two pillars
by
A. R. Eddie
In the F.C. Degree. we hear of the two Great
Pillars at the P. or E. of K.S.T. These are described in great detail in I Kings
and II Chronicles. We don't know exactly when these pillars and K.S.T. assumed
the importance in Masonry that they enjoy today, but it is comparatively
recently--say within the last four or five hundred years. Before that, the Old
Charges dealt with two pillars of a totally different nature, and there was
probably a lengthy period when the two pairs of pillars existed side by side.
The fabulous history of the Old Charges, or
"Gothic Constitutions" concerns itself with a man named Lamech and his two sons
by one wife and a son and daughter by another. These children had discovered all
the sciences of the world: Jabell discovered Geometry, Juball Music, Tubal Cain
Metalcraft, and Naamah Weaving. Knowing that God would sooner or later punish
sin either by fire or flood, they resolved to preserve this knowledge by
inscribing it on two pillars, "the one of marble that will not perish by fire,
and the other of lateras which will not drown in water". When this punishment
took place it turned out to be Noah's flood, and the pillars were subsequently
recovered, the one by Pythagoras and the other by Hermes.
This is our oldest legend. It is based on the
"Polychronicon" of Higden, a monk of Chester, who died in 1364. Higden cribbed
from Josephus (1st century A.D.), who had it from the Greek historian Berosus,
of about the 3rd century B.C., who copied from a Sumerian account of about 1500
B.C. It will be remembered that the greatest flood of which we have
archaeological knowledge occurred to the Sumerians, as revealed by Sir Leonard
Woolley's excavations at Ur of the Chaldees, at the mouth of the Euphrates, so
this legend of the Sumerians, which ended up in our Old Charges, was probably
based upon personal knowledge. (Incidentally, Ur was said to have been the
residence for a time of Abraham, and it may be significant that the Woolley
expedition unearthed a golden ram with its horn caught in a thicket.)
The foregoing is of necessity very much
condensed, and in any case the Old Charges themselves vary in detail, so this is
not to be considered completely what you will discover in any one of them.
However, it is accurate in fundamentals.
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