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
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Chapter II
MASONRY AS A PHILOSOPHY
Signs are not wanting that a higher Masonic consciousness is
awakening in the Craft. Members of the Order are gradually, and here
and there, becoming alive to the fact that much more than meets the
eye and ear lies beneath the surface of Masonic doctrine and symbols.
They are beginning to think for themselves instead of taking the
face-value of things for granted, and, as their thought develops,
facts that previously remained unperceived assume prominence and
significance. They discern the Masonic system to be something deeper
than a code of elementary morality such as all men are expected to
observe whether formally Masons of not. They reflect that the
phenomenal growth of the Craft is scarcely accountable for upon the
supposition that modern speculative Masonry perpetuates nothing
more than the private associations that once existed in connection
with the operative builders' trade. They recognize that there can be
no peculiar virtue or interest in continuing to imitate the customs
of ancient trade-guilds for the mere sake of so doing; or of keeping
on foot a costly organization for teaching men the elementary
symbolism of a few building tools, supplemented by a considerable
amount of social conviviality. Upon a little thought it becomes
pretty obvious that our Third Degree and the great central legend
that forms the climax of the Craft system cannot have, and can never
have had, any direct or practical bearing upon, or connection with,
the trade of the operative mason. It may be urged that
we have our great charity system and that the social side of our
proceedings is a valuable and humanizing asset. Granted, but other
people and other societies are philanthropic and social as well as
we; and a secret society is not necessary to promote such ends, which
are merely supplemental to the original purpose of the Order. The
discernment of such facts as these, then, suggests to us that the
Craft has not yet entered into the full heritage of understanding its
own system and that side-matters connected with Masonry which we have
long emphasized so strongly, valuable in their own way as they are,
are not after, all the primary and proper work of the Order. The work
of the Order is to initiate into certain secrets and mysteries, and
obviously if the Order fails to expound its own secrets and mysteries
and so to confer real initiations as distinguished from passing
candidates through certain formal ceremonies, it is not fulfilling
its original purpose whatever other incidental good it may be doing.
Now as these facts are the basis upon which this lecture proceeds,
let me at the outset make my first point by stating that as the
progress in the Craft of every Brother admitted into its ranks is by
gradual, successive stages, in like manner the understanding of
the Masonic system and doctrine is also a matter of gradual
development. Stated in the simplest terms possible, the theory of
Masonic progress is that every Member admitted to the Order enters in
a state of darkness and ignorance as to what Masonry teaches, and
that later on he is supposed to be brought to light and knowledge.
Putting it in other terms, he enters the Craft symbolically as a
rough ashlar and it is his business to develop both his character and
his understanding that ultimately, in virtue of what he has learn and
practised, he may be as a finished and perfect cube.
Now the understanding of the Masonic scheme tends to develop upon
precisely similar lines. lts meaning is not discernible all at once,
and unless our minds are properly prepared and our understandings
carefully trained, they are unlikely ever participate in the real
secrets and mysteries Masonry at all, however often we may watch the
performance of external ceremonial or however proficient we may be in
memorizing the rituals and instruction lectures. The first stage, the
first conception of what Masonry involves, is concerned merely with
the surface-value of the doctrine; with an acquaintance with the
literal side of the imparted knowledge which we all obtain upon
entering the Craft. Beyond this stage the vast majority of Masons, it
is to be feared, never passes. This is the stage of knowledge in
which the Craft is regarded as a social, semi-public, semi-secert;
community to which it is agreeable and advantages to belong for
sociable or even for ulterior purpose in which the goal of the
Mason's ambition is to attain office and high preferment and to wear
a breastful of decorations; in which he takes a literal superficial
and historic view of the subject-matter of the doctrine; in which
ability to perform the ceremonial work with dignity and effectiveness
and to know the instruction catechisms by heart, so that not a
syllable is wrongly rendered, is deemed the height of Masonic
proficiency; and where, after discharging these functions with a
certain degree of credit, his idea is often to have the Lodge closed
as speedily as may be and get away to the relaxation of the festive
board.
Now all these things belong to what may be called the very
rough-ashlar stage of the Masonic conception. I am not, of course,
alluding to any individual Mason. I confess frankly to having come
within this category myself, and I think we may agree that we have
all passed through the phase I have described, for the simple reason
that we knew nothing better and had no one able to teach us something
better. Let us not complain. If we look back upon the progress of the
Craft during the last 150 years we cannot but congratulate ourselves
upon the enormous, if gradual, strides made in Masonic progress and
decorum even in the rough-ashlar stage of our conception of it.
Anyone familiar with the records of old Lodges will have been
brought into close touch with times when almost every element of
reverence and dignity seems to have been lacking. Lodges were held in
the public rooms of taverns. Whatever official furniture decorated
these primitive temples, quart-pots and "churchwardens"
figured largely among the unauthorized equipment. In one of the great
London galleries there hangs a famous picture called "Night"
by the great artist and moralist of his age, Hogarth. His purpose was
to depict a characteristic night-scene in the streets of London
as they appeared in his time. Among the typical specimens of
depravity haunting those ill-lit streets, the great artist has held
up to the derision of all time the figure of a Freemason staggering
home drunk, still wearing his apron and being assisted by the tyler
of the Lodge. No true Mason can regard this picture without a burning
sense of shame, and without registering a resolution to redeem the
Craft from this stigma. We have, I hope, got past such things as
these. We have awakened to some sense of dignity and self-reverence.
The Craft is well governed by its higher authorities, and individual
Lodges take a pride in providing proper temples and in conducting
their assemblies with due regard to the solemnity of Masonic
doctrine. May the Order never relapse into the primitive and chaotic
condition from which it has emerged.
But this improvement in matters of external deportment, great and
welcome as it is, is not enough. To prevent the Order settling down
into a state of self-satisfaction with its social privileges and the
agreeableness of friendly intercourse among its members; to prevent
its making its claims to being a system of knowledge and science as
perfunctory and little onerous as possible, the improvement I have
spoken of must be attended (and I believe is destined to be attended)
by an awakening to the deep significance of the Craft's internal
purposes. And since I have referred to what I have termed the "
rough - ashlar " conception of that purpose you have the right
to ask me now to state that loftier conception which may be regarded,
in comparison, as the " perfect cube." The answer to this
enquiry I shall not attempt to state in so many words. I invite you
to regard this whole lecture as an indication of what that answer
must be. To some extent I endeavoured to formulate that answer upon a
previous occasion, but whilst I then entered rather into the details
and minutiae of the Craft system and symbols, I shall treat the
subject now upon broader lines and deal with Masonry in its wider and
more philosophic aspect. I said upon that occasion - and I must
repeat it now - that in its broad and more vital doctrine Masonry was
essentially a philosophic and religious system expressed in dramatic
ceremonial. It is a system intended to supply answers to the three
great questions that press so inexorably upon the attention of every
thoughtful man and that,,, are the subject around which all religions
and all philosophies move : What am I ? Whence come I ?I Whither go I
? It is a truism to say that in our quieter and more serious moments
we all feel the need of some reliable answer to these questions.
Light upon them is "the predominant wish of our hearts";
and upon such light as we can obtain, whether from Masonry or
elsewhere, depends our philosophy of life and the rule of conduct by
which we regulate our life. In a larger sense, then, than our
conventional limited one, the Masonic candidate is presumed to
enter the Order in search of light upon these problems; light that he
is presumed not to have succeeded in finding elsewhere. If his
candidature is actuated by any motive other than a genuine desire for
knowledge upon these problems, which beyond all others are vital to
his peace, and by a sincere wish to render himself, by the help of
that knowledge, serviceable to his fellow creatures, then his
candidature is less than a worthy one. The reason why no man should
be solicited to join the Order is that in regard to these matters of
sacred and momentous import, the first springs of impulse must
originate within the postulant himself; the first place of his
preparation must ever be in his own heart, and it is to the cry and
knocking of his inward need, and for no less a motive, that-in
theory, though scarcely in practice -the door to the Mysteries is
opened and the seeker enters in and finds help. At another stage of
his symbolical progress the candidate learns from his superior
brethren, that they, along with himself, are in search of something
that is lost and which they have hopes of finding. And it is here
that the great motive of this and of all quests, as well as the clue
to the real purpose of Masonry, appears prominently and is stated in
emphatic terms. Masonry is the quest after something that has been
lost. Now what is it that has been lost? Consider the matter thus.
Why should we, or the world at large, require systems of religion and
philosophy at all? What is the motive and reason for the existence
of a Masonic Order and of many other Orders of Initiation, both of
the past and the present? Why should they exist at all? I might
reduce the matter to the compass of a small and personal point by
asking why have you come to hear this lecture, and why should I have
been striving for many years to acquire the information that enables
me to give it ? - if it be not the fact, - as indeed it is, that
every man in his reflective moments realizes the sense of some
element of his own being having become lost; that he is conscious, if
he be honest with himself, of the sense of moral imperfection, of
ignorance, of restricted knowledge about himself and his
surroundings; that he is aware, in short, of some radical deficiency
in his constitution, which, were it but found and made good, would
satisfy this craving for information, for completeness and
perfection, would " lead him from darkness to light", and
would put him beyond ignorance and beyond the touch of the many ills
that flesh is heir to. The point is too obvious to need pressing
further, and the answer to it is to be found by a reference to a
great doctrine that forms the philosophic basis of all systems
of religion, and all the great systems of the Mysteries and of
Initiation of antiquity, viz., that which is popularly known as the
Fall of Man. However we may choose to regard this event - and
throughout the history of the human race it has been taught in
innumerable ways and in all manner of parables, allegories, myths and
legends - its sole and single meaning is that humanity as a whole has
fallen away from its original parent source and place; that from
being imbedded in the eternal centre of life man has become projected
to the circumference; and that in this present world of ours he is
undergoing a period of restriction, of ignorance, of discipline and
experience, that shall ultimately fit him to return to the centre
whence he came and to which he properly belongs. "Paradise Lost"
is the real theme of Masonry no less than of Milton, as it is also of
all the ancient systems of the Mysteries. The Masonic doctrine
focuses and emphasizes the fact and the sense of this loss. Beneath
a veil of allegory describing the intention to build a certain
temple that could not be finished because of an untimely disaster,
Masonry implies that Humanity is the real temple whose building
became obstructed, and that we, who are both the craftsmen and the
building materials of what was intended to be an unparalleled
structure, are, owing to a certain unhappy event, living here in this
world in conditions where the genuine and full secrets of our nature
are, for the time being, lost to us; where the full powers of the
soul of man are curtailed by the limitations of physical life; and
where, during our apprenticeship of probation and discipline, we have
to put up with the substituted knowledge derivable through our
limited and very fallible senses.
But, whilst Masonry emphasizes this great truth, it indicates also
- and this is its great virtue and real purpose - the method by which
we may regain that which is lost to us. It holds out the great
promise that, with divine assistance and by our own industry, the
genuine realities of which we at present possess but the imperfect
shadows shall be restored to us, and that patience and perseverance
will eventually entitle every worthy man to a participation in them.
This large subject is mirrored in miniature in the Craft ceremonial.
The East of the Lodge is the symbolic centre; the source of all
light; the place of the throne of the Master of all life. The West,
the place of the disappearing sun, is this world of imperfection and
darkness from which the divine spiritual light is in large measure
withdrawn and only shines by reflection. The ceremonies through which
the candidate passes are symbolic of the stages of progress that
every man - whether a formal member of the Craft or not - may make by
way of self-purification and self-building, until he at length lies
dead to his present natural self, and is raised out of a state of
imperfection and brought once more into perfect union with the Lord
of life and glory into whose image he has thus become shaped and
conformed.
It is in this large sense, then, that Masonry may become for us -
as indeed it was intended to become by those who instituted our
present speculative system - a working philosophy for those brought
within its influence. It supplies a need to those who are earnestly
enquiring into the purpose and destiny of human life. It is a means
of initiating into reliable knowledge those who feel that their
knowledge of life and their path of life have hitherto been but a
series of irregular steps made at haphazard and under hoodwinked
conditions as to whither they are going. Not without good reason does
our catechism assert that Masonry contains " many and invaluable
secrets." But these of course are not the formal and symbolic
signs, tokens and words communicated ceremonially to candidates; they
are rather those secrets which we instinctively keep locked up in the
recesses and safe repository of our hearts; secrets of the deep and
hidden things of the soul, about which we do not often talk, and
which, by a natural instinct, we are not in the habit of
communicating to any but such of our brethren and fellows as share
with us a common and a sympathetic interest in the deeper problems
and mysteries of life.
I have said already that Masonry is a modern perpetuation of great
systems of initiation that have existed for the spiritual instruction
of men in all parts of the world since the beginning of time. The
reason for their existence has been the obvious one, resulting from
the cardinal truth already alluded to, that man in his present
natural state is inherently and radically imperfect; that sooner or
later he becomes conscious of a sense of loss and deprivation
and feels an imperative need of learning how to repair that loss. The
great world-religions have been ordained to teach in their respective
manners the same truths as the Mystery systems have taught. Their
teaching has always been twofold. There has always existed an
external, elementary, popular doctrine which has served for the
instruction of the masses who are insufficiently prepared for deeper
teaching; and concurrently therewith there has been an interior,
advanced doctrine, a more secret knowledge, which has been reserved
for riper minds and into which only proficient and properly prepared
candidates, who voluntarily sought to participate in it, were
initiated. Whether in ancient India, Egypt, Greece, Italy or Mexico,
or among the Druids of Europe, temples of initiation have ever
existed for those who felt the inward call to come apart from the
multitude and to dedicate themselves to a long discipline of body and
mind with a view to acquiring the secret knowledge and developing the
spiritual faculties by means of experimental processes of initiation
of which our present ceremonies are the faint echo. It is far beyond
my present scope to describe any of these great systems or the
methods of initiation they employed. But in regard to them I will ask
you to accept my statement upon two points : (i) that although these
great schools of the Mysteries have long dropped out of the public
mind, they, or the doctrine they taught, have never ceased to exist;
the enmity of official ecclesiasticism and the tendencies of a
materialistic and commercial age have caused them to subside into
extreme secrecy and concealment, but their initiates have never been
absent from the world; and (2) that it was through the activity and
foresight of some of these advanced initiates that our present system
of speculative Masonry is due. You must not imply from this that
modern Masonry is by any means a full or adequate presentation of
these older and larger systems. It is but their pale and elementary
shadow. But such as they are, and so far as they do go, our rituals
and doctrine are an authentic embodiment of a secret doctrine and a
secret process that have always existed for the enlightenment of
such aspirants as, putting their trust in God (as our present
candidates are made to say), have knocked at the door of certain
secret sanctuaries in the confidence that that door would open and
that they would find in due course that for which they were seeking.
Those who instituted modern speculative Masonry some 250 years ago
took certain materials lying ready to hand. They took, that is, the
elementary rites and symbols pertaining to mediaval operative guilds
of stone-masons and transformed them into a system of
religio-philosophic doctrine. Thenceforward, from being related to
the trade which deals in stones and bricks, the intention of Masonry
was to deal solely and simply with the greater science of
soul-building; and, save for retaining certain analogies which the
art of the practical stone-mason provided, thenceforward it became
dedicated to purposes that are wholly spiritual, religious and
philosophic.
Perhaps the chief evidence of the transformation thus effected was
the incorporation of the central legend and traditional history
comprised in our Third Degree. Obviously that legend can have had no
relation to, or practical bearing upon, the operative builders'
trade. I will ask you to reflect that no building of stone, no temple
or other edifice capable of being built with hands, has remained
unfinished through the death of any professional architect such as
Hiram Abiff is popularly supposed to have been. The principles of
architecture, the genuine secrets of the building trade, are not and
never have been lost; they are thoroughly well known, and the
absurdity is manifest of supposing that Masons of any kind are
waiting for time or circumstances to restore any lost knowledge as to
the manner in which temporal buildings ought to be constructed. We
know how to erect buildings to-day quite as well as our Hebrew
forefathers did who built the famous temple at Jerusalem, and indeed
a well known architect has stated that most of our London
churches are, both for size and ornamentation, far larger and more
splendid than that temple ever was. Our duty then is to look behind
the literal story; to pierce the veil of allegory contained in the
great legend and to grasp the significance of its true purport. That
which is lost is to be found, we are told, with the Centre. But if we
enquire what a Centre is, the average Mason will give you nothing
more than the official, enigmatic and not very luminous answer that
it is a point within a circle from which every part of the
circumference is equidistant. But what circle? And what
circumference? For there are no such things as centres or
circles in respect of ordinary buildings or architecture. And
here the average Mason is at an utter loss to explain. Press him
further, "Why with the Centre?" and again he can only give
you the elusive and perplexing answer "Because that is a point
from which a Master Mason cannot err", and you are no wiser.
Brethren, it is just this elusiveness, these intentional
enigmas, this purposed puzzle-language, that are intended to put us
on the scent of something deeper than the words themselves convey,
and if we fail to find, to realize and to act upon, the intention
of what is veiled behind the letter of the rituals, we can scarcely
claim to understand our own doctrine; we can scarcely claim to have
been regularly initiated, passed and raised in the higher sense of
those expressions, whatever ceremonies we have formally passed
through. " The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life." Let
us enquire what the spirit of this puzzle-language is.
The method of all great religious and initiatory systems has been
to teach their doctrine in the form of myth, legend or allegory. As
our first tracing-board lecture says, "The philosophers,
unwilling to expose their mysteries to vulgar eyes, concealed their
tenets and principles of philosophy under hieroglyphical figures",
and our traditional history is one of these hieroglyphical figures.
Now the literally-minded never see behind the letter of the allegory.
The truly initiated mind discerns the allegory's spiritual value. In
fact, part of the purpose of all initiation was, and still is, to
educate the mind in penetrating the outward shell of all phenomena,
and the value of initiation depends upon the way in which the inward
truths are allowed to influence our thought and lives and to awaken
in us still deeper powers of consciousness.
The legend of the Third Degree, then, in which the essence of
Masonic doctrine lies, was brought into our system by some advanced
minds who derived their knowledge from other and concealed sources.
The legend is an adaptation of a very old one and existed in various
forms long before its association with modern Masonry. In the
guise of a story about the building of a temple by King Solomon at
Jerusalem, they were promulgating the truth which I have alluded to
before and which is generally known as the Fall of Man. As our legend
runs, upon the literal side of it, it was the purpose of a great king
to erect a superb structure. He was assisted in that work by another
king who supplied the building materials, by a skilful artificer
whose business was to put these together according to a pre-ordained
plan, and by large companies of craftsmen and labourers. But in the
course of the work an evil conspiracy arose, resulting in the
destruction of the chief artificer and preventing the completion of
the building, which remains unfinished, therefore, to this day.
Now I will ask you to observe that this legend cannot refer to any
historical building built in the old metropolis of Palestine. If we
refer to the Bible as an authority you will find that that temple was
completed; it was afterwards destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed again
on more than one occasion. Moreover, the biblical accounts make no
reference whatever to the conspiracy, or to the death of Hiram. On
the other hand they state expressly that Hiram "made an end of
building" the temple; that it was finished and completed in
every particular. It is very clear then that we must keep the two
subjects entirely separate in our minds; and recognize that the
Masonic story deals with something quite distinct from the
biblical story. What temple then is referred to? The temple,
brethren, that is still incomplete and unfinished is none that can be
built with hands. It is that temple of which all material edifices
are but the types and symbols; it is the temple of the collective
body of humanity itself; of which the great initiate St. Paul said
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?" A perfect
humanity was the great Temple which, in the counsels of the Most
High, was intended to be reared in the mystical Holy City, of which
the local Jerusalem was the type. The three great Master-builders,
Solomon and the two Hirams, are a triad corresponding after a manner
with the Holy Trinity of the Christian religion; Hiram Abiff being
the chief architect, he "by whom all things were made" and
"in whom (as St. Paul said, using Masonic language) the whole
building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the
Lord." The material of this mystical temple was the souls of
men, at once the living stones, the fellow craftsmen and
collaborators with the divine purpose.
But in the course of the construction of this ideal temple,
something happened that wrecked the scheme and delayed the
fulfillment indefinitely. This was the Fall of Man; the conspiracy of
the craftsmen. Turn to the book of Genesis, you will find the same
subject related in the allegory of Adam and Eve. They were intended,
as you know, for perfection and happiness, but their Creator's
project became nullified by their disobedience to certain conditions
imposed upon them. I will ask you to observe that their offense was
precisely that committed by our Masonic conspirators. They had ,been
forbidden to eat of the Tree of Knowledge; or, in Masonic language,
they were under obligation "not to attempt to extort the secrets
of a superior degree" which they had not attained. Now the
Hebrew word Hiram means Guru, teacher of "supreme knowledge",
divine light and wisdom, and the liberty that comes therewith. But
this knowledge is only for the perfected man. It is that knowledge
that Hiram said was "known to but three in the world",
i.e., known only in the counsels of the Divine Trinity, but it is
knowledge that with patience and perseverance every Mason, every
child of the Creator, "may in due time become entitled to a
participation in". But just as Adam and Eve's attempt to obtain
illicit knowledge caused their expulsion from Eden and defeated
the divine purpose until they and their posterity should regain the
Paradise they had lost, so also the completion of the great mystical
Temple was prevented for the time being by the conspirators' attempt
to extort from Hiram the Master's secrets, and its construction is
delayed until time and circumstances-God's time, and the
circumstances we create for ourselves-restore to us the lost and
genuine secrets of our nature and of the divine purpose in us.
The tragedy of Hiram Abiff, then, is not the record of any vulgar,
brutal murder of an individual man. It is a parable of cosmic and
universal loss; an allegory of the breakdown of a divine scheme. We
are dealing with no calamity that occurred during the erection of a
building in an eastern city, but with a moral disaster to universal
humanity. Hiram is slain; in other words, the faculty of enlightened
wisdom has been cut off from us. Owing to that disaster mankind is
here to-day in this world of imperfect knowledge, of limited
faculties, of chequered happiness, of perpetual toil, of death and
frequent bitterness and pain; our life here is (to use a poet's
words) :
"An ever-moaning battle in the
mist,
Death in all life and lying in all
love ;
The meanest having power upon the
highest,
And the high purpose broken by the
worm."
The temple of human nature is unfinished and we know not how to
complete it. The want of plans and designs to regulate the disorders
of individual and social life indicates to us all that some heavy
calamity has befallen us as a race. The absence of a clear and
guiding principle in the world's life reminds us of the utter
confusion into which the absence of that Supreme Wisdom, which is
personified as Hiram, has thrown us all, and causes every reflective
mind to attribute to some fatal catastrophe his mysterious
disappearance. We all long for that light and wisdom which have
become lost to us. Like the craftsmen in search of the body, we go
our different ways in search of what is lost. Many of us make no
discovery of importance throughout the length of our days. We seek it
in pleasure, in work, in all the varied occupations and diversions of
our lives; we seek it in intellectual pursuits, in religion, in
Masonry, and those who search farthest and deepest are those who
become most conscious of the loss and who are compelled to cry
"Machabone! Macbenah! the Master is smitten", or, as the
Christian Scriptures word it, " They have taken away my Lord,
and I know not where they have laid him".
Hiram Abiff is slain. The high light and wisdom ordained to guide
and enlighten humanity are wanting to us. The full blaze of light and
perfect knowledge that were to be ours are vanished from the race,
but in the Divine Providence there still remains to us a glimmering
light in the East. In a dark world, from which as it were the sun has
disappeared, we have still our five senses and our rational faculties
to work with, and these provide us with the substituted secrets that
must distinguish us before we regain the genuine ones.
Where is Hiram buried? We are taught that the Wisdom of the Most
High-personified as King Solomon-ordered him to be interred in a
fitting sepulchre outside the Holy City, "in a grave from the
centre 3 feet between N. and S., 3 feet between E. and W., and 5
feet or more perpendicular". Where, Brethren, do you imagine
that grave to be? Can you locate it by following these minute details
of its situation? Probably you have never thought of the matter as
other than an ordinary burial outside the walls of a geographical
Jerusalem. But the grave of Hiram is ourselves. Each of us is the
sepulchre in which the smitten Master is interred. If we know it not
it is a further sign of our benightedness. At the centre of
ourselves, deeper than any dissecting-knife can reach or than any
physical investigation can fathom, lies buried the "vital and
immortal principle", the "glimmering ray" that
affiliates us to the Divine Centre of all life, and that is never
wholly extinguished however evil or imperfect our lives may be. We
are the grave of the Master. The lost guiding light is buried at the
centre of ourselves. High as your hand may reach upwards or downwards
from the centre of your own body - i.e., 3 feet between N. and S.
far as it can reach to right or left of the middle of your person -
i.e., 3 feet between W. and E. - and 5 feet or more perpendicular -
the height of the human body - these are the indications by which our
cryptic ritual describes the tomb of Hiram Abiff at the centre of
ourselves. He is buried "outside the Holy City", in the
same sense that the posterity of Adam have all been placed outside
the walls of Paradise, for, "nothing unclean can enter into the
holy place" which elsewhere in our Scriptures is called the
Kingdom of Heaven.
What then is this " Centre", by reviving and using
which we may hope to regain the secrets of our lost nature? We may
reason from analogies. As the Divine Life and Will is the centre of
the whole universe and controls it; as the sun is the centre and
life-giver of our solar system and controls and feeds with life the
planets circling round it, so at the secret centre of individual
human life exists a vital, immortal principle, the spirit and the
spiritual will of man. This is the faculty, by using which (when we
have found it) we can never err. It is a point within the circle of
our own nature and, living as we do in this physical world, the
circle of our existence is bounded by two grand parallel lines; "one
representing Moses; the other King Solomon", that is to
say, law and wisdom; the divine ordinances regulating the universe on
the one hand; the divine "wisdom and mercy that follow us all
the days of our life" on the other. Very truly then the Mason
who keeps himself thus circumscribed cannot err.
Masonry, then, is a system of religious philosophy in that it
provides us with a doctrine of the universe and of our place in it.
It indicates whence we are come and whither we may return. It has two
purposes. Its first purpose is to show that man has fallen away from
a high and holy centre to the circumference or externalized condition
in which we now live; to indicate that those who so desire may regain
that centre by finding the centre in ourselves, for, since Deity is
as a circle whose centre is everywhere, it follows that a divine
centre, a "vital and immortal principle", exists within
ourselves by developing which we may hope to regain our lost and
primal stature. The second purpose of the Craft doctrine is to
declare the way by which that centre may be found within ourselves,
and this teaching is embodied in the discipline and ordeals
delineated in the three degrees. The Masonic doctrine of the Centre -
or, in other words, the Christian axiom that "the Kingdom of
Heaven is within you" - is nowhere better stated than by the
poet Browning
" Truth is within ourselves. It
takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you
may believe. There is an inmost centre in ourselves Where truth
abides in fullness; and to know
Rather consists in finding out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may
escape Than by effecting entrance for a light Supposed to be
without."
Brethren, may we all come to the knowledge how to "open the
Lodge upon the centre" of ourselves and so realize in our own
conscious experience the finding of the "imprisoned splendour"
hidden in the depths of our being, whose rising within ourselves
will bring us peace and salvation. How then does the Craft doctrine
prescribe for the liberation of this imprisoned centre? Its first
injunctions are those of our first degree. There must be purity of
thought and purpose. I need scarcely remind you that the word
candidate derives from the Latin candidus, white (in the sense
of purity), or that our postulants before entering the Lodge leave
behind them in the precincts the garments that belong to the fashion
of the outer world whose ideals they are desirous of relinquishing,
and enter the Lodge clad in white as emblematic of the blamelessness
of their thought and the purification of their lives. As this
symbolic white clothing is worn during each of the three degrees, it
is as though the seeker after the high light of the Centre must
always come uttering the triple ascription, "Holy, Holy, Holy,"
as the token of the threefold purity of body, soul and spirit, which
is essential to the achievement of his quest. He has left all money
and metals behind him, for the gross things of this world are
superfluous in the world that lies within; whilst if any dross of
thought or imperfections of character remain in him, he will find the
impossibility of attaining to the consciousness of his highest
self; he will learn that he must renounce them and begin again, and
that his attempt at real initiation must be repeated.
He must be animated by a spirit of universal sympathy. Financial
doles and practical relief to the pecuniary poor and distressed are
admirable practices as far as they go, but they by no means exhaust
the meaning of the term charity as Masonry intends it. The payment of
a few guineas to philanthropic institutions is scarcely a
fulfillment of St. Paul's great definition of charity so often read
in our Lodges, by exercising which we are wont to say that a Mason
"attains the summit of his profession".
There is a far larger sense of Brotherhood than the limited
conventional one obtaining among those who are members of a common
association. There is that deep sense in which a man feels himself
not only in fraternity with his fellow-men, whether Masonically his
brethren or not, but realizes himself brother to all that is, part of
the universal life that thrills through all things. A great
illuminate, St. Francis of Assisi, expressed what I refer to when he
wrote in his famous canticle, of his brothers the sun and the wind;
his sisters the moon and the sea; his brethren the animals and the
birds; as being all parts of a common life, all constituents in the
scheme of the Great Architect for the restoration of the Temple of
Creation and its dedication to His service, and as all worthy of a
common love upon our part, even as they are the subject of a common
solicitude upon His.
And passing from these primary qualifications we proceed to what
is signified by our second degree, wherein is inculcated the analysis
and cultivation of the mental and rational faculties; the study of
the secrets of the marvelous, complex, psychical nature of man; the
relation of these with the still higher and spiritual part of him
which, in turn, he may learn to trace "even to the throne of God
Himself" with which he is affiliated at the root essence of his
being. These studies, brethren, so lightly touched upon in our
passing-ceremony, so glibly referred to as we recite our ritual, when
undertaken with the seriousness that attached to them in the old
mystery-systems are not without just reason described in our own
words as " serious, solemn and awful". The depths of human
nature and self knowledge, the hidden mysteries of the soul of
man are not, as real initiates well know, probed into with impunity
except by the "properly prepared". The man who does so has,
as it were, a cable-tow around his neck; because when once stirred by
a genuine desire for the higher knowledge that real initiation is
intended to confer, he can never turn back on what he learns thereof
without committing moral suicide; he can never be again the same man
he was before he gained a glimpse of the hidden mysteries of life.
And as the Angel stood with a flaming sword at the entrance of Eden
to guard the way to the Tree of Life, so will the man whose
initiation is not a conventional one find himself threatened at the
door of the higher knowledge by opposing invisible forces if he
rashly rushes forward in a state of moral unfitness into the deep
secrets of the Centre. Better remain ignorant than embark upon this
unknown sea unwisely and without being properly prepared and in
possession of the proper passports.
And eventually the aspirant, after these preliminary
disciplines, has to learn the great truth embodied in the third
degree; that he who would be raised to perfection and regain what he
has long realized has been lost to himself, may do so only by utter
self-abnegation, by a dying to all that to the eyes and the reason of
the uninitiated outer world is precious and desirable. The third
degree, Brethren, is an exposition in dramatic ceremonial of the text
"Whoso would save his life must lose it". Beneath the
allegory of the death of the Master - and remember that it is
allegory - is expressed the universal truth that mystical death must
precede mystical rebirth. "Know ye not that ye must be born
again?" “Unless a grain of corn fall into the ground and
die, it abideth alone; if it die it bringeth forth much fruit".
And it is only thus that all Master-Masons can be raised from a
figurative (not a physical) death to a regenerated state and to the
full stature of human nature.
The path of true initiation into fullness of life by way of a
figurative death to one's lower self is the path called in the
Scriptures the narrow way, of which it is also said that few there be
who find it. It is the narrow path between the Pillars, for Boaz and
Jachin stand impliedly at the entrance of every Masonic Temple and
between them we pass each time we enter the Lodge. Very great
prominence is accorded these pillars in the ritual, but very
little explanation of their import is given, and it is desirable to
know something of their great significance. To deal with them at all
fully would require an entire lecture upon this one subject, and even
then there would have to remain unsaid in regard to these great
symbols much that is unsuited to treatment in a general lecture.
The pillars form, and have always formed, a prominent feature in
the temples of all great systems of religion and initiation, whether
Masonic or not. They have been incorporated into Christian
architecture. If you recall the construction of York Minster or
Westminster Abbey, you will recognize the pillars in the two great
towers flanking the main entrance to those cathedrals at the west end
of the structure. Non-Masons, therefore, enter these temples, as we
do, between the pillars in the West; they look through them along the
straight path that leads to the high altar, just as the Mason's
symbolic passage is also from the West to the throne in the East.
That path is, as it were, the straight path of life, beginning in
this outer world and terminating at the throne, or altar, in the
East. Many centuries before our Bible was written or the temple of
Solomon described in the Books of Kings and Chronicles was thought
of, the two pillars were used in the great temples of the Mysteries
in Egypt, and one of the great annual public festivals was that of
the setting up of the pillars. What, then, did they signify? I can
deal with the subject but very superficially here. In one of their
aspects they stand for what is known in Eastern philosophy as the
"pairs of opposites". Everything in nature is dual and can
only be known in contrast with its opposite, whilst the two in
combination produce a metaphysical third which is their synthesis and
perfect balance. Thus we have good and evil; light and darkness (and
one of the pillars was always white and the other black); active and
passive; positive and negative; yes and no; outside and inside; man
and woman. Neither of these is complete without the other; taken
together they form stability. Morning and evening unite to form the
complete day. Man is proverbially imperfect without his "
better half", woman; the two marry to impart strength to each
other and to establish their common house. Physical science shows all
matter to be composed of positive and negative electric forces in
perfect balance and that things would disintegrate and disappear if
they did not stand firm in perfect union. Every drop of healthy blood
in our bodies is a combination of red and white corpuscles, by the
due balance of which we are established in strength and health,
whilst lack of balance is attended by disease. The pillars therefore
typify, in one of their aspects, perfect integrity of body and
soul such as are essential to achieving spiritual perfection. In the
terms of ancient philosophy all created things are composed of fire
and water; fire being their spiritual and water their material
element, and so the pillars represented also these universal
properties. In one of the Apocryphal Scriptures (2 Esdras, 7; 7-8),
the path to true wisdom and life is spoken of as an entrance between
a fire on the right hand and a deep water on the left, and so narrow
and painful that only one man may go through it at once. This is in
allusion to the narrow and painful path of real initiation of which
our entrance into the Lodge between the pillars is a symbol.
Now all great symbols are shadowed forth in the person of man
himself. The human organism is the true Lodge that must be opened and
wherein(' the great Mysteries are to be found, and our Lodge-
rooms are so built and furnished as to typify the human organism. The
lower and physical part of us is animal and earthy, and rests, like
the base of Jacob's ladder, upon the earth; whilst our higher portion
is spiritual and reaches to the heavens. These two portions of
ourselves are in perpetual conflict, the spiritual and the
carnal ever warring against one another; and he alone is the wise man
who has learned to effect a perfect balance between them and to
establish himself in strength so that his own inward house stands
firm against all weakness and temptation. And in still another
sense the two pillars may be seen exemplified in the human body.
There are our two legs, upon both of which we must stand firm to
acquire a perfect physical balance. An having discerned this simple
truth, and having seen that the path of true initiation, which is one
of spiritual rebirth, is an arduous and painful progress to him who
undertakes it, let me ask you to consider in all sacredness another
physical phenomenon, the great mystery of which we perhaps think
little of by reason of its frequency and of our familiarity with it.
I refer to the incident - the great mystery I might say - of
child-birth. Brethren, every child born into this world, coming into
this life as into a great house of initiation, trial and discipline
passes, amid pain and travail, through a strait and narrow way and
between the two pillars that support the temple of its mother's body.
And thus in the commonplaces of life, in which for those who have
clean hearts there is nothing common or unclear but everything is
sacred and symbolic, the act of physical birth is an image and a
foreshadowing of that mystical rebirth and of that passing through
strait gate and a narrow way in a deeper sense without which it is
written that a man shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
The regenerated man, the man who not merely, in ceremonial form
but in vital experience, has passed through the phases of which the
Masonic degrees are the faint symbol, is alone worthy of the title of
Master-Mason in the building of the Temple that is not made with
hands but that is being built invisibly out of the souls of just men
made perfect Not only in this world is this temple being built; only
the foundations of the intended structure are perceptible here. The
Craft contemplates other and loftier planes of life, other storeys of
the vast structure than this we live and work in. Just as our Craft
organization has its higher assemblies and councils in the form of
the Provincial and the Grand Lodges that regulate and minister to the
need of the Lodges of common craftsmen, so in the mighty system of
the universal structure there are grades of higher life, hierarchies
of celestial beings working and ministering in the loftier portions
of the building, beyond our present ken. And as here at the head of
our limited and temporal brotherhood there rules a Grand Master,
so too over the cosmic system there presides the Great Architect and
Most Worshipful Grand Master of all, whose officers are holy Angels;
and the recognition of this truth may tend to consecrate us in the
discharge of the little symbolic part we severally perform in the
system which is the image of the great scheme.
The world at large, Brethren, is as it were, but one great Lodge
and place of initiation, of which our Masonic Lodges are the little
mirrors. Mother Earth is also the Mother-Lodge of us all. As its
vast work goes on, souls are ever descending into it and souls are
being called out of it at the knocks of some great unseen Warden of
life and death, who calls them here to labour and summons them hence
for refreshment. After the Lodge, the festive board; after the labour
of this world, the repast and refreshment of the heavenly
places. And thus, although our after-proceedings have no formal place
in the Masonic system, any more than the after-life is in formal
connection with us whilst our sphere of activity is in this present
world, still it plays a striking and appropriate part calculated to
awaken us to the deep significance of our customary conviviality.
Upon such occasions we are wont to drink the toast of "the King
and the Craft", remembering as loyal subjects and loving
brethren our earthly sovereign and our Masonic comrades throughout
the world. But here again I would ask every Master who gives and
every brother who drinks this toast, to lift his thoughts to a
greater King and to a larger craft than our limited and symbolic
fraternity. I would remind you how in the Christian Mysteries there
was another Master whom unconsciously we imitate, who also after
supper took the cup and when he had given thanks to the King of
kings, pledged himself, as it were, to that larger Craft which is
co-extensive, with humanity itself; directing them in this manner to
show forth symbolically a certain great mystery until his coming
again. But this, Brethren, is none other than what is implied in our
own Masonic words when we also are directed to use certain
substituted secrets until time and circumstances shall restore to us
the genuine ones.
In submitting, then, these thoughts to you, it may be claimed that
Masonry offers to those capable of appreciating it a working
philosophy and a practical rule of life. It discloses to us the
scheme of the universe - a scheme once shattered and arrested, but
left in the hands of humanity to restore. It indicates our place, our
purpose and our destiny in that universe. It is as a great house of
instruction and initiation into the Mysteries of a larger and fuller
life than the unenlightened worldling is as yet ripe for
appreciating. Let us, therefore, value and endeavour fully to
appreciate its mysteries. Let us also be careful not to cheapen the
Order by failing to realize its meaning and by admitting to its
ranks those who are unready or unfitted to understand its import. I
said at the outset of this lecture that some Masons are beginning to
awake to a larger consciousness of the true meaning and purport of
our Craft. I say now at the end, Brethren! Lift up your hearts; throw
wide open the shutters of your minds and imaginations. Learn to see
in Masonry something more than a parochial system enjoining
elementary morality, performing perfunctory and meaningless rites,
and serving as an agreeable accessory to social life. But look to
find in it a living philosophy, a vital guide upon those matters
which of all others are the most sacred and the most urgent to our
ultimate well-being. Realize that its secrets which are "many
and invaluable" are not upon the surface; that they are not
those of the tongue, but of the heart; and that its mysteries are
those eternal ones that treat of the spirit rather than of the body
of man. And with this knowledge clothe yourselves and enter the Lodge
- not merely the Lodge-room of our symbolic Craft, but the larger
Lodge of life, wherein, silently and without the sound of metal tool,
is proceeding the perpetual work of rebuilding the unfinished and
invisible Temple of which the mystical stones and timber are the
souls of men. In that rebuilding, men and women are taking part who,
whilst formally not members of our Craft, are still unconsciously
Masons in the best of senses. For whosoever is carefully and
deliberately "squaring his stone" is fitting himself for
his place in the "intended structure" which gradually is
being "put together with exact nicety" and which, though
erected by ourselves, one day will become manifest to our clearer
vision and will appear "more like the work of the Great
Architect of the Universe than that of human hands". Upon us
Masons therefore, who have the advantage of a regular and organized
system which provides and inculcates for us an outline of the great
truths that we have been considering and that always in the world
have been regarded as secret, as sacred, and as vital, there rests
the responsibility attaching to our privilege, and it must be our aim
to endeavour to enter into the full heritage of understanding and
practising the system to which we belong.
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