Post by Tamrin on Aug 25, 2010 6:51:57 GMT 10
W. Kirk MacNulty, The Application of Psychology to Masonic Symbolism:
I have to say that my propensity to interpret Masonic symbolism in a psychological context has, in the past, puzzled some Brethren. They have noted that Freemasonry precedes psychology by at least a hundred years, and it is unlikely that the Brethren who formulated our symbolic structure could have intended the meanings I ascribe to our symbols. There is certainly some justification for this; the Brethren who founded our order would never have used the psychological terminology that I have used here. But there is more to it than that.
The practice of the Hermetic/Kabbalsitic Tradition of the Renaissance was an interior ascent, and when one “turns inside,” one finds himself in the domain that we call the psyche. This was as true for the philosopher of the Renaissance as it is for us today. As Carl Jung demonstrated in his work, Psychology and Alchemy, the intellectual community of the Renaissance studied the psyche; they simply had a very different purpose than that of our contemporary psychologists who seek to help people adapt to life in the physical world. Their nomenclature was also very different, too.
Although Freemasonry’s symbols are based on ideas from the Renaissance, it is my understanding that those symbols represent the structure of our own interior being. As we try to understand these symbols and apply them to ourselves, it is easier to use the contemporary psychological terms that we are familiar with than to use the idiom from some earlier discipline.
The practice of the Hermetic/Kabbalsitic Tradition of the Renaissance was an interior ascent, and when one “turns inside,” one finds himself in the domain that we call the psyche. This was as true for the philosopher of the Renaissance as it is for us today. As Carl Jung demonstrated in his work, Psychology and Alchemy, the intellectual community of the Renaissance studied the psyche; they simply had a very different purpose than that of our contemporary psychologists who seek to help people adapt to life in the physical world. Their nomenclature was also very different, too.
Although Freemasonry’s symbols are based on ideas from the Renaissance, it is my understanding that those symbols represent the structure of our own interior being. As we try to understand these symbols and apply them to ourselves, it is easier to use the contemporary psychological terms that we are familiar with than to use the idiom from some earlier discipline.