COMMUNICATION - CONSULTANCY - PERSONAL GROWTH - WISDOM TRADITION AMYDON-EXETER CENTRE 113 To and from Melanie Small CARJ SouthWest To Very Rev. Terence O'Brien, SDB, MA To Revd Frederick E. Crowe SJ To Very Reverend Bernard Grogan SDB, STL, BA To Rt Rev Mgr Philip Carroll To the Hon. Doctor Louis Galea To Professor Giuliano di Bernardo   To Very Rev. Terence O'Brien, SDB, MA 49 Surrey Lane Battersea LONDON SW11 3PN Friday, 9 June 1995 Dear Father Terence, Faculties to hear Sacramental Confessions … One non-R.C. Christian in Kent who writes to me from time to time described your book as a veritable treasure. I quote from it briefly, and give details of it and your address in my short paper on "Simplicity IN Prayer"… "Exaudi, quaesumus, Domine, supplicum preces, et devoto tibi pectore famulantes perpetua defensione custodi; ut nullis perturbationibus impediti, liberam servitutem tuis semper exhibeamur officiis.... Postulat sancta Mater Ecclesia catholica, ut hos praesentes diaconos ad onus presbyterii ordinetis.... Sit doctrina vestra spiritualis medicina populo Dei; sit odor vitae vestrae delectamentum Ecclesiae Christi; ut praedicatione, atque exemplo aedificetis domum, id est, familiam Dei." The Bishop who pronounced those prayers on the day of your own ordination to the Catholic Priesthood knew by Faith that all Prayer is answered, but he probably did not know that your vocation would bear fruit in the establishment of the Guild of St. Dominic Savio, in the publication of successive English editions of Don Bosco's Companion of Youth, and in so many other wonderful ways under the protection of Mary's mantle. The Bishop who obtained vivae vocis oraculo from the Pope permission to ordain the future Archbishop Luigi Barbarito to the priesthood before he had attained the normal minimum required canonical age, did not know he was collaborating with Divine Providence in the formation of the present Papal Nuncio to the Court of St. James. When Cardinal Fossati's failing health and defective memory precluded his being invited to ordain thirty-three Salesian Deacons to the Priesthood on 9 February, 1964, and a Bishop from southern Italy ordained us, having been only a few years previously restored to the exercise of his episcopal functions by Pope John XXIII after suffering in silence several years' unjust deprivation of office during the previous Pontificate, neither I nor anyone else at the time knew that the much gentler Via Crucis in my life would coincide with the patient spiral pilgrimage through time and space of this Preliminary LibrArian I+N the Neith Network. In the words of my immediate predecessor in office, the transcendent vastness of what I have been inspired to call the Neith Network comprises "the physical, vital, psychic and spiritual worlds: their structure, forces, beings, their reciprocal relationships, their transformations and the history of these transformations" - past, future and present NOW. (Meditations on the Tarot, p. 189). It is, IN Truth, a vast domain ' The Library is that known as Thoth's Hall of Records in the Hermetic Tradition, and to gain access to the Book one needs to steer clear of what is called Babylon.... In the extended text of my RILKO Lecture of 31 March 1995 I offered only a preliminary outline sketch of the public history of human life on planet Earth, but "history - as, moreover, the life of the individual - is 'worked' by day and by night.... Thus, when the Gospel was preached by the light of day in the countries around the Mediterranean, the nocturnal rays of the Gospel effected a profound transformation of Buddhism. There, the ideal of individual liberation by entering the state of nirvana gave way to the ideal of renouncing nirvana for the work of mercy towards suffering humanity. The ideal of mahayana, the great chariot, then had its resplendent ascent to the heaven of Asia's moral values. Dies diei eructat verbum ('omer) et nox nocti indicat scientiam (da'ath). (Meditations on the Tarot, p.102; Psalms 19:2.) ... Bishop Christopher, whose Mass I shall be attending in Plymouth Cathedral tomorrow, is abundantly well acquainted with my three formal, still on-the-table requests for reinstatement in the ordinary canonical ministry of the priesthood, and Archbishop Barbarito has to date neither rejected nor explicitly acknowledged my written additional request to him that I be, at least informally, authorised to celebrate Holy Mass at least once a year on the Feast of Christ the King, in order efficaciously to symbolise that, like all True Hermits, I seek to be a humble son of the Church in accordance with my vocation. Dear Father Terence, you have said more than once that you sense we have something to accomplish together. Canon Law already authorises me to absolve from sin persons in proximate danger of death. The relationships I have with various persons increasingly persuade me that, even if my full reinstatement in ministry is not at this time feasible, possession of full faculties to hear sacramental confessions and to grant absolution is something it is not good for me to lack. Because of the Love that is our shared Life, and in the light not only of this letter but of all you know of me I, therefore, now beg you kindly to intercede on my behalf with Archbishop Barbarito or with such other suitable Prelate as you best can. I hope this print is large enough for you comfortably to read. I thank you for all your patient kindness. I hope you are well, and that we can meet soon. With best wishes for yourself, Father Rector and the community…     To Revd Frederick E. Crowe SJ Lonergan Research Institute 10 St. Mary's Street - Suite 500 TORONTO Ontario M4Y 1P9 Canada 12 July 1995 Dear Father Crowe, Enstatic Conversion Although I no longer have a copy to hand, you once published an article about amatum in amante. Although Bernard Lonergan later admitted his pejorative use of "myth" was out of step with more recent usage, so far as I am aware, he never felt any need explicitly to distinguish, as does, e.g., the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot's English translator, between 'astrology' and 'Astrology', 'alchemy' and 'Alchemy', 'magic' and 'Magic', etc. Your Index to the 1958 revised students' edition of Insight passes over "astrology" in silence, and for "alchemy" refers the reader only to p. 540. Nevertheless, Lonergan's avowed "repugnance" (p. 323) to placing "astronomy" and "chemistry" on the same footing as "astrology" and "alchemy" does not appear to stem from his appreciation that "astronomy" fails to live up to the normative implications of its name! "Primordial" (p.212) features in his vocabulary, but by and large he sticks to "primitive" - several times in a context where "primordial" might have signalled a dialectically more generous evaluation of circumstances then prevailing. To find "esoteric" used as a plus- rather than as a minus-sign (Method in Theology, 1972, p. 243), therefore, comes as something of a welcome surprise. I mention these few pointers to a possibly important residual oversight in Lonergan's communicated understanding of his own conscious and unconscious personal growth, and enclose some related correspondence of mine, in case they suggest a fruitful theme for some future monograph or PhD thesis…     To Very Reverend Bernard Grogan, SDB, STL, BA Editor - Salesian Bulletin Salesian Provincial House 266 Wellington Road North STOCKPORT SK4 2QR 14 July 1995 Dear Bernard, Et Lux perpetua luceat eis! I am just home from Mass in the South Street church of the Sacred Heart, where I prayed especially for Fathers Charles Snell, Martin McPake, and Edigio Vigano, my only meeting with whom was at the centenary celebration Mass in the Trott Street church of the Sacred Heart, when he was standing next to my one time French tutor. Significant, too, that I last attended Mass in Trott Street on the feast of Corpus Christi this year, and that I mentioned that fact in writing, on the day of the Rector Major's death, to Archbishop Barbarito, requesting him "graciously now to grant me full faculties to hear sacramental confessions and to grant absolution." Martin McPake died on my 61st birthday and, on the day Charles Snell died, my father, had he been alive, would have celebrated his 100th birthday. Building a more just, interdependent and caring global society There was a Full Moon on 13 June, and I was, therefore, already in London the evening before to take part in a meditation-meeting convoked by the Lucis Trust & World Goodwill to inaugurate the celebration of World Invocation Day, when "people of goodwill from all parts of the world, and from different religious and spiritual backgrounds unite in invoking" the "higher energies" of "light, love and spiritual will." In a letter I wrote on 7 June to Mrs. Doriel Sybil Hall, a member of the Neith Network's Whole Earth Policy Committee, inviting her to join me on that occasion, I also disclosed that my immediate predecessor in the office of Preliminary LibrArian was the anonymous author of the only posthumously published Meditations on the Tarot - A Journey into Christian Hermeticism (ISBN 1-85230-222-4). In his Foreword to the German edition Hans Urs von Balthasar acknowledged the author's "unmistakable purity," and approved of the way in which he "seeks to lead mediatively into the deeper, all-embracing wisdom of the Catholic Mystery." Joan D'Arcy Cooper also preferred the term "mediation" to "meditation." In Method in Theology (1972; ISBN 0-232-51139-X) Bernard Lonergan, as I yesterday reminded Terence O'Brien, correctly emphasises the fundamental importance of religious conversion, of moral conversion and of intellectual conversion. He notes that a given individual may be the subject of all three conversions, of any two of them, of any one of them, or may as yet remain unconverted. His self-knowledge grew sufficiently for him to master the essence of Aquinas's contribution to Christian self-understanding, to develop it further, and helpfully to communicate the main body of his findings to us. Lonergan, however, perhaps because of his paedagogical and pastoral prudence rather than on account of any remaining blind-spots or notable personal ignorance, failed to acknowledge the existence of what I have now chosen to call "enstatic conversion," an invaluable key to discriminating the wheat from the chaff in fundamentally important areas and dimensions of interfaith dialogue, ecumenical dialogue and Thomist-Scotist dialogue - Eric Doyle's St. Francis and the Song of Brotherhood (Allen & Unwin, 1980) is well worth re-reading. Lonergan wrote in Method (pp. 343-4, my italics): "Since knowledge of intentional consciousness can develop, it follows that the whole foregoing structure admits development and thereby escapes rigidity. At the same time, the structure ensures continuity, for the possibility of development is the possibility of revising earlier views, and the possibility of revising earlier views is the continuing existence of the structure already determined. Finally, the approach eliminates any authoritarian basis for method. One can find out for oneself and in oneself just what one's conscious and intentional operations are and how they are related to one another. One can discover for oneself and in oneself why it is that performing such and such operations in such and such manners constitutes human knowing. Once one has achieved that, one is no longer dependent on someone else in selecting one's method and in carrying it out. One is on one's own." In company with St. Bonaventure (De triplici via, iii, 14), though responsibility for the new technical term 'enstatic conversion' is entirely my own, I depart from Lonergan's italic assertion, and: "Note, lastly, what the Truth must be - (1) In the first Hierarchy: evoked by the utterance of prayer, work of the Angels; heard in study and reading, work of the Archangels; announced through example and preaching, work of the Principalities. (2) In the second Hierarchy: joined with as refuge and place of indulgence, work of the Powers; apprehended through zeal and emulation, work of the Virtues; conjoined with in self-deprecation and mortification, work of the Dominions. (3) In the third Hierarchy: worshipped through sacrifice and praise, work of the Thrones; admired through ecstasy and contemplation, work of the Cherubim; embraced in kiss and delection, work of the Seraphim.... This is a fountain of life."1 1 Lonergan has identified William Johnston's The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing, (New York, Rome, Tournai, Paris - Desclee, 1967) as representing a position very largely coherent with his own. The passage from Ch. 7,1.2.4.6 of St. Bonaventure's The Journey of the Mind to God included in the Office of Readings for his feast (15 July) also points to the distinction (not separation) between religious conversion and enstatic conversion, as does, I believe, today's reading from Deuteronomy (30:10-14) for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C). Into the Next Century Christopher McOustra's appraisal (Salesian Bulletin, Summer 1995, pp. 4-62) is helpful. My enclosed letter to the Editor & Readers of the local Baptists' Family Circle magazine may also be of interest… 2 ".... Most kinds of jobs in Europe will be at risk - jobs poorly-paid and well-paid, jobs insecure and 'secure'...." Rt Rev Mgr Philip Carroll General Secretary Bishops' Conference of England & Wales 39 Eccleston Square LONDON SW1V 1PD 17 January 1997 The Common Good - Initial Complementary Reflections: Dear Mgr Carroll, Having now read the complete text of The Common Good and the Catholic Church's Social Teaching together with that of its 4-page companion document Introducing The Common Good, I wish to present my initial complementary reflections through you to all members of the Bishops' Conference. I especially welcome Cardinal Hume's reminder in his Preface that “realising our full human dignity as children of G-d [my preferred spelling], made in his image and likeness, also requires each of us to undertake an inner spiritual journey” and, as I trust my own also enclosed recent Christmas message helpfully clarifies, it is the deepening of that hermeneutic perspective that motivates and underpins all that follows. Precisely because, like our other talents, our time and our times are not our own but G-d's, while accepting Bishop David Konstant's Introductory indication that you “are eager to listen to ideas from… others”, I shall endeavour to be as brief as possible. If it ever proves to be the case that what I here write requires further clarification, I am always happy to do my best to provide it but, by and large, Bishop Christopher Budd is sufficiently au fait with most aspects of my life and work to fill in the background to and context of my present theological, ecumenical and pastoral vision. Paragraph 118 (p.26) is excellent, and implicitly acknowledges that “eloquent teaching” is one thing, effective teaching quite another… Eminently good teaching is good example and, while reading the first full paragraph at the head of p.33 from Centesimus Annus: “The obligation to earn one's bread by the sweat of one's brow also presumes the right to do so…”, I sense there is something terribly wrong about the Roman Catholic Church's established ways of severely restricting (directly and indirectly) the employment in accordance with each one's unique vocation of “laicised” (dogmatically a very questionable notion) priests and uncomfortably problematic theologians. I pray that these issues can be appropriately addressed. As regards the equally topical question of “women priests”, Francis Sullivan's article in tomorrow's Tablet is to the point, Cardinal Hume is in dialogue with the so called Jubilee People and so with CWO, and all I would wish to say here is that, notwithstanding current expressions in favour of “toleration” of honest dissent in all walks of life, Peter Brown's Authority and the Sacred - aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman world (Cambridge University Press 1995) speaks loud and clear to whoever today has ears to hear… What is said about “structures of sin” is good as far as it goes. Both in individuals and in groups, both on Earth and in other realms “structures of sin” are examples of what the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot - a journey into Christian hermeticism (Element Books 1991 - Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote the Foreword to the German edition) in keeping with established esoteric usage called ‘egregores’. Although some of their effects are physically manifest, any reality they have is spiritual. For example, as G-d's creation the ever-growing Church is the spotless Bride of Christ, but the institutional Church's historically developing shadow (using that term in Jung's sense) is an egregore and, to the extent that it obstructs the growth of Christ's Bride, a sinful one at that - a structure of sin. Despite our eagerness for dialogue, individual and collective structures of sin of which we are rarely anywhere like adequately conscious hinder our return to the fullness of Our Father's Love. I have deliberately avoided saying they impede our “progress”, a vogue word which masks one of the most unfortunate structures of sin we have to contend with, as the Patriarch Jacob had to contend with the limp it took an encounter with an Elohim to make him aware he was already suffering from! As an advocate of Primordial Catholicism, I especially welcomed Vatican II's and the present Pope's clarifying recourse to the quintessentially important distinction between Tradition and tradition. I regret that neither § 11 (p.6) nor §28 (p.9) achnowledges the existence of this distinction, which in my experience is of fundamental pastoral and ecumenical importance. The Common Good's overall excellently clear and generally helpful treatment of current issues is severely blemished by insufficient care in its handling of the concept of “natural law”. It is true that since the 14th century Christian theologians have increasingly lost sight of the mediæval idea that it was “natural” for human beings, as children of G-d, to want to do all they could to imitate the behaviour of G-d as revealed in the biblical account of G-d's dealings with his chosen people, and I am not suggesting that idea should have been especially emphasised in this document. However, at least since Vatican I it has been acknowledged that man's state of “pure nature” is hypothetical, that in the concrete the only order of providence is a supernatural one and that, unless we be aided by divine Grace, we remain in the concrete unable to recognise even natural law. Without going to the extent of agreeing with Karl Barth, surely the first sentence in §44 (p.12) requires some amendment, since it is what Gilbert Ryle would have called “systematically misleading”… It is true that “knowledge of natural law is possible” intrinsically and hypothetically, since all intelligibilia are possibilia per se. However, were it concretely possible generally, even by and large, there would have been far less need for The Common Good to be published or for preachers of every religious faith to so frequently concentrate on natural law topics in their homilies! (I could refer fairly extensively to Ryle's relevant writings, but refrain from doing so, since I feel sure this is not a disputed question - just a very regrettable oversight.) Cardinal Hume in his Preface did not fail to follow the Bible in distinguishing between “the image and likeness of G-d”, but in §§12 & 18 (pp.6 & 7) only “the image” is mentioned. For persons concerned with the historic and pre-historic veracity of the Bible and with current anthropology (cf §17, p.7) this is to fail to recognize that, as regards our “image” we are most closely related to apes and chimpanzees, as regards our “likeness” we owe our being several million years' ahead of our natural evolution to the genetic engineering efforts of those Elohim who made first The Adam, later Adam and Eve (almost certainly Neanderthals) and later still improved the lot of their grandson Enosh (very likely the first CroMagnon) by authorising his return visit to Eden (cf Gn 4:26). For those reading the Bible as an aid to their individual spiritual growth it is still both appropriate and helpful to acknowledge that thanks to our being made in G-d's “image” original sin does not deprive any human being of their essential goodness, but that because we have lost our primordial “likeness” to G-d (the so called preternatural as well as supernatural gifts), even a boddhisattva, a buddha to be or an avatar normally and naturally needs years of self-discipline and meditation in order to know natural law! Hence, by failing to appreciate our own over-optimism as Catholics about our own knowledge of natural law, we also fail to appreciate the natural miracles that Buddhists and others often manifest in their life-style and outlook. If “our neighbourhood is universal” (§14, p.7) this needs attention. Also, in all honesty, it needs stating (§30, p.9) that while “The international oversight of the Holy See enables it to see how similar social problems can arise in different societies, and it can also see which solutions to such problems prove most successful in advancing the true interests of humanity”, both uses of that over-simplifying “it” paper over the sometimes scandalous and frequently all too human lack of integration within and between the various dicasteries of the Roman Curia. While Father Boyle of the Vatican Library looks forward to an electronic chip no larger than a 20p-piece holding the complete catalogue of the Library of the Congress of the U.S.A., the Under Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Dialogue with Non-Christian Religions is completely unable to use even the simplest computer (and, of course, we each of us could easily cite a number of even more potentially disheartening, even depressing examples)!! In §37 (p.10) I would have preferred to see a distinction made beween a nationally or internationally agreed “right to life” and the baptised and confirmed Christian's “Right to Life” (the parable about plucking out an eye or going maimed into Life springs to mind). Probably, however, that is a consideration best left to emerge in discussion. As Introducing the Common Good well says: “every group is different, and there are no absolute rules other than to adapt the material and methods to suit your group”. No doubt Father Tissa Balasuriya would agree! (I sent him a copy of my Christmas letter before I was made aware of the CDF's Notification that he is excommunicated latae sententiae, since I felt he was somewhat lacking in focus; perhaps it may help him). Finally, having now read each of Zecharia Sitchin's seven full-length books about the origin of life on this planet and of human life in particular, I urge clarification of the final sentence of §90 (p.21): “Even before the Fall human work was the primary means whereby humanity was to co-operate with and continue the work of the Creator, by responding to G-d's invitation to ‘subdue the earth’”. (1) To subdue does not mean exploitatively but rather prudently, respectfully, responsibly and benevolently subjugate. (2) In G-d's providence the Elohim certainly made The Adam (in Sumerian: “the little black-heads”) as slaves to relieve them of their own drudgery, but they also kept and broke a moral code and had a capacity for empathy that combined to lead, as earlier mentioned, to Adam & Eve, and even after ‘the Fall’ to Enosh. I hope this helps… The Hon. Louis Galea, BA, LLD, MP Minister of Education Floriana CMR 02 Malta   20 July 2001 Dear Doctor Galea, First of all, if you are among the many sons and daughters of Gozo, Malta and Comino currently celebrating the festa of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, please accept my prayerful best wishes on this auspicious occasion. I understand that Malta's Museums Director, Tony Pace, answers to you and that recent events have also required you to give some attention to the views of such distinguished gentlemen as Dr Henry Cleeve and Ray Bondin, but I don't know to what extent you are already familiar with the work of Professor Anthony Bonanno, the English text of whose Malta - An Archæological Paradise I have by me as I write. It is, in any case, a rather curious reference to him in Raphæl Vassallo's article, "Authentication hopes for underwater 'temple' slowly sinking", in the Malta Independent of 7 November 1999, that necessitates this communication. The forty or so colour photographs of this alleged "temple" exhibited on three of my seven websites dedicated to the Shipwreck of St. Paul and placed under the protection of Our Lady of All Nations are easily accessed and, however one wishes to evaluate them, they are, I feel, far better than the four used to illustrate Vassallo's article. However, I am not contacting you about his article as such, but about the claim there attributed to Anthony Bonanno vis-à-vis the megalithic temples: "There are after all no written records of any kind dating back to that period." In April 1935, before being obliged to leave Malta and return to Italy in the aftermath of Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia, Professor Luigi Maria Ugolini had - as I learned only recently, thanks in part to the kind courtesy and good offices of D.ssa Rosanna Cravenna of the Italian Cultural Institute, presented to the Regia Bibliotheca Melitensis a copy of the first, 1934 edition of his Malta - origini della civiltà mediterranea, and figure 79 on page 181 is an excellently reproduced photograph of what he there labels: "Cadi, frammento di lastra astrologica (cm. 29 × 215)", in other words, of the Tal Qadi Incised Stone (TQ/S1) currently on permanent display in what is, perhaps, the most inconspicuous display-case within your National Museum of Archæology in Valletta. It appears likely that Ugolini's book is also the primary source of the unfortunately less than accurate drawing of the same stone contained in Alastair Service & Jean Bradbery's Megaliths and their Mysteries (1979) and, consequently, also in the latter's Italian translation, I megaliti e i loro misteri (Armenia Editore, viale Ca'Granda 2, Milano, 1981), even though these authors' published acknowledgment is to a far less reliable work, Michæl Ridley's The Megalithic Art of the Maltese Islands (Poole, 1971). Another drawing of this same Incised Stone, differently inaccurate, appears as figure 17 on page 19 of the 1988 reprint of Rowland Parker & Michæl Rubinstein's booklet, Malta's Ancient Temples and Ruts (ISBN 0-904674-14-2). For important reasons still to be made plain, it is appropriate to note that David Trump wrote the Foreword to this reprint, which was published by the Institute for Cultural Research, PO Box 13, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN3 0JD, UK. A few copies of this reprint were still available for purchase in Valletta in June 2001, when, in another shop, a few copies were also still being offered for sale of what appeared to be the original edition of 1984, published by the Gozo Press, which has that fine building on the Mgarr Road in Gnajnsielem. It is, I think, noteworthy that this 1984 edition does not contain either that figure 17 or any of the associated paragraph of text, whose author (David Trump perhaps?) quite misleadingly affirms of Tal Qadi that "interestingly, and perhaps significantly", it is the only surviving megalithic temple to be "aligned NE-SW". That is an outright lie! ... I haven't only looked very carefully at a local map; during my most recent on-site visit I used a field-compass and recorded the main bearings. Tal Qadi's main orientations are N-E and S-W. Perhaps you know David Trump personally? I don't, but he is clearly a congenial man of the world, and I always enjoy re-reading my copy of the 1993 reprint of the second, 1990 edition of his still popular, and very recently again revised, 1972 Malta - An Archæological Guide. Like myself in many ways, I suspect, he still nurtures some sort of romantic attachment to flowers and the countryside, and feels that this latter is a place to go for a rest - away from the hard work of offices and lecture-halls and libraries! He clearly is neither an engineer nor a stone-mason. Bypassing any serious discussion of his consequent oversights and errors, suffice it here to note his pleasantly friendly: "Tracing the [cart-]ruts across country for plotting on to large-scale maps is a very satisfying sport, more humane than most, particularly on bright winter days with their invigorating blend of warm sun and cool air." (p.32 in my copy.) I sense the same pen at work in the opening sentence of section 7 on page 19 of the 1988 reprint of Parker & Rubinstein's booklet - but here the wording is very important, indeed. Under the heading, "Is there any evidence of astronomical observations and their use?" we read: "Just one piece of evidence; a roughly fan-shaped stone slab found at Tal Qadi scratched with radiating lines, stars and a crescent moon; probably part of a circle or semi-circle. What use was or could be made of it we do not know." The very helpful staff of the Gozo public-library in Victoria supplied me with a photocopy of that page, which I later annotated slightly, and I am enclosing a photocopy of it for your own ease of reference. But what is all this leading up to? Many pages within my websites contain hints and other helpful pointers towards a fuller answer. Certainly my short presentation this week at the Marian Studies Centre in the Margaret Beaufort Institute in Cambridge can at most afford those truly interested in learning the merest first glimpse of the blackness, the void, the ignorance, the rejection of arrogance and relativistic resignation to meaninglessness that only a very brave few, among them Roger Scruton, currently seem ready to acknowledge and face... Under the heading of metahermeneutics I have assembled a few helpful preliminary references you may wish to look at. Instead of sillily attempting the impossible task of summarising my own summaries elsewhere, I mention in conclusion - and this is the bottom line, the important bit: Hubert Zeitlmair correctly saw the Tal Qadi stone as not just "scratched" "lines", but carefully incised "writing" in pre-Vedic proto-Sanskrit and, as it happens, very probably contemporaneous with and certainly in the same language and script as that used by our worldwide seafaring ancestors in places as far apart as Cuenca in Peru, the Burrows Cave area in the Mississippi Valley, in central France, in Portugal, on Fuenteventura - and, yes, in Malta. Professor Bonanno couldn't be more wrong in saying no writing survives; we have tablets and inscriptions by the cart-load! Kurt Schildmann's enthralling and excellently documented book can, of course, easily be obtained, from the address he has specified, in as many copies as your Ministry may feel circumstances warrant. Even the most sedulous academics have administrative tasks to perform, just as you, no doubt, cannot entirely escape them; they also have students who, as Thomas Aquinas taught me long ago, shouldn't try to swim across the Atlantic until they have first paddled gently in a few small ponds or rivers safely. Truth is a double-edged sword, and I, honestly, am not out to get anyone.But the future isn't arrived at by playing the ostrich! When John-Paul II affirms that both Europe and the World need Malta, his message clearly has the backing of St. Paul and Our Blessed Lady. I am no more than a messenger. Please accept my good wishes - and their blessing, and please pray for: Yours sincerely, Colin James Hamer Webmaster Editor's Notes: (1) A small number of typing error present in the original have been removed from this transcript. (2) Our related Air Ministry photo-map of the archipelago, taken a few years after the end of World-War-II and before Luqa airport's main runway was extended to include the war-time Safi strip, shows that Malta, indeed, "looks at first like a leaf, green or yellow according to the season, floating upon the sea." - The Air Battle of Malta - The Official Account of the R.A.F. in Malta, June 1940 to November 1942 prepared for the Air Ministry by the Ministry of Information, London: H.M.S.O., 1944, p.7. (3) As mentioned on pages 35 and 74 of the Official Account just quoted, until a high-level decision was taken to replace as Air Officer Commanding the Malta Station Air Vice-Marshal Sir Hugh Pughe Lloyd (who had arrived there in May 1941) by Air Vice-Marshal Sir Keith Park (although this change-over did not officially occur until 14 July 1942, Sir Keith had fortunately by then already been effectively in control of operations for two full weeks) all allied fighter-planes operating out of Malta were "practically forced on to the defensive", and many pilots were massacred and planes lost as a result of Sir Hugh's policy of subjecting to ground-control not only each plane's height and position, but even each fighter-pilot's authority to open fire once an enemy plane had actually been intercepted! Hence, like the unknown Maltese civilian's act of "honouring" the outgoing Air Vice-Marshall publically in Valletta with the gift of a specially inscribed cigarette-case, this Official Account's record of Sir Hugh's having "directed the air forces during unparalleled assaults" is not without irony - as soon as Sir Keith gave the allied fighter-pilots the freedom they needed to defend themselves by firing on the enemy without needing constantly to ask ground-control for permission, these "unparalleled assaults" lost much of their earlier easily predictable effectiveness, and Malta began to win the War. (4) Had Mussolini sided with the Allies, however, instead of with Hitler, things might have been very different, since Hitler might then easily have occupied Italy, and then Malta, and then... Professor Giuliano di Bernardo Università degli Studi di Trento Via Belenzani 12 38100 TRENTO Italy 18 January 1997 Dear Professor di Bernardo, I am pleased to learn that you are familiar with Emerich Coreth's Was ist der Mensch? Grundzuge einer philosophischen Anthropologie (Innsbrück 1976) and am generally in agreement with the hermeneutic perspective you adopt in your 1989 (Tunbridge Wells: Freestone - with a Preface by Leslie H. Hicks) Freemasonry and its Image of Man - a philosophical investigation (108,25-28), which I have just read. Although better proof-reading might have eliminated quite a few remaining spelling mistakes in the English edition as printed, this book is clearly a very positive and therefore most welcome contribution to dialogue between open-minded Roman Catholic intellectuals and Freemasons. While your admission that “all forms of integralism are excluded from the anthropological conception of the mason” is transparently true in your own case, and may be desirably so in all cases without prejudice to your avowal that “after initiation each mason finds himself upholding the entire weight of his subjectivity - each and every one will be a unique and unrepeatable rough stone which will never find its like among others” (36,8-11), I was not entirely satisfied by your arguments in favour of the conclusion (for you an important one) that “while every anthropology originating from religion is by nature total, masonic anthropology is partial” (3,15-16, italics yours; parzialità in qualche modo sottointesa? almeno da taluni?…). Since the book details your comments on Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's papally approved Declaration on Freemasonry of 26 November 1983, I am especially glad a copy sought me out in Camden Town and would enjoy discussing the transcendent starting-point of a non-relativistic epistemology of relativity with you: surely a good way to prepare for the new millennium! I applaud your personal rejection of positivism, fully accept your claim (p.31) that “the conception of man in masonic terms can only be grasped by masons” and, granted that limit on my own possibilities, share your approval of Henry C. Clausen's 1977 Messages for a Mission (72,26-73,21), but cannot at present accept as satisfactorily established your claim that “non-exclusive regulativism” is an authentic anthropological foundation for freemasonry (a) primordially, (b) historically, (c) conceptually or (d) in current general practice. Moreover, in view of the statement by the Grand Lodge of England (1 June 1985) that “discussion of religion at its meetings is forbidden”, I find it extremely difficult to understand how even you can ever hope to know (at least in the course of this life we share on planet Earth) whether or not your fellow masons effectively share your vision of the nature and essence of the craft as “a conception of man requiring the pursuit of ethical aims directed by transcendence according to initiatic modalities”(19,2-4). Some years have past since you wrote this book and, as we have never met, perhaps the simplest thing is for me very briefly to attempt to respond to your welcome invitation to dialogue by sharing with you in this letter the brief annotations I have just made in my copy of your book… The first number(s) refer to pages, the second to lines in your English text: 2,5: “exclusivist” - unless comparative. 2,18: “since it is founded” - unless value-free. 3,15-16: “every anthropology originating from religion is by nature total” - integral, yes, but may be also open-ended. 4,29: “total” - only in the sense of integral. 4,30: “ideally” - only according to the appropriate measure of each one's individual vocation. 6,10: “reciprocal” - if this relationship be truly reciprocal, then the foundation, too, can only be relatively constant! 9,15: “legendary or mythical” - myth is not legend! 9,17: “image of” - image and likeness of… 10, 5: “These legends are to be interpeted” - Why? 15,29-16,5 - I have especially noticed this point. 19,2-4 - I have already commented on your definition of Freemasonry. 23,11-16 “freedom… the possibility man has of adhering subjectively to an objective order of values. We must insist on this latter component of the concept of freedom because without it, all other notions of freedom would be devoid of meaning” - However, this objective order need not be, as such, pre-given. Why not a genetic, dialectic unfolding? Cf Bernard Lonergan, Insight - a study of human understanding (London: Longmans 1957; posthumous critical edition: University of Toronto Press 1992). 28,22-27: “For a mason… the transcendent… he understands it only as an unattainable goal” - unattainable? or not certainly attainable? 29,5: “truth” - truth is not to be confused with Truth! 29,9-10: “based on” - or mediated by? 29,27: “salvation” - as a free gift, not an earned reward! 31,30-31: I have already referred to this important claim of yours, and I understand that the final paragraph on p.30 and the whole of page 31 requires particular attention. 35,8-14: also noted. 35,31-33: “A mason can never return to his former state - he can never become an ex-mason - but simply a mason asleep”. - I understand that if Earth is a space-ship, masons are crew, not passengers… 36,8-11 - I earlier noted this statement, which for me suggests that a Freemason's initiation is structurally isomorphic with the individual Christian's actual vocation; I interpret “vocation” in the light of the dictum of Aquinas: agere est pati quoddam… 37,21: “generally speaking” - Understanding that immediately prior to his death in Charing Cross King Charles the Martyr said not: “Remember!” but: “Re-Member”, thereby magically evoking a re-capitulation, I nowadays sense that “generally speaking” requires as its complement “individually knowing”… Symbols resonate!!! Cf Meditations on the Tarot - a journey into Christian hermeticism (Element Books 1992), Helen Mary Luke, Kaleidoscope - ‘The Way of Woman’ and other essays (New York: Parabola 1992), Sallie Nichols, Jung and Tarot - an archetypal journey (New York: Samuel Weiser 1980), Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer, Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth - her stories and hymns from Sumer (Harper & Row 1983). Symbolic resonance for Diane Wolkstein is primarily a psychic experience; for me and Zecharia Sitchin, however, it is deepened and amplified by being historically and so Traditionally rooted I+N its primordial source - hence the academic as well as the epic-dramatic thoroughness of his The Earth Chronicle Series: 1 - The 12th Planet; 2 - The Stairway to Heaven; 3 - The Wars of Gods and Men; 4 - The Lost Realms; 5 - When Time Began (Santa Fe: Bear & Co. 1991-1994); Genesis Revisited - Is Modern Science Catching Up With Ancient Knowledge? (1991); Divine Encounters (New York: Avon Books paperback 1996. Avon Books editions also available of his other titles). I follow Sitchin in radically integrating biblical truth with scientific truth by reading Genesis (1:1): “Ab-reshit bara Elohim at Ha'Shamaim v'et Ha'Aretz - The Father-of-Beginning created the Elohim, the Heavens and the Earth”. I have read each of Sitchin's books 9 times - for me they do resonate! 39,19-22: “in Freemasonry the symbols express one secret, the initiation secret. There is only one initiation, which consists of seeing oneself as a link in the ideal chain of brotherhood“ - If this is so, then one is an analogous term and, I suggest, one that is analogous not merely by an analogy both of intrinsic proportions and of intrinsic attribution but also by that analogy of transcendence which is proper to Being as The One, The True, The Beautiful, Etc!!… (I learned this distinction from Giulio Girardi SDB in Rome in 1959.) 68,7-10: I note with interest the distinction between Lodge and Chapter. 70,8-11: noted. 70,17.25-29: “Andrew Michael Ramsey… considered Freemasonry to be an association comprising all peoples and uniting all spirits and hearts in the same aim. He proposed it should become ‘a great intellectual nation’, and dreamt of transforming it into an academy of scholars and artists”. - To me this ideal sounds like that of authentic Gnosis (Tertullian's Christianity, too). 72,26-73,21-74,end: In this important quotation I especially noted that “we learn our mission in a system of progressive degrees of instruction” - if understood in the light of agere est pati quoddam this is manifestly in full accord with all authentic mystical theology. I also noted with interest your listing of the 33 degrees in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite symbolic, capitular, philosophical and administrative - partly because, although I am not and never have been ‘a Freemason’ each and every one of those 33 degrees were once (almost 20 years ago now) simultaneously conferred on me, by post and uninvited, by John Pope de Loxley, Laird of Camster, the Imperial Toad of what I was informed was a U.S.A.-certified-&-registered De Molay Lodge (with the password Et In Arcadia Ego), purely and simply because, being a materially poor man, he felt that was his only available way of thanking me for having helped research his claim to be a direct descendant of the original Robin Hood, as indeed he very well may be! So much by the by… 76,5-7: “Certain proscriptions or orders in the Constitutions are clearly linked to the historical, political and social context of the time in which they were written” - This, of course, is also very much applicable to much within Roman Catholic custom and usage. It also means that if any mutual dialogue is to be authentic and fruitful, participants will need faithfully to distinguish between the theoretical and the practical, the abstract and the concrete, the ideal proposed and actual achievements to date… While, therefore, fully recognising the authority of the United Grand Lodge of England's document Freemasonry and Religion (1 June 1985), the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's Declaration on Freemasonry (6 November 1983) and the semi-official related Osservatore Romano front-page three-column article (23 February 1985), it is appropriate to note that within the life of the Roman Catholic faith-community reception of that Church's magisterium is a complex process that also everywhere involves the hermeneutic contributions of its canonists and theologians. Hence, such documents are a helpful point-of-reference but not necessarily the quintessential heart of the matter… 78,9-10: “Freemasons meet in common respect for the Supreme Being as He remains Supreme in their individual religions” - Is this always intrinsically possible objectively? subjectively?… common meta-respect, yes; common respect? 79,9-10: “The secrets of Freemasonry are concerned with modes of recognition” - a beautifully crafted statement! Need the concern be existential? Can what is secret ever be a means of recognition? Transparency in the sense in which Ancient Egyptian frescoes on the corresponding surfaces of a painted wall separating adjacent rooms are to be interpreted as reciprocally transparent was a wonderful hermeneutic tool when used by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, but… Bonum est abscondere sacramentum regis. 82,27-34: When “the discussion of religion at its meetings is forbidden” and “a Masonic theological doctrine” is not allowed to develop, is there not a risk of papering over intrinsic self-contradictions that in fact infect the praxis of Lodge life? 83,8: “principle of tolerance” - Because of its contemporary relevance in all human situations I recommend attention to Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred - aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman world (Cambridge University Press, 1995, especially pp.30, 34, 38). 90,23-25: If “by avoiding the creation of any form of integralism, the principle of tolerance regulates the authentic relationship between regulativist and religious masons”, the result would seem to me to be at best a meta-consensus rather than a consensus… 90,26-91,2: “non-exclusive regulativism… foundation” - concrete or abstract? 91,11-14: “Various principles of an ethical nature are derived both from the regulative ideal and the principles of various religions. How is it possible to guarantee that there will be no conflicting issues between them?” - How indeed?! 92,9-10: “Masonic ethics reflects that part of general ethics concerning the action of the mason as such” - Prescinding from the intrinsic power of symbolic reflection, any ethics so formulated would, I suspect, resemble Coreth's transcendental metaphysics in being excessively abstract to be, as such, referrable to any concrete situation, just as Catholic morality is defective whenever it fails to be enlivened by Charity… 93,30-94,5: I understand that “it is not easy to give a straight answer” but recommend Bion's remarks in Experiences in Groups (Tavistock publications), where he mentions that initial encounters are not the beginning of any relationship, but simply a manifestation of its being already given. 96,1-3: “Christian anthropology can be recognised in the following triple - Freedom, Transcendence (in the ontological sense), Salvation” - I prefer to equate Christian anthopology with the quadruple: Charity, Faith, Hope, Humility (= Mysticism, Gnosis, Magic, Hermetic Philosophy). 97,17-22: Note that, since agere est pati quoddam, the Christian's personal relationship with G-d (my preferred spelling) is one of increasing quasi-identity. Cf. the unpublished Gregorianum University never publicly defended (for lack of competent assessors) pro-doctoral theological dissertation by Nazareno Camilleri SDB on “The Metaphysical Essence of the Beatific Vision of G-d”… (He taught me ascetical and mystical theology; when a student himself, he publicly defended one thesis in the personal presence of Pope Pius XII.) 98,22-24: “the Rituals must be above all the symbolic and allegorical expression of masonic anthropology” - because valid symbols resonate trans-temporally through all related realms and not merely within the material dimensions of planet Earth in one sense, of course, they must be ABOVE. However, since Freemasonry is not merely a human egregore, let alone merely a gentlemen's club, but the continuing free creation by one or more hierarchical beings, all sincere but abstract protestations to the contrary, the Rituals cannot be allegorical and symbolic, therefore, in any merely conventional sense. Although not, in the Roman Catholic sense, sacraments or even sacramentals (since they are not intrinsically related to a consciously free acceptance of the Law of Jesus Christ), they are in nature quasi-sacraments or quasi-sacramentals. Today on TV I watched Warner Brothers' film Land of the Pharaohs (with Jack Hawkins & Joan Collins) - even though the 3 Pyramids at Giza were all built long before the birth of Khufu, and even though the alleged inscriptions within the Great Pyramid that are the only alleged evidence for attributing that Pyramid to Khufu (a) contradict Khufu's own claim that the Pyramids and Sphinx were old when he was young, and (b) are forgeries perpetrated on the instructions of Colonel Howard Vyse in the 19th century A.D., so that, in other words, there is precious little historically authentic about Land of the Pharaohs, as a dynamic symbol this film still inevitably evokes much that has real archetypal resonance. I suspect you would not wish to deny that the symbols within Freemasonry are at least as efficacious… 98,30-34: “the Rituals should express the minimum requirement of Freemasonry, as reflected in non-exclusive regulativism (Freemasonry as a concept), in that it is the common foundation for all masons” - In the Light of what I have already said about symbolic reflection, you ought not to find it odd that the Roman Catholic magisterium has refused to accept Freemasons' claims that there is no intrinsic incompatibility between the minimum symbolically resonant expressions required of Freemasons and the minimum degree of self-committment to Jesus Christ required of His Disciples. Unlike the Roman Empire, Freemasonry as such (although not a religion) is not merely of this world, although it may be and, of course, like the Roman Catholic Church also historically has been and still is embodied in institutions which are very much of this world (with advantages and disadvantages for each in consequence). Were either the Church or Freemasonry a purely human (in the everyday sense of that adjective) institution, your response to Cardinal Ratzinger's Declaration might (prescinding from occasional imperfections in its verbal expression) be substantially adequate, as things are, however, it is no more (and no less) than a symbolic expression of a justified hope that on Earth and metaphysically our still separate growths are in some degree convergent… 100,29-101,10: “different religious faiths” - I believe all religious faiths, like all human languages, share a common root, even if it is necessary to study our life on Earth before the Great Flood (c.11,000 B.C.) sufficiently to appreciate this as no mere legend, but a myth that is both psychically and (pre-)histori-cally true. Although, so far as I know, the probably still existing relevant cuneiform inscriptions have yet to be identified, deciphered, transcribed, transliterated, translated and interpreted, I also suspect that Freemasonry shares that same common root, in other words that Anderson's legend (p.9) is much more than that, though he failed to distinguish between the Adam (who for a long time was, whether male or female, non-reproductive, because a hybrid, and so had to be cloned) and the much more recent Adam & Eve (Neanderthals, as was their son Cain) and their grandson (through Seth) Enosh (the 1st CroMagnon, thanks to his visit back to Eden: Genesis 4:26). 102,26-28: I have argued elsewhere that all authentic Catholicism IS Primordial, which is why I hope Freemasons' non-acceptance of its claims will not for ever remain the obstacle to our predestined Unity it at present appears to be. 108,25-28: Initially noted. 112,17-20: Even if “positivist philosophical anthropology is an empty set, bereft of any constituent elements”, at least “as far as masonic and Christian anthropologies are concerned”, in view of the logical importance of negation, cannot an empty set still prove to be structurally regulative? 114,22-115,11: I take note of the importance of both these passages, but refer back to my earlier remarks. What J.D. Solomon and I have sometimes called axiological contuition can and typically does justify the individual subject's positing of whichever presuppositions are required to found his or her freely chosen aesthetic Welthineinhörung, but omne cognoscens cognoscit implicite Deum in quolibet cognito… Cf. J. D. Solomon, The Mind's Ear (Hounslow: Bibliagora 1979, passim) and related papers (enclosed). 119,18: “man” - or Life? 129,22: “every” - unconditionally? 131,27-29: “There is no added ethical content but only ritual prescriptions that are suitable for promoting the masonic ethical ideal which has already been defined in the principles exposed” - While this amply justifies your claim that individual personal autonomy is not diminished by no secret of Freemasonry being revealed to the candidate prior to his initiation, and while it would, therefore, rebut Roman Catholic objections to Freemasonry if the Catholic Church were simply some sort of humanist ethical society, since “Freemasonry does not claim any global vision of man” (131,32-33), but because Jesus regarded whoever was not with Him as eo ipso against Him, the Church's reserve is understandable. 133,1-12: True and important, especially in the Light of my remarks about symbolic reflection… Although I continue to believe the Church's reserve is well warranted, I accept your sincere avowal that “the secret is not for masons ‘an instrument of strategies unknown to them’ neither is it ‘harmful to the autonomy of the person’” - provided the phrases you object to are understood in some purely socio-ethical-political sense, once, however, they are transferred to a higher supramundane metaphysical context, questions remain. 136,23: “of Paul VI” - of the II Vatican Ecumenical Council. 137: I especially welcome this information, regarding which I was previously unaware. 137,34: “abolished” - the New Code states quite generally that, unless the contrary be clearly and explicitly stated, all provisions of the New Code are to be interpreted within the totality of their historically preceding context. 138: I also hope my brief remarks may contribute to the desired dialogue. 141,19-23: I find myself wondering whether or not this is a personal view of yours of the sort that you are not free to discuss within the Lodge? 142,30-31: “The most ancient document of condemnation against Freemasonry was issued by the Magistrate of Amsterdam on 30th November 1935” - Your reference presumably relies on more recent research, since it differs from as well as being more specific than that at the top of p.53 of volume 2 of A. E. Waite's A New Encyclopædia of Freemasonry (New York: Wing Books reprint 1994, with an Introduction by Emmit McLoughlin), where I also notice the reference to Kilwinning Lodge. My sister, the historian Sister Dominic Savio CP, used to teach at a Roman Catholic School in Kilwinning, and lived in a Convent in Irvine, an old mansion house with an original Masonic window still in place immediately next to the nuns' chapel, where in the mid-'60s I occasionally celebrated Mass for their community.. 145,10-11: “Seventeen Presidents of the United States were masons” - noted! 148,7-13 & 149,11-22: Mussolini's remarks also noted!! 150,8-12: “I intend to emphasise here that the initiation secret is an original and essential notion of masonic philosophical anthropology, without which Freemasonry, as an initiatic society, is no longer Freemasonry. At most, it becomes a society with philanthropical aims” - cf Helen Mary Luke (88-years-old Anglo-Catholic Apple Farm lay community foundress and Jungian analyst), Kaleidoscope - ‘The Way of Woman’ and other essays (New York: Parabola 1992, pp.113-119: “The Secret and the Open”, especially this quotation from George MacDonald, p.116): “For each, G-d has a different response. With every man He has a secret - the secret of a new name. In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which G-d only can enter… There is a chamber also… in G-d Himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar man - out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his creation. This is that for which he was made - to reveal the secret things of the Father”, Helen Mary Luke than adds: “But if anyone rushes to reveal his glimpses of that first secret place in himself to all and sundry, without the long discipline of discrimination, he or she will assuredly never enter the innermost secret chamber, where the whole, unique life of a conscious being brings to others revelation and strength beyond any words and without any effort of the will”. In the context of our dialogue that quotation needs to be set beside her editor, Rob Baker's earlier quotation (p.2) of something A. M. Hadfield wrote about Charles Williams and his ‘company’ of friends and associates: “There was no pledge or initiation, no standard asked by others… In all matters the compulsion is interior… it is a spirit which will work within everything we do, and will reject nothing of our ordinary life… It is the birth and life of love, of Christ, here and now”. I take note of what you have written in your Epilogue, but haven't actually ready any of the books listed in your bibliography (it was Coreth's Metaphysics I read, unfortunately only in its considerably abridged English translation; I have the German original, but my German doesn't extend to it), though I have glanced through W. I. Wilmshurst, The Meaning of Masonry (New York: Bell Publishing Co. 1980). I also own a copy of George A. Mather & Larry A. Nichols, Masonic Lodge, edited by Alan W. Gomes (Carlisle: Om Publishing 1995, by arrangement with Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan), one of eight slim booklets in their First Series of Guide to Cults & Religious Movements, and dedicated to the memory of Harold T. Dodge, past Massachusetts District Deputy Grand Master and a 32nd Degree Consistory Order of the Eastern Star. The stated aim of the Guide (First & Second Series) is to provide “a Christian response” to “many of the most important groups and belief systems confronting the Christian church today”, and all the authors are said to be “well-respected professional Christian apologists”. I don't know if you know Jean Houston's writings? I read her and Robert Masters' The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience and Mind Games in the mid-'70s, and have just finished my first reading of her excellent (HarperSanFrancisco 1995) A Mythic Life - Learning to Live Our Greater Story (ISBN 0-06-250282-4 pbk). Jean (whom Pierre Teilhard de Chardin conversed with weekly for 18 months in her early adolescence, and whom Margaret Mead in her final years looked upon as her second daughter) lives in New York, has a library of 60,000 books and quite a collection of resonant antiquities, including a huge bust of Athena. She also enjoys computing so, yesterday, I posted her 15 3½" disks containing the text of my more significant preliminary writings and all those published by J.D. Solomon and J.D. Cooper; I am pretty sure all these will be new to her as well as relevant to her own ongoing “socially catalytic and individually kairotic homoeokinetic polyphemic process”, especially as she uses ordinary good English most of the time! I don't know whether or not you enjoy computing, but in any case I have no more spare disks!. Instead, I enclose the hardback English text of my 1978 Voice In The Darkness (together with that of its never yet published Italian translation and with a 1996 unpublished complementary update in English only) and - with his compliments as well as mine - of J. D. Solomon's 1979 The Mind's Ear (together with 3 more recent privately printed philosophical papers of his and two papers of mine about his contributions to logic and philosophy). If you read my Solomon-related papers, you will also learn of our shared interest in the writings of Carlos Castaneda, which I understand are also well known in Italy. I am currently reading Taisha Abelar's The Sorcerer's Crossing - a woman's journey. As well as being the female Carlos Castaneda, her style of writing almost suggests she may be the very man himself, but perhaps not: “I looked at Clara shocked, unable to utter a single word. Clara's and Mr. Abelar's laughter was like a giant explosion reverberating inside my head. I couldn't have been more surprised at anything they might have said or sprung on me. As my initial numbness subsided, instead of becoming angry for being manipulated, I was filled with awe at the incredible precison of their manœvering and at the immensity of their control, which I finally realized was not control over me, but over themselves” (p.168). I saw J.D. Solomon in Crystal Palace last week. He will be 91 later this month. For three weeks around Christmas he was very low indeed, but last week he could converse normally, though reading is almost impossible for him now. Another splendid nonagenarian I have been privileged to know died about 10 years ago, aged 92 or 94, Reginald Wrugh, a Welsh Nationalist and a Masonic Chaplain whose personal socio-cultural vision and achievements had developed in his years of close collaboration with Sir Patrick Geddes. I like the photographs of Rosslyn Chapel (the Templar Church near Edinburgh) in Laurence Gardner's Bloodline of the Holy Grail - the hidden lineage of Jesus revealed (Element Books 1996). As Jacobite historiographer royal he obviously had access to various otherwise untapped sources, and I am not surprised Prince Michael of Albany (who wrote the Foreword) approved the text. However, I found the first two chapters far too brisk a gallop through our shared labyrinthine past to provide any sort of reliable foundation for the claims that followed. No doubt we are all descended from Adam, but that the present Stewart claimant to the throne is biologically descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalen is not, to my way of thinking, by any means evident! The sudden death last year of a 49-years-old friend reminded me we may not have much time left ahead of us, and that is why I have ventured in this initial letter in response to your welcome contribution to Freemasonry's dialogue with the rest of today's world to intrude upon your time and fraternal attention to the degree that I have elected so to presume. I welcome correspondence, read and speak Italian pretty fluently, but have been away from Italy too long to write this letter nella bella lingua di Dante. Spero che Lei abbia la bontà di perdonarmi. Augurandogli un felice anno nuovo, e coi più distinti saluti… - Shalom & Welcome! -       © The Neith Network Library 2004 Webmaster: ExtraReverendDoctorColinJames Hamer, The Rainbow Programme Creativity House, 9 Oxford Street, St. Thomas, EXETER, Devon EX2 9AG, U.K. This page updated 10:01 22/8/2004.