(285) Researches on The Holy Grail leading to more re ´Paraclete´ and ´cognate´

On January 23rd 2017 I had already begun searching for more gen re something which had recently, once more, started to very much preoccupy me: The Holy Grail. 
An e mail arrived from David DeAngelo headed -The Holy Grail of One-Night-Stands.

At lunchtime on January 24th 2017 I was rereading the Narrative Entry here, http://james-plasketts-coincidence-diary.blogspot.com.es /2006/03/ part-two-narrative-epilogues-and.html specifically for stuff on the Holy Grail.

And just a few seconds after I had read this of point (12)

 -

Through further researches I gathered that the quest for the Holy Grail represents very much a personal and individual attempt to contact the divine.

Works such as H. Kahanne’s and R. Pietrangeli’s "The Krater and the Grail, Hermetic Sources of the ‘Parzival’ " clarified to me how the symbolism of the Grail was born from ancient cults and myths, e.g. the Greek krater was the deepest bowl of creation and divine wisdom. 

In Gnosticism the krater was a feminine principle; the mixing vessel filled with spirit, which the Creator sent down to earth so that those who strove for higher consciousness might be baptised in it.
So the krater could be viewed as the most primal aspect of the Grail pantheon. 

- my wife mentioned, re portions of tomato soup she had just prepared for us using a soup-making machine, since our cooker was temporarily out of action;

"There you are; mine´s the cup, yours is the bowl."

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At lunchtime on Jan 25th 2017 (the next day) I found myself thinking on being asked a question on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? re the meaning of ´cognate´.

My reply would have been that I had only ever come across the word once and that was in a piece by Anthony Burgess. But it meant ´of like mind´.

A couple of hours later I felt moved to look up, again, the meaning of ´Paraclete´, as used by Bernard Levin in  his piece from The Times of February 18th 1988 apropos Parsifal in Point (1) of the above Narrative entry :

When Parsifal enters he adds strains from the other world… Suddenly… we hear, for the first time… the Grail… in the struggle between good and evil… it is approaching, with its glorious news that the battle is almost over, and light has triumphed over darkness…
Surely this is what the shepherds who were tending their flocks must have experienced when the angel appeared to them with glad tidings of great joy.
The tidings in Parsifal are brought in Act Three, when the Spear, which pierced Christ’s side heals the wound of Amfortas’ guilt…
And… what is the Christian message but hope?
Surely Wagner is saying that Parsifal is neither Christ nor John the Baptist, but the Paraclete of St John’s Gospel, who is sent to comfort the world: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." And it is man, sinful but capable of redemption, who receives the divine gift from the hands of "the innocent fool, made wise by pity."

I see the first hit when ´Paraclete´ is entered into Yahoo is its definition in Wikipedia -

In Judaism

Philo speaks several times of "paraclete" advocates primarily in the sense of human intercessors.

The word later went from Hellenistic Jewish writing into rabbinical Hebrew writing. For a summary of rabbinical usage see Jewish Encyclopedia 1914 "Paraclete".

The word is not used in the Septuagint, the word "comforters" being different in Job. Other words are used to translate the Hebrew word מְנַחֵם (m^ənaḥḥēm "comforter") and מליץ יושר.

In modern Hebrew, the cognate 'praklit' (פרקליט) means 'solicitor' or 'legal counsel', 'praklit ha-mechoz' means district attorney, and 'praklitut ha-medina' the Israeli equivalent of the solicitor-general.

This last sentence also contained the very rare word ´cognate´. And that prompted me, some 30 mins or so later, to look up the meaning of ´cognate´ via Google

This was the first hit. - https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/cognate

At the lefthand bottom corner of that page there was a section headed

For Everyone.

Below it were listed four options. The first was

Play The Challenge

I found myself taking an interest in that link... and I clicked in it... to find I had thus activated a multiple choice check on one´s understanding of the word 

´cognate´ 

with FOUR possible answers.

I chose the right one of the four (´Similar´).

Four options, of course, is what would have been presented had the word´s meaning featured as a question on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? - the very scenario upon which I had just been pondering.

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Circa 18:23 on that same day - Jan 25th 2017 - I was reading clips from the book

The Holy Grail from the Works of Rudolf Steiner.

It is a compilation of just over forty pages of extracts referring to The Holy Grail from his many lectures. I read swiftly through the entry on p.11, which is from a lecture in Basle of 22nd November 1907, headed simply -

The Gospel of St John

This brief extract concludes with the sentence -

"This is represented in the Holy Grail, the shining chalice, the attainment of which floated as a shining goal before the knight of the Middle Ages."

My son came home, saw the title of the work I was reading, and said that this formed a coincidence for he had five minutes earlier scooped up a copy of The Bible he had found in Paseo de las Delicias. 

It was a Gideons copy of the New Testament, Nuevo Testamento, including Psalms and Proverbs, and, of course, the Gospel of St John. 

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On the evening of February 20th 2017 I was moved by a reference to Luna Incognita resulting from my looking at the entry on ´Crater Plaskett´ in Wikipedia. 

That entry linked to the ESA Press Release of March 1st 2007 which features just before Point (1) of Entry http://james-plasketts-coincidence-diary.blogspot.com.es /2006/03/ part-two-narrative-epilogues-and.html

One subsequent lead which resulted from my entering ´Luna Incognita´ into my search engine was this, from a NASA Lunar Science Institute seminar of April 2013 -

One subsequent leadS ipeaker: Ben Bussey, Johns Hopkins University – Applied tfrhPhysics LaboratorLuna Incognita”

Abstract: When we began this integrated research project, the lunar Polar Regions were regarded as “Luna incognita”, the unknown Moon.  During the last four years we have striven to further our understanding of the Polar Regions so that they are now as well known, and in some case better known, than the rest of the Moon. ”Luna incognita” has become “Luna cognate”:

The mapping of the moon´s dark side was proclaimed with a proto-map on the day I was born.
Here I now learned of yet another meaning for ´cognate´. This time in Latin.
It means ´known´.