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The Great Book of Nature and Revelation

rebis

Premium Member
From our first acceptance into a lodge of Entered Apprentices and beyond, the idea of nature seams to be closely knitted with our society.

How important of a role does nature play in your masonic journey or general existence as a whole?


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dfreybur

Premium Member
I love the ambiguous wording of the expression.

It works as a description of nature being like a book that is revealed one page at a time through study and experiment.

It works as a description of the VSL as a profound revelation about human nature.

Both true. If they seem to be in conflict does one look more deeply until they no longer seem to be in conflict or does one look more broadly until they no longer seem in conflict? This is the same sort of puzzle as Masonry rejecting atheists yet being the world leader for freedom of religion. Underneath there is a structural unity.
 

coachn

Coach John S. Nagy
Premium Member
Very important, especially if you do the Work. It's the focus of the second degree studies.
 

BryanMaloney

Premium Member
"Nature" hasn't alwasy meant the same thing. During the Age of Reason, "nature" wasn't "not urban" or "not mechanical" or however the term is used today. In addition, that whole "pristine untouched" schtick was an invention of the Romantic Era. In the Enlightenment, "nature" was this "other" that had to be studied and tamed. It was the "nature" of the unpredictable and destructive storm, the "nature" of the barbarians who killed all before them and stole whatever was shiny. The "nature" of the formative years of Freemasonry was not a "balance of nature", it was a constant turmoil, it was Scylla and Charybdis, it was the raving monster within each man that had to be tamed, balanced, and brought into humanity by Law and Reason. In the Enlightenment mind, the "natural man" would devour everything before him and lay it to waste. Thus, one learned to measure and circumscribe the "natural man", knock off the rough portions...
 

pointwithinacircle2

Rapscallion
Premium Member
Yes, it is all of that. And it is taming the raving monster within each man without losing it. It is interesting that in Freemasonry we do not talk about the Phoenix, but we use the symbol often. According to the legend the Phoenix lives for 500 years and before it bursts into flame and is burned to the ashes from which it is reborn. The intellectual man burns the raving monster to ashes only to have him re-emerge centuries later to burn the intellectual man and his society to the ground. It is a cycle. Interestingly, there is some biographical evidence to suggest that the Masters Word can only be spoken if one knows where they are in the cycle.
 
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