Theodor Reuss quotes

A Warning to all Close minded, petty, or malicious, great and small spirits! Just as the whole plot of Parsifal of the festal play of Richard Wagner is only an allegory, a symbolical depiction with no real occurrence in the material world, so the above explanation of the Graal-secret is not to be understood as literal, personal, material, earthly, relative to vulgar events. But it is only to be understood as totally impersonal, symbolical, and relative on purely spiritual grounds. (Theodor Reuss)
Gurnemanz is still not absolutely certain that Parsifal is pure and a fool, as he makes the decision to lead Parsifal to the castle of the Graal, for Gurnemanz sang after they both had walked a while: Now pay attention, and let me see, if you are a fool and if you are pure...! - The test, if he is a pure fool, shall come to Parsifal first in the Temple of the Graal! This point cannot be worked out further here. View quote
Theodor Reuss
Nothung, Nothung, envious sword - what is the sword Nothung, but that unbreakable legacy which Siegfried, as the only son of the father, re-tempers in the fire of youth. What else, but the symbol of the primal-sword (primal-Phallus!) The primal-father has stuck this primal-sword into the trunk of the primal-tree, and whoever pulls out this sword wins a woman with it - as bride and sister! These are no symbols of sexual-abstinence! View quote
Theodor Reuss
Now begins the true pilgrimage: Parsifal with the lance in hand! Here begins the symbol of renunciation! The renunciation lies, symbolically expressed, in the words, with the lance in hand! A renunciation is first, then, a renunciation in the true sense of the word, when one does not do something that one has recognized as desirable and has wished to do. The sojourn of Parsifal with the lance in hand corresponds to the 40 days that Christ shall have spent in the wastelands. It corresponds to the trials and tribulations which all candidates of all the old religions, of all mystical secret societies etc. had to undergo, before they could become initiates. This sojourn also corresponds therefore, to the 40 days of the fast and abstention, which yet today the initiates of a mystical society impose on their candidates as a test before they are left to study the mystical secret, salvational - teachings. View quote
Theodor Reuss
Contemporaneous with the awakening of the interest of the great masses of the German people in Parsifal, a flood of newspaper articles about Parsifal have begun, of which, most have no trace of a hint of the deep deep mystical meaning of the plot and the symbology of the play is lost. View quote
Theodor Reuss
Parsifal does not ask in the first act: What is the Graal, Parsifal asks, Who is the Graal? View quote
Theodor Reuss
Learn to eat of the tree of Knowledge, and of the tree of Life enjoy the fruit. View quote
Theodor Reuss
Gurnemanz is still not absolutely certain that Parsifal is pure and a fool, as he makes the decision to lead Parsifal to the castle of the Graal, for Gurnemanz sang after they both had walked a while: Now pay attention, and let me see, if you are a fool and if you are pure ...! View quote
Theodor Reuss
Closing Word Learn to eat of the tree of Knowledge, and of the tree of Life enjoy the fruit. Seek both within yourself, and so you recognize them and know their place, you are come to the highest rung of the 12 step ladder. Through this will the Divine-Love be awoken that does not have a place in the twisted minds of men, but dwells in his heart, from which the salvational current will be born which gives us the vision of the eternal light and annihilates all falsity. "The eternal-feminine draws us up?!" View quote
Theodor Reuss