Fraternidad Masónica

Esotericism as a Principle and Way

Address given at the First Communication of the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy

Rome, April 17, 2008

by the Grand Master of the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy

the Most Worshipful Bro. Fabio Venzi



In 1993, in a moment in which Freemasonry in this country had reached the lowest level as for its reputation because of its involvements in politics and crime, the Gran Loggia Regolare d'Italia came to light with the ambitious plan to bring Masonic Tradition back to its ancient philosophical-esoteric roots.

Nowadays, fifteen years later, we can definitely state we made good progress in our work. As a matter of fact, in these fifteen years the Gran Loggia Regolare d'Italia never deviated from Landmarks characterizing a Masonic Order as a "regular" one, never dealt with politics nor with business, never polemized against Catholic Church nor against any other religious Institution. It was rather the opposite.

GRIS (Gruppo di Ricerca e Informazione Socio-religiosa/Sociological-religious Research and Information Group, i. e. one of the most renowned Vatican survey centres) published some days ago in the last issue of its magazine the records of a conference held last year in Rome on "Catholic Church and Freemasonry". These records include some unpublished documents on this subject and, in full, the speech I pronounced in that occasion. Well, let me say that printing on a Catholic official magazine the words of an Italian Masonry Grand Master – after something like three hundred years of conflicts and misunderstandings – is in my opinion an event which let us hope in a future chance to open a dialogue: if not an event having an historical significance.

In the last fifteen years we rather deliberately set out on a purely esoteric journey: a journey in which Esotericism has to be understood both as an individual principle of knowledge and quest, and as a common way to be shared with all Brethren of our already large family.

Three research Lodges – namely the Quatuor Coronati, Santa Cecilia and Pico della Mirandola – and the highly esteemed magazine De Hominis Dignitate were the exclusive tools we used in these years for inner dialogue and for public relations aiming to let sincerely interested people know and understand us.

So, esotericism as a principle and way: why this choice?

You already know my strong dislike for theories considering Freemasonry as a filiation of Enlightenment, this way moving the Mason away from his original and fundamental essence. Modern paradigm in fact performs, by using the experimental method, an intellectual speculation in which the wholeness encompassing us becomes a mere projection of human mind and not a per se process. Even nature is perceived as a field in which all the inventions of the reason come off, and it loses its role of empathetic comprehension of reality: this nature is therefore mute, passive, at the mercy of rationalistic determinism and secularization. Scientistic paradigm in fact is based on belief that man can rule over nature thanks to rationality; but a substantial difference exists between rationality and reason (logos).

According to our Ritual, in second degree occult mysteries of nature and science are learned; but science is in this case the outcome of a reason which refers to noetic intelligence: i. e. an intelligence allowing man to comprehend the dimension of sacred and, above all, to be tuned in profound rhythms of nature sensing this way all aspects that rationality can not catch. These dynamics have in this sense an holistic character: man and nature act here as parts of a complex organism taken as a whole, more than as separate and interacting bodies. Metaphysical approach is more suitable than rationalistic one in order to understand these dynamics, esoteric way more convenient than scientistic one. This is in my opinion the ground and context in which a Freemason operates; and this ground, this context, participate of course in something greater and wider: in the plan of life itself.

Progress, technological rationalization, scientistic determinism are spiritually blind. Freemasonry thought has an individualistic nature and can not rise from heterogenesis of aims.

Therefore Masonic thought is not the fruit of the Enlightenment progressive ideology, but instead an antidote, a criticism of western society degeneracy, bringing – in its own Rituals and in the esoteric elements of its symbology – a metapolitical interpretation of reality, suggesting spiritual and transcendent references through which Freemasons can create their own vision of world and prepare themselves to life: both from a social and from an inner, personal point of view. It teaches us in an age of decline to went up the river of Tradition toward its sources, trying to criticize rationalization process – inevitably degenerating in homologation and quantification of social relations – up to its roots.

Fortified by these principles and by our orthodoxy we now face the future, firmly believing that sense and reason of Freemasonry lie in its ancient initiatory knowledge: in its noble tradition being the giant whose shoulders we can climb on to see farer and farer.

website