Shakespeare's Holy Grail:

What have we lost: that is so hard to find?

So, are we searching for something we already have? If we ask, ‘What is the Grail? Where is the Grail?’ we become lost in the mists of Avalon. But if we ask the same question from a different altitude: ‘What of priceless value did we, humanity, lose (that would be worth any price to find again)?’ we begin to open ourselves up to a range of very different answers. The most prosaic answer could be: humanity lost its humanity. We lost our soul-self-awareness and everything that goes with it. Something rotten, as it were, usurped us, and the right order was lost. When I first checked this latter question with Google, it sent up posts and websites about God, Christ and the soul! Try it yourself!

Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, were historians. For their answers, they asked history and art, specifically Leonardo da Vinci, the symbolism in his mural The Last Supper and the frescos in the chapel at Rennes-le-Château in France (where I also met Henry Lincoln).

Myself, I’m much more of a maverick theologian. I contemplate the Bible — taking great care to ignore the orthodox interpretations. And what does the Bible say that mankind has lost? Access to the Tree of Life.