A candidate proposing to enter Freemasonry has seldom formed any definite idea of the nature of what he is engaging in. Even after his admission he usually remains quite at a loss to explain satisfactorily what Masonry is and for what purpose his Order exists. He finds, indeed, that it is "a system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols," but that explanation, whilst true, is but partial and does not carry him very far. For many members of the Craft to be a Mason implies merely connection with a body which seems to be something combining the natures of a club and a benefit society. They find, of course, a certain religious element in it, but as they are told that religious discussion, which means, of course, sectarian religious discussion, is forbidden in the Lodge, they infer that Masonry is not a religious institution, and that its teachings are intended to be merely secondary and supplemental to any religious tenets they may happen to hold. One sometimes hears it remarked that Masonry is "not a religion"; which in a sense is quite true; and sometimes that it is a secondary or supplementary religion, which is quite untrue. Again Masonry is often supposed, even by its own members, to be a system of extreme antiquity, that was practiced and that has come down in its present form from Egyptian or at least from early Hebrew sources: a view which again possesses the merest modicum of truth. In brief, the vaguest notions obtain about the origin and history of the Craft, whilst the still more vital subject of its immediate and present purpose, and of its possibilities, remains almost entirely outside the consciousness of many of its own members. We meet in our Lodges regularly; we perform our ceremonial work and repeat our catechetical instruction-lectures night after night with a less or greater degree of intelligence and verbal perfection, and there our work ends, as though the ability to perform this work creditably were the be-all and the end all of Masonic work. Seldom or never do we employ our Lodge meetings for that purpose for which, quite as much as for ceremonial purposes, they were intended, viz.: for "expatiating on the mysteries of the Craft," and perhaps our neglect to do so is because we have ourselves imperfectly realized what those mysteries are into which our Order was primarily formed to introduce us.
Yet, there exists a large number of brethren
who would willingly repair this obvious deficiency; brethren to
whose natures Masonry, even in their more limited aspect of it,
makes a profound appeal, and who feel their membership of the
Craft to be a privilege which has brought them into the presence
of something greater than they know, and that enshrines a purpose
and that could unfold a message deeper than they at present realize.
In a brief address like this it is hopeless to attempt to deal
at all adequately with what I have suggested are deficiencies
in our knowledge of the system we belong to. The most one can
hope to do is to offer a few hints or clues, which those who so
desire may develop for themselves in the privacy of their own
thought. For in the last resource no one can communicate the deeper
things in Masonry to another. Every man must discover and learn
them for himself, although a friend or brother may be able to
conduct him a certain distance on the path of understanding. We
know that even the elementary and superficial secrets of the Order
must not be communicated to unqualified persons, and the reason
for this injunction is not so much because those secrets have
any special value, but because that silence is intended to be
typical of that which applies to the greater, deeper secrets,
some of which, for appropriate reasons, must not be communicated,
and some of which indeed are not communicable at all, because
they transcend the power of communication.
It is well to emphasize then, at the outset, that Masonry is a
sacramental system, possessing, like all sacraments, an outward
and visible side consisting of its ceremonial, its doctrine and
its symbols which we can see and hear, and an inward, intellectual
and spiritual side, which is concealed behind the ceremonial,
the doctrine and the symbols, and which is available only to the
Mason who has learned to use his spiritual imagination and who
can appreciate the reality that lies behind the veil of outward
symbol. Anyone, of course, can understand the simpler meaning
of our symbols, especially with the help of the explanatory lectures;
but he may still miss the meaning of the scheme as a vital hole.
It is absurd to think that a vast organization like Masonry was
ordained merely to teach to grown-up men of the world the symbolical
meaning of a few simple builders' tools, or to impress upon us
such Masonry elementary virtues as temperance and justice: the
children in every village school are taught such things; or to
enforce such simple principles of morals as brotherly love, which
every church and every religion teaches; or as relief, which is
practiced quite as much by non-Masons as by us; or of truth, which
every infant learns upon its mother's knee. There is surely, too,
no need for us to join a secret society to be taught that the
volume of the Sacred Law is a fountain of truth and instruction;
or to go through the great and elaborate ceremony of the third
degree merely to learn that we have each to die. The Craft whose
work we are taught to honor with the name of a "science,"
a "royal art," has surely some larger end in view than
merely inculcating the practice of social virtues common to all
the world and by no means the monopoly of Freemasons. Surely,
then, it behooves us to acquaint ourselves with what that larger
end consists, to enquire why the fulfillment of that purpose is
worthy to be called a science, and to ascertain what are those
"mysteries" to which our doctrine promises we may ultimately
attain if we apply ourselves assiduously enough to understanding
what Masonry is capable of teaching us.
Realizing, then, what Masonry cannot be
deemed to be, let us ask what it is. But before answering that
question, let me put you in possession of certain facts that will
enable you the better to appreciate the answer when I formulate
it. In all periods of the world's history, and in every part of
the globe, secret orders and societies have existed outside the
deeper limits of the official churches for the purpose of teaching
what are called "the Mysteries": for imparting to suitable
and prepared minds certain truths of human life, certain instructions
about divine things, about the things that belong to our peace,
about human nature and human destiny, which it was undesirable
to publish to the multitude who would but profane those teachings
and apply the esoteric knowledge that was communicated to perverse
and perhaps to disastrous ends.
These Mysteries were formerly taught, we are told, "on the
highest hills and in the lowest valleys," which is merely
a figure of speech for saying, first, that they have been taught
in circumstances of the greatest seclusion and secrecy, and secondly,
that they have been taught in both advanced and simple forms according
to the understanding of their disciples. It is, of course, common
knowledge that great secret systems of the Mysteries (referred
to in our lectures as "noble orders of architecture,"
i.e., of soul-building) existed in the East, in Chaldea, Assyria,
Egypt, Greece, Italy, amongst the Hebrews, amongst Mahommedans
and amongst Christians; even among uncivilized African races they
are to be found. All the great teachers of humanity, Socrates,
Plato, Pythagoras, Moses, Aristotle, Virgil, the author of the
Homeric poems, and the great Greek tragedians, along with St.
John, St. Paul and innumerable other great names were initiates
of the Sacred Mysteries. The form of the teaching communicated
has varied considerably from age to age; it has been expressed
under different veils; but since the ultimate truth the Mysteries
aim at teaching is always one and the same, there has always been
taught, and can only be taught, one and the same doctrine.
What that doctrine was, and still is, we will consider presently
so far as we are able to speak of it, and so far as Masonry gives
expression to it. For the moment let me merely say that behind
all the official religious systems of the world, and behind all
the great moral movements and developments in the history of humanity,
have stood what St. Paul called the keepers or "stewards
of the Mysteries." From that source Christianity itself came
into the world. From them originated the great school of Kabalism,
that marvelous system of secret, oral tradition of the Hebrews,
a strong element of which has been introduced into our Masonic
system. From them, too, also issued many fraternities and orders,
such, for instance, as the great orders of Chivalry and of the
Rosicrucians, and the school of spiritual alchemy. Lastly, from
them too also issued, in the seventeenth century, modern speculative
Freemasonry.
To trace the genesis of the movement, which came into activity
some 250 years ago (our rituals and ceremonies having been compiled
round about the year 1700), is beyond the purpose of my present
remarks. It may merely be stated that the movement itself incorporated
the slender ritual and the elementary symbolism that, for centuries
previously, had been employed in connection with the medieval
Building Guilds, but it gave to them a far fuller meaning and
a far wider scope. It has always been the custom for Trade Guilds,
and even for modern Friendly Societies, to spiritualize their
trades, and to make the tools of their trade point some simple
moral. No trade, perhaps, lends itself more readily to such treatment
than the builder's trade; but wherever a great industry has flourished;
there you will find traces of that industry becoming allegorized,
and of the allegory being employed for the simple moral instruction
of those who were operative members of the industry. I am acquainted,
for instance, with an Egyptian ceremonial system, some 5,000 years
old, which taught precisely the same things as Masonry does, but
in the terms of shipbuilding instead of in the terms of architecture.
But the terms of architecture were employed by those who originated
modern Masonry because they were ready to hand; because they were
in use among certain trade-guilds then in existence; and lastly,
because they are extremely effective and significant from the
symbolic point of view.
All that I wish to emphasize at this stage is that our present
system is not one coming from remote antiquity: that there is
no direct continuity between us and the Egyptians, or even those
ancient Hebrews who built, in the reign of King Solomon, a certain
Temple at Jerusalem. What is extremely ancient in Freemasonry
is the spiritual doctrine concealed within the architectural phraseology;
for this doctrine is an elementary form of the doctrine that has
been taught in all ages, no matter in what garb it has been expressed.
Our own teaching, for instance, recognizes Pythagoras as having
undergone numerous initiations in different parts of the world,
and as having attained great eminence in the science. Now it is
perfectly certain that Pythagoras was not a Mason at all in our
present sense of the word; but it is also perfectly certain that
Pythagoras was a very highly advanced master in the knowledge
of the secret schools of the Mysteries, of whose doctrine some
small portion is enshrined for us in our Masonic system.
What then was the purpose the framers of our Masonic system had
in view when they compiled it? To this question you will find
no satisfying answer in ordinary Masonic books. Indeed there is
nothing more dreary and dismal than Masonic literature and Masonic
histories, which are usually devoted to considering merely unessential
matters relating to the external development of the Craft and
to its antiquarian aspect. They fail entirely to deal with its
vital meaning and essence, a failure that, in some cases, may
be intentional, but that more often seems due to lack of knowledge
and perception, for the true, inner history of Masonry has never
yet been given forth even to the Craft itself. There are members
of the Craft to whom it is familiar, and who in due time may feel
justified in gradually making public at any rate some portion
of what is known in interior circles. But were that time comes,
and that the Craft itself may the better appreciate what can be
told, it is desirable, nay even necessary, that its own members
should make some effort to realize the meaning of their own institution,
and should display symptoms of earnest desire to treat it less
as a system of archaic and perfunctory rites, and more as a vital
reality capable of entering into and dominating their lives; less
as a merely pleasant social order, and more as a sacred and serious
method of initiation into the profoundest truths of life. It is
written that "to him that hath shall be given, and from him
that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath";
and it remains with the Craft itself to determine by its own action
whether it shall enter into its full heritage, or whether, by
failing to realize and to safeguard the value of what it possesses,
by suffering its own mysteries to be vulgarized and profaned,
its organization will degenerate and pass into disrepute and deserved
oblivion, as has been the fate of many secret orders in the past.
There are signs, however, of a well-nigh
universal increase of interest, of a genuine desire for knowledge
of the spiritual content of our Masonic system, and I am glad
to be able to offer to my Brethren some light and imperfect outline
of what I conceive to be the true purpose of our work, which may
tend to deepen their interest in the work of the Order they belong
to, and (what is of more moment still) help to make Masonry for
them a vital factor, and a living, serious reality, rather than
a mere pleasurable appendage to social life.
To state things briefly, Masonry offers us, in dramatic form and
by means of dramatic ceremonial a philosophy of the spiritual
life of man and a diagram of the process of regeneration. We shall
see presently that philosophy is not only consistent with the
doctrine of every religious system taught outside the ranks of
the Order, but that it explains, elucidates and more sharply defines,
the fundamental doctrines common to every religious system in
the world, whether past or present, whether Christian or non-Christian.
The religions of the world, though all aiming at teaching truth,
express that truth in different ways, and we are more prone to
emphasize the differences than to look for the correspondences
in what they teach. In some Masonic Lodges the candidate makes
his first entrance to the Lodge room amid the clash of swords
and the sounds of strife, to intimate to him that he is leaving
the confusion and jarring of the religious sects of the exterior
world, and is passing into a Temple wherein the Brethren dwell
together in unity of thought in regard to the basal truths of
life, truths which can permit of no difference or schism.
Allied with no external religious system itself, Masonry is yet
a synthesis, a concordat, for men of every race, of every creed,
of every sect, and its foundation principles being common to them
all, admit of no variation. "As it was in the beginning,
so it is now and ever shall be, into the ages of ages." Hence
it is that every Master of a Lodge is called upon to swear that
no innovation in the body of Masonry (i.e., in its substantial
doctrine) is possible, since it already contains a minimum, and
yet a sufficiency, of truth which none may add to nor alter, and
from which none may take away; and since the Order accords perfect
liberty of opinion to all men, the truths it has to offer are
entirely "free to" us according to our capacity to assimilate
them, whilst those to whom they do not appeal, those who think
they can find a more sufficing philosophy elsewhere, are equally
at liberty to be "free from" them, and men of honor
will find it their duty to withdraw from the Order rather than
suffer the harmony of thought that should characterize the Craft
to be disturbed by their presence.
The admission of every Mason into the Order is, we are taught,
"an emblematical representation of the entrance of all men
upon this mortal existence." Let us reflect a little upon
these pregnant words. To those deep persistent questionings which
present themselves to every thinking mind, What am I? Whence come
I? Whither go I?. Masonry offers emphatic and luminous answers.
Each of us, it tells us, has come from that mystical "East,"
the eternal source of all light and life, and our life here is
described as being spent in the "West" (that is, in
a world which is the antipodes of our original home, and under
conditions of existence as far removed from those we came from
and to which we are returning, as is West from East in our ordinary
computation of space). Hence every Candidate upon admission finds
himself, in a state of darkness, in the West of the Lodge. Thereby
he is repeating symbolically the incident of his actual birth
into this world, which he entered as a blind and helpless babe,
and through which in his early years, not knowing whither he was
going, after many stumbling and irregular steps, after many deviations
from the true path and after many tribulations and adversities
incident to human life, he may at length ascend, purified and
chastened by experience, to larger life in the eternal East. Hence
in the E.A. degree, we ask, "As a Mason, whence come you?"
and the answer is "From the West," since he supposes
that his life has originated in this world. But, in the advanced
degree of M.M. the answer is that he comes "From the East,"
for by this time the Mason is supposed to have so enlarged his
knowledge as to realize that the primal source of life is not
in the "West," not in this world; that existence upon
this planet is but a transitory sojourn, spent in search of "the
genuine secrets," the ultimate realities, of life; and that
as the spirit of man must return to God who gave it, so he is
now returning from this temporary world of "substituted secrets"
to that "East" from which he originally came.
As the admission of every candidate into a Lodge presupposes his
prior existence in the world without the Lodge, so our doctrine
presupposes that every soul born into this world has lived in,
and has come hither from, an anterior state of life. It has lived
elsewhere before it entered this world: it will live elsewhere
when it passes hence, human life being but a parenthesis in the
midst of eternity. But upon entering this world, the soul must
needs assume material form; in other words it takes upon itself
a physical body to enable it to enter into relations with the
physical world, and to perform the functions appropriate to it
in this particular phase of its career.
Need I say that the physical form with which we have all been
invested by the Creator upon our entrance into this world, and
of which we shall all divest ourselves when we leave the Lodge
of this life, is represented among us by our Masonic apron? This,
our body of mortality, this veil of flesh and blood clothing the
inner soul of us, this is the real "badge of innocence,"
the common "bond of friendship," with which the Great
Architect has been pleased to invest us all; this, the human body,
is the badge which is "older and nobler than that of any
other Order in existence": and though it be but a body of
humiliation compared with that body of incorruption which is the
promised inheritance of him who endures to the end, let us never
forget that if we never do anything to disgrace the badge of flesh
with which God has endowed each of us, that badge will never disgrace
us.
Brethren, I charge you to regard your apron as one of the most
precious and speaking symbols our Order has to give you. Remember
that when you first wore it was a piece of pure white lambskin;
an emblem of that purity and innocence which we always associate
with the lamb and with the new- born child. Remember that you
first wore it with the flap raised, it being thus a five-cornered
badge, indicating the five senses, by means of which we enter
into relations with the material world around us (our "five
points of fellowship" with the material world), but indicating
also by the triangular portion above, in conjunction with the
quadrangular portion below, that man's nature is a combination
of soul and body; the three-sided emblem at the top added to the
four-sided emblem beneath making seven, the perfect number; for,
as it is written in an ancient Hebrew doctrine with which Masonry
is closely allied, "God blessed and loved the number seven
more than all things under His throne," by which is meant
that man, the seven-fold being, is of the most cherished of all
the Creator's works. And hence also it is that the Lodge has seven
principal officers, and that a Lodge, to be perfect, requires
the presence of seven brethren; though the deeper meaning of this
phrase is that the individual man, in virtue of his seven-fold
constitution, in himself constitutes the "perfect Lodge,"
if he will but know himself and analyse his own nature aright.
To each of us also from our birth have been given three lesser
lights, by which the Lodge within ourselves may be illumined.
For the "sun" symbolizes our spiritual consciousness,
the higher aspirations and emotions of the soul; the "moon"
betokens our reasoning or intellectual faculties, which (as the
moon reflects the light of the sun) should reflect the light coming
from the higher spiritual faculty and transmit it into our daily
conduct; whilst "the Master of the Lodge" is a symbolical
phrase denoting the will-power of man, which should enable him
to be master of his own life, to control his own actions and keep
down the impulses of his lower nature, even as the stroke of the
Master's gavel controls the Lodge and calls to order and obedience
the Brethren under his direction. By the assistance of these lesser
lights within us, a man is enabled to perceive what is, again
symbolically, called the "form of the Lodge," i.e.,
the way in which his own human nature has been composed and constituted,
the length, breadth, height and depth of his own being. By their
help, too, he will perceive that he himself, his body and his
soul, are "holy ground," upon which he should build
the altar of his own spiritual life, an altar deeper which he
should suffer no "iron tool," no debasing habit of thought
or conduct, to defile. By them, he will perceive how Wisdom, Strength
and Beauty have been employed by the Creator, like three grand
supporting pillars, in the structure of his own organism. And
by these finally he will discern how that there is a mystical
"ladder of many rounds or staves," i.e., that there
are innumerable paths or methods by means of which men are led
upwards to the spiritual Light encircling us all, and in which
we live and move and have our being, but that of the three principal
methods, the greatest of these, the one that comprehends them
all and brings us nearest heaven, is Love, in the full exercise
of which God-like virtue a Mason reaches the summit of his profession;
that summit being God Himself, whose name is Love.
I cannot too strongly impress upon you,
Brethren, the fact that, throughout our rituals and our lectures,
the references made to the Lodge are not to the building in which
we meet. That building itself is intended to be but a symbol,
a veil of allegory concealing something else. "Know ye not"
says the great initiate St. Paul, "that ye are the temples
of the Most High; and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"
The real Lodge referred to throughout our rituals is our own individual
personalities, and if we interpret our doctrine in the light of
this fact we shall find that it reveals an entirely new aspect
of the purpose of our Craft.
It is after investment with the apron that the initiate is placed
in the N.E. corner. Thereby he is intended to learn that at his
birth into this world the foundation-stone of his spiritual life
was duly and truly laid and implanted within himself; and he is
charged to develop it; to create a superstructure upon it. Two
paths are open to him at this stage, a path of light and a path
of darkness; a path of good and a path of evil. The N.E. corner
is the symbolical dividing place between the two. In symbolical
language, the N. always signifies the place of imperfection and
un-development; in olden times the bodies of suicides, reprobates
and un-baptized children were always buried in the north or sunless
side of a churchyard. The seat of the junior members of the Craft
is allotted to the north, for, symbolically, it represents the
condition of the spiritually unenlightened man; the novice in
whom the spiritual light latent within him has not yet risen above
the horizon of consciousness and dispersed the clouds of material
interests and the impulses of the lower and merely sensual life.
The initiate placed in the N.E. corner is intended to see, then,
that on the one side of him is the path that leads to the perpetual
light of the East, into which he is encouraged to proceed, and
that on the other is that of spiritual obscurity and ignorance
into which it is possible for him to remain or relapse. It is
a parable of the dual paths of life open to each one of us; on
the one hand the path of selfishness, material desires and sensual
indulgence, of intellectual blindness and moral stagnation; on
the other the path of moral and spiritual progress, in pursuing
which one may decorate and adorn the Lodge within him with the
ornaments a jewels of grace and with the invaluable furniture
of true knowledge, and which he may dedicate, in all his actions,
to the service of God and of his fellow men and mark that of those
jewels some are said to be moveable and transferable, because
when displayed in our own lives and natures their influence becomes
transferred and communicated to others and helps to uplift and
sweeten the lives of our fellows; whilst some are immoveable because
they are permanently fixed and planted in the roots of our own
being, and are indeed the raw material which has been entrusted
to us to work out of chaos and roughness into due and true form.
The Ceremony of our first degree, then, is a swift and comprehensive
portrayal of the entrance of all men into, first, physical life,
and second, into spiritual life; and as we extend congratulations
when a child is born into the world, so also we receive with acclamation
the candidate for Masonry who, symbolically, is seeking for spiritual
re-birth; and herein we emulate what is written of the joy that
exists among the angels of heaven over every sinner who repents
and turns towards the light. The first degree is also eminently
the degree of preparation, of self-discipline and purification.
It corresponds with that symbolical cleansing accorded in the
sacrament of Baptism, which, in the churches, is, so to speak,
the first degree in the religious life; and which is administered,
appropriately, at the font, near the entrance of the church, even
as the act itself takes place at the entrance of the spiritual
career. For to all of us such initial cleansing and purifying
is necessary. As has been beautifully written by a fellow-worker
in the Craft:--
"'Tis scarcely true that souls come
naked down
To take abode up in this earthly town,
Or naked pass, of all they wear denied.
We enter slipshod and with clothes awry,
And we take with us much that by-and-by
May prove no easy task to put aside.
Cleanse, therefore, that which round about
us clings,
We pray Thee, Master, ere Thy sacred halls
We enter. Strip us of redundant things,
And meetly clothe us in pontificals.*
(* Strange Houses of Sleep by A. E Waite)
In the schools of the Mysteries, when aspirants for the higher
life were wont to quit the outer world and enter temples or sanctuaries
of initiation, prolonged periods were allotted to the practical
achievement of what is briefly summarized in our first degree.
We are told seven or more years was the normal period, though
less sufficed in worthy cases. The most severe tests of discipline,
of purity, of self-balance were required before a neophyte was
permitted to pass forward, and a reminiscence of these tests of
fitness is preserved in our own working by the conducting of the
candidate to the two wardens, and submitting him to a merely formal
trial of efficiency. For it is impossible today, as it was impossible
in ancient times, for a man to reach the heights of moral perfection
and spiritual consciousness which were then, and are now, the
goal and aim of all the schools of the Mysteries and all the secret
orders, without purification and trial. Complete stainlessness
of body, utter purity of mind, are absolute essentials to the
attainment of things of great and final moment "Who"
says Psalmist (and remember that the Psalms were the sacred hymns
used in the Hebrew Mysteries), "Who will go up to the hill
of the Lord, and ascend to His holy place? Even he that hath clean
hands and a pure heart"; whence it comes that we wear white
gloves and aprons as emblems that we have purified our hearts
and washed our hands in innocence. So also our Patron Saint (St.
John) teaches, "He who hath this hope in him purifieth himself,
even as He (i.e., the Master whom he is seeking) is pure."
For he who is not pure in body and mind: he who is enslaved by
passions and desires, or by bondage to the material interests
of this world, is, by the very fact of his uncleanness, prevented
from passing on. Nothing unclean or that defileth a man, we are
told, can enter into the kingdom; and, therefore, our candidates
are told that if they have " money or metals about them";
if, that is, they are subject to any physical attraction or mental
defilement, their real initiation into the higher things, of which
our ceremony is but a dramatic symbol, must be deferred and repeated
again and again until they are cleansed and fitted to pass on.
After purification come contemplation and enlightenment, which are the special subjects of the second degree. Aforetime the candidate for the Mysteries, after protracted discipline and purification enabling his mind to acquire complete control over his passions and his lower physical nature, was advanced, as he may advance himself today, to the study of his more interior faculties, to understand the science of the human soul, and to trace these faculties in their development from their elementary stage until he realizes that they connect with, and terminate in, the Divine itself. The secrets of his mental nature and the principles of intellectual life became at this stage gradually unfolded to his view. You will thus perceive, Brethren, that the F.C. degree, sometimes regarded by us as a somewhat uninteresting one, typifies in reality a long course of personal development requiring the most profound knowledge of the mental and psychical side of our nature. It involves not merely the cleansing and control of the mind, but a full comprehension of our inner constitution, of the more hidden mysteries of our nature and of spiritual psychology. In this degree it is that our attention is called to the fact that the Mason who has attained proficiency in this grade has been enabled to discover a sacred symbol, placed in the center of the building, and alluding to the G.G.O.T.U. Doubtless we have often asked ourselves what that phrase and what that symbol imply. Need I repeat that the building alluded to is not the edifice we meet in, but is our own selves, and that the sacred symbol at the center of the roof and of the floor of this outward temple is but symbolic of that which exists at the center of ourselves, and which was spoken of by the Christian Master when He proclaimed that "the kingdom of heaven is within you"; that at the depths of our own being, concealed beneath the heavy veils of the sensual, lower nature , there resides that vital and immortal principle, which is said to "allude to" the G.G. because it is nothing other than a spark of God Himself immanent within us. Over the old temples of the Mysteries was written the injunction "Man, know thyself, and thou shalt know the universe and God." Happy then is the Mason who has so far purified and developed his own nature as to realize in its fullness the meaning of the "sacred symbol" of the second degree, and found God present not outside but within himself. But in order to find the "perfect points of entrance" to this secret (and we are told elsewhere that "straight is the way and narrow the gate, and few there be that find it") emphasis again is laid in our teaching upon the necessity of complete moral rectitude, of utter exactness of thought, word and action, as exemplified by rigid observance of the symbolic principles of the square, level and plumb-rule.
Here again the symbolism of our work becomes
extremely profound and interesting. He who desires to rise to
the heights of his own being must first crush and crucify his
own lower nature and inclinations; he must perforce tread what
elsewhere is described as the way of the Cross; and that Cross
is indicated by the conjunction of those working tools (which
when united form a cross); and that "way" is involved
in the scrupulous performance of all that we know those working
tools signify. By perfecting his conduct, by struggles against
his own natural propensities, the candidate is working the rough
ashlar of his own nature into the perfect cube, and I would ask
you to observe also that the cube itself contains a secret, for
unfolded, it itself denotes and takes the form of the cross.
The inward development which the second degree symbolizes is typified
by the lowering of the triangular flap of the apron upon the rectangular
portion below. This is equivalent to the rite of Confirmation
in the Christian Churches. It denotes "the progress we have
made in the science," or in other words it indicates that
the higher nature of the man, symbolized by the trinity of spirit,
has descended into and is now permeating his lower nature. Hitherto,
in his state of ignorance and moral blindness, the spiritual part
of his nature has, as it were, but hovered above him; he has been
unconscious of its presence in his constitution; but now, having
realized its existence, the day-spring from on high has visited
him, and the nobler part of him descends into his lower nature,
illuminating and enriching it.
Now the man who so develops himself, speedily becomes more conscious
of the difficulties of his task, more sensitive to the obstacles
the life of the outer world places in the way of the spiritual
life. But he is taught to persist with fortitude and with prudence,
to develop the highest within him with "fervency and zeal."
Upon self scrutiny, too, i.e., upon entering into that "porchway"
of contemplation which like a winding staircase leads inward to
the Holy of Holies within himself, he realizes that difficulties
and obstacles placed in his way are utilized by the Eternal Wisdom
as the necessary means of developing the latent and potential
good in him, and that as the rough ashlar can only be squared
and perfected by chipping and polishing, so he also can be made
perfect only by toil and by suffering. He sees that difficulty,
adversity and persecution serve a beneficent purpose. These are
his "wages": and he learns to accept them "without
scruple and without diffidence, knowing that he is justly entitled
to them, and from the confidence he has in the integrity"
of that Employer who has sent him into this far-off world to prepare
the materials for building the temple of the heavenly city. And
so, as the sign peculiar to the degree suggests, he endeavors
to examine and lay bare his heart, to cast away all impurity from
it, and he stands, like Joshua, praying that the light of day
may be extended to him until he has accomplished the overthrow
of his own inward enemies and of every obstacle to his complete
development.
The aspirant who attains proficiency in the work of self-perfecting to which the F.C. grade alludes, has passed away from the N. side of the Lodge, the side of darkness and imperfection; and now stands on the S. E. side in the meridian sunlight of moral illumination (so far as the natural man may possess it), but yet still far removed from that fuller realization of himself and of the mysteries of his own nature which it is possible for the spiritual adept or Master Mason to attain. Before that attainment is reached there remains for him "that last and greatest trial" by which alone he can enter into the great consolations and make acquaintance with the supreme realities of existence. In the places where the great Mysteries have always been taught, what is ceremonially performed in our third degree is no mere symbolical representation as with us, but an actual, vital experience of a most severe character: one the nature of which can hardly be made intelligible, or even credible, to those unfamiliar with the subject. I refrain, therefore, from more than mere mention of it, observing only that it is one not involving physical death, and in this respect only is our ceremony in accord with the experience symbolized. For if you follow closely the raising ceremony, although distinct reference to the death of the body is made, yet such death is obviously intended to be merely symbolical of another kind of death, since the candidate is eventually restored to his former worldly circumstances and material comforts, and his earthly Masonic career is not represented as coming to a close at this stage. All that has happened in the third degree is that he has symbolically passed through a great and striking change: a rebirth, or regeneration of his whole nature. He has been "sown a corruptible body"; and in virtue of the self-discipline and self development he has undergone, there has been raised in him " an incorruptible body," and death has been swallowed up in the victory he has attained over himself. I sometimes fear that the too conspicuous display of the emblems and trappings of mortality in our Lodges is apt to create the false impression that the death to which the third degree alludes is the mere physical change that awaits all men. But a far deeper meaning is intended. The Mason who knows his science knows that the death of the body is only a natural transition of which he need have no dread whatever; he knows also that when the due time for it arrives, that transition will be a welcome respite from the bondage of this world, from his prison-like husk of mortality, and from the daily burdens incident to existence in this lower plane of life. All that he fears is that when the time comes, he may not be free from those "stains of falsehood and dishonor," those imperfections of his own nature, that may delay his after-progress. Not the death to which Masonry alludes, using the analogy of bodily death and under the veil of a reference to it, is that death-in-life to a man's own lower self which St. Paul referred to when he protested "I die daily." It is over the grave, not of one's dead body but of one's lower self, that the aspirant must walk before attaining to the heights. What is meant is that complete self-sacrifice and self-crucifixion which, as all religions teach, are essential before the soul can be raised in glory "from a figurative death to a reunion with the companions of its former toils" both here and in the unseen world. The perfect cube must pass through the metamorphosis of the Cross. The soul must voluntarily and consciously pass through a state of utter helplessness from which no earthly hand can rescue it, and in trying to raise him from which the grip of any succoring human hand will prove but a slip: until at length Divine Help itself descends from the Throne above and, with the "lion's grip" of almighty power, raises the faithful and regenerated soul to union with itself in an embrace of reconciliation and at-one-ment.
In all the schools of the Mysteries, as well as in all the great religions of the world, the attainment of the spiritual goal just described is enacted or taught under the veil of a tragic episode analogous to that of our third degree; and in each there is a Master whose death the aspirant is instructed he must imitate in his own person. In Masonry that prototype is Hiram Abiff: but it must be made clear that there is no historical basis whatever for the legendary account of Hiram's death. The entire story is symbolical and was purposely invented for the symbolical purposes of our teaching. If you examine it closely you will perceive how obvious the correspondence is between this story and the story of the death of the Christian Master related in the Gospels; and it is needless to say that the Mason who realizes the meaning of the latter will comprehend the former and the veiled allusion that is implied. In the one case the Master is crucified between the two thieves; in the other he is done to death between two villains. In the one case appear the penitent and the impenitent thief; in the other we have the conspirators who make a voluntary confession of their guilt and were pardoned, and the others who were found guilty and put to death; whilst the moral and spiritual lessons deducible from the stories correspond. As every Christian is taught that in his own life he must imitate the life and death of Christ, so every Mason is "made to represent one of the brightest characters recorded in our annals"; but as the annals of Masonry are contained in the volume of the Sacred Law and not elsewhere, it is easy to see who the character is who is alluded to. As that great authority and initiate of the Mysteries, St. Paul, taught, we can only attain to the Master's resurrection by "being made conformable unto His death," and we must die with Him if we are to be raised like Him": and it is in virtue of that conformity, in virtue of being individually made to imitate the Grand Master in His death, that we are made worthy of certain "points of fellowship" with Him: for they "five points of fellowship" of the third degree are the five wounds of Christ. The three years' ministry of the Christian Master ended with His death and, these refer to the three degrees of the Craft which also end in the mystical death of the Masonic candidate and his subsequent raising or resurrection.
The name Hiram Abiff signifies in Hebrew " the teacher (Guru, or enlightened one) from the Father ": a fact which may help you still further to recognize the concealed purpose of the teaching. Under the name of Hiram, then, and beneath a veil of allegory, we see an allusion to another Master; and it is this Master, this Elder Brother who is alluded to in our lectures, whose "character we preserve, whether absent or present," i.e., whether He is present to our minds or no, and in regard to whom we "adopt the excellent principle, silence," lest at any time there should be among us trained in some other than the Christian Faith, and to whom on that account the mention of the Christian Master's name might possibly prove an offence or provoke contention.
To typify the advance by the candidate at
this stage of his development, the apron here assumes greater
elaborateness. It is garnished with a light blue border and rosettes,
indicating that a higher than the natural light now permeates
his being and radiates from his person, and that the wilderness
of the natural man is now blossoming as the rose, in the flowers
and graces incident to his regenerated of nature; whilst upon
either side of the apron are seen two columns of light descending
from above, streaming into the depths of his whole being, and
terminating in the seven-fold tassels which typify the seven-fold
prismatic spectrum of the supernal Light. He is now lord of himself;
the true Master Mason; able to govern that lodge which is within
himself; and as he has passed through the three degrees of purifying
and self-perfecting, and squared, leveled, and harmonized his
triple nature of body, soul and spirit, he also wears, on attaining
Mastership, the triple Tau; which comprises the form of a level,
but is also the Hebrew form of the Cross; the three crosses upon
the apron thus corresponding with the three crosses of Calvary.
To sum up the import of the teaching of the three degrees, it
is clear, therefore, that from grade to grade the candidate is
being led from an old to an entirely new quality of life. He begins
his Masonic career as the natural man; he ends it by becoming
through its discipline, a regenerated perfected man. To attain
this transmutation, this metamorphosis of himself, he is taught
first to purify and subdue his sensual nature; then to purify
and develop his mental nature; and finally, by utter surrender
of his old life and losing his soul to save it, he rises from
the dead a Master, a just man made perfect, with larger consciousness
and faculties, an efficient instrument for use by the Great Architect
in His plan of rebuilding the Temple of fallen humanity, and capable
of initiating and advancing other men to a participation in the
same great work.
This - the evolution of man into superman - was always the purpose
of the ancient Mysteries, and the real purpose of modern Masonry
is, not the social and charitable purposes to which so much attention
is paid, but the expediting of the spiritual evolution of those
who aspire to perfect their own nature and transform it into a
more god-like quality. And this is a definite science, a royal
art, which it is possible for each of us to put into practice;
whilst to join the Craft for any other purpose than to study and
pursue this science is to misunderstand its meaning. Hence it
is that no one should apply to enter Masonry unless from the deepest
promptings of his own heart, as it hungers for light upon the
problem of its own nature. We are all imperfect beings, conscious
of something lacking to us that would make us what, in our best
moments, we fain would be. What is that which is lacking to us?
"What is that which is lost?" And the answer is "The
genuine secrets of a Master Mason," the true knowledge of
ourselves, the conscious realization of our divine potentialities.
The very essence of the Masonic doctrine is that all men in this world are in search of something in their own nature which they have lost, but that with proper instruction and by their own patience and industry they may hope to find. Its philosophy implies that this temporal world is the antipodes of another and more real world from which we originally came and to which we may accelerate our return by such a course of self-knowledge and self-discipline as our teaching inculcates. It implies that this present world is the place where the symbolic stones and timber are being prepared "so far off" from that mystical Jerusalem where one day they will be found put together and, collectively, to constitute that Temple which even now is being built without hands and without the noise or help of metal tools. And this world, therefore, being but a transient temporary one for us, it is necessarily one of shadows, images and merely "substituted secrets," until such time as being raised not merely symbolically but actually, in character and knowledge and consciousness, to the sublime degree of Master Mason, we fit ourselves to learn something of the "genuine secrets," something of the living realities, that lurk and live in concealment behind the outward show of things. All human life, having originated in the mystical "East " and journeyed into this world which, with us, is the "West," must return again to its source. To quote again the verse of the Brother I have already cited;--
"From East to West the soul her journey
takes;
At many bitter founts her fever slakes;
Halts at strange taverns by the way to feast,
Resumes her load, and painful progress makes
Back to the East."
Masonry, by means of a series of dramatic representations, is
intended to furnish those who care to discover its purport and
to take advantage of the hints it throws out in allegorical form,
with an example and with instructions by which our return to the
"East" may be accelerated. It refers to no architecture
of a mundane kind, but to the architecture of the soul's life.
It is not in itself a religion; but rather a dramatized and intensified
form of religious processes inculcated by every religious system
in the world. For there is no religion but teaches the lesson
of the necessity of bodily purification of our first degree; none
but emphasizes that of the second degree, that mental, moral and
spiritual developments are essential and will lead to the discovery
of a certain secret center "where truth abides in fullness,"
and that center is a "point within a circle" of our
own nature from which no man or Mason can ever err, for it is
the divine kingdom latent within us all, into which we have as
yet failed to enter. And there is none but insists upon the supreme
lesson of self-sacrifice and mystical death to the things of this
world so graphically portrayed in our third degree; none but indicates
that in that hour of greatest darkness the light of the primal
divine spark within us is never wholly extinguished, and that
by loyalty to that light, by patience and by perseverance, time
and circumstances will restore to us the "genuine secrets,"
the ultimate truths and realities of our own nature. We are here,
Masonry teaches, as it were in captivity, by the waters of Babylon
and in a strange land; and our doctrine truly tells us that the
richest harmonies of this life are as nothing in comparison with
the songs of Zion; and that, even when we are installed into the
highest eminences this world or the Craft may offer, it were better
that our right hand should forget its cunning and that we should
fling the illusory treasures of this transitory world behind our
backs, than in all our doings fail to remember the Jerusalem that
lies beyond.
Our teaching is purposely veiled in allegory and symbol and its
deeper import does not appear upon the surface of the ritual itself.
This is partly in correspondence with human life itself and the
world we live in, which ale themselves but allegories and symbols
of another life and the veils of another world; and partly intentional
also, so that only those who have reverent and understanding minds
may penetrate into the more hidden meaning of the doctrine of
the Craft.
The deeper secrets in Masonry, like the deeper secrets of life,
are heavily veiled; are closely hidden. They exist concealed beneath
a great reservation; but who so knows anything of them knows also
that they are "many and valuable," and that they are
disclosed only to those who act upon the hint given in our lectures,
"Seek and ye shall find; ask and ye shall have; knock and
it shall be opened unto you." The search may be long and
difficult, but great things are not acquired without effort and
search; but it may be affirmed that to the candidate who is "properly
prepared" (in a much fuller sense than we conventionally
attach to that expression) there are doors leading from the Craft
that, when knocked, will assuredly open and admit him to places
and to knowledge he at present recks little of. For him, too,
who would enter upon the greater initiations, the same rule applies
as that which was symbolically represented upon his first entrance
into the Order, but this time it will no longer be a symbol, but
a realistic fact. He will find, I mean, that a drawn sword is
always threatening in front of him, and that a cable-tow is still
around his neck. Danger, indeed, awaits the candidate who would
rush precipitately and in a state of moral unfitness into the
deeper mysteries of his being, which are indeed "serious,
solemn and awful"; but, on the other hand, for him who has
once entered upon the path of light it is moral suicide to turn
back.
And now, Brethren, to bring to an end this
brief and imperfect survey of the deeper meaning and purposes
of our Craft, I pray that what is now spoken may help to prove
to some of you a further restoration to that light which is, at
all times, the predominant wish of our hearts. It rests with ourselves
whether Masonry remains for us what upon its outward and superficial
side appears to be merely a series of symbolic rites, or whether
we allow those symbols to pass into our lives and become realities
therein. Whatever formalities we may have gone through in connection
with our admission into the Order, we cannot be said to have been
"regularly initiated" into Masonry so long as we regard
the Craft as merely an incident of social life and treat its ceremonies
as but rites of an archaic and perfunctory nature. The Craft,
as I have already suggested, was given out to the world, from
more secret sources still, as a great experiment and means of
grace, and as a great opportunity for those who cared to avail
themselves of what is little known and little taught outside certain
sanctuaries of concealment. It was intended to furnish forth an
epitome or synopsis, in dramatic form, of the spiritual regeneration
of man; and to throw out hints and suggestions that might lead
those capable of discerning its deeper purpose and symbolism into
of still deeper initiations than the merely superficial ones enacted
in our Lodges. For, as on the external side of the Order we may
be called to occupy positions of honor and office in the Provincial
Grand Lodge, or may enter other Masonic grades outside the Craft,
so also upon its internal side there are eminences to which we
may be called that, whilst offering us no social distinction and
no visible advancement, are yet really the true prizes, the most
valuable attainments, of Masonic desire. To this goal all may
attain who truly seek to do so and who prepare the way for themselves
by appropriating the truths lying beneath the superficial allegory
and the symbolic veils of the Craft teaching. And since there
seems today a genuine and widespread desire on the part of many
members of the Order to enter into a fuller understanding of what
the Order itself conceals rather than reveals, I feel I should
not be discharging my duties as a Master in the Craft did I not
take advantage of that position to share with them some measure
at least of what I have been able to glean for myself.
But, finally, I must ask you to remember that, in accordance with
the general design of our system, every Master of a Lodge is but
a symbol and a substitution, and that behind him, and behind all
other the grand officers of the Masonic hierarchy, there stands
the "Great White Head," the "Great Initiator"
and Grand Master of all true Masons throughout the Universe, whether
members of our Craft or not. To whom let us all bow in gratitude
for the invaluable gift accorded to us in this our Order; and
to whose protection, and to whose enlightening guidance into its
deeper mysteries, I recommend you all.
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