A fast kept for a reasonA vow of continenceA thing given away rather than keptA candle for the one who did not come backWater and bread at a shrine
Invocation Approach
Tone
Austere gentle distinct
Address
GalahadThe Grail KnightThe Perfect KnightSon of Lancelot
Relationship
The son who was made to answer for his father
Warning
He is a doctrine wearing armour and the doctrine is about other people s bodies
Resonance
Those who keep a vow the young the celibate the grieving
Symbols
The grailThe siege perilousThe sword in the stoneThe white shieldThe bloody spear
Mythology Summary
Galahad is invented by the Vulgate Cycle, in the Queste del Saint Graal (c. 1220s) written in a Cistercian milieu, as the illegitimate son of Lancelot and Elaine of Corbenic; he alone can sit in the Siege Perilous and draw the sword from the stone, and he alone achieves the Grail, with Percival and Bors, before his soul is carried to heaven. He is in neither Chretien nor the earlier Grail stories: his role was created by displacing Percival, because the new Grail demanded a virgin knight. Malory takes him over as the perfect knight whose chastity is the qualification.
Modern Practice
No cult, and the least usable figure of the nine for practice — deliberately so, since he was built as an ideal rather than a person. The small honest use of him is as a mirror for vows: what vow have you actually kept, what did keeping it cost someone else, and is a purity that requires someone to be excluded worth maintaining.