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 V.
FREEMASONRY IN RELATION TO THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES.
Every Mason is naturally desirous to know something of the origin
and history of the Craft. The available literature on the subject is
diffuse and unsatisfying. It offers a mass of disconnected details of
archeology and comparative religion without unifying them into any
helpful light and deals rather with matters of minor and temporal
history than with what alone is of real moment, the spiritual lineage
of the Craft. In this paper, therefore, it is proposed to trace a
rough outline - and, in the space available, only a very rough one is
possible - of a movement which is as old as humanity itself and the
purpose and doctrine of which are still faithfully, if very
rudimentarily, preserved in the Masonic system. But such a sketch, by
providing a general outline for the enquirer to contemplate and the
details of which he, may fill in for himself by subsequent study of
his own, may perhaps prove more serviceable than a mass of
fragmentary facts over which one may pore indefinitely and with much
interest, yet without perceiving their inter-relation or
coordinating them into one comprehensive impressive scheme.
No really serviceable work upon Masonry exists that treats of its
history and purpose in the only way that matters vitally. The student
is apt to waste much time to little profit by turning for information
to publications the titles of which seem to promise full
enlightenment, but that leave him unsatisfied and unconvinced.
Desultory collections of information upon points of symbolism,
archaeology and anthropology, the tracing of connections between
modern Masonry and mediaeval building-guilds and other communities
may be all very interesting, but these are but as the dry bones of a
subject of which one desires to know the living spirit. They fail to
answer the main questions one asks from the heart and is anxious to
have answered; such as, What was the nature of the Ancient Mysteries
of which modern Masonry purports to be the perpetuation? To what
end and purpose did they exist? What need is there to perpetuate them
to-day? For what purpose was Initiation instituted? Did it at any
time serve any real purpose or can it now? Was it ever more than it
is to-day, a mere perfunctory ceremonial leading to nothing of
essential value and emphasizing only a few moral principles and
elementary truths which we know already? It is to answering such
questions as these that the present paper is directed.
Now one of the first things to strike any student of Masonic
literature and comparative religion is the remarkable presence of
common factors, common beliefs, doctrines, practices and symbols, in
the religions of all races alike, whether ancient or modem, eastern
or western, civilized or barbarian, Christian or pagan. However
separated from others by time or distance, however intellectualized
or primitive, however elaborated or simple their religion or morals,
and however wide their differences in important respects, each people
is found to have employed and still to be employing certain ideas,
symbols and practices in common with every other; perhaps with or
without some slight modification of form. Masonic treatises abound
with demonstrations of this uniformity in the use of various
symbols prominent in every Lodge. Authors delight in supplying
evidence of the close correspondences in various unrelated systems
and in demonstrating how ancient and universal such and such ideas,
symbols and practices have been. But they do not go so far as to
explain the reason for this antiquity and universality, and it is
this point which it will be well to clear up at the outset, since it
furnishes the clue to the entire problem of the genesis, the history,
and the reason for the existence of Masonry.
If research and reflection be pushed far enough it becomes clear
that the universality and uniformity referred to are due to the fact
that at one time, long back in the world's past, there existed or was
implanted in the minds of the whole human family which was
doubtless much smaller and more concentrated then than now-a
Proto-Evangelium or Root-Doctrine in regard to the nature and destiny
of the soul of man and its relation to the Deity. We of to-day pride
ourselves upon being wiser and more advanced than primitive humanity.
We assume that our ancestors lived in moral benightedness out of
which we have since gradually emerged into comparative light. All the
evidence, however, negatives these suppositions. It indicates that
primitive man, however childish and intellectually undeveloped
according to modern standards, was spiritually conscious and
psychically perceptive to a degree undreamed of by the modern mind,
and that it is ourselves who, for all our cleverness and intellectual
development in temporal matters, are nevertheless plunged in darkness
and ignorance about our own nature, the invisible world around us,
and the eternal spiritual verities. In all Scriptures and
cosmologies the tradition is universal of a "Golden Age",
an age of comparative innocence, wisdom and spirituality, in which
racial unity and individual happiness and enlightenment prevailed; in
which there was that open vision for want of which a people
perisheth, but in virtue of which men were once in conscious
conversation with the unseen world and were shepherded, taught and
guided by the "gods" or discarnate superintendents of the
infant race, who imparted to them the sure and indefeasible
principles upon which their spiritual welfare and evolution depended.
The tradition is also universal of the collective soul of the
human race having sustained a "fall", a moral declension
from its true path of life and evolution, which has severed it almost
entirely from its creative source, and which, as the ages advanced,
has involved its sinking more and more deeply into physical
conditions, its splitting up from a unity employing a single language
into a diversity of conflicting races of different speeches and
degrees of moral advancement, accompanied by a progressive
densification of the material body and a corresponding darkening of
the mind and atrophy of the spiritual consciousness. To some who read
this the statement will probably be rejected as fabulous and
incredible. The supposition of a "fall of man" is nowadays
an unpopular doctrine, rejected by many who contend that everything
points rather to a rise of man, yet who fail to reflect that
logically a rise necessarily involves an antecedent fall from which a
rise becomes possible. This point, however, we cannot stop to discuss
and must be content merely with indicating what in both the
Scriptures of all races and the Wisdom-tradition of the sages of
antiquity is unanimously recorded to be the fact.
From that "fall", which was not due to the
transgression of an individual, but to some weakness or defect
in the collective or group-soul of the Adamic race, and which was not
the matter of a moment but a process covering vast time-cycles, it
was necessary and within the Divine counsels and providence that
humanity should be redeemed and restored to its pristine state; that
it should be brought back once more into vital association with the
Divine Principle from which by its secession it became increasingly
detached, as its materialistic tendencies overpowered and quenched
its native spirituality. This restoration in turn required vast
time-cycles for its achievement. And it required something
further. It required the application of an orderly and scientific
method to effect the restoration of each fallen soul-fragment and
bring it back to its primitive pure and perfect condition. I
emphasize that the method was necessarily to be not a haphazard, but
a scientific one. Anyone may fall from a housetop and break his
bones; skilled surgery and intelligent effort by some friendly hand
are required to heal the patient and get him back to the place he
fell from. So with humanity. It fell - out of Eden, as our Scriptures
describe the lapse from super-physical to physical conditions - why
and how, again we must not stay to enquire. It fell, through inherent
weakness and lack of wisdom. Unable to effect its own recovery it
required skilled scientific assistance from other sources to bring
about its restoration. Whence could come that skill and scientific
knowledge if not from the Divine and now invisible world, from those
"gods" and angelic guardians of the erring race of whom all
the ancient traditions and sacred writings tell? Would not that
regenerative method be properly described if it were called, as in
Masonry it is called, a "heavenly science", and welcomed in
the words that Masons in fact use, "Hail, Royal Art!" ?
Thus, then, was the origin and birth of Religion. And Religion is
a word implying a "binding back" (re-ligare). As with the
setting and bandaging a broken limb, so the collective soul of
humanity, fractured and comminuted by its fall into countless
individuations and their subsequent respective progenies, each
separately damaged and imperfect, needed to be restored to the
condition from which it had become dislocated and once more built up
into a perfect harmonious whole.
To the spiritual guardians of primitive man, then, one must
attribute the communication of that universal science of rebuilding
the fallen temple of humanity, of which science we now surprisedly
find traces in every race and religion of the world. To this source
we must credit the distribution, in every land and among every
people, of the same or equivalent symbols, practices and doctrines,
modified only locally and in accordance with the intelligence of
particular peoples, yet all manifesting a common root and purpose.
This was the one Holy Catholic (or universal) Religion "throughout
all the world"; at once a theoretic doctrine and a practical
science intended to reunite man to his Maker. That religion could
only be one, as it could not be otherwise than catholic and for all
men equally and alike; though, owing to the perverse distortive
tendencies of humanity itself, it was susceptible of becoming (as has
so happened) debased and sectarianized into as many forms as there
are peoples. Moreover, its main principles could never be susceptible
of alteration, though they might be (as they have been) exoterically
understood by some and esoterically by others, and their full import
would not all at once be apparent, but develop with increasing
fidelity to and understanding of them. It provided the unalterable
"landmarks" of knowledge concerning human nature, human
potentialities and human destiny. It laid down the ancient and
established "usages and customs" to be followed at all
times by everyone content to accept its discipline and which none
might deviate from or add innovations to, save at his own peril. It
was the "Sacred Law" for the guidance of the fallen soul, a
law valid from the dawn of time till its sunset, and of which it is
written "As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be,
world without end". It was the science of life - of temporal
limited life lived with the intention of its conversion and
sublimation into eternal universal life; and, therefore, it called
for a scientific or philosophic method of living, every moment and
action of which should be directed to that great goal; - a method
very different from the modern method, which is entirely utilitarian
in its outlook and totally unscientific in its conduct.
This Proto-Religion is related to have originated in the East,
from which proverbially all light comes, and, as humanity itself
became diffused and distributed over the globe, to have
gradually spread towards the West, in a perpetual watchfulness of
humanity's spiritual interests and an unfailing purpose to retrieve
"that which was lost"- the fallen human soul. We have
already said that in early times the humanity then under its
influence was far less materialized and far more spiritually
sensitive and perceptive than it subsequently became or is now; and
accordingly it follows that with the increasing age and density of
the race the influence of the Proto-Religion itself became
correspondingly diminished, though its principles remained as
valid and effective as before; for the self-willed vagaries and
speculative conceptions of man cannot alter the principles of static
Truth and Wisdom. To follow in any detail the course of its history
is not now necessary and would require a long treatise. And to do so
would also be like following the course of a river backwards from its
broad mouth to a point where it becomes an insignificant and scarcely
traceable channel. For the race itself has wandered backwards,
farther and farther from the original Wisdom-teaching, so that the
once broad and bright flood of light upon cosmic principles and the
evolution of the human soul has now become contracted into minute
points. But that light, like that of a Master Mason, has never been
wholly extinguished, however dark the age, and, by the tradition,
this of ours is spiritually the darkest of the dark ages. "God
has never left Himself without a witness among the children of men",
and among the witnesses to the Ancient Wisdom and Mysteries is the
system of Masonry; a faint and feeble flicker, perhaps, but
nevertheless a true light and in the true line of succession of the
primitive doctrine, and one still able to guide our feet into
the way of peace and perfection.
The earliest teaching of the Mysteries traceable within historic
time was in the Orient and in the language known as Sanscrit - a name
itself significant and appropriate, for it means Holy Writ or
"Sanctum Scriptum"; and for very great lights upon
the ancient Secret Doctrine one must still refer to the religious and
philosophical scriptures of India, which was in its spiritual and
temporal prime when modern Europe was frozen beneath an ice-cap.
But races, like men, have their infancy, manhood and old age; they
are but units, upon a larger scale than the individual, for
furthering the general life-purpose. When a given race has served or
failed in that purpose, the stewardship of the Mysteries passes on to
other and more effectual hands. The next great torch-bearer of the
Light of the world was Egypt, which, after many centuries of
spiritual supremacy, in turn became the and desert it now is both
spiritually and materially, leaving nevertheless a mass of structural
and written relics still testifying to its possession of the Doctrine
in the days of its glory. From Egypt, as civilizations developed in
adjoining countries, a great irradiation of them took place by the
diffusion of its knowledge and the institution of minor centres for
the imparting of the Divine Science in Chaldea, Persia, Greece and
Asia Minor. "Out of Egypt have I called My son" is, in one
of its many senses, a biblical allusion to this passing on of the
catholic Mysteries from Egypt to new and virgin regions, for their
enlightenment.
Of these various translations those that concern us chiefly are
two; the one to Greece, the other to Palestine. We know from the
Bible that Moses was an initiate of the Egyptian mysteries and became
learned in all its wisdom, while Philo tells us that Moses there
became "skilled in music, geometry, arithmetic, hieroglyphics
and the whole circle of arts and sciences". In other words he
became in a real sense a Master Mason and, as such, qualified himself
for his subsequent great task of leadership of the Hebrew people and
the formulating of their religious system and rule of life as laid
down in the Pentateuch. The Mosaic system continued, as we know,
along the channel indicated in the books of the Old Testament, and
then, after many centuries and vicissitudes, effloresced in the
greatest of all expressions of the Mysteries, as disclosed in the
Gospels of the New Testament (or New Witness), involving the
supersession of all previous systems under the Supreme Grand
Mastership of Him who is called the Light of the World and its
Saviour.
Concurrently with the existence of the Hebrew Mysteries under the
Mosiac dispensation, the great Greek school of the Mysteries was
developing, which, originating in the Orphic religion, culminated and
came to a focus at Delphi and generated the philosophic wisdom and
the aesthetic glories associated with Athens and the Periclean age.
Greece was the spiritual descendant and infant prodigy of both India
and Egypt, though developing along quite different lines. We know
that Pythagoras, like Moses, after absorbing all his native teachers
could impart, journeyed to Egypt to take his final initiation prior
to returning and founding the great school at Crotona associated with
his name. We know, too, from the Timaeus of Plato how aspirants for
mystical wisdom visited Egypt for initiation and were told by the
priests of Sais that "you Greeks are but children" in the
Secret Doctrine, but were admitted to information enabling them to
promote their own spiritual advancement. We know from the
correspondence, recorded by Iamblichus, between Anebo and
Porphyry, the fraternal relations existing between the various
schools or lodges of instruction in different lands; how their
members visited, greeted and assisted one another in the secret
science, the more advanced being obliged, as every initiate still is
when called upon, to "afford assistance and instruction to
his brethren in the inferior degrees". And we know that at the
Nativity - or shall we say the installation in this world - of the
Great Master, there came to Him from afar Magi or initiate
visitors who knew of His impending advent and had seen His star in
the East and desired to acknowledge and pay Him reverence. In
all these world moving incidents in times when initiation was a real
event and not a mere ceremonial form as now, it is of interest to
notice the practice upon a grand scale of the same customs and
courtesies as are still observed, though alas unintelligently, by the
Craft of to-day.
We must now speak more fully of the Mysteries and the "Royal
Art" as pursued by the Greek school. With the Greeks it took the
form of a quest of philosophy; i.e., for wisdom, for the Sophia, just
as in the Hebrew and Christian schools it took the form of a quest
for the Lost Word. The end was of course the same in both cases, but
the approach to it was by different means and, as we shall see, the
two methods coalesced into one at a later date. The Greek approach
was primarily an intellectual one and by what Spinoza has termed Amor
intellectualis Dei. The Christian approach was primarily through
the affections and the adoration of the heart. Both strained
after "that which was lost", but one sought after the lost
ideal by intellectual and the other by devotional energy. Humanity is
but slowly educated; "line upon line; precept upon precept; here
a little and there a little", one faculty after another being
developed and trained unto the refashioning of the perfect organism.
And if philosophic Wisdom and the sense of Beauty stood forth - as
they did stand forth-most prominently as the main pillars of the
Greek system, the Greeks had yet to learn of a third and middle
pillar that synthesized and comprised them both - that of the
Strength of the supreme virtue of Love, when towards the object of
all desire it pours from a pure and perfect heart.
The Greek's quest of wisdom was something much more than a mere
desire for larger information and maturer judgment about one's place
in the universe. Merely to know certain facts about the hidden side
of life profits nothing unless the knowledge is allowed to
influence and adapt our method of living to the truths disclosed.
Then the knowledge becomes transmuted into wisdom; one becomes
the truth one sees; and a man's life becomes truth made substantial
and dynamic. But to bring this about one must first be informed about
or initiated into certain elements of the truth and be persuaded that
it is truth before setting about to become it. The Greek method,
therefore, began by initiating the mind into certain truths about the
soul's own nature, history, destiny and potentialities, and then left
the individual to follow up the information by a course of conduct in
which the teaching imparted would become converted into assured
conviction and living power, whilst his increasing progress in the
science would itself result in awakening him to still deeper truths.
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that no one can learn
spiritual science, whether as taught by Masonry or any other system
inculcating it, without submitting himself to its processes and
living them out in practical experience. In this supreme study,
knowing depends entirely upon doing; comprehension is
conditional upon and the corollary of action. "He that will do
the will shall know of the doctrine".
Hence it is that in Masonry an installed Master is still called a
"Master of Arts and Sciences", for he is supposed to
have mastered the art of living in accordance with the theoretic
gnosis or science imparted to him in the course of his progress. Real
Masonic knowledge will never be achieved merely by oral explanation,
hearing lectures and studying books. These may be useful in giving a
preliminary start to earnest seekers needing but a little guidance to
set them on that path of personal practice and experience where they
will soon develop an automatic understanding of the doctrine for
themselves; for those with but a casual dilletante interest the
doctrine will continue veiled and secret. For example, it is one
thing to hear explained what is meant by being divested of money and
metals in the philosophic sense; it is quite another to have become
insusceptible to all attraction by material interests and
sense-allurements and to be consciously possessed of the wisdom
accruing from that experience. It may interest to be told why,
at a certain stage of progress, the candidate is likened to an ear of
corn by a fall of water; but the explanation will be forgotten
to-morrow, unless as the result of his own effort the hearer has
become personally aware of an inward substantial growth ripening to
harvest within him from the ground of his own being and fertilized by
supersensual nourishment falling like the gentle rain from heaven
upon his ardent and aspiring soul. Again, it may seem instructive to
know that the great ritual of the Third Degree signifies a death unto
sin and self and a new birth unto righteousness, but how will the
information profit those who nevertheless mean to go on living the
old manner of life, which at every moment negates all that that
ritual implies?
The Ancient Mysteries, then, involved much more than a merely
notional philosophy. They required also a philosophic method of
living - or rather of dying. For as Socrates said (in Plato's Phado,
from which much Masonic teaching is directly drawn and which
every Masonic student should study deeply) "the whole study of
the philosopher (or wisdom-seeker) is nothing else than to die and be
dead"; an assertion repeated by Plutarch, "to be initiated
is to die"; and by the Christian apostle, "I die daily".
Their method was divided into two parts, the Lesser and the Greater
Mysteries. The Lesser were those in which the more elementary
instruction was imparted, so that candidates might forthwith set
about to purify and adapt their lives to the truths disclosed. The
Greater Mysteries related to the developments of consciousness within
the soul itself, as the result of fidelity to the prescribed rule of
life. To draw a faint analogy, the Lesser Mysteries bore the same
relation to the Greater as the present Craft Degrees do to the Holy
Royal Arch.
To deal adequately with the Mystery-systems would involve a
lengthy study in itself. We will refer to but one of the most famous
of them, the Eleusinian, which existed in Greece and for several
centuries was the focus-point of religion and philosophy for the then
civilized portion of Europe "Eleusis" means light, and
initiation into the Mysteries of Eleusis, therefore, meant a quest of
the aspirant for light, in precisely the same, but a far more real,
sense as the modem Mason declares light to be the predominant wish of
his heart. It meant, as it ought to mean to-day but does not, not
merely light in the sense of being given some secret information not
obtainable elsewhere or about any matter of worldly interest, but the
opening up of the candidate's whole intellectual and spiritual nature
in the super-sensual light of the Divine world and raising him to
God-consciousness. The ordinary and uninitiated man knows nothing of
that super-sensual light by his merely natural reason; he is
conscious only of the outer world and things perceptible by his
natural faculties. In the words of St. Paul "the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are
foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are
spiritually discerned". Initiation, therefore, meant a process
whereby natural man became transformed into spiritual or
ultra-natural man, and to effect this it was necessary to change his
consciousness, to gear it to a new and higher principle, and so,
as it were, make of him a new man in the sense of attaining a new
method of life and a new outlook upon the universe. "Be ye
transformed by the renewing of your minds," says the Apostle,
referring to this process. As has previously- been shown in these
papers, the transference of the symbol of the Divine Presence from
the ceiling to the floor of the Masonic Lodge is to indicate how the
Vital and Immortal Principle in man can be brought down from his
remoter psychological region into his physical organism and function
there through his body and brain, thus as it were dislocating and
superseding his natural mentality and regenerating him. This truth is
still further reproduced in Masonry by the name "Lewis",
traditionally associated with the Craft. "Lewis" is a
modern corruption of Eleusis and of other Greek and Latin names
associated with Light. In our instruction Lectures it is said to
designate "the son of a Mason" This, however, has no
reference to human parentage and sonship. It refers to the mystical
birth of the Divine Light in oneself; as a familiar Scriptural text
has it, "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given".
It is the Divine Principle, the Divine Wisdom, brought to birth and
function within the organism of the natural man, who virtually
becomes its parent. It is further described in our Lectures as
something "which when properly dovetailed into a stone forms a
clamp, enabling Masons to lift great weights with little
inconvenience whilst fixing them on their proper bases". All
which is a concealed way of expressing the fact that, when the Divine
Light is brought forward from man's submerged depths and firmly
grafted or dovetailed into his natural organism, he then becomes able
easily to grapple with difficulties, problems and "weights"
of all kinds which to the unregenerate are insuperable, and to
perceive all things sub specie oeternitatis and in their true
relations, as is not possible to other men who behold them only sub
specie temporis and are consequently unable to judge their real
values and " fix them on their proper bases."
In the time that the Mysteries flourished, every educated man
entered them in the same way that men enter a University in modern
times. They were the recognized source of instruction in the only
things that really matter, those affecting the culture of the human
soul and its education in the science of itself and its divine
nature. Candidates were graded according to their moral efficiency
and their intellectual or spiritual stature. For years they underwent
disciplinary intellectual exercises and bodily asceticism, punctuated
at intervals by appropriate tests and ordeals to determine their
fitness to proceed to the more serious, solemn and awful processes of
actual initiation, administered only to the duly qualified, and which
were of a secret and closely guarded character. Their education,
differing greatly from the scholastic methods of a utilitarian age
like our own, was directed solely to the cultivation of the "four
cardinal virtues" and the "seven liberal arts and sciences"
as qualifications prerequisite to participation in the higher
order of life to which initiation would eventually admit the worthy
and properly prepared candidate. The construction put upon these
virtues. and sciences was a much more advanced one than the modern
mind considers adequate. Virtues with them were more than
abstractions and ethical sentiments; as the word itself implies they
involved positive valours and virility of soul. Temperance involved
complete control of the passional nature under every circumstance;
Fortitude, the courage that no adversity will dismay or deflect from
the goal in view; Prudence, the deep insight that begets the
prophetic or forward-seeing faculty of seer-ship
(providentia);Justice, unswerving righteousness of thought and
action.* (* The four cardinal virtues are referred to in both Plato's
Phcedo and the Book of Wisdom, ch. viii, 5-'7, indicating community
of teaching between the Greek and Hebrew schools.) The "arts and
sciences" were called "liberal" because they tended to
liberate the soul from defects and illusions normally enslaving it,
thus totally differing from science in the modern sense, the tendency
of which is, as we know, materialistic and soul-benumbing. Grammar,
Logic and Rhetoric with the Ancients were disciplines of the moral
nature, by which the irrational tendencies of a human being were
purged away and he was trained to become a living witness of the
universal Logos and a living mouth-piece of the Divine Word. Geometry
and Arithmetic were sciences of transcendental space and
numeration (seeing that, as in the words of our own Scriptures, God
has "made everything by measure, number and weight"), the
comprehension of which provides the key, not only to the problems of
one's being, but to those physical ones which are found so baffling
by the inductive methods of to-day. Astronomy for them required no
telescopes; it dealt not with the stars of the sky, but was the
science of metaphysics and the understanding of the distribution of
the forces latent in, and determining the destiny of, individuals,
nations and the race. Finally Music (or Harmony) was for them not of
the vocal or instrumental kind; it meant the living practice of
philosophy, the adjustment of human life into harmony with God, until
the personal soul became unified with Him and consciously heard,
because it now participated in, the music of the spheres. As Milton
puts it :
" How lovely is Divine
Philosophy,
Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools
suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute
And a perpetual feast of nectar'd
sweets
Where no crude surfeit reigns."
Every possible device was employed and practised to train the mind
to acquire dominion over the passions and to loosen and detach it
from the impressions and attractions of the senses, to destroy
the illusions and false imaginations under which it labours when
using no higher light than its own, and to qualify it for a higher
method of cognition and for the reception of supersensual truth and
the light of the Divine world. The idealism of Greek architecture and
sculpture was entirely due to the same motive and with a view to
elevating the imagination beyond the visible level and fitting the
mind for the apprehension of ultra-physical form and beauty.
Even athletic exercises were made to subserve the same purpose;
wrestling and racing were not vulgar sports; they were regarded
sacramentally, as the type of combats the soul must engage in against
the competition of the fleshly desires; and the victor's crown of
laurel or olive was the emblem of wisdom and illumination resulting
to him in whom the spirit conquers the flesh. Thus every intellectual
and physical interest was made subservient to the one idea of
separating the soul from material bondage and was purposely of a
purifying or " cathartic " nature that should cleanse the
thoughts and desires of the aspirant and make him white within and
without, even as the modern candidate for the Craft is clothed in
white. This inward purity of heart and mind, coupled with the
possession of the four cardinal virtues, was and still is an absolute
essential to the ordeals of actual initiation, which otherwise
rendered the candidate liable to insanity and obsessions of which the
modern mind in its ignorance of what initiation involves can form no
opinion. Those who became proficient and properly prepared in this
curriculum of the Lesser Mysteries were eventually admitted to
initiation in the Greater Mysteries. Those who failed to qualify were
restrained from advancement. As now, the numbers of really earnest
and qualified aspirants were only a percentage of the total of those
who entered the Mysteries, for in the spiritual life, as in the world
of nature, the biological phenomenon prevails that the available raw
material greatly exceeds the perfected product. Every year far more
seeds are borne, far more eggs are laid or spawned, than reach
maturity, although every seed and egg is potentially capable of
growth and fruition. Plato, speaking of the Mysteries in his own day,
quotes a still older authority that "the thyrsusbearers*
(or candidates for initiation) are numerous, but the Bacchuses (or
perfected initiates) are few". [* The thyrsus (or Caduceus)
was an elaborate wand borne by the candidate, to the symbolism of
which deep meaning attached. Its present form is the wand carried by
the deacon accompanying the candidate.] The same truth is
restated in the words in the Gospels, "Many are called, but few
are chosen."
One qualification above all was essential to the aspirant, as it
is still to-day,-humility. The wisdom into which the Mysteries and
initiation admit a man is foolishness to the world; it is a reversal
and revolution of all orthodox and academic standards. To attain it a
man must be prepared for that complete and voluntary self-denial
which may involve his finding negated everything he has previously
held to be true, or which those among whom he ordinarily mingles
believe to be true. He must be content to "become a fool for the
kingdom of heaven's sake" and to suffer adversity, ridicule and
obloquy for it if needs be. This was one of the prime reasons for
secrecy and one - though not the only one - of the origins of the
Masonic injunction as to secrecy. The world's wisdom and that to
which initiation admits are so antipodal in their nature that any
intrusion of the latter will infallibly provoke resentment from
the former. Hence it is written "Cast not your pearls before
swine, neither give that which is holy unto dogs-lest they turn and
rend you". Silence and secrecy are, therefore, desirable if only
in self-defence, though there are other reasons; but humility is
indispensable. In the public processions of the Lesser Mysteries -
for the public were permitted at certain festivals to participate to
a small extent in some of the more exoteric knowledge - the sacred
emblems and eucharistic vessels used in the rites were carried with
great reverence upon the back of an ass. With the same intention, it
is said that one of the great Greek philosophers always had an ass by
his side in his lecture-room when instructing his students. The
explanation is given in the words of one of the old authorities upon
initiation as follows : "There is no creature so able to receive
divinity as an ass, into whom if ye be not turned, ye shall in no
wise be able to carry the divine mysteries". In the light of
this, one will at once discern the symbolical significance of the
Christian Master riding into Jerusalem upon an ass.
Another and a greatly educative means employed in the Mysteries
was that of instructing, enlarging and purifying the imagination by
means of myths, expressing either in doctrinal form or by spectacular
representation, truths of the Divine world and of the soul's history.
The modern mind in its passion for actual concrete facts is little
sympathetic to a method of teaching which dispenses with
demonstrable facts and prefers to enunciate the eternal
principles underlying such facts and of which those facts are but the
manifested resultant consequence. Facts - of history or science -
tend, however, to congest the mind and paralyse the imagination, as
Darwin lamented in his own case. Principles stimulate and illumine
the imagination, and enable the mind to interpret facts and adjust
them to their proper relation. The Greek mythologists were adepts at
expressing cosmic and philosophic truths in the guise of fables which
at once expressed theosophic teaching to the discerning and veiled it
from the careless and ignorant. Myth-making was a science, not an
indulgence in irresponsible fiction, and by exhibiting some of these
myths in dramatic form candidates were instructed in various
fundamental verities of life.
One of the chief and best known of the numerous myths was that of
Demeter and her daughter Persephone, annually performed with great
ceremony and elaboration at the Eleusinia, and of which it may be
useful to speak briefly. It told how the maiden Persephone strayed
away from Arcadia (heaven) and her mother Demeter, to pluck flowers
in the meads of Enna, and how the soil there opened and caused her to
fall through into the lower dark world of Hades ruled over by Pluto.
The despair of her mother at the loss reached Zeus, the chief of the
Gods, with the result that he relieved the position by ordaining
that, if the girl had not eaten of the fruit of Hades, she should
forthwith be restored to her mother for ever, but that if she had so
eaten she must abide a third of each year with Pluto and return to
Demeter for the other two thirds. It proved that Persephone had
unfortunately eaten a pomegranate in the lower world, so that her
restoration to her mother could not be permanent, but only periodic.
This myth, and the importance once attached to it, will be
appreciated only upon understanding its interpretation. It is the
story of the soul and is of the same nature as the Mosaic myth of
Adam and Eve and the apple, and as the cosmic parable of the Prodigal
Son, neither of these being meant to be regarded as historically
true, but as a fiction spiritually true of cosmic facts. Persephone
is the human soul, generated out of that primordial incorruptible
mother-earth which the Greeks personified as Demeter, just as the
Mosaic narrative speaks of God forming man out of the dust of the
ground. Her straying from her Arcadian home and heavenly mother in
quest of flowers (or fresh experiences on her own account) in the
fields of Enna, corresponds with the same promptings of desire that
led to Adam's disobedience in Eden and his fall thence to this outer
world. All unruly desires end in dissatisfaction and bitterness, and
"Enna" (signifying darkness and bitterness) is the same
word as still meets us in Gehenna. One may, however, profit by one's
mistakes. It is they which breed wisdom, and it is the riches of
wisdom and experience that are signified by Pluto, the god of riches,
into whose kingdom Persephone falls. She might have returned thence
to her mother for ever, Zeus decreed, had she not still further
injured herself by eating of the fruit of the lower world, but having
done so her restoration can only be partial and temporary. This
alludes to the soul's still further self-soilure and degradation by
lusting after the inferior pleasures of this lower plane, which, as
the pomegranate symbolizes, is manyseeded with illusions and
vanities. Until these false tendencies are eradicated, until the
desires of the heart are utterly weaned from external delights, there
can be no permanent restoration of the soul to its source, but merely
the periodic respite and refreshment that death brings when it
withdraws the soul from Pluto's realm to the heaven-world, to be
followed again and again by periodic descents into material
limitations and re-ascents into discarnate conditions, until it
becomes finally purged and perfected.
By this great myth, therefore, instruction was imparted as to the
history of the soul, its destiny and prospects, and the doctrine of
reincarnation* was emphasized. [* As this doctrine is not
popularly inculcated in the West as it is in the East, and will be
novel and probably unacceptable to some readers, its acceptance is
not pressed here. We are merely recording what the secret doctrine
teaches.]
Now Masonry follows this traditional method of instruction by
myths. Its canon of teaching in the Craft degrees contains two myths.
One is that of the building of King Solomon's Temple. The other is
that of the death and burial of Hiram Abiff narrated in the
traditional history. The Royal Arch contains a third myth in the
story of the return from captivity after the destruction of the first
temple, the commencement to build the second, and the discovery then
made. This third myth has already been expounded in our paper on the
Royal Arch degree, so that we need now speak only of the Craft Myths.
To the literal-minded the building of Solomon's temple at
Jerusalem (which is of course largely but not entirely based upon the
Hebrew Scriptures) appears to be the history of an actual stone and
mortar structure erected by three Asiatic notables, one of whom
conceived the idea, another supplying the building material, whilst
the third was the practical architect and chief of works. The two
former are said to have been kings of adjacent small nations; the
third was not a royalty, but apparently a person of no social dignity
and a "widow's son".
As has previously been said in these papers, these details of an
enterprise undertaken more than two thousand years ago can have no
possible value to anyone to-day and if they related merely to
historic fact modem Masonry might as well close its doors and cease
to exist for any benefit that fact could impart to serious or
reflective minds. But if the narrative were never intended as a
record of temporal historic fact, but be a myth enshrining
philosophic truths concerning eternal principles, then it must be
interpreted with spiritual discernment and its analysis will reveal
matters of real importance.
The story of the building of the temple, then, is a philosophical
instruction, garbed in quasi-historical form, concerning the
structure of the human soul. That temple is not one of common brick
and stone, but of the "unhewn stone" or incorruptible raw
material of which the Creator fashioned the human organism. The
Jerusalem in which it was built was not the geographical one in
Palestine, but the eternal "city of peace" in the heavens;
not, as St. Paul says, "the Jerusalem which now is, but the
Jerusalem above, which is the mother of us all", like the Greek
Demeter. Its builders were not three human personages resident in the
Levant, but the Divine energy considered in its three constituent
principles spoken of in our Instruction Lectures as Wisdom, Strength
and Beauty, which as "pillars of His work" run through and
form the metaphysical warp and basis of all created things. These
three metaphysical principles may be defined in modern terms as
Life-Essence (or the substantial spirit of Wisdom); incorruptible
Matter, serving as the mould, matrix or vehicle of that Life-Essence,
to give it fixity, form and objectiveness (Strength); and lastly the
fabricative intellectual principle or Logos binding these two
together and constituting the whole an intelligent and functionally
effective instrument (Beauty). Of these three principles, or upon
these three pillars, was the human soul originally and divinely built
in the heaven-world, and our Lectures, therefore, rightly say that
those three pillars "also allude to Solomon, King of Israel;
Hiram, King of Tyre; and Hiram Abiff," because those names
personify the indissociable triadic constituents of the Divine Unity.
(They are also shown inscribed upon the central symbolic altar in the
Royal Arch Degree as further evidence of this divine construction of
the human soul). The temple of the soul has, however, now been
destroyed and thrown down from its primitive eminence and grandeur.
Humanity, instead of being a collective united organic whole, has
become shattered into innumerable fragmentary separated parts, not
one stone standing upon another of its ruined building. It has lost
consciousness of the genuine secrets of its own origin and nature and
has now to be content with the spurious substituted knowledge it
picks up from sense-impressions in this outer world. Like Persephone
it has eaten the pomegranates of Pluto's dark realm in preference to
the ambrosia of Arcady, and until that poison is eliminated from its
system it cannot permanently reattain its unfallen state, but at best
must endure a rhythm of deaths and rebirths and of intermittent
periods of labour in this world and refreshment beyond it. But it may
become cleansed; the temple can be rebuilt, and each Mason's soul
that is wrought into a true die or square by his work upon himself
here, becomes one more new stone of the restored temple in the
heavens.
A further word is necessary as to the concealed significance of
Solomon and the two Hirams. Solomon personifies the primordial
Life-Essence or substantialized Divine Wisdom which is the basis of
our being. It is defined in the Book of Wisdom (chap. vii., 25-27),
as "a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty; the
brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the
power of God and the image of His goodness". It is described as
a "king" because it must needs transcend and over-rule
whatever is inferior to itself, and as "king of Israel"
because "Israel" itself means "co-operating or ruling
with God" as distinct from being associated with beings or
affairs of a sub-divine order. To conjoin this transcendental
Life-Essence to a vehicle which should give it fixity and form
required the assistance of another dominant or "kingly"
principle, personified as Hiram, King of Tyre, who supplied the
"building material". Now inasmuch as we are dealing with
purely metaphysical ideas, it will be obvious that the Tyre in
question has no relation to the Levantine sea-port of that name. The
name Tyre in Hebrew means "rock" and the strength,
compactness and durability which we associate with rock, whilst the
same word recurs in Greek as Turos and in Latin as Terra, earth, and
as Durus, implying form, hardness, consistency and durability. "King
of Tyre", therefore, is interpretable as the cosmic principle
which gives solidity and form to the spiritual fluidic and formless
Life-Essence, and which is comparable to a cup intended to hold
liquid. Solomon and Hiram of Tyre therefore contribute their
respective properties of Life-Essence and durable form and "building
material" as the groundwork of the soul, which then is made
functionally effective by the addition of the third principle
described as Hiram Abiff, the widow's son, and personifying the
active intellectual principle or Logos. In a word, Hiram Abiff is the
Christ principle immanent in every soul; crucified, dead and
buried in all who are not alive to its presence, but resident in all
as a saving force - "Christ in you, the hope of glory."
Consistently with Christlike humility, Hiram Abiff (literally,
"the teacher from the Father") is not described as a "king"
as are Solomon and Hiram of Tyre, but as one "of no reputation",
a " widow's son "; a beautiful touch of Gnostic symbolism
referable to the derelict or widowed nature of the Divine Motherhood
or Sophia owing to the errancy and defection from wisdom of her frail
children. Such of those children as have rejoined, or are striving to
rejoin, their mother are alone worthy to be called the “widow's
sons," and it is to the cry to those who have rejoined her from
those still labouring at that task in the flesh, and perhaps wiping
from their brow the bloody sweat of their Gethsemane anguish in the
struggle, that the traditional petition applies, “ Come to my
help, ye sons of the Widow, for I am the Widow's son!"
The temple of the human soul,primordially constituted of the three
principles just spoken of in due balance and proportion and divinely
pronounced to be " very good," has deflected from that
state. Its fall has been effected by the disproportioned,
unbalanced and, therefore, disorderly abuse of its inherent powers.
Just as a man in a temper becomes temporarily unbalanced and liable
to do what he would not in serene moments, so the soul has
disorganized its own nature utterly. Of the three pillars that should
support it, Wisdom (Gnosis) has fallen and become replaced by a
flexible and shifting prop of speculative opinion : Strength (divine
dynamic energy) has become exchanged for the frailty of the perishing
flesh : Beauty, the god-like radiant form that should adorn and liken
man to his Divine Creator, has become superseded by every ugliness of
imperfection. Man is now a ruined temple, over which is written
"Ichabod! Ichabod! the glory is departed !" Severed from
conscious intercourse with his Vital and Immortal Principle, he is a
prisoner in captivity to himself and his lower temporal nature. It
remains for him to retrace his steps and rebuild his temple; to
continue no longer a bondslave to his self-made illusions and the
attractions of "worldly possessions", but become a
free man and mason, engaged in shaping himself into a living and
precious stone for the cosmic temple of a regenerate Humanity unto
which, when completed and dedicated, Deity will again enter and
abide.
To be "installed in the chair of King Solomon",
therefore, means in its true sense the re-attainment of a Wisdom we
have lost and the revival in ourselves of the Divine Life-Essence
which is the basis of our being. With the reattainment of that Wisdom
all that is comprised in the terms Strength and Beauty will be
reattained also, for the three pillars stand in eternal association
and balance. Not to reattain it, not to revive the Divine
Life-Essence, during our sojourn in this world, is to miss the
opportunity which life in physical conditions provides, since
the after-death state is one not of labour at this work, but of
refreshment and rest, where no real progress is possible. Initiation,
therefore, was instituted to impart the science of its reattainment
and so lift the individual soul to a new life-basis from which it
could proceed to work out its own salvation and develop its inherent
powers along the true line of its destiny and evolution. But, as
the Ancient Mysteries taught, the soul that never even begins this
work in this world will not be able to begin it hereafter, but will
remain suspended in the more tenuous planes of this planet until such
time as it is once again indrawn into the vortex of generation by the
ever-turning wheel of life. To quote Plato again, "those who
instituted the Mysteries for us taught us that whosoever descended
into Hades (the after-death state) uninitiated and without being a
partaker in the Mysteries, will be plunged into mire and darkness,
but whoever arrived there purified and initiated will dwell with the
Gods". This teaching is reproduced in Masonry in the reference
to the Master-Mason being "admitted to the assembly of the just
made perfect" : the implication being that those who have not
reached that proficiency and are neither "just" (i.e.,
rectified) nor perfected, will abide upon a lower level of
post-mortem existence. For the levels of superphysical life are
numerous - "in my Father's house are many mansions", or,
literally, resting places-and they and their occupants are graduated
in hierarchical order according to their degree of fitness and
spiritual eminence. The disordered modern world, with its perverse
democratic ideals of equality and uniformity, has lost all sense of
the hierarchic principle, which since it obtains in the higher world
ought to be reflected in this.
" Order is Heaven's first law
and, that confessed, Some are, and must be, greater than the rest."
But Masonry preserves the witness to this graduation, and to
the existence of separate tiers of life in the heaven-places, in the
symbolic distribution of its more advanced members. Above the Craft
Lodges there presides the Provincial Grand Lodge; beyond that rules
the Grand Lodge of the nation. Theoretically higher than any of these
is the Royal Arch Chapter, with the Provincial and Grand Chapters
towering beyond that. In the symbolic clothing worn by the members of
each of these ranks the observant student will perceive the intention
to give appropriate expression to the truth thereby signified. The
Masonic apron has been explained in an earlier paper as a figure of
the soul's corporeality - the body (not to be confused with the gross
physical body) which it wears and will display when it passes from
this life. Its pure white is fringed in the case of junior brethren
with a pale shade of that blue which, even in physical nature, is the
colour of the heavens. With seniors in the Provincial and Grand
Lodges this has intensified to the deepest degree of that hue in
correspondence with their theoretical spiritual development, whilst
the gold lace adornments of the clothing emblematize what is referred
to in the Psalmist's words, "The King's daughter (the soul) is
all glorious within; her clothing is of wrought gold": for as
the Life-Essence or Wisdom becomes increasingly "wrought"
or substantialized in us, it becomes the objectified corporeality of
the soul. In the Royal Arch the Craft devotional blue is intershot
with red, the colour of fire or spiritual ardour, the blend resulting
in that purple which both in earth and heaven is the prerogative of
royalty. Thus, by their clothing in the various grades, the members
of Masonry emblematize on earth the angels and archangels and all the
company of Heaven. Some of them are clothed with light as with a
garment; others are ministers of flaming fire.
In a short paper such as this our reference to the Ancient
Mysteries is necessarily brief and has been restricted to the Greek
Eleusinian system. Many others of course existed and an extensive,
though scattered, literature is available for those who would pursue
the subject further in the direction of the Egyptian, Samothracian,
Chaldean, Mithraic, Gnostic and other systems. In their respective
days and localities they formed the authoritative centres of religion
and philosophy, using those terms as but phases of an indivisible
subject which nowadays has become split up into many brands of
theology and speculative philosophy having little and often no
possible connection with each other. What the old writers made public
about the Mysteries of course discreetly avoids descriptions of the
deeper truths they imparted or of the actual processes of initiation.
These must always remain a subject of secrecy, but by the perspicuous
reader enough can be found in their purposely obscure and
metaphorical accounts to indicate what occurred, and with what effect
upon the candidate. Initiation, we have already said, is something
which but few are fit to receive, even after long and rigorous
preparation, and fewer still are competent to impart. It was an
experience of which a writer has said in regard to the candidate, Vel
invent sanctum, vel facit - it either finds him holy or
makes him so. Virgil's account in the sixth £neid of the
initiation of Nneas into Elysium (or the supernatural light), or that
of Lucius (again a name signifying enlightenment) in the "Golden
Ass" of Apuleius, when he was permitted to "see the sun at
midnight", are instructive instances. So also the exclamation of
Clement of Alexandria, who had been received into the Gnostic school
: "O truly sacred Mysteries! O pure Light! I am led by the light
of the torch to the view of heaven and of God. I become holy by
initiation. The Lord Himself is the hierophant who, leading the
candidate for initiation to the Light, seals him and presents him to
the Father to be preserved for ever. These are the orgies of my
Mysteries. If thou wilt, come and be thou also initiated, and thou
shalt join in the dance with the angels around the uncreated,
imperishable and only true God, the Word of God joining in the
strain!"
The Mysteries came to an end as public institutions in the
sixth century, when from political considerations they and the
teaching of the secret doctrine and philosophy became prohibited by
the Roman Government, under Justinian, who aimed at inaugurating an
official uniform state-religion throughout its Empire. Subsequently,
as the Roman Empire declined and broke up, the Roman Catholic Church
emerged from it, which, as we know, has resolutely discountenanced
any authority in religion and philosophy as a rival to her own and at
the same time claimed supremacy and an over-riding jurisdiction
in temporal matters also. For the Freemason the result of that
Church's conduct is instructive. For when an authority upon matters
wholly spiritual and belonging to a kingdom which is not of this
world, lays claim to temporal power and secular possessions, as the
Roman Church has done and still does, it at once vitiates and
neutralizes its own spiritual qualifications. It becomes infected
with the virus of "worldly possessions”. It loads itself
with the "money and metals" from which it is essential to
keep divested. The result has been that what might have been, and was
designed to be, the greatest spiritually educative force in the
world's history, has become a materialized institution, exercising an
intellectual tyranny which has estranged the minds of millions from
religion altogether. As Lot's wife is metaphorically said to have
crystallized into a pillar of salt through turning back in desire to
what she ought to have renounced altogether, so in trying to serve
Mammon and God at the same time the Roman Church has failed in both
and, as the result of the false steps and abuses of centuries. the
world is to-day a chaos of disunited sects and popular religious
teaching is as materialistic as Masonry. It is a pity, for in its
original design and practice Christianity was intended to serve as a
system of initiation upon a catholic or universal scale, and to take
over, supersede and amplify all that previously was taught, in a less
efficacious way and to a more restricted public, in the Ancient
Mysteries. It is not possible here to enter upon the extremely
interesting questions involved in the transition from pre-Christian
to Christian religion, or to explain why and how the Christian
Mysteries are the efflorescence of the earlier ones and transcend
them. In their central teachings, as in the philosophic method of
life they demand, the two methods are identical. The differences
between them are only such as are due to amplification and formal
expression. Christianity came not to destroy, but to fulfill and
expand. That fulfillment and expansion were consequent upon an event
of cosmic importance which we speak of as The Incarnation. By that
event something had happened affecting the very fabric of our planet
and every item of the human family. What that something was and the
nature of the change it wrought is too great and deep a theme to
develop now, but, to illustrate it by Masonic symbolism, it was an
event which is the equivalent of, and is represented by, the
transference of the Sacred Symbol of the Grand Geometrician of the
Universe from the ceiling of the Lodge, where it is located in the
elementary grades of the Craft, to the floor, where it is found in
the Royal Arch Degree surrounded with flaming lights and every
circumstance of reverence and sanctity. How many Masons are there in
the Order to-day who recognize that, in this piece of symbolism,
Masonry is giving affirmation and ocular testimony to precisely the
same fact as the churchman affirms when he recites in his Creed the
words " He came down from heaven, and was incarnate and was made
man?"
By a tacit and quite unwarranted convention the members of the
Craft avoid mention in their Lodges of the Christian Master and
confine their scriptural readings and references almost exclusively
to the Old Testament, the motive being no doubt due to a desire to
observe the injunction as to refraining from religious discussion and
to prevent offence on the part of brethren who may not be of the
Christian faith. The motive is an entirely misguided one and is
negated by the fact that the "greater light" upon which
every member is obligated, and to which his earnest attention is
recommended from the moment of his admission to the Order, is not
only the Old Testament, but the volume of the Sacred Law in its
entirety. The New Testament is as essential to his instruction as the
Old, not merely because of its moral teaching, but in virtue of its
constituting the record of the Mysteries in their supreme form and
historic culmination. The Gospels themselves, like the Masonic
degrees, are a record of preparation and illumination, leading up to
the ordeal of death, followed by a raising from the dead and the
attainment of Mastership, and they exhibit the process of initiation
carried to the highest conceivable degree of attainment. The New
Testament is full of passages in Masonic terminology and there is not
a little irony in the failure by modern Masons to recognize its
supreme importance and relevancy to their Lodge proceedings and in
the fact that in so doing they may be likening themselves to those
builders of whom it is written that they rejected the chief Corner
Stone. They would learn further that the Grand Master and Exemplar of
Masonry, Hiram Abiff, is but a figure of the Great Master and
Exemplar and Saviour of the world, the Divine Architect by whom all
things were made, without whom is nothing that hath been made, and
whose life is the light of men. If, in the words of the Masonic hymn
"Hiram the architect
Did all the Craft direct
How they should build,"
it is equally true that the protagonist of the Christian
Scriptures also taught universal humanity "how they should
build" and reconstruct their own fallen nature, and that the
method of such building is one which involves the cross as its
working tool and one which culminates in a death and a raising from
the dead. And, of those who attain their initiation and mastership by
that method, is it not further written there that they become of the
household of God and built into a spiritual temple not made with
hands, but eternal and in the heavens and of which "Jesus Christ
is the chief corner stone, in whom all the building, fitly framed
together, groweth unto an holy temple builded for an habitation of
God ?"
Neither the Ancient Mysteries nor Modem Masonry, their descendant,
therefore, can be rightly viewed without reference to their relation
to the Christian evangel, into which the pre-Christian schools became
assumed. The line of succession and evolution from the former to the
latter is direct and organic. Allowing for differences of time, place
and form of expression, both taught exactly the same truths and
inculcated the necessity for regeneration. In such a matter there
cannot be a diversity of doctrine. The truth concerning it must be
static and uniform at all periods of the world's history. Hence we
find St. Augustine affirming that there has never existed but one
religion in the world since the beginning of time (meaning by
religion the science of rebinding the dislocated soul to its source),
and that that religion began to be called Christian in apostolic
times. And hence too it is that both the Roman Church and Masonry,
although so widely divergent in outlook and method, have this feature
in common, that each declares and insists that no alteration or
innovation in its central doctrine is permissible and that it is
unlawful to remove or deviate from its ancient landmarks. Each is
right in its insistence, for in the system of each is enshrined the
age-old doctrine of regeneration and divinization of the human soul,
obscured in the one case by theological and other accretions foreign
to the main purpose of religion, and unperceived in the other because
its symbolism remains uninterpreted. To clear vision, Christian and
Masonic doctrine are identical in intention though different in
method. The one says "Via Crucis"; the other "Via
Lucis"; yet the two ways are but one way. The former teaches
through the ear; the latter through the eye and by identifying the
aspirant with the doctrine by passing him personally and dramatically
through symbolic rites which he is expected to translate from
ceremonial form into subjective experience. As Patristic literature
shows, the primitive method of the Christian Church was not that
which now obtains, under which the religious offices and teaching are
administered to the whole public alike and in a way implying a common
level of doctrine for all and uniform power of comprehension by every
member of the congregation. It was, on the other hand, a
graduated method of instruction and identical with the Masonic system
of degrees conferred by reason of advancing merit and ability. To
cite one of the most instructive of early Christian treatises
(Dionysius : On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy), with which every
Masonic student should familiarize himself, it will be found that
admission to the early Church was by three ceremonial degrees exactly
corresponding in intention with those of Masonry. "The most holy
initiation of the Mystic Rites has as its first Godly purpose the
holy cleansing of the initiated; and as second, the enlightening
instruction of the purified; and finally and as the completion of the
former, the perfecting of those instructed in the science of their
appropriate instructions. The order of the Ministers in the first
class cleanses the initiated through the Mystic Rites; in the second,
conducts the purified to light; and, in the last and highest, makes
perfect those who have participated in the Divine Light by the
scientific contemplations of the illuminations contemplated."
This brief passage alone suffices to show that originally membership
of the Christian Church involved a sequence of three initiatory rites
identical in intention with those of the Craft to-day. The names
given to those who had qualified in those Rites were respectively
Catechumens, Leiturgoi, and Priests or Presbyters; which in turn are
identifiable with our Entered Apprentices, Fellow Crafts and Master
Masons. Their first degree was that of a rebirth and purification of
the heart; their second related to the illumination of the
intelligence; and their third to a total death unto sin and a new
birth unto righteousness, in which the candidate died with Christ on
the cross, as with us he is made to imitate the death of Hiram, and
was raised to that higher order of life which is Mastership.
When Christianity became a state-religion and the Church a
world-power, the materialization of its doctrine proceeded apace and
has only increased with the centuries. Instead of becoming the
unifying force its leaders meant it to be, its association with
"worldly possessions" has resulted in making it a
disintegrative one. Abuses led to schisms and sectarianism, and
whilst the parent body, in the form of the Greek and Roman
Churches, still possesses and jealously conserves all the original
credentials, traditions and symbols in their superb liturgies and
rites, more importance is attached to the outer husk of its heritage
than to its kernel and spirit, whilst the Protestant communities and
so-called "free" churches have unhappily become
self-severed altogether from the original tradition and their
imagined liberty and independence are in fact but a captivity to
ideas of their own, having no relation to the primitive gnosis and no
understanding of those Mysteries which must always lie deeper than
the exoteric popular religion of a given period. Regeneration as a
science has long been, and still is, entirely outside the purview of
orthodox religion. The Christian Master's affirmation "Ye must
be born again" is regarded as but a pious counsel towards an
indefinite improvement of conduct and character, not as a reference
to a drastic scientific revolution and reformation of the individual
in the way contemplated by the rites of initiation prescribed in the
Mysteries. Popular religion may indeed produce "good" men,
as the world's standard of goodness goes. It does not and cannot
produce divinized men endued with the qualities of Mastership,
for it is ignorant of the traditional wisdom and methods by which
that end is to be attained.
That wisdom and those traditional methods of the Mysteries have,
however, never been without living witness in the world, despite the
jealousy and inhibitions of official orthodoxy. Since the
suppression of the Mysteries in the sixth century, their
tradition and teaching have been continued in secret and under
various concealments, and to that continuation our present
Masonic system is due. As previously intimated in these papers, it
was compiled and projected between two and three centuries ago as an
elementary expression of the ancient doctrine and initiatory method,
by a group of minds which were far more deeply instructed in the old
tradition and secret science than are those who avail themselves
of their work to-day, or even than the text of the Masonic rites
indicates. If they remained obscure and anonymous, so that the modern
student's research is unable to identify them, it is only what is to
be expected, for the true initiate is one who never proclaims himself
as such and is content ever to remain impersonal and out of sight and
notoriety, planting his seed for the welfare of his fellow men
indifferently and leaving others to water it and God to give it
increase. But, within the limits they allowed themselves, they
achieved their work well and truly and, as has been sought to
demonstrate in these pages, made it a rescript, faithful at least in
outline and main principles, of the ancient teaching and perfecting
rites of the philosophic Mysteries. It has been well said by a writer
of authority on the subject that they put forward the system of
speculative Masonry as "an experiment upon the mind of the age",
and with a view to exhibiting to at least a small section of a public
living in a time of gross darkness and materialism an evidence of the
doctrine of regeneration which might serve as a light to such as
could profit therefrom. If this theory be true, their intention may
at first sight appear to have become falsified by subsequent
developments, in the course of which there has sprung up an
organization of world-wide dimensions and vast membership,
animated undoubtedly in the main with worthy ideals and accomplishing
a certain measure of benevolent work, but nevertheless failing
entirely in perceiving its true and original purpose as an Order for
promoting the science of human regeneration, and unconscious
that by this default its achievements in other directions are of
small or no account. But a broader and wiser view of the situation
would be one that, whilst recognizing a great diffusion of energy to
little present purpose, sees also that, in the long run and in the
amplitude of time, that energy is not wasted but conserved, and that,
besides benefiting individuals here and there who are capable of
truly profiting from the Order, it preserves the witness and keeps
burning the light of the perpetual Mysteries in a dark age. Like the
light of a Master Mason which never becomes wholly extinguished, so
in the world's darkest days the light of the Mysteries never goes out
entirely, and God and the way to Him are not left without witness.
If, in comparison with other witnesses, Masonry is but a glimmering
ray rather than a powerful beam of light, it is none the less a true
ray; a kindly light lit from the world's central altar-flame, and
sufficing to lead at least some of us on amid the encircling gloom,
until the night is gone. Light is granted in proportion to the
desire of our hearts, but for the majority of Masons their Order
sheds no light at all, because light is not their desire, nor is
initiation in its true sense understood or wished for. They move
among the symbols, simulacra and substituted secrets of the Mysteries
without comprehending them, without wishing to translate them into
reality. The Craft is made to subserve social and philanthropic ends
foreign to its purpose and even to gratify the desire for outward
personal distinction; but as an instrument of regeneration it
remains wholly ineffective.
Is this nescience, this imperviousness and failure to comprehend,
however, to no purpose ? Perhaps not. Each of us lives in the
presence of natural mysteries he fails to discern or understand, and
even when the desire for wisdom is at last awakened, the education of
the understanding is a long process. Nature in all her kingdoms
builds slowly, perfecting her aims through endless repetitions and
apparently wanton waste of material. And in the things of the Kingdom
which transcends Nature, the same method prevails. Souls are drawn
but slowly to the Light, and their perfecting and transmutation into
that Light is often very gradual. For long before it is able to
distinguish shadow from substance, Humanity must try its
prentice-hand upon illusory toys and substitutions for the genuine
secrets of Reality. For long before it is worthy of actual initiation
upon the path that leads to God it must be permitted to indulge in
preliminary unintelligent rehearsals of the processes therein
involved. The approaches to the ancient temples of the Mysteries were
lined with statues of the Gods, having no value of themselves, but
intended to habituate the minds of neophytes to the spiritual
concepts and divine attributes to which those statues were meant to
give objective form and semblance. But within the temple itself all
graven images, all formal figures, symbols and ceremonial types,
ceased; for the mind had then finally to learn to dispense with their
help, and, in the strength of its own purity and understanding alone,
to rise into unclouded perception of their formless prototypes
and "see the Nameless of the hundred names".
"Get knowledge, get wisdom; but with all thy gettings, get
understanding," exclaims the old Teacher, in a counsel that may
well be commended to the Masonic Fraternity to-day, which so little
understands its own system. But understanding depends upon the gift
of the Supernal Light, which gift in turn depends upon the ardour of
our desire for it. If Wisdom to-day is widowed, all Masons are
actually or potentially the widow's sons, and she will be justified
of her children who seek her out and who labour for her as for hid
treasure. It remains with the Craft itself whether it shall enter
upon its own heritage as a lineal successor of the Ancient Mysteries
and Wisdom-teaching, or whether, by failing so to do, it will undergo
the inevitable fate of everything that is but a form from which its
native spirit has departed.
|