The Eternal NOW.

Many writers have explored this essential concept; as a philosophical problem; as a psychological state; as an existential reality. Different forms of spirituality have also tackled the problem of the NOW.

Whichever way we approach the idea, we cannot escape it. The NOW is all we truly have.

The past exists only as Memory and evidence of things done. The future exists only as a series of potentials and partial predictions.

Community and society compel us to frame our lives in constant reference to our past actions and our future plans - where do we come from? What have we earned? What are our plans and objectives? What can we expect? Religion and culture are unavoidably rooted in the past, noble as it may have been in many ways; yet the past also contains horrors, tragedies and losses. Science and technology make constant raids on our potential futures, seeking to conquer the limits of physics and nature, with variable results that range from ground-breaking discoveries to devastating errors of judgement. Media throws all of this information up in the air, and creates a maelstrom from it. The brain reels from the complexities of our contemporary life.

Still, we only live and exist - in any real sense - in the NOW.

Every realisation, every discovery, every act of Love or War, happens in the NOW.
It is in the NOW where our liberation lies - our power to transform ourselves and our environment - our power to unfold potentials which are otherwise obscured by past traumas and future fears - our power to change paradigms, heal wounds, discover truths, act with wisdom, and find peace.

In the Hermetic Mysteries, and the Alchemical traditions which derive therefrom, we find multiple images of arcane symbolism. Beautiful depictions of geometry, nature, science, myth and allegory overwhelm the aesthetic senses as we study them - but in all , the Key is implicit. It is the  observer, and the NOW in which they exist. The power to perceive and react. The power to know. The Consciousness. The Self. This is the First Key to all the Mysteries.

The Medieval Adepts revealed the cosmology of the Sublime Mysteries in  concentric circles, extending from the Earth through the Planetary Zones to the Supercelestial Realms beyond the Fixed Stars. We dismiss this as a primitive grasp of the astronomical sciences, when they 'believed' the Earth to be the centre of the Universe. But for the emergent Human Consciousness, this is existentially true: Earth  is  the centre of our human experience, until the expansive revelations of Science and the Mysteries bring us upwards and outwards - from the Womb of the Spiritus Telluris, through those ever-expanding Circles of Truth and Wisdom - to contemplate Eternity and Infinity as both a scientific  and a spiritual reality. Initiation into the Egyptian Masonic Mysteries is nothing more than a graduation of this universal process of Human Evolution. Only our Human Consciousness is capable of becoming the Point in the centre of the Circle. Just as Earth is placed in the cosmic centre, we also ground ourselves existentially in the Present.

The Gate of the Mysteries is sometimes open; it is sometimes closed. All things oscillate in the Cosmos.

If you are considering passing through that Gate to join us, do not hesitate.

All any of us have is NOW.

T.'.F.'.E.'.