From the book
Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry
R. Swinburne Clymer · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordSpirit names the inward or divine dimension of life; matter names its embodied or outward condition.
- In Ancient Mystic Oriental MasonryThe soul's emanation into denser forms gives the pair a cosmic setting.
- In this editionSpiritual does not automatically mean disembodied, and material does not always mean selfish.
- A place to readI.26: “The problem of genuine Initiation, or training in occultism, consists in placing all the operations of” …
Meaning
Spirit names the inward or divine dimension of life; matter names its embodied or outward condition. The book interprets their relation through descent, development, and the recovery of an inward order.
Use in the book
The soul's emanation into denser forms gives the pair a cosmic setting. The triangle and square make it visible in the degrees. The body-as-temple passages then require the bodily life to be shaped by spiritual understanding. The introduction does not tell the student simply to despise the body; it calls for purification and direction.
Places to read
- Original Introduction · Block 26“The problem of genuine Initiation, or training in occultism, consists in placing all the operations of the body under the dominion of the Will. In freeing the Ego from the dominion” …
- Degrees of the Mystic Oriental Rite · Block 15… “higher, some lower, the highest tending upward into Spiritual essences, the lowest forming particled matter. These denser emanations, following out the creative law, aggregated into Suns, Satellites, Worlds, and each repeating” …
- Mystic Masonry · Block 44… “his career with the triangle surmounting the square (spirit has not yet descended into matter). As he progresses the descent takes place, and we have the triangle in the square, and” …
- Mystic Masonry · Block 68… “like (made in the likeness of,) that other, spiritual temple, not made with hands, eternal in the heaven; for the old philosophy (Kabalah) teaches that the Immortal Spirit of man is” …
In this edition
Spiritual does not automatically mean disembodied, and material does not always mean selfish. Context determines the intended contrast.
Reading the argument
The opposition is therefore not always an opposition between good and evil. Embodiment is part of the pilgrimage the text describes. The question is how the material life participates in, expresses, or obstructs the inward aim.
spirit
“spirit” — 30 occurrences in 22 text blocks: I.7, 10, 12, 19; D.16; M.30, 44, 47, 52, 55, 68, 74; F.50, 56, 90, 92, 98, 151–152, 154, 166; S.96.
spiritual
“spiritual” — 23 occurrences in 20 text blocks: I.23; D.13, 15; M.68, 71–72; F.48, 67, 70, 79, 98, 112, 128, 133; S.6, 15, 25, 120; R.16; N.184.
matter
“matter” — 25 occurrences in 20 text blocks: I.15; D.15–16; M.7, 44, 50, 52, 55, 57, 63, 68; F.75, 127, 134, 137, 170–171; S.15, 131; R.11.
material
“material” — 7 occurrences in 7 text blocks: D.15; M.62; F.132; S.18, 43, 85; N.184.