Miserere Mei Deus

The Inner Ecclesia: The Seven Churches of Asia

The seven churches of Assiah, the World of Action, is a Johannine reference to the Earthly and primordial transmission that is entrusted to the custodial care of Orthodox succession and inner practice. In his classic work Ecce Homo, Louis Claude de St. Martin wrote that the early Christian priests had four powers: to make the Lord's Supper, to forgive sins, to heal diseases and to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. The Marquis St Martin taught that priests in modern times have retained only the first two. Ordinary priests were likened unto officers in the Lodge of Saint John who had essentially "lost the password", as they say.

In A.E. Waite's Hidden Church of the Holy Grail,the fourth chapter is entitled, "The Victory of the Latin Rite." As the tradition of the Holy Graal and the Celtic Church are both in alignment with the mysticism of the Orthodox church and the unrestricted and organic fluidity of the Pre-Nicean church, Waite's writing is particularly relevant to the Apostolicism seen in the esoteric Christian community's Orders of Ormus, the Priory of Sion, the Scottish Rectified Regime, the Asiatic Brethren, the Golden Rosicrucians and the Fratres Lucis. Allow me to quote a passage for your consideration and nourishment,

"I have now put forward the hypothesis of the Celtic Church as it has never been expressed previously; I have diminished nothing, and any contrary inferences have been proposed so far temperately; but the issues are not entirely those of the Graal legend, and in view of all that comes after a few words in conclusion of this part may perhaps be said more expressly. It should be on record, for those who have ears, that the Welsh Church, with its phantom and figurehead bishops, its hereditary priesthood, its fighting and sanguinary prelates, and its profession of sanctity as others profess trades, seems a very good case for those who insist that the first Christianity of Britain was independent of St. Augustine, which it was, and very much indeed, but on the whole we may prefer Rome. When we have considered all the crazes and heresies, all the pure, primitive and unadulterated Christianities, being only human and therefore disposed to gratitude, it is difficult not to thank God for Popery. But it would also be difficult to be so thankful, that is to say, with the same measure of sincerity, if we were still in the school courses and belonged officially thereto.

I mean to say, although under all reserves, that there is always some disposition to hold a fluidic brief for Rome in the presence of the other assemblies. William Howitt, the historian of priestcraft à rebours, once said: "Thanks be to God for the mountains!" It is well to quote from our enemies, but not in the sense of our enemies, and hence I read by substitution the seven hills and the city built thereon. Let therefore those who will strive with those who can over the dismembered relics of apostolical Christianity; but so far as we are concerned the dead can bury their dead. We have left the Celtic Church as we have left carved gods. A Pan-Britannic Church might have been the dream of one period, and were that so, seeing that it never came to fulfilment, we could understand why it is that in several respects the Graal literature has now the aspect of a legend of loss and now of a legend of to-morrow. The Anglican Church seems in this sense to recall for a moment that perverse generation which asked for a sign and was given the sign of Jonah. It has demanded apostolical evidences to enforce its own claim and it has been given the Celtic Church. Let us therefore surrender thereto the full fruition thereof. There may be insufficiencies and imperfect warrants in the great orthodox assemblies, but in the Celtic Church there is nothing which we can regret. Gildas and St. Bernard are eloquent witnesses concerning it. The Latin rite prevailed because it was bound to prevail, because the greater absorbs the lesser. On the other hand, and now only in respect of the legends, let us say lastly that the ascension of Galahad is, symbolically speaking, without prejudice to the second coming of Cadwaladr. It does not signify for our purpose whether Arthur ever lived, and if so whether he was merely a petty British prince. The Graal is still the Graal, and the mystery of the Round Table is still the sweet and secret spirit of universal knighthood."

Such things are the concerns of the Abbey of St Sulpice, the Order of St Leo & the Knights of the Holy Ghost. Amen. +