Richard Wagner

[Robo]

The Good Friday music


A replica of the Lance of Longinus, The Spear of Destiny

When Parsifal was a young man, he found himself in a heathen land where he encountered a magical castle full of fille de joie, but when Parsifal rejected them, Klingsor, a black magician, tried to corrupt his innocence by sending a paragon of beauty, in the form of a mind-controlled slave, called Kundry, to seduce him, but her kiss had the opposite effect… the pure fool became wise through compassion.

Parsifal rejected Kundry’s advances. In retaliation, she called upon Klingsor to destroy him with the Holy Spear, but as the black magician threw it at him, it hovered above his head. Parsifal made a sign with it, and destroyed Klingsor's powers. He informed Klingsor that he must find Amfortas. This made Kundry furious… she laid a curse on him, saying that, no matter which road he would take through the world, he would never find Amfortas, but Parsifal turned to her and replied, "You know where you can again find me". With the Holy Spear, Parsifal set off to find Amfortas.

Before Parsifal was born, Amfortas – who was appointed Guardian of the Holy Grail and Holy Spear – went off to fight Klingsor with the Holy Spear, but he was seduced by a mysterious seductress. During the seduction, the Holy Spear that was by his side lay unguarded. Klingsor took the opportunity to seize the Spear. As he made his getaway, he wounded Amfortas in the side, inflicting a wound that would not heal. Only the Spear that dealt the wound could heal the wound, but now it was in Klingsor’s hands, and it made him even more powerful in the world. The Holy Spear grants mystical power to anyone who wields it.

Many knights went off in search of the Spear, but each one became corrupted and fell under Klingsor's control. Klingsor imagines that if he could corrupt all men with the power of the Spear, then the Grail would become his, and he would become ruler of a New World Order.

Parsifal spends many decades wondering through the world. However, one morning, whilst wandering through a wild forest, he encounters a hermit who happens to be the knight, Gurnemanz, who once roughly turned Parsifal away when he was a boy, after he failed to understand the meaning of Grail ceremony. Gurnemanz recognises Parsifal, and the Holy Spear. He informs Parsifal that he has found his way back to the Grail Castle!

It's Good Friday. Gurnemanz prepares Parsifal for his re-entry into the Grail Castle as king of the Grail. Upon entry, Parsifal witnesses a community in spiritual crisis and despair. Klingsor's evil magic is about to render the world spiritually desolate, but Parsifal takes the Holy Spear and with it, he heals the King's wound. The Spear – that Klingsor once stole – is then re-united with the Holy Grail. The kingdom is rejuvenated, and the wasteland once again becomes fertile.

The video starts in Act III, at 3’20’35” and the Good Friday music scene lasts for about 7 minutes, but the video continues to the end of the opera… Kundry has just washed Parsifal's feet with her hair...

[Robo]

Terrence McKenna was quite an interesting person. Some claim he was a CIA plant giving out misleading or false information, and that he was an intelligence asset. He certainly wasn't correct regarding 2012 and the eschaton. He spoke about the Quickening and the transcendental object at the end of time (TOatEoT). This to me sounds like it could be a reference to the Grail. As with religion, throwing out all of McKenna's ideas, might be throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water. Perhaps he was right about the eschaton but just got the date wrong? There's already quite a lot to think about, so will leave it there with this post...

[Robo]

Love in death

Tristan dies in Isolde's arms as she exhales her last breath to be united with him in death and in ecstasy:

Mildly and gently,
how he smiles,
how the eye
he opens sweetly ---
Do you see it, friends?
Don’t you see it?
Brighter and brighter
how he shines,
illuminated by stars
rises high?
Don’t you see it?
How his heart
boldly swells,
fully and nobly
wells in his breast?
How from his lips
delightfully, mildly,
sweet breath
softly wafts ---
Friends! Look!
Don’t you feel and see it?
Do I alone hear this melody,
which wonderfully and softly,
lamenting delight,
telling it all,
mildly reconciling
sounds out of him,
invades me,
swings upwards,
sweetly resonating
rings around me?
Sounding more clearly,
wafting around me ---
Are these waves
of soft airs?
Are these billows
of delightful fragrances?
How they swell,
how they sough around me,
shall I breathe,
Shall I listen?
Shall I drink,
immerse?
Sweetly in fragrances
melt away?
In the billowing torrent,
in the resonating sound,
in the wafting Universe of the World-Breath ---
drown,
be engulfed ---
unconscious ---
supreme delight!

[Robo]

Final scene, from the middle act of Wagner's sacred music drama, Parsifal

Kundry fails to seduce Parsifal, and calls upon the black magician, Klingsor, to kill Parsifal with the Holy Spear, but when Klingsor throws it, the Spear hovers above Parsifal's head. Parsifal makes a sign of the cross, and Klingsor's magickal kingdom collapses in ruin. Parsifal turns to Kundry and says: "You know where you can find me again."

Parsifal is free to make his way to the Grail kingdom to heal the wounded Grail King, Amfortas, with the Holy Spear, but Kundry curses him, saying, no matter which road he takes, never will he find a road, or path that takes him to the Castle of the Grail.

In this recent, and unusual, modernised production (May 2021, Vienna), Klingsor (here presented as a mafia boss) has already thrown the Holy Spear at Parsifal. Of course, this fails to destroy Parsifal. Kundry threatens to kill Parsifal with a handgun, but just as she's about to pull the trigger, Parsifal looks into her eyes... she unexpectedly turns the gun on the black magician, Klingsor, and shoots him dead instead. Parsifal turns to Kundry and says: "You know where you can find me again."

Translation of the German:

Parsifal:
With this sign (he makes the sign of the cross)
I banish your magickal power;
Just as it will heal the wound that you dealt with the Holy Spear's tip,
in grief and mourning it destroys your deceptive display!

Parsifal (turning to Kundry):
You know where you can find me again.

[Robo]

Kundry and the Wandering Jewess from Wagner's last opera, Parsifal

Like the young Parsifal, the wild woman has many names. The many elements in Wagner's Kundry included another archetype found in literature from the Middle Ages onwards: the Wandering Jew. In Wagner's poem, Kundry becomes a reincarnation of Herodias who, because she had laughed at the Saviour's suffering, was cursed to wander through the world until His return. She is not only cursed to wander, but also always to tell the truth; and she cannot weep, only laugh her accursed laugh.

https://www.monsalvat.no/kundry.htm

In the quote below, from Astrid Varnay's autobiography, "Fifty-five Years in Five Acts", (pp. 116-117), the singer/actress discusses the character of Kundry and gives some interesting insight into Kundry's innermost being, which was one of her many roles on the world's international opera stages:

[Kundry's] sexuality, without love or even a modicum of affection, is like a narcotic. The more Kundry indulges, the more she desires. Parsifal's unexpected rejection drives her to frenzy, to the extent that her mental processes become incoherent. Finally, she confuses feelings and remembrances, and even goes so far as to believe that Parsifal is the One she had laughed at. She begs and pleads with him to "unite" with her for her salvation. Parsifal's denial drives her to form of madness. The effect is like drug withdrawal. The person goes through hell until he or she is healed.

To make matters even more complicated, Kundry has become a kind of schizophrenic, unaware of one manifestation of her personality while she is locked in the other. In act 1, despite her not realizing she had been at fault in seducing Amfortas, she also has an inner compulsion to atone, like someone on a pilgrimage to a scared shrine, moving up and down the stairs on her knees. And for all the services she renders, she insists on being spared any form of gratitude. "Ich helfe nie," is her response to the thanks of others, "I never help." The reason for this is her belief that gratitude will nullify the validity of the help she has given, and this would mar the selflessness of her acts. It's a very life-negating attitude toward what are basically simple virtues.

Astrid Varnay as Kundry, in Wagner's opera "Parsifal"

Jesus Christ and Parsifal live in a parallel reality - both have awareness of each-other:

• Adam = Amfortas (the weak king who's spiritual wound won't heal)

• Jesus = Parsifal ("everyman" enlightened through compassion, the healer)

• Eve = Kundry (the woman who laughed at Jesus on the Cross)

Kundry and the Wandering Jewess, "Recapitulation of a Lifetime", by Dieter Borchmeyer:

Wagener's final work also refers back to his other Romantic operas. Kundry is a female variant of the 'Wandering Jew', as Wagner himself noted in the 1865 prose draft. She is therefore the counterpart not only of the Flying Dutchman ('the Wandering Jew of the sea', as Heinrich Heine called him) but, at the same time, of Wotan, whom Wagner similarly described to Cosima as 'a kind of Flying Dutchman'.

Klingsor identifies Kundry as a reincarnation of Herodias ('Herodias were you'), who appears as the female counterpart of Ahaseuerus in legends and poems from the Middle Ages onwards; like the Wandering Jew, she is condemned to a life of restless wanderings over the earth.

Kundry, Wandering Jewess, 'endlessly tormented through all existence', is therefore by no means a pure invention of Wagner's. The medieval myth was taken up again by Eugène Sue in his best-selling novel "Le juif errant" of 1844. Here Herodias accompanies Ahasuerus restlessly throughout history until, like Wagner's Kundry, she finds redemption. And there were other writers, too, who recast the medieval motif in the years around the middle of the nineteenth century.

There is no doubt that Wagner was directly inspired by Henrich Heine's "Atta Troll" of 1843 in his conception of Kundry. here - as in may other nineteenth-century poems, including Allarme's Herodiade - Herodias merges with Salome. Thus Wagner's Kundry is a reincarnation of both Herodias and Salome. As such, she has left behind her clearly definable traces in the poems of other fin-de-siècle authors, including Oscar Wilde and Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, both of whom wrote about Herodias/Salome.

It is the curse of Ahasuerus and Kundry/Herodias that they must constantly repeat the very same sin that was the reason for their having been cursed in the first place. In Nikolaus Lenau's ballad "The Wandering Jew" of 1839, we find the following strophe:

Alas, the image haunts me evermore,
Of how he begged to rest awhile, who came,
Weary of his life, bowed down by shame,
And grief, and whom I ordered from my door.

Just as Ahasuerus prevented Jesus from resting outside his door on the via dolorosa, so did Kundry laugh at Christ carrying the cross. This is a radical reversal of the attitude which informs the metaphysical centre of "Parsifal", namely elemental compassion for the suffering individual. That is why Kundry is forced to repeat her 'accursed laughter' with compulsive regularity, in addition to suffering the constraint of embodying time after time the depravity of Herodias/Salome.

[Robo]

Kundry, the seductress under the control of the magician

In Act II, of Richard Wagner's sacred stage consecration play (he didn't conceive of it as being an opera), "Parsifal", Kundry (a mind controlled sexual slave, under the control of an evil magician, see above) tries to seduce Parsifal. Here's the libretto from the music drama's score:

Parsifal:

For eternity would you be damned with me if I were to forget
my mission and spend one hour in your embrace!

I was sent here also for your salvation,
for which you must abandon your desires.

The balm that will end your suffering does not flow from their source;
salvation can never be granted you until it has been sealed.

There is another salvation - a different one - for which I saw the brothers
longing in their despair, in utmost distress, scourging and mortifying their flesh.

But who can see clearly and brightly the only fixed fount of salvation?

Oh misery, that prevents deliverance!

Oh, benighted madness of the world:
that while seeking for salvation, thirsts for the fountain of damnation!

Kundry:

So was it my kiss that gave you world-perception?

Then the full embrace of my loving surely will raise you to godhead!

Redeem the world, if that's your mission; let me make you a god,
for just an hour, rather than leave me to eternal damnation, my wound never to be healed!

Parsifal:

Blasphemer, I offer you release and redemption.

Kundry:

Let me bring you divine loving, then you can redeem me.

Parsifal:

Love and deliverance will be yours if you show me the way to Amfortas.

Kundry (exploding in a fury):

You will never find him! Let the fallen one perish,
the unholy one, seeker of disgrace, whom I mocked -
laughing - laughing! Ha! He fell to his own spear!

Parsifal:

Who dared to wound him with the holy weapon?

Kundry:

He - He - whom once I mocked with laughter - his curse - ah! - gives me power -
against you too I can summon the weapon, if you honour that sinner with compassion!

Ah! Madness! (imploringly) Compassion! Pity me! To be mine for an hour!
Let me be yours for just one hour - and you will be shown the path!

Parsifal:

Get off me, damned woman!

Kundry:

Help! Help! Over here! Stop the intruder! Here! Block his way! Block his path!

Should you escape from here, and should you travel all the roads of the world,
the way, the one you seek, that path you will never find; the path and way
that leads you away from me, I curse you from it now! Stray! Stray!

Kundry calls on the evil magician, Klingsor, to destroy Parsifal with the Holy Spear, but when Klingsor throws it at Parsifal, the Spear hovers above his head. Parsifal takes the Spear and makes the sign of the cross, and with that sign, Klingsor's tower collapses, as if in an earthquake.

Kundry falls screaming to the ground. Parsifal pauses as he hurries away; from the top of the castle wall he turns and looks back to Kundry.

You know -
where you can find me again!

He hastens away. Kundry has lifted herself slightly and her gaze follows Parsifal's departure.

[Robo]

Kundry was sent by Klingsor to corrupt Parsifal through sex.

The moment Parsifal rejects Kundry's attempted sexual seduction:

[Robo]

Kundry is the mother of the Matrix.

[Robo]

There is a Princess of our world, and she should have led us to a beautiful reality, but this is what the evil magician of our world has done to her:

[Robo]

The Blue Rose

"There are worse things than blindness: Knowledge can be more terrible than ignorance, if nothing can be done about it."

"Mortals are weak and frail... if their stomach speaks, they foregt their brain. If their brain speaks, they forget their heart, and if their heart speaks, they forget everything!"

The magician turned the Princess into a mind controlled sexual slave. This is how Kundry was bewitched, the same story as Kundry's fall in Richard Wagner's sacred drama, but told in a different way. This is how the magician used witchcraft to turn the Princess into a harlot: