The suggestion made above as to the probable existence in the
primitive ritual of a substitution ceremony, seems to me to provide a
possible explanation of the feature found alike in Wolfram, and in the
closely allied Grail section of Sone de Nansai; i.e., that the wound
of the King was a punishment for sin, he had conceived a passion for a
Pagan princess.[22] Now there would be no incongruity in representing
the Dead King as reborn in youthful form, the aged King as revenu dans
sa juvence, but when the central figure was a man in the prime of life
some reason had to be found, his strength and vitality being restored,
for his supersession by the appointed Healer. This supersession was
adequately motivated by the supposed transgression of a fundamental
Christian law, entailing as consequence the forfeiture of his crown.
I would thus separate the doubling theme, as found in Chretien and
Wolfram, from the wounded theme, equally common to these poets. This
latter might possibly be accounted for on the ground of a ritual
variant; the first is purely literary, explicable neither on the
exoteric, nor the esoteric, aspect of the ceremony. From the exoteric
point of view there are not, and there cannot be, two Kings suffering
from parallel disability; the ritual knows one Principle of Life, and
one alone.
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