Such tricks hath strong imagination...

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
-William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act v. Sc. 1.


"The Imago Templi can be seen as the meeting-place of the great families of the Abrahamic tradition, of all the "communities of the Book" (Ahl al-Kitab)."
-Henry Corbin: Temple and Contemplation. KPI, 1986

"...features in the Kalachakra teachings... Specifically, the twelve astrological signs of the zodiac were painted around the walls of the main halls of the Buddhist monasteries in Kabul. This motif was found both in Iranian royal palaces and in the Kalachakra mandala, where deities representing the twelve signs surround the palace. "

"...the Kalachakra Tantra embodies a large conglomerate of Western Asian, mostly Iranian (Zoroastrian, Manichean), elements, Hellenistic and local religious features characteristic of Gandhara and Udyana as well as Vedic borrowings (which interestingly had themselves made their way into India via western Central Asia, though in prehistoric times).6
<Das Kalachakra, die letzte Phase des Buddhismus in Indien. In: Saeculum 15,1964. Siegbert Hummel: Frau Welt und der Priesterkoenig Johannes. In: Zeitschrift fuer Missionswissenschaft und Religionwissenschaft 43/2, (M?ster) 1959). Siegbert Hummel: Notes on the Lamaist Apocalypse. In: Tibet Journal XXII/4, 1997 (Orig. in: Archiv Orientalni 26/2, Prag 1958). >>
Besides that, it shows the marks of Buddhism's struggle against the inexorable expansion of Islam in the region, and bears traces of the Jewish and Christian traditions, also probably mediated into the region by the Arabs.7
<<. Helmut Hoffmann: Kalachakra Studies I. Manicheism, Christianity and Islam in the Kalachakra Tantra. In: Central Asiatic Journal XIII, 1969.
Helmut Hoffmann: Kalachakra Studies I. Addenda et Corrigenda. In: Central Asiatic Journal XV, 1971. >>

"How awesome is this place! This is none other than the House of God, and this is the gate of heaven." So Jacob rose early in the morning and he took the stone which he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel {Beith-El}, but the name of the city was Luz at first... The stone representing the Omphalos could take the form of a pillar like the stone of Jacob, and it is quite probable that among the Celtic peoples certain 'menhirs' had the same significance; and the oracles were uttered close by these stones, as at Delphi, which is easily explained by the fact that they were considered to be the dwelling-place of the divinity, the 'House of God' being moreover quite naturally identified with the 'Center of the World'."

Meanings of the Monad Number One
"The point within a circle, the Central Fire Deity. The lingam, an upright pillar, was its Hindu symbol.:"
- W. Wynn Westcott: Numbers: Their Occult Power And Mystic Virtues, 1890

"The Shekhinah is the image (dimyon) manifest in prophetic visions, for she is the likeness of the anthropos (demut 'adam), that is, the image of the masculine aspect of the divine.170 More specifically, it is evident that in the above passage the Shekhinah is portrayed as the phallus of the divine anthropos. This is alluded to in the depiction of the Shekhinah as the seal (hotam) of the image of the man... The imaginal forms that inhere within the feminine Presence ... locus of the images or forms is in Yesod (Foundation)...that corresponds to the phallus of the divine anthropos...."

"...to Yesod belongs the inner world of dreams, daydreams and vivid imagination, and
one of the titles of Yesod is "The Treasure House of Images"."

Concerning the Hieron du Val d’Or:

"The Abbey of Orval's web site says only that mysterious monks from Calabria came there in 1070, although little is known about their identity, and they were welcomed there by Count Arnould de Chiny. These "pioneers" moved out after forty years, i.e. around 1110. The legend of Orval claims that it was named by Mathilda de Tuscany, who after finding a lost ring declared the place "a Valley of Gold" (Val D'Or.) "
http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/poseur3.html

Zacharias Werner: Die Söhne des Thals (The Brotherhood of the Valley, 1803-4)

"Werner developed an extraordinary theme, representing a great secret, spiritual power behind the Temple, that of the SONS OF THE VALLEY, a Company of Adept Brethren belonging to a Hidden School of Christ which recalls the Secret Church Mystical in Eckartshausen's CLOUD UPON THE SANCTUARY. The Knights Templar are said to have tampered with a sacred knowledge placed in their hands and they were about to reveal it in the world. The providence of the Sons of the Valley was therefore withdrawn, and they were left to work out their own destiny of destruction at the hands of Pope and King."

"Those who remember a dictum of St Augustine, which I have quoted myself often, namely, that Christianity has been always in the world but has not been known always under that name, may perhaps see that a pregnant intimation is conveyed by Werner when he suggests remotely and in words aloof that the Religion of Osiris became in the course of long ages the religion of Christ. In their all-hidden Sanctuary the SONS OF THE VALLEY seem to have stood apart from the ages and to have watched them passing. He Who was called Christ on the circumference of the Templar circle was still named Horus at the point within the circle."
-Arthur Edward Waite: Secret Tradition in Freemasonry

Ludwig Werner's Sons of the Valley came out of the German Masonic Order of the Strict Observance. Werner was a High-Grade Mason and a member of the STRICT OBSERVANCE, the traditional history of which is elaborated in his remarkable work.
"Werner's Sons of the Valley already mentioned, being the existence from time immemorial
of a Secret Order of Wise Masters in Palestine devoted to the work of initiation for the building of a spiritual city and as such the power behind the Temple, as it was also behind Masonry""
-Arthur Edward Waite: THE TEMPLAR ORDERS IN FREEMASONRY
An Historical Consideration of their Origin and Development
in: The Occult Review", Volume XLV, nos.
1 and 4, January and April, 1927.

"...in Werner's Sons of the Valley already mentioned, being the existence from time immemorial of a Secret Order of Wise Masters in Palestine devoted to the work of initiation for the building of a spiritual city and as such the power behind the Temple, as it was also behind Masonry."
-Arthur Edward Waite: THE TEMPLAR ORDERS IN FREEMASONRY, An Historical Consideration of their Origin and Development" The Occult Review", Volume XLV, nos. 1 and 4, January and April, 1927.

"... the ’eben shetiyah, which, in Jewish tradition, marked the center of the earth, the center of the sanctuary, and was the foundation stone of the ancient temple. "

'Ahad al-arkan'; the provided translation there being: 'pillar of the game'
Arkan being = 'pillar', however according to Wikipedia:
ahad= "only." Islamically, ahad means One Alone, unique, none like God.

"a pillar in the temple of my God" (Rev. 3:12), and to enjoy the immediate vision of the divine
Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, [which is] new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and [I will write upon him] my new name.

"[the imamate] is a spiritual kingship above the visible world that operates incognito, something like the role of the dynasty of the Grail.
The Hidden Imam, like the eternal Parzifal, is a world master in occultation, a Pole, one who upholds the world in his invisibility
"
"The Tzadikim Nistarim or Lamed Vav Tzadikim (often abbreviated to "the Lamed Vav(niks)", the 36) refers to 36 Righteous people, a notion rooted within the more mystical dimensions of Judaism. (In Hebrew gematria, Lamed is the letter representing "thirty", and vav represents "six". Tzadikim is the plural for "righteous")

The Lamed-Vav Tzaddikim are also called the Nistarim ("concealed ones"). In our folk tales, they emerge from their self-imposed concealment and, by the mystic powers, which they possess, they succeed in averting the threatened disasters.
An analogous group of individuals may be discerned within the Islamic tradition of the Kutb and The Abdals.

" It is not surprising that the space inside Titurel's Temple is of a size that makes it the measure of the entire human community... the number seventy-two [the double of Lamed-Vav=36] corresponds to the number of peoples and of human tongues (seventy or seventy-two), as the Ancients traditionally represented them... preeminence is given ...to the relationship of the Temple with the human race."
-Henry Corbin: Temple and Contemplation. KPI, 1986

These men, without suspecting it, are the secret pillars of the universe.

aspectans silvam immensam, et sic forte precatur:
beholding the boundless forest, and thus by chance he prays.
“Si nunc se nobis ille aureus arbore ramus
“If now that golden branch should display itself to us
ostendat nemore in tanto!
from the tree in so great a grove.

"Every 200 years the kutb changes, and there may only be one kutb at a time. Each kutb influences knowledge according to the times and is the pillar of the faith upon earth, the axis of the faith. According to other beliefs, no one knows whether the Kutb are one man, or two men, or four men; they have the supervision of all the saints alive on earth, and are more powerful than kings, though they look like ordinary men. They are often seen yet almost never recognized, and they travel over the earth, mildly reproving the impious and hypocritical." (In fact, Kutb means axis or pole in Arabic, which is similar to the concept of a pillar)."



Q: Master Builder, tell me how you make a temple?
A: Tools and moon stones, you don't really need them, you know...
Q: Master Builder, tell me what the temple's made of?
A: Deep inside you, you can build an invisible temple in your own imagination if you will