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a few definitions of esotericby Clarence Anderson Mackey, Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry:ESOTERIC MASONRY That secret portion of
Freemasonry which is known only to the initiates as distinguished from Exoteric
Freemasonry, or monitorial, which is accessible to all who choose to read the
manuals and published works of the Order. Waite, A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry:"Esoteric Freemasonry -- the suggestion will be understood as an allusion to hidden Grades: but no such Grades exist. By anti-Masonic Leagues and Latin Christianity generally it will be collected eagerly as an unguarded admission of their own contention -- that the Order has a concealed purpose, a secret plan of the political and religious kind. There is no such purpose in Masonry. On the other hand, in a sense which is not intended, there is that assuredly which may be called Esoteric Masonry, if we like to adopt an arbitrary and undesirable label; for there is that which can be imparted to no one by the study of monitorial text-books, or even the books in extenso containing the Rituals of the Rites: it is the essential life of the Order which can be found and shared only by integration therein. . . .There is another Esoteric Masonry, and this is the meaning which lies beneath the surface of the Grades and can be drawn forth only by those who have a living familiarity with the history of universal initiation, who have become qualified by its comparative study to look beyond mere records and disern in part the true end of initiation. Out of this there is evolved a third Esoteric and indeed Transcendental Masonry, which those in fine attain who have entered into union with the end. . . . It is individual to each who attains, though it is one at the root for all, being the figurative process of the progress of the soul in God." Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, p. 249- 250:"Christ himself spoke in parables and allegories, John borrowed
the enigmatical language of the Platonists, and Paul often indulged in
incomprehensible rhapsodies, the meaning of which could have been clear to the
Initiates alone. . W.L.Wilmshurst, The Meaning of Masonry, p.21-23:"It is well to emphasize then, at the outset, that Masonry is a
sacramntal system, possessing, like all sacraments, an outward and visible side
consisting of its ceremonial, its doctrine and its symbols which we can see and
hear, and an inward, intellectual and spiritual side, which is concealed behind
the ceremonial, the doctrine and the symbols, and which is available only to the
Mason who has learnd to use his spiritual imagination and who can appreciate the
reality that lies behind the veil of outward symbol. . . .The Craft whose work
we are taught to honour with the name of a "science," a "royal art," has surely
some larger end in view than merely inculcating the practice of social virtues
common to all the world and by no means the monopoly of Freemasons. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary:"ESOTERIC, adj. |
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