The fellowship holds eight teachings as the heart of the Essene way as we have received it. They are not a creed. No one is asked to sign them. They are the eight places where, in our long reading of the scrolls, the forgotten gospels, the ancient witnesses, and the later tradition, we have found the same thing said again and again in different words, and where our own practice has confirmed what the texts say.
Each teaching is given below in a nutshell, the least a student needs to know. Each has its own page, where it is given at length with its roots in the old writings and its fruit in daily practice. We suggest reading them in order the first time, since each builds on the last. After that, return to whichever one the season of your life requires.
The One Law
In a nutshellBehind all the changes of nature and of the soul there is a single order of balance, neither arbitrary nor cruel, which the ancients called the Law and which can be known. The whole spiritual life is learning to live in harmony with it. Sin is not the breaking of a rule but the breaking of a balance, and healing is its restoration.
Children of Light
In a nutshellTwo spirits contend in every human heart, one of truth and one of falsehood, one of light and one of darkness. The Essene does not deny the darkness in himself or pretend to have escaped it. He chooses, every morning, to be counted among the children of light, and he knows that the choice is made again each day.
The Tree of Life
In a nutshellA human life is sustained by fourteen forces, seven from the earth and seven from heaven, which the old tradition pictured as the roots and branches of a tree. To be whole is to be in living communion with all fourteen. Most of us are starving at several roots without knowing it.
The Sevenfold Peace
In a nutshellPeace is not one thing but seven: peace with the body, with the mind, with the family, with humanity, with one's heritage, with the earth, and with the Eternal. A person at peace in six and at war in one is not at peace. The work of a lifetime is to make peace in all seven.
The Inner Kingdom
In a nutshellThe kingdom of heaven is not a distant country to be awaited but a present reality to be entered. The heart is its temple, the mind its priest, the body its outer court. The one who has made the heart a temple does not need to go up to Jerusalem; Jerusalem has come down.
The Sanctity of Life
In a nutshellEvery living thing carries the breath of the Giver of life, and to harm it needlessly is to harm oneself and offend the Giver. The old tradition expressed this in the refusal to shed blood, the simple table, and tenderness toward the least creature. The fellowship holds it as a direction to walk in, not a line to be judged by.
The Soul and Its Journey
In a nutshellThe ancient witnesses say the Essenes held the soul to be immortal and the body a passing tent. The soul comes from the Light, is clothed in flesh for a season of learning, and returns to the Light with what it has learned. Death is not the end of the journey but a door in it. Fear of death is the root of most other fears, and the one who has lost it is free.
Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding
In a nutshellThe scrolls and the psalms speak again and again of three gifts of the mind: knowledge, which is to see what is; understanding, which is to see how it fits; and wisdom, which is to live accordingly. The Essene way has always been a way of knowing as well as of believing. Faith that refuses to know is not faith but fear.
A Word on Sources
Where a teaching rests on the scrolls or the ancient witnesses we say so on its page. Where it rests on later tradition, such as the teaching of the Tree of Life in the form the fellowship uses, we say that too. We have tried never to put into the mouths of the ancient Essenes what they did not say. We have also tried never to refuse a true thing because its pedigree was uncertain.