Hidden Side of Christian Festivals - Paperback

by Wynn Wagner (Editor), Charles Webster Leadbeater (Author)

Written by one of the foremost authorities on esoteric Christianity, HIDDEN SIDE takes you on a journey beneath the popular surface meaning of the major events in the church's year. It was written a few months after World War One, and that still is a strong memory to the author. Archbishop Leadbeater (1854-1934) was the second Presiding Bishop of the Liberal Rite of the church catholic. He was one of the most well-known authors on esoteric Christianity of the twentieth century. "Christianity is one of the great paths up the mountain of light at the summit of, which sits God Himself. It is one of the paths, but only one, and if we have a number of people all round the base of the mountain, the shortest path to the top for each man is the path, which opens before him. It would be foolish to have the idea that we must go and drag a man all round the base of the mountain in order to make him walk up our particular path. "Our efforts to convert people from other religions and modes of worship are unnecessary and presumptuous. The effort to bring to the knowledge of God people who are ignorant of His ways is a grand and noble action; that we should by deed as well as by word preach our belief that there is a God, and that to live as He would have men live is the only sure way to comfort and peace - that is a noble work; but to try to convert a man who is already good along his own line in order to make him good along ours is not a sensible thing to do." Abp. Charles W. Leadbeater from "The Epiphany"

Author Biography

Charles Webster Leadbeater was born in February 1854, in Cheshire, England. During his life, he claimed to have been born in 1847, but there is a fairly good body of evidence to say the correct year was 1854. His father - Charles - moved the family to London in 1861 because of a job with the railroad. An uncle - W. W. Capes - got young Charles interested in the priesthood. He was ordained to the Church of England clergy by the Bishop of Winchester in 1979. He met Helena P. Blavatsky in 1884. The well-known mystic got him interest in the occult side of religion. Father Leadbeater was so enamored by Madam Blavatsky that he became her disciple, mov-ing to Adyar, India shortly after meeting her. He renounced his priesthood and took up studies under Blavatsky. Leadbeater moved to Sydney, Australia in 1915, and estab-lished a Theosophical Society center that was second only to the main house in India in size. In the early part of the twentieth century, he and James I. Wedgwood founded the Liberal Catholic Church. Their intent was to nourish esoteric liturgies, separate from the Anglican and Roman Rites of the church catholic. His philosophy of religion can be summed up in the words he wrote for the Liberal Catholic liturgy: "We believe that God is Love and Power and Truth and Light; that perfect justice rules the world; that all His sons shall one day reach His Feet, however far they stray. We hold the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of man; we know that we do serve Him best when best we serve our brother man. So shall His blessing rest upon us and peace for evermore."