The Meaning of Masonry
W. L. Wilmshurst
Frontspiece
INTRODUCTION - The Possibilities of the Masonic Order
CHAPTER I - The Deeper Symbolism of Masonry
CHAPTER II - Masonry as a Philsophy
CHAPTER III - Further Notes on Craft Symbolism
CHAPTER IV - The Holy Royal Arch
CHAPTER V - The Relation of Masonry to the Ancient Mysteries
|
Chapter I
THE DEEPER SYMBOLISM OF FREEMASONRY
A candidate proposing to enter Freemasonry has seldom formed any
definite idea of the nature of what he is engaging in. Even after his
admission he usually remains quite at a loss to explain
satisfactorily what Masonry is and for what purpose his Order exists.
He finds, indeed, that it is "a system of morality veiled in
allegory and illustrated by symbols," but that explanation,
whilst true, is but partial and does not carry him very far. For many
members of the Craft to be a Mason implies merely connection with a
body which seems to be something combining the natures of a club and
a benefit society. They find, of course, a certain religious element
in it, but as they are told that religious discussion, which means,
of course, sectarian religious discussion, is forbidden in the Lodge,
they infer that Masonry is not a religious institution, and that its
teachings are intended to be merely secondary and supplemental to any
religious tenets they may happen to hold. One sometimes hears it
remarked that Masonry is " not a religion "; which in a
sense is quite true; and sometimes that it is a secondary or
supplementary religion, which is quite untrue. Again Masonry is often
supposed, even by its own members, to be a system of extreme
antiquity, that was practised and that has come down in well-nigh its
present form from Egyptian or at least from early Hebrew sources a
view which again possesses the merest modicum of truth. In brief, the
vaguest notions obtain about the origin and history of the Craft,
whilst the still more vital subject of its immediate and present
purpose, and of its possibilities, remains almost entirely outside
the consciousness of many of its own members. We meet in our Lodges
regularly we perform our ceremonial work and repeat catechetical instruction-lectures night after
night with a less or greater degree of intelligence and verbal
perfection, and there our work ends, though the ability to perform
this work creditably were the be-all and the end-all of Masonic work:
Seldom or never do we employ our Lodge meeting for that purpose for
which, quite as much as for ceremonial purposes, they were intended,
for "expatiating on the mysteries
of the Craft," and perhaps our neglect to do so is because we
have ourselves imperfectly realized what those mysteries are into
which our Order was primarily formed to introduce us.
Yet, there exists a large number of brethren who would willingly
repair this obvious deficiency brethren to whose natures Masonry,
even in the more limited aspect of it, makes a profound appeal and
who feel their membership of the Craft to be privilege which has
brought them into the presence of something greater than they know,
and that enshrines a purpose and that could unfold a message deeper
than they at present realize.
In a brief address like this it is hopeless to attempt to deal at
all adequately with what I have suggested are deficiencies in our
knowledge of the system we belong to. The most one can hope to do is
to offer a few hints or clues, which those who so desire may develop
for themselves in the privacy of their own thought. For in the last
resource no one can communicate the deeper things in Masonry to
another. Every man must discover and learn them for himself, although
a friend or brother may be able to conduct him a certain distance on
the path of understanding. We know that even the elementary and
superficial secrets of the Order must not be communicated to
unqualified persons, and the reason for this injunction is not so
much because those secrets have any special value, but because that
silence is intended to be typical of that which applies to the
greater, deeper secrets, some of which, for appropriate reasons, must
not be communicated, and some of which indeed are not communicable at
all, because they transcend the power of communication.
It is well to emphasize then, at the outset, that Masonry is a
sacramental system possessing, like all sacraments, an outward and
visible side consisting; of its ceremonial, its doctrine and its
symbols which we can see and hear, and an inward, intellectual, and
spiritual side, which is concealed behind the ceremonial, the
doctrine and the symbols, and which is available only to the Mason
who has learned to use his spiritual imagination and who can
appreciate the reality that lies behind the veil of outward symbol.
Anyone, of course, can understand the simpler meaning of our symbols,
especially with the help of the explanatory lectures; but he may
still miss the meaning of the scheme as a vital whole. It is absurd
to think that a vast organization like Masonry
was ordained merely to teach to grown men of the world the symbolical
meaning of a few simple builders' tools, or to impress upon us such
elementary virtues as temperance and justice: - the children in every
village school are taught such things; or to enforce such simple
principles morals as brotherly love, which every church and every
religion teaches; or as relief, which is practised quite as much by
non-Masons as by us; or of truth which every infant learns upon its
mother's knee. There is surely, too, no need for us to join a secret
society to be taught that the volume of the Sacred Law is a fountain
of truth and instruction; or to go through the great and elaborate
ceremony of the third degree merely to learn that we have each to
die. The Craft whose work we are taught to honour with the name of a
"science," a "royal art," has surely some larger
end in view than merely inculcating the practice of social virtues
common to all the world and by no means the monopoly of Freemasons.
Surely, then, it behoves us to acquaint ourselves with what that
larger end consists, to enquire why the fulfilment of that purpose is
worthy to be called a science, and to ascertain what are those
"mysteries" to which our doctrine promises we may
ultimately attain if we apply ourselves assiduously enough to
understanding what Masonry is capable of teaching us. Realizing, then, what Masonry cannot be
deemed to be, let us ask what it is. But before answering that
question, let me put you in possession of certain facts that will
enable you the better to appreciate the answer when I formulate it.
In all periods the
world's history, and in every part of the globe, The secret
orders and societies have existed outside the limits of the official
churches for the purpose of teaching what are called "the
Mysteries": for imparting to suitable and prepared minds certain
truths of human life, certain instructions about divine things, about
the things that belong to our peace, about human nature and human
destiny, which it was undesirable to publish to the multitude who
would but profane those teachings and apply the esoteric knowledge
that was communicated to perverse and perhaps to disastrous ends.
These Mysteries were formerly taught, we are. told, "on the
highest hills and in the lowest valleys," which is merely a
figure of speech for saying, first, that they have been taught in
circumstances of the greatest seclusion and secrecy, and secondly,
that they have been taught in both advanced and simple forms
according to the understanding of their disciples. It is, of course,
common knowledge that great secret systems of the Mysteries (referred
to in, our lectures as "noble orders of architecture,"
i.e., of soul-building) existed in the East, in Chaldea, Assyria,
Egypt, Greece, Italy, amongst the Hebrews, amongst Mahommedans and
amongst Christians; even among uncivilized African races they are to
be found. All the great teachers of humanity, Socrates, Plato,
Pythagoras, Moses, Aristotle, Virgil, the author of the Homeric
poems, and the great Greek tragedians, along with St. John, St. Paul
and innumerable other great names - were initiates of the Sacred
Mysteries. The form of the teaching communicated has varied
considerably from age to age; it has been
expressed under different veils; but since the ultimate truth the
Mysteries aim at teaching is always one and the same, there has
always been taught, and can only be taught, one and the same
doctrine. What the doctrine was, and still is, we will consider
presently so far as we are able to speak of it, and so far a Masonry
gives expression to it. For the moment let me merely say that behind
all the official religion systems of the world, and behind all the
great more movements and developments in the history of humanity,
have stood what St. Paul called the keepers or "stewards of the
Mysteries." From that source Christianity itself came into the
world. From them originated the great school of Kabalism that
marvellous system of secret, oral tradition of the Hebrews, a strong
element of which has been introduced into our Masonic system. From
them too, also issued many fraternities and orders, such for
instance, as the great orders of Chivalry and of the Rosicrucians,
and the school of spiritual alchemy. Lastly, from them too also
issued, in the seventeen century, modern speculative Freemasonry. To trace the genesis of the movement, which came into
activity some 250 years ago (our rituals and ceremonies having been
compiled round about the year 1700), is beyond the purpose of my
present remarks. It may merely be stated that the movement itself
incorporated the slender ritual and the elementary symbolism that,
for centuries previously had been employed in connection with the
mediaeval Building Guilds, but it gave to them a far fuller meaning
and a far wider scope. It has always been the custom for Trade
Guilds, and even for modern Friendly Societies, to spiritualize their
trades, and to make the tools of their trade point some simple moral.
No trade, perhaps, lends itself more readily to such treatment than
the builder's trade; but wherever a great industry has flourished,
there you will find traces of that industry becoming allegorized, and
of the allegory being employed for the simple moral instruction of
those who were operative members of the industry. I am acquainted,
for instance, with an Egyptian ceremonial system, some 5,000 years
old, which taught precisely the same things as Masonry does, but in
the terms of shipbuilding instead of in the terms of architecture.
But the terms of architecture were employed by those who originated
modern Masonry because they were ready to hand; because they were in
use among certain trade-guilds then in existence; and lastly, because
they are extremely effective and significant from the symbolic point
of view.
All that I wish to emphasize at this stage is that our present
system is not one coming from remote antiquity: that there is no
direct continuity between us and the Egyptians, or even those ancient
Hebrews who built, in the reign of King Solomon, a certain Temple at
Jerusalem. What is extremely ancient in Freemasonry is the spiritual
doctrine concealed within the architectural phraseology; for this
doctrine is an elementary form of the doctrine that has been taught
in all ages, no matter in what garb it has been expressed. Our own
teaching, for instance, recognizes Pythagoras as having undergone
numerous initiations in different parts of the world, and
as having attained great eminence in the science. Now it is perfectly
certain that Pythagoras was not a Mason at all in our present sense
of the word but it is also perfectly certain that Pythagoras was a
very highly advanced master in the knowledge of the secret schools of
the Mysteries, of whose doctrine some small portion is enshrined for
us in our Masonic system.
What then was the purpose the framers of our Masonic system had in
view when they compiled it? To this question you will find no
satisfying answer in ordinary Masonic books. Indeed there is nothing
more dreary and dismal than Masonic literature and Masonic histories,
which are usually devoted to considering merely unessential material
relating to the external development of the Craft and to its
antiquarian aspect. They fail entirely to deal with its vital meaning
and essence, a failure that, in some cases, may be intentional, but
the more often seems due to lack of knowledge and perception, for the
true, inner history of Masonry has never yet been given forth even to
the Craft itself. There are members of the Craft to whom it is
familiar, and who in due time may feel justified in gradually making
public at any rate some portion of what is known in interior circles.
But ere that time comes, and that the Craft itself may the better
appreciate what can be told, it is desirable, nay even necessary,
that its own members should make some effort to realize the meaning
of their own institution and should display symptoms of earnest
desire to treat it less as a system of archaic and perfunctory rites,
and more as a vital reality capable of entering into
and dominating their lives; less as a merely pleasant social order,
and more as a sacred and serious method of initiation into the
profoundest truths of life. It is written that "to him that hath
shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even
that which he hath"; and it remains with the Craft itself to
determine by its own action whether it shall enter into its full
heritage, or whether, by failing to realize and to safeguard the
value of what it possesses, by suffering its own mysteries to be
vulgarized and profaned, its organization will degenerate and pass
into disrepute and deserved oblivion, as has been the fate of many
secret orders in the past.
There are signs, however, of a well-nigh universal increase of
interest, of a genuine desire for knowledge of the spiritual content
of our Masonic system, and I am glad to be able to offer to my
Brethren some slight and imperfect outline of what I conceive to be
the true purpose of our work, which may tend to deepen their interest
in the work of the Order they belong to, and (what is of more moment
still) help to make Masonry for them a vital factor, and a living,
serious reality, rather than a mere pleasurable appendage to social
life.
To state things briefly, Masonry offers us, in dramatic form and
by means of dramatic ceremonial a philosophy of the spiritual life of
man and a diagram of the process of regeneration. We shall see
presently that that philosophy is not only consistent with the
doctrine of every religious system taught outside the ranks of the
Order, but that it explains, elucidates and more sharply defines, the
fundamental doctrines common to every religious system in the world,
whether past or present, whether Christian or non-Christian. The
religions of the world, though all aiming at teaching truth, express
that truth in different ways, and we are more prone to emphasize the
differences than to look for the correspondences in what they teach.
In some Masonic Lodges the candidate makes his first entrance to the
Lodge room amid the clash of swords and the sounds of strife, to
intimate to him that he is leaving the confusion and jarring of the
religious sects of the exterior world, and is passing into a Temple
wherein the Brethren dwell together in unity of thought in regard to
the basal truths of life, truths which can permit of no difference or
schism.
Allied with no external religious system itself, Masonry is yet a
synthesis, a concordat, for men of every race, of every creed, of
every sect, and its foundation principles being common to them all,
admit of no variation. "As it was in the beginning, so it is now
and ever shall be, into the ages of ages." Hence it is that
every Master of a Lodge is called upon to swear that no innovation in
the body of Masonry (i.e., in its substantial doctrine) is possible,
since it already contains a minimum, and yet a sufficiency, of truth
which none may add to nor alter, and from which none may take away;
and since the Order accords perfect liberty of opinion to all men,
the truths it has to offer are entirely "free to" us
according to our capacity to assimilate them, whilst those to whom
they do not appeal, those who think they can find a more sufficing
philosophy elsewhere, are equally at liberty to be "free
from" them, and men of honour will find it their duty to
withdraw from the Order rather than suffer the harmony of thought
that should characterize the Craft to be disturbed by their presence.
The admission of every Mason into the Order is, we are taught, "an
emblematical representation of the entrance of all men upon this
mortal existence." Let us reflect a little upon these pregnant
words. To those deep persistent questionings which present themselves
to every thinking mind, What am I ? Whence come I? Whither go I?,
Masonry offers emphatic and luminous answers. Each of us, it tells
us, has come from that mystical "East," the eternal source
of all light and life, and our life here is described as being spent
in the "West" (that is, in a world which is the antipodes
of our original home, and under conditions of existence as far
removed from those we came from and to which we are returning, as is
West from East in our ordinary computation of space). Hence every
Candidate upon admission finds himself, in a state of darkness, in
the West of the Lodge. Thereby he is repeating symbolically the
incident of his actual birth into this world, which he entered as a
blind and helpless babe, and through which in his early years, not
knowing whither he was going, after many stumbling and irregular
steps, after many deviations from the true path and after many
tribulations and adversities incident to human life, he may at length
ascend, purified and chastened by experience, to larger life in the
eternal East. Hence in the E.A. degree, we ask, "As a Mason,
whence come you?" and the answer,
coming from an apprentice (i.e., from the natural man of undeveloped
knowledge) is "From the West," since he supposes that his
life has originated in this world. But, in the advanced degree of
M.M. the answer is that he comes
"From the East," for by this time the Mason is supposed to
have so enlarged his knowledge as to realize that the primal source
of life is not in the "West," not in this world; that
existence upon this planet is but a transitory sojourn, spent in
search of "the genuine secrets," the ultimate realities, of
life; and that as the spirit of man must return to God who gave it,
so he is now returning from this temporary world of "substituted
secrets " to the “East" from which he originally
came. As the admission of every candidate
into a Lodge presupposes his prior existence in the world without the
Lodge, so our doctrine presupposes that ever soul born into this
world has lived in, and has come hither from, an anterior state of
life. It has lives elsewhere before it entered this world: it will
live elsewhere when it passes hence, human life being but a
parenthesis in the midst of eternity. But upon entering this world,
the soul must needs assume material form; in other words it takes
upon itself a physical body to enable it to enter into relations with
the physical world, and to perforn the functions appropriate to it in
this particular phase of its career. Need I say that the physical
form with which we have all been invested by the Creator upon our
entrance into this world, and of which we shall all divest ourselves
when we leave the Lodge of this life, is represented among us by our
Masonic apron? This, our body of mortality, this veil
of flesh and blood clothing the inner soul of us, this is the real
"badge of innocence," the common "bond of friendship,"
with which the Great Architect has been pleased to invest us all
this, the human body, is the badge which is "older and nobler
than that of any other Order in existence": and though it be but
a body of humiliation compared with that body of incorruption which
is the promised inheritance of him who endures to the end, let us
never forget that if we never do anything to disgrace the badge of
flesh with which God has endowed each of us, that badge will never
disgrace us.
Brethren, I charge you to regard your apron as one of the most
precious and speaking symbols our Order has to give you. Remember
that when you first wore it it was a piece of pure white lambskin; an
emblem of that purity and innocence which we always associate with
the lamb and with the newborn child. Remember that you first wore it
with the flap raised, it being thus a five-cornered badge, indicating
the five senses, by means of which we enter into relations with the
material world around us (our "five points of fellowship"
with the material world), but indicating also by the triangular
portion above, in conjunction with the quadrangular portion below,
that man's nature is a combination of soul and body; the three-sided
emblem at the top added to the four-sided emblem beneath making
seven, the perfect number; for, as it is written in an ancient Hebrew
doctrine with which Masonry is closely allied, "God blessed and
loved the number the seven more than all things under His throne,"
by which is meant that man, the seven-fold being, is the most
cherished of all the Creator's works. And hence also it is that the
Lodge has seven principal officers, and that a Lodge, to be perfect,
requires the presence of seven brethren; though the deeper meaning of
this phrase is that the individual man, in virtue of his seven-fold
constitution, in himself constitutes the "perfect Lodge,"
if he will but know himself and analyse his own nature aright.
To each of us also from our birth have been given three lesser
lights, by which the Lodge within ourselves may be illumined. For the
"sun" symbolizes our spiritual consciousness, the higher
aspirations and emotions of the soul; the "moon" betokens
our reasoning or intellectual faculties, which (as the moon reflects
the light of the sun) should reflect the light coming from the higher
spiritual faculty and transmit it into our daily conduct; whilst "the
Master of the Lodge" is a symbolical phrase denoting the
will-power of man, which should enable him to be master of his own
life, to control his own actions and keep down the impulses of his
lower nature, even as the stroke of the Master's gavel controls the
Lodge and calls to order and obedience the Brethren under his
direction. By the assistance of these lesser lights within us, a man
is enabled to perceive what is, again symbolically, called the "form
of the Lodge," i.e. the way in which his own human nature has
been composed and constituted, the length, breadth, height and depth
of his own being. By their help, too, he will perceive that he
himself, his body and his soul, are "holy ground," upon
which he should build the altar of his own spiritual life, an altar
which he should suffer no "iron tool," no debasing habit of
thought or conduct, to defile. By them, too, he will perceive how
Wisdom, Strength and Beauty have been employed by the Creator, like
three grand supporting pillars, in the structure of his own organism.
And by these finally he will discern how that there is a mystical
"ladder of many rounds or staves," i.e., that there are
innumerable paths or methods by means of which men are led upwards to
the spiritual Light encircling us all, and in which we live and move
and have our being, but that of the three principal methods, the
greatest of these, the one that comprehends them all and brings us
nearest heaven, is Love, in the full exercise of which God-like
virtue a Mason reaches the summit of his profession; that summit
being God Himself, whose name is Love.
I cannot too strongly impress upon you, Brethren, the fact that,
throughout our rituals and our lectures, the references made to the
Lodge are not to the building in which we meet. That building itself
is intended to be but a symbol, a veil of allegory concealing
something else. "Know ye not" says the great initiate St.
Paul, "that ye are the temples of the Most High; and that the
Spirit of God dwelleth in you? " The real Lodge referred to
throughout our rituals is our own individual personalities, and if we
interpret our doctrine in the light of this fact we shall find that
it reveals an entirely new aspect of the purpose of our Craft.
It is after investment with the apron that the initiate is placed
in the N.E. corner. Thereby he is intended to learn that at his birth
into this world the foundation-stone of his spiritual life was duly
and truly laid and implanted within himself; and he is charged to
develop it; to create a superstructure upon it. Two paths are
open to him at this stage, a path of light and a path of darkness; a
path of good and a path of evil. The N.E. corner is the symbolical
dividing place between the two. In symbolical language, the N. always
signifies the place of imperfection and un-development; in olden
times the bodies of suicides, reprobates and unbaptized children were
always buried in the north or sunless side of a churchyard. The seat
of the junior members of the Craft is allotted to the north, for,
symbolically, it represents the condition of the spiritually
unenlightened man; the novice in whom the spiritual light latent
within him has not yet risen above the horizon of consciousness and
dispersed the clouds of material interests and the impulses of the
lower and merely sensual life. The initiate placed in the N.E. corner
is intended to see, then, that on the one side of him is the path
that leads to the perpetual light of the East, into which he is
encouraged to proceed, and that on the other is that of spiritual
obscurity and ignorance into which it is possible for him to remain
or relapse. It is a parable of the dual paths of life open to each
one of us; on the one hand the path of selfishness, material desires
and sensual indulgence, of intellectual blindness and moral
stagnation; on the other the path of moral and spiritual progress, in
pursuing which one may decorate and adorn the Lodge within him with
the ornaments and jewels of grace and with the invaluable furniture
of true knowledge, and which he may dedicate, in all his actions, to
the service of God and of his fellow men. And mark that of those
jewels some are said to be moveable and transferable, because when
displayed in our own lives and natures their influence becomes
transferred and communicated to others and helps to uplift and
sweeten the lives of our fellows; whilst some are immoveable because
they are permanently fixed and planted in the roots of our own being,
and are indeed the raw material which has been entrusted to us to
work out of chaos and roughness into due and true form.
The Ceremony of our first degree, then, is a swift and
comprehensive portrayal of the entrance of all men into, first,
physical life, and second, into spiritual life; and as we extend
congratulations when a child is born into the world, so also we
receive with acclamation the candidate for Masonry who, symbolically,
is seeking for spiritual re-birth; and herein we emulate what is
written of the joy that exists among the angels of heaven over every
sinner who repents and turns towards the light. The first degree is
also eminently the degree of preparation, of self-discipline and
purification. It corresponds with that symbolical cleansing accorded
in the sacrament of Baptism, which, in the churches, is, so to speak,
the first degree in the religious life; and which is administered,
appropriately, at the font, near the entrance of the church, even as
the act itself takes place at the entrance of the spiritual career.
For to all of us such initial cleansing
and purifying is necessary. As has been beautifully written by a
fellow-worker in the Craft :-
"Tis
scarcely true that souls come naked down
To take abode
up in this earthly town,
Or naked
pass, of all they wear denied.
We enter
slipshod and with clothes awry,
And we take
with us much that by-and-by
May prove no
easy task to put aside.
Cleanse,
therefore, that which round about us clings,
We pray Thee,
Master, ere Thy sacred halls
We enter.
Strip us of redundant things,
And meetly
clothe us in pontificals.”
[Strange Houses of Sleep by A. E. Waite.]
In the schools of the Mysteries, when aspirants for the higher
life were wont to quit the outer world and enter temples or
sanctuaries of initiation, prolonged periods were allotted to the
practical achievement of what is briefly summarized in our first
degree. We are told seven or more years was the normal period, though
less sufficed in worthy cases. The most severe tests of discipline,
of purity, of self-balance were required before a neophyte was
permitted to pass forward, and a reminiscence of these tests of
fitness is preserved in our own working by the conducting of the
candidate to the two wardens, and submitting him to a merely formal
trial of efficiency. For it is impossible to-day, as it was
impossible in ancient times, for a man to reach the heights of moral
perfection and spiritual consciousness which were then, and are now,
the goal and aim of all the schools of the Mysteries and all the
secret orders, without purification and trial. Complete stainlessness
of body, utter purity of mind, are absolute essentials to the
attainment of things of great and final moment "Who?" says
the Psalmist (and remember that the Psalms were the sacred hymns used
in the Hebrew Mysteries), "Who will go up to the hill of the
Lord, and ascend to His holy place? Even he that hath clean hands and
a pure heart"; whence it comes that we wear white gloves and
aprons as emblems that we have purified our hearts and washed our
hands in innocency. So also our Patron Saint (St. John) teaches, "He
who hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He (i.e., the
Master whom he is seeking) is pure." For he who is not pure in
body and mind he who is enslaved by passions and desires, or by
bondage to the material interests of this world, is, by the very fact
of his uncleanness, prevented from passing on. Nothing unclean or
that defileth a man, we are told, can enter into the kingdom; and,
therefore, our candidates are told that if they have "money or
metals about them"; if, that is, they are subject to any
physical attraction or mental defilement, their real initiation into
the higher things, of which our ceremony is but a dramatic symbol,
must be deferred and repeated again and again until they are cleansed
and fitted to pass on.
After purification come contemplation and enlightenment, which are
the special subjects of the second degree. Aforetime the candidate
for the Mysteries, after protracted discipline and purification
enabling his mind to acquire complete control over his passions and
his lower physical nature, was advanced, as he may advance himself
to-day, to the study of his more interior faculties, to understand
the science of the human soul, and to trace these faculties in their
development from their elementary stage until he realizes that they
connect with, and terminate in, the Divine itself. The secrets of his
mental nature and the principles of intellectual life became at this
stage gradually unfolded to his view. You will thus perceive,
Brethren, that the F.C. degree, sometimes regarded by us as a
somewhat uninteresting one, typifies in reality a long course of
personal development requiring the most profound knowledge of
the
mental and psychical side of our nature. It involves not
merely the cleansing and control of the mind, but a full
comprehension of our inner constitution, of the more hidden mysteries
of our nature and of spiritual psychology. In this degree it is that
our attention is called to the fact that the Mason who has attained
proficiency in this grade has been enabled to discover a sacred
symbol, placed in the centre of the building, and alluding to the
G.G.O.T.U. Doubtless we have often asked ourselves what that phrase
and what that symbol imply. Need I repeat that the building alluded
to is not the edifice we meet in, but is our own selves, and that the
sacred symbol at the centre of the roof and of the floor of this
outward
temple is but symbolic of that which exists at the centre
of ourselves, and which was spoken of by the
Christian Master when
He proclaimed that "the kingdom of heaven is within you";
that at the depths of our own being, concealed beneath the heavy
veils of the sensual, lower nature, there resides that vital and
immortal principle, which is said to "allude to" the G.G.
because it is nothing other than a spark of God Himself immanent
within us. Over the old temples of the Mysteries was written the
injunction "Man, know thyself, and thou shalt know the universe
and God." Happy then is the Mason who has so far purified and
developed his own nature as to realize in its fulness the meaning of
the "sacred symbol" of the second degree, and found God
present not outside but within himself. But in order to find the
"perfect points of entrance" to this secret (and we are
told elsewhere that "straight is the way and narrow the gate,
and few there be that find it") emphasis again is laid in our
teaching upon the necessity of complete moral rectitude, of utter
exactness of thought, word and action, as exemplified by rigid
observance of the symbolic principles of the square, level and
plumb-rule.
Here again the symbolism of our work becomes extremely profound
and interesting. He who desires to rise to the heights of his own
being must first crush and crucify his own lower nature and
inclinations; he must perforce tread what elsewhere is described as
the way of the Cross; and that Cross is indicated by the conjunction
of those working tools (which when united form a cross); and that
"way" is involved in the scrupulous performance of all that
we know those working tools signify. By perfecting his conduct, by
struggles against his own natural propensities, the candidate is
working the rough ashlar of his own nature into the perfect cube, and
I would ask you to observe also that the cube itself contains a
secret, for unfolded, it itself denotes and takes the form of the
cross.
The inward development which the second degree symbolizes is
typified by the lowering of the triangular flap of the apron upon the
rectangular portion below. This is equivalent to the rite of
Confirmation in the Christian Churches. It denotes "the progress
we have made in the science," or in other words it indicates
that the higher nature of the man, symbolized by the trinity of
spirit, has descended into and is now permeating his lower nature.
Hitherto, in his state of ignorance and moral blindness, the
spiritual part of his nature has, as it were, but hovered above him;
he has been unconscious of its presence in his constitution; but now,
having realized its existence, the day-spring from on high has
visited him, and the nobler part of him descends into his lower
nature, illuminating and enriching it.
Now the man who so develops himself, speedily becomes more
conscious of the difficulties of his task, more sensitive to the
obstacles the life of the outer world places in the way of the
spiritual life. But he is taught to persist with fortitude and with
prudence, to develop the highest within him with "fervency and
zeal." Upon self-scrutiny, too, i.e., upon entering into that
"porchway" of contemplation which like a winding staircase
leads inward to the Holy of Holies within himself, he realizes that
difficulties and obstacles placed in his way are utilised by the
Eternal Wisdom as the necessary means of developing the latent and
potential good in him, and that as the rough ashlar can only be
squared and perfected by chipping and polishing, so he also can be
made perfect only by toil and by suffering. He sees that difficulty,
adversity and persecution serve a beneficent purpose. These are his
"wages": and he learns to accept them "without scruple
and without diffidence, knowing that he is justly entitled to them,
and from the confidence he has in the integrity" of that
Employer who has sent him into this far-off world to prepare the
materials for building the temple of the heavenly city. And so, as
the sign peculiar to the degree suggests, he endeavours to examine
and lay bare his heart, to cast away all impurity from it, and he
stands, like Joshua, praying that the light of day may be extended to
him until he has accomplished the overthrow of his own inward enemies
and of every obstacle to his complete development.
The aspirant who attains proficiency in the work of
self-perfecting to which the F.C. grade alludes, has passed away from
the N. side of the Lodge, the side of darkness and imperfection; and
now stands on the S.E. side in the meridian sunlight of moral
illumination (so far as the natural man may possess it), but yet
still far removed from that fuller realization of himself and of the
mysteries of his own nature which it is possible for the spiritual
adept or Master Mason to attain. Before that attainment is reached
there remains for him " that last and greatest trial " by
which alone he can enter into the great consolations and make
acquaintance with the supreme realities of existence. In the places
where the great Mysteries have always been taught, what is
ceremonially performed in our third degree is no mere symbolical
representation as with us, but an actual, vital experience of a most
severe character: one the nature of which
can hardly be made intelligible, or even credible, to those
unfamiliar with the subject. I refrain, therefore, from more than
mere mention of it, observing only that it is one not involving
physical death, and in this respect only is our ceremony in accord
with the experience symbolized. For if you follow closely the raising
ceremony, although distinct reference to the death of the body is
made, yet such death is obviously intended to be merely symbolical of
another kind of death, since the candidate is eventually restored to
his former worldly circumstances and material comforts, and his
earthly Masonic career is not represented as coming to a close at
this stage. All that has happened in the third degree is that he has
symbolically passed through a great and striking change: a rebirth,
or regeneration of his whole nature. He has been "sown a
corruptible body"; and in virtue of the self-discipline and
self-development he has undergone, there has been raised in him "an
incorruptible body," and death has been swallowed up in the
victory he has attained over himself. I sometimes fear that the too
conspicuous display of the emblems and trappings of mortality in our
Lodges is apt to create the false impression that the death to which
the third degree alludes is the mere physical change that awaits all
men. But a far deeper meaning is intended. The Mason who knows his
science knows that the death of the body is only a natural transition
of which he need have no dread whatever; he knows also that when the
due time for it arrives, that transition will be a welcome respite
from the bondage of this world, from his prison-like
husk of mortality, and from the daily burdens incident to existence
in this lower plane of life. All that he fears is that when the time
comes, he may not be free from those "stains of falsehood and
dishonour," those imperfections of his own nature, that may
delay his after-progress. No! the death to which Masonry alludes,
using the analogy of bodily death and under the veil of a reference
to it, is that death-in-life to a man's own lower self which St. Paul
referred to when he protested "I die daily". It is over the
grave, not of one's dead body but of one's lower self, that the
aspirant must walk before attaining to the heights. What is meant is
that complete self-sacrifice and self-crucifixion which, as all
religions teach, are essential before the soul can be raised in glory
"from a figurative death to a reunion with the companions of its
former toils" both here and in the unseen world. The perfect
cube must pass through the metamorphosis of the Cross. The soul must
voluntarily and consciously pass through a state of utter
helplessness from which no earthly hand can rescue it, and in trying
to raise him from which the grip of any succouring human hand will
prove but a slip: until at length Divine Help itself descends from
the Throne above and, with the "lion's grip" of almighty
power, raises the faithful and regenerated soul to union with itself
in an embrace of reconciliation and at-one-ment.
In all the schools of the Mysteries, as well as in all the great
religions of the world, the attainment of the spiritual goal just
described is enacted or taught under the veil of a tragic episode
analogous to that of our third degree; and in each there is a Master
whose death the aspirant is instructed he must imitate in his own
person. In Masonry that prototype is Hiram Abiff: but it must be made
clear that there is no historical basis whatever for the legendary
account of Hiram's death. The entire story is symbolical and was
purposely invented for the symbolical purposes of our teaching. If
you examine it closely you will perceive how obvious the
correspondence is between this story and the story of the death of
the Christian Master related in the Gospels; and it is needless to
say that the Mason who realizes the meaning of the latter will
comprehend the former and the veiled allusion that is implied. In the
one case the Master is crucified between the two thieves; in the
other he is done to death between two villains. In the one case
appear the penitent and the impenitent thief; in the other we have
the conspirators who make a voluntary confession of their guilt and
were pardoned, and the others who were found guilty and put to death;
whilst the moral and spiritual lessons deducible from the stories
correspond. As every Christian is taught that in his own life he must
imitate the life and death of Christ, so every Mason is "made to
represent one of the brightest characters recorded in our annals";
but as the annals of Masonry are contained in the volume of the
Sacred Law and not elsewhere, it is easy to see who the character is
who is alluded to. As that great authority and initiate of the
Mysteries, St. Paul, taught, we can only attain to the Master's
resurrection by "being made conformable unto His death",
and we "must die with Him if we are to be raised like Him"
and it is in virtue of that conformity, in virtue of being
individually made to imitate the Grand Master in His death, that we
are made worthy of certain "points of fellowship" with Him:
for the "five points of fellowship" of the third degree are
the five wounds of Christ. The three years' ministry of the Christian
Master ended with His death and, these refer to the three degrees of
the Craft which also end in the mystical death of the Masonic
candidate and his subsequent raising or resurrection.
The name Hiram Abiff signifies in Hebrew "the teacher (Guru,
or enlightened one) from the Father": a fact which may help you
still further to recognize the concealed purpose of the teaching.
Under the name of Hiram, then, and beneath a veil of allegory, we see
an allusion to another Master; and it is this Master, this Elder
Brother who is alluded to in our lectures, whose "character we
preserve, whether absent or present", i.e., whether He is
present to our minds or no, and in regard to whom we "adopt the
excellent principle, silence," lest at any time there should be
among us trained in some other than the Christian Faith, and to whom
on that account the mention of the Christian Master's name might
possibly prove an offence or provoke contention.
To typify the advance by the candidate at this stage of his
development, the apron here assumes greater elaborateness. It is
garnished with a light blue border and rosettes, indicating that a
higher than the natural light now permeates his being and radiates
from his person, and that the wilderness of the natural man is now
blossoming as the rose, in the flowers and graces incident to his
regenerated nature; whilst upon either side of the apron are seen
two columns of light descending from above, streaming into the depths
of his whole being, and terminating in the seven-fold tassels which
typify the seven-fold prismatic spectrum of the supernal Light. He is
now lord of himself; the true Master Mason; able to govern that lodge
which is within himself; and as he has passed through the three
degrees of purifying and self-perfecting, and squared, levelled, and
harmonized his triple nature of body, soul and spirit, he also wears,
on attaining Mastership, the triple Tau; which comprises the form of
a level, but is also the Hebrew form of the Cross; the three crosses
upon the apron thus corresponding with the three crosses of Calvary.
To sum up the import of the teaching of the three degrees, it is
clear, therefore, that from grade to grade the candidate is being led
from an old to an entirely new quality of life. He begins his Masonic
career as the natural man; he ends it by becoming through its
discipline, a regenerated perfected man. To attain this
transmutation, this metamorphosis of himself, he is taught first to
purify and subdue his sensual nature; then to purify and develop his
mental nature; and finally, by utter surrender of his old life and
losing his soul to save it, he rises from the dead a Master, a just
man made perfect, with larger consciousness and faculties, an
efficient instrument for use by the Great Architect in His plan of
rebuilding the Temple of fallen humanity, and capable of initiating
and advancing other men to a participation in the same great work.
This - the evolution of man into superman - was always the purpose
of the ancient Mysteries, and the real purpose of modern Masonry is,
not the social and charitable purposes to which so much attention is
paid, but the expediting of the spiritual evolution of those who
aspire to perfect their own nature and transform it into a more
god-like quality. And this is a definite science, a royal art, which
it is possible for each of us to put into practice; whilst to join
the Craft for any other purpose than to study and pursue this science
is to misunderstand its meaning. Hence it is that no one should apply
to enter Masonry unless from the deepest promptings of his own heart,
as it hungers for light upon the problem of its own nature. We are
all imperfect beings, conscious of something lacking to us that would
make us what, in our best moments, we fain would be. What is that
which is lacking to us? "What is that which is lost?" And
the answer is "The genuine secrets of a Master Mason", the
true knowledge of ourselves, the conscious realization of our divine
potentialities.
The very essence of the Masonic doctrine is that all men in this
world are in search of something in their own nature which they have
lost, but that with proper instruction and by their own patience and
industry they may hope to find. Its philosophy implies that this
temporal world is the antipodes of another and more real world from
which we originally came and to which we may accelerate our return by
such a course of self-knowledge and self-discipline as our teaching
inculcates. It implies that this present world is the place where the
symbolic stones and timber are being prepared "so far off"
from that mystical Jerusalem where one day they will be found put
together and, collectively, to constitute that Temple which even now
is being built without hands and without the noise or help of metal
tools. And this world, therefore, being but a transient temporary one
for us, it is necessarily one of shadows, images and merely
"substituted secrets," until such time as being raised not
merely symbolically but actually, in character and knowledge and
consciousness, to the sublime degree of Master Mason, we fit
ourselves to learn something of the "genuine secrets,"
something of the living realities, that lurk and live in concealment
behind the outward show of things. All human life, having originated
in the mystical "East" and journeyed into this world which,
with us, is the "West," must return again to its source. To
quote again the verse of the Brother I have already cited :-
" From East to West the soul
her journey takes;
At many bitter founts her fever
slakes;
Halts at strange taverns by the way
to feast,
Resumes her load, and painful
progress makes
Back to the East."
Masonry, by means of a series of dramatic representations, is
intended to furnish those who care to discover its purport and to
take advantage of the hints it throws out in allegorical form, with
an example and with instructions by which our return to the "East"
may be accelerated. It refers to no architecture of a mundane kind,
but to the architecture of the soul's life. It is not in itself a
religion; but rather a dramatized and intensified form of religious
processes inculcated by every religious system in the world. For
there is no religion but teaches the lesson of the necessity of
bodily purification of our first degree; none but emphasizes that of
the second degree, that mental, moral and spiritual developments are
essential and will lead to the discovery of a certain secret centre
"where truth abides in fullness," and that that centre is a
"point within a circle" of our own nature from which no man
or Mason can ever err, for it is the divine kingdom latent within us
all, into which we have as yet failed to enter. And there is none but
insists upon the supreme lesson of self-sacrifice and mystical death
to the things of this world so graphically portrayed in our third
degree; none but indicates that in that hour of greatest darkness the
light of the primal divine spark within us is never wholly
extinguished, and that by loyalty to that light, by patience and by
perseverance, time and circumstances will restore to us the "
genuine secrets," the ultimate truths and realities of our own
nature. We are here, Masonry teaches, as it were in captivity, by the
waters of Babylon and in a strange land; and our doctrine truly tells
us that the richest harmonies of this life are as nothing in
comparison with the songs of Zion; and that, even when we are
installed into the highest eminences this world or the Craft may
offer, it were better that our right hand should forget its cunning
and that we should fling the illusory treasures of this transitory
world behind our backs, than in all our doings fail to remember the
Jerusalem that lies beyond.
Our teaching is purposely veiled in allegory and symbol and its
deeper import does not appear upon the surface of the ritual itself.
This is partly in correspondence with human life itself and the world
we live in, which are themselves but allegories and symbols of
another life and the veils of another world; and partly intentional
also, so that only those who have reverent and understanding minds
may penetrate into the more hidden meaning of the doctrine of the
Craft. The deeper secrets in Masonry, like the deeper secrets of
life, are heavily veiled; are closely hidden. They exist concealed
beneath a great reservation; but whoso knows anything of them knows
also that they are "many and valuable", and that they are
disclosed only to those who act upon the hint given in our lectures,
"Seek and ye shall find; ask and ye shall have; knock and it
shall be opened unto you". The, search may be long and
difficult, but great things are not acquired without effort and
search; but it may be affirmed that to the candidate who is "properly
prepared" (in a much fuller sense than we conventionally attach
to that expression) there are doors leading from the Craft that, when
knocked, will assuredly open and admit him to places and to knowledge
he at present reckons little of. For him, too, who would enter upon
the greater initiations, the same rule applies as that which was
symbolically represented upon his first entrance into the Order, but
this time it will no longer be a symbol, but a realistic fact. He
will find, I mean, that a drawn sword is always threatening in front
of him, and that a cable-tow is still around his neck. Danger,
indeed, awaits the candidate who would rush precipitately and in a
state of moral unfitness into the deeper mysteries of his being,
which are indeed "serious, solemn and awful"; but, on the
other hand, for him who has once entered upon the path of light it is
moral suicide to turn back.
And now, Brethren, to bring to an end this brief and imperfect
survey of the deeper meaning and purposes of our Craft, I pray that
what is now spoken may help to prove to some of you a further
restoration to that light which is, at all times, the predominant
wish of our hearts. It rests with ourselves whether Masonry remains
for us what upon its outward and superficial side appears to be
merely a series of symbolic rites, or whether we allow those symbols
to pass into our lives and become realities therein. Whatever
formalities we may have gone through in connection with our admission
into the Order, we cannot be said to have been "regularly
initiated" into Masonry so long as we regard the Craft as merely
an incident of social life and treat its ceremonies as but rites of
an archaic and perfunctory nature. The Craft, as I have already
suggested, was given out to the world, from more secret sources
still, as a great experiment and means of grace, and as a great
opportunity for those who cared to avail themselves of what is little
known and little taught outside certain sanctuaries of concealment.
It was intended to furnish forth an epitome or synopsis, in dramatic
form, of the spiritual regeneration of man; and to throw out hints
and suggestions that might lead those capable of discerning its
deeper purpose and symbolism into still deeper initiations than the
merely superficial ones enacted in our Lodges. For, as on the
external side of the Order we may be called to occupy positions of
honour and office in the Provincial Grand Lodge, or may enter other
Masonic grades outside the Craft, so also upon its internal side
there are eminences to which we may be called that, whilst offering
us no social distinction and no visible advancement, are yet really
the true prizes, the most valuable attainments, of Masonic desire. To
this goal all may attain who truly seek to do so and who prepare the
way for themselves by appropriating the truths lying beneath the
superficial allegory and the symbolic veils of the Craft teaching.
And since there seems to-day a genuine and wide-spread desire on the
part of many members of the Order to enter into a fuller
understanding of what the Order itself conceals rather than reveals,
I feel I should not be discharging my duties as a Master in the Craft
did I not take advantage of that position to share with them some
measure at least of what I have been able to glean for myself.
But, finally, I must ask you to remember that, in accordance with
the general design of our system, every Master of a Lodge is but a
symbol and a substitution, and that behind him, and behind all other
the grand officers of the Masonic hierarchy, there stands the "Great
White Head", the "Great Initiator" and Grand Master of
all true Masons throughout the Universe, whether members of our Craft
or not. To whom let us all bow in gratitude for
the invaluable gift accorded to us in this our Order; and to whose
protection, and to whose enlightening guidance into its deeper
mysteries, I commend you all.
|