Quest Magazine

Navigating Spaceship Earth: Four Russian Cosmists

Printed in the Summer 2013 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Young, George M. "Navigating Spaceship Earth: Four Russian Cosmists" Quest 101. 3 (Summer 2013): pg. 105-108, 120.

By George M. Young

Theosophical Society - George M. Young is a Fellow at the Center for Global Humanities at the University of New England. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a tendency emerged in Russian thought that went beyond socioeconomic, political, and geographic considerations to examine our cosmic dimensions, and to suggest that our field of awareness, activity, and influence extends even beyond planetary boundaries to include the entire universe.

The Russian Cosmists, as these thinkers are called today, did not consider themselves part of a coherent school, and only in retrospect can they be seen to have shared a common core of themes and convictions. Some, like Vladimir Solovyov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, and Pavel Florensky, were primarily religious thinkers. Others, like Vladimir Vernadsky, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and Alexander Chizhevsky, were scientists. What they shared was a conviction that we are very much more than earthly beings, that we are active agents of our own evolution, and that we should direct all spiritual, scientific, and even esoteric knowledge and effort to realize the long and widely held dream of universal human immortality. We are, as one of these thinkers put it, not earthlings, but "heaven dwellers."

Of the ten or so major Cosmists I would like to focus here on four: Nikolai Fyodorov (1829-1903; his surname is sometimes transliterated as "Fedorov"), the eccentric librarian and futuristic religious thinker from whom— or sometimes against whom—all the later Cos-mists develop their positions; Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), who as a teenager considered Fyodorov his "university" and went on to become the grandfather of the Russian space program; Alexander Chizhevsky (1897-1964), who as a young man was mentored by Tsiolkovsky and went on to investigate (among other things) periodicity in nature and the influence of cosmic energy on cycles of human behavior; and Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945), an eminent scientist proficient in many disciplines, who developed the idea of the "noosphere," a sheath of mental energy surrounding the planet.

Fyodorov, the founder of the Cosmist tendency, was born in the south of Russia, an illegitimate son of Prince Pavel Gagarin, who was a scion of one of Russia's oldest and most distinguished families. The roots of the Gagarins extend back to Riurik, the legendary founder of Russia, and extend forward to include Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. Prince Pavel himself was a black sheep; he left the Gagarin estates to lead a bohemian life as impresario of a theater and burlesque house in Odessa. Almost nothing is known about Fyodorov's mother, and his surname came from the godfather at the christening. Fyodorov grew up as both a Gagarin and not a Gagarin, and in his mature writings always takes the point of view of the outsider looking in, a voice from the uneducated masses speaking to a learned elite. A major theme in all his writings is the need to overcome divisions: between classes, generations, and academic disciplines, between theory and practice, ideal and reality. All now divided must be brought back together, especially sons and fathers, the living and the dead. Duty and responsibility were cardinal virtues for Fyodorov, absent in the world as it is, dominant in the world as it ought to be.

In his lifetime Fyodorov was best known for his twenty-five years of service in the great Rumiantsev Museum, which now forms a wing of the enormous Russian National Library. Occupying a minor position and refusing all offers of promotion, he became a legend of erudition, said to know not only the title but a summary of the contents of every item in the vast library, and a reader ordering materials would often receive extra items he had not even heard of that turned out to be relevant, even essential, to his research. A lifelong ascetic bachelor, Fyodorov lived alone, changing residences every year or so, usually a single closet-sized rented room or corner of someone's apartment. He slept on a humpback trunk, sometimes bare, sometimes covered with newspapers, placing under his head not a pillow but some hard object, usually a book. The only coat he wore every day, summer or winter, was more rag than coat, and strangers easily mistook him for a beggar on the streets. He had no furniture, and each time he moved to new quarters he gave away whatever objects the room had accumulated. He spent nothing on entertainment, diversion, or any conveniences, and he refused to take cabs even in the coldest winter months. He drank only tea, ate hard rolls, sometimes accompanied by a piece of old cheese or salt fish, and lived for months without a hot meal. He considered wealth poisonous and vile, rejected all offers of raises, gave away most of his meager salary, and cursed himself if he came home at night with a few kopecks left in his pocket that he had not managed to give away.

Every researcher at the library knew Fyodorov as an ideal, if eccentric, librarian. But only a very few knew that he was also a thinker—in Berdyaev's opinion the most original and "most Russian" in Russian history. Leo Tolstoy, who looked down on tsars, generals, popes, and emperors, considered himself fortunate to have lived in the same century as Fyodorov. Solovyov, usually considered Russia's greatest philosopher, considered Fyodorov his master and spiritual father and Fyodorov's idea the first forward movement of the human spirit since the time of Christ. So what was so important about Fyodorov?

The British philosopher Isaiah Berlin has drawn a famous dichotomy between foxes, who know many things, and hedgehogs, who know one big thing. Fyodorov was a supreme hedgehog, a thinker with one huge idea. And though it is a very complex idea with any number of parts, in its simplest statement his idea is that we all should stop everything that we are now diversely doing and devote all our time, energy, effort, and knowledge to what he called "the common task" of resurrecting all the dead. And he meant this literally. In his view everything in the physical, social, moral universe is now disintegrating and pointed toward death, and it is humanity's task to overcome death and redirect everything toward eternal life. Nature is the force of disintegration, and God gave us human reason to regulate nature. We should be mindless nature's mind, blind nature's eyes. For Fyodorov, an Orthodox believer, true Christianity can only be the practice of actively resurrecting the dead. All science must become the science of resurrection.

As early as the 1860s Fyodorov was proposing things like what we now call cloning, genetic engineering, artificial organs, space travel, and colonization. For Fyodorov, all matter contains particles of our disintegrated ancestors. Advanced science must find a way to restore whole persons from individual particles, and since some of these have dispersed beyond earth, we must go into space to gather in the dispersed particles of our ancestors. Combining knowledge and action, science, religion, and art, everyone will join the project. Everyone living will become a resurrector, Christian in practice, regardless of belief or unbelief. Sons and daughters will resurrect their parents, who in turn will resurrect their parents, and so all the way back to Adam and Eve.

To those who worried about overpopulation and wondered where on earth we would put all those resurrected, Fyodorov answered: that's why we must colonize space. The resurrected ancestors would have new bodies engineered to live in places throughout the universe currently unable to support life. Going even further, Fyodorov proposed that as part of regulating nature we learn to overcome gravity and time; eventually we should be able to guide our planet out of its natural orbit and sail it like a boat in directions of our own rational choice. A hundred years before R. Buckminster Fuller, Fyodorov proposed that we become "captain and crew of spaceship earth." In today's terminology, Fyodorov wanted to turn the exploding cosmos into an eternal steady state, shaped not as constellations of figures from pagan Greek myths, but as a human-regulated sidereal icon of the Holy Trinity.

The few contemporaries who learned of Fyodorov's idea and incorporated at least parts of it—the moral and religious, not scientific or technological parts—into their own works included three of the greatest: Tolstoy, Solovyov, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Another younger contemporary who did incorporate Fyodorov's scientific ideas into his own was Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky, a nearly deaf raw youth who came to Moscow penniless but in hopes of somehow obtaining in the great library an education beyond his minimal schooling back home in Kaluga. Fyodorov immediately recognized the young man's potential. He took him under Ms wing, brought him stacks of guided readings, set problems for him, taught him to take notes and use a conspectus, provided money for necessities whenever possible, and, as Tsiolkovsky later gratefully wrote, took the place of the university professors he was unable to study under.

After a few years in Moscow, Tsiolkovsky returned to his village near Kaluga to become an elementary science teacher while dreaming of interplanetary travel. He began to make notebook sketches for rocket boats rocket wagons, and rocket-powered spaceships and to write fictional accounts of space voyages. What distinguished Tsiolkovsky's imagination from that of any of his contemporaries is that after writing fantasy narratives and drawing rough pencil sketches, he developed the mathematical formulas that would make the realization of some of his fantasies possible. Over the years, while still teaching school and working after hours in a homemade attic laboratory, he built a series of large wooden model rockets, dirigibles, aerostats, wind tunnels, centrifuges, and primitive space vehicles, and wrote the papers that would eventually lay the foundation for the 1957 launching of Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite.

Tsiolkovsky's great accomplishment as a scientist was not only to quantify the dream of space travel through mathematical equations, but to actively promote and popularize the idea of flight beyond earth, to inspire an enthusiasm for rocket science among young people and even schoolchildren throughout the Soviet Union. He provided a kindly, grandfatherly, down-to-earth image for an otherwise daunting field of study.

Among the young readers who grew up to be outstanding scientists were the cosmonaut and first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, and the Cosmist heliobiologist Alexander Chezhevsky, whose ideas we shall discuss below.

But it is not only rocket scientists who are interested in Tsiolkovsky. From early in his career through late in life, he speculated about man's relationship to the cosmos. Some of these speculations found their way into his science fiction narratives, others were published in tiny editions as discursive pamphlets or tracts, but most remained unpublished during his lifetime, and have only begun to emerge since the collapse of the Soviet Union. As a result of these speculations, many of them probably derived from H.P. Blavatsky, in whose writings he was deeply interested, Tsiolkovsky has become something of a New Age cult figure in Russia, and his home and museum in Kaluga (which was also the home of Elena Pisareva, a leading early Theosophist and publisher of Theosophical works), have become a destination for esoteric as well as scientific pilgrims.

One of Tsiolkovsky's central ideas has to do with the presence of life and spirit in all matter. He writes: "I am not only a materialist, but also a panpsychist, recognizing the sensitivity of the entire universe. I consider this characteristic inseparable from matter. Everything is alive, but with the condition that we consider living only that which possesses a sufficiently strong sense of feeling. Since everything that is matter can, under favorable circumstances, convert to an organic state, then we can conditionally say that inorganic matter is in embryo (potentially) living."

An idea at the heart of most of Tsiolkovsky's nontechnical writings is that of the "atom-spirit" (atorndukh) inherent in every particle of matter in the cosmos, recalling Fyodomv's idea of all matter as the dust of ancestors. But where Fyodorov believed that we must redirect and reshape the cosmos, Tsiolkovsky's view of the cosmos is that it is already teleological, rationally organized, and hierarchical. Lower life forms, consisting mainly of matter in which spirit is dormant, naturally evolve into higher ones, in which the spirit is awakened and more dominant. Eventually as we approach perfection, we will outgrow our material envelopes and join the rays of cosmic energy that constitute something like the pleroma of the Gnostics. In Tsiolkovsky's view, our earth probably represents an early, primitive stage of planetary evolution, and elsewhere in the cosmos life forms have advanced much further. These advanced "atom-spirits" are already in communication with us, but only geniuses —artists, scientists, mahatmas, and the like—are attuned to their messages.

As in the 1870s Fyodorov was mentor to the sixteen-year-old Tsiolkovsky, in 1914 Tsiolkovsky became mentor to seventeen-year-old Alexander Chizhevsky, a sensitive but fragile wunderkind from a privileged background, who began his intellectual life as a poet and painter, talents he continued to exercise through life. As a child, Chizhevsky was taken to Italy every winter, where, as he writes in his autobiography, he began his lifelong fascination with, even worship of, the sun. When his father was appointed commander of a regiment in Kaluga, the family moved there, and the boy genius Chizhevsky soon came under the wing of the eccentric rocket genius Tsiolkovsky. Though they worked in different fields, their close association continued for the rest of Tsiolkovsky's life, and today in Kaluga the Tsiolkovsky Museum of Cosmonautics houses a Chizhevsky Museum as a wing. It was under Tsiolkovsky's influence that Chizhevsky's intellectual interests, always broad, ranging from ancient languages to neoimpressionist painting, gradually began to expand further to include the sciences.

The works that would earn Chizhevsky an international reputation as a "Da Vinci of the twentieth century;' and a nomination (though unsuccessful) for a Nobel Prize, were his discoveries in aero-ionization, which included the invention of an air purification device called the "Chizhevsky Chandelier," and studies in hemodynarnics, which shed new light on the cycling of blood through living bodies. These studies, some first published in French, others in Russian, fell within the limits of acceptable Soviet science and brought Chizhevsky high national and international honors.

But his most important work, in heliobiology, demonstrating the effects of solar pulsations on human life, provoked accusations of mysticism, occultism, and irrationality. Eventually, during the Stalinist terror, these accusations led to his arrest as an "enemy under the mask of a scientist," resulting in sixteen years in prison camps and exile, from 1942 until his rehabilitation in 1958. During this period of imprisonment and exile, despite special punishment for refusing to wear a large prison number on his back and for objecting to being addressed in the familiar second person singular, he still painted, wrote poetry, and, with whatever means he could find, continued to conduct scientific research. At one point, realizing that they had an internationally famous biologist in their hands, prison authorities dragged Chizhevsky barely alive from a punishment cell to see if he could stop a cholera epidemic that was sweeping the camp—which, with bleaching powder and other crude remedies at hand, he managed to do. As a reward, he was allowed to set up a minimal laboratory in the prison clinic. Here, using only a borrowed microscope and glass capillaries, he conducted groundbreaking investigations into the movement of blood.

In one of his most controversial works, published in 1922, Chizhevsky provides a number of charts in which he correlates the fluctuations of sunspots with the up-and-down periods of violence in human history. In these charts, covering two thousand years, the correlation is almost too perfect to be credible, with periods of what he calls maximum universal excitability coinciding with maximum solar activity, and stretches of relative international calm coinciding with minimal solar activity.

During his career, Chizhevsky, like the other Cosmists, was frequently accused of trying to take science back to a prescientific state, for attempting to replace chemistry with alchemy, astronomy with astrology. Chizhevsky, like the other Cosmists, strongly denied these allegations, but added that he did respect and did wish to restore to modern science not the actual practices of alchemy and astrology, but the intuition underlying those prescientific efforts. He argued that in some very profound and mysterious but eventually definable way we and all matter in the cosmos are one, and that through exchanges of energies and matter, via particles and rays, elemental transformations, cosmic and local, physical and psychological, can result.

Vladimir Vernadsky was another scientist honored for his writings on the biosphere but derided for speculations about what he called the transition of the biosphere into a "noosphere" (from the Greek nous, "mind"), a sheath of life increasingly infused with and directed by the human mind. In the West, the concept of the noosphere is best known through the writings of Vernadsky's French colleague, Pierre Teilhard de Char-din, who attended a course of lectures Vernadsky delivered at the Sorbonne and probably developed his own concepts under the influence of and in collaboration with Vernadsky. But it is through Vernadsky's deeper and broader extensions of the idea that the noosphere has become such an important concept in Russian Cos-mist speculation. Vernadsky contended that although it cannot be measured or detected by standard instruments, the noosphere is as real and important as the stratosphere or ionosphere. He believed that our planet's transition from the biosphere, the sheath of living matter, to the noosphere, the sheath of thinking matter, will be as crucial a stage in geology as earlier transitions from a lifeless orbiting rock to a teeming biosphere. In Vernadsky's view, we share the biosphere with all living matter—vegetables, animals, other humans. We are related to all, and, as the rational component of living matter, we bear responsibility for all.

Although not religious in any traditional sense, Vernadsky was a deeply spiritual thinker, and his idea of the noosphere as a nonmaterial sheath of intellectual matter and recorded mental activity enveloping the biosphere in some ways resembles the Theosophical concept of akasha. Vernadsky's spiritual and scientific vision was of a wholly interconnected cosmos. Man in Vernadsky is both a result of and an active participant in the ongoing natural evolution of the cosmos, which nonmaterial as well as material realities operate. Like the other Cosmist thinkers, Vernadsky assumed that knowledge was whole, that scientific, spiritual moral, theoretical, and practical approaches would not lead toward different directions and goals, but would in the end unite in ultimate truth. As a political, cultural, and intellectual moderate living and working among radicals of all stripes and tendencies, as a profound traditionalist in revolutionary times, Vernadsky suffered official slights, threats, and harassment throughout his career. But even through the worst conditions, he remained loyally, thoroughly Russian, refused to adapt science to politics, refused all opportunities to emigrate, and as conditions have improved has emerge as a model of scientific genius and intellectual integrity.

None of the Russian Cosmists was a pure Theosophist, but all were at one time or another familiar with, attracted to, and influenced by HPB's writings. They were not afraid to go against current intellectual tendencies, nor hesitant to undertake unconventional researches. They found new scientific worth in long ignored or rejected bodies of knowledge and directions of enquiry. Though not intended as such, their works as a whole can be read as reasonable responses to the Third Object of Theosophy: to investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in humanity.

George M. Young is a Fellow at the Center for Global Humanities at the University of New England. He is the author of The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Further Reading

Bales, Kendell E. Science and Russian Culture in an Age of Revolution: V.I. Vernadsky and His Scientific School, 1863?1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Holquist, Michael. "Konstantin Tsiolkovsky: Science Fiction and Philosophy in the History of Soviet Space Exploration." In Intersections: Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. George E Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 74-86.

Masing-Delic, Irene. Abolishing Death: A Salvation Myth of Russian Twentieth-Century Literature. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992.

Rosenthal, Bernice Glatzer, ed. The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997.

The Esoteric School of Theosophy

Printed in the Summer 2013 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Sender, Pablo. "The Esoteric School of Theosophy" Quest 101. 3 (Summer 2013): pg. 100-104.

By Pablo Sender

Theosophical Society - Pablo Sender became a member of the Theosophical Society in his native Argentina and has presented Theosophical lectures, seminars, and classes around the world. Every person that joins the Theosophical Society receives a welcoming letter from the current international president, Radha Burnier. At the end there is a somewhat mysterious postscript:

There is an Esoteric School connected with the Theosophical Society, which those who have been members of the Society for a certain time and who fulfill the required conditions may enter if they wish. The Esoteric School is meant for all those who wish to live truly Theosophical lives, and not merely study Theosophy. Wisdom comes to those whose minds are capable of receiving it. Members of the Esoteric School prepare themselves by a life of purity and self-discipline to become worthy to receive [the wisdom].

What is the Esoteric School? What do their members do that cannot be done in the Society as a whole? And what are the "required conditions" to enter?

The Esoteric School (ES) developed in the first decades of the life of the Theosophical Society. Before we can better understand its nature and purpose, we need to examine briefly the history of its formation.

A New Experiment

Most spiritual and religious organizations throughout recorded history were designed to promote a specific set of teachings given by their founders. These teachings brought light to many around the world but unfortunately also led to quarrels among the different beliefs. Thus religions have frequently acted as means of division rather than of union.

The founding of the Theosophical Society in 1875 was described as an "experiment" in a new approach (Chin, 125). It too was inspired by some enlightened beings (known as the Mahatmas or Masters of Wisdom), and its founders and leaders also gave some specific teachings we call "modern Theosophy". But the TS was not meant to become one more sect among many, promoting its own teachings exclusively. Rather, the goal was to form a nucleus of universal brotherhood without distinctions—a brotherhood that is not based on the profession of a common faith, but one where people with different beliefs and views can come, share, learn, and work together, united in the common aspiration to find truth by whatever path each person chooses. While some members may feel attracted to Theosophical teachings, those who feel differently are free to follow their own paths, without being compelled to adopt any particular approach.

This open platform, which offers the freedom necessary to bring people together from different traditions or none, also has certain limitations, which soon became evident. As the Theosophical teachings spread, a number of people were inspired by them and joined the TS. Naturally enough, these members longed to have a space entirely dedicated to a spiritual discipline based on these principles. But they could not do this in their lodges without limiting the freedom of those who wanted to study different teachings. Should the TS give up its attempt to be a universal brotherhood and promote one particular way of life? Or should it merely become an organization to spread teachings from different traditions, leaving those who longed to live a Theosophical life alone in their efforts?

Early attempts to address this problem were made by forming "inner groups" within some TS lodges. However, none of these loosely organized efforts were successful. Finally, in 1888, after repeated requests, H.P. Blavatsky agreed to create a special section within the TS called the "Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society" The ES provided a way to encourage among its members the practice of the spiritual life based on Theosophical teachings, while at the same time protecting the nonsectarian quality of the TS as a whole.

This section, headed by Mme. Blavatsky, was to be independent and to be connected to the general Society only through the Society's president and founder, Henry Steel Olcott. But sometime before her death in 1891, HPB decided that "all official connection between the two should end" so that "the perfect freedom and public character of the Society" could not be interfered with (Blavatsky, 12:485). The name of the ES was then changed to "Eastern School of Theosophy," and later to its current one: "Esoteric School of Theosophy." Today the two organizations are independent and have no official connection, save in the fact that only members of the TS can be admitted into the ES.

Beyond the Great Range

In order to understand the character of the ES we need to examine one more element that played an important role in its formation.

One of Mme. Blavatsky's goals was to oppose the growing scientism of her era, which portrayed the universe as a clockwork mechanism with no room or need for anything religious or spiritual. To this end she performed occult phenomena that could not be explained by the laws known to the scientists of the time, showing there were realities beyond their ken. (For more information about this, see my article "Psychic Phenomena and the Early Theosophical Society," Quest, Summer 2012.) These phenomena, HPB claimed, were not "miracles" of any kind. They followed certain "occult laws" well known to the Masters of Wisdom, of whom she was a disciple and with whom she and some other members were in direct communication.

In the early 1880s, two disgruntled employees at the international headquarters of the TS in India accused HPB of faking the phenomena and forging the communications coming from the Masters. Richard Hodgson, a young and inexperienced member of the newly formed Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in Britain, went to India to investigate the charges. In a report published in 1885, he pronounced her a fraud. This, of course, became worldwide news, making Hodgson and the SPR famous.

As was shown in later studies, Hodgson systematically disregarded the evidence in favor of HPB. In 1986, over a hundred years later, Vernon Harrison, a longstanding member of the SPR and an expert on forgery, published a study of the Hodgson report in the SPR Journal. Harrison concluded that HPB was unjustly condemned. (For an online version of Harrison's study, visit www.theosociety.org/pasadena/hpb-spr/hpbspr-h.htm.) Nevertheless, when it first appeared, the Hodgson report was almost a deathblow to the TS, and even HPB feared that this would destroy it. In an attempt to save the Society, Olcott proposed to redirect its activity and publications, dropping all mention of phenomena, the occult, and the Masters, to work on the less controversial field of comparative religion, philosophy, and science.

One of the Masters, Koot Hoomi, said that although this move was well-calculated to save the physical integrity of the Society, it would kill its soul.

The Society has liberated itself from our grasp and influence and we have let it go—we make no unwilling slaves. He [Olcott] says he has saved it? He saved its body, but he allowed through sheer fear, to its soul to escape, and it is now a soulless corpse, a machine run so far well enough, but which will fall to pieces when he is gone. Out of the three objects the second alone is attended to, but it is no longer either a brotherhood, nor a body over the face of which broods the Spirit from beyond the Great Range. (Jinarajadasa, 125-26)

By denying its "occult" dimension the TS had become an exoteric organization with lofty aims, but empty of its occult life, and the influence of the Masters was seriously restricted. But even if the TS could successfully limit itself to the exoteric field, it would still be doomed to fail. Why? Probably because the foundation stones of the TS were not laid with the exoteric work in view. No organization that deals with subjects such as the Lemurian and Atlantean civilizations, psychic phenomena, unseen Masters and their disciples, and occult initiations is fit to be a "respectable" member of the academic world.

Mme. Blavatsky, aware of this situation, was seeking a way of retaining the link between the TS and its occult source of inspiration. The formation of the ES afforded this opportunity, as the existence of the Masters was naturally and openly accepted by those members eager to lead a spiritual life based on Theosophical teachings.

The Purpose of the ES

Although a feeling of devotion to the Masters and their work for humanity is an important element for many of its members, the ES is not a temple where the Masters are worshipped, nor is it intended to fulfill the role of a religion. The meetings revolve around a meditative study and inquiry on Theosophical spirituality, and the members agree to follow a daily discipline based on purity of life, meditation, study, service, and self-awareness.

Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that the ES is not primarily meant to promote the members' personal development. The ES aims at preparing people to be helpers of humanity.

The ideal aspirant is one who sees the depth of the ignorance and suffering in which he (or she) and the world are buried. Being sensitive to this state of affairs, he wonders how things could be changed. He may help to palliate the suffering through charitable organizations, education, and movements for social reform, but he sees that, although external changes are useful and even necessary, they do not address the root of the problem. The real cause of sorrow is in the hearts and minds of people. What is needed is to help humanity move from a selfish to an unselfish state of consciousness. But he realizes that only those who are beyond the need of help can really help others, and that he can participate in this work to the extent that he frees himself from his own spiritual ignorance. Individual spiritual growth is necessary, not as an end in itself, but as a means to a wider, collective goal. Thus the ES offers a path for transcending the personal ego so that the aspirant can assist the Masters in their altruistic work.

The ES is an occult organization, but only in the sense in which the word "occult" was used at the time of its formation. (The word "occultism" was made popular by the TS in the late nineteenth century. At the time, it was used to refer to the spiritual path that leads one from the personal ego to the higher Self. Later the word was applied by other movements and authors to a variety of things that Mme. Blavatsky used to call the "occult arts.") The ES was never meant to be a school of magic. In fact, both HPB and the Masters were opposed to the creation of such a thing, even though a number of members were asking for it. The ES does not teach how to develop psychic powers, to activate chakras, to awaken kundalini, or anything related to the manipulation of occult forces.

This degree of the Esoteric Section is probationary, and its general purpose is to prepare and fit the student for the study of practical occultism or Raj yoga. Therefore, in this degree, the student —save in exceptional cases—will not be taught how to produce physical phenomena, nor will any magical powers be allowed to develop in him; nor, if possessing such powers naturally, will he be permitted to exercise them before he has thoroughly mastered the knowledge of SELF, of the psycho-physiological processes (taking place on the occult plane) in the human body generally, and until he has in abeyance all his lower passions and his PERSONAL SELF.

Disappointment is sure to come to those who have joined this Section for the purpose of learning "magic arts" or acquiring "occult training" for themselves, quite regardless of the good of other people less determined. (Blavatsky, 12:488)

HPB said that the study (let alone the practice) of occult teachings sets in motion forces that can harm students if they are not prepared (Blavatsky, 12:678). Practical occultism should only be attempted by a person who has attained a certain degree of purity and transcended the illusion of the personal self. The purpose of the ES is to provide the tools for the earnest student to undergo this process of transformation. Once the student has accomplished it (which may take several lives of earnest work) a Master of Wisdom will accept him as a disciple. Only then he can safely start treading the path of practical occultism under the guidance of his Master.

While HPB was alive, the ES served as a place where she could impart some esoteric instructions related to this preparation for the occult path, to be worked out among the ES members before making them public. (In her view, whenever a person studies a subject he "magnetically" attracts the thought-forms produced by people who have previously studied the topic. These thought-forms may either help or hinder the understanding, depending on their accuracy. It was probably expected that the study by ES members would produce the right thought-forms before the general public had access to the teachings). Those teachings were later published partially by Annie Besant in her third volume of The Secret Doctrine and eventually made available in their entirety in volume twelve of Blavatsky's Collected Writings.

The ES is not esoteric because it has a body of teachings that are kept secret from the rest of the TS members. Although there is material produced specifically for the ES, these teachings can be found throughout the Theosophical literature. Rather the ES material focuses on the teachings that have to do with the practice of the spiritual life according to Theosophical principles. Thus the occult aspect of the school is not based on the existence of special information or secret ceremonies, but on the inner processes to which members are subjected.

A second purpose of this organization has to do with the collective. Every homogeneous group of people becomes, consciously or unconsciously, a channel for different kinds of energies, whether spiritual, intellectual, or emotional, whether uplifting or debasing. The ES attempts to gather together a group of people with a common goal and lifestyle so that a certain influence can be conveyed through them. (This, of course, does not mean that every person who joins the ES is inwardly in tune with its aim, or that there are no people outside the ES who are in harmony with its aim and work.) It is the duty of each ES member to do his best to attune himself to the aims of the ES and to be in harmony with other members, so that he becomes a vehicle instead of an obstruction for the energy that is intended to be spread.

Joining the ES

As was said before, the TS offers an open platform for everybody without asking its members to adopt any particular belief or practice. Those ready to fulfill the necessary requirements are free to join the ES, if they feel drawn to this particular spiritual path. But those TS members who are not particularly attracted to it are free to follow their own practice, if any, and this will in no way be a hindrance to their TS life and activities.

Any person, after having been an active member of the Theosophical Society for a couple of years, can apply to join the ES. However, because this school is meant as a place to tread a certain spiritual path and not merely to study about it, there are some conditions the aspirant has to fulfill. Some people dislike the fact that they cannot be freely admitted, but this attitude does not seem reasonable. The ES is an organization that proposes a particular lifestyle. If somebody is not willing to adopt it, why would he want to join the ES? It is like wanting to join a tennis club while being unwilling to hit a ball with a racquet.

The requirements to join the ES should not be felt as an imposition from outside, but simply as part of a lifestyle the aspirant is ready to embrace willingly. Blavatsky wrote that although the discipline will not affect family duties, "every member of the Esoteric Section will have to give up more than one personal habit, such as practised in social life, and to adopt some few ascetic rules" (Blavatsky, 12:488).

For the ES to have any transformative effect, the aspirant has to be willing to work on any physical and psychological habits that may hinder his spiritual life. If a member is not willing to do this to the best of his capacity, joining the ES will not have a positive effect on him; moreover he will become an inharmonious element within the organization.

Let us now explore briefly the conditions of membership. One of them is vegetarianism. (In the nineteenth century it was difficult to be vegetarian in the West, so this rule was not compulsory. But today it is, since there are many options for a vegetarian diet.) According to Theosophical teachings, the consumption of meat stimulates the animal nature the aspirant is trying to fight against. Also, the influence of the Masters is hindered by an atmosphere saturated by the emanations from the slaughtered animals (Chin, 138). Finally, Theosophical teachings point out that the presence of a nervous system in an organism is the result of an active awareness on the emotional plane. This means that the capacity to feel pain is well developed in the animal kingdom (in vertebrates more than in invertebrates). Eating meat therefore goes against the development of compassion.

Another prerequisite is to avoid the consumption of drugs and alcohol, even if the aspirant wants to use them as alleged "spiritual" means. In the Theosophical view, no artificially altered state of consciousness is regarded as valuable. Besides other harmful effects, these habits attract undesirable elementals and damage the pineal and pituitary glands, which are the organs for the reception of spiritual perception in the brain.

Finally, the sexual life of the aspirant has to be ordered and healthy. It is essential that it take place in the atmosphere of higher emotions, with a person he or she loves and feels responsible for, rather than as an act of gratification of the animal nature.

It is clear that these rules are not in themselves indicators of spirituality. A person may be able to fulfill them quite easily and yet be thoroughly selfish and unfit for the spiritual path. Similarly, another person can be very spiritual and compassionate even if he does not follow them. These rules do not entail any moral judgment, but those willing to tread this particular path need to follow them, both for individual and collective reasons.

Once the aspirant joins the ES, he agrees to follow a daily discipline based on the Theosophical principles of study, meditation, service, and self-awareness. However, in the ES there are no gurus that take responsibility for a member, or control what he does or does not do. The "control" comes from the law of karma: those who are serious receive help and guidance through what happens in their lives, while those who are not miss the opportunity and gradually stagnate.

Effects of Joining

Joining an occult organization such as the ES has some important effects on the neophyte. HPB explained it as follows:

As soon as anyone pledges himself as a "Probationer," certain occult effects ensue. Of these the first is the throwing outward of everything latent in the nature of the man: his faults, habits, qualities, or subdued desires, whether good, bad, or indifferent ..

[The vices] will come to the front irrepressibly, and he will have to fight a hundred times harder than before, until he kills all such tendencies in himself.

On the other hand, if he ... has any virtue hitherto latent and concealed in him, it will work its way out as irrepressibly as the rest.

THIS IS AN IMMUTABLE LAW IN THE DOMAIN OF THE OCCULT.

Its action is the more marked the more earnest and sincere the desire of the candidate, and the more deeply he has felt the reality and importance of his pledge. (Blavatsky, 12:515)

We have to remember that the motive for joining the ES is not to make life more enjoyable, but to free oneself from the sources of ignorance as rapidly as possible, so that one becomes able to help others. The effects of the occult energies are similar to those of the sun when it begins to shine upon a hitherto obscured piece of land. Everything in it is vitalized, weeds as well as beautiful plants. As in an alchemical process, the neophyte's weaknesses and shortcomings will become more active, so that he has the opportunity to work on them for their purification and transmutation. But he will also have added strength to do this work.

However, there are those who, after experiencing this effect, fall into a tendency of self-delusion, not facing honestly whatever is being brought up. The result of this attitude is that they fall prey to the negative side of this occult process (the stimulation of weaknesses) without taking advantage of the positive one (the additional strength to deal with them).

An additional effect of a sincere intent in this direction is that the neophyte's karma is "reorganized." Life becomes less random and acquires a specific direction that is clear to the observant aspirant. External situations will be shaped in a way so as to afford the necessary challenges and opportunities for the work of inner alchemy. The earnest aspirant has nothing to fear. Nobody has to face more than he is capable of. And even though at times this is hard work, the bright side is that as a result of his efforts, he gradually attains more freedom, wisdom, and strength.

This inner work helps the aspirant progressively awaken to a deeper existence, and his life becomes more meaningful from a spiritual point of view. But maybe the most inspiring aspect of this path is the sense that he becomes a humble part of a mighty power that is toiling to ultimately ensure the happiness of humanity, and that every time he faces and defeats the "evil" inside himself, he is helping defeat it in the whole world.

Sources

Blavatsky, H.P. Collected Writings. Edited by Boris de Zirkoff. 15 vols. Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1977-91.

Chin, Vicente Hao, Jr., ed. The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in Chronological Sequence. Manila: Theosophical Publishing House, 1998.

Jinarajadasa, C., ed. Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, First Series. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1919.

PABLO SENDER has given Theosophical lectures, seminars, and classes in India, Europe, and several countries in the Americas. He has published two books in Spanish and a number of articles in English and Spanish in several Theosophical journals. They can be found on his Web site, www.pablosender.com.

Shhh! It's a Secret! Grappling with the Puzzle of Freemasonry

Printed in the issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Kinney, Jay. "Shhh! It's a Secret! Grappling with the Puzzle of Freemasonry" Quest 101. 3 (Summer 2013): pg. 94-99.

By Jay Kinney

Much of the public's ongoing fascination with Freemasonry has to do with its reputation as a secret society. Yet that reputation—like so much about Masonry—is paradoxical. Given that for much of the past two centuries, Masonic lodge buildings have been a ubiquitous presence on town squares across America and that, by some estimates, nearly 10 percent of the adult male population were Masons, Masonry would seem to be one of the least secret societies of all time.

Another paradox: as part of their initiation rituals, Masons are admonished not to reveal any of Masonry's secrets, but exactly what those secrets may be is never defined—a situation that leaves many new Masons scratching their heads.

A secret society that is hardly secret and a society with "secrets" that no two members can agree upon—is this any way to run a railroad? (as my father used to say).

However, if we look back to the origins of modem Freemasonry in Britain, this emphasis on secrecy becomes more understandable. Prior to the 1600s, Masonic lodges were basically stonemasons' guilds or unions. Their "secrets" were the closely held trade secrets of how to construct massive buildings for both church and state. Secret modes of recognition between masons, be they certain handshakes or passwords, were a means of job protection and quality control in an industry where skilled workers often moved around from project to project. Properly skilled masons were taught those modes of recognition as part of their training, which helped distinguish them from unqualified would-be masons hoping to pass themselves off as the real thing.

In the course of the 1600s, for reasons that are still not entirely clear, lodges began to accept members who were not stonemasons at all, but gentlemen or other worthies who were interested in architecture, mathematics, and other more arcane pursuits. Over time, these so-called "speculative Masons" came to outnumber the working "operative masons," and eventually modern Freemasonry was born. (I must add that this summary barely scratches the surface of a historical sequence that has been the subject of numerous competing theories and conjectures. For a more detailed discussion, see my book The Masonic Myth.)

This newer and more philosophical Masonry maintained the tradition of secrecy, including modes of recognition and the protection of "secrets," but the secrets were no longer building trade secrets. Rather they were largely the wording of much-elaborated initiatory rituals and a collection of symbols alluding to philosophical concepts, moral values, and spiritual ideals. Most of the symbols were derived either from the Bible or from stonemasons' working tools, and the whole motif of stonemasonry was preserved in symbolic form (for example, the wearing of stonemasons' aprons).

None of these secrets were (or are) particularly earth-shattering, nor were they exactly secret. Eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Masons were fond of parading in public processions with symbol-laden aprons, banners, officers' jewels, and other regalia. Anti-Masonic conspiracy theorists have tended to view this as a diabolical public flaunting of secret symbols, but a less sensational interpretation would be that it served as an early form of guerrilla marketing and branding for what was essentially a fraternal order. "Curious what these symbols mean? Become a Mason and find out!"

Still, there are other possible reasons for a tradition of Masonic secrecy, and these lead us back again to the 1600s, the century when lodges evolved from "operative" to "speculative." This was a time of enormous social upheaval in Scotland and England, including religious conflicts, the deposing (and beheading) of the Stuart king Charles I in 1649, the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, the return of the Stuart kings in 1660 (followed by their exile again after the Glorious Revolution of 1688), the Great Fire of London, and the beginnings of modern science.

Furthermore, the anonymous release of the Rosicrucian manifestoes in Germany in the early 1600s set off a great ferment across Europe among mystically inclined intellectuals eager to contact the mythical brotherhood.

Portrayed as a hidden order of esoteric healers founded by an allegorical figure named Christian Rosenkreutz, the Rosicrucians were a literary construct employed by its anonymous authors to advance ideas of universal reform and religious freedom at odds with the Holy Roman Empire (see Yates and McIntosh).

Despite numerous attempts to locate the order, contact was never made, but the initiative succeeded in stimulating a dialogue among intellectuals inspired by its ideas.

It is suggestive that the two earliest Masonic initiates on record in England (Robert Moray and Elias Ashmole) were both interested in matters Rosicrucian, mystical, alchemical, and scientific. One could speculate that such gentlemen might be attracted to Masonic lodges by their secret nature, as a venue where new or controversial ideas could be discussed in private. In an era when one could be burned at the stake for advocating a heliocentric cosmology or challenging religious authorities, secrecy might simply be a matter of self-preservation.

In such a context, Masonic secrets wouldn't necessarily be Masonic as such, just private discussions among learned men on any range of subjects. What one's guess. Perhaps they were on one side of the room discussing chiseling techniques while their speculative brothers were on the other side discussing the Philosopher's Stone. The few records that have survived (mostly Scottish lodge membership rolls) are of little help in tracing this era. There are no detailed meeting minutes to refer to.

Historian Marsha Keith Schuchard, in her book Restoring the Temple of Vision, proposes that the poets, playwrights, and other courtiers in the Stuart royal orbit were variously interested in Rosicrucian, Kabbalistic, and Solomonic tropes, evidence of which she finds in their literary output, correspondence, and personal libraries. These allegorical forays constituted a kind of proto-Masonic discourse unbound by lodge secrecy or institutionalized formality. Traces of these elements can be identified in later Masonic ritual and symbols, though the mystical and occult interpretations may have been minimized as the Enlightenment succeeded the late Renaissance.

Schuchard and others have conjectured that a more esoteric Freemasonry may have accompanied the Stuarts on their exile in France in the eighteenth century, and there are indications of Stuart courtiers helping propagate Masonry there. What seems certain is that Masonry's evolution on the continent took a more elitist and aristocratic turn than the relatively egalitarian variety back in Britain.

British Masonry traced its roots to humble stonemasons' lodges, but there was no such organic growth in France and Germany. There, various Masonic entrepreneurs, such as Count Alessandro di Cagliostro and Baron von Hund, introduced orders largely plastered over any esotericism, this was hardly the case with the continental orders, many of which purported to impart esoteric secrets, often courtesy of "Unknown Superiors" or veiled Masters. It was to this latter stream of "Eastern" Masonry that H.P. Blavatsky credited her Masonic knowledge, wearing a Rose Croix jewel said to have once belonged to Cagliostro (and which she later passed on to Annie Besant).

Setting aside for the moment the question of the actual depth or content of this supposedly more esoteric Masonry, it should be clear by now that "Freemasonry" is an umbrella term covering all manner of streams and tributaries, many in competition with each other, and many sharing only the most general characteristics. What at first glance may appear to be an interconnected international brotherhood is in reality a smorgasbord of brotherhoods (and in some cases, sisterhoods), not all of whom see eye to eye or share a common history.

This is like the rather fractured state of Christianity, where one may speak of the Church, or Christendom, or the community of believers, but the reality on the ground is one of hundreds of denominations separated from each other by all manner of doctrinal, political, social, and national differences.

Traditionally, Freemasonry has tried to avoid such divisions by broadly accepting members with a variety of religious beliefs and, in many of its branches, by banning religious and political discussions within its lodges. Yet some jurisdictions, such as the Grand Orient of France, have encouraged and valued the discussion of social issues within their lodges, to the point of taking political stands, something that would be unheard of in most other Masonic jurisdictions.

Despite such variations and inconsistencies, what characteristics are shared by all Masonic bodies? First, a commitment to performing initiatory rituals (degrees) that are intended to inspire the candidate and impart moral and spiritual lessons of a nonsectarian nature. Second, an attempt to encourage the practice of a universal brotherhood that transcends national, political, and religious barriers. And third, an effort toward some form of community service, which affirms that there is a greater good to be sought than just one's personal advancement.

If this is so, then one might ask, why the need for secrecy? That is indeed a good question and one that is not easily answered. Some Masons have suggested that the most effective initiatory ritual is one that takes the initiate on an unanticipated journey. Few fans of detective mysteries would want to have the mystery solved on the very first page. Much of the emphasis on secrecy in Masonry is akin to such thinking: let's not spoil it for the candidate by blabbing about what is to come. And let's not cheapen the whole experience by having it become a subject of public discussion.

Of course, such pragmatic secrecy comes at a cost. Outsiders resent the keeping of secrets. Anti-Masonic conspiracy theorists assume that such secrecy is a cover for diabolical machinations and elitist power plays. Yet when all is said and done, Masonic secrecy is more gesture than substance.

Beginning in the early to mid-1700s, Masonic "exposures" were regularly published that revealed the degree rituals' wording and contents. Indeed Masons often utilized these unauthorized exposures as study aids for memorizing ritual parts that were otherwise difficult to absorb in a strictly oral tradition.

In other words, from nearly the beginning of modern "speculative" Freemasonry, the much vaunted Masonic secrecy —at least in terms of rituals —has been a kind of facade, an instance of wishful thinking believed by both its proponents and its opponents, but not supported by what's really out there.

This has led to the second line of defense of Masonic secrecy within Masonry itself. To wit, the secrets themselves don't matter so much as the moral efficacy of keeping a secret. If you vow to keep a secret—no matter how trivial or already "exposed" it may be —the keeping of that secret is itself an act of moral fidelity and a valuable tool for training character.

This may be so, but it carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. Keeping a secret that is, in fact, not a secret is psychologically debilitating. It sets up an internal emotional double-bind within the person required to keep such a secret. One feels like a hypocrite in denying or refusing to acknowledge the reality of what one knows is so. Given Freemasonry's emphasis on ethical straight dealing and honesty—admirable values at odds with business-as-usual —an underlying sense of hypocrisy due to bogus secret-keeping undermines the whole operation.

Of course, Masonic secrecy extends beyond just the ritual wording and symbolic interpretations. Masons promise to keep other Masons' confidences to themselves —a somewhat formal version of the assumptions at work between good friends in daily life. Anti-Masonic critics have leapt at the opportunity to see this as an invitation for abuse or corruption, but it strikes me as more akin to lawyer-client or physician-patient confidentiality. All such relations rely on a sense of trust between participants.

If one is seeking advice, for instance, one would prefer not to have one's chosen confidant turn around and broadcast one's problems or worries to the world at large. (Unless, of course, one is seeking advice from Dear Abby or Ann Landers, in which case the advice seeker is actually angling for a public, though anonymous, exposure.)

Yet after a dozen years' immersion in Masonic culture, I've concluded that the primary reason for the continuing emphasis on secrecy in Freemasonry is its inherently conservative traditionalism. Speculative Masonry evolved within a lodge system that protected trade secrets and, once those secrets were largely irrelevant, it still maintained a tradition of secrecy—often for its own sake.

It attracted men who liked the idea of being in on the "inside stuff" and who embraced the tradition of keeping it inside, even though the stuff itself was hardly earth-shattering, as Masonic exposures have demonstrated. The relatively unchanging nature of the ritual work, the ongoing rote memorization of degree "lectures" that were originally conceived in the eighteenth century, the preservation of regalia that strike the modern eye as archaic—all these things are attractive to men who, perhaps, love the past more than the present, who enjoy a certain formality of interaction, and who like having secrets.

If this explanation of mainstream Masonry seems rather anticlimactic, what of the more esoteric "Eastern" Masonry into which Mme. Blavatsky claimed initiation? As best I can determine, this was not some ancient "Oriental" stream of Masonry, but most likely one or more of those European rites that claimed exotic origins. Cagliostro dazzled French society for a spell with his "Egyptian" rite, and HPB stoutly defended his bona fides against charges of charlatanism.

In the early years of her Theosophical endeavors, HPB displayed a patent from the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry (A&PR), which titillated journalists and aroused indignation among mainstream Masons.

Unfortunately, the A&PR loomed larger on paper than in real life, but HPB defended such "Eastern" Masonry while disparaging what she called "Western" Masonry, that is, mainstream Freemasonry in the U.S. and U.K. (Blavatsky 2:371-404).

The advantage of promoting a nebulous and self-proclaimed esoteric Masonry—which is what the Ancient & Primitive Rite put forth—is that its secrecy assures an opaque canvas upon which one can paint one's own picture. If HPB was intent upon promoting the virtues of occultism over those of spiritualism or Christianity (which seems to be the gist of her message in writings of the 1870s, such as Isis Unveiled), it was advantageous to imply that there was a truly deeper Masonry, one perhaps with unspecified occult secrets, that she was privy to and certified to discuss. But promotional campaigns run their course as situations change.

If there truly was a deeper esoteric Masonry with which HPB was conversant, it likely did not derive from her A&PR diploma. It could have stemmed from her youthful reading of her great-grandfather's Masonic books in Russia or from published exposures of higher degree systems. It might have been supplemented by discussions with Charles Sotheran or Albert Rawson, New York Masons fond of higher degrees who were present at the founding of the TS. With them HPB and Henry Steel Olcott discussed constituting the Society as, in Olcott's words, "a Masonic body with a Ritual and Degrees; the idea being that it would form a natural complement to the higher degrees of the craft, restoring to it the vital element of Oriental mysticism which it lacked or had lost" (Olcott, 1:468).

Then again, HPB may have really been an initiate of "Eastern" Masonic rites that she never named (apart from displaying the A&PR patent to journalists). As with so much about her, we may never know for sure. What is clear is that she played up Masonic secrecy when it suited her and disparaged and exposed it when it suited her. Isis Unveiled featured the keys to no less than four Masonic ciphers, an instance of nose-thumbing at "Western" Freemasonry.

Once HPB and Olcott departed for India at the end of 1878— which marked an ever further "Eastern" turn—esoteric Masonry and Egypt were soon water under the bridge, replaced by engagements with Hinduism and Buddhism. These later cross-cultural encounters had an immeasurable influence on global history, but HPB's earlier preoccupations with Masonry, Jesuits, and other controversies of her time tend to get lost in the "old news" shuffle.

Nevertheless, an interest in Freemasonry lived on within Theosophical circles. The TS itself, in the period of Annie Besant's and C.W. Leadbeater's leadership in the early twentieth century, encouraged participation in Co-Masonry, an esoterically oriented system that accepts both men and women and which has continued to this day, despite a number of splits and schisms.

Leadbeater's books The Hidden Life in Freemasonry and Glimpses of Masonic History offered clairvoyant insights into a deeper Masonry, though one perhaps that was not identical to HPB's conception. Like most individuals seeking a more esoteric Masonry—including HPB herself, Cagliostro, and numerous others — Lead-beater brought his own esotericism with him. In this respect, these figures did not so much discover Masonic secrets as create them, for the following reason.

Regardless of the supposed differences or rivalries between esoteric and mainstream, or between "Western" and "Eastern" Masonries, the Masonic secrets that matter most are the individual Mason's subjective experience of the degree rituals and his (or her) unique interpretation of the symbols employed.

Freemasonry may be one of the few international spiritual/ethical/moral institutions that encourage the priority of symbols over holy writ or ideology. Symbols lend themselves to multiple interpretations, none of which can claim complete rightness.

In view of that, every initiate is granted the right to interpret the numerous Masonic symbols in his own fashion. This explains why Masons who are it possible to carve out their own interpretation of Masonry's symbolic components and meaning.

In the end, these are secrets that cannot really be revealed, because they are uniquely subjective and inaccessible to others who have not undertaken the same ritual and symbolic experience. They could be shouted from the rooftops, but any outside interpretation would be confused and at the mercy of the hearer's projections. These, not the keys to ciphers or descriptions of ritual, are the true Masonic secrets. And somewhat ironically, the only way to discover them is to become a Mason yourself.

Sources

Blavatsky, H.P. Isis Unveiled. Two volumes. Los Angeles: Theosophy Co., 1968.

Kinney, Jay. The Masonic Myth. San Francisco: Harper One, 2009.

McIntosh, Christopher. The Rosicrucians: The History, Mythology, and Rituals of an Esoteric Order. Rey 3d ed. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1997.

Olcott, Henry S. Old Diary Leaves. Six volumes. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1974.

Schuchard, Marsha Keith. Restoring the Temple of Vision: Cabalistic Freemasonry and Stuart Culture. Leiden: Brill, 2002.

Yates, Frances A. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment.

JAY KINNEY was publisher and editor in chief of Gnosis magazine during its fifteen-year span from 1984 to 1999. His book The Masonic Myth has been translated into five languages. He has been honored with the 33rd degree within the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction.

The Open Secret of the Esoteric Orders

Printed in the Summer 2013 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Gilchrist, Cherry. "The Open Secret of the Esoteric Orders" Quest 101. 3 (Summer 2013): pg. 90-93, 120.

By Cherry Gilchrist

I want to find an order, a real order!" We are driving along Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, in the heady postcommunist days of the early 1990s. The man next to me is a music entrepreneur, Andrei Tropillo, known as "the midwife of Russian rock." Russia has exploded chaotically into a new era, to which the manic traffic and hectic trading evident all around us bear witness. Everyone wants to get rich and acquire a fast car and fashionable clothes. But while browsing in some of the more hushed, wealthy emporia, I have noticed signs of a different sort of interest creeping in. Glass showcases hold ceremonial swords and regalia. They are enigmatic and expensive, the attributes of high ritual. They speak of order, not the order on the streets or in government, which is sadly lacking, but the kind of secret or exclusive order that the rich, the famous, or the worthy may find or buy their way into.

Andrei is admired by the young and feared by the newly burgeoning music industry, who brand him a music pirate. He has cash to splash around and is currently sponsoring a children's early music school, which I am also helping, hence our otherwise unlikely connection. Is his impassioned outburst a sign of genuine seeking, or is it simply expressing a desire to move into the higher echelons of society? It's not really up to me to judge his motivation, but I might be able to tell better if he asks me questions rather than just making a demand. After all, time-honored wisdom decrees that one should be above all receptive when in search of an authentic esoteric tradition. Andrei does not seem to be operating in this mold: as one of his interviewers says, he "loves talking ... He speaks fast. Sometimes furiously fast . . . It is almost impossible to break in with questions."

Looking back on this episode now, which took place on the very street where teachers G.I. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky ran esoteric study groups nearly eighty years earlier, Andrei's words still have an impact on me. Even if the rock king's motivations were mixed, it was a remarkable testimony to the impulse that continues to spring up after decades of social repression. Nothing, it seems, can quell the desire to seek out the hidden orders that bring a different kind of majesty and vision into human life, something a political creed or a fleet of Mercedes can never provide. And Andrei recognized this. I could not necessarily have pointed him towards an authentic Russian order, but I might have been able to help him to search better if I'd managed to open up the conversation at that point. I have pondered his words since, and my thoughts here about esoteric orders are in some sense a response to how I might have tried to answer the questions that he never asked.

We could say that there are four essential components of an esoteric order. First, there is the implication, from the word "order" itself, that it is methodically organized. The way the term is used in various common contexts also sheds light on the nature of an esoteric order, indicating that there is a hierarchy involved, whether it's between the orders of different life forms, as in biology, or by confirming the status of a member in terms of rank or grade, as in various social or professional organizations. In addition, both for esoteric and various public orders of honor, there is a ceremonial nature, with the use of rituals and insignia as a part of its operation. Finally, in both cases again, there are special conditions for admission, which may be granted as an honor or as an acknowledgment of common status and purpose between the candidate and its members.

So we can expect an esoteric order to be structured and organized. It won't be a democracy, or offer membership to anyone who wants to join. We can also deduce that such "ordering" may involve rank, hierarchy, ritual, instructions, training, and privileges. Furthermore, a specific esoteric order is not likely to be a completely self-contained organization, but will take its place within a wider spectrum. (I'll give an example of this from Sufism later in this article.) We can also see this principle at work in the broader span of human orders, in groupings such as the orders of chivalry, originally constellated around knightly ideals, and spiritual others, constituted around religious practices. (These cannot be entirely separated from esoteric orders, and may share common origins with them.)

So taking all these factors into account, one should expect a degree of organized membership and ceremony in an esoteric order. It may have a view of its position within a cosmic hierarchy, and will probably have some kind of internal hierarchy as well. As mentioned, democracy does not usually play a prominent role, even though harmony and cooperation may be found there. But with the idea of clearly defined roles and hierarchy comes a sense of identity An esoteric order has a shape, a form, and a purpose. Esoteric orders may have elements in common, but each order is different, and no single one can include all others. Orders involved with magic will have a different kind of operation from those connected with spiritual teaching, for instance. Others perpetuating an esoteric tradition of prayer will not work in the same way as those concerned with trying to fight injustice through the inner planes. The notion of a "universal order," though well-meaning, misses the point. Nevertheless, there can be a more generalized sense of purpose that connects esoteric others, even though each one will have its own kind of work. If an esoteric order sees its place within a greater hierarchy of spirit, it can act by mediating between higher realms and human life. This, I suggest, is another key element of many, if not all, esoteric orders.

With this comes the sense of offering service. At this point, we can leave the more intellectual forms of definition behind and turn to something more visionary: Chapter twenty-one of the book of Revelation sets out a schema of the Holy City, whose twelve gates and walls, studded with twelve jewels, can be seen as a template for twelve orders, twelve types of work that lead their members in and out of the Holy City and the presence of the divine. This vision has certainly been a direct inspiration for some orders based in a Western or Christian tradition. For example, a group with which I studied used the twelvefold schema of the Holy City to formulate twelve basic types of orders. They were classified as Teachers, Prophets, Magicians, Lawgivers, Traders, Artists, Craft Workers, Life Tenders, Warriors, Perpetuators, Priests, and Explorers. Each of these could be seen as essential functions of human work and service, with an esoteric core. There are also said to be twelve orders within Sufism, and on a visit to a Sufi tekke (center) in Turkey, I learned from the elders there that these orders give gifts to one another, both in recognition of the relationship between them and in celebration of their difference.

In a more general sense, such service as esoteric orders perform may be primarily on a worldly level with a spiritual component, or may be seen entirely as a service of a higher degree. For instance, an order might see its role as that of furthering contact between human beings and angels on the inner planes, or it might have a clear external focus, such as the Order of Knights Hospitaller (Knights of St. John), formed in the Middle Ages to "aid and succor the pilgrim" on journeys to the Holy Land. An order should usually have an avowed aim, in the same way that an intention for any ritual should be dearly formulated. However, the implementation of its aim may encompass both esoteric and exoteric work. The Knights Hospitaller, along with their colleagues or rivals, the Knights Templar, whose job it was to defend in more military style, were both reputed to have esoteric teachings and spiritual aspirations at their core of their external endeavors. The Knights of St. John are still in existence today in Britain, and judging by the chapels, ceremonies, and initiations that it still maintains, it keeps something of that esoteric flavor, as well as offering almshouses to the poor and wonderful service to the sick under the banner of the St. John's Ambulance service. So when using the term "esoteric" in conjunction with an order, it's worth keeping in mind that its work may span both inner and outer worlds, the spiritual and the everyday.

This highlights another feature of others: through their intention to carry out a task, which they perceive to be of benefit to the universe, they offer their members the chance to belong to something bigger than themselves. And in every order that does have an esoteric or spiritual level to its work, membership means the chance of entry into another level of consciousness. It may also include acceptance of the realm of higher beings or forces, and thus too the opportunity to sense their presence in a more direct way. If, on the other hand, an order appears to be purely self-serving, as a means to confer status, or simply for members to scratch one another's backs, then it is unlikely to be genuine. It may be a harmless organization that has fossilized or something covert to foster dubious privilege. If you come into contact with an order, check out whether it is both a gateway to higher realms and a means of offering something to mankind.

Remember that such service doesn't necessarily have to be in a material form. The significance of prayer may be relevant here; Sister Wendy Beckett, a nun who is both a contemplative hermit and a renowned expert on art history, says that prayer is simply "to stand unprotected before God"; a moment of naked, painful awareness in the depths of a night is a kind of prayer, and it marks us out as human. (See her book Sister Wendy on Prayer.) We can thus see a possibility that humans may choose to further this vital, precious relationship with the divine through the work carried out in esoteric orders; prayer takes many forms. And it also shows how a close relationship may exist between the more esoteric orders and those (for example, of monks and nuns) which exist within the context of specific religions, such as Buddhism and Christianity.

The question of how national orders of chivalry fit into today's world and also relate to esoteric orders would take far longer to explore than space permits here. Again, the boundary isn't fixed, and one type of order may change into another over time, or present a public face while offering an esoteric kernel of wisdom at its heart. Ceremony and service are key features of even the most well-known, publicly scrutinized orders. In Britain, for instance, the New Year's Honors list is always eagerly awaited to see who will receive an OBE, or Order of the British Empire, or will be admitted to another order, each with its special robe and insignia. The orders of Russia are even more elaborate (see The Orders of Russia by V.A. Durov). Surprisingly, many of these seem to have been carried forward into the current Russian Federation, though older rules for admission requiring a candidate to own several hundred serfs have been abandoned! Overall, such orders of chivalry seem to embody a nation's ideals of honor and service to the people, and are based far more on merit nowadays than on decaying notions of aristocratic entitlement. So it could be said that they carry something of the spirit of esoteric orders, even if they don't act in the same way.

All of this helps to show how orders may evolve and change their emphasis. This is natural and healthy, and in any case, esoteric or purely spiritual work will eventually find its way into the world and into the lives of ordinary people, if it is effective. The techniques of visualization, so popular now in areas from psychotherapy to weight loss, emerged into the light of day at least partly through the work of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late nineteenth century. In those days such practices were kept secret, and they took time to reach the outside world; even when I joined a Kabbalah group (not directly related to the Golden Dawn) in 1970, a type of visualization known as "path working" was something special, to be attempted only in a closed group, and under careful instruction. So in such a case, once the work has reached the outside world, an order could say, "Job done. Now, what's next on the agenda?"

This leads on to the question of secrecy, always a controversial issue. Some argue that secrecy is to safeguard powers so great that they could destroy the world if wielded by the uninitiated. The British magician Gareth Knight, in his introduction to Dion Fortune's book Esoteric Orders and Their Work challenges this melodramatic interpretation, and argues that with modem means of communication, secrets tend not to last for long anyway. He is at pains, however, to indicate that there should be some safeguards, both for the psychological well-being of participants and for the work itself. I would agree that some degree of secrecy is necessary; researching into alchemy taught me that the sealed vessel of transformation cannot be exposed too early. (See my book Explore Alchemy, previously published as The Elements of Alchemy) If opened prematurely, the precious substance that is being distilled may leak away, and disasters such as terrible explosions can occur. Both creative and esoteric work need protection while the process is in operation. Close-quartering your work does of course bring its own dangers, especially if it cannot be checked by others, or held to account for the effects it creates, but without an element of containment, it cannot develop properly.

The level of secrecy in an order may vary, from one where even the name may not be whispered abroad to another which makes many if not most of its transactions transparent. Again, this can change: the Freemasons in the U.K., for instance, responding to public opinion, have taken pains to be more open about their work. In Bath, where I used to live, public invitations to view their meeting hall and to ask questions about Masonic beliefs and practices were very popular. (Not necessarily a comfortable experience for the members, though; I overheard some very trying exchanges centered on Dan Brownâ€“style accusations of fraud and conspiracy.)

To summarize, one way to discern the value and sincerity of an order that you are considering joining is to ask questions of the following kind:

What is its main purpose or intention? Do I feel attuned to that?

Does it have a reliable structure, but one that is not overburdened with protocol?

Is the order aligned with a spiritual vision or religious affinity that I can share?

Does it have an appropriate sense of discretion or secrecy?

What are its conditions for membership? Do I fit them, and do I agree with them?

Does it seem to be ethical in its dealings?

You may not be able to ask all of these questions directly, and finding the answers you need may depend on your own observations and investigations. But bear in mind that no order will be entirely tailor-made to one's personal notions and inclinations. Leaving behind the baggage of one's cherished whims is inevitably a part of joining an organization that operates on a bigger scale. If you want to feel part of a greater endeavor, then something of the personal must be dropped to experience that. It's a question of balance: an order should honor individual difference and not expect a member to act purely as a cog in a machine. But if the order seems perfectly suited to your tastes, then be very suspicious!

And if you are searching for an order, as Andrei Tropillo was, you may find one in a place you would never think to look. Some years ago, I was having a chat with the cleaner who came to work each week in our house in Bristol. We were on friendly terms but, I thought, didn't have a lot in common. Then the conversation took an unexpected turn, as she told me she was about to be initiated into a women's order, called the Glades. Its roots were said to lie in medieval times, when women would meet secretly in forest clearings at night. She was trying to learn what she needed for the ceremony, and confessed that she was afraid that she might forget her lines when the initiation took place! At that time, I had researched far and wide into women's traditions, but had no idea that an order like this existed, let alone that I would encounter a prospective member in my own home. Even now, some twenty years later, it would be unlikely that I'd come across the Glades, as there is still little information about the group in the public domain or on the Internet. It was like a prod reminding me that the subject of orders may come up in curious ways and unlikely places, whether that is a street in postcommunist Russia or beside the kitchen sink.

Cherry Gilchrist has studied esoteric traditions for over forty years, and has written extensively about these in books such as The Elements of Alchemy, The Circle of Nine, and The Tree of Life Oracle. She is particularyy interested in wisdom found in traditional cultures and mythology, and after may trips to Russia wrote Russian Magic, published by Quest Books. Cherry lives in the U.K. and is a writing tutor for the universites of Ocford and Exeter.

Do You Remember?

Printed in the Summer 2013 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Boyd, Tim. "Do You Remember?" Quest 101. 3 (Summer 2013): pg. 88-89.

Tim Boyd National President

For sixty years I have been forgetful, every minute, but not for a second has this flowing toward me stopped or slowed. I deserve nothing.

—Jullaludin Rumi

As a young person growing up I used to find humor in some of the things my parents did. My fatherhad one particular habit that I could never understand. I would shake my head and wonder about it. It was something simple that I later realized many parents do, but it just did not make any sense to me. There were four of us kids, and sometimes when he wanted to call one of us for one thing or another, he would look at the one he was calling and cycle through each of our names until he got the right one. If we were out of sight when he called, it would be the same process. This did not happen every time, but to me it was remarkable that it happened at all. How could he not immediately know my name, or my brothers', or sister's? There was no way that I would ever call for Brandon when I wanted Ed or Becky. At the time I wrote it off as one of my dad's unintentionally humorous quirks.

Years have passed since my youthful fascination with my father's behavior, and with it has come, perhaps not understanding, but at least the experience of a brain overcrowded with names, places, numbers, and countless random facts. Not too long ago I realized that I had crossed a line. I was sitting in a meeting with a number of coworkers. I was going around the table introducing a newcomer to the various people in the room. When I got to one of my coworkers, someone I see and converse with regularly, I drew a blank. For the life of me I could not remember her name. I played it off with some halfway humorous ruse, so that I was the only one who really knew what had just happened, but that vacant moment where something so familiar dangled just beyond my mental grasp made an impression on me. My father's peccadilloes of memory somehow seemed quite forgivable now that I had fallen heir to them.

The French have a graceful way of speaking about many things; middle age is one of them. The term they use for it is d'un certain age—of a certain age. It is a gentle and kindly indefinite way of saying that time is moving on. When I mentioned my little blank moment to my friends of a certain age and older, I got two typical responses. The first was "It's normal"; the second was a variation of the first: "Welcome to the club." Frequently these conversations would veer off into narrations of more extreme forms of forgetfulness, Alzheimer's and dementia. Friends would tell stories of looping, repetitive conversations with parents or relatives suffering from Alzheimer's that were both painful and in hindsight funny. Hearing these types of stories had a way of putting my momentary forgetfulness into a more palatable perspective. It also set me to thinking about memory and its opposite.

In Theosophy there is the idea that the human being is "Highest Spirit and lowest matter joined by mind." The extreme loss of memories connected with Alzheimer's has been described as an interruption or severance of that link between higher and lower, the spiritual individuality and the personality. It is a disruption in the function of the brain as a receiver for the impulses of the mind, preventing the normal connection between the personality and its "Father in Heaven" —the spiritual self. Whatever may be the causes, in this condition the bridge of the mind that connects the personality to the spiritual is cut off leaving the person to function using habitual responses developed over the course of a lifetime.

Alzheimer's and other diseases of the brain are isolated and dramatic forms of distorted memory. The spiritual traditions of the world address a more universal and pervasive level of forgetfulness. In countless ways the ageless wisdom traditions point to a process in which we are all engaged. It has been described as a path of outgoing and return, involution and evolution, or of forgetting and remembrance.

There is a story that pops up in spiritual traditions around the world. It is one of those tales that is so ubiquitous that it cannot be attributed to any historical source. It is archetypal, the heritage of the entire human race. It is told in different ways depending on the culture, place, and time in which it appears. The basic story line is this: there is a great, wise, and powerful king. Something happens to him that causes him to lose his memory. He forgets his identity and everything about his authority and position. He walks away from his throne, away from his family, ministers, counsel-on, and subjects. He wanders in the world outside his kingdom, having experiences, beginning a new family, working and living like the people around him, never knowing that he has another life, a different possibility. After many years of living like this something happens that restores his memory. He returns to his kingdom, takes up his kingly duties, and rules with a wisdom enhanced by his experience in the outer world.

Variations of this story are everywhere. In the West we are most familiar with the biblical story of the Prodigal Son, which depicts a journey to a distant land, a loss of memory and stature, a remembrance, and a journey home to be gloriously reunited with the father. These are grand stories that talk about a grand process. Like any truly great story they speak at many levels from the cosmic to the personal. In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali there is a description of the process: "The purpose of the coming together of the purusha (Spirit) and prakriti (Matter) is the gaining by the purusha of the awareness of his true nature and the unfoldment of powers inherent in him and prakriti." This is a story of spirit becoming involved in matter, and evolving from matter. On the level of the individual it is a story of the sleep, awakening, and "expansion" of consciousness. The depth of the tale of the Prodigal Son is limitless, but from the point of view of the individual there is one moment in the story which is critical. It is the point at which we now find ourselves —the moment of awakening.

There is an African saying that "the disease that is hidden cannot be cured." During the period of our spiritual amnesia there is really nothing we can do. Our unawareness ensures a blind wandering from experience to experience, feeling unfulfilled, but as yet unquestioning. However, when the moment arrives that we remember, that we catch a fleeting glimpse of the forgotten majesty of our deepest self, many previously unimagined possibilities open up for us. Among these is the possibility to "hurry home."

One of the many paradoxes of the spiritual life is that as human beings we are future-oriented, but the future we point ourselves toward is something whose fullness is ever present around and within us. Our tendency is to approach the realization of the spiritual path, the "hidden splendor," or enlightenment, as though it is the culmination of some progressive unfoldment, which in a sense it is. However, in a deeper sense the moment of enlightenment can only occur when all impulses toward progress are stilled; when, in the words of the Prajnaparamita Sutra, we recognize and behave as though there is "no nirvana, no path, no wisdom, also no attainment." So we practice. We engage in a variety of exercises to address the restless movement of the body, the emotions, and our ever active minds. We practice compassion, kindness, generosity, patience, perseverance, harmony, equanimity, truthfulness, love, and a thousand more virtues. We practice until practice becomes irrelevant. We exert until all of the effort becomes effortless. In the words from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, "the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." The search ends where it began. The striving exhausts itself, and our forgetfulness of the soul dissipates, when once again we remember.

Quest Magazine

Navigating Spaceship Earth: Four Russian Cosmists

The Esoteric School of Theosophy

Shhh! It's a Secret! Grappling with the Puzzle of Freemasonry

The Open Secret of the Esoteric Orders

Do You Remember?

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