life with its immortal Breath.
Parsifal, springing up in intense grief, seems about to fall in a faint before the spring. Gurnemanz holds him upright and sets him down on the grassy mound. Kundry hurriedly fetches a bowl of water with which to sprinkle the face of Parsifal.
Gurnemanz, gently spurning Kundry, says:
“Not with this! The holy spring itself (the Yoni) shall refresh and bathe our pilgrim.”
“I suspect he has today to fulfill a sublime task, to perform a divine mission. Then let him be free of stain, and the dust of lengthy wanderings now be washed from him.”
Parsifal is gently led by the two to the edge of the spring. During those moments, Kundry loosens his greaves while Gurnemanz removes his body from the old armor, black from the pain and battles. He is left with only his white tunic of a Neophyte, which is the new tunic of purity. Every old ferment of sin has been expiated already, as Saint Paulo might say.
Kundry bathes the feet of the chosen one, she draws from her bosom a golden phial and pours part of its contents over Parsifal’s feet.
Kundry, as a new Magdalene, then dries him with her hastily unbound hair, while Gurnemanz empties the phial over Parsifal’s head, the new King. He then gently strokes his head and then folds his hands upon it, anointing him as a redeemer of the Grail and as a sapient for compassion.
Titurel, alive again for a while, raised himself a little in his coffin. At the same time, from the dome, a white dove descends and hovers over the head of the new King, the King sapient in compassion…! The sacred chants explode more vigorous than ever. Kundry, the woman symbol, slowly sinks lifeless to the ground amidst the universal homage that heaven and earth gloriously render to the Hero, who has defeated the potencies of evil and who has achieved Liberation by means of effort and sacrifice.
Samael Aun Weor
