COMMUNICATION - CONSULTANCY - PERSONAL GROWTH - WISDOM TRADITION AMYDON-EXETER CENTRE 113 To and from Melanie Small CARJ SouthWest To Reverend Father Tissa Balasuriya OMI To: Mrs. Venice Sedgwick To: Brian C. Bates, BA, MA, PhD To Piers Paul Read To His Excellency, Archbishop Luigi Barbarito, DD, JCD Magisterium   Reverend Father Tissa Balasuriya OMI Centre for Society & Religion 281 Deans Road COLUMBO 10 Sri Lanka Sunday, 9 February 1997 Copy to His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Dear Father Tissa, (1) You are cordially invited to delight in the evocative beauty of Peter Dent's inspiring Anglo-Welsh poem, The Gododdin: “Grugyn, Gorthyn, Garthwys, Morien Bradwen, Gwenabwy, Addonwy, Bleiddig Breichior, Llifiau, Merin, Tudfwlch Marchlew, Gwædnerth, Madog, Cynon Cynhafal, Nai, Bubon, Urfai THESE AND MANY, MOST UNNAMED Eithinyn, Gwrhafal, Edar, Gwawrddur AND MYNYDDOG, THE CHIEF OF ALL. Cibno, Ywain, Cadfannan, Gwefrfawr SO MANY HERE, SO MANY CAME. Hyfaidd, the son of Bodgad, Rheithfyw, Neirthiad ANEIRIN CANNOT LET THEM FALL. Erthgi, Cyfwlch, Blæn, Gwrfelling Cynri, Cynrain, Cydywal, Graid Buddfan, Isag, Ceredig, Caradog Gwrien, Gwyn, Gwriad, Pyll ANEIRIN AT THE MIDNIGHT OIL, Ieuan, Gwgon, Gwion, Cynfan INDEFINITE DARK THE ONLY VIEW. Peredur, Gwawrddur, Æddan, Gwlyged RELENTLESS COLD, UNBROKEN TOIL Rhufon, Gwid, the son of Fferog, Gwyddien TO SEE THE WAR-BAND SWEETLY THROUGH. Gwynfyd, Cenau, Heilyn, Rhys Cynwal, Morial, Merin, Cynddilig Moried, the son of Ceidio, Taflœw, Tyngyr Geraint, Eiddef, Gwair, Cynan Teithfyw, Cynfelyn, Mældderw and one”. (2) Today is the 33rd anniversary of my priestly ordination in the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians in Turin, my 63rd birthday is on 18 April, 8 September next will be the 44th anniversary of my first religious profession as a Salesian of St. John Bosco in St. Joseph's Catholic Church near Burwash in Sussex, my Licentiate of Sacred Theology and Doctorate of Philosophy degrees were conferred by the Pontifical Salesian University, Rome, in 1964 and 1968 respectively, and in September 1995 the Medicina Alternativa Institute affiliated to the Open International University for Complementary Medicines of Colombo, Sri Lanka, conferred on me (honoris causa and in absentia) the degree of Doctor of Science but, if José Argüelles' reading of the glyphs on the great Mayan sacred Tzolkin calendar-stone of 1479 is correct, 21 December 2012 may very well prove to be an even more important date in our shared history as readers and writers of the Book of Life… (3) Clear light has already been shed on many matters of fact concerning which not only the general public but even relatively well informed specialists had until only a few years ago been either less than accurately informed or entirely ignorant. Even now, however, all too few individuals are sufficiently aware of this welcome development, and, inspired by the teaching and example of Saint John Bosco and of his first successor, Blessed Michael Rua, I have dedicated what remains of my life here on Earth to facilitating in whatever way I can more favourable conditions for healthy individual and community growth. When I was teaching English and History of Philosophy to a young Salesian from Sri Lanka at the Salesian Institute of Further Education at Beckford in Worcestershire, round about Christmas 1956 we experienced what in that part of England was quite a rare fall of snow. I have never forgotten Brother John Chia's utter amazement when he first witnessed myriads of tiny snowflakes floating gently to the ground - he had, of course, previously seen Seasons Greeting cards featuring landscapes carpetted all over in gleaming white but, lacking any of that detailed knowledge that comes only from living in an environment where snow is naturally at home, your fellow countryman had always imagined that snow descended from heaven in a seamless sheet like one gigantic magic carpet! Hence, I have no difficulty whatsoever in sympathising deeply with your own and John-Paul II's difficulties in arriving at a publicly manifest agreement as, each of you in response to an utterly unique and primordial vocation from G-d, you seek to give witness of Jesus Christ. Your Mary and Human Liberation (which I have not seen) does not contain in language intelligible to approved theologians at home in the Latin Scholastic tradition any evident expression of orthodoxy, and the Holy Father's Crossing the Threshold of Hope (which I have read) does not in its references to Buddhism contain any intelligent reflection of the notable degree of spiritual convergence already resulting from officially sponsored dialogue between, to mention the most salient example, Tibetan Buddhists and the sons of Saint Benedict. Since, however, especially in the Zen tradition, monasteries are customarily constructed with at least one stone missing, this may be all to the good. In G. K. Chesterton's The Man who was Thursday all the criminals are policemen in disguise, and the only real criminal in this marvellously insightful novel, first published prior to the author's conversion to Roman Catholicism, is that arch-villain the Chief of Police who, in the final chapter, seems to be subsumed into the expansive levity of a balloon-like G-d The Father and, indeed, as the Spanish proverb says, G-d does write straight on crooked lines. O felix culpa! (4) The opening paragraph of Gabriel Daly's “What is original sin?” in yesterday's The Tablet reads: “Many Catholics throughout the world will have been shocked and angered by the news that Fr Tissa Balasuriya, the Sri Lankan priest and theologian, has been declared excommunicate by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Recourse to excommunication is an unbelievably crude and cruel way of expressing theological disagreement. All one's sympathies go out to a fellow Christian who has been so badly treated by the guardians of orthodoxy”. An adequate critique of Gabriel Daly's article would require a volume to itself, but I will restrict myself to a few brief comments, and I begin by rearranging those three sentences as follows: “Recourse to excommunication is an unbelievably crude and cruel way of expressing theological disagreement. Many Catholics throughout the world will have been shocked and angered by the news that Fr Tissa Balasuriya, the Sri Lankan priest and theologian, has been declared excommunicate by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). All one's sympathies go out to a fellow Christian who has been so badly treated by the guardians of orthodoxy”. Clearly, the solemn transmutation by bell, book and candle in foro publico, whether or not after due process, of a ferendæ sententiæ excommunication into an actual excommunication has often been an effectively deterrent even if unbelievably crude and cruel way not so much of expressing theological disagreement, but of punishing individual social malefactors, reminding other members of an at least relatively homogeneous community of the majesty of the law and thereby restoring a needed measure of social cohesion. The Vatican has already established a commission of inquiry into the past behaviour of the Holy Inquisition, but we are already sufficiently aware of what happened to the Jackdaw of Rheims. However, excommunication latæ sententiæ (notice that latæ is a past participle referring to something that has already taken place, unlike ferendæ, which is a gerundive indicating that something needs to be done) more typically occurs privately in foro conscientiæ, and it does so at precisely that moment in which the subject incurring it satisfies with a sufficient degree of knowledge and consent the qualifying conditions objectively specified in law. Sometimes, of course, the subsequent public actions of an individual who has in this way already excommunicated himself may be such as to threaten the socio-religious stability of the faith community to which that person is still generally believed to adhere, and in such circumstances its religious leaders may feel it is appropriate publicly to clarify the already obtaining but previously occult excommunication that individual has imposed on himself. There is nothing even remotely crude or cruel about recourse to this pastorally and socially rather than academically or theologically motivated procedure, especially when the competent ecclesial authorities go out of their way both to avoid specifying any particular act (in the present case any particular sentence in a widely available published book) as objectively illegal and to assure the apparently offending author that his signature to a simple declaration of Catholic orthodoxy will be acceptable evidence of his being still in good standing within the community. Morgan, that saintly and wise Briton and Roman theologian more customarily referred to by the Latin translation of his name, Pelagius, had little difficulty in convincing St. Augustine of Hippo that he personally had never subscribed to the heresy named after him that Augustine campaigned so valiantly to make the Catholic Church proscribe and condemn. Since a wilted rose by any other name still stinks, although it was less than courteous of Augustine to apply Morgan's name, even if only in translation, to the heresy that he had actually invented all by himself, no irreparable damage resulted. It might have been better, you may feel, if Augustine had taken the trouble to learn Morgan's brand of Latin, if someone in the CDF had been obliged to develop a mastery of your sort of theological language or if John-Paul II's earlier life had afforded him the opportunity of mastering the intricacies of the 200 volumes of the Tibetan Buddhists' closest equivalent to the Jewish and Christian Bible, but Divine Providence has arranged otherwise and as the Buddha (according to the Sandhinimochana-sutra: “Scripture unlocking the Mysteries”) has wisely said: “Once practitioners of contemplation have penetrated the selflessness of phenomena in the absolute sense in true thusness in one cluster, they do not further seek the selflessness of phenomena in the absolute sense in true thusness individually in the other clusters, the sense media, conditional origination, nourishment, the truths, the points of mindfulness, the right efforts, the bases of occult powers, the religious faculties and powers, the branches of enlightenment and the branches of the path” (Thomas Cleary's translation as Buddhist Yoga - a comprehensive course, Shambhala 1995, p.17). In the light of the foregoing, although I do not deny that “many Catholics throughout the world will have been shocked and angered by the news that Fr Tissa Balasuriya, the Sri Lankan priest and theologian, has been declared excommunicate by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF)”, I do not number myself among them. I agree that “all one's sympathies” appropriately “go out to a fellow Christian who has been so badly treated by the guardians of orthodoxy”, but feel equally strongly that they ought also to be extended to these same long-suffering guardians of orthodoxy, nowadays more than ever scape-goated in the name of “tolerance” by Christians seeking for perfection primarily in their neighbours and only secondarily, if at all, in themselves… (5) The first edition of what I in 1973 called my spiritual autobiography, Ecstasy and Vendetta is available from most public libraries in England & Wales. At least two hundred users of English have had access to Encounter Groups (1977) and to the original 1978 edition of Voice In The Darkness. A few years ago I made available to Cardinal Ratzinger and to twelve other persons around the Planet the full unpublished text of The Rainbow Cymbal. A hundred or so persons are to some extent familiar with my 1995 RILKO Lecture exploring the work of Zecharia Sitchin, which is enormously important for any proper understanding of what Catholics have traditionally referred to as Original Sin. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Plymouth and fourteen other persons still living have sets of IBM-compatible PC data-disks in MS-DOS format containing all those writings of the Anglican exponent of Ancient Sumerian Yoga, Joan D'Arcy Cooper, of the pro-Cathar esoteric novelist, Jason Crisp, of the Benedictine theologian, Sylvester Houédard, of the transdimensional cosmologist and philosopher of language, J. D. Solomon, of the social-dynamicist and characterologist, Marco Todeschini, and of myself so far selected for inclusion in the Preliminary Series of the Neith Network Library… (6) As regards reading, since moving from London to Exeter in 1987 I have reduced my private library from about 3,500 to about 700 volumes in all, buy no secular newspapers whatsoever but, in order to keep myself at least ecclesially up-to-date, somehow manage to afford a subscription to The Tablet, and have my own copies of The Catechism of the Catholic Church in its French and Italian as well as in its frequently misleadingly ‘translated’ English edition. (7) A few desirable if not indispensable second-hand volumes among the 700 above mentioned have only come my way in the last few years and, if I mention that my total weekly income is less than £80 per week, you will easily appreciate that only by economising on food, heating, computing, telephone and travel to an almost excessive extent have I been able to find the money needed… (9) I trust you are well and have assembled the foregoing [detailed information here omitted] to give you at least some slight idea of how things have been and are here on the physical plane at Creativity House, half of the downstairs lounge in which coincides with a node of power, transdimensional portal or chakra-gateway in the emerging new world-wide energy grid on which so many normally invisible as well as visible beings are increasingly focussed nowadays… (10) I promised to refrain from a comprehensive critique of Gabriel Daly's piece in yesterday's The Tablet but, since it relates directly to your own work, feel I ought to venture a few comments: Zecharia Sitchin in the seven thoroughly researched and painstakingly documented full-length books above mentioned, as well as in a related video-film and in various lectures and articles, has objecively established that Gabriel Daly's claim that “a literal and historical interpretation of the first three chapters of the book of Genesis… is impossible to reconcile with what science has revealed about the origins of our species, Homo sapiens” is - at least as far as informed members of the general public and a majority of leading-edge specialists in all the relevant disciplines are concerned - the very opposite of the truth. Should you have difficulty in acquiring Sitchin's books, which have already been translated in several languages, his address is 310 West 86 Street, New York, NY 10024-3142, U.S.A. He is able to read Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian cuneiform, as well as being fluent in Hebrew and sufficiently at home in a variety of modern languages used by scientists and academics - I suspect that this is not true of Father Daly… My life so far has, like that of Bernard Lonergan, been lived under the ægis of Pope Leo XIII's vetera novis augere et perficere, it being obvious that while fruits do, indeed, manifest the good or bad quality of a tree, it is via the roots that the source of that goodness or badness is to be traced and, if appropriate, attended to. In his great Encyclical Providentissimus Deus, Leo XIII said of the original biblical writers: “By supernatural power G-d so moved and impelled them to write, he was so present to them, that they first rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth the things which he ordered, and those only”. And he reaffirmed the decisions of the Council of Trent and emphasised that the Bible in all its parts was inspired and that a stated fact must be accepted as falling under inspiration, down to the most insignificant item; that is, the whole Bible is the Word of G-d. More recent statements by Popes and by the Second Vatican Council have helpfully complemented Leo XIII's prescient observations, but none of these warrant our doubting the truth of what he taught - with which, in any case, neither the Buddha nor any more recent avatar would disagree in the slightest, as I am sure you well know. Father Daly is probably not an avatar… Having rejected the historicity of Genesis 1-3 in favour of something he imagines to be “science”, he invites us to “release a flood [curious choice of analogy] of theological meaning” by exploiting these chapters' “symbolic possibilities”. In fact, as Joseph Blenkinsopp writes, “what should be affirmed at the present juncture is the need for coexistence between different interpretative systems with their quite different but not necessarily incompatible agendas. We need an edict of tolerance to discourage the tendency of new theories to proscribe their predecessors. This might, for example, encourage us to recover the insights of the patristic writers or the great Jewish exegetes of the Middle Ages. It would leave us free to look for the æsthetic aspects of the ‘text in itself’ without feeling obliged to condemn the quite different projects of the historical practitioner” (The Pentateuch - an introduction to the first five books of the Bible, New York: Doubleday 1992, p.28). Symbolic resonance is primarily a psychic experience but I find that it is deepened and amplified when it is historically grounded and so Traditionally rooted I+N its primordial source, cf Gn 1:1 - “Ab-reshit bara Elohim at Ha'Shamain v'et Ha'Aretz. The Father-of-Beginning created the Elohim, the Heavens and the Earth”, a rendering immediately meaningful to well instructed Hindus and an unequivocal response to the questions of those followers of other gods who sincerely want to know how and why Yahweh is unique, cf Ps 84: “G-d stands in the divine assembly, among the Elohim he judges” and pronounces sentence, saying: “I have said, ye are Elohim, all of you sons of the Most High; but ye shall die as men do, like any prince ye shall fall”. Father Daly, who appears to be more familiar with abstractions such as “the whole human race” and “neo-scholastic theology” than he is with concrete individuals such as the particular Elohim who fashioned the first Adam in their own image and likeness, the Elohim who subsequently transferred them from their place of creation in South East Africa to the Garden of Eden he had established, as the Bible indicates, in the neighbourhood of four great rivers (the Hiddekel/Tigris, the Prath/Euphrates, the nowadays underground but by satellite detectable Pishon that flows as Kuwait river into the Persian Gulf, and the similarly no longer obviously great Gihon or Karun river), etc., might learn something about morphogenetics and heredity not only from Sitchin but also from José Argüelles: “Of course, it is heretical to voice the thought that the sensory awakedness of the aborigine is preferable to twentieth-century technological comfort, which, in actuality, is a closing off of the sense fields and a narrowing of the perception we have of life… Myth defines the capacity for simultaneous, multi-referential resonance that merges being with being; history is the tendency to limit, measure, and materialize in a uni-referential direction that separates being from being… The mythic condition constructs from… experience a sacrament or ritual that affirms the bond between light and the greater forces, ultimately the forces of light. The historic mind uses… experience as information that determines practical creature-comfort goals. However, the creature-comfort seeking aspect of historic consciousness is in actuality the feedback effect of the impulse of DNA [scientifically researched by the Elohim who fashioned the Adam] to extrude technology. Hence historic consciousness is but a by-product of the larger technological bridging process, moving us from one natural symbiosis to another - from one realm of light to another. To gain an even deeper level of understanding, let us put forth one more equation: Myth = DNA × Light.. In this equation, myth or the mythic condition is the self-sustaining capacity of DNA to directly utilize light - the spectrum of radiant energy - to attain its ends. In the mythic condition, therefore, the psychic resonance between organism and radiant energy is direct and provides both primary nurturance and primary reality. This resonance is dependent upon and intensifies a superior sensory capacity for radiant interactiveness. The experience of the senses - eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body - is not only primary, but attuned to nuances that both convey information and expand delight. In this condition, the need for artificial inducements to pleasure become obstructions to the untrammeled purity of sensory experience per se…” (The Mayan Factor - path beyond technology, Santa Fe: Bear & C. 1987: pp. 149-54.) Seemingly unaware that the use of symbols is not an alternative to but an application of science and, as it happens, of a science intimately related to the fact of original sin, Daly also uncritically accepts the English-language version of §390 in The Catechism of the Catholic Church which differs from the French and Italian versions at that point by presenting the Fall as a “primeval” instead of as a “primordial” event. He then adds to his own confusion by inventing the concept of something he refers to as “a mega-sin”. Perhaps he has explained this mega-sin elsewhere but, going by what he wrote in The Tablet, his idea seems to be that of a super-sin, i.e., of a kind of sin that is more mortal than mortal sin, whereas, of course, it is received Catholic doctrine that original sin is, so far as Adam's & Eve's descendants are concerned, neither a mortal nor even a venial species of actual sin, but simply an innate inclination to sin, a proclivity to evil. A little further on he quotes you as claiming that “a Christian theology that legitimized the European expansion and the missionary enterprise… was based on the premise that all human beings were trapped in original sin and condemned to eternal damnation unless they were saved by Jesus Christ” (added emphasis mine), adding that “the core” of your theologising is subordinated to a “preoccupation with colonialism…” which is “a distraction from the substantive issue of the dogma of original sin”. That bizarre claim suggests to me that although Daly has written extensively on the subject of original sin, he has so far failed to notice that King Ferdinand and Queen Isobel of Spain's primary motive in funding Christopher Columbus's and subsequent expeditions across the Atlantic was precisely that of somehow reversing the effects of original sin by finding both the Tree of Life and the Water of Life of which both Genesis and the book of Revelation speak to us so powerfully. Moreover, pace Father Daly, Catholic “theology about Mary” is a most appropriate setting for the treatment of “the dogma of original sin”, since Faith tells us that, had not G-d foreseen the future redemptive merits of Jesus and Mary's freely given consent to be His Mother, He would neither have permitted Adam's Fall nor created that Cosmos which is the visible part of Mary's Nuptial Dowry as Queen of all Creation - cf. Wisdom 1:13-15; Romans 8:18-21. Not having read your Mary and Human Liberation I cannot comment on Daly's further claim that your “accusers” allege that you are a “relativist”, but the recent Tablet editorial which treated “relativism” as if it were synonymous with “relativity” was evidently, absolutely and utterly misleading or, if you prefer: “quam quidem sententiam stricto examine ponderatam, quamquam aliquo pacto sustineri posset in rigore, et proprio verborum sensu ab assertore intento hæreticam, erroneam, suspectam, temerariam, scandalosam vel in pias aures offensionem immitentem, competentium auctoritate damnari oportet et decet” (cf. DS 1080 together with its footnote and DS 979, which exemplify a once customary kind of approach Cardinal Ratzinger wisely wishes now and in the future consistently to eschew.). (11) Much of the little I have written above may require further elaboration in order adequately to clarify your present situation and there are, of course, several other relevant considerations that I haven't even mentioned once explicitly. I am, however, very happy to entrust everything to the Holy Spirit qui solus interius et principaliter docet, and conclude with a brief reference to one particular aspect of the verbal instruction in Christian dogmatic and doctrinal theology that was transmitted to me by Father B. De Maria SDB when I was among his students in Turin: Public Revelation, he taught us, came to an end with the death of the last of the Twelve Apostles, at which point in time it made way for the Magisterium… With personal best wishes and the assurance of a memento in my prayer… To: Mrs. Venice Sedgwick 53 John Street, Clayton-le-Moors, ACCRINGTON Lancashire BB5 5PT. Wednesday, 26 February 1997 Dear Venice, “Hail to the Dove! the Restorer of Light!” When the late Harold Trew, F.F.R.I.B.A., wrote his report on “the giant nature effigies representing the signs of the Zodiac” that Mrs. K. E. Maltwood, F.R.S.A., had discovered upon the hills and sea-moors of Somerset, near Glastonbury, he stated that these discoveries “reveal the fact that we have in England one of the most important monuments of prehistoric days, surpassing in grandeur of conception and skill those of Stonehenge and Avebury, and ranking in interest with the wonders of the ancient world”. “The discoveries link together in a surprising manner the work of many investigators, folklorists and historical astronomers such as Sir James G. Frazer, Alfred Nutt, Sir John Rhys, Sir Norman Lockyer, and many others: the new knowledge opens a vast field for further investigation”.* * Dr. John Dee (1527-1608) had, without Mrs. Maltwood's realising this, also been aware of the existence and nature of the Glastonbury Zodiac. According to C. Roscoe, this earthly Temple of the Stars is both a “symbol of immensity” and “an unimaginable lodge for solitary thinkings”. In her The Enchantments of Britain or King Arthur's Round Table of the Stars (Victoria, B.C., Canada: Victoria Printing & Publishing Co., 1944; Cambridge, U.K.: James Clarke & Co. Ltd, 1982) Mrs. Maltwood mentions that soon after her A Guide to Glastonbury's Temple of the Stars and its fully illustrated Air View Supplement had been published (by John Watkins, 21 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, London WC21), Arthur Edward Waite travelled up to London to see her, and with great sorrow remarked: “I have spent all my life in quest of the Holy Grail and have not found it; stars and maps did not interest me and now I am too old to revise my life's work”. 1 Reissued in 1964 by James Clarke & Co., London, as A Guide to Glastonbury's Temple of the Stars - their giant effigies described from air-views, maps and from ‘The High History of the Holy Grail’. Mary Caine informed me in 1987 that she first began to take an interest in these matters when she came across a collection of Mrs. Maltwood's related papers in a green-house standing in the garden of a house she and her husband had just moved into. Græl Communications (Torquay) published Mary's The Glastonbury Zodiac - key to the mysteries of Britain in 1978, and after further research into a similar set of effigies she discovered in Surrey, West London and South London, she wrote and had published her companion monograph: The Kingston Zodiac. Cornwall's Landscape Zodiac - an exciting discovery revealing secrets of the ancient world (1996) a second book by the author of Cornwall's Landscape Lion - a remarkable discovery on the Lizard peninsula (Elderberry Books, Porthallow Vineyard, St. Keverne, HELSTON, Cornwall TR12 6QH, 1994), Sheila Jeffries who previously lived in Glastonbury states that an ancient Phœnician human visitor to the area 3000 years ago whom she channels today claims that he then reincarnated one of a group of beings initially resident 6000 years earlier on the planet Elos orbitting the star Deneb in the constellation Cygnus but who had subsequently migrated to Earth where they began work on twelve different Zodiacs 9000 years ago although the individual figures were only completed 3000 years ago. Sheila locates one of these other Zodiacs near Cambridge, Lewis Edwards identified the Pumpsaint Zodiac in Wales in 1948, three Zodiacs are claimed in Co. Durham. with others in Buckinghamshire, Cheshire, Essex and Yorkshire, and we are indebted to Alfred Weysen for a fascinating account of a thirteenth in the Verdon gorge in Provence: L'Île des Veilleurs - À la découverte du Temple du Saint-Graal et du trésor des Templiers (nouvelle édition revue et augmentée, Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont,1986). Related acknowledgments of the crucial importance of Ancient Sumerian teaching and of reincarnation as a factor to be considered when studying the development of any particular Individual are reflected in the writings of Joan D'Arcy Cooper (1927-1982). Her Culbone - a spiritual history (1977), The Door Within - some meditations on Illness, Pain, Ageing and Death (1979), The Ancient Teaching of Yoga and the Spiritual Evolution of Man (1979) and Corner-Stones of the Spiritual World (1981) were privately printed and are available only from The Culbone Trust, Porlock Weir, Somerset; Guided Meditation and the Teaching of Jesus was published by Element Books in 1982 (2nd impression: 1985). I have now read all five of Joan's books completely six times and made my own (36-page) Index to their contents. “The reality a person thinks he sees”, Joan writes, “is in fact the mind he inhabits; recognising this fact, let each person take responsibility for his mind by questioning every form it contains”. “Not everything is caused by ourselves. There are accidents and we are vulnerable to other people's actions and states of mind. We are intimately connected with one another, and the healing of everyone's body, mind, and inner being is very much our own concern. ‘Innocent people’ and children do suffer through the weaknesses of others and through forms of distortion and violence which our societies express or allow. It is important to understand this, for it is a fact that we are all inter-related, and the only real answer to suffering which is inflicted on the ‘innocent’ lies in the ultimate spiritual growth of everyone… For most people on Earth, knowledge about ‘eternal life’ or spiritual growth through continuous life-expressions does not form part of their mind-structure when they come into physical bodies. They do not bring with them minds which are structured to accept the existence of more than one life - even though they have in fact already experienced numberless forms of life over a vast period of time. Each form of life has constituted for them the only life, either end of which fades into shadowy existence. In between existences, so to speak, in these shadowy wings, there is a fading out of memory so that each ‘on-stage’ call appears like an original ‘first night’. (This applies to both Western and Eastern people, for even those born into cultures that use such terms are karma or reincarnation to explain life do not find ready access to their own personal memory-traces)… There have been many physical forms into which individual men have incarnated, commencing with the earliest forms of proto-man. These forms represent more primitive stages in man's etheric or spiritual evolution. Man never incarnated in the physical form of plant or animal life. As men evolved spiritually, so the physical forms of mankind progressed as vehicles for his physical manifestation… Since the middle of the nineteenth century, however, an ever-increasing number of people have entered physical bodies that were not suited to their stage of evolution, or into societies whose conditions were inimical to any real learning experience or growth of being - or entered without adequate spiritual preparation themselves for their once-only life on Earth”. I entirely agree with Joan, therefore, that “if you are going to evolve in your spiritual uniqueness and individuality of expression, it is essential to become aware of the sharp differences between people (and influences) who nourish and encourage it, and those who seek to limit or even destroy it. It is necessary to discern clearly between good and evil as it affects your own identity. Evil is anything which makes you feel guilty about having a self, that seeks to destroy your individuality, or imposes the belief that the meaning of your individuality consists in giving it up to another person or deity or abstract image, such as ‘the people’ or ‘society’. Anything or anyone that denies, explicitly or by implication, the meaning of every person's uniqueness and spiritual potential is evil. On the contrary, everything and everyone that encourages it, reveals it, helps it to grow and evolve towards the Light of greater understanding and awareness is good”. That is why I also agree in general with Joseph Blenkinsopp (The Pentateuch - an introduction to the first five books of the Bible, Doubleday 1992, p.28) that “what should be affirmed at the present juncture is the need for coexistence between different interpretative systems with their quite different but not necessarily incompatible agendas…” Joe was my first guide to Stonehenge, Old Sarum and Salisbury Cathedral, and in my inner journey I have been immeasurably assisted by the anonymous author of the only posthumously published Meditations on the Tarot - a journey into Christian Hermeticism (translated by Robert Powell, Warwick, New York: Amity House 1985; Element Books 1991), a book I have so far read from cover to cover nine times and for which I have prepared a 56-page Index. According to the anonymous author, who died shortly after completing his manuscript in French on Trinity Sunday, 21 May 1967: “The Resurrection is the final victory not only over death (as the separation of the soul from the body) but also over sleep (as the separation of the soul from the world of action) and over forgetfulness (as the separation of consciousness from the world of past memories). This means to say that resurrection signifies not only the re-establishment of the integral unity of the spirit, soul and body of the human being, but also the uninterrupted continuity of his activity and the uninterrupted continuity of his consciousness - the whole of his memory. Now, the emergence of complete memory of the entire past is equivalent, for consciousness, to the last judgment, where the whole past is reviewed in the light of conscience…” (p.583.) Meanwhile, “it is death and birth which constantly save human evolution, by acting as the thunderbolt which strikes down and as the wind which blows down; Is it not deeply significant that the spiritual head of the religion of liberation from the wheel of reincarnation is sought - and fourteen times was found - amongst children born immediately after his death?… that Dalai Lamas are found amongst children of the first generation after their decease, through the incontestable facts of concrete memories of their preceding incarnation?… that all fourteen Dalai Lamas2 are only successive reincarnations of a single soul or entity?…” (p.456.) 2 Gendun Drubpa, the first Dalai Lama, was a tulku or officially recognized reincarnation of the Nepali yogi Pemavajra, and the Fourteenth Dalai Lama claims there are another fifty or so previous incarnations to be reckoned with. The Buddhists say that it is mercy which enables the soul of the Dalai Lama to return. As Egerton Sykes notes in reference to Ancient Egyptian religion (in Dent's Who's Who in non-classical mythology, p.62): “The problem of life in the after-world is revealed by the number of parts of the body and personality which had to be considered. They were the Khat or physical body; the Ka or double; the Ba or soul; the Khu or aura; the Khaibit or shadow; the Sekhem or vital force; the Ren or name; the Ab or will, symbolised as a heart; the Hati or physical heart; the Sahu or spirit body; and the Ikh or final spiritual state”. … As well as translating Meditations on the Tarot into English, Robert Powell has published his own study of Hermetic Astrology - Towards a New Wisdom of the Stars: Volume 1. Astrology and Reincarnation (Kinsau, West Germany: Hermetika 1987); Volume 2. Astrological Biography (1989); Volume 3. Christian Hermetic Astrology - The Star of the Magi and the Life of Christ (Great Barrington, Massachusetts: Golden Stone Press 1991). Robert Powell's approach to astrology, which has grown out of his appreciation of the contribution to human knowledge made by Rudolf Steiner (1860-1925) and by Willi Sucher (1902-1985), supposes that the sidereal zodiac is the authentic astrological zodiac and that a hermetic chart based on the Egyptian-Tychonic system is a tool of major significance in the field of astrological reincarnation research: “ ‘Who am I? Where do I come from? What is my task in life?’ These are fundamental questions - existential questions - which many people in our time are asking…” (Vol. 1, p.xiv.) “This work… has little in common with the popular astrology of today, which for the most part represents a profanation of the sacred science of the stars… The astrological ‘laws’ of reincarnation discovered by the author and published in this work do NOT enable previous incarnations to be calculated. For, the mystery of reincarnation is inaccessible to intellectual speculation. No amount of speculative reasoning combined with computational skill can ever penetrate this mystery. It is along other paths - whereby, instead of the brain, the heart becomes an organ of knowledge - that knowledge of reincarnation becomes attainable. In this deeper sense is this work truly a concern of the heart. And those who read it from this point of view will recognize that the contents of the following pages are only scattered fragments serving as indicators on the way towards a new wisdom of the stars. Truth to tell, this new wisdom of the stars can hardly be communicated in book form; for it is a matter of inner knowledge and experience attained during the course of spiritual growth… The author of this book, who qualifies as a scientist (in that for several years he was a lecturer in mathematics and statistics in the Department of Computing and Cybernetics at Brighton Polytechnic, England) is convinced that hermeticism - in particular Christian hermeticism - can help to act as a redeeming impulse (especially in relation to the amoral consciousness that has arisen in the modern scientific era) by way of engendering a new moral-spiritual consciousness of man in his relationship to the world” (Ibid., pp.xi-xiii). Until I came across Powell's work, my appreciation of the difference between the system familiar to Tycho and that favoured by Copernicus was limited to having read and enjoyed Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers, but since I now believe Zecharia Sitchin is very likely correct in identifying Marduk of Babylon with Ra of Egypt and in equating Thoth of Egypt with, for example, both Ninghiszada of Mesopotamia and Quetzalcoatl/Kukulcan of Meso-, Central & South America, and also in regarding Hermes Trismegistus and Mercury as one and the same person, I understand that we will do well to explore much more deeply the family relationships between Jewish, Egyptian and Babylonian astrological traditions and between all those and their Sumerian and pre-Egyptian known antecedents… Similarly convinced as I already am that Ra is not the Sun but NASA's Planet ‘X’ - the ‘12th’ planet Nibiru/Marduk that according to the Enuma Elish fashioned our Solar System by dividing Tiamat into Earth and the Asteroid belt, etc., … I rather strongly suspect that, whatever may prove to be true of Tycho, at least as far as ancient initiates (who, incidentally, also knew about Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) were concerned, astrology will have been more Nibiru-focussed than Sun/Moon/Earth centred and, consequently, that in such a hermeneutic perspective much if not all of what we have so far learned from others or grown to understand for ourselves regarding hermetic astrology will vastly benefit from appropriate reconsideration… and, of course, may then need a different Ephemeris than Neil Michelsen's already available and useful The American Sidereal Ephemeris (San Diego, 1981) to complement whichever geocentric Ephemeris you find most suitable to your purpose. In reading Powell's Hermetic Astrology it is also well to remember that what he claims was astrologically true of planet Earth in 20,590 B.C. may be better applied, perhaps, to planet Earth in 279,790 B.C. or in 305,710 B.C. This latter date approximately coincides with that of the genetic engineering in vitro by Enki and Ninharsag in South East Africa of The Adam, while 279,790 or 253,870 or 227,950 B.C. perhaps more closely approximates to the notably later genetic adjustment that made Adam as distinct from The Adam sexually compatible with Eve… Robert Powell has not ventured to provide his readers with any horoscope for either Adam or Eve, but in the light of the principles and laws proposed and discussed in Hermetic Astrology he feels certain that Rudolf Steiner was a reincarnation of St. Thomas Aquinas, that Earl Bertrand Russell was a reincarnation of Sir Francis Bacon and Sir Francis Bacon a reincarnation of Caliph Haroun al-Rashid of Baghdad, John Addey a reincarnation of Michæl Mæstlin, Tycho Brahe a reincarnation of Emperor Julian the Apostate, Ernst Hæckel a reincarnation of Pope Gregory VII, Herman Grimm a reincarnation of Beatrice of Tuscany, Ralph Waldo Emerson a reincarnation of Matilda of Tuscany, King Ludwig II of Bavaria a reincarnation of St. John of the Cross, Friedrich Nietzsche a reincarnation of St. Peter of Alcantara, Novalis a reincarnation of Raphæl, Laurence Oliphant a reincarnation of Ovid, Count Georg von Ertling a reincarnation of Cardinal Mazarin, Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria a reincarnation of the Emperor Nero, Christian Oeser (= Tobias Gottfried Schrœr) a reincarnation of Socrates and Karl Julius Schrœr a reincarnation of Plato, Vladimir Soloviev a reincarnation of St. Hildegard of Bingen, Emmanuel Swedenborg a reincarnation of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Richard Wagner a reincarnation of St. Teresa of Avila, Albrecht von Wallenstein a reincarnation of Emperor Louis the Pious, Otto Weininger a reincarnation of Thomas Campanella, & President Woodrow Wilson a reincarnation of Caliph Mu'awiya. As you know, Roger Pearson's WINDOWS Program Astro-Presentation bases its calculations on the tropical zodiac and facilitates the display of any individual's natal geocentric horoscope in Placidus, Regiomontanus, Campanus, Equal House or Topocentric system format; it also allows a simultaneous concentric display of either progressions or transits. Clearly, what is now needed instead is a program based on the sidereal zodiac similarly facilitating the concentric display of both the geocentric and hermetic natal (or mortuary) horoscopes of any individual in some appropriate format. In interpreting hermetic charts the Moon and Lunar aspects and influences especially reflect the native's immediately preceding incarnation, while the Sun and Solar aspects and influences point towards his or her orientation into the future, and all3 I+N G-d's Providence is placed within the Zodiacal context4 of destiny or ‘fate’+… 3 Cf. Carl Gustav Jung's letter of 9 September 1944: “If a breach goes through a house, then the whole house is affected, not just one half of it. The house is no longer so trustworthy. The conscientious architect does not seek to convince the inhabitants that the rooms on one side or the other of the breach are still in excellent condition, but will concern himself about the breach and will seek ways and means of putting the damage right… As a doctor I am interested solely in the question: How can the wound be healed? It is quite certain that the breach will never be closed by both sides apologeticly extolling their advantages instead of bewailing their lamentable inability to make peace. While mother and daughter squabble, their mutual enemy - Antichrist - is coming to the fore and showing these Christians, who are quarrelling over THEIR truth, what HE can do, for he is more egotistical than all”. 4 According to Robert Powell's calculation of the regression of the vernal point through the twelve signs of the Zodiac (Hermetic Astrology, Vol. 1, p.56) the last age of Aquarius extended from 23546-21386 B.C., Capricorn 21386-19226 B.C., Sagittarius 19226-17066 B.C., Scorpio 17066-14906 B.C., Libra 14906-12746 B.C., Virgo 12746-10586 B.C., Leo 10586-8426 B.C., Cancer 8426-6266 B.C., Gemini 6266-4106 B.C., Taurus 4106-1946 B.C., Aries 1946 B.C. - 215 A.D., Pisces A.D.215-2375 and the next age of Aquarius will extend from 2375-4535 A.D. However, since our states of social consciousness are disinclined to change in the twinkling of an eye (Ibid., p.89, note 14 & p.66, table 3), “The time-lag of 1199 years between the start of an astrological age and the start of the corresponding cultural age means that the last 961 years… of a zodiacal age coincide with the first 961 years of the corresponding cultural age”, so that from a cultural point of view the last era of Taurus in which man experienced himself as a child of the Divine ran from 2907-747 B.C.; the last era of Aries in which man experienced himself as an individual in relationship to the Divine was that Nabonassar inaugurated on the first day of the Egyptian month of Thoth in 747 B.C., i.e. on 26 February 747 B.C. according to the Julian Calendar (o.c., p.56) and which lasted until A.D. 1414; and our current Piscean cultural era in which each man, woman or child seeks to experience him- or herself as a free personality began only in 1414 A.D. and will continue until 3574 A.D. Although both the zodiacal age and the cultural era of Aquarius have, therefore, not yet begun, it is true that the Kali Yuga has already ended and that we are living in the New Age - according to Rudolf Steiner this began when the Maitreya Bodhisattva, born in 1900, began his spiritual activity at the age of thirty-three in A.D. 1933; he will not incarnate as the Maitreya Buddha until A.D. 4443 (Ibid., p.91, notes 34 & 39). + The biblical distinction between “destiny” and “fate” is explained by Z. Sitchin in his The Cosmic Code (Avon Books, 1998). As regards the calculations, that should not be very difficult to program for, since Robert Powell has done so much work on this already, but a parallel Hermetic Astro-Analysis for WINDOWS similar in format to your own already available interpretation Program may require more than a little time - “Then straightway lay thy dexter finger on thy lips and say: ‘O Silence! Silence! Silence!’ The Cymbal of the Living G-d beyond decay”… Mithraic Ritual   Introducing Robert Powell's Hermetic Astrology available in 3 volumes from Golden Stone Press, Box 974, Great Barrington, MA 01230, U.S.A.   “Test me, O G-d, and know my thoughts; see whether I step in the wrong path, and guide me along the everlasting way”. Entrance Antiphon at Mass on Thursday in the Second Week of Lent   Post mortem “man mounts upwards through the structure of the heavens. And to the first zone of the heaven he gives up the force which works in increase and decrease; to the second zone, the machinations of evil cunning; to the third zone, the lust whereby many are deceived; to the fourth zone, domineering arrogance; to the fifth zone, unholy daring and rash audacity; to the sixth zone, evil strivings after wealth; and to the seventh zone, the falsehood which lies in wait to work harm. And thereupon having been stripped of all that was wrought upon him by the structures of the heavens, he ascends to the substance of the eighth sphere, being now possessed of his own proper power”. Corpus Hermeticum I, 25-26a (trsl. W. Scott, Hermetica, p.129).   “The journey into incarnation takes place in the reverse order to the voyage of the soul after death”. Hermetic Astrology, Vol. 1, p.270.   “The teaching of the Eastern Church Fathers is to the effect that though man fell from his divine state in which he bore the image and likeness of G-d, he fell only insofar as his likeness to G-d is concerned. Man's archetypal image nature in relation to G-d has remained intact and unspoiled, despite the Temptation and Fall”. Paul M. Allen, Valdimir Soloviev - Russian Mystic (New York 1978), p.285.   “In image he possesses freedom of will, and in likeness he possesses virtues”. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon on the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.   In the light of St. Bernard's teaching, the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot (Element Books 1991, Letter XIV) considers the moral aspect of the relationship between the individuality and the personality to be analogous to that between the image and the likeness, but hermetic astrology focuses on the cosmic aspect of this relationship and examines how both the image and the likeness actively contribute to the formation of the vehicles,required by the individuality for incarnation. “In the light of hermetic astrology, man's archetypal image nature is the zodiacal man, the spiritual archetype of the physical body. This has remained intact. However, with the Fall the whole of nature - including man's corporeality - fell, descending to a level at which the physical body is no longer a true expression of the image… The physical body of the human being, as formed during the embryonic period, is a cross-product of heredity and the working of the image, [since] after the Fall heredity began to play a rôle ‘visiting the iniquity of the Father upon the children to the third and fourth generation’ (Dt 5:10)… Moreover, since the personality is a result of the earthly incarnations of the human being, the personality also is fallen - nevertheless… reflecting the image. Astrologically speaking, the Ascendant is the focal centre of the image, which is reflected on Earth below on the one hand in the physical appearance and on the other hand in the personality of the human being… whilst the individuality is signified by the Sun, which is the central focus of the likeness”. “The image and the likeness… [are] the zodiacal man and the hermetic man. The zodiacal man indicates that the bodily nature of the human being is formed in the image of the zodiacal sphere of fixed stars. The hermetic man, on the other hand, indicates that the inner being of man is formed in the likeness of the seven planets of the solar system: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Moon. Knowledge of the zodiacal man (image) and the hermetic man (likeness) - and of their correspondences with the human being - is central to hermetic astrology. Hermetic astrology is concerned with coming to a knowledge of the image and the likeness in relation to the mystery of individuality - the mystery of reincarnation - whereby the image and the likeness comprise the macrocosmic aspect of the human being's vehicles for incarnation through conception and birth”. Hermetic Astrology, Vol. 1, pp.295-7.   How do man's hermetic senses of clairvoyance, clairaudience and spiritual touch awaken and grow? In Rudolf Steiner's experience and according to Roberft Powell: “Through thinking away the limbs the Moon forces in the human being become perceptible to lunar consciousness. Similarly, through thinking away the chest the Sun forces indwelling man become manifest to solar consciousness… Through thinking away the head the zodiacal forces active in the upper human being become revealed to zodiacal consciousness… The solar eye, which views the cosmos from the vantage point of the Sun sphere, sees a variety of helio-geocentric configurations relating to the potential hermetic chart for the next incarnation, whilst the lunary eye reviews from the perspective of the Moon sphere a series of geocentric planetary configurations pertaining to the potential geocentric chart. The two eyes have to be brought into focus, until they coincide, i.e., until the ‘double vision’ of two separate and unrelated charts focuses upon a planetary configuration in which the two charts are fused together by virtue of the coincidence of hermetic and geocentric configurations at a single point in time. This future point in time is then the moment of birth chosen by the human being for his arrival on Earth in his next incarnation… Generally speaking, the birth chart (hermetic and geocentric) of a past incarnation portrays that which was intended for that incarnation, and the death chart (hermetic and geocentric) offers a picture of that which actually came to pass… In the case of alternating male and female incarnations, if the new incarnation is planned as a male incarnation… then the previous male incarnation will generally be of overriding importance - and vice versa in the case of a planned female incarnation”. Hermetic Astrology, Vol. 1, pp.268-70.   “The chart for the moment of conception is calculated retrospectively from the chart for the moment of birth… The zodiacal longitudes of the Ascendant and the Moon at birth are interchanged with those at conception or their opposite. [This] hermetic rule determines the moment of etheric conception, which falls close in time to the physical conception. At the etheric conception the image - having formed the spiritual archetyple of the physical body - begins to work into the formation of the embryo. This spiritual archetype - an imprint of the image - is released by the incarnating human being from the Moon sphere to unite with the fertilized egg provided by the parents. The chart of conception therefore signifies astrologically the shaping impulse of the image in the formation of the embryo, moulding the physical body to become a vehicle for the earthly incarnation of the human being”. Hermetic Astrology, Vol. 1, p.291   St. Thomas Aquinas died at Fossanova on 7 March 1274 at about 3 a.m.; Rudolf Steiner was conceived in Kraljavec at about 12.12 p.m. on 1 June 1860. It is interesting to compare the hermetic mortuary of Aquinas with that of Steiner's conception. In each case the inner circle exhibits the geocentric and the outer circle the hermetic chart, but only the latter includes the positions of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, since their geocentric sidereal positions hardly differ from their sidereal longitudes in the hermetic chart:   “Willi Sucher's research findings can be summarized as follows: the ten lunar sidereal months of the embryonic period… prefigure ten 7-year periods of life -Ps 90:10, ‘The years of our life are three score and ten’. This is meant in the sense that the karma (destiny) under which the incarnating soul stands becomes ‘woven’ into the human being's etheric body during the embryonic period in such a way that during each successive lunar sidereal month the karma for each successive 7-year period becomes incorporated into his etheric organism…Two events, taken together, comprise conception. The first is the fertilization of the egg by the sperm: this is the physical aspect of conception, constituting the commencement of the formation of the physical body. The second event is the uniting of the incarnating soul with the fertilized egg by way of releasing the archetype of the physical body formed by the image… The soul experiences, in the form of a tableau, a vision of its karma [and] it can happen that the soul receives such a shock… that it holds back… This is one of the causes of mongolism, where the physical body becomes retarded in its development and the soul is not fully incarnated… There is an exact correspondence between the sequence of 7-year life periods and the planetary sequence… Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Zodiac”. . Hermetic Astrology, Vol. 2, p.105-7   Each 7-year period in the incarnation of the Individual Being combines a destined journey through twelve Houses during the life portrayed in the geocentric chart with growth in consciousness as shown in the hermetic chart: The Moon associated with the brain especially influences the head and via the root chakra the will and the physical body generally. Mercury associated with the lungs especially influences the chest and via the so called spleen chakra intelligence, our feelings and the etheric body generally. Venus associated with the kidneys especially influences the limbs and via the solar plexus chakra love, thinking and the astral body generally. During the next three 7-year periods the Sun associated with the heart, the circulation of the blood and growth in self-identity via the heart chakra occupies centre stage. Mars associated with the gall-bladder, speech/power via the throat chakra and the spirit-self is especially active at age 42-49, Jupiter associated with the liver, thought/ wisdom via the so called third-eye chakra and the life-spirit or divine likeness in hermetic man at age 49-56, Saturn associated with the spleen, memory/consciousness via the 1000-petalled lotus and spirit-man or the divine image in zodiacal man at age 56-63, and the Rainbow Zodiac of Individual Life I+N Union with G-d ever increasingly thereafter, as may be much better appreciated by a prayerful meditation of the teachings contained in Meditations on the Tarot… Note that in each of the traditional ten 7-year period's the seven annual stages are successively: (a) resting in oneself, (b) movement, dialogue and interchange, (c) inner life, feeling and love, (d) awakening, coming to oneself and self-assertion, (e) self-realisation, (f) self-knowledge and (g) self-recollection. M eanwhile, the native's preliminary journey through each of the 12 houses, beginning from the Ascendant, is typically focussed on the so called twelve labours of Hercules: (1) life, (2) estate, (3) brothers and sisters, (4) parents, (5) children, (6) health, (7) marriage, (8) death, (9) religion, (10) honours, (11) friends and (12) enemies… To: Brian C. Bates, BA, MA, PhD Department of Psychology University of Sussex, BRIGHTON, Sussex BN1 9QN Thursday, 13 March 1997 Dear Dr. Bates, The Wisdom of the Wyrd In the hope that you will welcome this modest contribution to your own ongoing process of research and reflection I venture a few comments on your most recent book which I have just read after re-reading your wondrously crafted The Way of Wyrd. One book can, as you say, do no more than touch the surface of your chosen subject and no word-hoard, no matter how skillfully deployed, can effectively mediate the dynamic vitality of the essence of wyrd. Nevertheless, I also agree with you that written references are valuable and so, while aware that your printed bibliographies represent no more than a reader-friendly selection from among those sources you are already individually acquainted with, you may now wish to at least glance at “The Story of the Tinkle-Tinkle” by Michæl Fairless in her The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse (London: Duckworth & Co., 1905). Although your claim (p.46) that “since we rarely attend to the Moon's influence over our lives, there has never been a systematic programme of research on the matter” is in several respects true, Rudolf Hauschka in his The Nature of Substance (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2nd edition, 1983, p.195) reports that “certain disturbed states of consciousness, such as epilepsy and somnambulism, worsen or improve with changes of the moon”, and (p.19) that experiments with sprouting seeds “consistently gave evidence of weight gains or losses in every waxing and waning moon period respectively”, etc., and - even more germane to your sphere of interest - another Steiner-related investigator Robert Powell reports Willi Sucher's finding that “the karma (destiny) under which the incarnating soul stands becomes ‘woven’ into the human being's etheric body during the embryonic period in such a way that during each successive lunar sidereal month the karma for each successive 7-year period becomes incorporated into his etheric organism”, etc. (cf. R. Powell, Hermetic Astrology, Vol.2, pp.105-7). In advocating (p.2) “the rediscovery of our own sacred heritage” you rightly note that we have very largely forgotten the “civilisation of the forest peoples of Europe, the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic tribal cultures, the ‘native Europeans’ of one thousand years ago and more, and their ways of deep understanding”. Working within a different hermeneutic perspective than yours, Yair Davidy's The Tribes (Hebron, Isræl: Russell-Davis Publishers 1993, xvii+480 pages) comprehensively argues that, as is more succinctly explained by W. E. Filmer in A Synopsis of the Migrations of Isræl (1934, reprinted 1994 by Covenant Books, 8 Blades Court, Deodar Road, Putney, LONDON, SW15 2NU, tel:0181-877-9010, who can also supply The Tribes) that (1) in about 732 B.C. Isrælites taken into exile by the Assyrians were called Bit-Khumri and, later, Gimira; (2) in 707 B.C. the Gimira defeated an Urartian army operating south of Lake Urmia; (3) from 710-590 B.C. the Isrælites/Gimira, known as the Cimmerians by the Greeks, established a reign of terror in Asia Minor and then moved to a place called Arsareth (2 Esdras 13:40-44) in what is now Europe; (4) in 650-600 B.C. Isrælites in Media became known as Scythians and after an alliance with Assyria established colonies in Sacasene and Bactria; (5) in 650-500 B.C. Cimmerians in Europe moved up the Danube and became known as Celts; (6) in 525-300 B.C. other Thraco-Cimmerians were driven out of South Russia and moved North-West between the rivers Oder and Vistula to the Baltic, where they later became known as Cimbri; (7) in 600-500 B.C. following the collapse of their Assyrian allies, the Scythians were driven North through the Caucasus by the Medes and settled in South Russia; (8) in 250-100 B.C. South Russia was invaded from the East by the Sarmatians who drove the Scythians North-West through Poland into Germany; (9) in 400-100 B.C. the Celts expanded from central Europe, some attacking Rome in 390 B.C. and settling in northern Italy for 200 years, others known as Galatians invading Greece in 279 B.C. and then migrating to Asia Minor, but most moving West into France and later Britain - so that, in summary, what Yair Davidy calls “the Isrælite origins of Western peoples” can be spelled out as Ephraim - Britain; Menasseh - North America; Reuben - France; Simeon - Celts & Jews; Levi - with the Jews; Yehuda - Jutes & Jews; Issachar - Swiss & Fins; Zebulon - Holland; Gad - Sweden; Asher - Scots; Benjamin - Belgæ & Normans; Dan - Danes & Celts; Naphtali - Norwegians. If these findings are to any significant extent true, you might find that, notwithstanding mediæval Christianity's regrettable suppression of much we would prefer to have been nurtured and nourished in Nordic culture, the Jewish-Christian Bible and such works as Harold Knight's The Hebrew Prophetic Consciousness (London & Redhill: Lutterworth Press 1947) and Donald Evans' The Logic of Self-Involvement (London: SCM Press 1963) are intrinsically relevant to our proper understanding of both the relative homogeneity of the cultures you are chiefly drawing to your reader's attention and of the way of Wyrd, whether or not you choose to attune to echoes of this latter's vital rhythms in, e.g., Francis of Assisi, John Milton, Emmanuel Swedenborg, William Blake and Gordon Strachan (cf. the latter's Christ and the Cosmos (Dunbar: Labarum Publications 1985). Perhaps you have been over generous in crediting with evidential authority some of the ancient written documents you mentioned or quoted. Peter Brown in his Authority and the Sacred - aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge University Press 1995), which mainly concerns a period prior to that you have investigated, relevantly says: “A glance at the art and secular culture of the late empire makes one fact abundantly clear; when the ‘governing élite’ of this officially Christian empire presented themselves to themselves and to the world at large, as being ‘in truth governing’, the ‘set of symbolic forms’ by which they expressed this fact owed little or nothing to Christianity”. As a translator and writer also assaying to be a riter/righter/wrighter/writher I personally am intrigued by some of Robert Elbaz's remarks in his The Changing Nature of the Self - a critical study of the autobiographic discourse (Beckenham: Croom Helm 1988, pp.47-48): “Rather than going back to the origins of the text, the book, the concept, would it not be more meaningful to speak of the text as a field of play of socio-cultural phenomena, as the intertext of a social whole, as an interface of an indefinite set of ongoing dialectical relations? It is certainly more productive to speak of the inclusive text - that is, the space in which all texts occur - of a given socio-cultural entity. Such an inclusive Text, although never fully encompassable given that these dialectical relations form an endless semiotic field, would reveal the various intertexts that contribute to shape the textual production of the social forces which make up the social whole, for the productive forces of a social whole transcend the limit of individuality”. As regards your occasional written use of the term(s) “object” and/or “objectivity” which, unlike your chosen Way in life, appears to me not yet free of the systematically misleading implications you (p.66) associate with Cartesianism, may I suggest you take a look at Chapters 6-8 of Bernard Lonergan's Insight - a study of human understanding (revised students' edition, London: Longmans 1958; posthumous critical edition, University of Toronto Press 1992) which consider: “Common Sense and its Subject”, “Common Sense as Object” and “Things” in a way that in 1958 profoundly modified my then mode of being in the world. No doubt you already know César Calvo's The Three Halves of Ino Moxo - teachings of the Wizard of the Upper Amazon (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International 1995)? It is good that increasingly on every side so many now are switching from death to Life, from sleep to Wakefulness, from forgetting to Memory… The wisdom in your most recent book does not just bubble out “like water from a spring” as charmingly and infectiously as it did in your first published spell-binder, but I have learned a great deal from and have taken pleasure in reading it. Please accept my congratulations on this further achievement!…   Complementary Notes: (1) The Way of Wyrd - Tales of an Anglo-Saxon Sorcerer, first published by Century in 1983 and re-issued by Arrow Books in 1996, “attracted the interest of hundreds of thousands of readers in Europe and America, and in translation into German and French”. The Wisdom of the Wyrd - Teachings for today from our ancient past was published in 1996 by Rider, an imprint of Ebury Press, Random House. (2) In both books good and evil are dramatically and dialectically opposed as if they were contradictory opposites but, if we accept the Aristotelian notion of evil as privatio boni (cf. the scholastic tag: goodness requires fullness of being; evil is predicated of any defect), Wat Brand's eventual Christian acceptance of Wulf's ‘pagan’ folk-ways (The Way of Wyrd - Epilogue) may be understood not simply as an expression of the mystic's coincidentia oppositorum but also as a Lonerganian (or neo-Pauline) subsumption of Nature into Grace - this indeed appears to have been Brother Eappa's quietly confident hope and prayer throughout. (3) While we find the mediæval Christians' suppression of Nordic culture abhorrent, granted that culture's esteem for frank and open conflict to the death, it is not surprising that, e.g., St. Boniface (Wynfrith) of Crediton's felling of a sacred oak (which had been venerated for centuries) at Hesse in Germany failed to provoke any hostile reaction, especially when signs of vibrant new growth were revealed within the old trunk, as it fell to the ground and split open. Although Boniface had been schooled in the Christian Way by Abbot Wulfhard of Exeter and Abbot Winbert of Nursling, it is likely that his noble mother was also a mistress of Wyrd. Shalom, the Hebrew term for ‘peace’, is also mentioned in the Old Testament as one characteristic of a just war. (4) If, as Robert Powell seeks to demonstrate in his three volumes of Hermetic Astrology (Kinsau, West Germany: Hermetika 1987, 1989; Great Barrington, Massachusetts: Golden Stone Press 1991), Rudolf Steiner was a reincarnation of St. Thomas Aquinas & Richard Wagner a reincarnation of St. Teresa of Avila a balancing process of at-one-ment would appear to be well underway. Interestingly, Bishop P. Michael Micari (Yogi Satchakrananda) of the “Holy Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch-Malabar Rite”, who currently* enjoys “the Jurisdiction of the Diocese of Iceland and North Atlantic Territories”, resides at the “Fire & Ice Hermitage” at Kvennaholl on Iceland's West coast. (5) The Wisdom of the Wyrd contains much about water that is of interest. Guy Underwood in The Pattern of the Past (Museum Press, 1969; Abacus 1972) mentions that when a river is flowing from its inland source into the sea some form of electrical current is also flowing from the sea back to that inland source. * i.e., when this letter was written. This gentleman's present status is something else… To Piers Paul Read c/o The Claridge Press, 6 Linden Gardens LONDON W2 4ES Sunday, 16 March 1997 Dear Mr. Read, Quo Vadis? - The Subversion of the Catholic Church You conclude your 1991 Claridge Blasts Pamphlet under the above title with a reference to one of the documents of Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium (28): “Among the more important duties of bishops that of preaching the Gospel has pride of place. For the bishops are heralds of the faith, who draw new disciples to Christ; they are authentic teachers, that is teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach the faith… make it bear fruit and with watchfulness ward off whatever errors threaten their flock”. Then, as an Ampleforth College educated father of four children, Cambridge history graduate, sometime governor of Cardinal Manning Boys' School (North Kensington) and author of two works of non-fiction as well as eleven novels (p.44), you observe (pp.42-3 with clarifications from pp.37-8): “As the Church embarks upon the decade of Evangelisation, it is difficult to discover what the bishops themselves believe. In 1988, the very year in which Weaving the Web [a ‘cumulatively systematic modular programme of Religious Education’ and so, in the words of its authors, Richard Lohan and a graduate of Heythrop College, Sister Mary Mclure: ‘not primarily concerned with maturing and developing Christian faith’] was first published, Cardinal Hume, the Archbishop of Westminster, addressed pilgrims from his diocese at Aylesford. Let me speak to you seriously about my own thoughts and concerns at this time, I have three priorities for my ministry which I sincerely hope you will think about and make your own… First, there is the great and urgent task to hand on to the next generation the truths of our Catholic faith revealed to us by Our Lord as taught to us by the Church down the ages. Now Cardinal Hume was a monk at Ampleforth where I was learned the Faith as a child. Nothing that I was taught was refuted by Vatican II; equally, nothing that I was taught is recognisable in the modules of Weaving the Web. Yet Weaving the Web has the Nihil Obstat of Monsignor Ralph Brown, Vicar General of the Diocese of Westminster, and the imprimatur of Monsignor Vincent Nichols, Secretary to the Conference of Bishops of England and Wales. Neither an imprimatur nor a nihil obstat imply that those who give them agree with what is written; but they are there to assure the reader that it is free from the kind of error which might threaten the flock. It therefore enables Weaving the Web to be used in the Catholic schools. But just as there can be sins of ommission , so there can be error by commission; simply from the standpoint of intellectual coherence, it is difficult to understand (italics mine) how Cardinal Hume can see in the Christianity described in Weaving the Web the ‘truths of our Catholic faith… taught to us by the Church down the ages’. Nor, if the words are to have any meaning, can Weaving the Web be said to be free of syncretism and indifferentism condemned by the Council, or ‘that false irenicism which harms the purity of Catholic doctrine’. ‘It is a miserable time,’ wrote Cardinal Newman [ in A Form of Infidelity of the Day], ‘when a man's Catholic profession is no voucher for his orthodoxy, and when a teacher of religion may be within the Church's pale yet external to her faith. Such has been for a season the trial of her children at various eras of history…’ Such, in my view, is the trial of the English church today. Tormented by the tawdriness of its spiritual condition, and baffled by the paradoxes and mysteries of life, a generation hungers for the bread of truth. It is fed stones”. I am told your other writings are both well known and highly regarded but am not personally acquainted with any of them. However, I bought my second-hand copy of your Claridge Blast (which has not, I take it, been widely read, since it was printed by Short Run Press, Exeter) two days ago in a local bookshop and have read it all with very considerable interest. On page 4, for instance, presumably at least with your approval if not as a result of your explicit request or specific direction, the publishers announce: “All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by an means, including photocopying and recording, without the written permission of the copyright holder, application for which should be addressed to the publishers. Such written permission must also be obtained before any part of this publication is stored in a retrieval system of any nature”. Word-processors were already in common use when Quo Vadis? was “first published in Great Britain” in “1991” so, to use your expression, it is difficult to understand how I can request The Claridge Press's permission to quote, e.g., the 63-word copyright announcement above cited “before” storing it in my own computer's memory! Leaving for another occasion any further exploration of the ethical questions posed by that publishers' announcement, and even before I attempt to share with you the main elements of my response to your important and helpful statement of difficulties currently experienced by many Catholics here and abroad, allow me to entrust a few more quotations from your pamphlet to the excellent electronic memory of my desk-top PC: (1) "When the Americans… are told by Kinsey that most of them masturbate, their reaction is not to repent but to conclude that if everyone does it, it cannot be wrong. The spread of American influence after World War II is not to be measured just by the advance of jeans and Coca Cola, but by the acceptance of concepts (italics mine) such as ‘self-evident’ human rights; the pursuit of happiness as an ideal; of pluralism, democracy and many of those other ideas which were viewed with such suspicion by the Popes in the nineteenth century. It is to be traced in the decrees of Vatican II (italics mine), and triumphed in the repudiation of Humanae Vitæ which itself dared to reject not just the American technology of the contraceptive pill but Hollywood's idea of sex as the expression of romantic love” (p.21). (2) “Over the two decades which followed [Vatican Council II] 50,000 priest left the priesthood (italics mine)… There was a comparable defection (italics mine) among nuns” (pp.17-8). (3) “The basic objection to Liberation Theology is that it reverses the priorities of the Christian life” (p.32). (4) “To the traditionalists Romero was a good but gullible man who was manipulated by Marxist priests; to the progressives the Pope is the apostle of an ‘oppressive’ Christianity, a peddlar of an opiate Catholicism to the People of G-d (spelling mine). The progressives live in fear of the death squads; the traditionalists live in fear of the guerillas. ‘The real untold story,’ a Salesian father told me, ‘is the persecution of the traditional church’” (p.34). (5) “In Britain the adherents of Liberation Theology appear to dominate most of the Church's lay institutions” (p.35). (6) “The Tablet, an intelligent and well-edited weekly review, publishes in its section ‘The Church in the World’ items which read like press releases from the Catholic Institute for International Affairs (CIIR, which has the Rev. David Konstant, the Bishop of Leeds, as its Episcopal Adviser). CIIR conferences are covered by the former Jesuit, Michæl Walsh, now Librarian at Heythrop College, the Theological Faculty of London University, who is a member of the Council of the CIIR. No one reading The Tablet could possibly suspect that the majority of the bishops in El Salvador, including the President of the Bishops' Conference, the Bishop of Zacatecoluca, Monsignor Tovar, recognize the legitimacy of the Arena government and its armed forces, and condemn the Marxist guerillas (FMLN). The editorial line of The Tablet is not confined to favouring Liberation Theology; it invariably supports dissident theologians and criticises the ‘official’ church. It is opposed, in advance, to the Universal Catechism which is being prepared in Rome; on Humanæ Vitæ, homosexuality, women priests, married priests, Ecumenicism, intercommunion, and the full table d'hôte of the alternative magisterium it faithfully reflects the progressive point of view. It is the same when it comes to the Catholic Herald, a paper even more zealous than The Tablet in opposing the Vatican and promoting the cause of the anti-capitalist ‘progressive’ Church. “There remains The Universe, the religious paper with the widest circulation in Britain and owned by the Bishops of England and Wales. What is its line? It is in favour of justice and peace. It [is] against war. It is against poverty and famine and abortion too. Every now and then it will carry an insert promoting the ‘progressive’ church; but by and large it pursues a bland, inoffensive line reflecting a bland, inoffensive religion whose main purpose, like Oxfam or the Red Cross, is to help the hungry, the sick and the poor” (pp. 36-7 with clarifications from pp.33,35). (7) “Audacious hypotheses… make up the Christian religion” (p.9). (8) “As Nietzsche realised, ‘Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and complete (italics yours) view of things’” (p.9). (9) “Always within the Catholic Church there has prevailed a concept (italics mine) of orthodoxy about (italics mine) the core of its beliefs” (p.10). (10) “As Simone de Beauvoir [whose ‘understanding’ of such terms as ‘subject’ and ‘object’, ‘same’ and ‘other’ closely corresponds to that of Jean-Paul Sartre - and not at all to that of St. Thomas Aquinas] appreciated, the essential character of eroticism is ‘a movement towards the Other’, yet where a marriage is successful ‘husband and wife become for one another the Same’”(p.22). (11) “Theology… though it has been called the queen of sciences… is in fact the mere handmaid of religion - as superfluous to sanctity as the study of æsthetics is to the creation of a work of art” (p.31). (12) “There was, in the decree on Divine Revelation a clause which allowed (italics mine) biblical scholars to ‘look for that meaning which the sacred writers (sic?), in a determined situation and given circumstances of his (sic?) time and culture, intended to express and did in fact express, through the medium of a contemporary literary form’ (Dei Verbum, 11)” (p.28). Even before I purchased your Quo Vadis? a quick perusal of its contents taken together with your Christian name, Piers Paul, reminded me - with tears in my eyes - of the late Pier Paolo Pasolini's “Gli italiani non sono più quelli” front-page article in Corriere Della Sera as far back as 10 June 1974: “The middle ceti have changed radically and, I would say, anthropologically; their positive values are no longer those of their priests or the Holy Faith, but, though they have yet to put a name to their new-found ideology, they now acknowledge in practice the hedonistic values of the consumer society and consequently have adopted the North American Modernist heresy of universal mutual tolerance. By ‘improving’ the production of superfluous goods, driving people mad with the urge to consume, and manipulating fashions and the mass media, television especially, the Establishment itself has invoked these new values, and cynically thrown to one side the traditional values and the Catholic Church that symbolized their authority. Peasant Italy with all its many industries has collapsed, and lies broken in pieces beyond repair; it has left a void that in all probability will be filled by transforming the country into something completely bourgeois, Americanized, tolerant when it ought not to be, a victim of the Modernist heresy… There is no longer any historical continuity. The ‘development’ the Establishment wanted just because it seemed expedient has come with a vengeance as an epoch-making event; in the course of a few years it has radically transformed the whole Italian world… From an ancient cultural organization based on wealthy middle ceti of humanists and a population of illiterates the country has turned into an up-to-date mass-cultural organization. This fact is enormous, and really does, I must emphasize, constitute an anthropology ‘mutation’… The consequent cultural levelling-down process affects everybody alike, the populace and the bourgeoisie, the workers and the lumpenproletariat. The social setting has changed in a way that has meant much more uniformity. All Italians are now cast from the same mould. Real differences no longer exist - unless we count as a difference the empty gestures of going through the lifeless motions of choosing one's political colour - and Italian citizens, Fascist or counter-Fascist, are all alike. They have become interchangeable culturally, psychologically and even, which is quite impressive, physically as well. I repeat that, except at election time, or suchlike political occasions, there is nothing in their physical appearance, gesture or routine behaviour that allows one to choose between them” (English translation © Colin Hamer 1976 quoted from S. S. Acquaviva & M. Santuccio, Social Structure in Italy - crisis of a system, London: Martin Robertson 1976, pp. 86-7). I am confident you will recognise that your name-sake's angst reflects a crisis that is confined neither to Europe nor to our social structure; we are, indeed, and have for some time been confronted by a crisis of anthropological mutation - that was why Leo XIII issued Aeterni Patris, why Pius XII acquired and shared that wisdom Peter Hebblethwaite tended to sneer away as the substitution of dead encyclopœdias of theology for G-d's Living Word, and why John XXIII actively promoted within the Church “una cert'apertura alla sinistra”… The challenge now confronting us - which will not go away - is, I suggest, much greater than either you or the Catholic hierarchy of England & Wales have so far acknowledged. Words both written and spoken have an important but relatively very small part to play in helping each and every one of us both individually and collectively to face this challenge. In the course of the last fifty years I have contributed my share of verbiage to the common pool and if, e.g., as a reader of The Tablet, you have been hitherto unaware of that fact, just as I have been unaware of your contributions, no doubt the explanation is very largely that you have given in (5) and (6) above. It would not be at all difficult to offer evidence from my own experience in support of most of the claims you make in Quo Vadis?, but I see little advantage in doing so in any great detail and, in the remaining portion of this initial response to your cri di cœur, I hope to explain why that is so - principally by reference to your own (1)-(12) above: (1) As a Salesian Co-operator who was a religiously professed member of the Salesians of St. John Bosco from September 1953 until February 1971, I cherish Holy Purity as the quintessence of Divine Charity. My Ecstasy and Vendetta - The Making and Unmaking of a Catholic Priest (London: Peter Davies 1973) referred to Humanæ Vitæ (pp.124,126,129), briefly reviewed the Biblical texts most obviously relevant to our understanding of human sexuality (pp.135-46), and explicitly acknowledged the institutional Catholic Church's ongoing disapprobation of masturbation (p.147) - all this, I claimed (p.55), within the vitally dynamic and existential context of my “clear commitment to what Bernard Lonergan calls the Transcendental Imperative: Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, develop and, if necessary, change”… That is why I have italicised ‘concepts’ . “Why Ryle is not a Behaviourist” (Philosophical Studies, Maynooth, vol.17, 1968, pp.7-25), an extract from my Ph.D. thesis fortified not only by the Nihil Obstat and imprimatur of the then Archbishop of Dublin but also by a further nihil obstat and imprimi potest granted by the competent authorities within the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome, sufficiently details my awareness that in contemporary English use and usage “concepts” frequently is intended to signify something far richer than any merely abstract notion - indeed, for St. Thomas Aquinas, it is Christ as Verbum Dei who is our primary analogue for gradually growing, albeit howsoever imperfectly and obscurely, to appreciate the meaning of being, mediated by our G-d-given insights of which abstract concepts are effects, not causes! Scholastic ‘thinkers’, however, especially from the 14th century onwards, commonly (and unsurprisingly) substituted picture-‘thinking’ for understanding, and I suspect that neither you nor those you critique are entirely clear about the difference… Although Vatican II, as you rightly state, differed from Trent in that it defined no new dogmas, both Councils were principally pastoral in intention. As Trent, so Vatican II adopted formulations designed to be definite enough to differentiate between Catholic orthodoxy and non-Catholic failures fully to articulate it, yet vague enough to win the approval of a wide variety of always imperfect ways of attempting to express human understanding of Divine Truth. As Aquinas, Angelic Doctor & Prince of Theologians, clarifies: “Quilibet actus exsequendus est secundum quod convenit ad suum finem. Disputatio autem ad duplicem finem potest ordinari. Quædam enim disputatio ordinatur ad removendum dubitationem an ita sit; et in tali disputatione theologica maxime utendum est auctoritatibus… Quædam vero disputatio est magistralis in scholis, non ad removendum errorem, sed ad instruendum auditores ut inducantur ad intellectum veritatis quam intendit: et tunc oportet rationibus inniti investigantibus veritatis radicem, et facientibus scire quomodo sit verum quod dicitur: alioquin si nudis auctoritatibus magister quæstionem determinet, certificabitur quidem auditor quod ita est; sed nihil scientiæ vel intellectus acquiret, et vacuus abscedet” (Quodl. IV, q.9, a.18, c.). Aristotle had earlier explained this important difference between the way in which, e.g., first, our inquiry into the phases of the Moon leads us to appreciate that the Moon must truly be a sphere and, secondly, our intellectual understanding of what it means to say that the Moon is a sphere enables us to appreciate why any spherical Moon placed as ours is simply must have phases. By induction from contingent phenomena we arrive at the hypothetically necessary existence of an explanatory cause; insight into the nature of a particular contingent being bears fruit in a systematic array of inter-related abstract concepts explanatory of, among other possibiities, the Moon's phases, as may sometimes conveniently be expressed in a deductive syllogism… When you wrote Quo Vadis? in 1991, you appeared to share a common lack of any precisely nuanced appreciation of this distinction. Thankfully, however, as both Vatican Council I and Gilbert Ryle have helped me appreciate, further growth in understanding is for us human beings eternally possible. As St. Paul insisted: “Faith, Hope & Charity remain” (1 Co 13:13). At present I understand Paul VI's most decisively important and mystically prophetic statement in Humanæ Vitæ to have been and to be (8): “Marriage… is in reality the wise and provident instiution of G-d the Creator, whose purpose was to establish I+N (spelling mine) man his loving design. Husband and wife, through that mutual gift of themselves, which is specific and exclusive to them alone (italics mine), develop that union of two persons in which they perfect one another, in order to co-operate with G-d in the generation and education of new lives. Furthermore, the marriage of those who have been baptized is invested with the dignity of a sacramental sign of grace, for it represents the union of Christ and his Church”. (2) One cannot “leave the priesthood”. Even if parental obligations may justify your sometimes venturing a tentative evaluation of the morality or otherwise of your children's actual or proposed behaviour, it is highly unlikely that G-d has qualified you to judge whether any nuns defected from the religious life after the Council, and it ought to be obvious that each of the 50,000 priests who relinquished their then ministry in its institutionally approved form did so within the unique context of his individual growth towards or away from G-d. In Ecstasy & Vendetta (pp.168-70) I, therefore, restricted myself to a few comments about my own particular case: After leaving Thornleigh College, Bolton, in 1952, I had given twelve years of my life to preparing myself for the priestly ministry, and I had lived as a priest for six years, since my ordination in february 1964. As a committed Catholic, I accepted the Church's teaching - once a priest, always a priest. At no time did I have any intention of ceasing to live, and write, as a priest. I had found, however, that the non-laicized priest was sometimes not free to preach the Gospel. He was not free to live his priesthood. There was a lot of superstition. When a priest stood at the altar or in the pulpit, many Catholics wanted him not to ask questions, to discourage thinking, to express, possibly, some joy about the ‘next’ life, but certainly sadness about notable features of this one. Parishioners liked their priests to be above them. They liked to respect their way of life. They were extremely anxious not to live a fully Christian life of a priestly sort themselves. I felt this was all wrong. The priest had to share the life of ordinary Christians. All Christians had a priestly mission to fulfil. I found I had to hand a legal process called laicization. Strictly speaking, it has nothing to do with the spiritual reality of priesthood, with the substance of the priestly life, or with the religious and theological dimensions of the Church. But because the Roman Catholic Church is also a complex, institutionalized structure governed by detailed, legal machinery, ordination gives the Catholic priest economic security, a specific rôle and status in the ecclesiastical structure, and certain clearly defined rights and duties. The effect of laicization is that the priest no longer has this security, this rôle and status, these special rights and duties. He becomes like the ordinary members of the Church, save for the fact of his remaining always a priest… [When] at the end of November 1970 I was formally questioned in Highgate by Father R. McConnell, CP, who had been appointed by Cardinal Heenan to conduct the canonical process in respect of my application for dispensation from all the onera of the priesthood, I stated under oath (including also an oath of secrecy while my case was still sub judice) that I had always been glad to be a priest, that I would still welcome any opportunity of exercising the priestly ministry consistent with my conscience, and that I was seeking only a dispensation from my canonical obligations for reasons of conscience felt on 15 May [when I had written to Pope Paul VI asking him to release me from all the legal obligations of my priesthood] and still felt on the day of my official interrogation. The propriety and even the morality, or immorality, of the present legal process for laicization is seriously questioned by contemporary theologians, and some priests have felt it is wrong to make any official request for laicization for this reason, and have taken matters entirely in their own hands. While sympathetic to their point of view, I did not find it helpful to confound into one the two distinct questions of my own individual petition and of the general nature of the canonical process. I answered Father McConnell's questions within the framework of the present Roman Catholic systems of canon law and moral theology…” (3) There is Liberation Theology and there are a variety of liberation theologies, some of which I do not doubt are in several respects objectionable. (4) Some might wish to add that to the Vatican the former Archbishop of Dakar, Mgr Lefèbvre, whom you quote (p.18) as accounting the Council as “the greatest disaster not only of this century but of any century since the foundations (sic) of the Church” was a good but gullible man who was, if not exactly manipulated, very considerably exploited by neo-Fascist forces. (5) I feel you are right, but I also think it would be unrealistically naïve to expect otherwise, and I refer you to Peter Brown's excellent Authority and the Sacred - aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge University Press 1995). (6) Pending publication of the authentic Latin original text of the Cathecism of the Catholic Church, I never refer to Geoffrey Chapman's 1994 published version without also consulting the 1992 Mame/Plon Catéchisme de l'Église Catholique. On 24 May 1993 I had written to one of my former theological mentors, Cardinal Javierre Ortas, SDB, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, expressing my appreciation of the importance of the distinction made in this Catéchisme (as also in Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation and in Pope John-Paul II's Encyclical Letter, Splendor Veritatis) between “Tradition” and “traditions”. On 1 June 1993 Ruth McCurry of Geoffrey Chapman's, in replying to an earlier letter of mine, assured me they “had followed the discussion in The Tablet” and had for several months “been looking carefully at the details of the translation”, but conceded that “some” of the points I had raised would be useful, particularly when they came to check the index. On 5 June 1993 I therefore posted to Ruth McCurry a Note in which I pointed out that: In addition to the references provided in the French edition of the Catéchisme de l'Église Catholique, readers will find appel mentioned on page 4; impulsion at nos. 406 & 495; together with gémissement at no. 708, and touche at no. 683; either tradition or Tradition features on pages 7-8 and at nos. 13, 61, 75-95, 113, 120, 126, 174, 213, 242, 246, 247, 293, 328 & 368. For transmission consult nos. 24, 76-95, 105, 171-3, 182, 186, 404, 406, 417 & 425. An important meaning of Théologie will be found at no. 236. Nuit (“night”) is important at nos. 525 & 647. The primordial revelation to our first parents is mentioned at nos. 54-55, 142 & 282-86. The covenant with Noah features at nos. 56-57. The mediation of languages, peoples and cultures is acknowledged at nos. 172-3, 836, 839 seq. The limits of language are also acknowledged at nos. 42, 213, 237, 239, 251 & 362. Decide for yourself whether or not those observations are significant ones, and to what extent Geoffrey Chapman's Catechism has benefitted from my having made them. That example is not atypical, and the overall trend does not appear to have changed direction since you complained about it in 1971. As I mentioned on 17 January 1997, when I addressed to the General Secretary of the Bishops' Conference of England & Wales just over four pages of Initial Complementary Reflections on The Common Good:… [See full text above; my letter to Piers Paul Read quotes 3 especially pertinent paragraphs from it at this point.] As well as “primordial” being an important word in my vocabulary, the Mame/Plon uses the adjective primordiel where the Geoffrey Chapman ‘translated’ Catechism (390) offers instead: “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man…” (7) I am flabbergasted to learn that for you the Christian religion is “made up” and of nothing better than “audacious hypotheses” to boot…! (8) I glean that what Nietzsche and/or you wish to claim is that there is such a thing as a Christian Weltanschauung. I don't dispute that, though I would prefer some such term as Welthineinhörung but, while acknowledging the very considerable value of Donald Evans's study of Biblical speech patterns and their implications in his The Logic of Self-Involvement (London: SCM Press 1963), I would more than anything else wish to insist with St. John (1 Jn 3:20) that “we must come to realize that, even though our minds should still raise accusations against us, G-d can see further than our minds can, and that nothing is unknown to him”. (9) Gilbert Ryle's “About” in Analysis (1933, vol. 1, pp. 10-12) still repays reading. (10) In his Insight - a study of human understanding (revised students' edition, London: Longmans 1958; posthumous critical edition, University of Toronto Press 1992) Father Bernard Lonergan, SJ, mentions that it took St. Augustine of Hippo fourteen years or more to come to appreciate that not all things are bodies, and he goes on to explain how the fundamental character and orientation of any particular philosopher can often be clarified by determining how he or she uses the terms “real”, “know” and “object”. If you have found Simone de Beauvoir's chosen mode of communication about erotic relationships helpful, I am delighted to hear it, but suspect it implies either that you have not understood de Beauvoir's work or that you don't, in the relevant sense, understand yourself. I find Roger Scruton's Sexual Desire - a philosophical investigation (London: Phœnix 1986) a far better guide to good practice in this area of communication. (11) To quote the Catechism (94 - the only reference to Théologie in the Index to the Catéchisme, but not mentioned at all in the Index to the English-language version!): “It is in particular ‘theological research [which] deepens knowledge of revealed truth’”. The footnote references mention four relevant passages in the Council Documents. “Theological research” is a very far from satisfactory ‘translation’ of the French term, which is Théologie as clearly and deliberately distinct from the elsewhere more than once mentioned théologie. It is, of course, Théologie only that is the Queen of the Sciences (not merely of some so called ‘sciences’). St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas were Theologians; whether any of today's professors of ‘theology’ are or are not also Theologians and not merely theologians remains to be seen. (12) Your startling disparagement of both theology and Theology has resulted in your odd choice of the word “allowed” in stark contrast to the First Vatican Council's dogmatic pronouncement of 24 April 1870 (DS 3016): Ac ratio quidem, fide illustrata, cum sedulo, pie et sobrie quærit, aliquam Deo dante mysteriorum intelligentiam eamque fructuosissimam assequitur tum ex eorum, quæ naturaliter cognoscit, analogia, tum e mysteriorum ipsorum nexu inter se et cum fine hominis ultimo; numquam tamen idonea redditur ad ea perspicienda instar veritatum, quæ proprium ipsius obiectum constituunt. Divina enima mysteria suapte natura intellectum creatum sic excedunt, ut etiam revelatione tradita et fide suscepta ipsius tamen fidei velamine contecta et quadam quasi caligine obvoluta maneant, quamdiu in hac mortali vita “peregrinamur a Domino: per fidem enim ambulamus et non per speciem” (2 Co 5:6s). There is no higher Vocation than Theology, that mature fruition of Charity, Faith, Hope & Humility St. Luke (2:19) mentions as characterizing Our Blessed Lady who “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart”; Christ IS His Father's Theology!… Had I failed to say that, instead of sharing with you the Bread of Life I would, indeed, have been feeding you stones! You chose better than you knew, therefore, when by way of Prologue to your pamphlet you quoted from Communio et Progressio, Vatican Council II's rather disappointing Pastoral Instruction on the Means of Social Communication: Catholics should be fully aware of the real freedom to speak their minds which stems from ‘a feeling for the Faith’ and from Love. It stems from that feeling for the Faith which is aroused and nourished by the Spirit of Truth in order that, under the guidance of the teaching [i.e., of the magisterium] of the Church which they accept with reverence, the People of G-d may cling unswervingly to the Faith given to the early Church, with true judgment penetrate its meaning more deeply, and apply it more fully in their lives”. Not only does that quotation (in which I have placed some capitals not present in your publishers' type-setting) rightly extol Theology, but what the translator terms “a feeling for the Faith” is what Hans Urs von Balthasar's English translator, Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, even more perceptively acknowledges to be a radically new organ of touch, intimately related to Mary's motherly and bridal experience, that transforms the reality of creation into “a monstrance of G-d's real presence” by “the displacement and magnetic reorienting of the images of the world by the image of G-d in their midst”. (Cf. The Glory of the Lord - A Theological Aesthetics, Volume 1: Seeing the Form, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark 1982, pp. 420-1 and for a fuller discussion pp. 350-425). Please pray for me… To His Excellency, Archbishop Luigi Barbarito, DD, JCD Apostolic Nunciature 54 Parkside LONDON, SW19 5NE 20 March 1997 Dear Archbishop Barbarito, Dialogue between Roman Catholics & Freemasons: Thank you for forwarding to Rome for the attention of Cardinal Ratzinger a copy of the letter I addressed on 18 January to Professor Giuliano Di Bernardo at the Università degli Studi di Trento as author of Freemasonry and its Image of Man - a philosophical investigation (1989), a book which was first published in Italian by Marsilio Editore, Venice, and which, in addition to mentioning the Savona meeting on 15 June 1969 of Giordano Gamberini with Don Esposito exploring the relations between Freemasonry and the Catholic Church in the presence of a thousand Masons and Christians, refers to the 8 April 1986 North East Turin Rotary Club conference on The Moral Conscience of Man Today with communications from Grand Master Armandro Corona and Don Federico Weber SJ, as well as the participation of the philosopher Vittorio Mathieu and the historian Aldo Mola. Please kindly forward to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger the enclosed copy of the present Grand Master, Giuliano Di Bernardo's response of 14 March. As a devoted although unworthy son of our Holy Mother the Church I am always happy to serve as an instrument in the cause of peace and reconciliation I+N Truth, and within that context may I draw to your attention as well as to that of His Eminence: (a) a guide to the contents of The Neith Network Library, (b) the 18-page article Modern Science is catching up with Ancient Knowledge, the first 12 pages of which I recently also posted to Father Tissa Balasuriya OMI, and (c) my letter to Venice Sedgwick about the Glastonbury Zodiac, Hermetic Astrology & Reincarnation. In view of Giuliano Di Bernardo's transparent openness to “ulteriori approfondimenti” I am also sending him copies of each of the above-mentioned documents. Although his letter of 14 March was delivered by express post, I have yet to receive the “recente studio” he mentions, and suppose this was posted by ordinary mail - should its contents warrant, I shall not fail to keep you appropriately informed. Thank you again for all your prayerful help. Wishing you and Ian Farrell every blessing for the Feast of the Risen Christ - Shalom & Welcome! -       © The Neith Network Library 2005 Webmaster: ExtraReverendDoctorColinJames Hamer, The Rainbow Programme Creativity House, 9 Oxford Street, St. Thomas, EXETER, Devon EX2 9AG, U.K. This page updated 15:00 7/4/2005.