Teheuti
I apologize for my earlier tantrum. I've spent the past 20 years working on precisely this material, which cannot be presented without someone actually taking a serious look at the material. It becomes frustrating because few are willing to read Waite, and you, Abrac are one of the few. Thus my frustration when I feel I am discounted out of hand. In the same light I don't mean to discount what you say because you seem to be on the same track.
Waite: “It is recognised by the Catholic Church that the Eucharist is . . . the necessity of our spiritual life, awaiting that great day when our daily bread shall itself become the Eucharist, no longer that substitute provided in our material toil and under the offices of which we die. The body is communicated to the body that the Spirit may be imparted to the soul. . . . The high analogy in literature is the Supper at the Second Table in the poem of Robert de Borron. That was a spiritual repast, where there was neither eating nor drinking. For this reason the symbolic fish upon the table conveyed to the Warden the title of Rich Fisher, and it is in this sense--that is to say, for the same reason--that the saints become Fishers of Men.” HCHG.
BTW, note the fish around the neck of the King of Cups (Fisher King - and he who took his grandson (or was it nephew?) fishing (Page of Cups) in order to pass on the "mystery" and keeping of the Grail to him. In de Boron's story Joseph was unable to take the Grail all the way to its final resting place in England.)
“The four Hallows are therefore the Cup, the Lance, the Sword and the Dish, Paten or Patella--these four, and the greatest of these is the Cup. As regards this Hallow-in-chief, of two things one: either the Graal Vessel contained the most sacred of all relics in Christendom, or it contained the Secret Mystery of the Eucharist.” HCHG.
The Eucharistic Cup represents the doctrine of transubstantiation: “The words of the definition are: "The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ are really contained under the species of bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar, the bread being transubstantiated into the Body and the Wine into the Blood. . . The thesis . . . is that God's immanence was declared at the time of the [Graal] literature, through all Christendom, by the Mystery of Faith and that the development of Eucharistic doctrine into that of transubstantiation was a peculiar recognition of the corporate union between Christ and His people. [i.e., a promise of union [the mystic marriage] between God & man – a promise of life everlasting.] HCHG.
Waite: “The Eucharist is . . . a bond between the worlds . . . a link of union in the height and deep. The Spirit of Christ remains therein on every altar and in every soul which can receive the Spirit. So is God made man in Christ, and so the Word takes flesh through all the ages. There is Bethlehem in every Kingdom, country, shire and town. The world itself is Nazareth. Each man and woman in the body-part of them is Bethlehem’s stable. But the soul therein is seldom Mary, bearing Christ within. Hence is the Hidden Church from age to age in travail [as shown in the Minor suits], working towards that perfect day when Christ shall have been born of every soul, or when the soul shall know the Christ within, and the most blessed offices of Bread and Wine shall reach fulfillment [as shown in the Majors]. Then the soul—God-tinctured, God-transmuted, God-possess’d—shall need these signs no more. Till that great day the Hidden Church has sent out messengers with rumors of a noumenal [apprehended only in the mind] Eucharist . . . . But once through legend and through high romance the Secret Church sent out the Holy Graal [reference to the Robert de Boron story]." HCHG.
Here, in one statement, Waite mentions Mystery, Eucharist, Grail (bread/wafer & wine), glorious Virgin (Mary), and Holy Spirit (dove):
“I testify, therefore, that the true Mystery of the Eucharist resides in the assumption by the Divine Life of the veils of Bread and Wine, and that even as once in time and somewhere in the world that life assumed the veils of flesh and blood, which became the Body of the Lord, so here and now--daily on every worshipful and authorised altar over the wide, wide world--do those unspotted elements become again that sacred vehicle, so that he who communicates in the faith of spirit and of truth, receives that which is not less truly the Divine Body than the especial polarisation of elements which was born in Nazareth of the sacred and glorious Virgin. Moreover, I am very certain that the one Mystery was operated as if in the terms and valid forms of the other by the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the utter consecration of the elements. HCHG, p.29-30.
In the Magician card we see that consecration of the elements in process.
“The wisdom of the Graal is an Eucharistic wisdom, because the descent of an arch-natural Host takes place annually to renew the virtues thereof.” HCHG.
So what is the significance of the Cup? In the Ace of Cups it represents the Eucahrist by all outward appearances; but the bread and wine are only veils, the truth lays hidden behind them. Behind the veil means the world within, that of the soul; so that which is behind the veil is that which is within. And what is it within which the bread and wine symbolize?
Waite: “It is recognised by the Catholic Church that the Eucharist is . . . the necessity of our spiritual life, awaiting that great day when our daily bread shall itself become the Eucharist, no longer that substitute provided in our material toil and under the offices of which we die. The body is communicated to the body that the Spirit may be imparted to the soul. . . . The high analogy in literature is the Supper at the Second Table in the poem of Robert de Borron. That was a spiritual repast, where there was neither eating nor drinking. For this reason the symbolic fish upon the table conveyed to the Warden the title of Rich Fisher, and it is in this sense--that is to say, for the same reason--that the saints become Fishers of Men.” HCHG.
BTW, note the fish around the neck of the King of Cups (Fisher King - and he who took his grandson (or was it nephew?) fishing (Page of Cups) in order to pass on the "mystery" and keeping of the Grail to him. In de Boron's story Joseph was unable to take the Grail all the way to its final resting place in England.)
Definitely. In "The Book of the Holy Graal" Waite speaks of the "Eucharistic Life Divine:” the treasury of grace and power which fills them, permeates, overflows in the recipient’s heart.” (The Ace of Cups overflows.)the Mystic Marriage by a Eucharistic rite.
“The four Hallows are therefore the Cup, the Lance, the Sword and the Dish, Paten or Patella--these four, and the greatest of these is the Cup. As regards this Hallow-in-chief, of two things one: either the Graal Vessel contained the most sacred of all relics in Christendom, or it contained the Secret Mystery of the Eucharist.” HCHG.
Waite: “The thesis . . . is that God's immanence was declared at the time of the [Graal] literature, through all Christendom, by the Mystery of Faith and that the development of Eucharistic doctrine into that of transubstantiation was a peculiar recognition of the corporate union between Christ and His people. [i.e., a promise of union between God & man – a promise of life everlasting.] HCHG, p.26.It can be seen from this that as early as 1891 Waite viewed the inner significance of the Eucharist as a Mystic Marriage (communication with Deity), that is, the reuniting of soul with the Divine within (the Christ). On the Ace this is symbolized by the marriage of the wafer (spirit) with the cup (soul). But these are veils of the true marriage within.
The Eucharistic Cup represents the doctrine of transubstantiation: “The words of the definition are: "The Body and Blood of Jesus Christ are really contained under the species of bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar, the bread being transubstantiated into the Body and the Wine into the Blood. . . The thesis . . . is that God's immanence was declared at the time of the [Graal] literature, through all Christendom, by the Mystery of Faith and that the development of Eucharistic doctrine into that of transubstantiation was a peculiar recognition of the corporate union between Christ and His people. [i.e., a promise of union [the mystic marriage] between God & man – a promise of life everlasting.] HCHG.
Wonderful quote. I propose that this is most relevant to the Major Arcana and the images of the Cup/Grail that appear in Trinick's drawings, but not yet manifested in the Minor Arcana - only promised - the rainbow in the 10 of Cups. The suit of Cups is about that promise (as told in the de Boron story) that exists within the tales of loss (in de Boron, Joseph of Arimathea never reaches the promised land, Glastonbury, the resting place of the Grail).Also, from Waite's Fellowship of the rosy Cross "Return in Light" ritual, 1924:
"The sacrament of the Eucharist is the sacrament of that reception, the significance of which is that the Spirit dwells within. And this is the Christ Spirit. The secret tradition hereof is a great memorial concerning a great experience. The macrocosm is the body of Christ, the microcosmic soul of man is in the image and likeness hereof; there is union between Christ in the macrocosm and Christ in the soul of Man."
Waite: “The Eucharist is . . . a bond between the worlds . . . a link of union in the height and deep. The Spirit of Christ remains therein on every altar and in every soul which can receive the Spirit. So is God made man in Christ, and so the Word takes flesh through all the ages. There is Bethlehem in every Kingdom, country, shire and town. The world itself is Nazareth. Each man and woman in the body-part of them is Bethlehem’s stable. But the soul therein is seldom Mary, bearing Christ within. Hence is the Hidden Church from age to age in travail [as shown in the Minor suits], working towards that perfect day when Christ shall have been born of every soul, or when the soul shall know the Christ within, and the most blessed offices of Bread and Wine shall reach fulfillment [as shown in the Majors]. Then the soul—God-tinctured, God-transmuted, God-possess’d—shall need these signs no more. Till that great day the Hidden Church has sent out messengers with rumors of a noumenal [apprehended only in the mind] Eucharist . . . . But once through legend and through high romance the Secret Church sent out the Holy Graal [reference to the Robert de Boron story]." HCHG.
Here, in one statement, Waite mentions Mystery, Eucharist, Grail (bread/wafer & wine), glorious Virgin (Mary), and Holy Spirit (dove):
“I testify, therefore, that the true Mystery of the Eucharist resides in the assumption by the Divine Life of the veils of Bread and Wine, and that even as once in time and somewhere in the world that life assumed the veils of flesh and blood, which became the Body of the Lord, so here and now--daily on every worshipful and authorised altar over the wide, wide world--do those unspotted elements become again that sacred vehicle, so that he who communicates in the faith of spirit and of truth, receives that which is not less truly the Divine Body than the especial polarisation of elements which was born in Nazareth of the sacred and glorious Virgin. Moreover, I am very certain that the one Mystery was operated as if in the terms and valid forms of the other by the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the utter consecration of the elements. HCHG, p.29-30.
In the Magician card we see that consecration of the elements in process.
“The wisdom of the Graal is an Eucharistic wisdom, because the descent of an arch-natural Host takes place annually to renew the virtues thereof.” HCHG.