A Message From the
Imperator of Europe[From The Rosicrucian
Digest January 1940]
The
following is an address delivered by the Imperator of Europe, known by the
mystical name of Sar Hieronymus, to members of the F. U. D. O. S. I., at their
conference in Brussels, Belgium, last August. It will be
recalled by all Rosicrucians that the initials: "F. U. D. O. S. I." are
an abbreviation of the words, "Federation Universelle des Ordres et
Societes Initiatiques." This Federation is composed of the AUTHENTIC
arcane and mystical orders of the world, having charters and manifestoes
recognized by all of the member orders. The AMORC of North and South America is the only Rosicrucian Order of the
Western world having membership in it by virtue of its historical background
and subsequent recognition. Frater James Whitcomb, now Grand Treasurer,
attended the last F. U. D. O. S. I. Convention as the late Imperator's, Dr. H.
Spencer Lewis', personal representative. The Convention of the F. U. D. O. S.
I. was presided over by the Imperator of the Rose + Croix of Europe.
--IMPERATOR [Ralph M. Lewis]. |
WHY are you assembled together in this Temple? Because you are
initiates; and if I asked why you are Initiates? It is because you have heard
the mysterious calling: "You will become like unto God." But this
time, it is not the serpent, sneaking out of Darkness that pronounced it, it is
Christ in the resplendency of Divine Intelligence who proposed this new
ascension to you. And what was a lie in the mouth of Satan becomes a power on
the lips of Christ.
To those He loves, He brings more than the
revelations of salvation, He gives the complete vision of the mysteries of
Heaven and of the Earth.
Because you have chosen the right Path, because you
want to live with the Angels and not with the beasts, God grants you His Light.
By dint of aspiring toward the whiteness of the
mountain summits, by dint of raising yourself toward the infinite celestial
world, you have ceased to lie in the filth of the earth, and the paths of the
messengers of God have become familiar to you.
You have understood that the calling from on High was
that of perfection, and that your possibility of perfectibility was limitless,
each step preparing the following one.
And it is to the highest point of spiritual
improvement that the Rose-Croix Order means to lead you. You are the unknown
Masters who, through the power of prayer, of uprightness and of the deeper and
deeper knowledge of mystery, collaborate to the realization of the Divine
scheme. You will become like unto God. In a world that is submitted to
violence, you are the sacred Knighthood that will save, as the great Orders
have done in the days of yore, the ideals of justice, of love and of charity.
That which universe is in the look of man, the
mystery of Christ is for you, the initiates who are searching for Light.
Remember the words of Leonardo da Vinci: "Him
who has once met Jesus shall never turn his gaze from Him."
This meeting with the Master is the supreme grace
that the Highest Power grants to the men of good will. Those who have not yet
found Him on the path of their lives, if they do not resist spiritual truth, if
they wait patiently and quietly, some day will meet Him, and on that day, all
mysteries will be revealed unto them; they will be initiates in the highest
meaning of the word; they will be Magi.
The Magus lives in a domain where the nervous fluid,
vehicle of evil, does not reach and where the power that the black Magician
draws out of his cerebral substance with a view to harm you comes back against
himself.
Remember that if you are really above men, it is only
because you loathe the abominations of the world, its false, ephemeral,
debasing pleasures, and because you have chosen the path that rises toward
Splendor; because you have consecrated your life to the prayer that creates an
infrangible barrier against the material forces, and to the meditation that
opens the inaccessible regions of the spiritual plane.
It is why none shall truly be a Magus if he has not
received the Sign of Christ, the anointment of the Holy Ghost, and if he does
not participate in the immortal and radiant life of Christ.
For those who have not been sufficiently prepared
through religion to the practice of prayer, the most difficult point is to
submit to the necessary discipline so as to raise themselves to that true
prayer that puts the human soul in attunement with the Supreme Power.
The occultist Masters, too often, do neglect this
indispensable preparation, which, evidently has the character of absolute
necessity only for the brethren of the Rose-Croix.
It is the mystical formation, of which a perfect
medium is the meditative reading of the great mystics, like Louis de Blois,
Saint Jean de la Croix, Ruysbroeck the Admirable, Juliana of Norwich, Saint
Theresa of Avila...
Study them with a pure and sincere heart and soon you
will understand this word of the first Epistle to the Corinthians: "Spirit
searches all things, yea, the deep things of God."
And the more this spirit of brotherhood with the
great mystics will detach you from the material world, the stronger you will
become to dominate and conquer through prayer the enemies of Light.
At the beginning of your initiation, you will revolt
against the ascetic rule that is proposed to you, against the exterior forms
that are the degrees of improvement; it is matter, in you, that is rebelling.
Inert matter is the easy domain of the evil forces
that are serving the enemy which, in the Bible, bears the dreaded name of -- --
--
Wherever matter is ruling, the powers of the black
forces are ready to fight; even when it is idealized in the most beautiful
paganism, matter conceals the insidious calling of the serpent.
By itself, matter has no ideal, no beauty, no
morality. The aesthetical reflection of material things is in proportion with
their spiritual harmony. Deprived of this direction, matter stirs up in spirit
only the base instincts, selfish instincts, and opens the door to crimes, even
to those that are a sin against nature.
This is why it is our duty to combat materialism and
selfishness in all their manifestations:
1. First of all in yourselves, by casting off the
usual covetousness of man;
2. In the Order, by bringing into it the spirit of
charity, of love, of confidence and of Light; by fighting against ignorance,
which is an aspect of laziness, and also against the desire for material and
intellectual wealth which is a temptation from the evil spirit.
3. Finally in the outer world, by spreading the true
Light wherever you will go; by living the life of spiritual and radiating
beings because there will be real peace only when men will act according to the
ways of Spirit.
Even if you have not, as yet, attained complete
initiation in spiritual truth and if the fundamental creed of knowledge is not
entirely in your heart, you must strive with all your might to the powerful
union of all the spiritual forces, for the realization of an Order which will
work side by side with the Church of Christ in the domain of intelligence as
the Knighthood worked during the Middle Ages in the social field.
The Order of the Rose-Croix is in reality the highest
knighthood of our epoch, but all the Orders that serve the same ideal are also
the servants of spirit.
For this reason it is indispensable that they all
keep up the same discipline and that none of them, through guilty negligence,
may undergo condemnations that would make their spiritual work sterile, and
that would place them under the yoke of the spirit of Darkness. Many Orders,
which were honourable at their beginning, thus have fallen into the worst of
errors, and have ended in contempt and oblivion.
Nowadays it cannot be the same. I want to set up the
helm right to Divine Truth that is the basis of all work of Light, and if some
day I were to be convinced that I had been leading our Orders into the evil
path, or even in a path that would be dangerous for the salvation of our
brothers, I would prefer to break up the Orders and reject the sceptre, rather
than to imperil them.
Of yore, it has been necessary to warn of the
pitfalls those who were waiting for the second coming of Christ, and who, in
the white work, had let infiltrations penetrate, thus falling under the
reprobation of the Abbot Barbier; and in May 1884 these blunders brought up the
condemnation of Orders that were thoroughly respectable at their beginning.
Forty-five years after this decree the question
arises again upon an absolutely new plane of spirit.
I believe that if one wants to combat with its own
weapons the spirit of Darkness which, in its outer aspect is that of
materialism, of selfishness and violence, one is led to go down unto the
subterranean regions of thought, there where is to be hatched the eternal
conspiracy against Light.
Something has been changed in the world, but we would
that the world be really transfigured by the establishment of the universal
rule of Peace and Love. Before the Sovereign Master of all things whom the true
R-C recognizes with a humble heart, we invoke Light and strength, so that being
heartily attached to His divine revelation and to His teachings, we may pursue
the realization of God's designs, so also that our watchful care be not
surprised by pernicious infiltrations, that so many times have been
stigmatized, and that might corrupt the work that has been entrusted to us.
I wish that now my appeal may be heard in the
remotest parts of the earth. Because in these last words of mine, I do not
speak only to the Magii, but to all men of good will, to all men who are
conscious of the mission and of the responsibility that has been placed upon
them by the Master of all things!
For a long time we have been living in a dark period
of turmoil. The earth, thrown out of harmony through the disorders engendered
by war, vainly attempted to recover its equilibrium, and more than ever for the
last 20 years the menace is closing over it. The black forces are let loose
upon the world. Materialism which, in man, takes the form of selfishness and in
the nations that of violence, is pressing hard over the souls. The great ideals
of love, of liberty, of universal charity are despised, and to the innate
aspirations of man towards his celestial destiny, a paganism that is the
pestilential blossoming of matter is opposed as a derivative. Wherever religion
is persecuted, materialism is ruling as a master, to debase the individuals and
to make of them the tools of an attempt of destruction.
We clearly see where lies evil and we must conquer
it. It is why I appeal to all men of good will to prepare a new crusade, the
aim of which is not the sterile salvation of the empty sepulchre of Christ, but
the salvation of the spiritual ideals, the loss of which would be the worst
cataclysm that may befall humanity.
You are the Knighthood of the Spirit, and I ask you
to go wherever the combat makes a call upon you, to erect again the sacred
labarum, to be present wheresoever the spiritual ideals are insulted, violated
or even threatened. The luminous fate of the world lies between your hands, the
future of humanity shall be the price of your victory.
Like true knights of the Kingdom of God,
go to the conquest of the Universe, of peace, of love, of fraternal charity.
Nothing can resist to the mystical weapons of the
Magus.
Go and speak to men of their duty. God who has chosen
you among His children shall ask you to account for what you shall have done
for the instauration of His Glory.
|