ESOTERICISM, MYSTICISM AND OUR SPIRITUAL FUTURE
Robert A. Gilbert
(This draft taken from the lecture given to the Bournemouth Society on Saturday 3 October 2009 at Bournemouth University)
This lecture builds upon my earlier lecture of March this year on ‘Mystics, Magicians and Esoteric Orders’, in which I considered the nature and history of the two paths within the Western Mystery Tradition. These paths are the two ways by which we have traditionally sought to attain the goal of spiritual realisation: mysticism and magic. At first sight it would seem that these two ways must inevitably diverge, with no prospect of coming together, but should we not consider the possibility that, under the right conditions, they can be reconciled and merge into one? Is this not the direction in which our spiritual future lies?
It is such a possibility, that radically different approaches to esoteric practices and ideas might be brought together in harmony that concerns me now. They are, of course, quite distinct: the theoretical, philosophical framework that underpins magic is very different from that which encapsulates mysticism, but both paths have been claimed as the true way of the Western Mystery Tradition – a living tradition that has existed, has developed and has enriched western civilisation for more than 2,000 years. If, however, they should prove to be mutually exclusive, and thus irreconcilable, then one of them must be a false way – and in case you argue that both ways could be false, I must point out that there is no third way, for between them these two paths, in their broad sense, exhaust every possibility of spiritual attainment within this tradition.
But are they mutually exclusive? Is there no path of synthesis by which the two ways can together lead us to a true understanding and attainment of spiritual reality? Let us consider these questions, beginning with an attempt to define some specific terms. I will do this briefly, for I have presented these definitions at length in my earlier lecture, to which I refer you for greater detail.
‘Magic’ and ‘Mysticism’ are both notoriously difficult to define with precision, partly because the terms have been debased as common currency. Almost anything mysterious tends to be described as ‘mystical’ and the skilful play of professional footballers are often labelled ‘magic’. We can, however, rise above the commonplace and arrive at something that is both technically accurate and philosophically satisfying. Let us begin with what is, I feel, the best working definition of magic, set out by Evelyn Underhill:
Magic, in its uncorrupted form, claims to be a practical, intellectual, highly individualistic science; working towards the declared end of enlarging the sphere on which the human will can work, and obtaining experimental knowledge of
planes of being usually regarded as transcendental. (Mysticism 1930, 12th Ed. p. 152)
At once we are awake to its complexity, for ‘in its uncorrupted form’, suggests that there is more than one kind of magic: and so there is. Natural magic, for example, is simply the practical application of an understanding of the hidden processes of the natural world, and it is less significant in the Western Mystery Tradition than the two major divisions of magic: Goëtia and Theurgy. Both of these involve ceremonial working but there is a clear moral distinction.
It was expressed in the following way by A.E. Waite, who was well versed in the work of magical, esoteric and mystical Orders. ‘The distinction’, he wrote, ‘between White and Black Magic [he is referring to ceremonial magic] is the distinction between the idle and the evil word’. For him, magical arts are ‘the path of illusion by which the psychic nature of man enters that other path which goes down into the abyss.’ This may be seen as a contentious statement, but ritual magicians – of the past and of the present – do tend to glorify the self and to inflate the ego, and thus to be blind to the dangers of what they do.
Theurgy is very different; it is Gnostic rather than goëtic. The word ‘Theurgy’ means literally, ‘the works of God’, or ‘divine workings’, and those who seek to understand them are more properly described as seekers for illumination and saving knowledge rather than as magicians. The ceremonies in which they engage are designed to take them through a series of intermediary spiritual stages that lead to the experience of God. And this, of course, is the goal of the mystic, which leads us to our definition of mysticism.
As with magic there are two divisions, but these are not moral distinctions, they are simply the practical and theoretical elements of mysticism. The first of these concerns what mystics do, while the second is the study and interpretation of the experiences, attitudes, beliefs and speculative thought of the mystics. So who and what are the mystics? They are individuals who have consciously, but humbly, sought and entered an exalted state of consciousness in which they have a direct, personal experience of God (or ultimate reality, if you prefer to depersonalise Him). The mystic attains such experiences by the disciplined following of a prescribed way of spiritual life, which may be lay or religious. He or she has also made a moral choice in taking up the mystical path. As Evelyn Underhill succinctly put it, ‘magic wants to get, mysticism wants to give’.
So what of the tradition – the Western Mystery Tradition – in which these two paths lie? It forms a specific aspect of what is known, in academic circles, as ‘Western Esotericism’. This is a collective term, better described as a convenient portmanteau, for the various doctrines, theories, ideas and principles that underlie and hold together the practices of magical, divinatory and related arts and sciences (alchemy and astrology, for example), ways of interacting with and comprehending the spiritual world and its inhabitants, and the varieties of speculative religious philosophy associated with all of these (e.g. Kabbalah and the Theosophy of Jacob Boehme). In addition it incorporates the various institutions in which such things are studied and/or presented in ritualised form in the western Christianised world. A broad spectrum indeed that is descriptive rather than prescriptive and avoids both intellectual and moral distinctions; thus it can encompass both chalk and cheese, and matters as unlike each other as fortune telling and Theurgy.
The Western Mystery Tradition is less chaotic. It falls within the compass of Western Esotericism, but it is a concept rather than a catalogue and far from easy to sum up. In essence it is a secret, inner tradition underlying the spiritual quest of western man – a quest to find the way of return to God. It involves the transmission, in private or in secret by those initiated into its practices and its verbal expression, of a systematic body of revealed doctrine. This doctrine concerns our understanding of Man's personal relationship with the universe and with God, of the nature of spiritual reality, and of the practical means of attaining direct, personal awareness of that reality. Both magic and mysticism profess to be paths to the goal of this secret tradition, but are they an integral part of the process or simply a reflection of some of its elements?
At this point I feel I must enter some caveats. I am well aware that many books, both old and new, on occultism and New Age ‘spirituality’ take a broader view of the Western Mystery Tradition and define or describe it in terms very different from mine. so I shall narrow my focus and refer instead simply to the ‘Secret Tradition’ – to be understood as a western and essentially Christian tradition.
I make no apology for emphasising the Christian ethos of this Secret Tradition or of the Western Mystery Tradition in its wider sense, for the philosophical underpinning of the whole of western civilisation is the Christian religion, together with the Judaic and Neoplatonic streams that flow into it. This leads to a further caveat: the need to restrict the boundaries of the term ‘esotericism’ so that it can be seen as Christian Esotericism. It is necessary to use the term in order to make clear that the Secret Tradition is not simply a collection of Christian mystical texts, but has additional elements – kabbalistic, Neoplatonic and other sources – that co-exist comfortably with Christian spirituality. There are many other beliefs and practices within the broader compass of Western Esotericism that have no place within the Secret Tradition. Thus the God-oriented theurgy of the Christian Neoplatonist is a significant aspect of the Tradition, but the self-centred glamour and the syncretism of the ritual magician have no part to play. There neither is nor can be a full reconciliation between magic and mysticism.
Are we then at an impasse? No, we are not, if we limit our terms in the way I have set out, and we can proceed on our spiritual journey. I must emphasise that the way of the Secret Tradition, of Christian Esotericism, is not an alternative to or a substitute for religious faith and public religious worship, but it is complementary to them. Equally, it does not exist apart from them: the Secret Tradition I am presenting is a way to be followed in tandem with a profession of religious faith, and the Christian faith at that, although I must also emphasise that it is not in any sense restricted to any specific denominational Church or to any doctrines peculiar to such institutions. Of itself Christian Esotericism is not a religion: it does not have a dogmatic profession of faith, it does not involve public worship and it does not offer the sacraments of the Church. The ceremonies of Christian Esoteric Orders are not acts of public worship: they are corporate expressions of private devotion, dedicated to articulating spiritual experience and the system of belief and understanding that underpins such experience. But such Orders, and their members who engage with the Secret Tradition, work in tandem with the Church, albeit without the Churches’ knowledge, for that work enriches our individual spiritual lives. Nor is this all, for the Secret Tradition also has a significant role to play in preserving and reinforcing spiritual and moral values in a world from which they are fast disappearing.
By now you may be a little uneasy at what may seem to be sectarian propaganda; you need not be for it is not so. I am well aware that my statements on magic and mysticism are dogmatic, and this may seem out of place in a lecture that reflects what are personal opinions rather than established, objective fact, and such apparent dogmatism would certainly be at odds with my publicly stated commitment to the principle of tolerance in respect of philosophical, religious and socio-political systems of belief. So, let me reiterate my position on matters of faith. I fully respect the right of others to hold and to propagate belief systems that are out of harmony with, or run completely counter to my own, but if I am to be true to my own faith, then I cannot be expected to accept such beliefs as the truth. However, I also recognise that I must justify my opinions, so I shall offer reasons – sound, indeed conclusive, to my own satisfaction – as to why magic and mysticism cannot ultimately be reconciled and why I reject the former. You should also recognise that without such reconciliation there will inevitably be practical paths, and institutions, Esoteric Orders among them, which, to put it mildly, I cannot recommend as appropriate if you are seeking spiritual reality rather than illusion and delusion.
Here you may legitimately raise another question. If we are to be tolerant of others, should we not leave them to follow their own chosen paths wherever they may lead ? In an ideal world that is, of course, what we would do – but in an ideal world there would be no false paths and all would be well with the world, which is manifestly not the case. Our entire world, not just the developed, western world, is on the edge of political, economic and social disintegration; we face a future of increasing injustice, oppression, poverty and famine, and true spirituality is cast down in favour of aggressive, unthinking and uncaring religious fundamentalism that thrives on fear. Our current state is best summed up in the words of Yeats’s poem ‘The Second Coming’:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed upon the world, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
If we care at all for humanity we must stand against this terrible rejection of the Good, the True and the Beautiful; this antithesis of all that makes up the spiritual essence of Christianity, indeed of the whole human spirit. But how can this be done ? Is it not a task for the Churches, those orthodox, established institutions of the Christian faith ? Of course it is – but they are failing. They lack the dynamism they should have; there is no longer a constant, living interaction between worshipper, priest and God. And why ? Because they have lost sight of the immutable and fixed their gaze upon all that changes, they have become slaves to fashion, seeking only a specious and spurious relevance to ever-shifting social trends and attitudes – things that they should transcend. The result of their failure is a decline in belief, or rather, a decline in focussed belief, the consequence of which was bluntly stated by G.K. Chesterton: ‘When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing - they believe in anything.’
To remedy this Christian esotericists must become in part buttresses for a failing Church, not for the institutions but for their spiritual work: they, we, must provide food for the spiritually starved and must work towards presenting a model that will not only restore a belief in God to those who seek for a spiritual dimension in their lives, but also provide a way to experience God.
This is a tall order indeed, but before we consider how it may be met we must examine the alternatives, the roads to not-God offered by the ‘anything’ in which the disillusioned believe.
A decline in religious faith is not the only reason that leads people to take up these alternative paths, although the absence of faith in a specific religion, or in an integrated and well-established spiritual philosophy, takes away from them a reasoned and solid starting point for their spiritual journey. There has also been a significant cultural shift within western society. Knowledge that was taken for granted two generations ago – of Classical Mythology, of Biblical texts, of cultural history in general – is now confined to the few; ignorance of such things is widespread and the means of combating that ignorance – reading, books, libraries, social interaction and informed conversation – are in decline. We are in an age of social isolation, of the supremacy of the individual, of interaction with machines rather than with fellow human beings and in this situation superstition and fear grow together with ignorance. As individuals we cannot alter major trends in social and intellectual behaviour, but we can ensure that we, and those within our immediate social and cultural circles, retain our awareness of and access to the stored knowledge and wisdom of humanity – and our ability to think logically. But what of those who are in a state of ignorance?
Lives without spiritual structure or meaning will be filled with whatever empty fashions and groundless spiritual speculations are promoted and distributed by the media. We can see the effects of such worthless largesse in the hysteria surrounding The Da Vinci Code, its sources and its author’s other fiction. The distinctions between fiction, pseudo-science, imagined history and established fact become blurred; errors, follies and outright lies are accepted uncritically and taken for truth; and those who speak out against them are ignored and scorned. We cannot blame the media for this – their prime purpose is to make profits for their owners, not to disseminate the truth – but we can blame those who write such nonsense in the full knowledge that they are leading the public astray and distorting reality.
Nor can we hold guiltless those who abdicate from reason and propagate the ill-conceived, simplistic and self-centred pap that constitutes most of what passes for reasoned thought within the New Age community. Faced with unstructured, woolly and ultimately meaningless verbiage that is presented as New Age philosophy, of one sort or another, we would do well to react as did Chesterton’s Father Brown, in the story ‘The Dagger with Wings’. His adversary is an occultist who puts his views as a question to Fr. Brown:
The soul goes round upon a wheel of stars and all things return … Good and
evil go round in a wheel that is one thing and not many. Do you not realise in
your heart, do you not believe behind all your beliefs, that there is but one reality
and we are its shadows; and that all things are but aspects of one thing: a centre
where men melt into Man and Man into God ?
No, said Father Brown.
And that would be a good starting point for us to approach the fatuous utterances and false history of the New Age and the Neo-Paganism that it has spawned. Or spawned in part, for there is a more odious source than well-meaning folly behind such movements as modern witchcraft, or ‘Wicca’ as it styles itself. Present day witches still present Gerald Gardner’s formula of ‘An it hurt none, Do what you will’, as if it were a statement of benevolence and tolerance against the presumed restrictions of the moral codes of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. If it is analysed it is seen as a licence for licence, which is hardly surprising, given that it is derived from the more pompous, but equally self-centred, precept of Aleister Crowley: ‘Do what thou wilt; Love is the Law, Love under Will’.
The specious argument in favour of such a sentiment is that it doesn’t refer to doing whatever you may feel like doing, but to discovering what your true will is and then acting in accordance with it. What is implicit in this, but remains unsaid, is that your will is paramount and that your personal interests override those of society as a whole: the mores of society are not your concern, you must follow the morality of your will before that of others. Even if there were anything to said for this cynical placing of the demands and desires of the individual above those of the wider community – and among social creatures, such as human beings, there cannot be any justification in placing the self over and above the needs of society – there are few, if any, ordinary human beings who are so iron willed as to be able to resist completely the temptations of both the flesh and the spirit.
But what if the human being in question is not ordinary but extraordinary, a being spiritually superior to his or her fellows ? The few individuals throughout history who could be so described never did so themselves, it is we who perceive their true natures who can recognise that they really are spiritually exalted, and that is not the position for those who follow Crowley’s Law of Thelema. We cannot be certain that every person who subscribes to the doctrines of Crowley’s Book of the Law (the text of which manages to blaspheme and deride the founders and propagators of every major world religion), or who joins his Ordo Templi Orientis, perceives him or herself to be above the common herd, but it is very likely to be so. Nor would we be justified in looking on followers of the cult of Thelema as necessarily licentious or depraved, although the cult is admittedly antinomian (insofar as it professes that ‘the only sin is restriction’). It is also avowedly elitist and appeals mightily to the arrogant and the spiritually proud, and for this if for no other reason it can never be in harmony with the Secret Tradition.
There is also the question of the type of magic propounded in Crowley’s works and practised within the Orders derived from him. As with other esoteric Orders based upon the glorification of the self, they are magically oriented: not towards the practice of Theurgy, nor strictly towards the most noxious of goëtic rituals, but to the glamour and overblown ritual of the magical formulae prevalent within the workings of the Golden Dawn and similar magical systems that have outlived whatever merit they may once have had. And where there was a clear sense of progression in personal spiritual understanding in some of the Golden Dawn rituals, those of the Crowley and associated lineages are steeped in self-indulgence, sensual excess and spiritual pride. They do not and cannot represent any part of the Way of return to God and yet they still draw in informed occultists as well as the ignorant.
The reasons for this, and for the continuing success of such Orders, can be readily identified. First is the fatal ease with which we tend to succumb to spiritual pride. This does not affect only magicians and occultists; religious Fundamentalists also engage with self-indulgence of the spirit, and are every bit as elitists as ritual magicians. How can it be otherwise when they are so certain that they alone have the ear of God, as it were, and how satisfying to know that no others but they will be saved. And this digression in my text is not an indulgence on my part: it is essential for the spiritual well-being of humanity to recognise that Fundamentalism, whether murderous and criminal or merely censorious and self-righteous, is utterly alien to the Secret Tradition. Such a mindset can never lead to God, unless he draws such people to himself in His infinite pity, but only to what is not-God: the malignance beyond conception that is evil personified. But let me return to the mainstream: the reasons for the success of the magical way.
There is also the thrill of ‘Initiation’ for its own sake; the formal entry into an esoteric or magical Order not from a wish to understand and embrace the doctrines of esotericism, but because of its incidental pomp and circumstance, and of the opportunity that its hierarchical nature provides of achieving rank and power that would otherwise be denied. This may seem to you to be an empty and pointless manner of spiritual progression, and so it would be if spiritual progress was the goal. All too often it is not, and this purely material end is evident in many, indeed most branches of Freemasonry. Here I will give some examples from my personal experience.
Craft Freemasonry – the three Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason – is essentially concerned with imparting moral precepts within a framework of symbolic dramas. There is no magical or esoteric content, nor mystical either – save for what the initiate may experience within himself as he progresses through these Degrees. For most freemasons this is enough, but not for all. There are many ‘Additional Degrees’, Rites and Orders that are based upon other Biblical and extra-Biblical legends than those utilised in the Craft Degrees. For the most part they convey further moral messages, but the more rarefied Orders profess to convey more spiritual messages. All of them, however, involve varying degrees of pomp and circumstance, elaborate regalia and dramatic ceremonies; they have also all – or almost all – lost their way. Their purpose has become entirely that of their self-serving members: to supply a degree mill that can churn out Brothers, Masters, Companions, Knights and Commanders, all willing, and occasionally able, to rise to high office in their Orders. All of them very big fish in very small ponds, so that it is difficult to see whether this is elitism writ large or elitism write small. Either way it is pointless, save to impress one another with their own importance, and it is, perhaps, a sad reflection upon the way in which some disappointed individuals seek to make something of themselves when the outside world – the real world – denies it to them.
In itself this is of little consequence, although less harmless than may at first appear. There are some masonic Rites that have within them the means to direct and assist those who enter them on a path of significant spiritual progress. I am still a member of the Rite Ecossais Rectifié, a branch of Freemasonry predicated upon the ethos and history of the Knights Templar, but dedicated to imparting an understanding of the spiritual world, and our way within it, to its members. At least in theory. When a new, English speaking Lodge was founded in Belgium we introduced a rule that candidates for admission would be required to write a short paper on what they understood by the term ‘Spiritual Regeneration’. There was no set answer, it was simply to ensure that they understood, each in his own way, what was the purpose of the Rite.
Worked properly and with the right intent the ceremonies of the Rite are both impressive and effective; they convey a true sense of the numinous. But much depends on the attitude and sensibility of the members. After a few years of real progress the dead hand of masonic politics was laid upon our little lodge. It became desirable to the masonic authorities in England and Belgium that men should be admitted to our lodge simply because their names and presence were necessary to further the ambitions of those authorities: that they had not the slightest interest in or desire to achieve anything of a spiritual nature, that, in short, we didn’t want them, was immaterial. They were imposed upon us, the requirement for a paper on ‘Spiritual Regeneration’ was swept away, and the Spirit departed. The lodge is now an empty shell, unable at present to guide anyone towards the light and perpetuated to serve the interest of self-seeking men.
Fortunately, there were some who took steps to ensure that the path opened by this Rite should remain open, and for a few the road to Regeneration is still travelled. A similar fate – the abolition of spiritual content in favour of material masonic advancement – has afflicted another, quasi-masonic body that I once held to be of crucial importance. This is the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, a masonic Rosicrucian body, founded in 1867 and dedicated to the study of the subject matter of Western Esotericism. At least, so it was for 120 years, and then the masonic version of spiritual pride entered in, overcame the few true Rosicrucians and converted the society to yet another masonic degree mill of no spiritual or intellectual significance. I know from personal experience that struggling against such determined materialistic opposition is extremely difficult, and when that opposition is coupled with a disheartened and disillusioned membership the struggle is doomed. The only course, which some of us followed, is to walk away and begin anew. Such events bring to mind the double edged line in Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’: ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and Despair’. And that is quite enough of me.
Elitism and a desire for sensual excess or for a sense of achievement denied in the everyday world, are not the only reasons for choosing to follow a magical path that leads away from God. There is also the desire for power: power over the spiritual rather than the material world. Those who practise Goëtia and the slightly less abhorrent forms of ceremonial magic believe that they will obtain power over the beings who inhabit the spiritual world. For most of them this is pure delusion, but what do their actions say for their moral code and the state of their souls ? The famous conversation of Hotspur and Glendower in Shakespeare’s Henry IV [Part 1, Act 3, scene 1, 52–58] considers both the delusion and the morality. To Glendower’s boast, ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep’, Hotspur replies, ‘Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them ?’. This results in the following exchange: Glendower, ‘Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command the devil’, to which Hotspur retorts, ‘And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil by telling truth: tell truth and shame the devil’.
This is sound advice, but the spiritually proud risk more than they realise. If there is an ultimate spiritual reality, that is, if there is God, then we are faced with an inconceivable power, and challenging it is dangerous in the extreme. The danger is rarely appreciated by those who desire power, and warning against it can best be emphasised by illustration from fictional accounts. Thus Algernon Blackwood’s The Human Chord is an excellent cautionary tale. It concerns the blasphemous experiment conducted by a ‘retired clergyman’ who is driven by a ‘savage and dominant curiosity to know’. He seeks nothing less than forbidden knowledge: the true pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, the hidden Name of God, which he intends to utter aloud and to record. Then, he tells his assistants, ‘We shall be as Gods !’ Of course, he fails in his attempt and is destroyed by the power of the manifested letters of the Name. The extent of his spiritual pride is shown in his wilful disregard of the consequences of Genesis iii.5 – succumbing to temptation is the prelude to the Fall.
Curiosity also drives another element of the progressive deterioration and distortion of the Western Mystery Tradition. The entire range of Western Esotericism has come to the attention of the academic world, which sees in it a fruitful source of previously uncharted research material. Every aspect has been dissected, sliced up and displayed like a collection of moths on pins, with every fragment of life sucked out of them. This shrivelled, desiccated collection is then presented as a curious historical phenomenon, without any sense that it contains within it a dynamic, living spiritual tradition. In the eyes of academe, esotericism is safe because it is dead.
So these are the motives and reasons for taking the alternatives to the Secret Tradition. For the cynic it is curiosity; for the failure it is elitism; for the sensual it is self indulgence; for the arrogant and the ambitious it is spiritual pride and a desire for power; for the bewildered seeker, bereft of formal religious support, it is ignorance and fear. Taken together they encompass most of the seven deadly sins.
What, then, can we do to set the spiritual seeker upon a more desirable path – that of the Secret Tradition that offers a true Way of Return to God ? First we must show by our own example that this truly is a desirable, worthy and effective path to spiritual reality, to the direct experience of God. If we are not travellers at a point upon that path, then how can we show it and offer it to others ? Let us be sure that we ourselves are upon the Way of Return, that we can justify our certainty in this matter, that we can identify its features for others, and that we are clear about what we cannot and should not pretend to offer.
Above all we should not, indeed we cannot, compel others to take up a Way which can only be accepted or rejected by a free personal choice. We can point out its existence and we can explain the methods of progress and the pitfalls that may be encountered. We can guide and advise, but that is all: we are not substitutes for the conscience and freewill of any individual, nor should we try to usurp the traditional role of the Church, however much we may believe that it is failing in its task. We are not empowered as sanctified intermediaries but as signposts, showing to others the way on which we, too, are travelling. This does not preclude us, however, from proclaiming the faith.
It is indeed essential that we keep in mind that Christian Esotericism, the Secret Tradition of the West, is just that: Christian. For those who seek to know, or who have forgotten, we can set out the essentials of the Christian faith, emphasising that it involves an acceptance of the divinity of Jesus Christ and of his role as our Lord and Saviour, and that it obliges us to adopt the way of life that He laid down for us: to love God and to love our neighbour as ourselves, to the end of living with Christ in the spirit to eternity. This is the true following of Christ.
We can also point out that it is perfectly proper to go beyond this basic understanding of the faith. Not everything that Jesus said and did was made public (John 20:30 and 21:25), and Paul refers to his hearing in paradise 'unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter' (2 Cor. 12:4). Thus we are justified in speaking of hidden elements in Christianity which we can legitimately seek to know. These do not consist of rules of conduct and faith, for we have those in full, but it is rather the ways of entering and understanding the spiritual world and of beginning to grasp the nature of God; of using the knowledge so gained for the spiritual growth of ourselves, and of enabling us to guide and teach others whom we encounter on the same spiritual path. This is the essence of Christian Esotericism, what we might describe as the gnosis truly so-called.
Not every seeker we encounter, however, will turn to us for a brief course in the Christian faith, exoteric or esoteric, and we must recognise that others may embrace the Secret Tradition without initially realising its Christian nature. We will not help them if we treat our role as sympathetic guides and advisers as if we are a crusading army fighting against legions of demons. Bear in mind that we are not magicians after the fashion of the Duc de Richleau, in The Devil Rides Out, using magical power to fight magical power. The enemy we face is more complex, more subtle and more insidious and we should remain alive to the need to watch our backs as we seek to help those before us.
For all the limitations of what we are able to do, in terms of spiritual activity, we can direct seekers with the appropriate attitudes, abilities, convictions and mindset towards the Esoteric Orders and other spiritual institutions with which we ourselves are involved. We can identify their potential dedication by introducing the idea of the ‘Interior Church’, not of a ‘church made with hands’ but of a Holy Assembly of the Elect, comprising mystics, either by illumination or by revelation, who are united spiritually but consciously, although not in any material gathering. If they are receptive to this concept we can build upon it by introducing also those Esoteric Orders that represent the material form of the Interior Church: Orders that work within such movements as Martinism and Rosicrucianism, perfect exemplars of Christian Esotericism in practice.
Others may wish to engage with the Secret Tradition through personal, private spiritual practices, and we can aid them through our own awareness of the ways in which spiritual experience can be sought (most effectively by well-tried processes of prayer and meditation), and how, once it has been attained, it can be expressed. Such experiences are notoriously difficult to articulate – even to ourselves – and it will benefit both ourselves and our fellow travellers if we make a continuing study of the use of Word, Image and Act in presenting and understanding all that we encounter and experience on the Way of Return to God. Let me elaborate on this.
Ordinary language is wholly inadequate to describe or interpret any exalted non-sensory, non-empirical experience. Whether we term it religious, spiritual or mystical experience it lies outside the range of the everyday spoken or written word. But words can be used in other than a literal way: mystical experience can be encapsulated and glimpsed ‘as in a glass, darkly’ by way of metaphor, simile, symbol, allegory and parable. The art of such communication of the incommunicable is the choice of the appropriate verbal image, and we can learn it by reading and absorbing the words and works of the mystics of all religions, but it resonates more clearly for us when we draw our understanding from the writings of the Christian mystics, irrespective of their particular period or brand of Christianity. From their words we can build up a language of our own that will convey – to those who are in sympathy with it – just what we have experienced. And by extension, like ripples across a pond, it can be conveyed to and absorbed by other followers of the Secret Tradition in slowly but certainly increasing numbers.
Ideas and experiences, knowledge and understanding can also be conveyed by visual images, combinations of shape, form and colour that coalesce into symbolic or emblematic images: figurative or abstract pictures that are non-rational and able to cut through the restrictions of verbal reasoning. The most familiar examples are the pictorial illustrations of alchemical and Rosicrucian texts and the emblem books of the 16th and 17th century. As with the paradoxical verbal language of spiritual experience they can be studied and absorbed by the individual, or within a group.
To a certain degree this is also true of the active representation, in ceremonial, dramatic form, of esoteric concepts and of exalted inner experience. Translating the experience into act is inevitably at second hand as ceremonial drama is the outer form of the ritual text: the word transformed into the symbolic deed. This is the essence of initiation into Esoteric Orders and of progressive advancement in those Orders that are hierarchical or based upon symbolic ascents (e.g. of the Tree of Life).
I am aware that this is a brief and inevitably inadequate introduction to the transformation of spiritual experience (the interior experience) into a material, transmissible form (the outer experience) through words, images and actions. To understand more about it you have little option but to engage with the Esoteric Orders, but I do not intend to act as a recruiting sergeant so you will have time enough to reflect on your interest in such a means of spiritual progression.
I feel also that I have spoken for long enough and provided you, or so I hope, with an introductory map of the territory occupied by the Secret Tradition. The final goal of our spiritual activities is not the attaining of our own heightened awareness, of our personal transformative experiences, but our going outwards from the self to all mankind, striving to bring to all whatever part of the Divine Vision and Divine Union can be transmitted from one to another. If I can mix my religious metaphors, I would see ourselves not only as heirs of the Secret Tradition, but also as striving to fulfil the role of the Christian Bodhisattva.