The Science of Sacraments

Charles Webster Leadbeater (16 February 1854 - 1 March 1934) was a prominent early member of the Theosophical Society, author on the occult and co-founder with J. I. Wedgwood of the Liberal Catholic Church. Originally a clergyman in the Church of England, his interest in spiritualism led him to give up the Church in favor of the Theosophical Society, where he became a protege of Annie Besant. This work represents a careful revision of the Roman Catholic liturgy of his day, in which Leadbeater sought to remove its disfiguring elements, such as its crude anthropomorphisms and expressions of the fear and wrath of God, which he regarded "as derogatory alike to the idea of a loving Father and to the men (sic) He has created in His own image. If Christians," he wrote, "had been content to take what Christ taught of the Father in heaven, they would never have saddled themselves with the jealous, angry, bloodthirsty Jehovah of Ezra, Nehemiah and the others - a god that needs propitiating and to whose 'mercy' constant appeals must be made." 32] Thus the 'Credo' of the LCC Liturgy written by Leadbeater - typically in the non-inclusive language of his time - reads: "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. Amen." 33] Previously Leadbeater had investigated the energies of the Christian Sacraments and written 'The Science of Sacraments: An Occult and Clairvoyant Study of the Christian Eucharist' - one of the most significant works in Christian esotericism. In his prologue to the latest edition of this book, John Kersey refers to the Eucharist proposed by Leadbeater as "a radical reinterpretation of the context of the Eucharist seen within a theological standpoint of esoteric magic and universal salvation; it is Catholicism expressing the love of God to the full without the burdens of needless guilt and fear, and the false totem of the temporal powers of the church."