Imagination

And the cultivation of it

I’ve been awfully slow responding to comments here because for the past while our Grand Master has been keeping me extremely busy. Please know though that I’m not ignoring things, I just haven’t had the time to respond yet. I don’t doubt that things will return to normal here on Emeth very soon!

Or, as the Godfather would say:

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“A peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory, and illustrated by symbols.”

Allegory seems easy enough to understand. It’s an extremely common way of teaching, and always has been. Jesus taught through parable.

But, why symbols?

Our Brother Carl Claudy wrote long ago:

“The body has its five senses through which the mind may learn; the mind has also imagination. That imagination may see farther than eyes and hear sounds fainter than may be caught by ears. To the imagination symbols become plain as printed words to the eye. Nothing else will do; no words can be as effective (unless they are themselves symbols [allegory]); no teachings expressed in language are as easily learned by the mind as those which come via the symbol through the imagination.

Take from Freemasonry its symbols and but the husk remains, the kernel is gone. He who hears but the words of Freemasonry misses their meaning entirely.”

I can buy that. It makes great sense to me.

But, honestly, I’ve always had a really overactive imagination.

I’m using the term ‘overactive imagination’ on purpose here. I’ve lived an extremely social life for an awful lot of years, surrounded by friends and family a lot more often than not. And during that time, I’ve come to believe that maybe other people aren’t as consumed by their imagination than I am. Maybe they don’t spend as much time daydreaming, or maybe things things are less intense.

When considering that, I certainly think that I could use my time daydreaming a lot more effectively than I do. After all, one gets absolutely nothing done when lost in a flight of fancy. But, I’ve also come to believe that I wouldn’t want to be without all my daydreams. They are me.

I have to wonder, contemplating Claudy, if my overactive imagination is one of the reasons I find such satisfaction in Freemasonry. But not just in Freemasonry, in other systems of symbolism too, Tarot for example.

I’ll freely admit to being a bit weird, and probably the average person on the street would find these particular interests to be a bit weird as well.

All this does lead me to think about imagination. To imagine about imagination if you will.

I think that all children are born with super hyperactive imaginations, but our society does its very best to beat it out of them. Well, maybe we don’t beat the kids anymore, but you get the idea.

Parent’s generally work against imagination. Think about all the times we hear the words: ‘Pay Attention!’ Schools are even worse. ‘Sit down and shut up you little bastards!’ Maybe not those words exactly, but you know what I mean. Heck, these days schools, parents, and medical doctors quacks even medicate the crap out of kids to suppress imagination.

Yet Claudy writes about the vital importance of imagination to Freemasons.

So, how do we cultivate it within ourselves?