|
Concept |
| The
Sanctuary Website In a distracted and degenerate era the concept of Sanctuary is surely attractive. One has to clear a space from the barrage of the trivial, the ignoble and inane, to cultivate the alchemical garden of the mind: exalted thought – consciousness and insight – science, art, philosophy. The fourfold arrangement of the texts here provided is chiefly an aesthetic device for celebrating major cultural paradigms. The schema, it should be said, is simplistic and to an extent nominal or arbitrary. It is simply a means for ordering the material. Alchemy, Mysticism, Hermeticism, Christianity – invoking the archaisms of supposedly discredited paradigms, I pursue a twofold aim. In first place is a deliberate engagement with the greater legacy of humankind. In the second, a rebuke of the intellectual arrogance of this present age. Our rational age prides itself with the assumption of scientific and technological superiority. A global culture, however, which is destroying itself is demonstrably insane. It has no viable claim to a connection with reality. This brings us to the concept of Sanctuary in another sense. When life on earth has become unsustainable, the meek still require a place of refuge. Providentially we are given to understand that appropriate refuge has been provided, for we read in Psalms 27:5, For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock. That rock ... ! Hewn from the mountains without hands. Also the stone which the builders rejected. This shall be my overt and clandestine focus. The rest, as it were, is context. As to the perennial philosophy, exemplified in scripture by wise men from the East, it is proposed that its magical-mystical worldview provides a fertile bedding ground for the revelation of Christ. This is not to suggest identity of spiritual lineage, as per legends of the sangraal, claimed the bloodline of natural descent from the ancient anointed of God. The seed and line of descent of which it is here spoken is spiritual. Yet, although a spiritual seed, it requires the soil of cultural context for its reception and transmission. When Christ appeared in Bethlehem Judea, he necessarily came of a certain lineage, after a certain stature and standing within his local community. So it is in his appearing today. This is not to say that one must be a Hermetic philosopher to meet him, merely that the transcendent God is veiled in the parochial and apparently incidental. Emphatically it is not to suggest that the Almighty has sanctioned a particular cultural style. The prophetic thrust should not be confounded with its cultural bedding-ground. Seed and ground are necessarily distinct; the spiritual revelation is culture-transcendent and culture-independent. It submits to no paradigm, but stands alone, unsupported, a wonder unrecognised and unfathomed, full worthy of our scrutiny. It speaks for itself with a singular voice, resisting co-option, resisting permutation, resisting ecumenical syncretism. Stated another way, there is no such thing as vicarious representation of Christ on earth. In this age as in any other, Christ represents Christ on earth. So what I wish to display in my alchemical garden is ... the Tree of Life, along with other cultural flowers and seeds of the imagination. There are unicorns and dragons, elf machines and flying disks, wizards and faeries, bodhisattvas and dakinis. What is more, they all dance and they make music. And, wonder of wonders, they coexist in peace. Welcome !
|