The Lost Meaning of Death

Alvin Boyd Kuhn

• Publisher: Burtyrki Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839743115
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Buddismo

The text can be read with profit by both new and old Mason, for within its pages lies an interpretation of Masonic symbolism which supplements the monitorial instruction usually given in the lodges.The leading Masonic scholars of all times have agreed that the symbols of the Fraternity are susceptible of the most profound interpretation and thus reveal to the truly initiated certain secrets concerning the spiritual realities of life. Freemasonry is therefore more than a mere social organization a few centuries old, and can be regarded as a perpetuation of the philosophical mysteries and initiations of the ancients. This is in keeping with the inner tradition of the Craft, a heritage from pre-Revival days.The present volume will appeal to the thoughtful Mason as an inspiring work, for it satisfies the yearning for further light and leads the initiate to that Sanctum Sanctorum where the mysteries are revealed. The book is a contribution to Masonic idealism, revealing the profounder aspects of our ancient and gentle Fraternity—those unique and distinctive features which have proved a constant inspiration through the centuries.

THE LOST MEANING OF DEATH

In presenting to the public the thesis of this particular address the speaker is overawed by a twofold realization. He is aware, first, that the interpretation of all ancient Holy Writ which he here offers will be disruptive of the established creedal religions of the Western world. And, in the second place he knows that the presentment will fall with such astonishing force upon Occidental religious thought as to seem incredible in spite of an array of positive testimony certifying its correctness. He may well be pardoned a feeling of hesitation and dubiety in making the revelation, for it has involved him in a daring incursion into interpretative terrain whither no scholar has penetrated before him. From the penetralia of that little-trodden domain of ancient religion-mystery he brings forth into modern light a discovery that will severely tax all the resources of common acceptance. Traditional norms of thought do not readily relax their grip on the general mind. It is scarcely to be hoped that an announcement so subversive of accepted ideas in religion and theology will be received without scepticism or resentment, since it invades a field in which conservatism is most stolidly rooted. Traditions long institutionalized do not easily bend to correction of principles basically vital to their very existence. Yet truth demands insistently from her devotees her inexorable tribute of sincerity and courage, and scholarship must flinch no duty in the line of truth-seeking.

It will be impossible in a brief preview to do more than hint at the sweeping force of the disclosure now to be made in the domain of religious interpretation. It is permissible to assert that it will revolutionize the entire modus of such interpretation in vogue since the third century of the Christian era. Not alone one or two, but all of the doctrines of Christian theology will have to suffer drastic revision and restatement in the light of the import of this announcement. For in olden times the proper signification of the terms “death” and “the dead” was the touchstone by which the meaning of all scriptural writing could be gauged. The terms carried in their ancient usage a hidden or esoteric connotation, which was at once a clue to the primary meaning of the entire structure of theology and a key to the rational envisagement of our mortal life. The sagacious ancients were content to let a secondary implication of the terms, more readily apparent on the surface, prevail in the exoteric understanding, while imparting to the Mystery Initiates an occult signification which bore the real purport of Scripture, infinitely more informing and dynamic.

We are reliably informed that the sages of old employed mythical and cabalistic devices at once to reveal and conceal a profounder meaning in their sacred writings, using at times “blinds” to suggest to the untutored a shallow rendering, while conveying to those versed in symbolical methodology a far profounder message. The most startling of these ruses was their use of “death”. Teaching for the living was put out under the guise of instruction for “the dead”. Great moral and spiritual systems were cloaked under the mask of “Books of the Dead,” as in Egypt and Tibet. This being so, the sequel will show why a revision of our understanding of what was implied by the archaic use of the terms will so radically transform the meaning of every single doctrine of the Christian faith. For the key to the correct interpretation of all Scripture is just this ancient theological connotation of the word “death”.

What, we may surmise, must have been the consequences to theology—and to world history—of the loss of this arcane clue as far back as the third century! In imagination we can roughly begin to depict the prodigious handicap under which the theologians have labored for sixteen centuries. The depth of the darkness that has involved the whole region of religious intellectualism can be sensed without difficulty. It will hardly be a matter of surprise if we discover that every single dogma of Christian systematism has been sadly distorted out of its original sense. The discerning student is now able to trace the dire disfigurement of every Christian doctrine. For as the liniaments of ancient beauty become outlined again beneath the distortions of mediaeval and modern crudity, he is then for the first time made aware of the unconscionable grossness of rendering to which pure spiritual formulae of the arcane science have been subjected. He sees that Christian doctrinal material was interpreted in blind ignorance of a former recondite wisdom and that mass psychology has been made for ages the hapless slave to the crudest of misconceptions. For, it seems, not a scholar, not a theologian, mediaeval or modern, has been aware of the masked meaning of the word “death”, or suspected that it cloaked a cryptic signification, the discernment of which would have necessitated a reconditioned statement of every teaching or exegesis. Now, a clear inspection of Greek and Egyptian systems brings the lost clue to light, with what consequences to modern thought as a whole the mind is staggered to envision. In the flash of vivid light engendered by the revelation one can again survey the beautiful field of ancient spiritual truth, long buried under mists of ignorance. With one glance it can be seen that the entire structure of theological science can have sane and pertinent interpretation only by the application to it of the magical key that has been so long lost. Equally clear comes the perception that is has been the want of this key that has reduced religion to a meaningless babble of piety and sentimentalism, degrading the once kingly science of theology at the same time to the status of an outcast from the seats of modern intelligence. With startling force, too, it can be felt that the rediscovery may be timely enough to redeem the precarious fortunes of religion and theology from the danger of total eradication in a world that is fast growing less hospitable to them. Religion has been fighting a losing battle in modern life, and one of the basic reasons now comes glaringly to light. Indeed it becomes readily apparent that unless religion sets itself industriously to repair the breach made in its structure by the loss of keystone elements, it may not be able to withstand the assault of radical bitterness.

Christianity, as a system of exclusive sacred truth or a unique revelation of divine wisdom, is already reeling under the impact of one blow after another dealt it by the study of Comparative Religion and Comparative Mythology. The “deadly parallels” found to run so consistently and so strikingly between the life of the Gospel Jesus and the legends of some twenty or more antecedent Christly figures or Sun-gods, in the role of world-saviors, are rapidly piling up the evidence that tends to jeopardize the validity of the entire body of Gospel narrative as history. It is beginning to dawn on intelligent and informed students that the New Testament Gospels are not the biography of any “person” or living character at all, but are old dramatic books of the religious Brotherhoods, portraying, not the “life” of any man, but only the spiritual history of a typical figure. All previous Messianic characters, or Sun-gods, were only such typal dramatizations of man’s inner life, under ...