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BOOK X

THE SECRET CHURCH

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THE ARGUMENT

I. THE HERMENEUTICS OF THE HOLY GRAAL.--A summary of previous considerations--The way of attainment in the Secret Schools--Of the Interior Mass--Other gleanings concerning the Epiclesis clause--That the Secret Tradition does not impeach the official Church--Position of the several schools on this subject--There is no competitive orthodoxy--The eulogy of the external Church--Of what is to be understood by its desolation--Of its restrictions at this day--The sects and the Church. II. THE GOOD HUSBANDMAN.--The Graal legends and the Divine Alliance--That there is one Sanctuary--That the House of Doctrine is one--Of that which is behind the risible Church--Graal literature as the spiritual emotion of the Church--Its high texts as products of monasticism--The maiming of the outer Church--The inner priesthood and the secret Mass--The universal experiment--One of its concealments--Further concerning its rumours--Peculiar use of Eucharistic transubstantiation--The official Church and the seat of its power--Testimony of certain prelates in respect of Papal Rome--The yoke and the burden--Strictures on altered procedure in respect of the Eucharist--Traces of a school of patience and a school of higher experience--Of its connection with the life of the world within and without the Church. III. THE CATHOLIC SECRET OF THE LITERATURE.--Question as to the Custodians of the Secret Tradition--The Consensus Spiritus Sancti--The two apparent 

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schools of the Secret Tradition--Further concerning spiritual alchemy--The Quest of the Graal--Of Kabalism and Masonry--The proper understanding of a doctrine of loss in the Church--The Church as the House of Souls--Orthodoxy of the Graal literature--Its branches from this point of view--That its rumours and implicits are not the voice of a rival Christian conclave working in the hidden places--The same is to be said of Kabalism and Masonry--The position of Alchemy--Removal of a certain interdict on speech and thought--Councillor Karl von Eckartshausen--The Cloud on the Sanctuary--Loupoukine--His Characteristics of the Interior Church--The conception of a Holy Assembly--The sodality of a consciousness in common--The rise of a more express witness--A confusion in respect of the evidence--An illustration from the natural world--The Visible Church in connection with the doctrine of a Holy Assembly--Comparison of the Secret Church to a School of the Prophets--Inferences from secret fraternities--Testimony of the Sons of the Valley--Specific claim put forward by The Cloud on the Sanctuary--Its reduction into a complete schedule--The similar evidence of Loupoukine--Errors of expression in both witnesses--That the Secret Church is an arbitrary name--Definition of the mystic life--Of certain elements in the hands of the Graal romancers--That the Secret Church recognises the external Church--The consensus of sanctity--That the Secret Church is not an instituted Assembly--Of Mass in the Secret Church--Of certain limits to expression--The Graal literature as a rumour of Sanctuary Doctrine--Mystery concerning the rumour--How the official Sanctuary is made void. IV. THE MYSTERY WHICH IS WITHIN.--The Secret Church as an hypothesis, an implicit and a truth--Conditions 

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of its membership--That it has not issued manifestoes--In what sense the evidence is misleading concerning it--The silence of its work--Its chief mystery as that of Divine Communication--Its connection with the Eucharist--The Secret Church as an integration of believers in the higher consciousness. V. THE SECLUDED AND UNKNOWN SANCTUARY.--An alternative for the romances of the Graal--A further summary concerning the Secret Tradition--The mystery of love and the world of grace--Another reconsideration of the literature--A new comparison from alchemy--The Graal romances as an implied impeachment of Rome--Whether the Graal Church stood for official Christianity--The Rich Fisherman from this point of view--Difficulties of this assumption--Conclusion that the Hidden Sanctuary could not represent the Visible Church of Rome--Evidence of the literature itself on this subject--Whether the literature was, in some other sense, hostile to Rome--Assumption that the Graal sanctuary was really the Celtic Church--Evidence of the literature from this standpoint--The claim of the Lesser Chronicles is in conflict with the assumption--The Greater Chronicles are in some respects militantly Roman--One text only may be concerned with the aggrandisement of British Christianity--A note on the German cycle--Of certain plain stories told by the Graal texts--The mystery of the Graal Sanctuary--The makers of the literature did not dream of a pan-Britannic Church--Clearness of its concern at the highest--A lesson of these considerations--Its various counsels of caution--The true Question of the Graal--The literature as a witness of the Church--Of experience in transcendence--The harmony of all quests and histories outside the terms of romance--The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal--The hope of Western 

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[paragraph continues] Mysticism--The Secret Tradition in Catholic Experience. VI. THE TRADITION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE.--That the Secret Tradition in Christian times was never put into official language as by one instituted school which stood for the whole--Eckartshausen approximated only--Loupoukine expressed probably a strong intellectual sentiment--Were there no traces in the annals of the Church itself?--The Disciplina Arcani--Whether this was imbedded in the tradition of St. John the Divine--The Eucharist and the beloved disciple--Traditions concerning St. john--The rumour of his secret knowledge--In what manner he was assumed by the physical alchemists--The search after heresy--Some previous speculations--One suggested alternative--Of so-called Johannine Christians--Traditions concerning St. John--Traces of a higher Gnosis--An unfinished Quest. VII. THE CONCLUSION OF THIS HOLY QUEST.--Of certain unfulfilled covenants--Preliminary remarks--The Veil of the Eucharist--The French and German Percivals--Collectanea Mystica--The Lost Book--The Great Experiment--The Inner House of Doctrine--The world of attainment--Of the highest symbols as pretexts--The Mystic Quest--A praise of scholarship--But of that also which remains after--And this as a Spiritual Sun--The monastic Graal--Of that which may be superadded to the official consciousness of the Church--The many voices of tradition--The one testimony--An end of these pleadings--The colophon.


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