albion
11-16-2005, 04:24 AM
Enter the Occult Connection
In 1913, the aging, cantankerous leader of the rather unsuccessful English branch of Dutch Old Catholicism, Matthew, received a visitor. The thirty-year-old, handsome, cultured, and enthusiastic man who knocked at the door of Bishop Matthew was James Wedgwood, scion of England's noted Wedgwood china family. He was a theosophist, an avid follower of the neo-gnostic spiritual system publicized since 1875 by the Russian noblewoman and prolific writer, H.P. Blavatsky. Unlike other theosophists (and many of their counterparts in today's New Age), Wedgwood valued the Western spiritual traditions, such as ceremonial magic, esoteric masonry, and the mystery and sacred magic of the Christian sacraments. Wedgwood joined the small Old Catholic movement in England, and after some time and vicissitudes became a bishop in 1916. Many of his fellow theosophists also became attracted to the stately beauty and mysticism of the Mass and the other sacraments administered by Wedgwood and his associates. Among these was the leonine "grand old man" of the Theosophical Society, the noted teacher, writer, and clairvoyant, Charles Webster Leadbeater. Soon Wedgwood and Leadbeater settled down in Australia to a prolonged period of planning and work. The result was a new ecclesiastical body possessing its distinctive liturgy, philosophy, and customs. It came to be called the Liberal Catholic Church, and with it was born a new occult mysticism that was to have influence and consequences far exceeding the numerical strength of the new church or even of its senior ally, the Theosophical Society.
To say that there could be an occult Catholicism is not as absurd as some might think. History teems with prelates, priests, and nuns of the Catholic Church who were devoted and skilled occultists. Kabbalah, hermeticism, astrology and magic were all patronized by numerous popes and championed by Churchmen. (Depending on the persons involved as well as on the historical period, practitioners of these same disciplines were also at times burnt at the stake by the Inquisition.) Viewed psychologically, the relationship of the Church and occultism appears to resemble the relationship of ego and shadow; in spite of their frequent conflict, they belong together and depend on each other in many ways. The greatest estrangement of Catholicism from its dark esoteric twin came about after the Enlightenment, when rationalistic considerations made inroads into the Church. Even today, one may discover that persons of gnostic-hermetic interests have more in common with traditionalist Catholics than with either modernist Vatican II Catholics or with Protestants. Without articulating these thoughts consciously, the theosophical Catholics of Wedgwood's and Leadbeater's type seem to have intuited these archetypal relationships and compatabilities between essential Catholicism and basic occultism. With these intuitions, they may have become pioneers of an approach to sacramental Christianity that has significant promise for the future of Western religion.
http://www.gnosis.org/wandering_bishops.htm
In 1913, the aging, cantankerous leader of the rather unsuccessful English branch of Dutch Old Catholicism, Matthew, received a visitor. The thirty-year-old, handsome, cultured, and enthusiastic man who knocked at the door of Bishop Matthew was James Wedgwood, scion of England's noted Wedgwood china family. He was a theosophist, an avid follower of the neo-gnostic spiritual system publicized since 1875 by the Russian noblewoman and prolific writer, H.P. Blavatsky. Unlike other theosophists (and many of their counterparts in today's New Age), Wedgwood valued the Western spiritual traditions, such as ceremonial magic, esoteric masonry, and the mystery and sacred magic of the Christian sacraments. Wedgwood joined the small Old Catholic movement in England, and after some time and vicissitudes became a bishop in 1916. Many of his fellow theosophists also became attracted to the stately beauty and mysticism of the Mass and the other sacraments administered by Wedgwood and his associates. Among these was the leonine "grand old man" of the Theosophical Society, the noted teacher, writer, and clairvoyant, Charles Webster Leadbeater. Soon Wedgwood and Leadbeater settled down in Australia to a prolonged period of planning and work. The result was a new ecclesiastical body possessing its distinctive liturgy, philosophy, and customs. It came to be called the Liberal Catholic Church, and with it was born a new occult mysticism that was to have influence and consequences far exceeding the numerical strength of the new church or even of its senior ally, the Theosophical Society.
To say that there could be an occult Catholicism is not as absurd as some might think. History teems with prelates, priests, and nuns of the Catholic Church who were devoted and skilled occultists. Kabbalah, hermeticism, astrology and magic were all patronized by numerous popes and championed by Churchmen. (Depending on the persons involved as well as on the historical period, practitioners of these same disciplines were also at times burnt at the stake by the Inquisition.) Viewed psychologically, the relationship of the Church and occultism appears to resemble the relationship of ego and shadow; in spite of their frequent conflict, they belong together and depend on each other in many ways. The greatest estrangement of Catholicism from its dark esoteric twin came about after the Enlightenment, when rationalistic considerations made inroads into the Church. Even today, one may discover that persons of gnostic-hermetic interests have more in common with traditionalist Catholics than with either modernist Vatican II Catholics or with Protestants. Without articulating these thoughts consciously, the theosophical Catholics of Wedgwood's and Leadbeater's type seem to have intuited these archetypal relationships and compatabilities between essential Catholicism and basic occultism. With these intuitions, they may have become pioneers of an approach to sacramental Christianity that has significant promise for the future of Western religion.
http://www.gnosis.org/wandering_bishops.htm