3rd Path: Grail Search

Here are some of the graphics I was involved in another Arthurian theme, namely the Grail.

In the Arthurian Legends, I had included several pages on the Grail themes. One for the general background of the Grail, and other relics. The origin of the Grail, about Joseph of Arimathea and his family. And two separate pages in Arthur's time, where there were two different main Grail heroes in different traditions – Perceval and Galahad.

The image on the right, was one of my earlier work on the holy vessel. Since then I have shrunk the size of the Grail, to a much smaller size. The smaller image was later used in my Flash animation, which I will speak more of later.

Most people recognised the Grail as being a chalice, a drinking vessel, but originally it wasn't a chalice. Chretien de Troyes, the French medieval romance author, was the one who started this legend, described it as a dish, not a cup.

I had drawn the content in the grail is red, because according to another French author, Robert de Boron, Joseph d'Arimathea caught Jesus' blood in a chalice.

Chretien and later authors also described a Grail procession, where one person carried the vessel (thus the Grail), another person carried a spear that bleed, which was known as the Bleeding Lance. Chretien doesn't mention whose blood that bled into the Grail, but later authors, following Boron's lead, say that this was spear that stabbed at Jesus' side, when he was crucified. For this reason, I had created a simple Flash animation of the Bleeding Spear, with blood dripping from the spearhead into the Grail below. And this was the reason, I made the image of the Grail smaller. Originally, the animation was accompanied with the sound of dripping, but I have since switched it off, because they found the sound annoying.