Friday, December 10, 2004
BACKTRACKING FOR A MOMENT...
I'd like to return to an article I linked yesterday..."The Meaning of the Rose Cross" by Christopher Bamford.
The article is 23 pages of print-out, so I'm assuming that most of you didn't read it. There were a couple of surprises in it that I wanted to share.
- In speaking of the grail as the recepticle of the blood of Christ also represented by the calyx of a rose, Bamford says that the grail is also "a unique, nourishing, healing light...the light of the Holy Spirit, the Dove whose coming Age Joachim of Fiore first foresaw." He goes on to describe this unfolding:
For the background against which these unfolding developments occurred--in a sense, the critical element--was the recovery of the vernacular of lived experience, the mother tongue, what Paracelsus and Van Helmont would call the language of true or certain knowledge.
It is difficult to trace a historical lineage for this movement to uncover the living experiential-perceptual language of the heart buried beneath the mud of dead tongues.
Am I being totally weird when I see "Latin" in this reference to "dead tongues" and this "recovery of the vernacular" a description of what has taken place in Catholicism? He goes on to relate this return to the vernacular to "Sufi (and Ismali), Cathar, Kabbalistic and esoteric Christian influences flowing together almost in equal measure," and adds that the vernacular was employed above all in "movements of lay spirituality such as the Beguines, Beghards, Lollards and Waldenses of the twelfth century." Heretics, all, most of them discussed in Msgr. Ronald A. Knox's _Enthusiasm_. He continues, "These 'little women' and 'little brothers without domicile,' practicing an apostolic life of poverty, prayer, preaching, heraling, and mendicancy--free spirits all, called together by the Holy Spirit rather than the Church of Rome..." That sounds so much like our lay ecclesial movements that it boggles the mind!
- There is an environmental aspect of Rosicrucianism. Bamford writes: "To conjoin the Rose and the Cross in nature as a whole, to heal and unite nature and human nature in its center or heart, is thus the Rosicrucian aim."
- In speaking of Guenon, "...Guenon points out, that the person who has attained the Rose Cross, having reached the center or heart of the world, is attached to no form, no name, not even his or her own...Here, then, is the meaning of the designation 'cosmopolitan' found throughout the literature--true Rosicrucians are at home everywhere and nowhere. It should be remarked, too, that this rule of nonattachment to phenomenal forms extends in principle also to beliefs." This matched a statement in Sufi literature as well, and seems to reflect the premise of the book _Paths to the Heart_, which, in light of this paper of Bamford's, I would now describe as Rosicrucian.
- In keeping with this concept of being at home in all faiths, Bamford writes: "Above all it was he [Plethon] who brought the symbol of 'fire' to the center of the tradition we have been following and pushed the idea of ecumenism to the bounds of heresy upholding the universality of all forms..." The Church since Vatican II has pushed ecumenism.
- There is an emphasis in Rosicrucianism on the lay priesthood. Bamford writes: "The image of the alchemist or Rosicrucian as a kind of universal lay priest celebrating a kind of healing Mass in which not just bread and wine were transformed but nature and human nature in its entirety derives from Paracelsus." Paracelsus was a famous occultist. We are preparing for priesthood of the laity as we run out of priests. We are running out of priests because our seminaries have been corrupted. Orthodox thinking young men are not welcome there.
So, to sum up, with Rosicrucianism we get
1. Abandonment of "dead tongues" and a return to vernacular.
2. A focus on environmentalism.
3. A calling together by the Holy Spirit as opposed to the heirarchy.
4. Ecumenism.
5. Lay priesthood.
As Bamford describes it, Rosicrucianism is what the Roman Catholic Church has been transformed into by the changes in the faith mandated by the Spirit of Vatican II.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
