The Wax of Prejudice

William Quan Judge · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 2 pages

Two pages giving Judge's answer to Question 102 in The Theosophical Forum, republished in Dara Eklund's Echoes of the Orient. The question is printed first, and the answer is a single paragraph.

The question is whether it is honest for a sincere theosophist to celebrate the festivals of Christendom — Christmas and Easter — by present-giving or entertainments, and what the practice of occultists and the leaders of the Theosophical Society is in the matter. Judge answers by taking the word sincere apart. Theosophical sincerity, he says, is not some strange moral product of a new reform but exactly what philosophers and moralists have always meant by the word, which is supposed to derive from the Latin sine cera, without wax — that is, pure honey. From that etymology comes the whole argument: the wax is prejudice, and whoever harbours it, whether a Fellow of the Theosophical Society or not, may think his practice right in stopping him from viewing all the customs of all men broadly. But one who accumulates the pure honey of sincerity may just as well join in Christmas festivities in Christendom as he would in the celebration of Buddha's birthday in Ceylon. The file is short and the point is made once, without hedging.

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