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(p. 140)
THE solution of the religious problem
offered by the method of the mystics appears to be that which is destined to
triumph in the present age. This is no new method, but one that has been in the
world, obscurely and secretly, from the very dawn of religious thought, having
its representatives and exponents in the ancient systems of both East and West,
Buddhist, Alexandrian, and Christian. Their method consists in regarding the
exterior and phenomenal presentation of religion as but the scaffolding
necessary to the construction of the edifice – its mythologic
scenery, to use Professor Tyndal’s expression – and
not the religion itself. The true faith is interior and spiritual, and has for
ages been in the course of elaboration within and by means of these exterior
appliances. Representing an eternal verity, and based in the spiritual
consciousness, it is independent of letter and form, tradition and authority,
and superior, therefore, to all assaults of intellectual criticism. What this
age is witnessing is the removal of the now superfluous scaffolding, and the
disclosure, in all its finished perfection, of the true Catholic Church of the
future.
The difference between exoteric or popular religion and mystic or acroatic religion may be thus defined. In the former, sacred
personages and occurrences are understood in the physical and obvious sense, as
phenomenal and relative, and related to particular times and places, and
dependent for verification upon individual testimony. In the system of the
mystic, on the contrary, sacred personages and events denote principles and
operations which affect the spiritual Ego, and are to this what physical
transactions are to the material personality. As these principles and operations
belong necessarily to universal experience, they are unrelated to times, places,
and persons, and are to be sought, not on the historical plane, but on that of
the mind and spirit; not, as the Buddhist would say, in the “worlds of form,”
but in the “formless worlds.”
(p. 141)
Images and symbols of religious verities have their true and legitimate use in
leading the soul to the apprehension of that which they imply. But when regarded
– as the popular religionist regards them – as themselves essentials and
coefficients in spiritual processes, they become instruments of delusion. The
essential is related to the essential, the corporeal to the corporeal. The
things of God are similars to themselves; the things
of Caesar are similars to themselves. To God belong
the things of God; to Caesar the things of Caesar. The redemption of the soul
cannot be effected by means of coin on which is stamped
the image and superscription of the physical. No events occurring in time, no
acts of an historical personage, can “save” our souls.
These events and acts must be translated into spiritual verities, and
realised individually and experimentally, if they are to have any
efficacy for the spiritual selfhood. (1)
The method of the mystics consists, then, in transmutation, or the conversion of
the terms of the outer into the inner, of the physical into the spiritual; of
the temporal and phenomenal into the eternal and noumenal. In them the key of
the Scriptures, and of the functions and sacraments of religion, is found in the
alchemic secret of transmutation. All the metals, says the alchemist, are gold
in their essence, and by an application of the
(p. 142)
Divine art can be made to appear in their
essence. But the uninitiate judge superficially and
reject as dross that which the adept knows to be gold. Gold is the alchemic
formula for spirit; and as the precious metal lies concealed under the semblance
of the baser, so the true secret of all sacred Scripture – its spiritual
significance – is hidden under the letter in such wise that, though invisible to
the vulgar, it is evident to the eye of the illuminated.
Following, therefore, the invariable rule of his order, and applying to the text
of sacred tradition the “universal solvent” formed by the two words now and within, the mystic sees in the exposition of revelation, from Genesis to the
Apocalypse, the history, not of past events in the external and sensible world,
but of the soul, and of operations in perpetual process in the sphere to which
the soul – whether universal or individual – belongs.
FOOTNOTES
(140:1) Abstract, by Edward Maitland, of the Lecture
given by Anna Kingsford, on the 13th May 1885, to the Hermetic Society, and
published in Light, 23rd May 1885, p. 251.
(141:1) In a note to “Asclepios on Initiation,” in The Virgin of the
World. Anna
Kingsford says: “Mankind necessarily passes through the stage of nature-worship
before becoming competent to realise
the celestial order and the being of the heavenly Gods. For
before the empyrean can be reached by the human intelligence, it must traverse
the spheres intermediate between earth and heaven. Thus the images of the Gods are
worshipped before the Gods themselves are known; nor are these images
necessarily of wood or stone. All personalities are eidola (idols) reflecting
the true essentials, and having, as it were, a portion of Divinity attached to
them and resident in their forms, but none the less are they images, and however powerful and adorable
they may appear to the multitude who know not divine religion, they are to the Hermetist but types and persona of essentials which are eternally
independent of manifestation and unaffected by it. The signs of the truly Divine are three: transcendency of
form, transcendency of time,
transcendency
of personality. Instead of form is Essence; instead of time, Eternity; instead
of persons, Principles. Events become Processes; and phenomena, Noumena. So long as the conception of any divine idea
remains associated with, or dependent on, any physical or historical
circumstance, so long it is certain that the heavenly plane has not been
reached. Symbols, when they are recognised as symbols,
are no longer either deceptive or dangerous; they are merely veils of light
rendering visible the ‘Divine Dark’ towards which the true Hermetist aspires. Even the most refined, the subtlest and
most metaphysical expression of the supreme Truth, is still symbol and metaphor,
for the Truth itself is unutterable, save by God to God. It is Essence, Silence, Darkness” (p. 88). – S.H.H.
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