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I’ve always had an interest in esotericism… Flint has a prominent Masonic Temple downtown and Detroit’s Masonic Temple is one of the most prominent features of its New Center skyline. Also, my grandfather was a Freemason, and other members of my family were involved through the 70s, though nobody from my generation.
At first what is so exciting about this is the most conspicuously exotic. Secret initiations, secret rooms, secret passages, presumed use of incense and candles, secret words spoken, secret gestures. Most importantly, secret knowledge. Of course, at some point one has to make the concenssion that those little cars that the shriners drive around on McKinley Road or Main Street during the June parade look a little goofy, as do the bright orange and red caftans and fezes. And against that, it always was one of the most engaging parts of the parade.
Parsing a little deeper, however, there’s something more substantial in the esoteric society that I find personally attractive. It is esoteric. It is not public; membership requires effort or agency and confers privilege and benefit. It is not secret; the organizational philosophy is one of focus and attention to the world. Tension with the world. The esoteric society is created to acknowledge, be acknowledged by, and interact with the world.
In the case of the Freemasons, the square and compass might represent one extreme of allegorical economy… they can be metaphorically representative of many relationships to a degree of depth and specificity that almost matches Derrida’s sun in White Mythologies. Freemasonry itself had a guiding hand in the U.S. Constitution. To broaden the sphere of examples a bit more, whatever we might think of the astrological and divinatory statements of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, they produces Yeats. In Ancient Greece, the Lyceum and the Academy had some of the properties of esoteric societies; the Pythagoreans certainly were. By allowing a sufficiently broad definition, we could also incorporate most religious sects (from early Christianity to Wicca), artistic groups like the Surrealists and the Futurists and maybe even the Dolce Stil Nuovo that produced Dante.
I’m not arguing that “esoteric thought” specifically is always a fruitful vehicle for expression. It does, however, seem to encourage a structure where the application of guiding principles, which themselves can be quite broadly conceived, allow for the coexistence of institutions that usually are in opposition. The ideological inclusiveness is important. The communal exclusivity is important. The sharing and exploration of fields of inquiry through a common vocabulary is important. The hats are awesome.
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