The Vegetation deities,
Adonis-Attis, and more especially the Phrygian god, were the chosen
guides to the knowledge of, and union with, the supreme Spiritual
Source of Life, of which they were the communicating medium.
We must remember that though the document before us is, in its actual
form, the expression of faith of a discredited 'Christian-Gnostic'
sect, the essential groundwork upon which it is elaborated belongs
to a period anterior to Christianity, and that the Ode in honour of
Attis quoted above not only forms part of the original source, but is,
in the opinion of competent critics, earlier than the source itself.
I would also recall to the memory of the reader the passage previously
quoted from Cumont, in which he refers to the use made by the
Neo-Platonist philosophers of the Attis legend, as the mould into
which they poured their special theories of the universe, and of
generation.[13] Can the importance of a cult capable of such
far-reaching developments be easily exaggerated? Secondly, and of
more immediate importance for our investigation, is it not evident
that we have here all the elements necessary for a mystical
development of the Grail tradition? The Exoteric side of the cult
gives us the Human, the Folk-lore, elements--the Suffering King; the
Waste Land; the effect upon the Folk; the task that lies before the
hero; the group of Grail symbols.
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