THE BUILDER MAGAZINE
October 1918
volume 4 - number 10
THE HOUSE OF THE TEMPLE
BY BRO. H. L. HAYWOOD, IOWA
MORE than a year has passed since I paid my first visit to
the House of the Temple, headquarters for the Scottish Rite for the Southern
Jurisdiction, which stands in Washington, but the impressions remain as vividly
as though I had seen it yesterday. There are many remarkable buildings in our
Capital City, some of them historic, a few of them beautiful; but, with the
possible exception of the Capitol building itself, the House of the Temple is
the most wonderful and beautiful of them all. He who has seen the building,
outside and inside, will say this whether he be a Mason or not.
I shall never forget my first view of it. On a misty April
morning it stood amid the fog as something almost eerie and unearthly, like that
palace which Coleridge saw in his vision of Kubla Khan; there was that about it
which seemed to speak of antiquity, as though the genius of the ancient East had
wandered into the Capital City of the new West; it had an air of timelessness
about it which made it hard to believe that it had not yet been completed five
years.
In general shape it is patterned after the original
Mausoleum which Queen Artemisia erected to contain the ashes of her husband
three hundred and fifty-three years before the birth of Christ. The body of the
building is cubical, as is appropriate in a structure which is to serve as an
altar of Freemasonry. The roof is a series of stone terraces which rise to an
apex. The decorative work around the cornice is as beautiful as was ever seen on
a Grecian Temple.
The building is much larger than it first appears,
especially when seen from a distance. One approaches it up a series of three,
five, seven and nine steps; the platforms between these series are so wide that
one could set a large building on each one. At either side stands a huge sphinx,
dreaming and brooding with level eyes, as though it were still standing on the
banks of Mother Nile.
My mind still lay under the hush of these eternal watchers
when I knocked at the door and was received by a guide who is there to take care
of the hundred or more visitors who enter the portals every day. He stowed my
umbrella away in a safe place and told me to feel at home. But one couldn't very
well feel at home home in that magnificent, but subdued, atrium in which I found
myself. Far overhead was a carved and gilded ceiling, like a dream of beauty in
the upper twilight; on either side was a row of giant monoliths, pillars of the
house, of green Vermont granite, their sides fluted. Behind each of these stood
a seat, also of granite; in the center was a table of Cavanazza marble. At the
further end was the curving stairway which leads to the council chamber of the
Supreme Council; to break the coldness of its white marble, John Russell Pope
had set in a band of dark marble; it is one of the boldest strokes of
architectural genius about the entire building. Keeping watch at the foot of
this stairway were two Egyptian figures, a further reminder, were one needed,
that Masonry is as old as the world.
On both sides of this atrium, or lobby, are the doors
leading into the offices of Grand Commander, the Secretary General and the
library; at the left side is the entrance into the executive chamber of the
Supreme Council; these walnut doors are so hidden away in the shadows at the
side that they do not disturb the unity or serenity of the great chamber itself.
From Secretary General Brother John H. Cowles I received a
welcome as warm as the cheerful fire which blazed in the wide fireplace near his
desk. He introduced me to the Librarian, Brother William L. Boyden, who "showed
me around" the library. Being something of a bibliomaniac I have been privileged
to see many libraries but none that I have ever entered has left quite the same
impression. It is dignified but homelike and the atmosphere about it was almost
as conducive to prayer as to study. The library room proper lies in a corner of
the building; it opens into a semi-circular series of stack-rooms which stretch
across the end of the building that lies opposite to the entrance.
The center of interest in the library (stack-rooms) is the
collection of mementoes of Albert Pike. Here were several photographs, one of
his body lying in a casket; here was one of the quill pens with which he wrote;
the scrap of paper containing his last words before death; badges and ribbons
which once decorated his breast; family albums; his family Bible, and a ritual
which he wrote. There was also a collection of pipes, one of them valued at
$600, a prize winner at the Paris Exposition. Brother Boyden told me that the
General had used every one of them; the size of two or three gave me an added
respect for the General's powers. One of them looked as though it would have
held enough tobacco for a week's smoke.
The center of the Pike collection, it needs not be said,
was in the cases full of his original manuscripts. He had written all of these
by hand, with meticulous care, so that one might look through several pages
without seeing so much as one misformed letter; the writing was not in the usual
flowing script but more like a page of copperplate, the letters being shaped
like print. Of these manuscripts, all of them bound like books, there were, I
believe, about eighty: "Maxims of Roman Law" in thirteen volumes; "Maxims of
Military Science and Art" in six volumes; "Vocabulary of Indian Language" in one
volume; materials for a history of France in six volumes (part of this has been
published); "Commentaries of the Kabbala" in two volumes; Masonic Rituals in
twelve volumes; moreover there was also a volume of biography written by his
secretary from notes dictated by Pike himself. There were many volumes of
Eastern Philosophy which he had translated. These evidences of the man's
titantic intellect impress one almost more than the size and grandeur of the
building in which they are preserved.
In addition to all this there was a compass which he had
used in the Southwest; his set of chess men; a chair which he had constructed
for himself, with a patent, spring in it for raising and lowering the back; his
ring for the fourteenth degree, and much of his Masonic Regalia. It may be added
that the last words before mentioned were addressed to Brother Frederick Webber,
Secretary General at that time, and read as follows:
"Shalom: Peace --that comes with blessing to carefretted
men, when death's dreamless sleep ends all suffering and sorrow."
One of the rare mementoes in the library is a signature of
Albert Mackey made in January, 1859. Among the 85,000 volumes in the library,
40,000 are on Masonic subjects. There is also a collection of rare old Scottish
Rite patents and many other documents of almost priceless value. About the room
stand some six busts, one of them of Pike; these faces of past leaders, and the
thousands of volumes ranged about them, brought home to one's mind how vast has
been the intellectual labor devoted to Masonry.
On the same floor with the library is the executive chamber
of the Supreme Council. Honorary members of the Council are permitted to attend
when meetings are held in the great chamber on the second floor but only "active
Thirty-Thirds" are ever admitted to the executive chamber while the Supreme
Council is in session there. The room is so beautiful as to defy description. It
is the most beautiful room that I ever saw. An altar stands in the center; seats
for the members are built against the wall, and each seat is furnished with an
accoustic apparatus which enables the hard-of-hearing to catch every word that
is uttered. Needless to say, there is a complete telephone service in this and
in every room in the building. It would be hard to find anything that is lacking
in that marvelous structure.
The floor immediately beneath this is mainly devoted to the
banquet room, albeit there are a number of committee rooms around the side. In
the banquet room are twelve tables which will seat ninety-six men; chairs and
tables are in fumed quartered oak, ivory finish; carpets, hangings and walls
would make a king proud. Behind the banquet room is a serving room, completely
tiled, and furnished with every imaginable convenience.
Immediately underneath is a kitchen that would make any
housewife green with envy. I shall not describe that kitchen lest every woman
who chances to read this will apply for a position there the next time the
Supreme Council meets. It is a dream of a-kitchen. On this same floor is a
heating plant, with capacity for four hundred tons of coal; also a ventilating
plant that cost $80,000.00, and actually ventilates.
Somewhere on one or the other of these two lower floors (I
do not remember just where) I ran across the office of that genial and well-read
Mason, Brother Horace P. McIntosh, the editor of The New Age. He told me many
strange things about Masonry in foreign parts, all of which were true, for,
though Brother McIntosh was once a sailor, he is also a Scotchman. He showed me
a complete file of The New Age with a great deal of pride, as was fitting,
because The New Age is the best Masonic magazine in the world with the exception
of one; what that one is I am too modest to say.
The heart and soul of the House of the Temple is the
Supreme Council Chamber which occupies the floor just above the entrance floor.
The door leading into the chamber is itself a supreme work of art; it is of oak
covered with leather. Just inside is a high wooden screen which shuts off the
view of the interior when the door is opened; in a concealed room above this
door is the pipe organ, not a sign of which is anywhere visible in the chamber
itself. I shall not attempt to describe the chamber itself; I don't know how.
At the center stands an altar of black marble, round the
bottom of which runs this legend:
"From the light of the Divine Word, the Logos, comes the
wisdom of life and the goal of initiation."
As a frieze about the room runs another sentence, also
selected by Brother George F. Moore, Grand Commander:
"Unto the Divine Light of the Holy Altar, from the outer
darkness of ignorance, through the shadow of our earth life, runs the beautiful
path of initiation."
Above the Grand Commander's station is a vast window, round
which coils a huge serpent which symbolizes, one may suppose, wisdom. Along the
two sides of the room are twenty-six desks for the active members; behind these
are seats for the honorary members. There are great windows at the side hung
with massive curtains, and at the top are sky-light windows, the shades over
which are operated electrically. The furniture is in Circassian walnut. This
sounds as if the room might appear luxurious, but it is not so; the effect is
one of quiet dignity and grace, as befits the council chamber of a Scottish
Rite.
At one corner of the room, behind a small door, is a spiral
stairway leading down to the bottommost floor. One look down that dizzy well of
space helps one to understand the total height of the building, which is more
than four stories, though it does not appear so high from the street.
Everything about the building was especially designed for
it; nothing was used out of stock. The entire structure, it may be said for
those who are curious about such matters, cost more than two million dollars.
Some fifteen or more employed in the building all of the time.
The erection of the House of the Temple was under the
direction of an executive committee of five, the chairman of which was Brother
Charles E. Rosenbaum, of Little Rock, Arkansas, General Pike's old home. The
architect was John Ruessell Pope, whose design for the building won the national
architectural prize in 1916.
The House of the Temple is the Headquarters of the Southern
Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite; it is also a monument to the memory of
General Albert Pike whose genius made the Scottish Rite what it is. As one walks
through it he feels as if the heroic, scholarly, eloquent spirit of that great
character were hovering about him.
----o----
THE MASON'S HOLY HOUSE
(By Albert Pike)
We have a Holy House to build,
A Temple splendid and divine
To be with glorious memories filled;
Of Right and Truth to be the Shrine;
How shall we build it strong and fair--
This Holy House of praise and prayer
Firm set and solid, grandly great?
How shall we all its rooms prepare
For use, for ornament, for State?
Our God hath given the wood and stone
And we must fashion them aright,
Like those who toiled on Lebanon,
Making the labor their delight;
This House, this palace, this God's Home,
This Temple with its lofty dome,
Must be in all proportions fit
That heavenly messengers may come
To lodge with those who tenant it.
Build squarely upon the stately walls
The two symbolic columns raise,
And let the lofty courts and halls
With all their golden glories blaze
There, in the Kadosh Kadoshim
Between the broad-winged cherubim,
Where the Shekinah once abode
The heart shall raise its daily hymns
Of gratitude and love to God.
----o----
SPECULATIVE MASONRY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
BY BRO. OSSIAN LANG. GRAND HISTORIAN. GRAND LODGE OF NEW
YORK
PART II
CENTRAL TENETS OF THE BRETHREN OF THE ROSY CROSS
FLUDD and Frisius agree in essential points. As the "Summum
Bonum" supplies all we need for our present purpose, we may gather from this
work whatever information is desired for our inquiry. The central symbolism
turns around the stone, Aben, (1) and the building of the House of Wisdom. There
is an abundance of allegorical uses of the word stone or stones, in the Old and
New Testaments, which are made use of by Frisius to justify the philosophy of
the Brethren of the Rosy Cross.
"Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways Go up to
the hill-country and bring wood and build the house." --Haggai I, 78.
"They that are far off shall come and build in the temple
of the Lord." --Zechariah VI, 15.
"Wisdom hath builded a house, She hath hewn out her seven
pillars." --Proverbs IX, 1.
"Through wisdom is a house builded, "And by understanding
it is established; "And by knowledge are the chambers filled "With all
precious and pleasant riches." --Proverbs XXIV, 3-4.
"The wise man buildeth his house upon a rock. The rains may
descend and the floods come; the winds may blow and beat upon that house: it
will not fall; for it is founded upon a rock." --St. Matthew VII, 24-25.
Aben, Frisius argues, is the cabalistic stone. In it, we
have the Holy Trinity. For in Hebrew, Ab means Father and Ben Son; but where the
Father and the Son are present there the Holy Ghost must also be.
Aben is then explained as the foundation stone of the
universe, the macrocosm. ("The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said,
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast
understanding. Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the
cornerstone thereof ?"--Job XXXVIII, 1, 4, 6.)
The macrocosmic Aben, then, is the foundation stone of all
and for all. It was laid in Zion, and all the prophets and apostles built upon
it, though the ignorant and wicked builders rejected it as a stumbling block and
stone of contention:
"Thus saith the Lord God: "Behold, I lay in Zion for a
foundation a stone, "A tried stone, a costly corner-stone of sure foundation.
"He that believeth shall not make haste. "And I will make justice the line, "And
righteousness the plummet." --Isaiah XXVIII, 16-17.
"According to the grace of God which is given unto me as a
wise Master builder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon.
But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.... For other foundation
can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." --St. Paul, 1; Cor.
III, 10-11.
"The stone which the builders rejected "Is become the chief
corner-stone." --Psalm CXVIII, 22.
"As it is written in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a
chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth in him shall not be
confounded.
"Unto you, therefore, which believe, he is precious: but
unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the
same is made the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of
offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient." --I Peter
II, 6-7-8.
If we consider the significance of Aben for the individual
man (the microcosm, or the universe on a small scale), we find we are parts of
the same spiritual stone, "cut out of that catholic (universal) rock":
"Coming to Christ, as unto a living stone, disallowed
indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious: Ye also, as living stones, be ye
built up a spiritual house." --I Peter II, 4-6.
In other words: Build yourselves upon Christ, as the
foundation stone, as living stones, to a house of God.
"We are labourers together with God: Ye are God's
husbandry, Ye are God's building." --I Cor. III, 9.
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the
Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile this temple of God, him shall
God destroy; for the temple of God is holy which temple ye are." --I Cor. III,
16-17.
Nor are those excluded who are-not of our faith. The
temple of God is built up of all men who seek Him and strive to know Him.
Quoting John, the Baptist: "Say not within yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our
father': for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up
children unto Abraham."
The plan of the building which the Fraternity of the Rosy
Cross is seeking to establish is given in the words of Hebrews XIII, 1: "Let
brotherly love continue."
"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to
dwell together in unity." --Psalm CXXXIII, 1.
An example of the mystic, allegorical interpretation of the
Scriptures, met with everywhere in Rosy Cross literature, is the following:
As Christ was hidden in that Rock or Stone, before the days
of Moses, since the spiritual is usually concealed in the physical, so also does
Moses conceal in his writings the spiritual Aben; that is why we say he wrote
under a veil, i. e. mystically. That is why the Apostle Paul says (II Cor. III,
6) "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."
"The Lord said unto Moses, Behold, I will stand before
thee, there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shall smite the rock, and there
shall come water out of it, that the people may drink." --Exodus XVII, 6.
"Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be
ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through
the sea; "And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; "And did
all eat the same spiritual meal; "And did all drink the same spiritual drink;
for they drank of that spiritual Rock that went with them: and that Rock was
Christ." --I Cor. X, 1-4.
Alchemistically expressed, the water which sprang from the
Rock was potable gold, the word of God, words of Wisdom.
That suggests also what we Alchemists mean when we speak of
producing gold. It is not the gold the multitude hankers for. Ours is living
gold, the gold of God, that which the Psalmist calls silver:
"The words of the Lord are pure words, "As silver tried in
a crucible on the earth, refined seven times." --Psalm XII, 7.
The Rosy Cross alchemy in the transmutation of base metals
into gold, is not that of the spurious Rosicrucians who deceive the avaricious
by false promises; it takes the base, natural man and turns him by its art into
a new, spiritual man, through the Word of God and the practice of charity.
In the same manner the rough ashlar is turned into a
perfect ashlar.
As God has promised to dwell among men, to have his
tabernacle among them, we must with all our strength and with spiritual tools
strive for Aben. As the prophet Isaiah says: "Ye that seek the Lord, Look unto
the rock whence ye were hewn." (Isaiah LI, 1.)
The first step toward finding this Rock (the Philosopher's
Stone) is to look for it within yourself; hence begin to know thyself. If you
desire help from the writings of the Alchemists, remember that these wrote them
in a veiled, mystic manner. Thus Darnaeus says "Change--oh! change yourselves
from dead stones into living philosophical stones !"
In order to realize the chemical steps of progression, we
must first seek to discover the true sense of the Alchemists through careful
insight. Then it will be found that they wrote differently and wanted to be
understood differently. (Masonically speaking, one must first possess "the key
of a fellowcraft" to interpret correctly.)
We summarize, as follows; always following the "Summum
Bonum":
The human body is a temple. Christ is its cornerstone. When
we raise this corner-stone, His temple is also raised, as was the Temple of
Solomon, when his players were fulfilled and the glory of the Lord descended.
"Similarly, Kephas and Aben were at one time only dead
stones, now become living stones through an actual transmutation, in that from
the condition of Adam after his fall from grace they transformed themselves into
Adam's original state of innocence and perfection; just as if there had been
effected a transmutation from ordinary dirty lead into the purest gold. And this
transmutation took place by the intermediation of that living gold as of the
mystic stone of the Philosophers, which to us represents the divine emanation of
wisdom. This wisdom, however, is the gift of God, and nothing else."
MORE LIGHT FROM THE "SUMMUM BONUM"
The study of true Magic, the Cabala and chemistry are the
sciences called the three principal columns of the house of wisdom. By Magic is
meant the art of wisdom practised by the Magi who came to worship the new born
Christ. Cabala stands for mystic mathematics (or strength). Chemistry is
explained as the study of nature (beauty). The true Brethren of the Rosy Cross
are called architects who build the house of God, after the manner already
explained.
Why did the Brethren adopt the name of the Rosy Cross?
There is an order of the Holy Cross. The Knights who went to war against the
Saracens bore on their cloaks the emblem of a deep red cross. The Brethren have
chosen the true and living cross of Christ as the emblem of wisdom, that mystic
wisdom which the Bible calls the Tree of Life whose root is the Word of Light.
The color of the cross is that of blood or as that of red
roses mixed with lilies.
(We omit all mystic elaboration of the ideas here briefly
indicated nor do we include other matters which have no bearing on the
development of the Freemasonry of the Symbolic Lodge.)
R. C. BRETHREN AS MASTER BUILDERS AND FORM OF THE LODGE
Finally, the Brother is to labor at the perfecting of this
work in the character of an architect, or master builder. (I Cor. III, 10-11).
In order that the structure may be firmly established, in
order that we may arrive at the rosy blood of the cross hidden within the
foundation stone, we must dig from the surface to the center, we must seek and
knock; unless we pursue our work with zeal, all our efforts will be wasted. All
bodies have manifest height, occult depth and intermediate breadth. From the
manifest form of a body we can only conjecture what its occult form must be,
when we destroy the manifest to advance to the revelation of its occult form.
The truth of this is found when we contemplate the depth of the geometric cube.
The wise artist and the true religious philosopher must
penetrate the earth and labor in every particle of the threefold dimension, if
he wants to find the true rectangular foundation stone which God has laid in the
foundation of the earth (Job 38, 4-6). Then he will know that "the love of
Christ passeth knowledge, and that ye might be filled with all the fullness of
God." (Eph. III, 19).
Then knock and strike zealously and strenuously, for "Ye
have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." (Heb. XII, 4). Here the
Apostle teaches us occultly that a transgression here, something foreign there,
not emanating from the pure truth which is Christ Jesus, is present, which must
be broken off and gotten rid of, from the human or soul-endowed stone; then
truth will illumine the master builder and true Brother, and it will gleam in a
rose-red or blood-colored glow, and he will see in this divine light his own
light and receive and enjoy at last the wages of his labors. Then he shall be
justly called a Brother of the Rosy Cross and he shall be called a member of the
true Fraternity.
THE ROYAL ART
Everything thus far has been gathered from the "Summum
Bonum," arranged so as to serve best our present purpose and in language more
suitable to our times, without however changing the essence and the spirit. I
shall add no extended comment. The brethren who are at home in the language, the
symbols and the spirit of Freemasonry can gather their own conclusions. What has
been gleaned from the work of Frisius, together with the notes on the symbolism
of the Alchemists, would seem to be quite sufficient to explain why the Brethren
of the Rosy Cross should have been considered the forebears of the Accepted Free
Masons. Before offering a brief concluding summary, we must give a moment's
attention to the development of the idea of the Royal Art which is the true name
of Freemasonry.
First let us take another word from the "Summum Bonum,"
which describes the Rosy Cross view of the Royal Art:
There were in antiquity, four renowned schools of natural
Magic, to-wit, the Hindoo, the Persian, the Chaldaic and the Egyptian. From the
Persians came those three Kings (Magi, Wise Men) who were seeking the new born
"King of the Jews," to present gifts unto Him and to worship Him. The sons of
Persian Kings, as Plato has related in his "Alcibiades," were initiated into
Magic that they might learn from the study of the pattern of the universe how
best to govern their own dominions and to preserve order and administer justice
therein. Cicero, too, speaks of this, in his "De Divinatione," saying that no
one was crowned among the Persians with the royal diadem until after he had been
fully instructed in Magic. That is why Oriental kings were so well grounded in
wisdom and coveted the name of Magi or Wise Men. Hence those who came from the
far East to worship the Christ child, were called by the Holy Spirit "Magi."
Recalling that in the early days of the Grand Lodge of
England we met repeatedly with the declaration, "There have been Kings that have
been of this sodality," we shall have another clue to the genealogy of
Freemasonry, as it was conceived by the organizers of the speculative craft.
Or take this quotation from "The Master's Song" of the
premier Grand Lodge:
Thus mighty Eastern Kings, and some Of Abram's Race, and
Monarchs good Of Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome. True Architecture understood.
Who can unfold the ROYAL Art? Or sing its Secrets in a
Song? They're safely kept in Mason's heart And to the ancient Lodge belong.
Those familiar with the Constitutions of 1723 know what
changes were made to make the ancient "Charges" conform to the newly established
ideals of the Fraternity. What was there said regarding the attitude toward the
"old Gothic Constitutions," applies also to the religious tenets of the Brethren
of the Rosy Cross. The changes gave a simplified definition of the "Royal Art,"
though the spirit remained what it had been in the "Summum Bonum." Indicating
the new meaning in the briefest form, I would answer:
What is the Royal Art? The practice of the Royal Law. And
the Royal Law?
"If ye fulfill the Royal Law according to the Scripture,
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well." So wrote St. James, the
first Bishop of Jerusalem, the same who declared that "Pure religion and
undefiled before God and the Father is this; to visit the fatherless and widows
in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."
CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, I beg to submit a summary statement
embodying findings based on many years of search to arrive at some sort of
satisfactory solution of the puzzling question as to the derivation of the
substance of Freemasonry. This summary is not complete and is intended to serve
merely as a supplement to my paper on "Freemasonry and the Medieval Craft
Gilds."
The establishment of Christianity was accomplished chiefly
by the marvelous rise of the power of the Church and the rigid application of
this power. The first need and therefore the first care was to establish
catholic unity in the faith.
The disintegration of that which had been the Roman Empire
had sounded the death knell for pagan civilization. An era of confusion
followed. The most extravagant teachings were in circulation. Passions and vices
ran riot because of the prevailing anarchy. A cult of a thousand years had been
dispossessed by a young cult which had the promise of eternity but had not then
been established firmly enough to compel respect. People hesitated between the
creed of the yesterday and the creed of the tomorrow. There was one giant among
men, who had the courage to choose, and having chosen, to battle for his creed
without weakening. That was St. Augustin, the great Doctor of the Church, mystic
and man of action, philosopher and master organizer and administrator. He united
in himself the genius of the Semitic race with the wisdom of the Latins, the
Greeks and the Alexandrians. He may well be called the establisher of the Roman
Church which became, and for a thousand years thereafter remained, the supreme
ruler of Western Europe. (2)
One indirect but quite logical effect of St. Augustin's war
upon heresies was the suppression of every form of free speculation in
philosophy. Unity of creed must be established at any cost. The apostasy of the
Emperor Julian had convinced doubting ecclesiastics of the danger lurking in an
unbridled freedom of study. Three years after the death of St. Augustin, the
Fourth Council of Carthage (in 398) formally prohibited the reading of secular
books even by the bishops. In 529, the philosophical schools were abolished by
decree of Emperor Julian. (3)
Freedom of thought cannot be suppressed by decrees. But a
check may be put on the expression of thought. And it was put on. Then there
sprang up secret ("invisible") Colleges, Academies, Lodges, etc., for meetings
of independent seekers after truth. In Italy, particularly, these secret
associations-displayed great activity, hiding their real purposes under names,
auspices and forms selected to mislead the watchful spies of the hierarchy. (4)
Members of the Academy of the Trowel, for example, would
wear builders' aprons and display builders' tools, presenting the appearance of
a gild of operative Masons. By giving mystic meanings to emblems of a seemingly
operative character, they could freely discuss prohibited topics in a manner
only understood by trusted initiates. If they wished to be regarded as men
engaged in architectural subjects, they would try to have those present who were
generally reputed to be interested in such matters. The membership was made up
largely of scientists, philosophers, architects, musicians, painters, sculptors
and poets.
In spite of their camouflage, the brethren of these
"invisible" lodges were occasionally discovered. Yet so well were their secrets
guarded that practically no first hand knowledge of them has come down to us,
though we can obtain information enough from Roman Catholic sources, if we make
proper allowances for always unmistakable prejudices. Thus Pastor in his famous
"History of the Popes" refers to the "invisible" Roman Academy founded by Julius
Pomponius Laetus, professor in the University of Rome, in the fifteenth century,
as "the center of meetings for all discontented and pagan Humanists." We are
told that the initiates adopted religious usages, regarded themselves as a
college of priests, with Pomponius as Grand High Priest. Gregovorius who is
quoted with approval, calls the Academy "a classical Freemasons Lodge."
The Brethren of the Academy of Pomponius were accused,
under Pope Paul II (1464-1471), as having conspired to kill the Holy Father,
that they were pagans and materialists, etc. Imprisonment and death threatened
the Brethren. "Safety first" in those days meant punishing the accused first and
investigating afterward. Most of the Academicians fled. Ultimately all were, on
the principle of Scotch verdict, absolved from the charge of heresy. Owing to
the intervention of the scholarly and liberal Cardinal Bessarion, Pomponius and
the others were allowed the freedom of the city, under close surveillance.
The Academicians were predominantly Platonists. So were the
members of most of the other forbidden secret societies (or occasional
gatherings), while the Church officially upheld Aristotle and for a long time
sought to suppress Plato to whom religion consisted essentially in the practice
of justice.
In the Teutonic countries, speculative philosophers were to
be found largely among the mystic Alchemists who are often spoken of as
"Hermetic Philosophers," in Masonic writings. They had no central organization.
Wherever two or three of them met together, they formed a lodge for mutual
intercourse and the initiation of worthy candidates who, after a period of
probation more or less extended, would be put in possession of the secret
symbols and traditions whereby they might obtain a key to the literature of all
the mystics.
In Great Britain, the Rosicrucian Alchemists were, as has
been indicated, essentially Christian theosophists. They studied nature, but not
for purely scientific purposes; they sought rather to discover in nature the
traces of the mystic Supreme Architect of the Universe, revealed as well as
concealed in and by the visible and discoverable phenomena.
The predominance of religious speculation led to the
separation from the mystic Alchemists of those who preferred to specialize in
the experimental study of nature. The philosophical reform work of Francis Bacon
(1561-1626) was probably the chief cause of the change.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, through the
influence of Robert Fludd (1574-1671), the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross arose in
Great Britain. This Fraternity represented the mystic portion of the Alchemists
whose practices they followed. "Heresy" had been no safer under the Protestant
"Bloody Bess" than it had been in Pre-Reformation times; the only difference
being in the kind of "heresy" for which men were hanged or burned by the
executioner of the power which happened to be in control at the time. That,
together with the predilection for symbols having to do with house and temple
building, no doubt accounts for the appearance of the names of reputed
Rosicrucianism the membership lists of the operative gild of Masons. The
Alchemists of an earlier day are supposed also to have been identified with this
particular gild. The inference is that they formed occasional lodges of their
own and were the "secret brotherhood" in the bosom of the Masons Company
referred to in the records of that Company. This would account for the presence
among the "Accepted" Masons of Elias Ashmole, Sir Robert Moray, Dr. Thomas
Wharton, Sir George Wharton, William Oughtred, Dr. John Hewitt, the astronomer
and astrologist, William Lily and Sir Christopher Wren, all of them
distinguished scientists interested in the Rosy Cross program.
And now a word to account for the statement in the
Constitutions of 1738, at a time when there were many alive who would have
objected to it if it had not been true, that the decay of the lodges of Accepted
Freemasons, shortly after 1708, was due to Sir Christopher Wren's neglect of the
office of Grand Master. Gould's insistence that Wren was not a Freemason and
never could have been Grand Master, in spite of trustworthy evidence which
should have caused him not to be so positive, is easily explained. Gould is
usually very careful, content with nothing but the original sources but it is
quite evident here that he had never given serious consideration to the
possibility of Rosy Cross relationships.
Sir Christopher Wren was a speculative Mason, nevertheless,
and may have been known as Grand Master of the "Accepted" circle. His "neglect
of the office" shortly after 1708 appears quite natural to me. That which had
attracted him into the "Acceptation" was no doubt the calibre of the men who
were associated with it and who were active in it. But, in 1662, there had been
incorporated in London the Royal Society, which as time went on, absorbed more
and more the spare time of the men more directly interested in scientific
progress. After the close of the seventeenth century, "acceptation" of men of
this stamp in the Masonic fraternity ceased altogether. The lodges became mere
convivial clubs and for these Sir Christopher had no time.
This leads me to advance a conclusion for which I hope to
have prepared the ground. I believe that the Royal Society and Freemasonry both
sprang from the same original source or sources.
"Alchemy" which comprised in Pre-Reformation days all
pursuits in science and philosophy had passed into Rosicrucianism. Bacon's "Novum
Organum," in 1620, having established the necessity for specialization in
experimental science, Rosicrucianism was doomed to final extinction. Bacon's
"New Atlantis" (1624) set up a new ideal for men eager to enlist in the service
of mankind by the advancement of civilization. (5)
"The New Atlantis" was written, as Diderot pointed out in
the prospectus of the French Encyclopedistes, "at a time when, so to say,
neither sciences nor arts existed." The twilight efforts of the Alchemists no
longer sufficed. More light was wanted. Day was at hand. "Solomon's House, that
beautiful dream of the philosopher, began to be realized less than forty years
after his death." (6) The picture of Solomon's House drawn by Bacon in "The New
Atlantis" was the model from which the Royal Society was built. (7) The
historian of this Society, Dr. Thomas Sprat (1636-1713) Bishop of Rochester,
made acknowledgment of this when he wrote: "I shall only mention one great man
who had the true imagination of the whole extent of this enterprise, as it is
now set on foot, and that is Lord Bacon." (8)
Professor Nichol sums up the established testimony of all
authorities on the subject, in these words: (9) "It is admitted that the
suggestion of the College of Philosophy instituted in London (1645) and after
the Restoration extended into the Royal Society (1662) was due to the prophetic
scheme of Solomon's House in the New Atlantis. Wallis, one of the founders of
the Society, exalts him by name, along with Galileo, as heir master. Sprat says
"It was a work becoming the largeness of Bacon's wit to devise and the greatness
of Clarendon's prudence to establish." Boyle invokes for its inauguration "that
profound naturalist * * * one great Verulam."
The spirit that animated the whole conception of Solomon's
House was "the love of man and the honoring of God." The Royal Society limited
its membership quite naturally to men considered capable of rendering eminent
service to the advancement of scientific discovery. Thereby it assured the
progress of the great work it had undertaken, but it limited, at the same time,
the realization of the ideal pictured in the "New Atlantis." The consciousness
of this fact, together with the remembrances of the derivation from the true
seekers after truth among the earlier Alchemists, were, I am persuaded, the
chief reasons which prompted many of the members of the Royal Society to join
the "revived" Society of Freemasons, shortly after the establishment of the
Grand Lodge of England. In Freemasonry they hoped for the complete and universal
realization of the whole ideal of the "New Atlantis," with the Royal Society as
the scientific center of Solomon's House.
This is, briefly and summarily told, my conclusion
regarding the evolution of "Speculative" Freemasonry, more particularly during
the seventeenth century, for "the love of man and the honoring of God."
Imperfectly as the result of my researches is placed before you, my brethren, I
hope to have at least suggested where to look for traces of the origins of our
beloved Fraternity founded upon the Fatherhood of God, the mystic foundation
stone of the universe, and the practice of the Royal Art which is the fulfilment
of the Royal Law according to the Scripture: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself.'
POSTSCRIPT
I trust I have not given the impression that the substance
of modern Freemasonry was derived from the Rosicrucians. An organized Fraternity
of the Rosy Cross probably never existed outside of books. The writings of Fludd
and Frisius formulated for Great Britain a body of Rosy Cross tenets differing
in essential points from the teachings of the Rosicrucians of Continental
Europe. English and Scottish Alchemists followed Fludd and Frisius. Their
attempts to translate the plans of these leaders into practice, appears to have
induced some of them to form occasional lodges, either independently under the
designation of Freemasons--the name of Rosicrucian having fallen into
disrepute--or in the bosom of Masonic craft gilds, as a separate "secret
brotherhood" of Accepted Freemasons. Read in connection with "Freemasonry and
the Medieval Craft Gilds," the suggestion will be clearly understood.
Freemasonry, as established by the Constitutions of 1722-3,
represents the confluence of two streams, each having many tributaries: The
sources of the one stream must be looked for in the Anglo-Saxon gyld, and its
name is democracy; the sources of the other must be looked for in the earliest
academies of philosophers searching for the One Living God, Father of all men,
and its name is liberty of conscience.
(1) Aben or Eben (as in Ebenezar) is Hebrew for stone.
(2) For a vivid picture of life in the fourth century, the
period so trying for men's souls, I refer those who read French to the charming,
wonderful book of Louis Bertrand on "St. Augustin."
(3) See Laurie's "Rise of Universities," first two
chapters.
(4) Especially from the fourteenth century onward.
(5) "Doubtless it was one of Bacon's highest hopes that
from the growth of true knowledge would follow in surprising ways the relief of
man's estate; this, as an end, runs through all his yearning after a fuller and
surer method of interpreting nature." --Dean Church.
(6) M.C. Adam's "Philosophie de F. Bacon," Paris, 1890, p.
328. Bacon died on April 9th, 1626. The London "College of Philosophy" which
became the Royal Society, was instituted in 1645.
(7) G.C. Moorr Smith, in his edition of "The New Atlantis,'
(Pitt Press Series) Cambridge, 1900, page 28.
(8) "History of the Royal Society," edition of 1667, page
35.
(9) "Francis Bacon; His life and Philosophy," (Blackwood's
Phil. Classics) 1889, vol. II, p. 136.
----o----
SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES
BY BRO. OLIVER DAY STREET, ALABAMA
PART III THE SYMBOLISM OF THE MASTER MASON DEGREE
MANY of the lessons of the third degree are obvious to the
most superficial mind, but others (and these the most important) are grasped
only after long and patient study. I shall not attempt anything original, but
only lay before you in an imperfect way a few of the reflections and conclusions
of some of our most trustworthy Masonic scholars.
I believe it susceptible of the clearest proof that
Freemasonry, viewed in the aggregate, is an elaborate allegory of human life,
that the three degrees considered collectively, symbolically epitomize man's
existence both here and in the hereafter. My excuse for recurring to this idea
is that in my judgment Speculative Masonry can not be otherwise adequately
explained. The lodge is emblematical of the world; initiation, of birth; the
Entered Apprentice, of the preparatory stage of life, or youth; the Fellow
Craft, of the construction stage, or manhood; the Master Mason, of the
reflective stage, or old age, death, the resurrection, and the everlasting life.
This explanation of the three degrees is briefly given in our lecture on the
"Three Steps" delineated on the Master's Carpet. Any symbol or any meaning
attributed to a symbol which does not legitimately contribute to this allegory
may be discarded as nonMasonic.
THE ANTIQUITY OF MASONIC SYMBOLISM
The age of our symbolism is an important question in this
connection, because upon it to a great extent depend the meanings that must be
assigned to our symbols. While some of them may be of comparatively modern
origin, many of them are older than the oldest written language.
Says Brother Robert Freke Gould, one of the most cautious
of our historians:
"The symbolism of Masonry, or at all events a material part
of it, is of very great antiquity, and in substance the system of Masonry we now
possess, including the three degrees of the Craft, has come down to us in all
its essentials from times remote to our own." (1)
Another of our historians of the most exacting school,
Brother William J. Hughan, declares that "symbolism in connection with
Freemasonry antedates our oldest records."
Even this cautious statement would date our symbolism back
more than five hundred years, and Brother Gould is on record as declaring that,
if it can be put back that far, there is practically no limit backward to which
its beginning must be assigned. (2)
Another distinguished Masonic scholar, Brother George
William Speth, records his belief that "the greater part of our symbolism
(including all essentials) is undoubtedly medieval at least, and probably
centuries older than that." (3)
Still another, Brother William Simpson, distinguished as an
orientalist, says:
"The more important Masonic symbols are ancient and their
true meanings can only be found by tracing them back into the past. This will be
found to be particularly the case with the third degree; its true meaning can
only be realized by the study of similar rites which appear to go far back into
the history of our race." (4)
These are the opinions of men who, noted for their
scholarship, have disregarded our Masonic traditions and studied the question
from the purely historical viewpoint.
Following them, (and if they cannot be followed there are
none who can be,) our symbolism has come down to us from ancient times.
Of some of these symbols we know a part at least of their
meanings, but of some we know nothing at all. We get a hint from Brother Pike
that much of our symbolism has been forgotten, and Brother Gould asserts the
same and declares that "to a considerable portion of the symbolism of
Freemasonry, even at this day, no meaning can be assigned which is entirely
satisfactory to the intelligent mind." (5)
Heckethorn, a non-Mason, says that many of the mystical
figures and schemes of very ancient times are preserved in Masonry though their
meaning is no longer understood by the Fraternity. (6)
It should therefore be obvious that if we are ever to
reacquire this lost knowledge, we must have recourse to the records and
institutions of ancient times.
THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES
Do we find any institutions in ancient times similar to our
own and employing our symbols for like purposes? I answer at once that we do.
In all periods from the dawn of history till about the
fifth century, A. D., there is recorded the existence in nearly every known
country of secret societies which, so far as our knowledge of them enables us to
judge, were strikingly like Freemasonry in all except name. Our foremost Masonic
historian, Brother Gould, says that they taught precisely the same doctrines in
precisely the same way. These ancient societies bearing different names in
different countries, yet appearing everywhere to have been the same thing, are
generally termed "The Ancient Mysteries."
In Egypt they were known as the Mysteries of Osiris and
Isis, and these appear to have been the model for all others. They prevailed in
Egypt, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, and many other
countries. The most ancient of these were certainly in existence as early as
3000 B. C., and some of them were still flourishing in Western Europe, in a
corrupted state, it is true, as late as the fourth century of the Christian era.
Notwithstanding their differences in name, it does not
admit of a doubt that they were all substantially the same; "so much so," it has
been said by high Masonic authority, "that we may conclude either that they were
all independent copies from a great original or that they were propagated one
from another." Brother Gould, than whom no more judicious historian has ever
written on any subject, thinks they were only differentiated types of one
original form of worship, the object of which was in every instance the God of
Light and of Truth and of Beneficence. The Osiris of Egypt, the Brahma of India,
the Mithras of Persia, the Bacchus (or Dionysius) of Greece, the Bel (or Baal)
of the Chaldeans, the Belenus of Gaul, the Baldur of Scandanavia, the Adonis of
Phoenicia, and the Adonai of the Jews were all the same god; each, to his own
people, was the Supreme One, the Creator, the Enlightener, Lord and Master. All
the mysteries taught a more or less pure system of monotheism, though coupled
with the idea of a Trinity, or one God in three persons. Their Trinity differed
from ours, however, in that they conceived it to be a male, female and
off'spring, or Father, Mother and Son. They taught also the doctrine of the
resurrection of the dead and the immortality of the soul. (7)
Cicero tells us that in the Elusinian Mysteries they were
taught to live virtuously and happily and to die in the hope of a blessed
futurity. (8)
"The great doctrine of immortality of the soul," says
Brother Gould, "and the teachings of the two lives, the present and the future,
are to be found in the Ancient Mysteries, where precisely the same doctrines
were taught in precisely the same way" that they are now taught by the
Freemasons.
It seems that among pagan people of ancient times a few
superior minds and spirits were found who did not accept the idolatrous notions
of the populace as an adequate conception of the Deity and who searched
constantly in the great book of nature in the effort to find out and understand
him aright. To have openly proclaimed their beliefs and their rejection of the
popular gods and popular religion would have but called down upon themselves
contempt and ridicule and doubtless persecutions. They, therefore, chose to
drift along with the common herd to all outward appearances, reserving the
contemplation and discussion of their cherished beliefs for secret communication
with those of kindred mind in societies where they were secure from observation
and the interference of the outside world. Such seems to have been the occasion
of the origin of these ancient fraternities.
These societies were characterized by fixed forms of
initiation, successive steps or degrees, oaths of secrecy, a symbolical system
of teaching, and the possession of emblems and perhaps of grips, signs and words
of recognition. (9) Their rites were usually celebrated at night in chambers
securely guarded against intrusion and arranged similarly to our lodges, often
with the three chief officers seated in the South, West and East.
With all of them the East was an object of peculiar
veneration as the source of light and knowledge.
Initiation was an allegorical search for light and
knowledge and consisted of prescribed physical and moral preparations of the
candidate, lustrations, purifications and the administrations of oaths of
secrecy; the ushering from darkness to light symbolizing a transformation from
ignorance to knowledge, from corruption to moral and spiritual purity; the
investiture with an emblem of this purity consisting sometimes of a white apron,
sometimes of a white sash or robe; the encountering of trials and dangers
sometimes mock and sometimes real. In the Mithraic Mysteries the candidate was
received into the place of initiation upon the point of a sword piercing his
naked left breast. Many of their symbols were identical with those that can now
be seen in any Masonic lodge.
To each of the Ancient Mysteries pertained a characteristic
legend, which w as made the instrumentality of teaching with great
impressiveness the doctrines of the resurrection and immortality.
The legend of Osiris, probably the oldest and the model for
all the others was as follows:
Osiris, meaning the soul of the Universe, the Governor of
nature, was at once king and god of the Egyptians. The name appears as far back
as 3000 B. C. Having taught civilization, the arts and agriculture to his own
people, he magnanimously resolved to spread in person their benign influence
throughout the world. Leaving his kingdom in charge of his wife, Isis, he
departed upon his beneficent mission. After an absence of three years he
returned, but meanwhile his brother Typhon had organized a conspiracy to murder
him and seize the throne. At a grand banquet given in honor of his return,
Typhon provided a magnificent chest which exactly fitted the body of Osiris. All
the other guests being in the conspiracy, they feigned great admiration of the
chest and finally Typhon announced that he would give it to the one whose body
it would most neatly contain. Osiris, trying the box, was no sooner in it than
the lid was clapped down and securely fastened and the whole thrown into the
river Nile. It was borne out to sea by the current and in course of time was
cast ashore at Byblos, in Phoenicia, at the foot of an acacia tree. The tree
grew up rapidly and completely encased the chest containing the body of Osiris.
No sooner had Isis learned of the fate of her husband than,
weeping, she set out in search of his body and on her way interrogated every one
she met for information concerning its whereabouts. Virgins accompanied her who
dressed and combed her hair.
She finally discovered the body in the acacia tree, but the
king of that country, struck with the tree's beauty caused it to be cut down and
a column made of it for his palace. Isis thereupon engaged herself to the king
as a nurse for his children and asked and received for her pay this column. The
column was broken and the body released and at once borne back to Egypt, but
before it could be properly interred it was again seized by Typhon and cut into
fourteen pieces and these hidden in as many places. After long search Isis
succeeded in finding and bringing together all the parts except the phallus, and
the body was embalmed and buried in due form. It will be borne in mind that
according to ancient Egyptian ideas there could be no resurrection in the
absence of the body; hence, the great care with which they embalmed their dead.
As soon as the body of Osiris had been recovered and buried, it was announced
that he had risen from the dead and had resumed his place among the gods.
The ceremonies of initiation into the Egyptian Mysteries
dramatically represented the death of Osiris, the search for his body, its
discovery in the acacia tree, and its burial and resurrection, the murdered god
being personated by the candidate.
Pertaining to each of the Mysteries was a counterpart of
this legend. In Greece, Osiris becomes Bacchus, (not the drunken Bacchus of
later ages,) who is slain by the Titans and his limbs torn asunder. Isis becomes
Rhea, who after long and bitter search finds and inters his body, and in due
course he takes his place among the gods. In the Dionysian Mysteries celebrated
in his honor an effigy was stretched upon a couch, as if dead, while his
votaries bitterly bewailed his decease. After a proper time the figure was
quickly removed and the announcement made that the god had risen from the dead.
Likewise in some of the Mysteries of India the candidate underwent an
allegorical death, burial and resurrection. Those celebrated in Phoenicia during
the time of Solomon, King of Israel, Hiram, King of Tyre and Hiram Abif were
obvious copies of those of Egypt. Adonis and Venus became substitutes in the
legend for Osiris and Isis. During the course of these Mysteries, with which our
three ancient Grand Masters must have been familiar, an image was laid upon a
bier as if it were a dead body. During a momentary darkness the figure was
invisibly removed, after which it was announced that the god had risen from the
dead. The substantial identity with each other of all these Mysteries and
doctrines they were intended to inculcate is obvious.
It is claimed by students of ancient mythology, that this
legend of the Mysteries and the ceremonies based on it were all prophetic of the
coming of a Messiah, who should triumph over death and the grave, and thereby
demonstrate to mankind for a certainty that there is a life after death. That
this was common belief, not merely among the Jews, but the Egyptians,
Phoenicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Chaldeans, Hindus, Greeks and
Romans is now generally conceded.
The teachings of the Mysteries have been thus summarized:
"They diffused a spirit of unity and humanity, purified the
soul from ignorance and pollution; secured the peculiar aid of the gods; the
means of arriving at the perfection of virtue; the serene happiness of a holy
life; the hope of a peaceful death and endless felicity in the Elysian fields;
whilst those not initiated therein should dwell after death in places of
darkness and horror."
Thus did these ancient societies seek by means of the
dramatic presentation of a legend to teach the great Masonic doctrines of the
resurrection and the life after death.
There were lectures explanatory of the Mysteries but the
crowning ceremony of initiation was the communication to the candidate of an
ineffable name which it was lawful to speak only on certain occasions and in a
certain manner. Among the Egyptians, Persians and Hindus, notwithstanding their
pride separation, this was the mysterious AUM, pronounced OM. I have purposely
mingled things dissimilar with things similar to Freemasonry but the intelligent
Master Mason will be able to detect the points of resemblance.
Brother Robert F. Gould, whom I have already several times
quoted, without venturing to pronounce Freemasonry and the Ancient Mysteries
identical, says:
"It is a well known fact that these Mysteries offer
striking analogies with much that is found in Freemasonry; their celebration in
grottoes or covered halls, which symbolized the Universe, and which in
disposition and decoration presented a distinct counterpart to our lodge; their
division into degrees conferred by the initiatory rites wonderfully like our
own; their method of teaching through the same astronomic symbolism the highest
truths then known in Philosophy and Morals; their mystic bond of secrecy,
toleration, equality and brotherly love."
He intimates strongly his belief that Freemasonry is a
development out of the Mysteries of Mithras, which, originating in Persia,
spread to Greece, Rome and Western Europe and lingered there until the fourth or
fifth century, A. D.
Enough has been said on this point to make it plain that
anyone who would understand our Masonic symbolism must at least make a study of
what these same symbols meant to these ancient societies.
THIRD DEGREE SYMBOLS
I shall not lengthen this paper and tax your patience by
repeating explanations laid down in our monitors and lectures. I shall for the
most part confine myself to things that are not explained at all, or that are
explained inadequately.
Many of the symbols of the Master's degree are common to
the preceding degrees and these I shall touch upon very briefly. There is,
however, discoverable in their use as the degrees progress, an increasing
seriousness and depth of meaning.
For instance, in the first two degrees, the lodge
symbolizes the world, the place where all workmen labor at useful avocations and
in the acquisition of human knowledge and virtue. But in the Master's degree it
represents the Sanctum Sanctorum, or Holy of Holies of King Solomon's Temple,
which was itself a symbol of Heaven, or the abode of Deity. It was there that
nothing earthly or unclean was allowed to enter; it was there that the visible
presence of the Deity was said to dwell between the Cherubim. In the Master's
lodge, therefore, we are symbolically brought into the awful presence of the
Deity. The reference here to death and the future life is obvious and is a
further evidence that this degree typifies old age and death.
But there is even a deeper symbolism in the Master's lodge.
The allusion is not only to the sacred chamber of Solomon's physical temple, it
alludes also to the sacred chamber of that spiritual temple we all are, or
should he, namely, a pure heart, and admonishes us to make of it a place fit for
Deity himself to dwell.
The likening of the human body to a temple of the Deity is
an ancient metaphor. Jesus said, in speaking of the temple of his body, "Destroy
this temple and in three days I will raise it up." Again, Paul says, "Know ye
not that ye are a temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you? If
any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of
God is holy, and such arc ye." I quote these passages, not as a Christian
doctrine, but as a beautiful expression of Jewish thought far older than
Christianity. We can with difficulty conceive the extreme sacredness of the
Temple in the eyes of the Jew. It far exceeded the veneration with which we now
regard our churches and synagogues. This idea once comprehended shows how
greatly this figure of speech ennobles the human body. It declares it a fit
dwelling place for Deity himself.
In the Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft degrees, Light
typifies the acquisition of human knowledge and virtue; in the Masters degree it
typifies the revelation of divine truth in the life that is to come.
In the first two degrees the square and compasses denote
the earth and inculcate and impress upon us the desirability of curbing our
passions; in the third degree the compasses symbolize what is heavenly, because
to our ancient brethren the visible heavens bore the aspect of circles and
arches, geometrical figures produced with the compasses.
In some of the monitors we are told that "the compasses are
peculiarly consecrated to this degree," but the reasons there given are not
satisfying. In ancient symbolism the square signified the earth, while the
circle, a figure produced with the compasses, signified the sun or the heavens.
The square therefore symbolized what is earthly and material while the compasses
signified the heavenly and the spiritual. It is not without significance,
therefore, that in the Entered Apprentice degree, both points of the compasses
are beneath the square; that in the Fellow Craft degree one point is above the
square, while in the Master's degree both points are above, signifying that in
the true Master, the spiritual has obtained full mastery and control over the
earthly and the material. (10)
DISCALCEATION
Discalceation, or the plucking off of one's shoes, was in
the Entered Apprentice degree, as we there learned, a symbol of fidelity to our
fellow man. In this degree, however, it alludes to an ancient act of homage paid
by man to Deity, namely, the Eastern custom that prevailed among both Jews and
Gentiles of entering only barefooted into any sacred place or upon any holy
ground. In the one case, this practice was a testimony of man to man; in the
other, it is a testimony of man to his Creator.
Pythagoras taught his disciples in these words, "offer
sacrifice and worship with thy shoes off." Adam Clarke includes the universality
of this custom among his thirteen proofs that all mankind has descended from
common ancesters. A Master Mason's lodge represents, as we have seen, the Holy
of Holies of Solomon's Temple into which the High Priest alone entered only once
yearly, and then with bare feet. The lodge in some of the old rituals is said to
stand on holy ground. God said to Moses at the burning bush: "Put off thy shoes
from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." (11)
Note also the deeper significance of the shock of reception
as the degrees progress. In the first, the appeal is to the sense of fear, in
other words, purely physical. In the second, appeal is made to the moral sense
and inculcates fair dealing with men, but in the third it is not merely to our
sense of justice towards our fellow man, but to our brotherly love for him and
to those higher reflective elements of our nature whose proverbial seat is the
breasts.
It is a mistake to limit the "Brotherly Love" of this
degree to members of the Masonic fraternity. If the lodge symbolizes the world,
as it undoubtly does, so should its members symbolize all the inhabitants
thereof. The love that should prevail among the members of the lodge, therefore,
typifies the love that should prevail among all mankind. In the highest sense
all men are our brothers precisely as we are so strikingly taught in the parable
of the Good Samaritan that all men are our neighbors.
CIRCUMAMBULATION
Circumambulation, from the Latin word "circumambulare," to
walk around, is a very ancient rite, one common to all the Ancient Mysteries.
The sun, the fructifier and giver of life, in his daily course across the
heavens, appears to those living in the Northern Hemisphere, where the ancient
world dwelt, to proceed from the East by the way of the South to the West, and
thence through the darkness of the night via the North back to the East again.
Vegetation was seen to spring up, animal life to be aroused from slumber and
take on increased energy, as the King of Day moved with dignity across the
heavens. To the untutored mind of primeval man it is not strange that the sun
should appear to be the giver of life, the very Creator himself. His apparent
course, therefore, from East through the South to the West and back to the East
by way of the North became the "course of life", as the ancients expressed it.
The ancients in their ceremonies when representing life
pursued this course, and we Masons follow their example. To proceed in the
reverse direction typified death, and as every Master Mason knows at one
important point in our ceremonies we take this reverse course. At the grave of a
deceased brother, however, contrary to what might be expected, we still follow
the course of life as a token of our belief in the life that follows death. (11)
THE WORKING TOOLS
With us in America the especial working tool of a Master
Mason is said to be the Trowel. In England, this symbol is almost obsolete, and
they employ the Skirrit, Pencil and Compasses.
Of the Trowel, Dr. Oliver, a noted but somewhat discredited
Masonic authority, says:
"The triangle, now called the Trowel, was an emblem of very
extensive application and was much revered by ancient nations as containing the
greatest and most abstruse mysteries that it signified equally Deity, Creation
and Fire." (12)
We will learn directly something more of the symbolical
signification of the triangle.
The Skirrit, the Pencil and the Compasses are not
enumerated in America among the working tools of a Master Mason. The Skirrit is
an instrument working on a center pin and used by the Operative Mason to mark
out on the ground the foundation of the intended structure. The Pencil is
employed in drafting the plans and the Compasses in determining the limit and
proportions of its several parts. Symbolically they are explained in English
(Emulation) working in the following words:
"The Skirrit points out to us that straight and undeviating
line of conduct laid down for our guidance in the volume of the sacred law. The
Pencil teaches us that all our words and actions are not only observed, but are
recorded by the Most High, to whom we must render an account of our conduct
through life. The Compasses reminds us of his unerring and impartial justice,
which having defined for our instruction the limits of good and evil will either
reward or punish us, as we have obeyed or disregarded his divine commands." (13)
We must admit that the trowel would seem more properly to
belong to the Fellow Craft, who in Operative Masonry puts the stones in place,
rather than to the designer and overseer who corresponds to our Master Mason.
Brother John Yarker in his Arcane Schools says that the
Skirrit as a hieroglyphic signifies the origin of things. (14)
DEITY AND IMMORTALITY
There are a few who feign that they believe nothing that
cannot be experienced through the five senses of the body. Wonderful as are
these faculties, I am persuaded that we are possessed of a sixth sense which is
higher and finer even than those of the body. By this sense we perceive though
we see not; we feel though we touch not; we understand though we hear not; we
know though we neither taste nor smell. By it, also, we are aware of all the
higher aspirations of the mind and soul; by it alone are we conscious of our own
existence. Seeing is not thinking. Nor is hearing, or feeling, or tasting, or
smelling. These five senses are but ministers to this sixth sense. The five
senses of human nature we were concerned with in a former degree, but we are
here concerned with something far superior to them, whatever we call it, whether
consciousness, faith, mind, soul or spirit. Are the testimonies of this sixth
sense any less real or any less reliable than those of the five senses of the
body? By it mankind has always, in every age and in every condition, felt
intuitively that there was a God and that we shall live again. These beliefs are
so strong and so ever present with us that we never doubt them until we begin to
argue about them.
There is nothing in Masonry so constantly pressed upon our
thoughts as these two great doctrines. Signs, symbols, and legends are all
repeatedly employed to emphasize them.
In the Master's degree, the Pot of Incense, the All-Seeing
Eye, the Three Grand Masters, the Triangle, and the legends of the Temple and of
Hiram Abif are all employed for this purpose, as I shall attempt to show.
We read with incredulity that men could ever bow down to,
and worship, idols. Doubtless the thoughtful and intelligent ones have never
done so even in pagan countries. They looked beyond and viewed the idol as
merely a symbol. As the idol among pagan people usually assumed a human form,
the Jews as well as other believers in monotheism of ancient times, forbade the
employment of the human effigy as a symbol of Deity. To supply the need so
keenly felt by the ancients of a symbol to represent every idea, conventional
figures such as squares, circles, triangles, etc., were adopted by the ancient
monotheists to symbolize the Deity. Thus perhaps it is that the being which
alone is said to have been made in the image of his Creator is nowhere employed
in our symbolism to represent the G. A. O. T. U.
THE HIRAMIC LEGEND
The most important series of symbols in Freemasonry is the
legend concerning Hiram Abif and the other symbolic allusions connected
therewith. For obvious reasons, I do not attempt to narrate the story of this
legend. Nor shall I undertake to make any systematic or exhaustive study of it,
but only to discuss in a disconnected way those symbols associated with it that
are most important or whose meaning is least obvious.
As we have already seen, the Ancient Mysteries employed a
legend dramatically presented to teach the great doctrines of the existence of
Deity, the resurrection of the body, and the immortality of the soul. Among
Freemasons, the legend of Hiram, the builder, is employed in a strikingly
similar way to teach the same truths. It is not permissible, even if it were
necessary, to enter further into details in order to demonstrate this parallel,
but the points of resemblance will be sufficiently obvious to the intelligent
Mason.
A few observations upon the name Hiram Abif will not be out
of place. Abif is certainly not a surname as our use of it would seem to
indicate. It is translated in the English Bibles "Hiram, my father's" and
"Hiram, his father." This scarcely makes sense; and hence the general consensus
of opinion among Masonic scholars is that "Abif" is a Hebrew idiom indicating
superiority in his Craft and may therefore, in a general sense, be said to be
synonymous with "Master." (15)
The name "Hiram" itself has been supposed | 
