Temple and Contemplation brings together for the first ... - ImagoMundi

THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
theme of the "noble man" in Meister Eckhart, of the chivalric ideal that
informed an entire aspect of Rhenish mysticism in the fourteenth century.
The two numbers twenty-two (+ 2 = 24) and seventy-two, given as
being the number of chancels in the Temple of the Grail, each possess, as
we said, an arithmosophical meaning. It is not surprising that the space
inside Titurel's Temple is of a size that makes it the measure, eschatologically
speaking, of the entire human community. The number twenty-four
is double the number of the signs of the zodiac, and suggests the correspondences
between the Temple of the Grail and the cosmic Temple. But
the number seventy-two corresponds to the number of peoples and of
human tongues (seventy or seventy-two), as the Ancients traditionally
represented them. The figure seventy-two is certainly contained, potentially,
in the number twelve (12X6 = 72). In favouring it, preeminence is
given not so much to its relationship with the cosmic dome as to the
relationship of the Temple with the human race. 253 In Wolfram, the
chivalric ideal already brought the knights of East and West together in
the same knighthood. Eschatologically, the service of the Grail should
bring together the whole of humanity in the Temple of Titurel. The
Pentecostal mystery is "eschatology realized" in the Temple of the Grail
(see above, section V, 4).
We also said above that, on the one hand, the secret of the Grail Temple
was the Holy of Holies which exemplifies the relationship of the Temple
with the Temple within man as a microcosm, and that, on the other hand,
this secret lay in the form of the great Temple, which is a perfect round.
This form has fascinated researchers. The Finnish scholar L.J. Ringbom
has traced its models, imitations, parallels and variations from Persia to
the far West. According to him, the form of the temple in the round is
essentially and par excellence the form of the sacred royal building. The
concept of the priest-kingship, of the integral king as a priest-king—as in
ician par excellence of Light (Shaykh al-ishraq). The mystical meaning of Albrecht's
epic should be gone into more deeply, and Gudula Trendelenburg's brief note on
the metaphysics of Light and Gothic style needs developing, ibid., p. 112.
253 Cf. ibid., pp. 90-91, 193 ff., where numerous examples of the archetypical usage of
the numbers 70 and 72 are quoted. It is worth noting that the diagrams in which
the Iranian Shiite philosopher Haydar Amull represents the 72 sects, schools and
religions into which the human race is divided before and after Islam, correspond
perfectly to the ideal plan of the Temple of Montsalvat with its 72 chancels. On the
diagrams of Haydar Amull, see my study on 'The Science of the Balance and the
Correspondences Between Worlds in Islamic Gnosis', published above.
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THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
the case of the Grail king—provides him with the key which opens all the
traditional sanctuaries whose form is related to that of the Grail Temple. 254
We observed that the shape of the entire Temple corresponds to that
which would be assumed by a Gothic semi-rotunda if it were completed to
make a perfect circle. Yet the chancel of the Gothic church—for example,
Saint-Martin de Tours, or Saint-Remi de Reims—consists of no more
than a semi-rotunda opening onto the rectangle of the old basilica, so that
the plan of the whole building is cruciform. The breaking, or rather the
cutting-off, of the rotunda signifies the breaking of the whole formed by
the sacerdotal kingship of the Grail or, in other words, the breaking of the
unity formed by exoteric and esoteric, which are henceforth separated and
dispersed. The whole drama and meaning of the Temple ab origine lies in
the capitulation of the esoteric before the official norm and power of the
exoteric Church.
The historian of traditional architectural forms can thus follow the
progress of the Imago Templi from the Orient to its entry into the West,
where the hearts of men are so hardened that it cannot survive. The
Templar rotundas are destroyed. With a few exceptions, all that remain
are the semi-rotundas, traces of a mutilated unity. 255 The exoteric is
triumphant, and the idea of the royal Temple returns to the country
whence it came, to the mystical "Orient" where it is received by him who
is the guardian of the priestly kingship, the mysterious Prester John, who
is not a ruler of this world. This is the last episode in the "New Titurel".
Yet it must never be forgotten that the Temple of the Grail was only ever
manifest at "the meeting-place of the two seas", in the Land of Light or
Terra Lucida, the "eighth clime" which the Ishraqiyun call the "intermediary
Orient". It was not and could not be "incarnated" in this world, in the
sense that this word is misused today. In a single night, the Temple was
transferred from this "intermediary Orient" to the "Orient" of the metaphysical
world, to which Titurel and Parsifal transferred the Holy Grail.
If this "return to the Orient" possesses a symbolic virtue for the history
of traditional architectural forms, it possesses it no less with respect to the
temple within man—or, better, to the temple that is man. We come back
254 Gudula Trendelenburg, op. cit., pp. 98-99. See also Ringbom, op. cit., especially
chap. X, pp. 140-178, 197-198.
255 Consider, on the other hand, the rotunda of Neuvy Saint-Sepulcre (Indre), the
Round Church at Cambridge, etc.
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