Ritual and Religious Experience – Part 5

Charles Seymour

In the last article it was pointed out that an understanding of much of the ancient Mystery ritual and teaching can often be reached through the use of psychology. This essentially the case when we come to study the reasons for, and the effects of, ritual dancing. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that in any study of “Religion” as “Experience”, one should make use of modern psychology just as readily as one would make use of the methods of historical research in the domain of the comparative study of religions.

The idea of ritual dancing in a religious service may seem strange to the unimaginative British Protestant of the 20th Century; it, however, would not have seemed at all strange to anyone living, say, two or three thousand years ago. David, we know, danced with extreme vigour before the Ark, but one cannot quite picture a modern Bishop in his Doctor of Divinity gown imitating him. Perhaps David, in spite of his family worries, was younger and more virile than many of our modern Bishops seem to be.

In early Christianity, Bishops led the faithful in sacred dances both in the churches and before the Tombs of the Martyrs. The practice was forbidden by the Council of 692AD. But the prohibition was ineffective. Centuries later, the Liturgy of Paris included the rubric: “Le chanoine ballera au premier psaume”. It would add greatly to the impressiveness of the services if those venerable University Scholars who adorn the Canon’s stalls in St Paul’s Cathedral had to dance the Psalms.

Even in the present day, dancing before the High Altar is permitted in Seville Cathedral on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, at Shrovetide, and on Corpus Christi Day.

Up to the eighteenth century, dancing by priests on saints’ days was practised in the French provinces. It is also clear from many passages in the Hebrew Psalms that ritual dancing played a part in the Temple worship and in its liturgy (Psalms 149, 3: 150, 4: Moffatt’s translation.)

It is said that a new Roman Catholic women’s order, whose emblem is the Holy Grail, is using old Gregorian Chants for public ritual dancing; it appears that the results are entirely free from irreverence, are expressive of deep devotion, and are very beautiful to watch. But then it must be remembered that they are carried out by well-trained young girls. The results might be different with well-fed middle-aged clerics.

In the Christian Gnostic Mystery Schools, dancing was used in much the same way that it was used in the Pagan Mystery Religions, that is, as a means of “raising consciousness”. In the Acts of John, there is a dance ritual, and Mead seems to think that the ceremony is that of a sacred dance of Initiation. In the following quoted in Fragments of a Faith Forgotten by GRS Mead pg431 C stands for Candidate, I for Initiator (the Christ) and A for the Assistants.

C: I would be saved.
I : And I would save.
A: Amen
C: I would be loosed.
I: And I would Loose.
A: Amen
(Grace – the Sophia – dances)
I would pipe: dance all of you
A: Amen
The ogdoad plays to our dancing. Amen.
The dodecad danceth above us. Amen.
He who danceth not, knoweth not what is being done.
I: Now respond thou to my dancing.
See thyself in Me who speak: and when thou hast seen what I do, keep
silence on my Mysteries.
(Dancing) Observe what I do…

This hymn begins and ends with a doxology to each line of which the disciples, “going round in a ring”, are said to answer back “Amen”.

Commentary by Christian Gilson

Psychology is an important tool in understanding the function of religion and its effect upon the human psyche. However, it is understandable that over the years believers have been resistant to such an approach. Mainly because psychology has been used as a blunt instrument in the attempt to reduce religious experience and dismiss it. Indeed, Freud the father of psychology saw religion as a neurosis. He argued that the Father God was a projection of our guilt that arises from the Oedipal Complex. Wherein we have effectively killed our fathers, or at least removed their authority, and as a result we seek an idealised father figure to comfort us, I over simplify but the point is clear. Freud certainly saw religion as psychological crutch that we have created to deal with the difficulties of life.

However, his greatest student Jung and many others did not share his view, and saw religion as a powerful aspect of our lived experience. Therefore, we must reject the deconstructionist views of Freud and embrace the interpretative use of psychology offered by Jung and others. These tools as Seymour argues, help us to understand the spiritual effect of religion, and its out working in our daily lives. At one level religion ted actions that unite word and physical movement, done with intention and focus. Such actions can and do have a profound effect on the mind, creating not only patterns of behaviour but allowing connection between the conscious and subconscious mind. Such connections lead the mind of the person to develop particular aspects of the self and its relation to the world around it. These ideas underpin much of what is practised today in the fields of coaching, and Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

William James describes the religious experience of the individual as being ineffable, that is, it is difficult to accurately describe using words, it is an experience that goes beyond language to express and share it. However, such experiences can and do create profound changes in the person who has had the experience, which James calls its noetic quality. Therefore, something has indeed happened and we should be able to use the tools of modern psychology to try to understand the nature of the experience and the subsequent change. Which is the view that Seymour is expressing here, and is clearly deeply influenced not only by the works of William James but also the teachings of Dion Fortune.

Seymour’s discussion of dancing in the Christian church conjures some wonderfully funny images, but regardless, he makes a very valid point. That music, literature, poetry, art all have their place in worship, so why should dance not also be included? In the late twentieth century with the charismatic movement came the urge to worship through dance, and many a formal service found itself engaging with dance performances. But in the traditional churches this seems to have been short lived. The only place where a form of dance seems to continue is within the evangelical free churches. However, here whilst being a spontaneous expression of the power of faith, the dance is more about hand waving. Indeed, it has none of the formality that Seymour implies, and I think he would find it sadly lacking.

It is also interesting to note that the contemporary examples that he shares are all to be found outside the British Isles, it seems the British expression of Christian faith has been a conservative one for many centuries, and that perhaps, is to its detriment. Perhaps this was a reaction to the continuation of pagan forms of dancing, such as the Circle Dance, within the folk traditions of the country. Associating dance with something less than Godly. Or even encouraging the faithful to engage in lewd and sinful activities, for folk music is rich with sexual imagery. Certainly, the wave of puritanism that reached its height under Cromwell would have seen dancing as being devilish, how dare we enjoy worshipping!

The power of dance to alter the state of consciousness is well known through many religions, and remains controversial. Mainstream Islam teaches that music and dance should be kept apart from worship, and for some it should even be put aside. Yet within the spiritual movement of Sufism in Islam dance is a very important part of worship. The Mevlevi are famously known to use dance to enter into a deep trance, in which the dancer is able to have contact with the divine, and channels spiritual blessings into the material world. Their movements echo the movements of the solar system as they spin about their own axis, and slowly circle the Sheik at the centre, who represents the sun. This dance begins with the mournful call of the pipes, calling the souls of the dancers from the sad separation from God, which is seen as almost calling them from the grave into true life.

Yet the use of dance in this way introduces a dimension to worship that cannot be governed. The individual is empowered to make personal contact with God, without the intermediary of the priest. As a result the visions or revelations gained through this dance cannot be controlled, or steered into the safe waters of orthodoxy, therefore, prevention seems to be the easier route, or labelling such practices as sinful or evil.

One group of religions where dance is important have suffered from this labelling. I refer to the traditional religions that grew form tribal Africa. In the various forms that exist today across the world, dance is used to alter the consciousness of the worshipper so that they may become vessels for the divine, allowing the gods to speak through them. This practice is not so different from the practice of trance mediumship used by Dion Fortune, that Seymour would have regularly participated in.

The Acts of John that Seymour refers to are a series of stories about John that first circulated in the Second Century, and were subsequently recorded, but labelled as unsuitable by the early church and are now seen as part of the Apocryphal Gnostic texts. Part of this text is an account by John of his time spent travelling with Jesus. In it there is an account that includes a circular dance initiated by Jesus, who says, “Before I am delivered to them, let us sing a hymn to the Father and so go to meet what lies before us”. Directed to form a circle around him, holding hands and dancing, the apostles cry “Amen” to the hymn of Jesus. Embedded in the text is a hymn that some consider to have originally been a liturgical song, with response, in some Johannine communities. Circle dances of this nature can still be seen practised by some Jewish groups.

It is clear that dancing has an important part to play in ritual worship, not only as way for the worshipper to express themselves, but also as a way to alter their psychological state. Then in this heightened state of consciousness the dancer can, like the Mevlevi dervish, encounter God directly, for a short while leaving their worldly concerns behind and entering into the ecstasy of union with the Divine, the full and powerful religious experience that William James calls the Mystical Experience.

Ritual and Religious Experience – Part 4

Charles Seymour

Directly one faces the problem of trying to discover, – from the fragments of the great Mystery Religions that have escaped the vandalism of the Christians of the fourth and fifth centuries AD. – what was the basis of their working, one comes, mentally, up against a closed door. It is a mental door that seems to be tightly locked; and there is one thing quite certain, the key to that door is not to be found in modern orthodox and rationalist histories. As a rule, for pure materialism a Church History written by a sound Protestant theologian, will beat easily any work issued by the Rationalist Press. There are, of course, exceptions to be found, such as “The Mystery Religions and Christianity”, and “The Religious Quests of the Graeco-Roman World”, both by Samuel Angus. But such exceptions are few and far between. Again, books by Roman Catholic historians are, as a rule, written in a patronising manner, and they display unconcealed bias. And so, they are difficult for a student to read if he is trying to be fairminded; for they irritate and rouse, almost subconsciously, a feeling of mistrust. This may be quite unwarranted, but there it is, unfortunately.

Then there are books written by Theosophists and Spiritualists. These also are obviously written from a particular point of view as to rouse mistrust. While the books written by the ‘Ancients’ which form the subject of one’s study do not, as a rule, convey their real intention in the surface meaning. So, unless one has a pretty strong subconscious drive to continue one’s studies, one is apt to drop the subject as not worthwhile.

In reality, it would seem that the best thing to do is to study a certain amount of modern psychology, and then go direct to the ancient sources. For in psychology lies the key to many of these ancient teachings. Afterwards, by meditation, one should strive to ‘intuit’ as much as one can of that which lies behind the veiled hints given us by the old-world initiates. “Understand in Silence”, was the rule of Plotinus, and that is really the only way to decipher the teachings of the Mysteries.

There is, however, a clue that helps considerably in any study of the Mystery Teachings. It is well known that the Greeks, thanks to the conquests of Alexander BC 330, became for the ancient world the apostles of cosmopolitanism and individualism. The destruction of the City States led to the discrediting of the local deities who were supposed to support and protect those States. The Greek Sophists, like the rising generation today, questioned all authority in the “City State”, and in the end they destroyed the authority of the “Polis”, by showing that no law or laws could be divine: all laws were man-made, and ‘what was law at Megara might well be unlawful at Athens.’ In thus destroying the supposed divine nature of the Authority of the State, they destroyed also the authority of the god who stood behind the State as an external authority. But in the place of that which they destroyed, they set up the doctrine that “Man is the measure of all things”; and in developing this idea, Socrates had to drink the cup of hemlock, because he taught that the ultimate authority on right and wrong is not external but internal. In this idea there is a clue to the inner meaning of much of the Mystery Teachings. The clue that we are now following is that of “Conscience”. A word that the Stoics made familiar to the ancient world hundreds of years before Orthodox Christianity, somewhere about AD 225, built its first church; but Conscience had then a meaning rather different to that it has today.

For Socrates and for Plato, there dwelt within each man a divinity. And in the Mysteries there was a regular teaching in ‘astronomizing’, ‘geometrizing’, ‘dancing’, and so forth, given in the Temple schools by specially trained Initiates. This training was intended to enable the would be initiate to attend upon that indwelling divinity, which was held to manifest itself to the ordinary man through the voice of “Conscience”.

In those days the initiated man was spiritually free in a way that many are not free today. His authority was this Divine Authority which was within himself, for the “daimonion” of Socrates was a regular and recognised type of spiritual religious phenomena. The Daimonia were a lesser race of divine beings, as opposed to the Theoi, or the great divinities. So far as the writer can discover, it is only with the advent of Christianity that the “daimonian” were relegated to the sphere of evil spirits. Previous to the early Christian Fathers, this term “daimonion” was the same as the Latin “numen”; and the Ancient Mysteries used both these terms in much the same way that Professor Otto of Marburg, when he particularises, uses the term “numen” in his books on theology, such as “The Idea of the Holy”. The object, then, of these Mystery rituals was to put the Initiate in direct touch with his own particular “daimonion”, or, as we should say, with his own Higher Self.

Now there is a modern, though unorthodox, teaching, that the Personality is the man in incarnation, and the Individuality is the Higher Self which overshadows this lower self or personality; and this teaching is much the same as that which is implicit in the idea of Socrates and his daimonion. It is also very similar to that which is to be found in St Paul’s teaching of the “inward man”, and St Peter’s comment on the “hidden heart”. The whole object, in the early stages at any rate, of the preparatory teaching given in the Temple schools, was to put the student in touch with what we should call his own Higher Self.

The education given in these schools was an all-round training. In addition to developing the intellect by studies, such as geometry and astronomy, and training the intuition by the study of meditation, ritual dancing was taught. And one of the few things that we are fairly certain of with regard to the Mysteries is that dancing played a very important part in the working of their rituals. There is much in the ritual dances of, say, certain of the Mohammedan tribes in North Africa and in India to explain why this should be so. For ritual dancing has a very curious psychological effect not only on those taking part in it, but also on the onlookers; – an effect that anyone can understand who has watched – “with sympathy” – a Khattak dance in North India, or a well-staged Nautch.

In the Mysteries ritual dancing was used with the idea of producing a definite religious – or perhaps it would be better to say, numinous – experience. Of course, it is open to anyone to say that such induced experience is not real, and that it is purely emotional. This may be the case; but the fact that an experience is emotional does not make it unreal. There are emotions which are very real and produce very definite physiological effects; fear is one, and hate is another. And the religious emotion produced by ritual dancing is just as real as fear, or hate; and like them, it produces effects that are real in their own sphere.

Commentary by Christian Gilson

Seymour’s opening paragraph is an interesting reflection on the works of the Classicists of his time, and quite a damning one at that. The domination of a Christian narrative in this period is clear, along with a moral cleansing of the translations of many classical texts. Indeed, it is from the authors that Seymour is talking about that we get the distortion of ‘Platonic Love’. Our present understanding is that this is referring to a close, intimate but nonsexual relationship. Plato however, had no such understanding, his writing is clear in describing a close sexual relationship between two people of the same sex. However, most writing by classicists of the period that Seymour is reading would refuse to acknowledge such a thing, in fear that their works may be used to give moral and historical support to relationships that were socially unacceptable at the time.

Seymour is right to complain, this bias, whether open or concealed, placed a veil over the original texts which obscured meaning and even changed it, to serve a purpose that was seen to be more important. This whitewashing of history has not continued into the 21st Century and thankfully there are now a range of far more open and informative texts available to the scholar. There are also many popularising authors who do not have the patronising manner referred to by Seymour. Amongst such authors are academics such as Mary Beard, or Catherine Nixy. The mental door Seymour posits has clearly been unlocked and pushed open. Perhaps not to the extent or in the manner that he wanted. Amongst the modern spiritual publishing houses there are a plethora of texts of varying reliability on every form of classical religious practice. These texts though come under the same scornful eye as those of the Theosophists and Spiritualists of Seymour’s time. Much that has been written for the neopagan audience shuns historical accuracy, relying on material gained from working with ancient myth using modern spiritual techniques. Many books re-invent the methods of the Egyptian and Greek temples of the mysteries. Such texts fall under the same suspicion as those written with a Christian bias. To actually return to the every day life and worship of classical society requires careful academic and archaeological study, and even then, there is much conjecture involved. Many will argue does this matter if the techniques that we use lead us to insights that help us to grow as individuals, to continue the Great Work of Regeneration?

It clearly does matter to Seymour, who refers us back to the original texts. However, as many classics students know these texts represent only a small fragment of the written output of these civilisations. We cannot blame the loss simply on the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. In her book ‘The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World’ Catherine Nixy clearly charts the destruction of texts and all reference to pre-Christian practices of the Mystery religions. She usesthe work of a great many modern classics scholars to show how the Early Christians systematically worked to obliterate anything that they felt challenged their theological position. Much in the same way as the modern caliphates have tried to do in Syria. A stance we wholeheartedly condemn as thoughtless and barbaric.

Carl Jung argued that the mystery traditions of the ancient world and particularly that field known to us as magic, was and is the seed of all psychology. That is to say it is the collected understanding of the way in which the human mind operates and can be trained. In the Red Book he writes “The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner.” (Pg 314) Thus magic and psychology act in very similar if not identical ways. This does of course require a large step for some modern readers, to stop seeing magic as a way to influence the world. Indeed, Jung tells us “Magic is the working of men on men, but your magic action does not affect your neighbour; it affects you first, and only if you withstand it does an invisible effect pass from you to your neighbour.” (Red Book pg308) These ideas then are for Seymour the key to the door of the ancient mystery schools.

In his writing on Greek history Seymour elides a considerable period of time, and as a result his description of the changes to society and the death of Socrates are confused. He separates the terms “City State” from “Polis” when the two are in fact synonymous. He then talks of the destruction of the “City State” when in fact it was by the establishment of “City States” that Alexander manage to conquer and control a vast empire. Furthermore, in the writings of Plato, Socrates distances himself from the Sophists. At his trial he is accused of ‘impiety’ and of ‘corrupting the youth of Athens’. The latter was due to him teaching the youth to question everything and accept nothing at face value, a wise idea but one liable to upset those in power who claimed authority.

Putting aside the confusion of this section, the main point holds true. That law had begun as a matter of divine proclamation that Socrates and others brought in to question. Then more than 63 years after the death of Socrates we find Alexander the Great putting this into practice, showing that local gods could not protect their cities and so their law could not hold authority. What develops instead is a rule of law based on human understanding and thought, reflecting on experience. Certainly, we have here the seeds of what we are, by the twelfth century, to call ‘conscience’. He is right to explain that the meaning of the word has changed considerably since its first stirrings in ancient Greece. There is a distinct period in which humanity goes through a very important development, moving away from the collective to the individual, and through it we can see the evolution of language as a marker, showing the birth and formation of the individual as we understand him/her today.

In writing “The Idea of the Holy” Rudolph Otto was trying to explore an understand the religious experience. In the book Otto calls them the nonrational feelings, the sense of the tremendous, the awe full, the mysterious, or, in a word of his choosing, the “numinous”. It is an exploration of the nonrational factor in the idea of the Divine and its relation to the rational. The “numen” then is not so much the soul as Seymour suggests but more the sense of the “Wholly other” the spiritual reality that subtends physical manifestation.

The aim of the Mystery School as explained here by Seymour is a sound one that has changed little. The aim is to give the Initiate the skills, and discipline necessary in order to create an altered state of consciousness by which they are able to create or access the state of mind recognised as the religious experience. In Otto’s terms to enable them to have access to the “numinous” the “wholly other” and so engage in and mange that experience which is characterised as being ”mysterium tremendems et fascinans.” In the writings of the golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley it is “the knowledge and conversation of the holy guardian angel.” This is an essential point in the development of the initiate, for it is only by achieving this that they can actively and consciously begin to align their manifest will with their true or Divine will. It is this condition that is the true mark of the adept

Ritual dancing is an important and powerful tool in the spiritual development of the m individual, and one which seems to be sadly missing from many modern esoteric practises. When writing about dance in Islam, Seymour, is referring to the Mevlevi order of Sufism. A group who use ritualised dance as a form of worship. By entering into a meditational state and dancing in a continual circular motion the dancers emulate the movements of the planets in the solar system. Their right hand raised to receive the blessing of God and their left hand lowered to pass this blessing to the earth. Whilst dancing they are engaged in ‘Dikr’ the continual mindfulness of God, they are transported from the physical into the spiritual and so may be said to be having a religious experience. However, it must be remembered that Sufism is not part of the main stream Muslim tradition. In fact, traditional Sunni Islam forbids the use of dance.

The reference to Khattak and Nautch is interesting and clearly Seymour was able to watch this. Khattak is a very stylised form of dancing initially developed in the reign of the Mughal cemperors it took the form of a martial dance using swords. Whilst Kathak is a highly stylised dance form in which hand gestures carry a specific meaning. This form of dancing is used in Hindu ritual settings to retell the stories from scripture. These forms of dancing require great concentration and physical control and so are less likely to stimulate religious experience. Yet dance is found in other forms of mystery religion, and in the United Kingdom many dances have been preserved and are performed for their meditational benefits, here I am referring to the Circle Dance movement so beautifully described by June Watts in her 2006 book “Circle Dancing: Celebrating the Sacred in Dance.”

The validity of such experiences is an interesting one. For if we deny the validity of a religious experience induced through dance then we must deny the experience as brought about through prayer, or meditation, or any other devotional activity. For such an activity is created to produce this effect. If we rely simply on the grace of God to produce a religious experience, we may be waiting a very long time. There is a long tradition in many religions of working in a disciplined way towards the experience of God. Within the writings of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and Swami Prabhavananda, to name but a few, we are clearly told that when we strive towards the Divine, it is then that the Divine strives towards us. Simply to wait for grace to act and for God to reach out for us seems to be a very lazy and unproductive option. Despite how much we sit and listen to ritual, it is only when we reach out and engage intellectually, and emotionally, in thought and word and deed that we are able to access and encounter the Divine.

Reality and Religious Experience – Part 3

Charles Seymour

Before considering in detail the relation of ‘ritual’ to religious experiences, it may help the student to get a clearer idea of the result of the use, the abuse, and the neglect of ritual, the attached diagram be studied.

In studying this diagram of the Seven Ways by which a religion may develop as a whole or in part, it must be remembered that no church and no sect travels completely or entirely by one way only. For example, in the Anglican Church, first, second, and sixth ways are strongly developed. In the Church of Rome, the fifth way is even more cultivated than it is in Quakerism. But the mysticism of the Roman Catholic is subordinated to his Catholicism; and the fifth way is subordinated in its teaching to the first way. For the Quaker, however, Quakerism is mysticism; it is ” the” way, not one of the ways.

These Seven Ways must therefore be considered as seven tendencies, all of which will show themselves to a greater or lesser degree in all religions, and in all subdivisions of any religion. This diagram will therefore apply equally to Buddhism and Mohammedanism, though here only Christian terminology has been used for the sake of convenience and brevity. The Seventh Way is the ideal one, and its characteristic is balance. Everything is in due proportion and nothing is in excess. It is unnecessary to emphasize very strongly the fact that no religion and no sect is fully on this way – as yet. But also, necessary to emphasize strongly the fact that almost every religion and every sect thinks that it, and usually it alone, is this seventh way.

This Seventh Way is really a “Middle Way” to borrow a phrase from Buddhism. It is the pure white light of Divine truth in its religious aspect. On either side of this middle way are the two ways of Catholicism and of Protestantism. And it is worth noting that in some form or other the basic principles for which Catholicism and Protestantism stand are common to all religions. The Hinnayama and the Mahayana, speaking generally, are but the Protestant and Catholic forms of Buddhism. Fundamentally the two ways part company on the idea of authority. Catholicism usually acknowledges as it’s only authority ” the church”. The authority in true Protestantism (a very difficult thing to find) is in the mind: It is usually called (rather mistakenly!) the individual’s own conscience. Protestantism in England, Northern Europe and North America, is dominated by the idea of Reason (so called!) as the ultimate authority on religion. It tends towards nationalism in religion, and intellectualism, as well as towards individualism and independence of thought. It is the religion of the virile independent northern races living in cool climates. Its great defect is its excessive tendency towards rationalism, and towards loss of touch with the numinous. As a religion, it is phenomenal rather than noumenal, and it is ethical rather than religious. As a result of its sceptical and materialistic philosophy, it has almost completely lost all its ritual powers – powers which it has long despised, partly because it does not understand religious psychology, and partly because it fears to use that which it cannot rationalize, measure, and more or less explain in terms of matter. In terms of the numinous we may say that Protestantism functions chiefly on the concrete mental plane and to a lesser degree on the astral plane; for as a religion, its emotional aspects are usually dominated by its concrete-mindedness. Even when emotionalism breaks loose, as it sometimes does in ‘revivalism’, its effect seldom last. The outburst may be violent, the results may sometimes be deplorable, but sooner or later reason returns to rule, and the uncontrolled expression of repressed emotional tendencies is a thing of the past.

Revivalism is disliked and distrusted – only too often with good reason – by the clergy. But it is usually welcomed by the laity, and as a nice emotional outbreak which is not banned by the law of the herd, it often gives relief to many repressions. For the Roman Catholic, a restrained and trained and continuous flow of emotion is encouraged by the ritual, the majesty and beauty of the Roman mass. Here you have a trained and regulated emotion deliberately allowed to run its ordered course and to over-rule ‘reason’, and speaking generally, for the Roman Catholic, beauty and the higher emotions guide reason in religious matters. The authority is the Church, and the latter’s chief instrument of power over the faithful is its ritual. Here, ritual may lead to a very definite religious experience. Often the Catholic knows by experience that which the Protestant can only reason about – usually somewhat illogically.

On the whole it may be said that, unlike Protestantism, Catholicism leads to internationalism, or rather to universalism, also that the ‘church’ comes before the ‘individual’. Also Roman Catholicism uses meditation much more thoroughly than even the Quakers do; and it is this combination of meditation and ritual which gives the Church of Rome the tremendous hold it has over the souls of its adherents. They will accept certain very evident drawbacks and failings for the sake of the practical religious experience which they can enjoy. We may also say that Roman Catholicism appeals especially to emotional people and the Latin races of the south of Europe, who have been far less touched by Protestantism than have the races of northern Europe.

Ritualistic experience mellowed by devotional meditation may then be said to be the chief source of the spiritual strength as well as the worldly success of Roman Catholicism as a religion. It satisfies the devout Roman Catholic, who can often say from personal experience,” I know”, whereas an equally devout Protestant, who neglects both ritual and meditation, can seldom get beyond: “I believe”.

Commentary by Christian Gilson

Looking at the simple diagram of the seven ways that Seymour has developed, it is interesting to see the different ways that he perceived that the revelatory materials of the founder could be approached. The first apparent claim at the centre, that the founder has taught “truth” must be initially questioned. Firstly, the teachings that are central to any given religion may not derive from a founder, for example the teachings of Buddhism were not committed to paper until five hundred years after Siddhartha Gautama was thought to have delivered them. The teachings of Jesus were written by followers who had not necessarily had first-hand experience of this teaching. Indeed, modern Biblical scholarship argues that this material was written and edited by a range of different contributors. Whilst Mohammed claimed to be illiterate and received the Qur’an directly from God by holy revelation. Whatever the case may be this is not the focus of the point, but rather the need to change the centre to the “teachings and doctrines specific to the faith” in order to be more accurate.

The seven ways are well thought out especially the concept that the best approach is a balance of the other six. That is to say, ideally religion should inspire devotion based on credulity, but not a blind faith, rather a faith in which the believer is asked to engage rationally. However, merely to use reason and devotion is to have a religion devoid of the potential of religious experience. The individual surely needs to feel that contact with the Divine is possible, and that meaning can be revealed to them through intuition and supernaturalism. Finally, all religious believers flourish when they are able to use ritual and object as a focussing point, what Seymour calls superstition. The diagram breaks down the approach to religion in a clear and very effective way and the examples given help the reader to understand the point.

However, there is a need in the present day to replace the example of Catholicism from the path of devotion and use instead Orthodoxy. Simply because of the changes that the Catholic Church has undergone in the last fifty years. Also, what is interesting is his placing of the tendency to pantheism, which is clearly given a negative placement. Certainly, many pantheists would not call their faith a mixture of supernaturalism and superstition. Whilst this may be true of early pagan religions this idea has evolved with time. Many neo-pagans would be more comfortable with the idea of panentheism, that there is one source approached through many aspects, it would be interesting to consider where he would have placed this concept.

The rich and definite distinction that Seymour draws between the Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations here is interesting for what he is telling us about the importance of emotion within ritual practice. However, it would be interesting to see how this would stand up today. The ritual practice of the Roman Catholic mass having been dramatically altered since his time. One could ask if it was the use of latin that attracted him, or the almost obsessional focus on devotion to the saints. The modern Catholic Church has worked to move itself away from such expressions.

However, his analysis of Protestantism as a religion of the mind still holds strong in some part, but not in all. The development of charismatic forms of worship have certainly re-introduced the emotional into protestant worship. But here I avoid the term ritual, because the new forms of Protestantism have abandoned ritual for a non-liturgical form of worship, where music dominates the majority of the service. Indeed, those attending for the first time may be forgiven for thinking that they are at a pop concert. This move certainly returns the emotional aspect but rejects any form of ritualism, so moving from one extreme to the other.

I think it would be more helpful for us to move away from the examples used by Seymour and look instead to those ideas that underpin this article. That is the importance of an emotional aspect to any form of ritual.

Ritual can take two forms, liturgical, and non-liturgical, to use the theological terms. The liturgical form is in effect scripted, following a set pattern with words and forms that are used for every ritual, with some variation in regard to the central theme. It would be easy to consider this to be potentially boring, and lacking spontaneity, and it is why some groups / denominations prefer non-liturgical worship. This ritual form has no script, simply using a theme and allowing the ritual to evolve as it progresses. This latter form is incredibly difficult to manage effectively and often ends in being just a simple gathering of like-minded people.

The power of the liturgical form of ritual is that it gives the ritual form from the outset. However, this is also its downfall. The liturgical ritual is like a play in which each participant has their role to play. Following this metaphor of a play, we can see that if the actors merely read their lines when on stage the audience are going to be very dissatisfied. As a result, the reviews will be terrible and the play will soon close. Rather the actors are called on to fill the role they have been given and give their part an emotional charge. They must make their character believable, so that the audiences’ imagination is captured and they are transported into the world of the play. This is the unification of force and form, it is at root a polarity working.

Transposing these ideas from the stage to the ritual space there is little or no difference. If the words of the ritual are said but no emotional force is brought to bear then they are dead words. The form is empty and lifeless. The ritual then is pointless, failing to appeal to the minds, both conscious and subconscious, and spirits of the participants. It therefore goes without saying, such a ritual will not attract the attention of the Inner Planes, and will not function on anything more than the material plane, which is what Seymour accuses the Protestants of his time of doing. For ritual to be effective it must involve all aspects of the incarnatory personality, speaking to all forms of the mind, drawing on the physical, mental, emotional, and imaginative aspects of every participant.

There is also another aspect to this, for a person who attends a ritual without the intention to be emotionally engaged will also fail to engage with and be moved by that ritual regardless of how much force flows through the other participants. It is not enough to merely turn up, it is essential to tune in and actively participate, even if that participation is to listen. This is the error that many who attend any form of worship/ritual make, it is not the task of the ritual itself to transform you, and make you transcend the ordinary, it is your task to engage with it and so allow it to activate those aspects of yourself that will enable you to transcend and transform yourself. Actors often talk about the importance of feeding from the energy of an audience, a disengaged audience often results in a poor performance, ritual is no different. The ritualist then, needs to bring to liturgical / scripted forms of ritual a willingness to be emotionally engaged. The words of the ritual then act as a channel for that force and by creating a balance of force and form enable the possibility of connection with the spiritual realms, creating the possibility for religious experience. Which as Seymour implies is the secret of any good ritual.

The non-liturgical or unscripted ritual is much harder because there is little for the participants to grasp onto. The channels of form are no longer proscribed, all that is given is an idea, and the participants must focus on this idea and develop an emotional response to it. Then through the altered state of consciousness achieved they must look for each other, and find both a connection to each other and the form of the ritual on the astral, reaching beyond the material. However, if they achieve this then to make the ritual effective they must be able to bring back both the force and form to the material plane and manifest it. This takes a very high degree of discipline and concentration. A state which is rarely found in exoteric worship of any kind, and so the resultant worship becomes little more than a party that leaves everyone happy.

It is argued that liturgical ritual is repetitive and as a result it loses its meaning, becoming something that the participants simply pay lip service too. This is true if there is no emotional connection, if there is no force given to the form by the participants. Malidoma Patrice Somé says of ritual: “No ritual can be repeated the same way twice (in my village there are seasonal rituals that are repeated – but never exactly!). There are structures, however, that stay the same.” (Ritual: Power, healing, and community 1993). He goes on to explain that every participant brings something new and different to the ritual every time, if they are truly engaged with it. He also points out that it is essential that every participant comes to ritual with a purpose. To fail to do so, to attempt to be a disengaged observer, will result in greater problems for that person. He writes “Elders say that ritual is like an arrow shot at something. When the intended target is not there, the arrow invents one.” That is to say the participant who fails to engage purposefully with ritual giving it the force and form required may find themselves receiving the gifts of that ritual in unexpected and often unwanted ways. It is for these reasons that the initiate is carefully trained in the disciplines necessary for ritual to be effective, and for the spiritual life to be enrichening. Seymour is showing us that ritual is not merely a one-way activity, it is a process by which we raise the material to meet with the spiritual and so enable Divine Union, the true religious experience as expressed by mystics in every religion.

Ritual and Religious Experience – Part 2

Charles Seymour

Professor James, the famous American psychologist, in his delightfully written book – “Varieties of Religious Experience”, – emphasises the advantage of some study of the laws of psychology before considering seriously the religious phenomena of Mysticism. Even a slight knowledge of how the mind works will at times throw a flood of light on the real aims of, and the reasons for, many curious rites in the ancient Mystery Religions. Historical research which has been carried out since 1900, strongly tends to show that the educated priesthoods who served in the Mystery Religions of two thousand years ago had a very sound working knowledge of psychology.

Here it is necessary to point out that the regular study of books on the Mystery Religions which have been written before 1890 is largely a waste of time, at any rate for the beginner. So much has been discovered in the last forty five years that it is distinctly unsafe to quote the opinions of almost any modern writer who is prior to that date, the reason for this being that usually his data is inadequate, and so it is often mistakenly applied. It is a point, only too easily forgotten, that nowadays religious books like modern battleships, soon become obsolete.

Today we are slowly being driven to conclude that as regards education, the populace of the civilised parts of the Roman Empire were on a far higher level than was formerly thought to be possible. It is now known that the phenomena and the psychology of religious experience were both carefully studied and practically taught to the Initiates of the higher grades in many. of the ancient Mystery Schools; also that the training of the priestly Initiates must have lasted a great many years and been extremely thorough. Except in the Church if Rome, most modern Divinity Schools seem to give a very inadequate course of instruction. And, judging by what one hears the clergy expound from the pulpits, any instruction that may have been received seems only too often to have been quickly forgotten, or discarded.

In the Divinity Schools of most protestant sects little is taught about the psychology of ritual; indeed, only too often little beyond dates, and personalities, and blind condemnation of anything that savours of “Romanism”, comes the way of the average Divinity student. Failure to study Ritual as Power is an adequate explanation of the deplorable state of the Anglican Church of two hundred years ago, when Fox the Quaker called the Church of England a ‘dead church’ worshipping a ‘dead Christ’. Even Dean Inge seems to think that this reproach can be applied with only too much truth to the Church today: and the Dean of St Paul’s very definitely states that ‘the impregnable rock’ is ‘neither an institution nor a book, but life or experience’. Inge’s Christian Mysticism pp329-330).

Here perhaps a few words may be said about the phrase, used above, ‘To Study Ritual as Power’. It is not easy to explain all that this sentence implies, but an attempt to do so by analogy will be made. For example, you may go into a place of worship; it feels cold and dead, there is no warmth, no feeling, and it produces in you no desire to worship. As one sometimes hears it put – “There is no atmosphere”. Yet the place of worship may have cost much to build, it may be beautifully decorated and most expensively kept up. The Preacher may be a very learned man, a very good man, and a very hard-working, tactful man. Nevertheless the place seems to feel more like a lecture hall than a place of worship. Most of us have ‘felt’ something like this, at some time or other.

Perhaps a quarter of a mile away, there is another place of worship. It may be in a poor quarter. It may be cheap and tawdry. But while its decorative effect may offend your good taste, there seems to meet you, as you enter, a something which makes you want to pray, or at least to sit quiet and rest in its atmosphere. That something is what Rudolph Otto calls the “numinous”. It is a feeling of the nearness of the ‘Unseen’.

One can learn a lot from a good Quakers’ meeting. For example, I know a Quakers’ meeting house. It is the plainest and most inartistic room I have ever been in. The congregation mostly were people who worked with their hands six days a week; simple folk, perhaps widely read in some ways, but with no university polish about them. At the time, I wondered if they knew what they were doing; for, at the end of fifteen minutes’ silence, that room was humming like a dynamo with spiritual power. You see they were trained in “The Ritual of Silence”; and they were carrying it out with one accord in one place: This is a point of vital importance. But when a speaker began to ‘rant’, the atmosphere perceptibly lessened. Now can you imagine an untrained congregation such as one finds on some of the Anglican Churches, sitting tense and motionless and fully concentrated on the “Ritual of Silence”?

If you understand religion to mean contact with the ‘numen’, then there are two main aspects to religion: the aspect of Meditation and the aspect of Ritual. Either will take you far along a straight, steep and narrow path that will lead to “Realisation”. Either aspect, by itself, can take you a long way along ‘the Path’. But if you want to travel far and to travel fast, unless you are an exceptional person, with rare spiritual gifts, you will be well advised to combine both aspects and to make full use of the powers which ritual gives as well as the powers which meditation gives. For with these two acting in combination you can have a speed, a balance, and a harmony, which is so often lacking when one aspect only is used, and when the other aspect is neglected and its power unknown.

The Mystery Religions made a great point of combining meditation and ritual in a balanced harmony in their system of training; they knew how controlled meditation can help a tortured mind; they also knew that a Mystery ritual, if properly worked, has a strange power of refreshing a tired soul and of calming a mind burdened with doubt or sorrow, or trouble. They knew, too, that a ritual, to be effective, must be worked with that power which can only come from knowledge, study and faith. In religion, practical knowledge confers very potent powers on those who can use them.

Commentary by Christian Gilson

William James, was the elder brother of the novelist Henry James. In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of physical and mental difficulties, including problems with his eyes, back, stomach, and skin, as well as periods of depression in which he was tempted by the thought of suicide. He went on to study medicine at Harvard Medical School in 1864. James spent his entire academic career at Harvard. He was appointed instructor in physiology for the spring 1873 term, instructor in anatomy and physiology in 1873, assistant professor of psychology in 1876, assistant professor of philosophy in 1881, full professor in 1885, endowed chair in psychology in 1889, return to philosophy in 1897, and emeritus professor of philosophy in 1907.

James’ Varieties of Religious Experience has remained a key work on the subject that still has its place on the shelves of many a contemporary theologian. The book is a collection of talks given by James for the annual Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. James was not interested in studying religious institutions or doctrines. He focused instead on “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” For example, James compared two different types of religion according to the feelings and emotions that they instilled in people—the “Religion of Healthy-Mindedness” versus the “Sick Soul.”

To James, all religious experiences represent the workings of an important biological function within all human beings. He finds religion useful on the whole for all people although this does not necessarily make it true. According to James, religion connects human beings to some greater reality that we cannot readily experience in our normal everyday interactions with the world.

Mysticism is an important aspect of religion that in the last few decades has been passed over, even shunned by mainstream religion. Mainly because of the implicit difficulty of controlling and managing the claims made by mystics as a result of their subjective experiences. In modern times, “mysticism” has acquired a limited definition, with broad applications, as meaning the aim at the “union with the Absolute, the Infinite, or God”. This limited definition has been applied to a wide range of religious traditions and practices, valuing “mystical experience” as a key element of mysticism. Since the 1960s scholars have debated the merits of perennial (that there is universal similarity between these experiences that stretches throughout history) and constructionist (that these experiences are relevant only within a particular time and place) approaches in the scientific research of “mystical experiences”. The perennial position is now “largely dismissed by scholars”, most scholars using a contextual approach, which takes the cultural and historical context into consideration.

In the first paragraph it is clear that Seymour favours a perennial approach, and there are merits in such a position, which can be found in the writings of Aldous Huxley and the Theosophical Society. Both of which Seymour would have been very familiar. The warning he gives about the problem of obsolete scholarship is an important one that is still relevant today, particularly in the fields of science and archaeology in which new methods and interpretations of material are constantly being developed.

Seymour’s respect for the Roman Catholic Church is very interesting. At the time that particular denomination retained the Latin mass and with it the air of mystery. This has long since gone and I would wager the Seymour would find it hard to distinguish the Catholic priest from the Anglican minister in a standard Sunday homily. The same is true of the mass itself, with the training of priests focussing more on the pastoral element of ministry than the mystical aspects of ritual. This has contributed to the erosion of the authority of the church, and the decline in the production of modern mystical and devotional works. Much of what is produced now for the believer is focussed on the pastoral benefits of relationship with God. Indeed his words about the failure to study ritual as power can be extended to most modern denominations and new Christian movements. The focus has moved from mystery to the world and the need for consolation and promise. This can be seen in the decline in Church attendance nationally. Indeed when asked many state this fact as the reason for their move towards alternative religious expressions, and new religious movements such as paganism. They want a less dogmatic approach to their relationship with God, and the freedom to experience for themselves. In other words they are expressing a need for greater mystery, and the possibility of personal religious experience that is not hemmed in or explained away.

We must concur with Seymour’s observation that many places of worship lack the energy of reverence or awe. They have become tourist sites, where the art is to be enjoyed rather than worship given. Or more often than not we find them used for musical concerts, or literary readings. Often the Church itself is used for the playgroup or as a meeting place, or market place hosting the Christmas Fair. These buildings have become community centres rather than places of sacred worship. These profane uses of the space erode the spiritual energy that may have been present. Whilst there are other Christian groups that meet in profane social spaces; community centres, school halls, theatres, and cafes. Where the building up of sacred energy is impossible to achieve.

Yet there are many places where we can encounter this numinous presence, and these are often places in nature, or places of great antiquity. It is a place where we find ourselves emotionally moved, they convey to us a great sense of awe and wonder. There are modern spaces that also inspire this feeling not because of their architecture or some simple external factor. Often, we are unable to say precisely why they have moved us. William James would say that such an experience is ineffable, we are unable to find words to explain what has happened to us. There is this sense when entering the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the visiting tourist finds a deep and abiding silence and sense of reverence descend without any requirement being placed upon them. They are simply encountering that build-up of spiritual energy that has come from the prayers of those who have been and are still members of the worshipping community. Yet we can walk a few yards into Haga Sophia and experience the opposite.

The importance of meditation and ritual that Seymour underlines here is an indicator of a far more fundamental distinction, the division of public and private worship. Ritual suggests the public element in which the individual can experience community, and more importantly can share the experience of relationship with the Divine. All religions have an aspect of this communal public worship. It serves to build a sense of identity and belonging, as well as establishing the boundaries that define the group or faith community. In occultism this group identity gives rise to the group mind and group spirit, the egregore, which is in every way as important as the functioning of the individuals within the group. This spiritual other that is the active combination of the worshipping community acts to bring the spiritual power into focus within the sacred space, and also serves many other roles that are too vast to explore in this commentary.

The role of meditation whether done alone or in community is a personal or private form of worship. The believer who only attends ritual misses the richness of a personal relationship with the Divine. Indeed, in the Judaeo-Christian tradition the believers are told “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). The act of meditation gives the opportunity for contemplating concepts and seeking a greater understanding, it also allows for mediation, where direction is gained from the Inner Planes.

Seymour has said a great deal in this very short article. Most importantly he has pinpointed the problem with modern expressions of religion, especially in the United Kingdom. The all too rapid move to please the growing secular public has divorced ritual from its roots in the mystical. This has left us with ineffectual faith communities and this can be judged by the absence of spiritual power within their places of worship. This argument can be extended to many of the new religious movements. It can be seen in neo-paganism that there is a growing preference for celebrations rather than expressions of deeper spiritual connection. Without due care and attention, a movement that was started out of a desire to take personal responsibility for our personal spiritual development will go the same way as the spiritless lip service found amongst other religious communities.

Ritual and Religious Experience -Part 1

Charles Seymour

History as a hobby appeals to many people. It is a science, but, unlike most of the sciences, it does not require of the student a long and arduous training in order that he may become efficient. To be an efficient writer on historical subjects requires years of research work, as well as the possession of certain specialised mental gifts, of which a faculty for sifting evidence is not the least. But, for a student to read history with both pleasure and profit to himself, average brain power and perhaps a trifle more than average perseverance only are required.

The law of efficiency in historical reading is the law of limitation. In history, just as in other subjects, if one wants to be efficient one must specialise. As a specialised subject the comparative study of religious history can be not only delightful but also very instructive reading. For example, how many realise that today, at the opening of the twentieth century, there are many factors working to produce a world-wide religious situation which resembles closely in many ways that which faced the Roman Empire and its rulers at the time when Christianity was being brought to birth.

The comparative study of religious history covers an immense field, so here again the subject matter must be strictly limited, and in these articles it is proposed to concentrate one’s efforts upon the comparative study of certain ancient religious rituals considered as an aid to religious experience.

Usually the comparative study of religion busies itself more with the study of the outward forms, the dogmas, teaching, symbols, and external rites of sects and religions, than with the study of experience of the Unseen World or Worlds.

There are two clear-cut aspects to every religion, the form and the force side, or the spirit and the letter; and usually the comparative study of religion concerns itself chiefly with the form side, feeling perhaps that Mysticism (as the force side is popularly but incorrectly called) is too vague and impalpable to be made a subject for scientific investigation. Actually, one cannot separate the two aspects of ‘Form’ and ‘Force’, for as a matter of fact they are related to each other just as closely as is steam to an engine, and as an engine is to steam. Neither can function in their respective spheres without the other’s aid. Even Quakerism has its form side, and, in the opinion of many, the worship of the Society of Friends is growing steadily more and more formal.

But, just as in studying an engine one can concentrate one’s attention either on the form side of the machinery or on the use of the force side of the driving power; so, too, in studying ‘Religion’, the emphasis can be thrown either on to the form side, that is, onto the public worship and public teachings, or onto the experiences of the individual in the ‘secret chamber’; to put this in another way, one can study the “Schools of the Priests” or the “Schools of the Prophets”.

There apparently always has been, and possibly always will be, friction between the official representatives of these two schools, a friction which existed in Israel long before Amos, the desert shepherd from Tekoa, fell foul of Amaziah, the cultured priest of Bethel, the royal Sanctuary.

Throughout the ages the priest has nearly always distrusted and misunderstood the prophet – the mystic – the unprofessional ‘shower-forth’ of the Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. “I must continue today and tomorrow, and the next day depart in death; for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem” (Luke 13:33 Variorum Teacher’s Bible): must have been a phrase which struck grim and sinister on the ears of those who were listening to Jesus. While
1600 years later, Bishop Butler’s treatment of Wesley and his followers showed that this great Bishop had, in this respect, learned but little from the life of the Master he served with such distinction. Yet both these schools are necessary for the development of a religion. In a religion without the restraining forces of a regularly taught priesthood there can be but confusion, as St Paul found with the Corinthian prophets (1Cor14:29); and again. “where
there is no vision the people perish”.

The ideal teacher is both priest and prophet; a man good at ritual, and equally good at meditation; one who is able to enter into the “silence of the Sanctuary”, and to draw strength and inspiration from the Ritual of Silence.

Greater stress will, then be laid upon religion considered as experience of the ‘Unseen’, than upon religion considered as dogma and rite. For the whole object of these articles is to develop the idea of using a religious ritual in order to induce a certain type of religious experience; and so, by means of first-hand experience, to confirm the two great sayings: “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you”; and, “He made darkness His hiding-place, His pavilion round about Him; darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies”. (Ps 18:2)

Commentary by Christian Gilson

The continued appeal of history today is clearly evidenced by the plethora of television programmes from academic explorations of ancient Rome to those which delve into the ancestry of minor celebrities. Although as Seymour is trying to say there is a world of difference between the academic historian and the hobby enthusiast. But, despite this
difference history is accessible to us all. It is there on our doorstep waiting to be experienced at the level which is right for us, and we have a fascination with it. We want to know where we came from and to discover the story of the human race.

If as Seymour claims a world-wide religious situation was being created it is yet in some ways to fully manifest. What has occurred is a growing secularisation in some areas, and in others a return to greater demarcation of belief and a call for an intense adherence to religious law, as seen in the fundamentalist movements that are emerging in every faith. The twentieth century saw a decline in membership of conventional Christian institutions in the United Kingdom, and a growth in the fellowship and house church movements. This in itself constitutes a move away from authoritarian power structures, and growing mistrust of them. This has perhaps, been fuelled by the large number of reported and confirmed incidents where this power has been abused, and as a result victims of the misuse of power have come forward to bring it into the light, in the hope of reclaiming their lives.

Some religious historians have argued that rather than a growing secularisation, the move away from all forms of religious belief, what has occurred is a move towards more noninstitutional or spiritual forms of religious worship. One area that has seen such a growth is the neo-pagan movement. This is a new religious movement that through particular figures such as Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente have reintroduced pagan worship of the old Gods. This has become one of the fastest growing religious movements in the UK today, and its growth is not only limited to this country. As a form, it is a new expression which seeks to root itself in the myths and beliefs of the pre-Christian era, but brings to it a new understanding. As a movement it is free from dogma and authority, perhaps as the early Christian Church once was.

The work of Seymour and Dion Fortune in many ways paved the way for this resurgence of paganism. Within the Fraternity Dion taught that there were three rays, the devotional, hermetic, and natural. It is this last that lends itself to the pagan sentiment. The nature of the ray is the manifestation of God and Spiritual power through the natural world, which is exactly the underlying idea of the neo-pagan movement. Seeing God as both male and female, permeating and underlying the natural world, celebrated in the cycles of the sun and moon.

Seymour is right to argue that the main work of comparative religion is concerned with the exoteric nature of the phenomena. There is very little of this kind of published work that seeks to understand shared underlying experiences or beliefs, perhaps because such experiences are by nature too subjective.

The definition of religion in terms of force and form is an effective one, seeing the outer practices as the form and the spiritual experience as the force. The problem remains that the spiritual aspects of faith are in the main subjective and come about through the devotion and openness of the individual. Whilst the outer forms can be practiced in a way that is devoid of force, and it can be argued this is exactly why many people have moved away from traditional forms of faith. Because, the forms are being practised without regard to the spiritual power needed to give them life. This results in a form of social lip service that is nothing more than an entertainment, a side show with good intention but no dynamic life of its own. When Christian priests declare their disbelief in God, what else can result. When dogma and rule become more important that communion with God the same is true. The result within Christianity has been a move towards a more celebratory form of worship, and a study of the Bible, rather than an embracing of God in the temple. Whilst the neo-pagan has thrown off religious literature, and dogmatic form in order to find God again in the created world.

The idea that true religious expression is the union of priest and prophet is a powerful and very attractive one. Whatever outward form the religion practiced takes, the individual needs to be able to engage in effective ritual and through it have contact and union with God in whatever form is appropriate. The priest who has no spiritual dimension of prophethood is nothing but an empty vessel, a practitioner of form without force. It is the vital contact with God that brings the ritual to life, and brings with it the potential for change, growth, and the unexpected. It is this that empowers effective ritual in any form, and gives the reason why so many religious rites lack any depth or sincerity. It is only when force and form unite that we encounter God, in whatever form we have approached through.