During what some may consider the height of the pandemic in the United States, I wrote two books, neither of which are yet published, and I consider them labors of imagination, intellect, and desperation. The first began as an essay, but quickly became a long-form passion piece about esotericism, philosophy, and Freemasonry. The text was finished near the middle of 2020, but my ambition for the work couldn’t be fulfilled without the addition of more…nuance.

I’ve described Freemasonry as a collective attempt on the part of its Initiates to uncover and reassemble a fractured work of immense genius, disassembled and scattered by the forces of ignorance and time. One of the most essential and powerful fragments of this ancient machine is the subtle art of reading hieroglyphs and symbols. Compared with the more exoteric and plain (but nevertheless formidable) ability of reading script in the traditional fashion with which we are all familiar, and without which you would not be absorbing my thoughts at present, the ability to read symbols and reconcile the totality of the psychic raw material represented by a body of symbolic work is several orders of magnitude beyond the former.

Now, most of us read symbols on a daily basis, and make judgements and perform tasks according to the information they summon up within our minds. These symbols, existing either as a part of some social schema or independently, and the concordant behaviors, prove that the faculty of symbol reading is alive in most people, though atrophied and disregarded.

Given this simple fact, and considering my training in this arcane art, I knew from the outset that a symbolic structure must be provided alongside the literary account if my work was to be complete. But whom should I ask? I’m ashamed to admit that it did not occur to me at first, but the obvious answer was Caleb Frey. A man with similar passions and principles to mine; a man who understands, as I do, that symbols are the cornerstone and capstone of the work in which we both engage; and a man who is an artist.

Caleb and I sat down to discuss the work of illustrating my book just a few days ago, and I finally feel like I’m going to finish this work.