The Holy Fool

My manuscript for Parsifal is 600 pages long at this point. I have finished an editing pass through the first section, which ends at page 147, and have gotten as far as page 184 in the second section. I remember when I was writing it last year, sitting on my bed one evening and it suddenly broke into the two sections. I was surprised, but it made sense. The first part of Parsifal's story is his upbringing in the forest, his first home, the backstory of why he ended up there, and the events that carry him to Camelot, his second home. The second part is his leaving of that second home on his epic quest for the Holy Grail. The place where my text divided is right as he is knighted - it gives a clean demarcation between his boyhood and the mature manhood that follows after he leaves his education and enters his career. A lot of what these stories mean to me personally and why I was motivated to write them is the coming of age motif for a knight, an icon of masculinity, in an era that is timeless and mythological - I have been working for years on animus development, the advance of my archetypal inner masculine psychological components, and these knights and their growth into heroic manhood both stimulate and reflect that process. Camelot and legendary Britain are also an excellent metaphor for the unconscious mind, the place where these processes occur. I saw a quote on the wall at the King Arthur exhibit I attended in Rennes, France, at the conference that I felt expressed something of this concept very well. It said, “Pour sa dame, le chevalier dans le secret de son coeur décide de faire des prouesses…” My command of French is imperfect, so I am unsure of the tenses, but it basically says, "For his lady, the knight in his secret heart decided to undertake heroic feats..."

As far as the manuscript goes, I also need to finish writing a notes section in the back explaining some things about the book and my sources and creative ideas. I have written some entries but I have a lot of scattered material that still needs to be distilled. I had some very unorthodox sources of inspiration for this book, not all of which are Arthurian but are rather from a range of spiritual traditions because the Grail unites all of mankind within itself. There is also still the same Jungian vibe as in my first book, an aspect which will never leave my writing as archetypal psychology is intrinsic to my own creative process. There is a process of participation mystique that occurs in the writing of these books that is part of the animus development that I outlined above. These characters are elements of my own experience of the archetypes and by expressing them, I explore myself. Parsifal is a Holy Fool, an innocent who is untouched by worldly ways until he is near to manhood, and he carries that purity of spirit with him on his quest. His innocence is the very core of his heroism. I was glad to discover that element in my own nature, and to allow it its full expression in this work.