First translated into English by our country's third president, this is the Bible of Gnostic Christianity, the original source for the legends of the Holy Grail, Freemasonry, even of the Mormon Church. Its text contains the most attacked and suppressed alternative gospel of the life of Jesus, and the book disputes accounts in the traditionally accepted gospels regarding what Jesus' mission on Earth really was, what Jesus taught, and how Jesus died.

Meticulously researched, this is a fascinating and unique guide to history of the Holy Grail.

The medieval legend of the Grail, a tale about the search for supreme mystical experience, has never ceased to intrigue writers and scholars by its wildly variegated forms: the settings have ranged from Britain to the Punjab to the Temple of Zeus at Dodona; the Grail itself has been described as the chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper, a stone with miraculous youth-preserving virtues, a vessel containing a man's head swimming in blood; the Grail has been kept in a castle by a beautiful damsel, seen floating through the air in Arthur's palace, and used as a talisman in the East to distinguish the chaste from the unchaste. In his classic exploration of the obscurities and contradictions in the major versions of this legend, Roger Sherman Loomis shows how the Grail, once a Celtic vessel of plenty, evolved into the Christian Grail with miraculous powers. Loomis bases his argument on historical examples involving the major motifs and characters in the legends, beginning with the Arthurian legend recounted in the 1180 French poem by Chrtien de Troyes. The principal texts fall into two classes: those that relate the adventures of the knights in King Arthur's time and those that account for the Grail's removal from the Holy Land to Britain. Written with verve and wit, Loomis's book builds suspense as he proceeds from one puzzle to the next in revealing the meaning behind the Grail and its legends.

Some fifty years before Chrétien de Troyes wrote what is probably the first and certainly the most influential story of the Holy Grail, images of the Virgin Mary with a simple but radiant bowl (called a “grail” in local dialect) appeared in churches in the Spanish Pyrenees. In this fascinating book, Joseph Goering explores the links between these sacred images and the origins of one of the West’s most enduring legends. While tracing the early history of the grail, Goering looks back to the Pyrenean religious paintings and argues that they were the original inspiration of the grail legend. He explains how storytellers in northern France could have learned of these paintings and how the enigmatic “grail” in the hands of the Virgin came to form the centerpiece of a story about a knight in King Arthur’s court. Part of the allure of the grail, Goering argues, was that neither Chrétien nor his audience knew exactly what it represented or why it was so important. And out of the attempts to answer those questions the literature of the Holy Grail was born.

Cotten Stone must unravel the mystery surrounding a claim that holy grail has been discovered in Iraq.

In this fascinating work, Barber traces the history of the legends surrounding the Holy Grail, beginning with Chrtien de Troyes's great romances of the 12th century and the medieval Church's religious version of the secular ideal.

In this important study of the meaning of the Grail, one of Europe's greatest esoteric philosophers discloses the pre-Christian and initiatic sources of this symbolic motif that is so central to Western mythology and culture. He demonstrates how the main features of the legend are from an older tradition analogous to the great heroic sagas and cycles of the North, and that the Grail itself is a symbol of initiation. Evola uncovers the hidden meaning in the often surreal adventures of the knights who searched for the Grail, interpreting them as inner experiences and tests for the seeker. He also explores the history of the myth in the Middle Ages, its use by the Knights Templar and the Cathars, its legacy during the decline of the Holy Roman Empire, and its links with Rosicrucianism, alchemy, and Masonry. This excursion into the realm of the Grail throws new light on an endlessly fascinating subject.