A DEFINITION OF MASONRY
by Frank C. Higgins, F. R. N. S.
The American Freemason - December 1912
In his facetious search for a "Brand
New Theory of Masonic Origins" in last February's AMERICAN
FREEMASON, the Editor "found all countries and nations of
antiquity preempted. Paradise, the Garden of Eden, Egypt, India,
Ancient Britain and prehistoric America had been exploited,
while Gymnosophists, Buddhists, Thibetan Lamas, Chinamen, Mayas,
Incas, Benedictine Monks and Jesuit Fathers had been laid under
contribution, and each heralded in turn as responsible for the
beginnings of Masonry. The writer is but too familiar
with the resources of Masonic bibliography not to feel
sympathetically akin to the shepherd lad "with his sling and
five small stones from a brook," who sallied forth to meet the
giant Philistine; but like David of old he does not despair of
returning with the head of the giant problem which will never
cease to puzzle humanity until it is adequately worked
out. The purpose of this paper is less to enter point blank
upon the labyrinthine paths of solution than to define the exact
character of the "riddle of the ages" and hazard a theory of how
it may or can, - yes, has been solved. The growing body
of students of comparative religion, who term themselves
"Theosophists," have a precisely similar difficulty to cope
with, and as among interested Masonic students, hundreds are at
work endeavouring to localize and historicize principles which
are ever elusive, because the truth concerning them is that they
are everywhere manifest and have been so during all time. The
beginning of Masonry cannot he found, for the precise reason
that "before Abraham was, Masonry is." That which Masonry
searches, that which Theosophy searches, that which dogmatic
religion fears to search, or rather fears the discovery of, is
one and the selfsame thing. Theosophy, for want of a better
term, calls it the "Ancient Wisdom," and is in a measure right,
but not even Theosophy has fully grasped the specific identity
of the lost science of the Logos. And yet, Theosophy is
full of it, Masonry is full of it and the religions of the world
are full of it; full of its fragments, its unidentified debris,
its mutilated fractions, scattered like those of Osiris upon the
waves. "Paradise" and Noah's Ark are indeed part of it
and the Creation epic of Hawaii is but an echo of that of
Babylon. There is a LAW, so simple in itself and in its
applications that the veriest child may be made to comprehend
its lessons, by which the Universe unfolds like a plant from
within the germ heart of its seed, and to man exhibits, as
though upon an unrolled scroll, all those marvellous
philosophies which have conferred immortality upon the Sages of
Hellas and the Orient. This LAW reveals at once the nature of
our Creator; enough of the bent of His infinite mind for us to
be assured that our own finite natures are truly reflexes of the
Divine prototype, so that the assurance that "God made man in
His own image" ceases to be but pointless babble. It
reveals, by the minute and incontrovertible testimonies which it
gives to that effect, that all of the historical mythologies and
religious philosophies which the world has ever harboured
were originally designed as exoteric, recordable veils for
esoteric, unrevealable, unrecordable FACTS, classed today as
"Mysteries," not as unknowable but as unknown. The
"keeping of this LAW," in the aspirational, emotional,
sacrificial sense, even though it be today unidentified except
as a vague longing of the human heart for a reality which is
sensed rather than comprehended, is RELIGION. The
knowledge of this LAW, the power to grasp and apply it, to
consciously and knowingly work, hand in hand, with the
G.A.O.T.U., to live in a close bond of union with an ever
present Master, and realize that physical death is but loving
initiation to a loftier degree, was once
MASONRY. Religion was the promise, Masonry the
pledge. That pledge exists to-day enshrined in every Lodge,
for he who can penetrate behind the veil may read in every sign
and symbol the story and the reason of his being. As beautiful
and inspiring as is the Masonic ritual and as full of manifest
heart-searching truth as it may be, it has been completely
voided of its ancient science. Many of its monitorial
injunctions, though full of benevolence and solicitude for the
brother, are vapid and unhistoric or unscientific. It has become
a species of religion also, to be taken on faith in statements
which make no tax upon the understanding. Yet Masonry and
Religion are children of the same divine parentage. Alike, each
had its rise in a precise, God-communicated fund of practicable,
ponderable fact. This is the reason for the universality of
symbolisms. The salient features of the ancient Mysteries of
various lands in which initiations were the requisites of
practical worship, as differentiated from mere prayers,
offerings and sacrifices in full light of day, have been ably
handled by several generations of Masonic writers, but the
nature of the superior information conveyed to the high initiate
has not only eluded discovery, and in most cases no suspicion
has been entertained by modern writers that there was any more
to the ceremonies of the ancient Mysteries than a sort of
super-heated Italian apprentisaggio, which taught the neophyte
wholesome respect for the power of his order. It is upon
this point that we base our dissent from the theory that the
controversy anent Masonic origins be closed, because we are
personally convinced that it has not even yet begun. In
expectation of further light on this interesting topic, we may
be permitted to hazard a few hints as to the direction from
which it may be anticipated. There is not a symbol or
article of furniture in the Lodge which has not a reason for its
shape, size, number, (if plural) and presence, utterly outside
of and transcending the monitorial explanation thereof, as a
scientific demonstration of which the moral deduction gives no
hint whatsoever. The higher the degree, the more this
divergence becomes apparent, for while the symbolism becomes
more expressive and claims to embody more subtle teachings, it
fails to convey to initiates therein certain positive knowledge,
the possession of which would raise them head and shoulders
above the lewd of non-initiates, intellectually, without
reference to the resonance of their titles or the size of their
medals or jewels. This knowledge, which was the fruit of
ancient initiations was not only positive, but
practical. It would enable a single individual to give arts,
letters and science to a race of nomad barbarians within the
space of his own life-time, and the semi-myths of Hermes, Thoth,
Cadmus, Oannes, Fo-Hi and others who are enshrined in the
histories of ancient peoples as having actually done so, are but
embodiments of the truth that it was of a superior manner of
imparting practical knowledge and the impressing of such as
the direct gift of God, made manifest as the giver entitled to
the gratitude and claiming it, that initiation consisted.
The universality of these "first civilizer" myths therefore
direct our attention to the possibility of a teaching capable of
transforming the poor, blind and ignorant, wherever found, into
masters of the work of civilization and enlightenment by
process of initiation, rather than education, although the one
is the corollary of the other. To the universality of
the "Teacher" myths must be added the universality of the
majority of Masonic symbols, which as we have noted, are being
pointed out under every sky as proof positive that whatever it
was, which has since become Masonry, originated at that latitude
and longitude. We have therefore to halt in our wild globe
scurry after the site of the legendary Masonic "Garden of Eden"
and realize that in pursuit of something of which we find the
prehistoric traces EVERYWHERE, coupled with traditions of Divine
origin, we may have to recast our notions and re-focus our
binoculars upon some principle or set of correlated principles
which express the same things to all peoples, times and places,
because they are eternal verities and not mere toys. Now the
astonishing part of it all is that Masonry possesses this
marvellous treasure and do" not know it. "He came unto
his own and they knew him not," applies with as great force to
the pseudo Jew of the Lodge as to the racial Jew of be "promised
land." The Masonic ritual of the civilized world bespeaks a
line of descent more particularly from the Jewish deposit of the
"Ancient Wisdom," than from, for example, the Chinese or the
Aztec. Therefore we will probably not go far astray in
tracing our ritualistic development along that historical line
of racial progress. The history of the Jewish people is
something widely apart from the trash taught with the avowed
object of fastening the crime of the ages upon the heads of this
people. Their historical contacts with Persia, Babylonia and
Egypt during both Pharaohonic and Ptolemaic times and their
contacts with Greek philosophy must be placed in the
balance. We must not forget that the Old Testament of the
Christian was translated not from the "Thorah," but from the
copied "Pentateuch," a work which filled the orthodox Jewish
world, at the time the original translation was made, with
horror, because the Egyptian-Greek-Hebrew rabbis who made it
injected therein the glyphs of the secret philosophy of the
Sun-priests of Heliopolis, so that Kohaleth, son of David,
surnamed "Shelomoh," "the Prince of Peace," became for all time
Sol-Om-On, "The Sun, breathing life upon Heliopolis," and the
fundamental principles of the Babylonian Kabbalah, or number
philosophy of the ancient Magi, which the Thorah already
embodied, applied to the construction of proper names,
extended so as to make them conceal a sort of Baconian
cipher of the "Wisdom of the Egyptians," a system which
develops in excelsis in the subsequent construction of the
"New Testament." That this cipher is a concealment of the
true meanings of the symbols of the Masonic Lodge and the
revelation of the LAW to which they bear witness, of its
Divinity, of its globe-encircling universality, and of its
eternal truth, it is the promise of the immediate future to make
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