John Grigsby in his 2003 book `Warriors of the Wasteland` posits the theory that the Aryan quest for the Grail is actually a quest to reintegrate the rational, logical left side of the brain with the more mystical and intuitive right side.
With the coming of the Arya into northwestern Europe in around 2700BCE there was a distinctive change in the way in which the dead were buried, a move away from communal burial to the more individual burial and a more warrior-like, virile solar spirituality replaced the lunar spirituality of the Old European population. Lunar symbols were replaced with solar ones, the chief of these being the sunwheel and swastika. There appears to have been a deliberate displacement of the myths of the Old Europeans with that of the Arya.
Mr Grigsby has no hesitation in referring to these invading incomers as `Arya`.
"The Indo-Europeans-or Arya[not Aryans, as is commonly thought], a name they sometimes used in reference to themselves-are believed to have had a common cultural make-up, which was carried with them to the various lands where their languages are now spoken. Part of this make-up was a threefold division of society into priests, warriors and herders/cultivators: in India the Brahamas, Ksatriyas and Vaisyas; in Rome the Flamines, Milites and Quirites; and in Celtic Gaul, according to Caesar, the Druides, Equites and Plebes."[Chapter 14, "The Arya"].
He goes on to say "The principal holy symbols used by the Arya/Indo-Europeans were the horse and the sun."
He contrasts this with the principal religious symbol of the ox of the Old Europeans.
"The horse was the Indo-European animal par excellence and took the place of the ox as a symbol of divinity in their religion. The horse was what made them swift and deadly in battle; it pulled their chariots and provided them with victory and new land-for they claimed as their own the very soil over which their horses travelled[indeed gabar, the Irish word for horse, forms the basis of the word for `invasion`]." [Chapter 15 "The Dragon Slayer"]
He believes that the bog men of Denmark, Ireland, Britain and other parts of northwestern Europe were not merely sacrifices to appease the gods but actually were willing participants in an ancient mystical rite, a self-sacrifice in which via a triple death they acted out the death of the `dying god`, an attempt to heal the rift that occurred in the European psyche when the lunar spirituality was abruptly replaced by the solar.
Traces of an hallucinogenic toxic grain called ergot has been found in the stomachs of the well-preserved bog men which along with their `triple death` indicated a ritual death, not merely a sacrifice to the gods.
He draws a direct link between the bog men and rituals contained within the Grail myths.
The pagan Indo-European myth of the Grail which was not committed to written record until the Christian era is a myth that is concerned with reintegrating the predominant Aryan left brain with the right, not a simple return to lunar spirituality but an integration of the left and the right, the lunar and the solar. This in essence is a form of `awakening`, the achievement of spiritual and psychological wholeness in which the Arya can realise and achieve a state of being at one with the gods, of being god in man in this lifetime.
This may be likened to Carl Gustav Jung`s `Collective Unconscious` and `Individuation`, the process of reintegrating the two halves of the human mind.
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