272 CONCLUSION
In fact, all authentic traditional paths can intersect only as they are
connected to the Absolute, which is One. Forms are merely different;
they do not diverge. It is interesting to note that there was never any
conflict in the art of building—that is, in the art of serving and express-
ing the Sacred—among the Christian religion and Islam either in Spain
or the Holy Lands at the time of the Crusades. Quite the contrary, their
relationship was one of mutual teaching and reciprocal enrichment.
The tragedy of operative masonry was the Reformation and
Counter-Reformation. Rather than being a case of opposition between
two different religions, it embodied the opposition of different forms of
worship within the same religion. This manifested in differente liturgi-
cal forms, which are simply circumstancial products of human sensibil-
ity—but these forms ceased to be seen as anything more than what they
were, an abstraction of the Transcendent Reality they expressed. What
resulted was the rule of the iconoclasts.
Freemasonry survived despite this critical blow. It survived through
those elements within it that were undying: its iniatory path and its
mode of expression: symbolism.
In one country especially, Great Britain, long divided and torn by
religious and political conflicts, it succeeded through an adaptation of
its mode of thinking and a transposition of its ability to act, to unite men
of separate conviction, who, without Freemasonry, would have remained
strangers to each other. This provided Freemasonry with a new point of
departure. But this transformation did not occur without upheaval,
especially concerning the essential: the spiritual transmission, the tradi-
tion, that ceased to be seen without an effort to intellectualize it.
This is where our historical record concerning the origins of this
tradition comes to a close. Above the vested interests, beliefs, and opin-
ions, and across the centuries and many nations, Freemasonry, loyal to
its origins, however hazy, maintained its perennial tradition of an ini-
tiatory path that has made it the reflection of humanity's eternal aspi-
ration toward the Beautiful, the Good, and the Perfect.
For a contemporary Freemasonry that still declares itself to be an
initiatory society despite the inevitable adaptations that have been
made, it is most important to grasp the simple and sublime, clear and
profound lesson offered to it by history. It is a valuable lesson for all