The Mystery of the Grail

The Mystery of the Grail and the Gibelin Imperial Concept: Initiation and Magic in the Quest for the Spirit (Italian: Il Mistero del Graal e la Tradizione Ghibellina dell'Impero) is a work by the Italian philosopher Julius Evola. It was published in 1934 by Hoepli; English translation by Inner Traditions International, 1995 (ISBN 0892815736).

Evola interpreted the Holy Grail and its heroic mythos as symbolic of knightly or kshatriya initiation (reintegration into the primordial state), deriving from the ancient Celtic-Hyperborean tradition. Evola also significantly linked the Grail mythos (with its esoteric themes of the "sick king" and the "broken sword" in need of restoration) to the aspirations of the medieval Ghibellines, who attempted a restoration of the "Sacrum Imperium" or Holy Roman Empire. As H.T. Hansen states, Evola considered the Grail as an initiatory "Hyperborean mystery" and also "a symbolic expression of hope and of the will of specific ruling classes in the Middle Ages (namely, Ghibellines), who wanted to reorganize and reunite the entire Western world as it was at that time into a Holy Empire, that is, one based on a transcendental, spiritual basis" (p. vii., The Mystery of the Grail).

Robert Richardson considers Evola's ideas on the Holy Grail as sources for Pierre Plantard's later claims;^[1] by this argument Evola becomes indirectly responsible for the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

To Evola the Grail was based on the Ghibelline tradition, being the apex of Western Civilisation. The Ghibelline tradition during the medieval period was represented by the German Hohenstaufen imperial line in opposition to the papacy.^[2]

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