Supreme Council of the 33rd and Last Degree

Books are written by people. Even the books of "divine inspiration", essential books par excellence, were also written by man's hand… And perhaps it is not superfluous to (re) remember, here, what - in this - Metropolitan Father Bartholomew Ananias said: " The inspiration of the Holy Spirit on the sacred author is not an automatic dictation, but a state of grace that respects his personality, character, temperament, degree of culture, literary talent and his own style ”.

In this state - of grace, the qualifier must be underlined - it refers, I think, to Brâncuși when, from the position of great spiritual, highly initiated in the depths and mysteries of Art / Creation, could say: "Things are not hard to do, it's hard to put yourself in the position to do them."

Written by people, books are - no doubt - written for people… The author of no book, as far as we know, did not remain its only reader; the writing of any book necessarily refers to a presumptive Other, because the book has, as its first intention, the need / desire - in other words, office - de to communicate.

This presupposes that the author really has something - something important, he thinks - to say; and that that "something" might be important to the Other.

So the books here start; and most of them remain here: either the importance of the message is due to rapidly changing circumstances, or the talent is precarious and the style, obsolete, the books come and go. It happens.

However, there are also books that - through a certain "state of grace" - exceed the level of communication; and naturally enters the realm of communion… A cumineca it means, here, "to share with the Other"; make him partaker of what has pleased you, enlightened you in the Spirit - beyond the “materiality”, (i) mediated, of the narrative.

Eating, or together-living of knowledge, can be the (re) experience - deeper, more intense, higher - of what the Intellect has known and assimilated… As can be another kind of "Judged, weighed, divided" - with emphasis on the last phrase.

This would be, briefly outlined, the meaning of what I mean by essential books: meaning that separates them from the others - which, in the "minor range", can also have their "value".

We can add a criterion of separation - expressed simply: than to read ten or twenty books on the same topic, but which talk a lot and say nothing more, it would be really useful only one; one and good, as they say - which embroider, on that theme, and you often, with impeccable argumentation, almost everything that can be said and deserves to be known… Attention, however: no book says "everything".

Intention? Impotence? Hard to say… Anyway, an old teaching warns: Who knows ten to say only nine. Why? - Here is a meditation theme.

So, here we go. And, at a pace neither slow nor alert, I recommend such a book. And I wish you the time to go through it, as well as the patience / ability to understand it; to linger usefully in interiority them and to find / build “bridges” to your own interiority.

What I mean is that simple reading is just that the first consent of intelligence Which is not to be confused, by any means, with true and integral understanding of Truth: especially when it comes, as in such books, to a doctrinal truth.

What kind of books will we present?… The titles we have in mind, for the time being, outline a “proximate genre” that identifies with the Christian era; with Europe for the last two millennia and with the “historical time” to which its evolution / involution is subscribed.

We have left aside the great books of the Orient - most of them, prior to this "era" - because our criterion is alternative, not restrictive… That is, European authors will be present whose books talk about (and some are even initiated by) the doctrines of the Orient.

For, as we know, the Light from there comes.
Peace be upon you, Reader!