|
The Speculative Science And The Operative Art
CHAPTER XI
the symbolism of freemasonry
albert gallatin mackey
And now, let us apply this doctrine of symbolism to an investigation of
the nature of a speculative science, as derived from an operative art; for
the fact is familiar to every one that Freemasonry is of two kinds. We
work, it is true, in speculative Masonry only, but our ancient brethren
wrought in both operative and speculative; and it is now well understood
that the two branches are widely apart in design and in character—the one
a mere useful art, intended for the protection and convenience of man and
the gratification of his physical wants, the other a profound science,
entering into abstruse investigations of the soul and a future existence,
and originating in the craving need of humanity to know something that is
above and beyond the mere outward life that surrounds us with its gross
atmosphere here below.44
Indeed, the only bond or link that unites speculative
and operative Masonry is the symbolism that belongs altogether to the
former, but which, throughout its whole extent, is derived from the
latter.
Our first inquiry, then, will be into the nature of the symbolism which
operative gives to speculative Masonry; and thoroughly to understand
this—to know its origin, and its necessity, and its mode of application—we
must begin with a reference to the condition of a long past period of
time.
Thousands of years ago, this science of symbolism was adopted by the
sagacious priesthood of Egypt to convey the lessons of worldly wisdom and
religious knowledge, which they thus communicated to their disciples.45
Their science, their history, and their philosophy were
thus concealed beneath an impenetrable veil from all the profane, and only
the few who had passed through the severe ordeal of initiation were put in
possession of the key which enabled them to decipher and read with ease
those mystic lessons which we still see engraved upon the obelisks, the
tombs, and the sarcophagi, which lie scattered, at this day, in endless
profusion along the banks of the Nile.
From the Egyptians the same method of symbolic instruction was diffused
among all the pagan nations of antiquity, and was used in all the ancient
Mysteries46
as the medium of communicating to the initiated the
esoteric and secret doctrines for whose preservation and promulgation
these singular associations were formed.
Moses, who, as Holy Writ informs us, was skilled in all the learning of
Egypt, brought with him, from that cradle of the sciences, a perfect
knowledge of the science of symbolism, as it was taught by the priests of
Isis and Osiris, and applied it to the ceremonies with which he invested
the purer religion of the people for whom he had been appointed to
legislate.47
Hence we learn, from the great Jewish historian, that, in the
construction of the tabernacle, which gave the first model for the temple
at Jerusalem, and afterwards for every masonic lodge, this principle of
symbolism was applied to every part of it. Thus it was divided into three
parts, to represent the three great elementary divisions of the
universe—the land, the sea, and the air. The first two, or exterior
portions, which were accessible to the priests and the people, were
symbolic of the land and the sea, which all men might inhabit; while the
third, or interior division,—the holy of holies,—whose threshold no mortal
dared to cross, and which was peculiarly consecrated to GOD, was
emblematic of heaven, his dwelling-place. The veils, too, according to
Josephus, were intended for symbolic instruction in their color and their
materials. Collectively, they represented the four elements of the
universe; and, in passing, it may be observed that this notion of
symbolizing the universe characterized all the ancient systems, both the
true and the false, and that the remains of the principle are to be found
everywhere, even at this day, pervading Masonry, which is but a
development of these systems. In the four veils of the tabernacle, the
white or fine linen signified the earth, from which flax was produced; the
scarlet signified fire, appropriately represented by its flaming color;
the purple typified the sea, in allusion to the shell-fish murex, from
which the tint was obtained; and the blue, the color of the firmament, was
emblematic of air.48
It is not necessary to enter into a detail of the whole system of
religious symbolism, as developed in the Mosaic ritual. It was but an
application of the same principles of instruction, that pervaded all the
surrounding Gentile nations, to the inculcation of truth. The very idea of
the ark itself49
was borrowed, as the discoveries of the modern
Egyptologists have shown us, from the banks of the Nile; and the
breastplate of the high priest, with its Urim and Thummim,50
was indebted for its origin to a similar ornament worn
by the Egyptian judge. The system was the same; in its application, only,
did it differ.
With the tabernacle of Moses the temple of King Solomon is closely
connected: the one was the archetype of the other. Now, it is at the
building of that temple that we must place the origin of Freemasonry in
its present organization: not that the system did not exist before, but
that the union of its operative and speculative character, and the mutual
dependence of one upon the other, were there first established.
At the construction of this stupendous edifice—stupendous, not in
magnitude, for many a parish church has since excelled it in size,51
but stupendous in the wealth and magnificence of its
ornaments—the wise king of Israel, with all that sagacity for which he was
so eminently distinguished, and aided and counselled by the Gentile
experience of the king of Tyre, and that immortal architect who
superintended his workmen, saw at once the excellence and beauty of this
method of inculcating moral and religious truth, and gave, therefore, the
impulse to that symbolic reference of material things to a spiritual
sense, which has ever since distinguished the institution of which he was
the founder.
If I deemed it necessary to substantiate the truth of the assertion
that the mind of King Solomon was eminently symbolic in its propensities,
I might easily refer to his writings, filled as they are to profusion with
tropes and figures. Passing over the Book of Canticles,—that great lyrical
drama, whose abstruse symbolism has not yet been fully evolved or
explained, notwithstanding the vast number of commentators who have
labored at the task,—I might simply refer to that beautiful passage in the
twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, so familiar to every Mason as being
appropriated, in the ritual, to the ceremonies of the third degree, and in
which a dilapidated building is metaphorically made to represent the
decays and infirmities of old age in the human body. This brief but
eloquent description is itself an embodiment of much of our masonic
symbolism, both as to the mode and the subject matter.
In attempting any investigation into the symbolism of Freemasonry, the
first thing that should engage our attention is the general purport of the
institution, and the mode in which its symbolism is developed. Let us
first examine it as a whole, before we investigate its parts, just as we
would first view, as critics, the general effect of a building, before we
began to inquire into its architectural details.
Looking, then, in this way, at the institution—coming down to us, as it
has, from a remote age—having passed unaltered and unscathed through a
thousand revolutions of nations—and engaging, as disciples in its school
of mental labor, the intellectual of all times—the first thing that must
naturally arrest the attention is the singular combination that it
presents of an operative with a speculative organization—an art with a
science—the technical terms and language of a mechanical profession with
the abstruse teachings of a profound philosophy.
Here it is before us—a venerable school, discoursing of the deepest
subjects of wisdom, in which sages might alone find themselves
appropriately employed, and yet having its birth and deriving its first
life from a society of artisans, whose only object was, apparently, the
construction of material edifices of stone and mortar.
The nature, then, of this operative and speculative combination, is the
first problem to be solved, and the symbolism which depends upon it is the
first feature of the institution which is to be developed.
Freemasonry, in its character as an operative art, is familiar to every
one. As such, it is engaged in the application of the rules and principles
of architecture to the construction of edifices for private and public
use—houses for the dwelling-place of man, and temples for the worship of
Deity. It abounds, like every other art, in the use of technical terms,
and employs, in practice, an abundance of implements and materials which
are peculiar to itself.
Now, if the ends of operative Masonry had here ceased,—if this
technical dialect and these technical implements had never been used for
any other purpose, nor appropriated to any other object, than that of
enabling its disciples to pursue their artistic labors with greater
convenience to themselves,—Freemasonry would never have existed. The same
principles might, and in all probability would, have been developed in
some other way; but the organization, the name, the mode of instruction,
would all have most materially differed.
But the operative Masons, who founded the order, were not content with
the mere material and manual part of their profession: they adjoined to
it, under the wise instructions of their leaders, a correlative branch of
study.
And hence, to the Freemason, this operative art has been symbolized in
that intellectual deduction from it, which has been correctly called
Speculative Masonry. At one time, each was an integrant part of one
undivided system. Not that the period ever existed when every operative
mason was acquainted with, or initiated into, the speculative science.
Even now, there are thousands of skilful artisans who know as little of
that as they do of the Hebrew language which was spoken by its founder.
But operative Masonry was, in the inception of our history, and is, in
some measure, even now, the skeleton upon which was strung the living
muscles, and tendons, and nerves of the speculative system. It was the
block of marble—rude and unpolished it may have been—from which was
sculptured the life-breathing statue.52
Speculative Masonry (which is but another name for Freemasonary in its
modern acceptation) may be briefly defined as the scientific application
and the religious consecration of the rules and principles, the language,
the implements and materials of operative Masonry to the veneration of
God, the purification of the heart, and the inculcation of the dogmas of a
religious philosophy. FOOTNOTES
44. "By speculative
Masonry we learn to subdue our passions, to act upon the square, to keep a
tongue of good report, to maintain secrecy, and practise charity."—Lect.
of Fel. Craft. But this is a very meagre definition, unworthy of the
place it occupies in the lecture of the second degree.
45. "Animal worship
among the Egyptians was the natural and unavoidable consequence of the
misconception, by the vulgar, of those emblematical figures invented by
the priests to record their own philosophical conception of absurd ideas.
As the pictures and effigies suspended in early Christian churches, to
commemorate a person or an event, became in time objects of worship to the
vulgar, so, in Egypt, the esoteric or spiritual meaning of the emblems was
lost in the gross materialism of the beholder. This esoteric and
allegorical meaning was, however, preserved by the priests, and
communicated in the mysteries alone to the initiated, while the
uninstructed retained only the grosser conception."—GLIDDON,
Otia Aegyptiaca, p. 94.
46. "To perpetuate the
esoteric signification of these symbols to the initiated, there were
established the Mysteries, of which institution we have still a trace in
Freemasonry."—GLIDDON, Otia Aegyp. p. 95.
47. Philo Judaeus says,
that "Moses had been initiated by the Egyptians into the philosophy of
symbols and hieroglyphics, as well as into the ritual of the holy
animals." And Hengstenberg, in his learned work on "Egypt and the Books of
Moses," conclusively shows, by numerous examples, how direct were the
Egyptian references of the Pentateuch; in which fact, indeed, he
recognizes "one of the most powerful arguments for its credibility and for
its composition by Moses."—HENGSTENBERG, p. 239, Robbins's trans.
48. Josephus, Antiq.
book iii. ch. 7.
49. The ark, or sacred
boat, of the Egyptians frequently occurs on the walls of the temples. It
was carried in great pomp by the priests on the occasion of the
"procession of the shrines," by means of staves passed through metal rings
in its side. It was thus conducted into the temple, and deposited on a
stand. The representations we have of it bear a striking resemblance to
the Jewish ark, of which it is now admitted to have been the prototype.
50. "The Egyptian
reference in the Urim and Thummim is especially distinct and
incontrovertible."—HENGSTENBERG, p. 158.
51. According to the
estimate of Bishop Cumberland, it was only one hundred and nine feet in
length, thirty-six in breadth, and fifty-four in height.
52. "Thus did our wise
Grand Master contrive a plan, by mechanical and practical allusions, to
instruct the craftsmen in principles of the most sublime speculative
philosophy, tending to the glory of God, and to secure to them temporal
blessings here and eternal life hereafter, as well as to unite the
speculative and operative Masons, thereby forming a twofold advantage,
from the principles of geometry and architecture on the one part, and the
precepts of wisdom and ethics on the other."—CALCOTT,
Candid Disquisition, p. 31, ed. 1769.
back to top |
