RedHanded - ShortHand: The Holy Grail

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

The Holy Grail is the most sought-after object in human history. The legend goes that the grail could bring whoever finds it unbelievable power, influence, youth and even eternal life. Which is why the hunters have included everyone from the knights of King Arthur to full-blown Nazis, hunting for a secret weapon to win them the war.We trace the whole story back to the Last Supper, via the Crusades, Heinrich Himmler, Dan Brown and Indiana Jones.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Hello, hello. And welcome to a very festive, a very Christian. Short-hand, we're talking about the Holy Grail. And I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the Holy Grail is the most sought-after object in all of human history. Any other contenders that jump to mind for you? The Ark of the Covenant. Which apparently is in Ethiopia. And it's in this church and in this like village.

So the Ark of the Covenant is what once held the Ten Commandment tablets. They're gone. Nobody is claiming to have them. But what they used to be in and carried in is alleged to be in Ethiopia where Christianity was before it was in Europe. And there is a man who is selected to guard it at all times and he has to guard it until he dies. Oh, wow. And nobody wants that job. is a very small population

and every single one of them goes blind and they say it's because of the Ark of the Covenant and they're having to look at it all the time fuck. Yeah, no wonder nobody wants it. I've got a fucking boring fucking job and you're blind. Yeah, exactly.

Wow. So the Ark of the Covenant but I don't think it would be as famous if it weren't for Indiana Jones and the Nazis. But I do think the Holy Grail is more famous. Yes. No, the only other thing that comes to mind and it isn't, but it is.

just because it's a throwback to the violin cupboard, the golden fleece. What is the most sought-after thing in podcasting history? Golden fleece level audio. So anyway, those hunting for the grail have many different reasons. Many believe it to be the actual cup that Jesus drank from at the last supper. And plenty of believers hope that finding the cup might show once and for all that the stories are real. But its value to many grail hunters over the years goes way beyond that, because the legend goes that the grail could bring whoever finds it,

unbelievable power, influence youth, and even eternal life. Which is why the hunters have included everyone, from stuffy academics to full-blown Nazis, looking for a secret weapon to win them the war. The Holy Grail has taken many forms over the years. A red agate cup, a wide wooden bowl, a small white stone and even

if you're Dan Brown a womb Oh okay so not the thing that came out of the womb the womb itself I see because he makes the cup shape Got it

God But The real question Is whether the grail ever existed at all Maybe I think you know Who does it hurt

Exactly I mean if the Nazis got it And then We're eternally youthful And powerful That probably would Would That would, if it's real and it does those things, maybe not them find it.

Maybe no one find it. That would be the best thing, probably. So, to answer that question, we're going to have to look at the most famous grail hunters in history. From the once and future king, King Arthur, to the Crusades, via Heimler, and his Nazi relic hunters all the way to the Da Vinci Code and Jay-Z. I, there was, we're in a different studio today for boring reasons and I just went out to go. coffee and there was a guy waiting he was talking to me. And he thought I worked here. Yeah.

And he was, I was, I said, what do you do here then? I was, oh no, I'm just hiring the studio. Because I didn't want to be like, well. Yeah. Today I'm doing the Black Death, Nosphiratu, the Holy Grail, when Santa robbed a bank. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And or maybe Jonestown if we have time. Yeah.

So I just silently slipped away. I was quite embarrassed when I came in, like momentarily embarrassed, but I came in and there was a guy sat here, like sat on the sofas. And he was like, hey, when I walked in, and I was like, oh, hi, do you work here? And he was like, no. And then I realized that the woman who worked here was sat around the corner. And then they're making a podcast next door in the studio. And the guy came out and he was like, oh, my God, it's so good to meet you.

Thank you so much for doing. We're so excited to talk about all the amazing work. I was like, oh, my God, he's like a famous person. And I was like, do you work here? Can I please have a coffee? Bless him. Anyway, maybe in 20 minutes time, you might have just enough information to go and find the Holy Grail yourself.

And how do you feel about seeking eternal life for a New Year's resolution? Here's the shorthand. For a surprisingly long time, the Holy Grail had nothing to do with Jesus. Stories of magical vessels go all the way back to the Celts, who, for those in the back, were a collection of peoples native to the British Isles and France, who were eventually pushed out by the Romans to Wales, Ireland and Brittany. The Celts had all sorts of legends about magical cauldrons and drinking horns, vessels that never ran empty and satisfied the needs of those who use them.

Some were said to be able to feed thousands, or even raise the dead. And when those tales got over to Brittany in northern France, Breton storytellers spread them far and wide. There's also a fair amount of similar law in Greek and Roman mythology, the horn of plenty, for example, which is a horn that Zeus's nurse could fill with whatever the owner wish for. As for the word grail, etymology corner hasn't got much for you today, unfortunately. It originally referred to a deep platter to serve food from, but some think it's from the old French, song rah, which is what Dan Brown goes nuts on, meaning royal blood. But that still feels like a bit of a stretch.

Either way, stories were read and recited through history, of a magical cup with the power to heal wounds, deliver eternal youth, or bring everlasting happiness. But to hit the big time and become the Holy Grail, it first needed to attach itself to a franchise. And the biggest franchise going in medieval Europe was, of course, the legend of King Arthur. For Americans who might be scratching their big, square American chins

at what we just said. King Arthur, who you will often here refer to as the once and future king, which I love, was probably not real. He was an English king from ancient European folk legend. And that legend is all shagging and there's dragons and it's knights and quests and there's a round table and camelot and the sword in the stone. And Merlin the wizard also, I forgot about him. So, in 1130,

a cleric called Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote a book called The History of the Kings of Britain and he wrote it in Latin. This was the point in time when writing a history book literally meant writing down whatever you wanted

because no one could read it anyway. So, based on a couple of vague mentions of a skilled warrior called Arthur from old Saxon era poems, Jeffrey of Monmouth centered his whole book around a brave monarch called King Arthur. He cobbled a history together from various myths and poems about battles and places,

took it all 100% literally, and told stories of ancient kings fighting with magical swords and sorcery, as if it was all historical fact. I just remembered King Arthur's mother had violet eyes. Yeah. It's all just so George R. R. Martin. And a bit later on, after this history of the Kings of Britain, a French poet called,

you can leave this in. Sheridian? Shritian de Troye. Wrote a series of romances based on the Arthurian story. And that is when the once and future king hit the big time. Detroit even added stories

of individual knights like Lancelot and Gawain and even added the steamy love triangle between King Arthur, his wife, Guinevere, and Lancelot. And there was one tale that featured a sweet little wannabe knight called Percival, Le Cont de Grail, or the story of the grail. To achieve his dream of becoming a knight, Percival went on a bunch of quests,

including one to find a magical grail. He eventually found an enchanted castle called Montslavatga, where a wounded king, known as the Fisher King, is believed to be in possession of the Holy Grail. The Fisher King had a horrific wound to his genitals. In fact, his downstairs was pretty much a comprehensive nightmare, and he was only being kept alive by the magical properties of the grail. At the castle, Percival witnessed miracles,

including small amounts of food feeding thousands. He saw the grail, and it was a big bejewel dish containing a single wafer, being carried through the crowd, and he described it as being like a shining star from the heavens. The poem was unfinished and the Fisher King and his magical dish was all left unexplained. At that point, the story of the Grails still had nothing to do with Jesus. This Grail was probably just taken from old Celtic law.

But then, in an incredibly savvy move by the Holy Grail's PR team, Jesus and the plate or the cup were combined. In 1190, a French poet called Robert de Boron retold the story of Percival and gave the Grail an origin story. It wasn't just any old magic bowl that keeps an old king's messy dick life. It was the cup that Jesus drank from at the last supper.

Better story. It is certainly a better story. The same cup that Jesus drank from at the last supper before Judas betrayed him later was used by Joseph of Arimathea, the receiver of the harshest short deal in the world, used to collect his son's blood as he died on the cross. I have spent many years of my life reading the crucifixion story in all of its relative forms. I don't think Joseph was there. His mum was there.

You've got to add to the story. You've got to add to the Holy Grail story. You've got to have Joseph of Aramathia there. I don't know. Maybe Mary's crying. He's there collecting the blood. Because it's also what they say about the spear of destiny, the one that stabbed him. Yes.

Catholics use that as proof that he was dead because it says in the Bible that water and blood came out. And that's what happens when you die, your blood separates, the plate that's separate. I mean, it's all bullocks, but that is what they say. So it's used as a like, oh, he definitely rose from the dead. that was the proof that he was actually dead and not just faking it. I see. But it does make sense, though, because Joseph, the reason they need him at all in the story is because he is descended from King David.

Yes, because it's like the line of King David, but then Jesus isn't actually his bio son. Anyway, we're not here to go into this. We're just here to have some fun shout about a cup. And for Christians, it does not get more important. crucifixion. So, come with us back to Bethlehem. Not Bethlehem, Jerusalem. Such an expert. Christ. So it was a Thursday, a particularly mournedy one. And Jesus knows that he is headed to the cross and he knows that he will be betrayed. So he and all of his mates had a big send-off dinner. And, as Paul says, in his first letter to the Corinthians, after supper, he took the cup saying, this cup is the new covenant

in my blood, do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. And do this in remembrance of me is still said en masse. Do what? Drink. Got it. Eat of my body, drink of my blood. Quite a bit later, Christians introduced transubstantiation, a ceremony in which regular bread and wine became the actual body and blood of Christ.

Catholics still believe that. Protestants don't. And it did become quite wide. spread in about the 12th century that Christians are literally eating Jesus. Right about the same time that Robert De Boron added it to his Arthurian legend. In De Boron's story, after Jesus dies, the cup fed his father, adopted father, surrogate father, whatever, Joseph for 43 years. Apparently he goes off on adventures in the Near East before bringing the grail to England,

where he buries it in Glastonbury, southwest England. This belief really stuck around. And one legend says that at the spot where Joseph buried the Holy Grail, the water runs red, because it travels through Christ's blood. Though it could also just be the red iron oxide in the soil.

But if you saw that, and you were a pastor, you'd be like, fuck, that's wild. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, DeBoron has Joseph's descendants becoming the grailkeepers, a secret lineage of guardians who are the bearers of the blood of Christ. But let's put a big fat crucifixion-sized nail in that for now. Point is, this Jesus-up version of the Arthurian legend, when absolutely bananas popular, the pasto version of going viral.

Over the years, it was retold in various different ways. In Wolfram von Eshtenbach's Prazavale, the grail is a mysterious white, stone that provides substance, revives the dead, cures the sick and keeps you young. As time went on, Sir Galahad became the main knight looking for the grail. His faultless, pure, heroic vibe fit a little bit better with the quest, and the search became one for a mystical union with God. Only Galahad was able to look directly at it, and, quote, behold the divine mysteries

that cannot be described by human tongue. so fucking full of himself, man. Never liked him. So Thomas Mallory's Le Morte de Arthur, which was printed in 1485, is the definitive version of the King Arthur legend. In the Morteur

D'Arthur, three knights, Percival, Galahad and Sobor's carry out a grail ritual and receive Holy Communion from the hands of Jesus himself. Galahad heals the injured Grail king with Christ's blood which drips from the Holy Lance,

then the cup and lance are taken back to heaven. Centuries of grail hunters since have conveniently ignored the ending of that story. At this stage in history, the hunt for the grail was the main quest for the knights of King Arthur. And that's the basic background. And a lot of modern grail hunters, because yes, people are still at it, pour through these old Arthurian legends for clues as if they are historical texts. and not just fun poems based on fun myths. It's kind of fun though.

It is fun. I'm not taking away from them. I'm like, look, you're just having a good time, reading all this, connecting some dots, looking for a cup. How about it? Yeah. So they pour over the legends and the poems. And also, they pour over the last supper. The painting.

And it's not a photograph. But, you know, whatever. It's a start. So, if you are wanting to get out there. and find the cup of eternal life. What other clues are out there? Suppose a discoveries of holy relics have been cropping up for millennia.

The first were found shortly after the Roman Emperor, Constantine I first, converted to Christianity, which he did because his mum told him to. They include the crown of thorns that Jesus wore on the cross, splinters and nails from the cross itself. The Holy Lance used to pierce his side. The Holy Spunge used to moisten his lips mid-crucifixion. They actually, so yes, that does happen, but Jesus has handed the sponge by the Romans,

and it had not been put in water, it had been put in vinegar. Oh, those sneaky fucking Romans. Those sneaky Romans. And of course, the holiest of holy relics, the cup he used at the last supper. Now, making these hunts for these holy relics a bit tricky is a fact that a lot of these items are functionally indistinguishable from bits of old wood and metal. The first mention of someone claiming to have the actual grail is in 570, in an anonymous text charting someone's journey to the Holy Land.

He's known as the Pilgrim of Piacenza, and he describes going to Jerusalem and seeing the sponge and the reed about which we read in the gospel. We drank water from this sponge. There is also the onyx cup, which he, meaning Jesus, blessed at the last supper, and many other wonders. But a very popular theory is that the Holy Grail was taken by the Knights Templar. And for that, we'll need to rewind all the way back to where we started this story, just before the Arthurian legend started, around the 11th century.

Because to find the first proper industrial-scale grail hunters, we have to go back to the Crusades. Christianity, obviously, started in the Middle East in modern-day Palestine, it really took root in Europe a bit later on. And after pretty much the whole continent had fallen head over heels for Christianity just after the first millennium happened, the European Christian kings wanted the Holy Land for themselves.

But the problem was it was still full of Muslims. So, the European Christian kings sent massive armies of knights over to conquer the Holy Region and bring all of the relics therein back to Europe. They sack temples and people. pillage cities as they went, looking for anything remotely related to the 33 years that Jesus was about. After the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099, pilgrims started heading east from Europe. And to protect them from the Saracen pirates, brigands, and other miscreants along the way

were a rag-tag order of knights that called themselves the poor fellow soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. Later rebranded to the Knights Templar, which is much more catchy and easy to say. It was the first and best known of the military religious orders that cropped up around that time. To sign up, you had to take a vow of chastity, poverty and obedience, and swear that you were ready to die for your faith. The Knights Templar became super powerful and influential in the Middle Ages, especially when in 1139 the Pope decreed them exempt from the law, both Holy Law and the regular They got donations from kings, lords and the church. Why all the special treatment?

Well, the legend goes that they were the guardians of the Holy Grail. The story goes that the Holy Grail was found in Jerusalem's Temple Mount, a site of insane religious significance we do not have time to go into here. And once it was found, the Holy Grail was entrusted to the Knights Templar. By the year 1300, the Knights Templar had fallen pretty sharply out of favour with the European kings, and they were all rounded up. They were branded as a bunch of heretics, brutally tortured until they confessed to all sorts of medieval,

no-noes, like devil-worshipping, spitting on the cross and the worst of all, being a gay. Dozens of former Knights Templar were burnt at the stake in Le Gay Parry, and perhaps most humiliatingly of all. Their property and their money was given to their rival gang, the Knights Hospitaller. Under pressure from the King of France, the Pope formally dissolved the Knights Templar in 1312. But some believe that all this persecution just forced the order underground into a secret society guarding ancient wisdom.

And that included the Grail, the shroud of Turin, the Ark of the Covenant, the Holy Spunge, the Crown of Thorns, the lance and parts of the crucifix itself. And bloody Elizabeth Warren claimed to have a splinter from... She did. I believe it, but that's bonkers. When I watched my Amityville horror, which is about one of the kids who grew up in the house and it just fucking ruined his life,

he goes to see Elizabeth Warren. Oh, we're talking about the Warrens, not Elizabeth Warren, the politician. No. Oh, right. I was like... No, Elizabeth Warren's and the Charlottetton. Is that his name?

No, it's not Elizabeth Warren's. Lorraine. Lorraine. Sorry. Yeah. Elizabeth Warren was the one who's like, I'm part Native American and everyone's seen. Oh, huh. Oh, yes.

Okay. I was like, so she's clearly too part Native American and also have a splinter for the cross. I think I need to sit in a dark room or something. I'm getting so many things mixed up today. It's all right. It's nearly holiday time and we can do that. Yeah, I don't know how to transition from that. So let's just carry one because don't worry about any of that.

If you are still keen to sign up, you don't. have to look far. In 1804, an organisation was founded in Paris called the Grand Priory of the Order Supremus Militarious Templi Herosoli Militante, something like that, or the Knights Templar International. They claim to be direct descendants of the original order, though how metaphorical they're being, we don't know. Still, there are now Knights Templar outposts all over the world, and the branch for England and Wales is based in Hertfordshire, where I grew up. And it has 16 precipitories, which meet at Masonic halls in various towns across Hertfordshire. There are three in Watford and two in St Orpans.

The modern version is very stonecutters adjacent, all wrapped up with free masonry. But that's all very much a story for another time. So if you're hoping to get your hands on the grail, the modern-day Knights Templar might be a good place to start. Careful, though, there are also quite a few far-right groups in the US and UK that have styled themselves after the Knights Templar too. And their mission is less Christian charity and more a crusade against a new multicultural world order. And whilst we're on the far right, try as we might to avoid it shorthand really does seem to always come back to the Nazis. We're doing Nosferratu today as well.

And that's got Nazis too. Somehow, they're everywhere. We did a while ago do a shorthand all of its own on Nazi obsession with occult stuff. So go and listen to that one for the full rundown. But the shorter version is that in the 30s, German writer Otto Rahn was digging around in the old King Arthur stories. And he thought he found a clue. The castle mentioned in the Percival stories was called Monarch. salvage of something similar. And Otte-Ran found himself at a Chateau de Montsegur in the south of France.

That's not that far off, the unpronounceable word. This is the first port of call for many grail hunters, finding a castle around the Pyrenees with a similar name to the one we can't say. And perhaps those grail hunters don't realize that the words in French and Spanish for My Lord sound just like that, making it a pretty common church name in the Pyrenees, but don't tell down around that. Otoran's first quest failed, but he went on to head up searches for the grail across the world on behalf of Nazi top brass.

Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, and architect of the Holocaust, was obsessed with the hunt for the grail. How did he have the time? There were quite a lot of Nazis. He probably delegated quite a lot. And they're all fucking on meth. They don't sleep. So they can do so much more with their day.

Himmler thought that finding the Grail would mean that Nazi supremacy was metaphysically preordained. Plus, he thought it would make them literally invincible, which would really, really help with the war effort. Sounds like some method thinking. So if you're really after the cup of eternal life, you could start by joining the Knights Templar, or treating the Arthurian legends as an old treasure map. But I hate to tell you this.

A lot of people will tell you it's already been found. Oh, I didn't know that. Let me tell you, since 1399, Valencia Cathedral has possessed a red, a gate chalice, made in the Middle East around the time of Christ, which they swear down, is a great itself. Their story goes that in the first century, it made its way to Rome, where it was hidden for a while by the persecuted Christians. There are even murals in the catacombs of Rome that they say bear, an exact resemblance to their grail.

Then in the third century, a deacon called St. Lawrence saw that the Christian's time was up in Rome and entrusted the grail to a Spanish legionaire. Sir Lawrence told the soldier to take it off to his parents' manor house in Huesca. This house is also a favourite starting place for the grail hunting community. And soon enough, once Christianity had set in,

the cup was given to the cathedral in Valencia. Today, that red cup is alarmed and closely guarded in a side chapel. Italy's got one too. Not very good at being left out, the Italians. See World War II. But they call it to the Sacro Cantino, and it's an octagonal green crystal bowl,

which is held at the treasury of the Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Genoa. And they say that it was found near Lake Galilee and brought to Genoa after the Crusades. testing has confirmed that this bowl was made way after Jesus's time, but that hasn't put them off. And there's also the Nantius Cup from England, a wooden fruit bowl that was later found to be no more than 600 years old. Oh, no. In fact, there are more than 200 different vessels of all shapes and sizes that claim to be the actual Holy Grail. I mean, obviously they don't.

They're inanimate objects, but people say. that they are. I mean, if you found one that says I'm the Holy Grail to you, it's the fucking Holy Grail. Or you've taken too much math. In 2014, there was a development,

visited swarm to the San Isidro Basilica in Lyon in Spain, after two historians published a book saying that the Grail was definitely there. They'd found two Egyptian parchments, they said, contained brand new clues to the location of the grail, and then they had found,

spent the next three years hunting it down across the world. Oh, it's like an additional bumper packed your board game. Depogamly. And in the end, these two people who published their book and I'm sure made a lot of money decided that the Grail was in their home country

which is quite convenient. And okay, it's easy to sit here in a podcast studio and be all scathing about the Holy Grail. But so many artefacts to do with Christ were preserved by the early Christians and guarded through the centuries. And if the real grail, somewhere down that line,

was abandoned somewhere by someone with no knowledge of its importance, could it still be out there? Could it be even collecting dust in a museum? So much of religion is total unquestioning faith, even, and especially when there's zero tangible proof. It's kind of the entire point. So perhaps the idea of finding the Grail and seeing its miracles for yourself

would be the ultimate incontrovertible proof, that God is real and great, and the public obsession with this magical cup has never really gone away. And of course, we can't leave out Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade is, in my opinion, not the best one. It's not as bad as the Shaila Buff one.

Also, it's one of the major plot holes in Hollywood history that there's literally no... Whatever Indiana Jones does in that film makes absolutely no difference and it all would have happened anyway. Oh wow. And... What an anti-climax.

Yes, exactly. Indy races the Nazi to the Grail and his clues lead him to a cave guarded by an ancient knight. The room is absolutely filled with cups of different shapes and sizes and the knight who's in there says that only one is the true Grail.

It's the one that tells you it is. It's just got googly eyes on it. In the Pixar version, It's got a sassy attitude. Oh, God. One of the Nazis picks a fancy bedouled cup and drinks from it,

which was wrong, and then he ages really fast and turns to dust. And then Indiana Jones points out that Jesus was a carpenter and picks a humble wooden cup. Holy grail. Smart.

And Indiana Jones throws this cup down a crevasse and then rides off into the sunset. In the Da Vinci Code, they discover that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene and the Grail is actually Mary Magdalene's Whomber.

So that obviously means that Jesus has a direct line of descendants and the Knights Templar are the ones who are tasked with keeping them alive and secret. Which, fine. I'm fine with that. I'm fine with that story. I'm fine with the Grail being a person. Me too. I'm fine with all of it. But whatever story about the Holy Grail that you believe, the point is, didn't exist and neither did Jesus. Good night. So yeah, guys, that is the long story of the Holy Grail. Why not have yourself a fun outing this year with your family? Go grail hunting.

Why not? Goodbye. Bye.