Studies in the Tradition

Enquirers who write to the Chancery ask, more often than anything else, where the teaching of the Order comes from. The pages on the Teachings say what the Order takes from each of its three streams. They say less about the streams themselves: who wrote the old books, when, and why; which of the stories told about them are true, which are doubtful and which are plainly false. For its fortieth year the Grand Council asked five of its officers and the Warden Emeritus to answer these questions in public, plainly and at modest length. The Studies in the Tradition are the result.

Each study is the work of its author and is signed. Each tells the history of one part of the Tradition as the best scholarship now tells it, and then says, briefly, what the Order has made of it. None of them is an instructional paper of the degrees, and none of them reveals anything that is reserved to the members. They are offered in the same spirit as the Charter and the Articles: as an honest account, given freely, to those who have found their way to the gate.

The authors have tried to be as careful about what the Order does not claim as about what it does. The Order of the Grail is young, and says so. It claims no chain of initiation from the fraternity of the Rose Cross, from the Elect Priests of the eighteenth century or from any of the Martinist bodies founded since. It has received what it teaches, and it is grateful to those who kept it. These studies are, among other things, an act of gratitude.