Today on the 1st of January, in the year of Our Lord, two thousand and nineteen, A Manual of Grail Quest Theology was made available for purchase.

We have never intended for this work to be spiritually accessible to all and sundry; those who can buy a book, attend a conference or read an article and pronounce to have donned the robes of chivalry and ascended to the level of a Galahad or a Percival.

In this competition we believe esoteric Roman Catholicism is utterly unique. The Magisterium does not allow for conjecture or guesswork when it comes to the Way to Heaven, or even the process of mystical union with God. The monastic method is laid out in the catechism and the dogma, there is no place for a blood ritual here or a shady initiation there, a good priest will immediately point at error and shout anathema before the theological criminal can even blink. And this is why the Church is the shepherd on earth of the Imperial fist.

Without the Church, without a priest, without a spiritual advisor, every man, even the Emperor and his knights are not only liable but certain to fall.

Every warrior was flanked by his mystic; everyone from Arthur to Alfred, Charlemagne to Barbarossa, Sobieski to Galahad, had his spiritual guide. The Grail Quest Knights frequently find themselves baffled by the enemies, environments, animals and mythical beasts, maidens, wizards and monsters they meet on the path to the Grail Castle, and every time, they stumble across a Hermit living in wood or cavern, they receive Mass from this lone ascetic and they have their most recent physical combat explained as a spiritual metaphor. Everything from splayed leg whores to two headed lions are divulged as symbolic obstacles for the armoured soul on its way to the Heavenly mansions.

Again and again the monk becomes the crossroads for the knight, if he chooses to continue headlong down a path of violence and reliance on his sword and shield he becomes an idiot and takes steps backwards, he becomes the Fool again; if he chooses to confess, receive the sacrament, blessing from the religious and guidance on the road, he advances again, into more and more difficulty until he reaches the limit of his Quest (the very doors of the Grail castle for Percival, and the touch of the Grail itself for Galahad).

We too stand on this precipice which confronts every sincere warrior on the path.

If we were to offer this road to the layman who says “can I read a book and then understand the quest”, we would be playing the part of Satan.

Entry into the Roman Catholic Church takes years, sometimes even decades, one can confess and be baptised and enter into the sacraments of the Lord in a matter of weeks, but the long and agonising process of catechesis and preparation for confirmation is a long one. The baby is baptised within the first year of life, but the child does not go to confirmation until puberty; this is nearly twelve winters of mass, theology, education and instruction until the Church decides to take the step into initiation and not without priestly interrogation first! Could we then say to a sincere enquirer, just read this book and you’ll get it.

And what about Spiritual Exercise?

We have condensed St Loyola’s eight week retreat into a thirty day dip into the waters of asceticism and monastic introspection. Loyola never intended the layman to plumb the depths of priestly meditation which he and his brother saints had mapped in private cloisters over the centuries since Christ hung from the tree. We are not looking for our readers to dive into the monastery or the priesthood (unless of course God uses this as a method to pull men into that vocation); instead we are seeking to push men up that hill towards the Grail Keep.

The men on this road need to be healthy, fortified, strong and physically capable but primarily they need to be spiritually robust. There is no description of the physicality of Bors, Percival or Galahad, and all three achieve the Castle, they are simply described as being capable knifemen, all of them besting dozens of equally matched combatants with ease. The only knight who is described as being big and strong and violent is Gawain and he struggles throughout the quest with reliance on his size and prowess instead of God’s hand. In fact, it is Galahad who reaches the Grail, and he is described as being modest, tender and almost ladylike in his graces, albeit touched with that penchant for vulgar violence which still makes him a competent Knight of the Round Table.

We have stressed throughout the short life of Fortress that this was never going to be a long term endeavour, or one that seeks to have a membership or some kind of badge wearing fealty in a technological circle jerk.

No. The modern Grail Quest, this theology of knuckle dusters in one fist and rosary beads in the other, is rooted and founded in a local church:

The Eucharist placed on your tongue by a priest who knows your name, and who has heard your blackest sins in the confessional;
Surrounded by men who know your name and know what your greatest hopes and darkest fears are;
A woman by your side who knows you intimately, first at the altar with a ring on her finger, and then in the home and lastly the bed;
Children at your side who know what you stand for, and what you want for them when it comes to the sons as soldiers, and the daughters as wives.

This manual stands on that bedrock and makes those assumptions about the reader, that you a) aren’t a beta loser slumming it at home with no prospects, vexing loudly on the internet about the great sins of modernity, whilst not acting in the world to change it, and b) that you aren’t a screeching alpha retard who thinks every battle is won with the metaphorical battle axe, when we know the greatest victories of Christendom over her enemies were won in the pews with a rosary in praying hands by a warrior before he stepped into the breech against overwhelming odds.

In the grand spiritual conflict which we are facing, the odds of a Don Juan at Lepanto or a Sobieski at the walls of Vienna would be warmly welcomed, for we are, as we continually reiterate, facing our metaphysical Helm’s Deep, insurmountable odds, with no hope of rescue because in Christ’s army there no allies, only enemies, for “He that is not with me, is against me.”

And maybe that is why the Grail Knights always quest alone, only meeting for brief respite in a hermit’s cavern or a virgin’s bed for a few hours at most before they again part ways on their own, facing their demons alone, dying alone, until only three of them make it to the Grail Keep, and only one may enter.

You can purchase the book HERE