The Highest Symbolic Degree of True Magic

[it] would bring you to ruin.

Before you continue reading, cast yourself down at the altar table and pray:

Prayer.

You God of my fathers, and merciful Lord! You who created all things by your Word.

And through your wisdom, ordained that man should rule over the natures that were created by you, that he should also govern the world with equity and justice, and judge with an upright spirit.

Give me the wisdom that stands before your throne, and do not cast me away from the number of your servants!

I am your servant, the son of your handmaid, and a weak human; I do not know you, and all the wisdom of men without your divine wisdom is foolishness in your eyes.

Send forth now your wisdom from your holy heavens, and from the throne of your majesty, so that it may always be with me, and work with me, so that I may know what is pleasing to you.

Amen.

After you have now finished this prayer, read on:

I was, my son, in the society of the wise who strive for truth, Ardesh a term for the society; our speech was: Truth and Goodness; our number 75; our word: Vandabat a secret watchword; our nomination Triphereth the Splendor/Beauty; the following package will explain more.

The angle of our "enwalled" referring to the figurative boundary of their inner circle is four hearts, which concentrate in the center and form the shape of a cross; a chain unites these hearts and makes a whole of them.

This angle is the sign that should constantly remind us of the high duties of man, of which I will explain further to you.

Our society, dear son, has no community with any society that ever existed or exists. We do not bind ourselves through oaths; we have neither constitutions nor written rules, neither convents nor lodges; our work is active love of God and mankind. Our order is the order of God, of the saints, of the wise.

We accept one another; each accepts himself according to the degree of love he gives himself through his actions. According to this, he places himself in the higher or lower degree of divine approach.

We have no superiors; we are all equal among ourselves; our leader is God.

We do not follow statutes according to a rule-measure; the angel who enters the good deeds of men into the book of eternity is our secretary, and our rule is the stamp of pure intention, which presses the seal of love upon our actions.

No one has to command another; each commands himself according to the degree of his insight.

We exclude no one; everyone excludes himself through the effort of abstinence, upon which he descends again if he leaves truth and goodness behind.

We do not make a statum in statu state within a state, but rather we are good people among people.

With us there are no ceremonies; our initiation is active love of God and mankind.

We teach one another without seeing one another, recognizing each other through active love, and according to the purity of love, each knows the degree of wisdom the other possesses.

Orders of merit, titles, and special privileges do not exist among us; they are signs of the works still imagined in the temples of God. The Master Builder alone determines our value; we do not presume any privileges, and we determine them according to the degree of merit of our brothers.

The genuine Masonic lodges (though they are few) are nurseries; from these, man moves on when he comes to insight, toward higher truth; he comes out of the material into the spiritual, or from the visible into the invisible.

Yet every human being, even if he was not a mason, can reach this degree of height, for if his will is good, God leads him to the truth.

Since the material man could rarely think himself into such great truths, our ancestors believed one could form the sensory man little by little into the non-sensory, and therefore they enclosed the truth of great secrets in figures to lead man step-by-step toward knowledge, and thus masonry originated.

But the promised stone, he who wants to tell the truth, soon received a gossip-form