Following the testing of the Candidate's knowledge comes one of the most illuminating episodes in our Masonic Ritual. Although only a preliminary to the Ceremony and, as such, too often regarded as a formality of small moment, it sounds the keynote of the Degree and introduces us to a whole range of new and instructive ideas. This is the entrusting of the Candidate with a passport by which he may claim re-admission to the Lodge after leaving it to undergo his further preparation.
This passport calls for detailed notice. It consists of a word, a token, and an emblem; and it is entrusted to him because he has himself earned it; it is his reward for his labors in the First Degree and for having satisfied the knowledge tests to which he has just been subjected.
First as to the word. It is a Hebrew word, signifying in English "sprouting forth". It is given to the Candidate as a title expressive of himself at this juncture. For, as the result of his work in the First Degree and of the "trials and approbations" he has there undergone, new life has germinated within him. He is already a changed man and beginning to "sprout forth" spiritually; the inner forces of his soul have begun to organize and manifest themselves in his thoughts, his conduct, his speech, and his person. To a trained eye this spiritual change is easily perceptible. "How do you know a Mason by day?" (i.e., exoterically), asks a subtle question in the E.A. Lecture; and the equally cryptic reply is "By seeing him and observing the sign". But the sign. observed is not the formal gesture of salute; it is the perceptible radiance of new life from within, suffusing and issuing from the man, who is intently building the temple of his own soul. That is the true Mason's "sign", and only those can observe it in-others who can display it themselves. A further question asks "How do you know a Mason by night?" (esoterically). The answer "By feeling the grip and hearing the word" will be intelligible to those who know how real a thing is that "mystic tie" which, in spiritually advanced Brethren, binds soul to soul into conscious contact and inter-communion.
"They can parley without meeting ;
Need is none of forms of greeting
They can well communicate In their innermost estate."
Next, the token or pass-grip. This is given in a particular way which cannot be written about and must be left to the discernment of Brethren. But a hint may be given. As the E.A. Lecture teaches, there are two places where Initiates traditionally meet, on the "high hills" (or as is often called "the Mount of Initiation") and in the "low valleys" between those hills. The form of greeting given in the latter differs from that given on the former and indicates the rank attained by the Brother giving it.
Lastly, the emblem of corn growing near water. Why is this emblem used? The short answer is that the ear of corn is a symbol of the Candidate's own soul-growth, nourished by the fall upon it of the Living Water from above. With it may be read the passage in the first of the Psalms, "the righteous man is as a tree planted by the waterside which bringeth forth its fruit in due season", but in view of its great antiquity and use in the Ancient Mysteries it is desirable to explain it at greater length and connect its use in the Craft with its use in antiquity.
In the Egyptian Rituals the Candidate, holding an ear of corn fertilized by the sacred water of the Nile, declared "I am a germ of eternity!" and at his death grains of corn were buried with him as emblems of immortality. At Eleusis one of the most advanced and secret initiation rites was that in which an ear of corn was presented to the Candidate, when the "mysteries of Ceres" associated with it were revealed to him and he was raised, by certain secret methods, to consciousness of his own deathlessness. Today, at the consecration of every Masonic Lodge, grains of corn are scattered to the four quarters of space; our Second Degree Lodge Board displays growing corn, with a stalk of which each Candidate for the Degree becomes personally identified; whilst the "full corn in the ear" is prominently exhibited in gold embroidery on the full dress collars of all grand Lodge officers as an emblem that what once was sown in them as bare grain has at last ripened to full and prolific fruitage. In entrusting the Candidate with the ear of corn our Craft is therefore perpetuating a sacred practice of extreme antiquity and invested with a wealth of significance little thought about today but deserving of prolonged reflection. Why is corn used in preference to any other symbol of growth? The traditional secret teaching is briefly this: Corn is a "Sacred plant". Its source has always puzzled the botanists. It is not indigenous to this world; it is never found, like other cereals and seeded grasses, in a wild state, from which its growth has been stimulated by intensive culture. This golden, graceful, prolific, and needful plant, it was taught, was never a growth of this earth, but a gift of the Gods who in the dawn of time transported it to our world from another planet with the double purpose of providing the staple food of humanity and of giving man an emblem of his own soul and of its infinite and prolific potentialities. (This ancient tradition is repeated in Psalm 78; 24-25, A.V., "He gave them of the corn of heaven; man did eat angels' food").
So, too, with the human soul. Like the corn, it is not indigenous to this time-world but is a native of eternity, whence it has become transported and sown as bare grain in the individualized patch of earth constituting the human body. There, like a seed of natural corn, it is subjected to the opposing forces of Nature, to the painful process of disintegration, dying and rising again, multiplied exceedingly as the result of the experience. Once again the Scriptures state the ancient doctrine:- "He that goeth forth (into the trials of incarnation) weeping, bearing precious seed, shall come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him" (Ps. 126, 6). The truth is embedded even in secular folklore in the old ballad of "John Barleycorn," the "hero bold" who, however beaten upon by storms, however often cut down and threshed, never failed to reassert himself and come to life again more vigorously than ever.
When, in founding a Lodge, the Consecrating Officer scatters corn to the four quarters of it, he is performing a profoundly sacramental act for the instruction of those who form the Lodge. He is emulating in small the cosmic activity of the Great Sower who continually goes forth sowing souls in space, like grain, which fall into natural earthly bodies that they may grow and be raised therefrom as spiritual bodies.
This, then, explains why in the Craft today, as in the Ancient Mysteries, there is presented to the Candidate at this particular moment an ear of corn ripening near a fall or flow of water. It is intended as a similitude of himself at this stage of his spiritual growth. It could not appropriately be revealed to him earlier, because until a man has made good headway in the First Degree work of purifying his sensual nature, tilling and weeding the soil of his personal earth-plot, acquiring virtue, and weaning his mind more away from material interests, he cannot be "permitted to enter upon the more hidden paths of his own nature" or to experience any change or growth in himself. But having submitted himself to this discipline, he at once becomes self-qualified for advancement to deeper truths; he automatically prepares his own passport to a realm of new and spiritual ideas; he can think of himself as a growing ear of wheat destined to ripen in due time into abundant corn that wit sustain himself and, haply, serve as bread of life to others.
Of the many gems of symbolism in our Ritual there is perhaps none more sparkling with significance than this ear of corn. It is dealt with here at length because it is not an emblem to be carelessly passed by or treated as a casual ceremonial detail. It is a symbol meant to be personally used. It is given us as an idea to be taken into our private meditation and mentally dwelt upon until it ceases to be a symbol and the truth veiled by it breaks upon our consciousness as an irrefutable self-convincing light. The lesson the ancient Initiate was trained to learn from it was: "I am a germ of the Eternal! 'Sprouting forth' is my name, for the hitherto latent energies and faculties of my soul are now beginning to germinate." And the Mason of to-day who is in earnest with his subject is meant to realize the same truth and to see, in this simple episode of entrustment with the passport to a higher Degree, the promise of his own immortality and the evidence of the illimitable potentialities open to his own soul.
After the presentation of this emblematic passport the Candidate retires; actually for a few moments only, to make his ceremonial preparation for his advancement; but symbolically for a long period, during which he will devote himself to reflection upon the mystical ear of corn and fall of water and in the light of their significance prepare his heart and mind for a new accession of Light from on high.
The preparation of his person now differs in certain details from that in the former Degree. As was explained in our study of that Degree, advancement to Light and Wisdom is gradual, orderly, progressive; and one's preparation for it must be correspondingly so; "line upon line; precept upon precept; here a little and there a little." The sense-nature must be brought into subjection and the practice of virtue be acquired before the mind can be educated; the mind, in turn, must be disciplined and controlled before truths that transcend the mind can be perceived.
In the First Degree, therefore, the symbolic preparation had reference primarily to the Candidate's sense nature, which he submitted to humiliation and self-denial, applying an emblem of torture to his flesh when taking his Obligation.
In the Second Degree his dedication is that of his intellectual nature, his mind, and the symbolic preparation is varied accordingly and complementarily. The reason, of course, is that in the work of the First Degree certain energies are required to be active and others passive, whilst in the Second Degree their relationship must be reversed. When the mind, for instance, is busy or called to concentrate, the senses must he quiescent, and vice versa. Brethren may he left to think out for themselves why first the right and then the left side of the body is divested in the successive Degrees, with the hint that the right side is associated with active effort and the left with passive receptivity.
The h.w. and c.t. are dispensed with in this Degree as unnecessary at this stage of the Candidate's progress. But in other respects the bodily preparation implies the same willing renunciation and self-detachment from material and mental possessions as in the former Degree, in expectation of a higher good, and the same meekness in following whatever path may lead him to his goal.
Thus prepared and entrusted with the emblem proclaiming his title to advancement, he is permitted to approach the Lodge in his quest for a further accession of Light.
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