"ORDER OF THE STAR IN THE EAST."

Taranaki Daily News, 15 March 1918, Page 8

"ORDER OF THE STAR IN THE EAST."

The public lecture entitled "Tlie Mystic Star," given by Miss C. W. Christie, drew a greatly interested audience to the Tlieosophical Lodge last r.ight. The lecturer showed clearly that beneath our avowed disbelief in the ofiicacy of talismans, symbols or badges of our religion, our various lodges, and our mascots, there is a strong and ignorant belief in them. This is easily proved by the great lemnnd, and the ostentatious wearing of them by the majority of orthodox re~ligionists and materialists in all classes of society; yet few of the wearers know, or trouble themselves to think seriously of, the real meaning or power, if any, possessed by these articles. This careless thinking, accompanied by an uneasy half-belief in superstition, is one of the greatest hindrances to spiritual growth (said the speaker). "I will try to-night to show you the meaning 01 the fivepointed star—the emblem of om- order—and its value as a talisman, and also that of other religious symbols, ceremonial and ritual. (1) Our star is the symbol of our escape from the,stage of brute into that of the human kingdom; the body of man is in the form of a five-pointed star, erect at last, hoad upward, arms and feet apart and freed for action (knowledge kills superstition). (2) Our escape again from the merely human_jnto the kingdom of Heaven, through the portals of initiation, over which it ever shines; the star is in the east, from which light comes. (3) The Heavenly man, rising grade by grade until perfected—a department controlling all subtle forces of the solar system, and consciously one with Uod. The power in this five-pointed form lies in the fact that the force of God, which creates it in matter finer than the physical, runs in given directions, moving matter into lines and forms, and expresses certain stages in the evolution of consciousness us well as form,J.lod geometriscs; and the actual form thus made is a centre of force upon every plane from the lowest physical to the highest upon which form exists."

The wheel, cross, square, triangle and circle were all dealt with, and the effect of ritual and rythmic movement combined with determined, sustained concentrated thought described. Miss Christie affirmed that this was not mere belief, but knowledge gained by experiment, and the result clearly in lodge workings, religious sacraments, etc. That God geomctrises can be proved by anyone who is sufficiently in earnest to study and experiment. A strong centre of the Order of the Star in the East has been formed in New Plymouth.