The temple has stood since primeval times; it is the place of initiation of human souls; to ‘enter’ it means simply to acquire the knowledge of the sublime plan of cosmic evolution.

To be initiated does not mean to know all things; no one can do that, not even the beings of the spiritual hierarchies. It means, rather, to perceive in a single survey the main outline of the evolutionary movement of everything.

This survey is made possible by the suprasensory ‘buildings’ of the Temple of Wisdom, constructed on the lines of intuition. The ‘buildings’ of the temple (if we imagine them as visible shapes) form an inverted bowl, out of which the seven streams of revelation flow.

These streams are the pillars of the temple, and the bowl is the dome. The seven pillars of the House of Wisdom, about which Solomon spoke, are also seven paths, or methods, of absorbing the streaming contents of the bowl, or the temple’s dome.

Valentin Tomberg, Christ and Sophia