View from the Big Hills

“Today …. taboos and terrors still linger, many of them, in the form of conventions of morality, uneasy strivings of conscience, doubts and desperations of religion; but ultimately Man will emerge from all these things, free-- familiar, that is, with them all, making use of all, allowing generously for the values of all, but hampered and bound by none. He will realize the inner meaning of the creeds and rituals of the ancient religions, and will hail with joy the fulfillment of their far prophecy down the ages-- finding after all the long-expected Saviour of the world within his own breast, and Paradise in the disclosure there of the everlasting peace of the soul.”   -- Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds; Their Origin & Meaning, by Brace and Company: New York [1920]

In the appendices of the original first two editions of Mysteria Magica, published by Llewellyn, Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips include some beautiful excerpts from Edward Carpenter’s epic poem, “Towards Democracy”. They say of the poem: “That great and noble poem shows forth the phases of psychosophical development, and the functions and faculties of the psyche, in profound clarity; at the same time it is not a general treatise, and the subject-matter is seen and felt through the idiom of Carpenter’s personality and no other. The student to whom this work appeals is urged not to limit his knowledge of it to the passages given here: he should acquire a copy of the complete work, in which much of vision and power will supplement his study of Volume IV of this series (The Triumph of Light). The given passages, illustrative of the Adept’s quest and attainment, were for many years employed by the Aurum Solis as the basis of one of its recommended mediation seque...