Esoteric Masonry

Consider the black and white Masonic floor. Wherever darkness is, it does not find light. For darkness, light does not exist. In a time yet to come, in the Above, the two shall meet and know one another in perfect union. At that nexus we will see the One who created all things.

In the meantime, in the Below, we glimpse a premonition of that wonder. For this is the human being: A breath of the divine within a material body; light and darkness face-to-face…within each single being.

Now consider the following three quotes:

"Darkness and light are both of one nature, different only in seeming, for each arose from the source of all. Darkness is disorder. Light is Order. Darkness transmuted is light of the Light. This, my children, your purpose in being; transmutation of darkness to light.

Within us burns that Flame, and before Its altar the lower man must bow, a faithful servant of the Higher. When he serves the Flame he grows, and the light grows until he takes his place with the true Initiates of the universe, those who have given all to the Infinite, in the name of the Flame within.” ~ Manly P. Hall, The Initiates of the Flame

"The alchemist of today is not hidden in caves and cellars, studying alone, but as he goes on with his work, it is seen that walls are built around him, and while he is in the world, like the master of old, he is not of it. As he goes further in his work, the light of other people’s advice and outside help grows weaker and weaker, until finally he stands alone in darkness, and then comes the time that he must use his own lamp, and the various experiments which he has carried on must be his guide. He must take the Elixir of Life which he has developed and with it fill the lamp of his spiritual consciousness, and holding that above his head, walk into the Great Unknown, where if he has been a good and faithful servant, he will learn of the alchemy of Divinity.

Where now test tubes and bottles are his implements, then worlds and globes he will study, and as a silent watcher will learn from that Divine One, who is the Great Alchemist of all the universe, the greatest alchemy of all, the creation of life, the maintenance of form, and the building of worlds."~ Manly P. Hall, Initiates of the Flame

“Darkness adopted illumination in order to make itself visible. Darkness is the one true actuality, the basis and the root of light, without which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist.

Light is matter, and Darkness pure Spirit. Darkness, in its radical, metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute light; while the latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as it can never be eternal, and is simply an illusion, or Maya.” ~ H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 (also quoting Robert Fludd)