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www.shamansociety.org 21 E S S A Y The Shamanic Grail Cup the Sangraal by Nita M. Renfrew The Grail cup is one of the most ancient symbols. The cup that both receives and offers and also withholds. The cup where change and transformation take place. The cup that is the Source as I was to find some years ago in a most curious way. The cup that contains ancient shamanic practice. The Holy Grail can offer nourishment or even poison. It gives and it takes. The Grail is like the Cross in Christianity an instrument of suffering transformation resurrection and eter- nal lifea symbol of Love. Shamans in the past always knew that the path to being a shaman-healer for both individuals and communities was dismemberment or shattering and death of the self or even of the body they knew that in order to be an instrument of the spirits it was necessary to lose everything to surrender totally. They also knew that once called there was no hiding from the spirit that had called and once on the path there was no going backever. Shamans knew that the spirits could make your life miserable if you did not do their bidding. And once you had tasted of the cup you were theirs forever. Jesus Christ knew this in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before he was crucified when he prayed Oh my Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me nevertheless not as I will but as Thou wilt Matthew 2639. But the cup did not pass. The following day he went obediently to the Cross where he suffered and died. However he then descended into Hades or Sheol brought back condemned souls and was resurrected. A Personal Quest When I was a child my mother Helma never ceased to re- mind me that the tradition of the Holy Grail was an important part of my heritage. The story of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table and their quest for the Holy Grail was sta- ple bedtime reading. The Holy Grail was the cup that Jesus used at the Last Supperthe Communion cup. The story went that Jesuss uncle Joseph of Arimathea took the cup to Glastonbury England after Jesuss death where it lay hidden for many years. An ancestor of mine Sir Thomas Malory was the author of the 15th century English classic Le Morte dArthur and so the tradition came down to me through my mothers family the Mallorys. They came to Virginia in the early 17th century from Studley Royal in Yorkshire which lay next to Fountains Abbey a Cistercian monastery where Sir Thomas would have had ac- cess to the rare French source books. 1 Early on in my life I decided to find out exactly what the quest for the Holy Grail was about and I vowed to learn its inner secrets. I read everything I could get my hands on but it all appeared to miss the mark. It took me most of my life to put the bits and pieces together and realize that the Holy Grail was about shamanic initiation and practice. The information and the practice along with the transmission came to me in ways that I could never have anticipated. As I was to learn the original shamanic practice itself had been dismembered and the various components were being practiced separately and needed to be re-membered. Jesus Shaman and Grail-Teacher Among the many pieces of the puzzle that I would need to put together regarding the Holy Grail an important one came when I attended a workshop with Saami shaman Ailo Gaup. Sitting in the back was an older woman who wore glasses and looked more like a librarian than someone who practiced shamanism. She was quiet though she participated in all the exercises where we drummed and journeyed crossed the river of blood and invoked the Saami spirits Juksakka the Bow Woman and the White Reindeer. She told me that she was an Episcopal priest and she was there because Jesus Christ had been a shaman and she wanted to learn shamanism. She ex- plained Jesus was a healer performed exorcisms mediated with the invisible world of spirits descended into the Underworld to bring back souls and rose from the dead. I was nonplussed. These were all things that shamans did. This was confirma- tion from a source that I had not expected of something that I already suspected. In 2001 everything in my life fell apart I lost my job and my companion of twelve years and then my aging mother far away became ill. Neither of us had any money and my heart and life broken beyond repair as I saw it I went into a state of total despair. I was grasping at straws to keep from going under in my life and Reiki appeared in the form of a free mini-session which I thought at the time was by chance. It took only a few