Quest Magazine

Originally printed in the July - August 2000 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Somerville, James M. "From Exclusivism to Convergence - Part 2." Quest  88.4 JULY - AUGUST 2000): pg 136-139.

By James M. Somerville

Faced with the fact of divergence in the religious traditions of the world, some believers in a particular tradition are exclusivists, rejecting all other traditions as errors. Other believers are inclusivists, recognizing other traditions as lesser or imperfect forms of truth. As possible responses to religious diversity, there remain two other approaches: pluralism and convergence.

Pluralism

Shouldn't we regard the various spiritual traditions of the world as roughly equal? Isn't one as good as another, depending on the needs of ethnic people? What suits a Hindu villager, surrounded by temples with gongs, bells, erotic images, and grotesque statues representing different aspects of God, may repel a European or American urbanite. Yet the Hindu peasant's religion can lead to the practice of the highest moral virtue with boundless trust in the promise of the sanatana dharma, or eternal doctrine. By the same token, the Hindu would probably find the externals of Western religion not only unfamiliar but indescribably dull and depressing.

Thomas Merton, when he visited the giant Buddha images at Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka, approached them reverently, barefoot, transformed by the peace emanating from those extraordinary faces. It was as though they had seen through every possibility, "knowing everything, rejecting nothing." Here was the peace "that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything."

Who can say whether the Cistercian monk, Thomas Merton, became a pluralist in those last days before his accidental electrocution. But it was a good way to die, away from home in a foreign land, on the verge of seeing that truth is not bound or confined in any set of theological formulas. God's reach is not shortened. There are saints and sinners in all the great traditions, and who can say "who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 18.1)?

St. Teresa of Avila strove to make it plain that her mysticism was grounded in Christ and that in her most lofty ascents he was always present. This may have been true also of St. John of the Cross, but in his poetry he does not speak explicitly of Christ. Basing much of his verse on the Song of Solomon, his stanzas are universal enough to be understood and treasured by a Sufi, such as Rumi, or a Hasidic Jewish mystic in the tradition of the Baal Shem Tov. Meister Eckhart's apophatic mysticism all but leaves behind every trace of Catholic dogma, an omission which, among other things, earned him a condemnation after his death by Pope John XXII. "His notion of God," writes Urban T. Holmes, "is more the Neo-Platonist One than the Trinity."

Regardless of how pluralistic one may become, most of us are born into a religious or an a-religious culture or household. We all begin somewhere, and most of us stay there. One is reminded of the story about the husband who, returning to his house unexpectedly, found a man who had been courting his wife hiding in a closet. Opening the closet door, he shouted to the man inside, "What are you doing in there?" to which the embarrassed intruder replied, "Well, sir, I gotta be somewhere." This is just another way of repeating what was said at the start. We've "gotta be somewhere." Most people live and die in the religion into which they were born and raised. Most will hold that it is the right religion for them, even the only true one. Few have the urge or the energy to look elsewhere. If they have to be somewhere, they might as well stay where they are.

Each religion has its own mythos, which is familiar to its adherents from childhood. It feels right and comfortable, whereas other religions, even denominations within the same faith, seem strange. And certainly, at the level of systematic belief and practice, religions vary greatly. The real issue is whether at the highest level Christian trinitarianism can be reconciled with the strict monotheism of Judaism and Islam; whether, in spite of the similarities between Buddhism and the Hinduism from which it diverged, the anatta, or no-self teaching of Buddhism, can be reconciled with the atman, or supreme-self doctrine, of Hinduism. It does make a difference when one faith holds that there has been only one incarnation (Christianity), while a second holds that there have been several (Hinduism), and a third denies that there have been any at all (Islam).

Some commentators try to weasel their way into reconciling differences by redefining what they understand by the divine, by incarnation, by what constitutes uniqueness. Since these are all merely doctrinal matters, what really matters, say the modern mystics (and not all of them are new-age types)is that, in the mystical "Cloud of Unknowing," beyond all images and conceptual structures, all doctrinal differences fall away in a direct experience of divine union. Maybe. But since few students of mysticism have actually had this kind of transforming experience themselves, they are reduced to taking someone else's word for what it is like. Reduced to faith in another's experience and not having had that kind of adventure themselves, most pluralists are loath to try to reconcile the differences among the various religions. They prefer to leave them in their otherness.

Convergence

Another approach to ecumenism plays with the idea of convergence. At their best and most authentic level, the major religions are, as Frederick Franck has said, like fingers pointing to the sacred. You get a sense that they are all moving toward the goal of transcending the limitations of image and speech, each trying through its peculiar story to communicate by the use of symbol and myth a sense of the Ineffable. Do not even presume to utter the divine Name, say pious Jews. But this very reluctance testifies to the conviction that the heart and source of all reality does exist, though it cannot be reduced to words or concepts. Each religion, beginning with its own story or myth, is capable of eliciting in its adherents a longing for transcendence and a desire for the infinite.

No religion, of course, can deliver the Absolute or the Infinite to order. That would be like trying to get back to the 10^-35 second after the Big Bang and before the cosmic inflation began. At that point all the known laws of physics break down. Anterior to that moment is the pretemporal state, whose laws, if they exist, are unknown to us. Analogously, though all the various religions converge toward Omega, none ever manages to bring us all the way. Spiritually and psychologically, what we would encounter "there" is emptiness, emptiness of all form. In the idiom of Nicholas of Cusa, Nothingness and the All coincide. But where they coincide is beyond where the lines of convergence can reach. Religion can bring us to the verge, to the brink, but like Moses, who led his people to the Promised Land, but could not enter in, there is no place for religion in the world to come. Religion is our vehicle for the journey. Once arrived, it will be left at the door.

Convergence saves us from the frustration and inconclusiveness of relativism. It recognizes the abiding reality of the Absolute, but by approaching it in conscious creaturehood, those who opt for convergence keep both poles of the creator-creature relationship intact. This enables one to acknowledge the limitations of all religions and thus to avoid turning any one of them into a Golden Calf.

Conversion and Ecumenism

Exclusivism, in its fundamentalist dress, has sometimes degenerated into bullying: either convert or be killed. Jews have repeatedly been faced with the choice of death or conversion. Short of threats to life and limb, a gentler form of terrorism is the policy of the true believer to frighten potential converts with visions of what will happen to unbelievers in the world to come. They will surely be lost unless they are baptized and are washed in the blood of the Lamb. Since they know they are right, exclusivists are known to wave aside every nonconformist element in their domain. They often use democratic means to take over the leadership of a denomination, as well as its seminaries and educational institutions, then oust all the well-trained faculty members who do not agree with their inerrantist literalism. Exclusivism does not always take this form, but the historical record shows that it very often does.

Inclusivism can admit the value of traditions other than its own and can even learn from them. But when pressed, it "knows" that its own tradition is best and truest, not just relative to the ethnic needs of its devotees but absolutely best and true. It therefore relativizes all the rest by making itself the judge and bar before which all the others are to be evaluated. It reduces, then, to a variety of exclusivism.

Pluralism, for all its good intentions, by allowing for the separate but rough equivalence of all religions, leaves itself open to the charge of relativism. Unless manyness has a focal point, even a receding one, we are left with a collection of radically independent worlds or universes with no unifying principle. As Kurt Gödel pointed out in mathematics, to account for the unity of any collection of items, one has to go beyond the set in order to find a principle of unification that is not a member of the set. Pluralism, to the extent that it leaves out transcendence as the goal toward which all religions are moving, has given up trying to address the problem of the coexistence of the one and the many.

Those who opt for convergence view the receding horizon of transcendent unity as the stimulus that animates all the religions of the world. Their starting points and some of their theologies may be irreconcilable when viewed separately. But none of the major religions is static; otherwise they would not have lasted for centuries. They are like the spokes of a wheel that converge toward the hub. Though, on the analogy, the hub may be invisible, the fact that the spoke-religions do converge means that the hub is not merely an invisible, external goal but an intrinsic, dynamic, guiding principle whose action is already inwardly operative in impelling the devotees to seek the hub.

Conversion to another religion is sometimes to the earthly advantage of the converted. If conversion frees individuals from slavery or an oppressive caste system, they may be better off joining the religion that liberates them or, in some cases, assures them of superior educational opportunities. People do not always have disinterested reasons for abandoning one religion and joining another. As for the trans-temporal advantages of conversion, who can say that a person's lot will be better hereafter for having changed from one religion to another?

All religious adherents do well if they are able to give a reasonable account of their faith to others. They also do well if they are prepared to listen patiently and attentively to what others have to say about their faiths. That is what ecumenism aims to achieve: not conversion but conversation. Where good will is at work, theologies turn out to be less important. What matters is the kind of faith which, in the Letter to the Hebrews (11.1), is defined as "the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of the reality of things not seen." But the dynamism does not stop there with a solipsistic "alone with the Alone." There must be a return movement, back, down to earth, whereby the fruits of devotion are turned into the service of others. The test of any true religion is the way it leads us to treat one another.

James M. Somerville taught philosophy for many years at Fordham University, where he was chair of the department and co-founder of the journal International Philosophical Quarterly. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy from Xavier University in Cincinnati and a Quest Book author (contributing to The Goddess Re-Awakening, 1989). His most recent book is The Mystical Sense of the Gospels (Crossroad, 1997).

by John Algeo

Originally printed in the JULY-AUGUST 2008 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Algeo, John. "Ceremony, Freemasonry, and the Mysteries." Quest  96.4 (JULY-AUGUST 2008):127-129, 147.

CEREMONY IS A MYSTERY—in several senses. First, we do not know the ultimate origin of the word. English ceremony comes through French from Latin caeremonia, but that Latin word is of unknown origin. It may be from Etruscan, a language spoken near Rome but unrelated to Latin. And it may originally have referred to sacred rites performed by the Etruscan priests at a site called Caere, but that is just speculation. The ultimate origin of the word is a mystery.

Second, although ceremony is basically just a form of customary action, including etiquette, protocol, and ritual of all sorts, some ceremonies have the potential of great power—of affecting their participants in deep and lasting ways. Yet that power is mysterious because we do not know how it works. William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet and Theosophist—who was himself a great ceremonialist—described the power of ceremony in a poem entitled "A Prayer for My Daughter," which ends with these lines:

How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

The "rich horn" is the cornucopia—the curved horn from a goat whose milk fed the infant Zeus. In gratitude for being thus fed, the god made that horn overflow with fruit, grain, and other good things, so it became a symbol of abundance. Laurel leaves were formed into wreaths with which to crown athletes, prophets, and poets, so the laurel is a symbol of victory, wisdom, and art. How ceremony gives rise to innocence and beauty, how it confers abundance and victory, and how it can affect the lives of those who engage in it are mysteries. 

Third, ceremony is the basis—the heart and soul—of the Ancient Mysteries, of which modern Freemasonry is a reincarnation. Aristotle said that initiation into the Mysteries was not a matter of learning something, but rather of experiencing something and of being changed by that experience. The Ancient Mysteries were ceremonies. A ceremony does not impart cognitive information, telling us something we otherwise might not know about; rather, a ceremony is a pattern of action, something we experience by doing it. The ceremonies of the Mysteries and of modern Freemasonry were and are experiences with the potential of transforming their participants. So ceremonies are Mystery actions.

Ancient Mysteries and Modern Freemasonry

The Mysteries of Eleusis were the most famous of those in ancient Greece, although there were many others in the Mediterranean world, for example, the Mysteries of Cybele, Bacchus, Orpheus, Isis, and Mithra. The Eleusinian Mysteries lasted for more than a thousand years, initiating countless numbers of nobles and commoners, women and men, free persons and slaves. After the Mysteries of Eleusis and others had been closed down by a Christian government that regarded them as subversive, the Mystery tradition did not die out, but was transformed. It continued, as Joscelyn Godwin shows in the Quest Book The Golden Thread: The Ageless Wisdom of the Western Mystery Tradition, in a number of forms: Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, Alchemy, Kabbalah, and Freemasonry, among others.

Godwin's metaphor of the thread echoes recent use of that term for a train of thought or a series of messages on a single topic (for example, a thread in the messages of a Web chat group). It is a good metaphor because it suggests a process of uniting by tying together, and uniting was and is the aim of both the Ancient Mysteries and their later descendant ceremonies. The post-Classical history of the Mysteries could also be likened to an underground stream that emerges here and there, now and again, in the landscape of history, as various springs of living water. Freemasonry is one of those springs.

The history of modern Freemasonry is reasonably well documented after the 1717 foundation of the Grand Lodge of England, but the Craft (as Freema-sons refer to their form of the Mysteries) is certainly much older than that. Elias Ashmole, the seventeenth-century English antiquary, esotericist, and founder of the Royal Society, was made a Freemason in 1646. And there is evidence that modern Freemasonry may have begun in the 1590s in Scotland.

The cathedral architects and stonemasons of the Middle Ages were part of the "Golden Thread" that Joscelyn Godwin writes about. Of all workmen in that time, they were doubtless the best informed about historical matters and the liberal arts—especially the quadrivium of mathematical arts: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music—but also about art, history, theology, and spiritual symbolism. Constructing and adorning the great cathedrals of Europe required mastery of all those fields. The stonemasons consequently formed a brotherhood with trade secrets and great pride in their special knowledge and status within European society. They formed lodges of workmen that strictly excluded cowans, a Scottish term for someone who works as a mason but has not been properly apprenticed or entered into the craft and therefore who lacks the necessary knowledge and skill to do the job well.

What seems to have happened in late sixteenth-century Scotland is that some of the nobility and gentry who patronized the stonemasons were admitted into Masonic trade lodges as an honor to both the gentry and the lodges. Some of those gentlemen would have been Renaissance men of learning, familiar with various forms of the "Golden Thread" that were continuing the Mystery tradition, as Elias Ashmole certainly was at his somewhat later time. Consequently, those gentlemen became Speculative Masons rather than operative masons. That is, they used the craft of stonemasonry as a mirror (Latin speculum) in which to reflect upon the mysteries of life. Thus they cooperated with those who operated as working stonemasons and thereby transformed Freemasonry into a reincarnation of the Ancient Mysteries.

Thus modern Freemasonry was born: mothered by the craft of stonemasonry and fathered by Renaissance esotericists. To some extent, this history is itself speculative, but it rests on the work of such scholars as Joscelyn Godwin and David Stevenson.

Similarities and Differences

The Ancient Mysteries and modern Freemasonry are thematically, if not lineally, connected. But what are the ceremonial links between the two esoteric practices? They are significant.

First, as Aristotle said, the Ancient Mysteries had no cognitive content, nor does Freemasonry. Neither ceremonial practice involves learning information; both involve doing something, namely experiencing a ceremony, which is intended to be and can actually be transformative. Indeed, Freemasonry defines itself, not as a body of ideas, but instead as "a peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols." In that definition, "peculiar" does not mean "odd, strange" (though some may think such an interpretation justified), but rather "particular, characterizing, distinctive," which is the oldest sense of that word. Masonic language is conservative, often archaic. And "morality" is not just "ethical behavior" but more generally reflects the Latin etymon of the word: mos, whose plural is mores, meaning "custom(s)." So Freemasonry is a way of acting, a customary ceremony (remember Yeats's poem about custom and ceremony).

Second, Aristotle also said that, in the Ancient Mysteries, something was told, something was shown, and something was done. The thing told was a story or myth; in the Eleusinian Mysteries, it was the myth of Demeter and Persephone, including the rescue of the latter from the underworld. The things shown included various symbols associated with the myth: a basket, a cup with a drink, a pomegranate, an ear of wheat, etc. The thing done was a ceremony acting out the myth. In that ceremony, the initiands of the Eleusinian Mysteries learned what death really is and how they too might rise from the after-death world of Hades into the bright heaven of Olympus.

Freemasonry also has those same three elements. What is told is a legend about the building of King Solomon's Temple and the fate of its principal architect, which is the veiling allegory of Freemasonry. What are shown are various tools related to the building trade, such as compasses, squares, levels, and plumb rules, which are the illustrating symbols. What is done is a dramatic ceremony reenacting aspects of the building of the Temple, especially the history of its principal architect, in which an initiand plays the central role. Like that at Eleusis, the ceremony of Freemasonry is about death and resurrection, which are the subject of all the Mysteries.

Despite the close parallels between modern Freemasonry and the Ancient Mysteries, there are also some differences. Mainstream modern Freemasonry differs in two main respects from the Mystery practices of old. One of those is that mainstream Freemasonry admits only men, not women to its mysteries. That is a result of the fact that modern Freemasonry began among stonemasons, all of whom were men, and speculative gentlemen. The social accident of early unisex masculine Freemasonic Lodges was mistaken as an essential of the Craft. That mistake was corrected in the late nineteenth century when a French Lodge of male Freemasons, some of whom were also active supporters of women's rights, initiated a woman, Marie Deraismes, as a Mason. As a result, a new order of Co-Freemasonry came into existence, dedicated to the equality of all peoples, regardless of sex.

The other main difference between much contemporary mainstream Masonry and the Ancient Mysteries is that the latter were focused centrally and sharply on spiritual transformation. Modern mainstream Freemasonry tends to focus on fraternal fellowship and social service. Those are good things, and the charitable work done by many Masonic bodies is highly commendable. But the fundamental message of both the Mysteries and Masonry is one of spiritual transformation. That message was reiterated among Co-Freemasons when Annie Besant was initiated into the Craft at the beginning of the twentieth century. She restored the spiritual focus and especially the esoteric emphasis to Freemasonry.

To be sure, many masculine Masons are well aware of the esoteric side of Freemasonry, for example, to name only two, W. L. Wilmshurst, from the turn of the twentieth century, and W. Kirk MacNulty, who is still publishing new works on symbolic and spiritual Masonry. But Co-Masons like Geoffrey Hodson and C. W. Leadbeater have been especially prominent in describing the inner side of Freemasonry. Today several independent Masonic organizations practice the sexual equality of the Ancient Mysteries, but one that also dedicates itself most particularly and centrally to the esoteric, spiritual side of the Craft is the Eastern Order of International Co-Freemasonry.

Ceremony and Sacrament

The spiritual interpretation of Masonry is the essence of the Craft. For example, King Solomon's Temple is the core symbol in Freemasonry. The structure that the Hebrew king built in Jerusalem served as the house of the God of his people, but the Masonic structure is also the Temple of Humanity. The divine manifests through the world, and particularly through human beings. In a sense, every human being is a temple that enshrines a spark of divinity. But Solomon's Temple also represents humanity collectively; each of us is a stone in that building. We differ from one another in many ways, just as the stones in a cathedral or temple differ from one another. But just as every stone has its own unique purpose and is needed to complete the Temple of Solomon, so also every unique human being is needed to complete the Temple of Humanity. All human beings are integrally valuable.

The metaphor of humans as building stones has another aspect, as well. Building stones are quarried from a single mineral mass. They are rough hewn to be worked upon. Then they are smoothed and polished. And finally, they are incorporated into Solomon's Temple. So also we human beings are individualized from a group soul. At first, we are rough and unrefined. But then we are educated and evolved. And finally, when we become fully human (in what is Theosophically called the fifth initiation), we realize our fundamental unity with each other and with all life; that is, we are incorporated into the Temple of Humanity, which is also the dwelling place of the divine in this world.

The symbolic allegory of building King Solomon's Temple is what Craft Freemasonry is about. Craft Freemasonry consists of three Degrees, which parallel the three statuses of members of the building trade: Apprentice, Craftsman (or journeyman), and Master. The Apprentice is one who is learning the trade. The Craftsman is one who is practicing the trade. And the Master is one who can teach the trade to others and employ them in its practice. Freemasonry has, however, other Degrees beyond the three because, as Light on the Path tells us:

Within you is the light of the world—the only light that can be shed upon the Path. If you are unable to perceive it within you, it is useless to look for it elsewhere. It is beyond you, because when you reach it you have lost yourself. It is unattainable, because it forever recedes. You will enter the light, but you will never touch the Flame.

Ceremonial initiation is a kind of sacrament. The word sacrament is from a Latin word meaning "an oath of allegiance, an obligation, a consecration," i.e., a process of making sacred. In both Freemasonry and the Ancient Mysteries, the initiands take an oath, affirm an obligation, and consecrate themselves to a life of purposefulness. The Book of Common Prayer defines a sacrament as "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." The inward and spiritual grace of which ceremonial initiation is an outward and visible sign is an experience of the light within. That light is infinite, without end. We can enter it; but we can never touch the central flame that produces it. Consequently, there is no end to ceremonial initiations.

The Degrees beyond the three of Craft Masonry comprise two series: Scottish Rite and York Rite. The existence of all those Degrees and of one initiation after another is a symbol of the truths that the road winds ever onward and that we will enter the light but will never touch the Flame. They are called "additional" or "higher" Degrees, but really they are just elaborations of or commentaries on the three basic Craft Degrees, which are the fundamental sacrament of Freemasonry.

All Masonic sacramental ceremony is a search for more light and greater perfection. Freemasonry is a ceremonial quest for the only initiation that really matters—our initiation into full humanity, a ceremony of innocence and beauty, of power and wisdom. Such ceremony is the allegorical cornucopia of abundant blessings and the symbolic laurel crown of ultimate victory in evolution.

References

Eastern Order of International Co-Freemasonry. Website at http://comasonic.net
Godwin, Joscelyn. The Golden Thread: The Ageless Wisdom of the Western Mystery Tradition. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, Quest Books, 2007.
Hodson, Geoffrey. At the Sign of the Square and Compasses. Adyar: Eastern Federation, International Co-Freemasonry, 1976.
Leadbeater, C. W. Ancient Mystic Rites [new ed. of Glimpses of Masonic History]. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1986.
———. The Hidden Life in Freemasonry. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1926.
MacNulty, W. Kirk. The Way of the Craftsman: A Search for the Spiritual Essence of Craft Freemasonry. London: Arkana, 1988; reprint London: Central Regalia, 2002.
Stevenson, David. The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century, 1590-1710. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Wilmshurst, W. L. The Meaning of Masonry. Facsimile of 1927 5th ed. New York: Bell, 1980.

John Algeo, PhD, served for nine years as president of the Theosophical Society in America and is now international vice president of the Theosophical Society. Author of the Quest Book Reincarnation Explored and most recently editor, with Adele Algeo, of The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky, 1861-1879 (vol.1), he is published widely in Theosophical magazines.

By Betty Bland

Originally printed in the JULY-AUGUST 2008 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bland, Betty. "The Light of the World." Quest  96.4 (JULY-AUGUST 2008):124-125.

SUNLIGHT STREAMING THROUGH BEAUTIFUL stained glass windows fills my earliest memories of religious or devotional feelings. Sitting in my family's regular Sunday morning pew and understanding little of what was going on, I would gaze at those luminous pictures of a loving shepherd holding the little lamb in his arms, or a kindly bearded man knocking to be given entry at a door draped with bunches of grapes. There was no shortage of beautiful church music and, on occasion after communion, the choir would gather around the altar rail and sing "The Lord Bless You and Keep You."

These experiences were outside the realm of my intellectual analysis, but they deeply imprinted on my heart a spiritual connection with the "other" that was not particularly conscious but a constant background presence. It did not make me religious, or even good, for that matter. In fact, "mischief" was said to be my middle name. However, in times of trouble or uncertainty the interior connection was a very present support. These experiences provided a mysterious access to an inner world that otherwise might have been invisible to me.

Depending on the individual, there are many different reactions to this weekly ritual, ranging from total boredom and resentment to conscious and life-changing inspiration. A few poignant symbols, connected and well presented, have the potential of striking an inner chord and mysteriously calling forth an intuitive response. Although unpredictable to some extent, the presence of inspiration is dependent on beauty, intentionality, and heart.

Beauty and culture were the two elixirs to humanity's evils identified by Nicholas Roerich in his writings. He felt that beauty had a unique way of speaking to one's soul and drawing out the best. Plato also identified Beauty as one of the trio of divine attributes along with the Good and the True. Although it is true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, there is a certain balance and harmony within the form one might call beautiful that creates a sense of pleasure, and gives a certain lift to the spirit.

But beauty alone does not have transformative power. Perhaps this is why Roerich felt the need to include culture as one of the essential attributes for saving humanity. Intentionality, or understanding, has to imbue the beautiful with meaning so that some message of inspiration is transmitted. In this context the beauty is not for its own sake but is like the finger pointing at the moon, useful but not the end goal in itself, lest it become a hollow mockery. Inherent within the beauty of a sunset is a sense of awe and vastness of the whole of creation, thus inspiring the viewer to think beyond the small self.

The most important element, however, is what I call heart—the light of spirit which is a unitive, all-encompassing love. It is like the sunshine that streams through the many-colored windows to translate the darkened glass into colorful images. This spiritual light has the power to shine through and transform elements of this world from empty idols into icons or symbolic representations of a greater reality. Meaningful symbols or symbolic actions are, as expressed in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church, outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace.

I mention the Christian idiom because that is my religion of birth and choice, but the use of symbols is universal to all religious traditions. Symbolic transmission of knowledge, in whatever system, is a gift for our human unfoldment. We have the unique ability to look into a metaphor and to see beyond it into unspoken truths. For this reason the preferred transmission of religious teachings has always been in metaphor and symbol. Certainly Madame Blavatsky chose the obscure and poetic Stanzas of Dhyzan as the foundational structure for her opus magnum, The Secret Doctrine.

As products of a materialistic, scientific age, we sometimes might forget the efficacy of using our inner light to look into and appreciate the subtleties of a symbolic or ritualistic approach to gaining insight into reality. Each of us would do well to draw to ourselves those symbols that inspire and encourage us. Moreover, we might remember that our regular practice of using them imbues them with the energy and power of heart and spiritual light. Each grain of practice helps to build a mountain of experience.

Yet, with routine and familiarity, we may forget the original inspiration. In fact, the one real danger in the use of symbols for our spiritual nurture is that we might lose sight of their true nature, getting lost in their outer forms, rather than drawing on the power of their beauty with intentionality and heart. But with conscientious effort we will access our inner light and, in the finding of it, develop a luminosity that becomes a beacon of hope for others.

In the afterword to Esoteric Christianity, Annie Besant inspires us to seek the mystery veiled in allegory in order that we might kindle our lights of intuition when she writes:

[We] have only lifted a corner of the Veil that hides the Virgin of Eternal Truth from the careless eyes of men. The hem of her garment only has been seen, heavy with gold, richly dight with pearls. Yet even this, as it waves slowly, breathes out celestial fragrances—the sandal and rose-attar of fairer worlds than ours.

VOLUME 96, NUMBER 4

Contents

The Light of the World
By Betty Bland

Ceremony, Freemasonry, and the Mysteries
By John Algeo

The Future of Esoteric Christianity
By Richard Smoley

Tarot and the Tree of Life: Finding Everyday Wisdom in the Minor Arcana
By Isabel Radow Kliegman

The Outside Lands: Astrology and Taboo
By John P. O'Grady

Explorations: Meditation and Yoga
By Kay Mouradian