Q : I believe that the method for initiatory enquiry of Freemasonry can be summed up by the expression: ‘ nosce te ipsum' , written on all our temples...but in knowing ourselves...what prevents a real introspective image is the activity of our ego...which is the first great obstacle. Indeed, V.I.T.R.I.O.L., by rectifying ourselves (heaven knows how many times) we will be able to reach the occult stone...using the plumb line like a line that stabs our ‘skin'...visiting the interiority... if we don't deconstruct our own mind, we will turn into logorrheic people who, four times a month, meet in a certain place to discuss the sex of angels....
A: On a personal level you have all my sympathy on the direction of the research you mention. I also think that it is the only path to get out of what is called oneiric culture . The latter doesn't belong to an Institution (the Church) rather than another (Freemasonry), but to a category of characters, which we will call devotional for simplicity. Freemasonry is full of them, despite its mysteriosophic origins.
As you can see, few words are sufficient to reach the mind, the character, the profane self, viz. the conditioned personality or physical conscience of the person who performs a certain action, often without knowing the reasons for a choice.
The psychic sphere (conscience of self) where decisions develop is the ‘unknown land' for most people. But that's where the only ‘access door' for the answers to our questions is. The ‘unknown land' of our personal hells inhabited, as Socrates said, by our destructive and protective daemons.
This is also the path for V.I.T.R.I.O.L. ( Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem ), of which the ‘scholars' talk a lot but that very few feel the wish-duty to know because it is a long and painful descending process. Long processes don't suit restless or immature souls. For this reason those who can recognize initiatory hints are told that the ‘visit of their own earth' stops at the first ‘3 steps of apprenticeship'. The reason is the difficulty of looking at our own inner face and discovering the various criteria of our own inner reality; or it is because of fear, lack of knowledge or soul inadequacy, which fine speakers would like to cover with dialectic abilities.
Because of fear many people prefer to theorize on sacred issues rather than put in practice the inner descent (V.I.T.R.I.O.L.); since there can't be any confutations on the subject it is easy to consider oneself as a ‘scholar'. It is also easy to cover what we fear with ritual ornaments considered divine or with flashing decorations considered initiatory.
I believe that the people who understand the great advantage of discovering faults that can be corrected (rectified) with a thorough work of education addressed at themselves are indeed privileged. These privileged people know that to descend to ‘visit one's own inner earth' is an ‘intellectual test' that brings great advantages to the initiatory progress. Indeed, by knowing and correcting we can grow inside. Inner growth produces the elevation that allows us to ‘touch' our inner sky; in other words to reach the Dome of Initiation.
The rest is the ‘sex of fallen angels' not yet re-awakened. 
