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THE LOST KEYS OF FREEMASONRY
or The Secret of Hiram Abiff
foreword
By REYNOLD E. BLIGHT, 33 degree, K. T.
MANLY P. HALL
Reality forever eludes us. Infinity mocks our puny efforts to imprison it in
definition and dogma. Our most splendid realizations are only adumbrations of
the Light. In his endeavors, man is but a mollusk seeking to encompass the
ocean.
Yet man may not cease his struggle to find God. There is a yearning in his
soul that will not let him rest, an urge that compels him to attempt the
impossible, to attain the unattainable. He lifts feeble hands to grasp the stars
and despite a million years of failure and millenniums of disappointment, the
soul of man springs heavenward with even greater avidity than when the race was
young.
He pursues, even though the flying ideal eternally slips from his embrace.
Even though he never clasps the goddess of his dreams, he refuses to believe
that she is a phantom. To him she is the only reality. He reaches upward and
will not be content until the sword of Orion is in his hands, and glorious
Arcturus glearns from his breast.
Man is Parsifal searching for the Sacred Cup; Sir Launfal adventuring for the
Holy Grail. Life is a divine adventure, a splendid quest
Language falls. Words are mere cyphers, and who can read the riddle? These
words we use, what are they but vain shadows of form and sense? We strive to
clothe our highest thought with verbal trappings that our brother may see and
understand; and when we would describe a saint he sees a demon; and when we
would present a wise man he beholds a fool. "Fie upon you," he cries; "thou,
too, art a fool." So wisdom drapes her truth with symbolism, and covers her
insight with allegory. Creeds, rituals, poems are parables and symbols. The
ignorant take them literally and build for themselves prison houses of words and
with bitter speech and bitterer taunt denounce those who will not join them in
the dungeon. Before the rapt vision of the seer, dogma and ceremony, legend and
trope dissolve and fade, and he sees behind the fact the truth, behind the
symbol the Reality.
Through the shadow shines ever the Perfect Light.
What is a Mason? He is a man who in his heart has been duly and truly
prepared, has been found worthy and well qualified, has been admitted to the
fraternity of builders, been invested with certain passwords and signs by which
he may be enabled to work and receive wages as a Master Mason, and travel in
foreign lands in search of that which was lost - The Word.
Down through the misty vistas of the ages rings a clarion declaration and
although the very heavens echo to the reverberations, but few hear and fewer
understand: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the
Word was God."
Here then is the eternal paradox. The Word is lost yet it is ever with us.
The light that illumines the distant horizon shines in our hearts. "Thou
wouldist not seek me hadst thou not found me." We travel afar only to find that
which we hunger for at home.
And as Victor Hugo says: "The thirst for the Infinite proves infinity."
That which we seek lives in our souls.
This, the unspeakable truth, the unutterable perfection, the author has set
before us in these pages. Not a Mason himself, he has read the deeper meaning of
the ritual. Not having assumed the formal obligations, he calls upon all mankind
to enter into the holy of holies. Not initiated into the physical craft, he
declares the secret doctrine that all may hear. With vivid allegory and profound
philosophical disquisition he expounds the sublime teachings of Freemasonry,
older than all religions, as universal as human aspiration.
It is well. Blessed are the eyes that see, and the ears that hear, and the
heart that understands.
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