Temple and Contemplation brings together for the first ... - ImagoMundi

counter-history of—that History which, as we saw at the beginning, has
been described as nothing less than the profanation of the sacred. To
conceive of the sacred, of the divine, as constituting the immediate, the
natural, the given, from which man will break free by becoming historical
man—that is to say, by the geste of a History whose hero is man himself—
is nothing other, perhaps, than to consent to the satanic inversion of the
primordial order of things. Going back to the symbol we used earlier (see
above, section II), it is to conform to the norms that Pharoah wishes to
impose on men. If History-profanation is no more than the decadence and
corruption of what was given to us originally, then we could say that in
our day the disease has attained planetary dimensions. We could also say
that, if this is the case, the idea of salvation is essentially and assuredly our
deliverance from the perils of History. Reference was made earlier to the
symbol of Moses saved from the waters of History. To save in a similar
way is the function of the Imago Templi. Given that this is so, the transition,
since the time of the Montanist crisis, from eschatological Christianity—
the Christology of Christos Angelos—to a Christianity and a Christology
within History, must surely strike us as fateful, a sign of the process of
corruption. Does not this sign coincide with the refusal of gnosis? And is it
not then the case that the secret of Israel, the secret of the "new Temple",
communicated impartially to all nations, is a sign that the difference
between the "Temple" and the profane has been abolished? .
Unfortunately, all too frequently one hears people say that the Christian
Revelation has no secret about it, nothing esoteric that needs interpretation.
"All is finished", as we were reminded earlier. In accordance with this
attitude these same people oppose the Christian revelation to gnosis and
to the hermeneutic that accompanies gnosis. In compensation, we are told
that the Christian mystery is unprofanable, because it requires one to be
present at this mystery through the sacramental communion of faith. Any
gnostic would see this contrast both as fragile and as painfully artificial,
for it starts out by forgetting that in this same sense gnosis itself is also and
par excellence unprofanable. It is not enough to hear the esoteric meaning
uttered; it is necessary to be present at it through a new birth. Gnosis and
palingenesis are inseparable, and this is also the sacramental sense of
communion through gnosis. On the other hand, to separate the Christian
Revelation from gnosis is precisely what lays the former open to profanation.
The overwhelming desacralization that is occurring in our time gives us
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THE IMAGO TEMPLI IN CONFRONTATION
ample food for thought. A hostile attitude towards gnosis has led to
forgetfulness or ignorance of the original relationship between the primitive
Christian community at Jerusalem and Jewish gnosis. The same hostile
attitude has inspired the statement that all Christian esotericism is doomed
to defeat. Unfortunately, what we are witnessing today is the defeat to
which we are condemned by the absence or the refusal of gnosis.
Protesting and testifying against this absence, on the other hand, is the
\persistence of the Imago Templi and its connection with the notion of an
inititiatic knighthood that is perpetuated from century to century, unknown
to the majority of men. Exactly the same theme occurs in Islamic gnosis,
both Shiite and Ismaili. 191
We must emphasize once again that our inquiry here is not of the sort
that a historian would conduct. The transmissions effectuated by the
Temple traditions are not supported by legal acts, registered documents,
and so on. Here above all it is necessary to proceed phenomenologically,
allowing the traditions to tell us what they will, without losing sight of two
things: i) These traditions can tell us, better than any archival document,
what goes on at "the meeting-place of the two seas", at the place, that is,
where all spiritual transmissions—which are not, of course, simply transmissions
of certificates or archives—really take place. 2) The moment the
decision to filiate himself to a tradition becomes effective for a man of
spiritual aspiration, the "historic" link between him and his predecessors
is forged. He is their lawful heir and successor, whatever the chronological
hiatus between them (we have frequently cited the case in point of Suhravardi,
reviving the theosophical tradition of the sages of ancient Persia in
Islamicized Iran). 192 This existential link is not "historical" in the current
exoteric sense of the word, for it cannot leave any trace in any archive; but
nonetheless it is formed once and forever in the time of "subtle history"—
which could also be termed "parahistory", since it bears the same relationship
to profane history as does the parable to all one-dimensional utterances.
If the phenomenologist has some difficulty in making himself understood
on this point by the historians, that is no reason for him to give up or to be
discouraged!
The "templar" tradition—that is to say, the "subtle history" or "hier-
191 See En Islam iranien, op. cit., vol. IV, index s.v. silsilat al-'irfan.
192 (If. my article 'Science traditionelle et Renaissance spirituelle', in Cahiers de I'Universile
Saint-Jean de Jerusalem, I (1975).
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