60

THE WOUND OF AMFORTAS²⁷

The Self-mastery of Percivale became the Self-masturbatery of the Bourgeois.

Vir-tus has become "virtue".

The qualities which have made a man, a race, a city, a caste, must be thrown off; death is the penalty of failure. As it is written: In the hour of success sacrifice that which is dearest to thee unto the Infernal Gods!

The Englishman lives upon the excrement of his forefathers.

All moral codes are worthless in themselves; yet in every new code there is hope. Provided always that the code is not changed because it is too hard, but because it is fulfilled.

The dead dog floats with the stream; in puritan France the best women are harlots; in vicious England the best women are virgins.

If only the Archbishop of Canterbury were to go naked in the streets and beg for his bread!

The new Christ, like the old, is the friend of publicans and sinners; because his nature is ascetic.

O if everyman did No Matter What, provided that it is the one thing that he will not and cannot do!

COMMENTARY (Ξ)

The title is explained in the note.

The number of the chapter may refer to the letter Samech (ס), Temperence, in the tarot.

In paragraph 1 the real chastity of Percivale or Parsifal, a chastity which did not prevent his dipping the point of the sacred lance into the Holy Grail, is distinguished from its misinterpretation by modern crapulence. The priests of the gods were carefully chosen, and carefully trained to fulfil the sacrament of fatherhood; the shame of sex consists in the usurpation of its function by the unworthy. Sex is a sacrament.

The word virtus means "the quality of manhood". Modern "virtue" is the negation of all such qualities.

In paragraph 3, however, we see the penalty of conservatism; children must be weaned.

In the penultimate paragraph the words "the new Christ" allude to the author.

In the last paragraph we reach the sublime mystic doctrine that whatever you have must be abandoned. Obviously, that which differentiates your consciousness from the absolute is part of the content of that consciousness.

NOTE

(27) Chapter so-called because Amfortas was wounded by his own spear, the spear that had made him king.