Darkness Visible - A Christian Appraisal of Freemasonry
Review, by Timothy Tindal-Robertson
Continuously in print since its first publication in 1952, there were signs from its inception that this was a very unusual book destined, in its own mysterious way, to work on unseen through succeeding decades like a leaven within the Church of England and the Grand Lodge of England itself, until now, well over 35 years later, its full effect as originally intended by the author is at last gradually beginning to come to fruition.
So this is a review not merely about the contents of a book which were remarkable enough at the time of its publication, but equally and even more interestingly, about its quite extraordinary subsequent after-life and development, a process initiated by the book itself and which today is working on into the Establishment in England more positively and successfully than ever before.
I never met Hannah myself, and neither his personal records nor his unique Masonic library, with books both for and against the Craft, have come down to us, so I am unable to relate how it was that he came to undertake this remarkable work. But it is certainly true to state that in the whole English-speaking world, to this day Darkness Visible is the only book written by a clergyman of the Church of England which deals exclusively and conclusively with the question of whether or not Masonry is a religion and, as such, whether it is compatible with Christianity. This observation is in fact itself the conclusion of a lengthy tribute which Stephen Knight paid to the unique character of Hannah's work in the pages of his own wide-ranging, informative and best-selling critique of Freemasonry published in 1983—The Brotherhood.
Paul, see new Milton reference @3.52pm below re today’s header Darkness Visible. Wizard of the Saddle December 29, 2020 at 8:21 am # K-Dog: The fake news people who brought you your news flash are all.
- Darkness Visible: Dante’s Clarification of Hell. Joseph Kameen (WR 100, Paper 3) Download this essay. Contrapasso is one of the few rules in Dante’s Inferno. It is the one “law of nature” that applies to hell, stating that for every sinner’s crime there must be an equal and fitting punishment.
- The use of ceremonial darkness is a classic and cross-cultural method for exploring hidden aspects of unconscious and super-conscious states, accessing invisible landscapes, and embracing the deeper recesses of the self. In Darkness Visible Heaven and Buxton examine the spiritual and therapeutic practice of taking retreat in physical darkness.
It was in January 1951 that Hannah first aired the whole question: 'Should a Christian be a Freemason?' in an article under that title which was published in Theology, an academic magazine produced under the auspices of the SPCK and edited at that time by Canon Alec Vidler, who was chaplain to King George VI. Predictably this caused a considerable stir in the Establishment in England, since both the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, were members of the Craft, along with a considerable portion of the clergy and hierarchy of the Church of England. For the very first time a voice had been raised loud and clear within the Church of England questioning in the name of Christ the hitherto unchallenged belief that membership of the Lodge was entirely compatible with one's profession of Christianity.
When the subject was discussed in the Church of England Assembly of June 1951, the cardinal issue of compatibility was side-stepped under pressure from the influential Masonic lobby, which repeatedly asserted that a non-Mason could not presume to comment on the Craft with authority. By a skillful maneuver, any discussion of the theological arguments raised by Hannah was preempted, and the Assembly of the Church of England was thereby prevented from subjecting the beliefs and practices of Freemasonry to its scrutiny.
Far from being defeated at seeing his efforts aborted from the very outset, it was this immediate silencing of his just enquiries which drove Hannah to writing a book to prove, first of all, that it is perfectly possible for a non-Mason to find out the truth about Freemasonry, and secondly, that even in respectable English Freemasonry there was much to cause practicing Christians legitimate cause for concern. Vbox guest additions iso downloadwesternthis.
And so, as Hannah writes in his Preface to the 10th edition in 1962, 'Darkness Visible made its story appearance in a fierce controversy that was taken up in the secular as well as the religious press.' Hannah had a friend in high editorial circles in Fleet Street, a man who was willing to take risks. When the book came out in June 1952, it was splashed in broad headlines right across the center page of a national Sunday paper, procuring instant dismissal for the editor responsible for this bold stroke, but at the same time assuring the work an irreversible launch.
All this is now so much dust and history, but the residual truth which lies at the heart of Hannah's book has never died. On the contrary, it has slowly and steadily grown in stature and influence in proportion as it has gained increasing recognition for the irrefutable testimony which it constitutes.
Hannah wrote the book, as he himself explains on pages 18-19, to substantiate his conviction that 'for a Christian to pledge himself to a religious or quasi-religious organization which offers prayers and worship to God which deliberately exclude the name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in whose name only is salvation to be found, is apostolic. I am also quite aware that there are many Christians, and even archbishops, who are also Masons who do not see it in that light, either because they do not take their ritual very seriously, or because they allow other considerations such as the good works, benevolence, and moral uprightness of the Craft to outweigh the clearly pagan implications of its formulæ..'
The first part of the book has a series of brief chapters with highly penetrating assessments on the different aspects of Freemasonry which give rise to contention: the sources for a study of Masonry; the Masonic oaths, or Solemn Obligations, as they are termed in the ritual; an analysis of whether Masonry is a religion, which includes some objections of particular gravity for any practicing Christian; the implications of membership of the Lodge by the clergy; the questions of benevolence, brothers and tolerance; and a summary of the ecclesiastical condemnations pronounced against Freemasonry by the principal Churches throughout the world.
Quote About Fatigue In Darkness Visible
To read Darkness Visible is, in a way, to give yourself a vicarious form of Masonic initiation! This was precisely the author's object. By laying open the rituals in their entirety before the public gaze, he showed that any person can be properly informed as to their nature and contents, whether Mason or non-Mason, and hence the Christian reader of Darkness Visible will find in the book all the information that is required to enable him to form an objective judgment on the whole question of the compatibility or non-compatibility of Masonry with Christianity.
There are also several valuable Appendices: one on variations in Scottish, Irish and American Workings; another on Christ-less Masonic services in Christian churches; and, in a further appendix on other Masonic degrees in England, Ireland and America, the author shows clearly that American Masonry basically follows the British system as outlined above.
All the foregoing explains why Hannah's uniquely critical exposé of Freemasonry as a non-Christian and anti-Christian organization should be of especial interest to Christians of all denominations, and not just in England but equally in America and, indeed, wherever the influence of the English-speaking world has extended. For in every case the English-speaking presence has been accompanied by the deplorable power and influence of Freemasonry to de-Christianize society—that same organization which used to assert unchallenged and with such complete self-assurance, until the dramatic changes inaugurated by the publication of Hannah's book, that it was in fact the very prop and pillar of Christianity throughout the English-speaking countries of the world. Troop leadership.
In March 1965, the author and his book were featured in a BBC TV documentary which was seen by over twelve million viewers and the producer, James Dewar, wrote a best-selling account of the program entitled The Unlocked Secret. This was the first time that the general public had been able to see what goes on behind the doors of the Lodge, since various parts of the ritual were enacted in front of the cameras, with assistance from Hannah.
The following year Hannah died in Montreal, age 54. He had been born in 1912 in Sussex, England, the third of four sons born to William Hannah and his wife, Annie Brand, who came from Cleveland, Ohio. In 1955 he had resigned from the Church of England to become a Catholic, and he then entered the Beda College at Rome to study for the priesthood. He was ordained priest in 1958, and the following year was posted to Montreal, Canada, where he ran a live telephone-in program for the Catholic Enquiry Forum.
It is not the purpose of this reviewer to pass any personal judgment on Hannah's book or its subject. That is not needed, the evidence speaks for itself; it is there for anyone who wants to examine it for himself, and it is for each reader to form his own opinion about it. But as the publisher of Hannah's celebrated work for twenty-five years, I would like to include a brief testimony of my own, which is not without its significance. In all these years that Darkness Visible has been continuously in print, we have never received a single letter of complaint or criticism against the book from any Freemason or Masonic authority. On the contrary, we have some many thousands of copes direct to individual Masons, as well as to the official Masonic publishers, A. Lewis & Co. These, too, are facts which speak for themselves.
Let Hannah have the last word. At the end of his commentary on the ritual, he says: 'No Church that has seriously investigated the religious teachings of Freemasonry has ever yet failed to condemn it' (p. 78).
Milton’s striking metaphor in Paradise Lost, the oxymoron Darkness Visible, is unparalleled in referring light (lumen) itself to something like a hellish tomb of veritable blackness. Robert J. Edgeworth in his essay entitled, Milton’s ‘Darkness Visible’ and ‘Aeneid’ 7, writes:
I suggest that Milton meant what he said: the flames of Hell radiate a positive, palpable darkness which extinguishes light (symbol of the divine in Milton as in the Christian tradition generally: God is absent from Hell) wherever it reaches-a powerful negation of light, and not merely a light which is weak or fitful…
The flames of Hell give no light; what is called dark here on earth is the brightest it ever gets in the underworld.
Contemporary literature and films focus extensively on this connotation, like William Styron’s book Darkness Visible that describes the descent into the darkness of madness; as well as the Hindi film Darkness Visible, a real psychological as well as spiritual thriller revolving around a young man whose own body houses a demonized spirit of a Rakshasa. While such connotations are engrossingly entertaining, it needs to be stressed that there are also affirmative meanings of the term; this blog series will stress such realizations and will boldly contend:
The light of the luminous can only be discerned through a darkness visible.
More often than not metaphors of light dominate spiritual landscapes. Before falling into this conditioned and highly prejudicial mindset, one must take careful note of what befell poor Icarus when he flew too closely into the rays of the sun:
A boy creates a magical pair of wings from bee’s wax and feathers, and begins to fly. He flies higher and higher despite his father’s warnings, continuing ever upward toward the light of the sun. He is consumed by his drive toward the light until the wax in his wings begins to melt in the sun’s heat, his feathers drop away, and he falls into the Aegean Sea and drowns.
We might sum up the moral of this tale in this way: “Too much light and your wings may be lost.” Yet within the religious traditions of many denominations there is often a largely unbalanced emphasis on embracing light and following a sole trajectory of ascension. As the myth of Icarus informs us, though, the inevitable curse and course of those who chase spiritual light is that they must eventually fall back down to Earth. In less mythic terms: The more we walk toward the light, the longer our shadows grow behind us. The route back to the source, then, is not upward to the light, but downward into darkness. (Ross Heaven & Simon Buxton, Darkness Visible: Awakening Spiritual Light through Darkness Meditation, Destiny Books 2005)
The work just quoted was my major inspiration for this series, which is closely akin to a sister series from 2016, Beyond the Rainbow Body:
Beyond the Rainbow Body, can also serve as a metaphor for going beyond all that is perceivable and demonstrable. When one contemplates this metaphor it becomes an absolute assurance that always remaining within the confining categories of the known and verifiable can be a most limiting enterprise. The realization will eventually dawn that it is the unknown and the unlimited-depths of dark spacelessness within the Void that, like “Dark Matter”, is the Real Imageless Substance that is woven throughout the pattern of existence. The ancient Essenes-sect expounded that the Absolute was more about darkness than light. In this sense they were in league with Pseudo Dionysius–for him the Absolute was a via-negativa–the absence of light. Think of it—Darkness is the Real Eternal Delight—it is the essence of the Imageless Eternal-Self. Darkness IS deathlessness itself. Light suffers from limitations, like the death of a Star that soon turns-inward into a Black Hole which Alone remains. Darkness is the womb out of which everything is born and into which everything will eventually return—the Dark Womb of Tara, Our Lady of the Void. Light is born but the darkness is always there—it is deathless. The ancients were well aware of this and incorporated various spiritual-vehicles in which to participate in this sensory-deprived-Dark Realization.
Indeed, this Darkness Visible is a Luminous One, something of which The Zennist wrote emphasizing that this is more of a “spiritual descent” rather than ascending into flights of fancy which is “just more of the same, samsara; rather we must descend into the void–into a place ‘we do not know’…descending into the void transcends the psychophysical organism…wherein only pure light can come through, like boring a tiny hole into the fabric of samsara.”
The above work by Heaven and Buxton is also in league with this Spirit of Luminosity as prayed by Dionysius the Areopagite:
“Direct our path to that topmost height of mystic Lore which exceedeth light and more than exceedeth knowledge, where the pure, absolute and immutable mysteries of heavenly Truth are veiled in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their Darkness and surcharging our blinded intellects with the utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories surpassing all beauty.
Darkness Visible Film
Let this be my prayer…. For by unceasing and absolute renunciation of oneself and all things, one shalt in purity cast all things aside and so shalt be led upwards to the Superessential Ray of Divine Darkness.” (ibid)
As today’s accompanying image depicts, the Zen Ensō can be likened unto a sole circular brushstroke that shines within the darkness of the void, thus illuminating It As Pure Translucent Light, empowering us to Recollect THAT most primal Darkness Visible—a boundless sea of Eternal Delight that is at once comforting and nurturing as the Bodhiwomb Itself.
“Mystery and imagination arise from the same source. This source is called darkness….Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding.” LAO-TZU