The substance of the tale of King Arthur and the Holy Grail has in one form or another intrigued men and women for well nigh a thousand years, not only in Britain but throughout the world. Nothing, it would appear, can kill the Arthurian saga. Generation after generation has been inspired and entertained by the legends of the Hero-King, his Knights of the Round Table, the reputed visit of Joseph of Arimathea, the mysterious coming of the Holy Grail, and the planting of the Holy Thorn. The original Book of the Grail was written in the early 13th Century, although only fragments of the original manuscript survive. This book is a translation of the first volume of Perceval le Gallois ou le conte du Graal, compiled in 1866 from a 16th Century transcript of the original, and is the most complete version of the Grail story. Sebastian Evans' rendering of the tale captures the high cadences of Medieval Romance, and is an essential addition to the library of anyone who shares the continuing fascination with this most enduring of legends. This is the book featured in the Terry Gilliam film The Fisher King (1991), starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams.

Composed by an unknown author in early thirteenth-century France, The Quest of the Holy Grail is a fusion of Arthurian legend and Christian symbolism, reinterpreting ancient Celtic myth as a profound spiritual fable. It recounts the quest of the knights of Camelot - the simple Perceval, the thoughtful Bors, the rash Gawain, the weak Lancelot and the saintly Galahad - as they journey through danger and temptation to reach the elusive Holy Grail. But only one of them is judged worthy to see the mysteries within the sacred vessel, and look upon the ineffable. Enfused with tragic grandeur and an aura of mysticism, The Quest is an absorbing and radiant allegory of man's perilous search for divine grace, and had a profound influence on later Arthurian romances and versions of the Grail legend. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

First translated into English by our country's third president, this is the Bible of Gnostic Christianity, the original source for the legends of the Holy Grail, Freemasonry, even of the Mormon Church. Its text contains the most attacked and suppressed alternative gospel of the life of Jesus, and the book disputes accounts in the traditionally accepted gospels regarding what Jesus' mission on Earth really was, what Jesus taught, and how Jesus died.

Recent works of fiction and popular history have promoted the idea that the Holy Grail symbolizes a physical bloodline resulting from the union of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. This, supposedly, is the 'secret' that esoteric movements have kept tirelessly for the past 2,000 years. From her groundbreaking research, Sylvia Francke exposes this notion to be a blatant misinterpretation of the mystery traditions that preceded and ran parallel to the birth of Christianity. She traces the ancient spiritual paths of knowledge from the Cathars, the Knights Templar and the enigmatic Rosicrucians, to the work of Rudolf Steiner in the twentieth century. Here, she concludes, is true Grail knowledge: the Tree of Life and the Holy Grail itself explained in their metaphysical context. From her research she suggests a solution to the riddle of the sudden wealth and strange behaviour of Bérenger Saunière, the mysterious priest of Rennes-le-Château in southern France. True Grail knowledge, she concludes, has nothing to do with bloodlines or worldly status, but is an ancient lifeline to the spiritual origins of creation. Its energetic forces ray up from the earth and down from the constellations and planets while interacting with individual human beings. It holds the key to the fulfilment of mankind's quest, a step to the next phase of human evolution... The recent explosion of interest in an alternative history of Christianity - the shadow Grail - prompted Sylvia Francke to revise The Tree of Life and the Holy Grail, first published in 1996. The result is a completely reworked and expanded book that constitutes a powerful and convincing refutation of distorted esoteric truths.

Vivid translation of one of the earliest and most important Grail romances.

The Holy Grain, it's origins, secrets and meaning revealed.

Some fifty years before Chrétien de Troyes wrote what is probably the first and certainly the most influential story of the Holy Grail, images of the Virgin Mary with a simple but radiant bowl (called a “grail” in local dialect) appeared in churches in the Spanish Pyrenees. In this fascinating book, Joseph Goering explores the links between these sacred images and the origins of one of the West’s most enduring legends. While tracing the early history of the grail, Goering looks back to the Pyrenean religious paintings and argues that they were the original inspiration of the grail legend. He explains how storytellers in northern France could have learned of these paintings and how the enigmatic “grail” in the hands of the Virgin came to form the centerpiece of a story about a knight in King Arthur’s court. Part of the allure of the grail, Goering argues, was that neither Chrétien nor his audience knew exactly what it represented or why it was so important. And out of the attempts to answer those questions the literature of the Holy Grail was born.

Perceval smiteth his horse of his spurs and cometh to the first in such sort that he passeth his spear right through his body and beareth him to the ground dead. The other two knights each smote his man so that they wounded them in the body right sore. The other two would fain have fled, but Perceval preventeth them, and they gave themselves up prisoners for fear of death. "Lady," saith he, "see here the quittance for your knight that was slain, and the fifth also remaineth lying on the piece of ground shent in like manner as was your own.""Fair son," saith she, "I should have better loved peace after another sort, and so it might be.""Lady," saith he, "Thus is it now. One ought to make war against the warrior, and be at peace with the peaceable." ===The tales of King Arthur and his knights have been enthralling readers for a millennium... and here is one of the oldest, set down on the page in the early 13th century in Old French by an unknown author and translated into English in 1898. Inspired by medieval Arthurian poet Chr tien De Troyes' unfinished "Perceval, or the Knight of the Grail," this will delight lovers of medieval culture, British mythology, and high romance.British poet and medievalist SEBASTIAN EVANS (1830-1909) also wrote Brother Fabian's Manuscripts.