The value of man does not consist in the
truth which he possesses, or means to possess, but in
the sincere pain which he hath taken to find it out. For his powers
do not augment by possess
ing truth but by investigating it, wherein consists his only perfectibility.
Possession lulls the en
ergy of man, and makes him idle and proud. If God held inclosed
in his right hand absolute
truth, and in his left only the inward lively impulse toward truth,
and if He said to me: Choose! even at the risk of exposing mankind
to continual erring, I most humbly would seize His left hand,
and say: Father, give! absolute truth belongs to Thee alone. -
G. E. LESSING, Fragments
I
God ever shields us from premature ideas, said the gracious and wise Emerson; and so does nature. She holds back her secrets until man is fit to be entrusted with them, lest by rashness he destroy himself. Those who seek find, not because the truth is far off, but because the discipline of the quest makes them ready for the truth, and worthy to receive it By a certain sure instinct the great teachers of our race have regarded the highest truth less as a gift bestowed than as a trophy to be won. Everything must not be told to everybody. Truth is power, and when held by untrue hands it may become a plague. Even Jesus had His "little flock" to whom. He confided much which He kept from the world, or else taught it in parables cryptic and veiled.* One of His sayings in explanation of His method is quoted by Clement of Alexandria in his Homilies: It was not from grudgingness that our Lord gave the charge in a certain Gospel: "My mystery is for Me and the sons of My house."*
(*Matt. 13:10,11)
(*Unwritten Sayings of Our Lord, David Smith, vii)
This more withdrawn teaching, hinted in the saying of the Master, with the arts of spiritual culture employed, has come to be known as the Secret Doctrine, or the Hidden Wisdom. A persistent tradition affirms that throughout the ages, and in every land, behind the system of faith accepted by the masses an inner and deeper doctrine has been held and taught by those able to grasp it. This hidden faith has undergone many changes of outward expression, using now one set of symbols and now another, but its central tenets have remained the same; and necessarily so, since the ultimates of thought are ever immutable. By the same token, those who have eyes to see have no difficulty in penetrating the varying veils of expression and identifying the underlying truths; thus confirming in the arcana of faith what we found to be true in its earliest forms - the oneness of the human mind and the unity of truth.
There are those who resent the suggestion
that there is, or can be, secrecy in regard to spiritual truths
which, if momentous at all, are of common moment to all. For this
reason Demonax, in the Lucian play, would not be initiated, because,
if the Mysteries were bad, he would not keep silent as a warning;
and if they were good, he would proclaim them as a duty. The objection
is, however, unsound, as a little thought will reveal Secrecy
in such matters inheres in the nature of the truths themselves,
not in any affected superiority of a few elect minds. Qualification
for the knowledge of higher things is, and must always be, a matter
of personal fitness. Other qualification there is none. For those
who have that fitness the Secret Doctrine is as clear as sunlight,
and for those who have it not the truth would still be secret
though shouted from the house-top. The Grecian Mysteries were
certainly secret, yet the fact of their existence was
a matter of common knowledge, and there was no more secrecy about
their sanctuaries than there is about a cathedraL Their presence
testified to the public that a deeper than the popular faith did
exist, but the right to admission into them depended upon the
whole-hearted wish of the aspirant, and his willingness to fit
himself to know the truth. The old maxim applies here, that when
the pupil is ready the teacher is found waiting, and he passes
on to know a truth hitherto hidden because he lacked either the
aptitude or the desire.
All is mystery as of course, but mystification
is another thing, and the tendency to befog a theme
which needs to be clarified, is to be regretted. Here lies, perhaps,
the real reason for the feeling of resentment against the idea
of a Secret Doctrine, and one must admit that it is not without
justification. For example, we are told that behind the age-long
struggle of man to know the truth there exists a hidden fraternity
of initiates, adepts in esoteric lore, known to themselves but
not to the world, who have had in their keeping, through the centuries,
the high truths which they permit to be dimly adumbrated in the
popular faiths, but which the rest of the race are too obtuse,
even yet, to grasp save in an imperfect and limited degree. These
hidden sages, it would seem, look upon our eager aspiring humanity
much like the patient masters, of an idiot school, watching it
go on forever seeking without finding, while they sit in seclusion
keeping the key's of the occult.* All of which would be very wonderful,
if true. It is, however, only one more of those fascinating fictions
with which mystery-mongers entertain themselves, and deceive others.
Small wonder that thinking men turn from such fanciful folly with
mingled feelings of pity and disgust. Sages there have been in
every land and time, and their lofty wisdom has the unity which
inheres in all high human thought, but that there is now, or has
ever been, a conscious, much less a continuous, fellowship of
superior souls holding as secrets truths denied to their fellow-men,
verges upon the absurd.
(* By occultism is meant the belief in, and the claim to be able to use, a certain range of forces neither natural, nor, technically, supernatural, but more properly to be called preternatural - often, through by no mean. always, for evil or selfish ends, Some extend the term occultism to cover mysticism and the spiritual life generally, but that is not a legitimate use of either word. Occultism seeks to get; mysticism to give. The one is audacious and seclusive, the other bumble and open; and if we are not to end in blunderland we must not confound the two (Mysticism, by E. Underhill, part i, chap. vii).)
Indeed, what is called the Secret Doctrine differs not one whit from what has been taught openly and earnestly, so far as such truth can be taught in words or pictured in symbols, by the highest minds of almost every land and language. The difference lies less in what is taught than in the way in which it is taught; not so much in matter as in method. Also, we must, not forget that, with few exceptions, the men who have led our race farthest along the way toward the Mount of Vision, have not, been men who learned their lore from ,any coterie of exoteric experts, but, rather, meri who told in song what they had been taught in sorrow - initiates into eternal truth, to be sure, but by the grace of God and the divine right of genius!* Seers, sages, mystics, saints - these are they who, having sought in sincerity, found in reality, and the memory of them is a kind of religion. Some of them, like Pythagoras, were trained for their quest in the schools of the Secret Doctrine, but others went their way alone, though never unattended, and, led by "the vision splendid," they came at last to the gate and passed into the City.
(* Much time would have been saved, and
not a little confusion avoided had this obvious fact been kept
in mind. Even so charming a book as feese, the Last Great Initiate,
by Schure - not to
speak of The Great Work and Mystic Masonry - is dearly, though
not intentionally, misleading. Of a piece with this is the effort,
apparently deliberate and concerted, to rob the Hebrew race of
all spiritual originality, as witness so able a work as Our Own
Religon is Persia, by Mills, to name no other. Our own religion?
Assuredly, if by that is meant the one great, universal religion
of humanity. But the sundering difference between the Bible and
any other book that speaks to mankind about God and Life and Death,
sets the Hebrew race apart as supreme in its religious genius,
as the Greeks were in philosophical acumen and artistic power,
and the Romans in executive skill. Leaving all theories of inspiration
out of account, facts are facts, and the Bible has no peer in
the literature of mankind.)
Why, then, Itmay be asked, speak of such a thing as the Secret Doctrine at all, since it were better named the Open Secret of the world? For two reasons, both of which have been intimated: first, in the olden times unwonted knowledge of any kind was a very dangerous possession, and the truths of science and philosophy, equally with religious ideas other than those in vogue among the multitude, had to seek the protection of obscurity. If this necessity gave designing priestcraft its opportunity, it nevertheless offered the security and silence needed by the thinker and seeker after truth in dark times. Hence there arose in the ancient world, wherever the human mind was alive and spiritual, systems of exoteric and esoteric instruction; that is, of truth taught openly and truth concealed. Disciples were advanced from the outside to the inside of this divine philosophy, as we have seen, by degrees of initiation. Whereas, by symbols, dark sayings, and dramatic ritual the novice received only hints of what was later made plain.
Second, this hidden teaching may indeed be described as the open secret of the world, because it is open, yet understood only by those fit to receive it. What kept it hidden was no arbitrary restriction, but only a lack of insight and fineness of mind to appreciate and assimilate it Nor could it be otherwise; and this is as true today as ever it was in the days of the Mysteries, and so it will be until whatever is to be the end of mortal things. Fitness for the finer truths cannot be conferred; it must be developed. Without it the teachings of the sages are enigmas that seem unintelligible, if not contradictory. In so far, then, as the discipline of initiation, and its use of art in drama and symbol, help toward purity of soul and spiritual awakening, by so much do they prepare men for the truth; by so much and no further. So that, the Secret Doctrine, whether as taught by the ancient Mysteries or by modern Masonry, is less a doctrine than a discipline; a method of organized spiritual culture and as such has a place and a ministry among men.
II
Perhaps the greatest student in this field
of esoteric teaching and method, certainly the greatest
now living. is Arthur Edward Waite, to whom it is a plesure to
pay tribute. By nature a symbolist, it not a sacramentalist, be
found in such studies a task for which he was almost ideally fitted
by temperament, training, and genius. Engaged in business, but
not absorbed by it, years of quiet, leisurely toil have made him
master of the vast literature and lore of his subject, to the
study of which he brought a religious nature, the accuracy and
skill of a scholar, a sureness and delicacy of insight at once
sympathetic and critical, the soul of a poet, and a patience as
untiring as it is rewarding; qualities rare indeed, and still
more rarely blended. Prolific but seldom prolix, he writes with
grace, ease, and lucidity, albeit in a style often opulent, and
touched at times with lights and jewels from old alchemists antique
liturgies, remote and haunting romance secret orders of initiation,
and other recondite sources not easily traced. Much learning and
many kinds of wisdom are in his pages, and withal an air of serenity,
of tolerance; and if he is of those who turn down another street
when miracles are preformed in the neighborhood, it is because,
having found the inner truth, he asks for no sign.
Always he writes in the conviction that all great subjects bring us back to the one subject which is alone great, and that scholarly criticisms, folk-lore, and deep philosophy are little less than useless if they fall short of directing us to our true end B the attainment of that living Truth which is about us everywhere. He conceives of our mortal life as one eternal Quest of that living Truth, taking many phases and forms, yet ever at heart the same aspiration, to trace which he has made it his labor and joy to essay. Through all his pages he is following out the tradition of this Quest, in its myriad aspects, especially since the Christian era, disfigured though it has been at times by superstition, and distorted at others by bigotry, but still, in what guise soever, containing as its secret the meaning of the life of man from his birth to his reunion with God who is his Goal. And the result is a series of volumes noble in form, united in aim, unique in wealth of revealing beauty, and of unequalled worth.*
(* Some there are who think that much of
the best work of Mr. Waite is in his Poetry, of which there are
two volumes, A Book of Mystery and Vision, and Strange Houses
of Sleep. There one
meets a fine spirit, alive to the glory of the world and all that
charms the soul and sense of man, yet seeing past these; rich
and significant thought so closely wedded to emotion that each
seems either. Other hooks not to be omitted are his slender volume
of aphorisms, Steps to the Crown, his Life of Saint-Martin and
his Studies in Mysticism; for what he touches he adorns.)
Beginning as far back as 1886, Waite issued
his study of the Mysteriu of Magic, a digest of the
writings of Eliphas Levi, to whom Albert Pike was more indebted
than he let us know. Then followed the Real History of the Rosicrtccianc,
which traces, as far as any mortal may trace, the thread of fact
whereon is strung the romance of a fraternity the very existence
of which has been doubted and denied by turns. Like all his work,
it bears the impress of knowledge from the actual sources, betraying
his extraordinary learning and his exceptional experience in this
kind of inquiry. Of the Quest in its distinctively Christian aspect,
he has written in The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal; a work
of rare beauty, of bewildering richness, written in a style which,
partaking of the quality of the story told, is not at all after
the rnanner of these days. But the Graal Legend is only one aspect
of the old-world sacred Quest, uniting the symbols of chivalry
with Christian faith. Masonry is another; and no one may ever
hope to write of The Secret Tradition in Masonry with more insight
and charm, or a touch more sure and revealing, than this gracious
student for whom Masonry perpetuates the instituted Mysteries
of antiquity, with much else derived from innumerable store-houses
of treasure. His last work is a survey of The Secret Doctrine
in Israel, being a study of the Zohar,* or Hebrew ABook of Splendor,"
a feat for which. no Hebrew scholar has had the heart. This Bible
of Kabbalism is indeed so confused and confusing that only a golden
dustman" would have had the patience to sift out Its gems
from the mountain of dross, and attempt to reduce its wide-weltering
chaos to order. Even Waite, with all his gift of research and
narration, finds little more than gleams of dawn in a dim forest,
brilliant vapors, and glints that tell by their very perversity
and strangeness.
(* Even the Jewish Encyclopedia, and such scholars as Zunz, Graetz,
Luzzatto, Jost, and Munk avoid this jungle, as well they might,
remembering the legend of the four sages in "the enclosed
garden:@ one of whom looked around and died; another lost his
reason; a third tried to destroy the garden; and only one came
out with his wits. See The Cabala, by Pick, and The Kabbalah Unveiled,
by MacGregor.)
Whether this age-old legend of the Quest
be woven about the Cup of Christ, a Lost Word, or a
design left unfinished by the death of a Master Builder, it has
always these things in common: first, the memorials of a great
loss which has befallen humanity by sin, making our race a pilgrim
host ever in second, the intimation that what was lost still exists
somewhere in time and the world, although deeply buried; third,
the faith that it will ultimately be found and the vanished glory
restored; fourth, the substitution of something temporary and
less than the best, albeit never in a way to adjourn the quest;
fifth, and more rarely, the felt presence of that which was lost
under veils close to the hands of all. What though it take many
forms, from the pathetic pilgrimage of the Wandering few to the
journey to fairyland in quest of The Blue Bird, it is ever and
always the same. These are but so many symbols of the fact that
men are made of one blood and born to one need; that they should
seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him,
though He is not far from every one of us; for in Him we live
and move and have our being.*
(*Acts 17:2-28.)
What, then, is the Secret Doctrine, of which this seer-like scholar has written with so many improvisations of eloquence and emphasis, and of which each of us is in quest? What, indeed, but that which all the world is seeking - knowledge of Him whom to know aright is the fulfillment of every human need the kinship of the soul with God; the life of purity, honor, and piety demanded by that high heredity; the unity and fellowship of the race in duty and destiny; and the faith that the soul is deathless as God its Father is deathless! Now to accept this faith as a mere philosophy is one thing, but to realize it as an experience of the innermost heart is another and a deeper thing. No man knows the Secret Doctrine until it has become the secret of his soul, the reigning reality of his thought, the inspiration of his acts, the form and color and glory of his life. Happily, owing to the growth bf the race in spiritual intelligence and power, the highest truth is no longer held as a sacred secret. Still, if art has efficacy to surprise and reveal the elusive Spirit of Truth, when truth is dramatically presented it is made vivid and impressive, strengthening the faith of the strongest and bringing a ray of heavenly light to many a baffled seeker.
Ever the Quest goes on, though it is permitted
us to believe that the Lost Word has been in the only way in which
it can ever be even in the life of Him who was "the made
flesh," who dwelt among us and whose and beauty we know.
Of this Quest Masonry aspect, continuing the high tradition of
humanity asking men to unite in the search for the thing most
worth finding, that each may share the faith of all. Apart from
its rites, there is no mystery in Masonry, save the mystery of
all great and simple things. So far from being hidden of occult,
its glory lies in its openness, and its emphasis upon the realities
which are to the human world what light and air are to nature.
Its mystery is of so great a kind that it is easily overlooied;
its secret almost too simple to be found out.*
(* All secret Orders, it may be added, are a reminiscence, if
not a survival, of the Men's House of primitive society, a tribal
Lodge in which every young man, when he came to maturity, was
initiated into the secret law, legend, tradition, and religion
of his people. Recent research has brought this long hidden institution
to light, showing that it was really the center of early tribal
life, the council-chamber, the guest-house, the place where laws
were made and courts held, and where the trophies of war were
treasured. Indeed, primitive society was really a secret society
so far as the men were concerned, and unless we keep this fact
in mind we can hardly understand it at all. Every man was an initiate.
Methods of initiation differed in different times and places,
but this had, nevertheless, a certain likeness, as they had always
the same purpose. Ordeals, often severe and frightful, were required
- exposing the candidate not only to physical torture, but to
the peril of unseen spirits - as tests to prove youth worthy,
by reason of virtue and valor, to be entrusted with the secret
lore of his tribe. The ceremonies included vows of chastity, of
loyalty and secrecy, and, almost universally, a mimic representation
of the death and resurrection of the novice. After his Ainitiation
into manhood for such it really was, he was given a new name,
and a new language of signs, grips, and tokens. No doubt it was
antiquity of the idea and necessity of initiation that our Masonic
fathers had in mind when they said that Masonry began with the
beginning of history - and, so interpreted, they were right. At
any rate the Men's House, with its initiatory rites and secret
teaching, was one of the great institutions of humanity which
Masonry perpetuates today. (For a scientific account of the Men's
House, see Primitive Secret Societies, by Prof. Hutton Webster).)
Back to The Builders [ Previous ] [ Next ]
