One of the most fascinating conferences I have attended was held recently at the Canonbury Masonic Research Centre. The subject was the approach to spiritual matters based on knowledge rather than faith or belief, an approach termed ‘Gnostic’ from the Greek word gnosis, ‘knowledge;’ a report appears in this issue.
    In the late second century A.D. certain Christian theologians decided that the Gnostics were heretics. From their perspective the Gnostics were, but due to the rich and diverse tradition of Christianity which found expression during this century the terms heresy and orthodoxy have no meaning - this had to wait a few centuries until orthodoxy had consolidated.
    In 1945 a large number of Gnostic codices were discovered. What was interesting was the fact that these writings contained a wide variety of texts revealing a wide variety of traditions - Christian, Platonic, and Hermetic. These texts were finally edited and published in 1978 by a group of scholars under the direction of Professor James Robinson; and Professor Robinson was a speaker at the Canonbury Conference.
    It was the sacred knowledge these texts expressed which was important, not the tradition that they might have come from. There was an emphasis on experience in order to acquire this knowledge.
    This brings us to the important difference between knowledge and belief: it can be shown that belief is not an end in itself but is a stepping stone towards knowledge. A Sufi story explains this: you can be told not to put your hand into the fire because you will get burned and feel pain.
    You can believe this to be true and during your life never act in this way. But while it affects your actions you can never say that you know the effect, that you feel the pain; you simply believe this to be true.
    If, however, you actually place your hand into the fire you experience the pain directly, you know it, and avoid doing it again. So, while the actions of the two people might look the same, one is done from a point of view of knowledge and one is done from a point of view of belief. The Gnostics held that to know matters spiritual through experience is better than to simply believe.
    This brings us to our Craft. There are those who would say that Freemasonry has a Gnostic centre; others would vehemently disagree. Yet, it is true that the spirituality of Freemasonry is drawn from many traditions and is concerned, through our type of ritual, with experience. That is not to say that doing our ritual correctly inevitably produces such an effect as described by Saint Teresa or in the Hermetic Poimandres - I wish it did - but it is a step on the journey towards such experience and it is one of the most encouraging discoveries to find that many people, one way or another, do have such a powerful and life-changing experience. And those who have been so fortunate can readily appreciate the value of the masonic journey.
    We need to look deeply into the key points of our ritual, because it is there that we find the value of experience and knowledge over belief. Consider the Charge given in the Third Degree: the ‘eye of reason’ is not enough. What this is saying is that the intellect can take you only so far. This is quite obvious if we think for a moment: language - that which carries and communicates enquiry - has its limitations; it cannot deal with anything ineffable; poetry is probably the closest it can get.
    We are told to listen to the voice of nature. What is this? It is that which speaks from the silence and stillness; our opening of the Third Degree explains that the genuine secrets are to be found in the centre. And operating from the centre, that point of silence and stillness, that source of the voice of nature, ‘a Master Mason cannot err’.
    The Gnostics used a symbol of a spark of divinity being trapped within every person. Masonic ritual speaks of the rising of the ‘bright Morning Star.’ What is this star? Is it a hint that we wait for the discovery of the fragment of divinity within? In a related symbol, in both Gnosticism and Christianity, this divinity - and any fragment – is termed ‘the Word.’
    Now, can we see the search for the lost word as the search for the spark of divinity hidden within each and every one of us - a treasure hidden but able to be found after a search? And is that the moment when ‘time or circumstances’ restores to us our heritage and allows us to move from belief to the certainty of knowledge? It seems likely to me.

Michael Baigent MA - Editor