Quest Magazine

Faith Beyond Belief: Stories of Good People Who Left Their Church Behind

Margaret Placentra Johnston
Wheaton: Quest Books, 2012. x + 300 pages, paper, $17.95.

According to the author of Faith beyond Belief, much of traditional religion puts forth a message that is spiritually immature and lacking in nuance and sophistication. She supports this thesis by recounting her own struggle with traditional religious views, as well as by narrating the real life stories of ten people from diverse backgrounds who had similar struggles and ultimately decided to leave their places of worship.

The stories are both engaging and revealing. They include those of a young mother who was raised as a Mormon; a man who from Kenya who was raised Roman Catholic; a Midwestern woman who began questioning her Presbyterian church at the age of eight; an elderly man who began to question his Muslim faith after the events of 9/11; and a baby boomer who was brought up in the Russian Orthodox Church. Although they left their religions behind, all these individuals felt that they continued to have a deep spiritual life in which truth and ethics play a pivotal part.

In most of these cases, the decision to leave one's religion involved a prolonged and intense psychological battle–an inner tug of war between wanting the continued security of a community with shared beliefs and the ever-increasing doubts raised by the rational mind regarding rigid church doctrine. Those whose stories are told here found that their search for spiritual integrity was stifled and repressed by the narrow parameters of orthodox religious thinking. But it was not uncommon for these inner struggles to endure for years. One can appreciate the great courage and integrity that were required to make those decisions, especially in the face of impassioned pleas from family and members of the congregation to stay within the fold. In some cases, the price paid was complete rejection by family and former friends.

As compelling as these stories are, they serve to make the author's larger point, which is that spirituality evolves through four stages of growth. The first stage includes those who are spiritually undeveloped. These are people who live their lives without any guiding principles and are motivated primarily by selfish and egocentric concerns. Some of them may even attend church, but only for superficial and ulterior motives. The second stage consists of those who are looking for definite answers and tend to read scripture in a literal fashion. They view their religion as the only "correct" one and place great value on the security and comfort that such attitudes bring them. They are not comfortable with ambiguity and prefer cut-and-dried moral directives. Third is the rational stage, in which science and reason play a great role. Individuals at this stage value truth and integrity and therefore cannot accept religious ideas that fly in the face of science. They are often skeptical and ask lots of questions. "Critical reflection," the author notes, "is a necessary step in moving toward spiritual maturity" She observes that for individuals to arrive at the rational level, their sense of self has to be stronger than their identity with a certain group, although this does not necessarily mean they are selfish.

The author characterizes the fourth stage of spiritual growth as the mystical stage. Here scripture is interpreted as metaphor and allegory. There is a comfort with ambiguity and mystery and "an ability to live in the questions" Individuals at this level accept and value paradoxical statements as pointers to truth, while those at an earlier stage of spiritual development are made uneasy and insecure by such apparent contradictions. Mystics value unity over divisiveness, seeing not one group or another, but all as part of one.

While the author presents much evidence to support this theory of spiritual development, she takes pains to emphasize that we should not use this type of knowledge to judge people or categorize them. Also, the stages are not always cut-and-dried, and people often exhibit traits from more than one category. But the overall evidence is persuasive, and the theory is compatible with the Theosophical view of spiritual evolution. Research from a number of sources, as well as the author's own ideas, are presented in a clear and nondogmatic fashion.

Just as the message put out by traditional religion is often immature, according to the author, so are the relentless attacks on organized religion by the new crop of atheists–people like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and others. Although they make some valid criticisms against religion, often in brilliant fashion, they are guilty of making an idol out of the rational mind, failing to understand that there may be other ways of perceiving the ultimate Reality.

Finally, it should be noted that this is not a book about bashing religion. The author stresses, "As a society, we do not want to leave our churches behind. Nor should we; they provide us with a rich cultural heritage and a particular sense of community not available elsewhere. They also serve as an integrating force for good and remind us to focus on issues beyond the material world"

David Bruce

The reviewer is a longtime member of the Theosophical Society, for which he serves as national secretary.

Initiating Women in Freemasonry: The Adoption Rite

Jan A.M. Snoek
Leiden: Brill, 2012. xvii + 550 pages, hardcover, $237.

Freemasonry is often considered an exclusively male fraternity and, in most of its manifestations, so it is. In particular, the dominant stream of Masonry that has historically flowed out of the British Isles (including Masonry as it developed in North America) has forbidden the initiation of women. Why this is so is a knotty question, though probably one over which few people lose sleep.

The usual explanation is that the mixing of men and women in “secret” meetings during the genesis of modern Masonry in seventeenth- and eighteenth- century British culture would have just been too scandalous. And Masonry, being an extremely traditional order, has continued that custom down to the present.

An alternate explanation, put forth by Robert G. Davis in Understanding Manhood in America: Freemasonry’s Enduring Path to the Mature Masculine (Lancaster, Va.: Anchor Communications, 2005), is that Masonic rituals (and their accompanying symbols and lectures) were consciously designed to initiate men into a mature and moral understanding of their responsibilities as men. In other words, Masonry may have evolved from an artisan trade initiation into a broader masculine adult “rite of passage” ritual. Women were not excluded out of some petty sexist spite. Rather, with Masonry understood as an embodiment of the male mysteries, the presence of women in Masonic lodges would have been as awkward as the presence of men in tribal women’s menstrual huts.

Nevertheless, during the upsurge of reform efforts in the mid- to late nineteenth century that encompassed abolitionism, suffragism, spiritualism, Prohibition, alternative healing methods, and a renewed interest in occultism, the exclusion of women from Freemasonry became an issue worthy of challenge. H.P. Blavatsky, in Isis Unveiled, delighted in revealing the keys to several Masonic ciphers and presented her own analysis of Masonic symbolism and history. For good measure, in an exchange of honors with John Yarker, a British disseminator of fringe Masonic charters and degrees, she received a diploma declaring her the recipient of several degrees of the feminine Rite of Adoption. The next generation of Theosophical leaders, particularly Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, went even further by encouraging the growth and spread of Co-Masonry, a version of Freemasonry admitting both men and women.

Yet these efforts toward Masonic inclusiveness were preceded by the substantial development of a largely feminine Freemasonry, particularly in France, in the latter part of the eighteenth century: the so-called Adoptive Rites (into which Blavatsky would supposedly be initiated). This is the subject of Jan Snoek’s Initiating Women in Freemasonry, a breakthrough tackling of a subject hitherto lost in the shadows of obscurity.

Freemasonry’s spread from Britain to the European continent around the 1730s was accompanied by all sorts of paradoxes. If Masonry in Britain was distinguished by an egalitarian mixing of male bourgeoisie, gentry, and aristocracy, Masonry in France was largely an aristocratic pursuit. Yet the French aristocracy allowed a greater latitude for the activities of women, whether through salons or through aristocratic female participation in Freemasonry.

This was largely propelled through the phenomenon of Adoptive Rites, with traditional male lodges founding associated lodges for women, with their own unique degree rituals and mythos. This was often portrayed by unsympathetic Masons as giving a sop to “the ladies,” but Snoek convincingly demonstrates that the Adoptive degree rituals had sufficient sophistication and depth to rival those of mainstream male Masonry. In fact, Snoek offers evidence that the Adoptive ritual may have been adapted from a variety of “Harodim” Masonry that existed parallel to the better-known Grand Lodge Masonry of Britain in the 1700s.

Snoek traces the ebbs and flows of active Adoptive Masonry from the eighteenth through the twentieth century, although he largely concentrates on its continental manifestations and doesn’t bring Co-Masonry into the discussion. His book makes great use of the vast archives of the Grand Orient, the central lodge of France, which were confiscated by the Nazis during World War II and subsequently seized by the Soviet Union, where they were warehoused until their return to the Grand Orient in 2000.

Initiating Women in Freemasonry is a dense and scholarly work, perhaps of most interest to Masonic researchers and the growing number of academic scholars investigating esoteric traditions. It assumes the reader has a substantial familiarity with—or at least an interest in—both the intricacies of Masonic history and such arcane topics as the variations between ritual texts published in various “Masonic exposures” in the eighteenth century. This may drastically limit the potential readership for the book; hence the publisher’s astronomical list price for it.

But make no mistake: Snoek has produced a richly researched and wellargued book that brings a formerly obscure corner of Masonic history into the light of day. It offers evidence that over the past three centuries, more women received a form of Masonic initiation than has hitherto been commonly known or assumed.

This work represents a breakthrough in expanding the discussion of the multitude of “Masonries” that have coexisted since the 1700s. However, it may be a good long while before such specialized research trickles down into more mainstream discussions of what is “real” Masonry. In the meantime, for serious Masonic history buffs, Snoek’s book is a tough, dense, but rewarding read. He deserves the strongest thanks for undertaking it.

Jay Kinney

Jay Kinney was publisher and editor in chief of Gnosis magazine during its fifteen-year span. His book The Masonic Myth (Harper Collins) has been translated into five languages.

Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality

Gary Lachman
New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2012.
352 pages, paper, $16.95.

Is another biography of one of the most fascinating and storied individuals of the nineteenth century, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, really needed? Gary Lachman, the well-known writer on occult and esoteric topics, and the author of some dozen works including biographical studies of P.D. Ouspensky, Rudolf Steiner, and Carl Jung, suggests that there are two Madame Blavatskys that have already been subjected to close scrutiny. There is, of course, the Madame  Blavatsky of what Lachman terms the "encyclopedi" version: the Blavatsky derided and disparaged, accused of fraud and labeled a charlatan. According to Lachman, the evidence for all the derogatory accusations is "pretty questionable" Then there is the pro-Blavatsky version, which at times borders on the uncritical and hagiographical. The third persona, whom Lachman says he discovered as he investigated her life and times, is a more exciting, surprising, and "real" character. It is the one that he believes deserves to be better known and hopes to reveal in the course of retelling her story.

In pursuit of this third persona, Lachman emphasizes the Russian traits that Blavatsky inevitably inherited”what the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev described as mystical and prophetic qualities or "devotion to spiritual truth," combined with a "profoundly contradictory character" To these, Lachman adds another: the acceptance of humiliation or what is known in the Sufi tradition as the "way of blame" (for an excellent description of this characteristic, see the recently  published Quest book, Yannis Toussulis's Sufism and the Way of Blame).

Drawing on a number of already published biographies, Lachman opens his first chapter, titled "From Russia with Love," with the indisputable facts of HPB's parentage and early years, continuing the narrative in the second chapter, "Around the World in Eighty Ways" As Lachman narrates the story, by the time of her marriage at the age of seventeen, HPB's life begins to take on the quality of a large question mark: many small questions are interspersed with verifiable facts. Lachman, for the most part, refrains from answering any of the questions, many of which still haunt the serious investigator, but rather presents a fairly balanced account of the numerous answers that have been proposed. A relevant example concerns her relationship with the Italian-Hungarian opera singer Agardi Metrovitch, whom she first met in Constantinople on the first of her several journeys around the world. Metrovitch gave his name to HPB's "ward," the child Yuri or Youri, whose actual father may well have been the Estonian Baron Meyendorff, with the mother named as HPB's sister-in-law, Nathalie Blavatsky. The story is a complicated one, and Lachman attempts to give equal credit to both the pro- and the anti- Blavatsky accounts.

In a similar manner, Lachman reviews the several versions of her first encounter–at least "in the flesh"–with her guru, the Master or Mahatma Morya, when she was in London. That meeting Lachman identifies as "perhaps the most important moment of her life" Morya, along with other Masters (members of what is often referred to as the  Brotherhood of Adepts or Occult Fraternity), appears throughout Lachman's account of all subsequent events in HPB's life. In the final chapter of the book, entitled "The Masters Revealed?", Lachman deals with the concept of "hidden masters" He also analyzes in some detail the work of K. Paul Johnson, including his book, Initiates of Theosophical Masters and his article "Blavatsky and Her Teachers," reprinted in Jay Kinney's anthology, The Inner West. While also dealing with post-Blavatskian ideas concerning the Masters, Lachman accepts that for Blavatsky herself, these are "actual people . . . remarkable men, possessed of remarkable powers, with high aims and a noble mission, but men nonetheless," and that she was in communication with them. 

Allied to the question of Blavatsky's Masters is the vexed issue concerning the time she spent in Tibet, and Lachman
devotes chapter three ("Seven Years in Tibet?") to an examination of possible answers. He is particularly  helpful in pulling together a record of those known to have attempted entry to the mysterious land. Some we know were successful in their effort (such as the French Abb Huc and much later, the French Buddhist Alexandra David-Neel, whose life–according to Lachman–closely paralleled that of Blavatsky's), while many were either turned back at the borders or perished in the attempt. More relevant, suggests Lachman, is what she did during whatever time she may have been in Tibet. Here Lachman proposes that HPB was instructed by the Masters in the "mysterious" language she termed "Senzar," as well as engaging in the "even more difficult study: the development and control of her psychic powers" However, Lachman's conclusion regarding her claim of having been in Tibet is simply, "In all honesty, I do not know" So the reader is left to determine the truth or falsity of HPB's own statements.

By chapter four ("A Haunting in Chittenden"), we are generally on verifiable ground. Lachman again cites a wide range of previously published biographies for his abbreviated survey of HPB's life during the years following her arrival in the United States, her meeting with Henry Steel Olcott, and the establishment of the Theosophical Society (events covered in chapters four, five, and six).

As he is usually quite careful in identifying his sources for the various significant events, it would have been helpful if Lachman had clearly identified the source of what he calls the Society's –mission' statement," generally called the Three Objects of the organization. In chapter six, "Unveiling Isis," he gives one of the very early versions of the Objects, adding that the "statement" still guides the branches of the Society today. Actually today, at least for the Adyar Society, the Objects that serve as guideposts have some important differences from the original versions. A minor point, perhaps, but worth noting to aid the reader unfamiliar with the Society.

It is in chapter six, however, that Lachman, discussing and summarizing the two volumes of Isis Unveiled, writes at his very best, with an enthusiasm and  vitality that excites the reader. Here too he justifies calling HPB the "mother of modern spirituality" Emphasizing that "many of the themes and ideas that occupy a great deal of contemporary
'alternative' literature were first announced by Blavatsky," Lachman proceeds to illustrate the claim that so much that has been called "new age" is really "rooted" in HPB's first major work.

Lachman deals quite competently with all the subsequent events: the move to India; meeting the journalist A.P. Sinnett; the production of numerous phenomena; the establishment of the headquarters of the Society at Adyar; what is often referred to as the "Coulomb Affair," followed by the famous (or infamous) Hodgson Report on behalf of the Society for Psychical Research; and the departure of HPB from India, first to Europe and then eventually to settle in London, where she would complete her second major work, The Secret Doctrine. Lachman, while admitting that as with Isis Unveiled, The Secret Doctrine is not easily summarized, proceeds to give the reader an adequate and very helpful prcis of the two volumes, quoting in full what are known as the "three fundamental propositions"

By the final chapter, one feels that Lachman has quite fallen in love with HPB, or at least has found her lovable, her life made up of "equal parts of history and mystery" Her most creative periods, he contends, were the times when she produced her four major works, Isis Unveiled, The Secret Doctrine, The Voice of the Silence, and The Key to Theosophy, works that have never been out of print since they were first penned. They are still studied by individuals and groups today, providing instruction, inspiration, and, often, bewilderment, giving rise to ever deeper probing into the truths she sought to convey.

If one faults Lachman for anything, it may be for his all too frequent digressions, which sometimes confuse and tend to lead away from his central thesis. On the whole, however, Lachman has produced an excellent brief survey of the life and work of one of the most remarkable women of all time. For those unfamiliar with HPB, the book provides a quick introduction, while those already acquainted with her may find in the work a new perspective on her legacy to the contemporary arena of spiritual search.

Joy Mills

Joy Mills was president of the Theosophical Society in America from 1965 to 1974. Her most recent contribution to Quest was "Entangled Karma" in the Fall 2012 issue.

The Modern Book of the Dead: A Revolutionary Perspective on Death, the Soul, and What Really Happens in the Life to Come

Ptolemy Tompkins
New York: Atria, 2012. 275 pages, hardcover, $26.

An old story from China concerns a teacher and a student who pay a condolence call. As the two men stand in front of the coffin, the student pats the lid and asks, “Is it alive or dead?” The teacher responds, “I will not say alive or dead.” The student asks why not. The teacher exclaims, “I won’t say! I won’t say!” The student continues to press his inquiry, even threatening violence, but the teacher remains steadfast: “I won’t say! I won’t say!” The student—whose question is a matter of life and death—does not get the answer he wants. It is something he must discover for himself. A shame then he did not have access to Ptolemy Tompkins’ latest book, which—while offering no definitive answer to the question— fulfills its aim of bringing to light “an extraordinarily empowering new geography of the afterlife.”

Tompkins, a former editor at Guideposts and Angels on Earth magazines (and a Quest contributor), is a widely published essayist and author of four previous books, including Paradise Fever and The Divine Life of Animals. His new book, while indeed addressing the question “What happens to us when we die?”, is more concerned with a peculiar situation in which modern people find themselves: namely, having “forgotten how to perform the essential activity of ‘thinking the right things’ about death.” Our ideas of the afterlife, Tompkins contends, are hazy and ill-formed because we don’t actually believe there is any life after death. The Modern Book of the Dead is intended to persuade its readers otherwise: “We come...from a larger, better world than this one, and we return to it when our time here is finished.” To achieve his ends, Tompkins offers an agreeable blend of memoir, comparative historical survey, and metaphysical speculation.

The first fifty—and most compelling— pages of the book stand as a condensed autobiography in which the author recounts growing up in a spiritually unconventional household. Tompkins’ father, Peter, a writer of some renown, was the coauthor of two books that helped usher in New Age thought, Secrets of the Great Pyramid (1971) and The Secret Life of Plants (1973). Talk around the family dinner table was most extraordinary, incandescent with the ideas of H.P. Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, Edgar Cayce, and L. Ron Hubbard. When Tompkins’ father wasn’t expounding on subjects metaphysical, he was voicing skepticism toward any form of conventional religion. As for modern science, the elder Tompkins harbored outright loathing, “believing that most scientists spent most of their time covering up the real truth about the world rather than revealing it.” A potent atmosphere of speculation and attitude characterized the household, all of which registered deeply on the son, who writes: “One of the main reasons I’m interested in the afterlife...is that the world I grew up in taught me to be interested.”

The majority of the book, however, is far less personal, as it provides a survey of the history and literature of what happens to us beyond the veil. Tompkins considers a wide range of perspectives on the subject, from the ancient Egyptians to contemporary neuroscientists, always on the lookout for “chunks of apparent meaning” or “the hidden narrative arc in the seemingly pointless flux of human experience.” Along the way, Tompkins delves into The Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and various writings of the American Transcendentalists— notably those of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman—for what can be gleaned to encourage us to “think the right things” about death. While nothing especially new comes to light here, The Modern Book of the Dead does make a significant contribution in its emphasis upon cultivating perspective, something Socrates himself might approve of. “For no matter what kind of brave face we might try to put on it,” Tompkins writes, “a life lived without a coherent, focused, and serious picture of the afterlife is, quite simply, a life without context: a life that will, in the end, always be missing half of itself.”

In this regard, the book is indebted to some of the pioneers of depth psychology— Fechner, Freud, and Jung—yet it also serves as a worthy complement to more recent investigations into the subject of the afterlife, such as those by Deborah Blum (Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life after Death) and Patrick Harpur (The Secret Tradition of the Soul, reviewed in Quest, Summer 2012).

The Modern Book of the Dead is not without its delightfully startling moments, as when Tompkins offers this insight about social media: “it would seem the afterlife is a lot like Facebook, with the difference that the simulacrum of connection with others that Facebook partially provides is here actually provided in full.” Laugh, cry, or wince at this analogy, it unsettles in the very way an unexpected truth often does. And despite the immodest claim of the book’s subtitle, Tompkins does strike a balanced tone in laying out his case, and he usually avoids confusing metaphor for reality: “The last thing we should do is take these descriptions completely at face value.”

Like many argonauts of the spirit before him, Tompkins is drawn to cartographic metaphor as a way to delineate the great beyond. He would have his book serve as a map for future travelers, which of course means all of us. “Such a map will always be just a map,” he admits, “but good maps do describe real places, and point to real journeys as well.” If in the end The Modern Book of the Dead proves less a map than an engaging travelogue, I for one have no complaints. Nor does it matter that this book, like that ancient teacher in China, leaves the big question unresolved. The reader instead comes away with renewed anticipation for wondrous regions that may one day be revealed.

John P. O’Grady

John P. O’Grady’s contributions to Quest include “Shadow Gazing: On Photography and Imagination” in the Fall 2009 issue.