WILLIAM BLAKE
collected, they began with the eighteenth century. Nevertheless the Freemasons are right in the spirit even if they are wrong in the letter. There is a tradition of things analogous to mystical masonry throughout all the historic generations of Paganism and Christianity. There is a definite tradition outside Christianity, not of rationalism, but of paganism, paganism in the original and frightful forest sense—pagan magic. Christianity, rightly or wrongly, always discouraged it on the ground that it was, or tended to be, black magic. That is not here our concern. The point is that this non-Christian supernaturalism, whether it was good or bad, was continuous in spite of Christianity. Its signs and traces can be seen in every age: it hung like a huge fume, in many monstrous forms, over the dying Roman Empire: it was the energy in the Gnostics who so nearly captured Christianity, and who were persecuted for their pessimism; in the full sunlight of the living Church it dared to carve its symbols upon the tombs of the Templars; and when the first sects raised their heads at the Reformation, its ancient and awful voice was heard.
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