The Entrustment repeats the procedure adopted in the First Degree and our comments upon it in our study of that Degree apply equally here. Of the real secrets nothing can be said in writing, and the Obligation prohibits their mention except in special circumstances. Of the formal secrets we can only repeat that the ceremonial signs and tokens serve as the clues to the actual secrets, which can only be acquired by private effort and experience. To quote a leading authority (A. Pike), "What is worth knowing in Masonry is never openly taught. The symbols are displayed, but they are mute. It is by hints only, and these the least noticeable and apparently insignificant, that the Initiate is put upon the track of the hidden secret. It was never intended that the masses of Masons should know the meaning of the Blue Lodge Degrees, and no pains were spared to conceal the fact."
The following remarks may, however, help to the better understanding of the signs and tokens.
The Step. As before, a pre-requisite to this is perfect physical erectness, with the feet Masonically quadrated, implying that, for real progress, physical and moral rectitude must reflect each other and the heart's intuitions be checked by and balanced with intellectual perception. Then from that position, a further forward step may be taken in this Degree; again a single step only. We saw that the First Degree step covered a theoretical period of seven years, allotted to purifying and re-ordering the sensenature. The Second Degree step covers five further years, devoted to the purifying, control and illumination of the mind; these five years thus corresponding with the five steps of the winding staircase.
Seven and five make twelve, a number always found associated with extension and fullness of development. The space of our solar system is bounded by a belt of twelve zodiacal signs; our clocks divide time into periods of twelve hours. The "chosen people" were ranged into twelve tribes. The Christ radiated his influence and teaching through twelve Apostles. The cubical Holy City of the Apocalypse had twelve gates, and the Perfect Ashlar (which the bellow Craft- Mason aspires to become) has twelve edges. Geometrically all these twelves are exemplifications of that wonderful figure of completeness, the dodecahedron or solid figure with twelve equal bases and comprising twelve pentagons, which provides the philosophical mystic with matter for endless contemplation.
Conformably with this the Initiate who had fulfilled these two periods of seven and five years, mastering his sense-nature and attaining a high degree of mental illumination, was formerly said to be, mystically, "twelve years old". It was this mystical age which Jesus is described (Luke 2 ; 42) as having attained when his abnormal wisdom and insight amazed the official teachers of his time. Solomon records (Wisdom 7; 17-21) the wonderful penetrative insight that came to him in his youth from the luminous uprush of wisdom into his mind as the result of his previous right living and aspiration for light. "All such things (he says) as are either secret or manifest, them I know. For Wisdom, which is the worker of all things, taught me. . . . and in, all ages, entering into holy souls, she maketh there friends of God and prophets."
These examples from the V.S.L. repeat themselves "in all ages" and become re-exemplified in every one who lives out the implications of our Second Degree. It is possible for every Fellow Craft Brother to become "twelve years old" and to share with the legendary head of our Craft that "wisdom of Solomon" which indeed still floods and saturates with supra-sensual Light the understanding of those who yield themselves to their utmost limit to "obedience to the Divine precepts" enshrined in this Second Degree of ours. If confirmation of these assertions be needed, it may readily be found in the numerous psychological studies available today of instances of expanded and "cosmic" consciousness.
The Sign. This is a single Sign with a threefold gesture. It is probably the oldest Sign in the world, being traceable to every ancient country and race. Like our other Signs, having no possible relation to the operative builder's trade, it must be regarded as connected with spiritual science and the education of the soul. This is confirmed by our Ritual's reference to its having been used at a time when Joshua was "fighting the battles of the Lord,"* [*In many Lodges a serious error is perpetuated in saying that the sign was "used by Joshua in the Valley of Jehoshophat." For this there is no biblical or other justification. The passage in Exodus 17, 10-13 has been confused with that in Joshua 10, 11-13. In the latter passage no mention of a sign is made; in the former a sign, but not that of our Degree, was given by Moses on the heights whilst Joshua fought in the plains ("Rephidim') below, not in "the valley of Jehoshopat" as often wrongly worded.] an obvious reference to the conflict between the good and evil, the higher principles and the lower tendencies, in man himself. But the Sign is far older than Hebrew history and embodies a host of ideas that cannot be explained here. Indeed a whole treatise might be devoted to the Masonic signs in even then exoteric significance, but their vital interpretation becomes known only to those who learn it from a qualified teacher or by private experimental use of them. For once more it cannot be too earnestly repeated that all our Signs are provided for private use out of Lodge as well as for ceremonial use within it, and that they arc not mere formal gestures but acts of worship, into which one's understanding must enter so fully that the outer signum becomes a faithful reflection of the habitual quality of mind of him who uses it. It is one thing, and a vain one, to give a sign in ignorance of what it means; it is quite another, and one of potent value, to give it "with intention", with full awareness of its implications and as a sacramental reflex of one's spiritual condition. Whoever has learned to do this will know how extremely appropriate and valuable our Signs are, and to what varied and beneficent purposes they can be applied.
Now the First Degree Sign implies (among much else) humility; the humbling (to the point of removal) of the head or natural carnal reason in the presence of the great mystery of Being, of which we, as initiates, are seeking to learn something. The Second Degree Sign, on the other hand, refers (also among much else) to the need for purity, fidelity and perseverance of heart in the pursuit of that mystery. In each case these virtues humility, purity, fidelity, perseverance - must become the habitual ingrained features of the Mason's soul, which then will of itself become a living sign, apart from any physical gesture he may casually use. On a previous page we referred to the question in the E.A. Lecture "How do you know a Mason by day?" and to the answer, "By seeing him and observing the sign"; not merely the ceremonial sign (which no one goes about publicly displaying), but by instant insight into his inner being and observing whether it exhibits the virtue to which that sign relates. And as no Mason may enter his earthly Lodge unless duly clothed and in possession of the appropriate sign, so we may be assured that on the higher planes of life he will be unable to gain entrance to the Grand Lodge Above if his soul fails to exhibit those inward Signs of grace which the bodily ceremonial signs are meant to he a reflex expression.
Let us reflect now for a moment upon what we call the Sign of Perseverance. Perseverance in the work of the Masonic life is every Brother's duty; in the First Degree every Candidate pledges himself to "persevere". In this Degree the duty of perseverance is still further emphasized by a special sign. As previously mentioned, motion (which involves perseverance) is inseparable from life; hence in one of its many implications our Sign of Perseverance is the equivalent of the ancient pastern Swastika, the emblem of perpetual motion and of the eternally persevering Divine Energy - whirling into manifestation and differentiating itself into creatural life and form. Observe that, like the Swastika or Fire Cross, our Sign displays a series of squares, built up out of horizontal and vertical lines, and therefore is especially appropriate to a Lodge which is "opened upon the Square".
Everything in Nature tends to evolve from the horizontal to the upright and to comply with the principle and the form of the builders' Square. The Great Architect's Compasses define the circular area in which Nature is to work. Thereupon she begins to "lay down levels and prose horizontals" and afterwards to erect vertical lines at a right angle to them. She prepares the level strata of soil and sedimentary rock, and then, as if dissatisfied with these, the volcanic energy of her fiery center proceeds to tilt them on end to heave up Mountain peaks in an effort to attain an upright position. Look at a mountain pine-tree, the most primitive, the most "perfectly erect" and, in virtue of its erectness, perhaps the most graceful of trees; it is Nature's first effort to set tip a vertical vegetable at a right angle to the earth's mineral surface. Every spire of grass stands at a right angle to the soil it grows from. Horizontal reptiles, worms and creeping things, learn eventually to stand up and evolve at last into the vertical biped. With what immense and patient perseverance through axons of time, has Nature succeeded in producing from protoplasmic slime a creature able to "stand perfectly erect", physically and morally, and capable of himself continuing that perseverance still further from Nature to Nature's God!
"The capacity to stand erect (says Tagore in his Hibbert Lectures for 1930, ['The Religion of Man'] has given our body its freedom of posture, making it easy for us to turn on all sides and realize ourselves at the center of things. Physically it symbolizes the fact that while animals have for their progress the prolongation of a narrow line, Man has the enlargement of a circle. As a center he finds his meaning in a wide perspective and realizes himself in the magnitude of his circumference".
Hence the propriety and deep significance of our Sign of Perseverance. Nature has perseveringly built man's body to the state of erectness and provided him with a physical vehicle to the limit of her powers. There her work ends; from that point she leaves man to continue the building work with like perseverance and to promote his own advancement to spiritual heights beyond her jurisdiction.
A man standing in the position of the Candidate about to be entrusted with the secrets of this Degree is Nature's finished product. She leaves him now to continue her work himself, to carry it on to still loftier heights, to become the shaper of his own soul, the squarer of his own living stone, to which work he must apply the same perseverance as did Nature from whose quarry lie has been drawn.
Hence we are given this Sign of Perseverance. No wonder that this sign is of such age and universality ; no wonder that the earliest guardians of our race taught it to primitive man from whom it has reached us Masons of to-day, still providing a clue to secrets and mysteries of life. In all ages and lands, barbaric and civilised, it has served as an act of prayer, worship, self-dedication; whilst for Initiates it is of potent use in other ways,-ways to which the rule of silence attaches.
The Word. Not until alter the taking of the Step and the use of the Sign have been disclosed is the ceremonial word imparted. From this we may deduce that no one will learn the real secrets of the Degree until he has first qualified for them by undergoing file necessary preliminary discipline.
Like that in the First Degree, the word is a biblical one, and the two words are meant to he used in combination; they are as inseparable as the two symbolic pillars at the entrance of Solomon's Temple. (At one time both words were imparted in the First Degree, not separately as now).
Solomon's Temple, like many earlier ones, was a symbolic structure, figurative of the architecture of the human organism. Near its entrance, but not inside it, stood two pillars, representing the metaphysical principles upon which that organism is based The first of these is our B. which is biblically translated as "Strength", but really means primal energy, the basic dynamic force behind all manifestation, the "Fire" (or electrical energy) which the earliest philosophers called "the father of all things". The second principle (or "pillar'') necessarily involves something opposite but complementary to the first. If the first is active energy and power, the second implies resistance to it; inertia; a passive, steadying, restrictive element. And this is precisely what the word J. means. Speaking broadly and in modern terms, B. means spirit and J. the form or body which clothes spirit but yet limits its action. Of these two every man is compounded. Without an origin in spirit we should not be mortal or immortal beings; without a material body and environment to limit and check our incorporeal fiery energies, our spirits would remain unstabilized abstractions. These two opposite principles are present in ourselves; and our business is to bring them into perfect balance.
Now the word J. is a shortened form of the
Hebrew word "Jehoiakin", which literally means "Jah
establishes" or makes firm; Jah being an abbreviation of
Jehovah. Taking B. and J. together the meaning is "God stabilizes
fire" (or spirit); i.e. God individualizes undifferentiated
spirit into distinctive human beings and, by subjecting it to
material conditions and limitations, renders it stable and differentiated,
(to use a simple analogy, diffused electricity, which manifests
destructively as lightning, can be so controlled and harnessed
as to serve constructively in globes of electric light). This
may be taken as a modern paraphrase of "In strength will
I establish this My house that it may stand firm". For God's
"house" is man and the building of man from the quarry-stone
of unconditioned Nature into a strongly individualized living
stone, perfect in all its parts and redounding in honor to the
builder, is the whole aim and end of the Masonic Craft.
In the union of B. and J., then, the Candidate is taught to see
that the two opposite but complementary "pillars" or
principles are blended in himself. Both B. (spirit) and J. (matter),
are present in him; he is himself a combination of dynamic energy
and of a static inert principle opposed to spirit, but necessary
for the restraint and education of his spirit. For spirit to be
effective needs confinement in body; and body, to become perfect,
must be suffused and sublimated by spirit; whilst to be "established
in strength and stand firm" implies the attainment of perfect
balance and harmony of these two opposites. (Other emblems indicating
the same truth are the interlaced triangles forming "King
Solomon's Seal", and the United Square and Compasses).
In a duly equipped Lodge two moveable pillars are employed as part of the regular furniture, one (B) colored white, and the other (J) dark, and at appropriate parts of the Ceremony the Candidate is placed between them to signify that the two opposed principles must be equilibrated in himself. For at present, with most of us, spirit and body are far from being balanced and harmonized, and the office of the Craft, as of all Initiation Schools, is to assist its members to a knowledge of themselves so that they may reduce their disordered principles into unity and concord. Few Lodges, however, possess such pillars or understand their meaning; hence the desirability of providing instruction upon a point that stands at the very threshold of Masonic science, just as the pillars themselves stood at the entrance to King Solomon's symbolic temple.
"I come from between the pillars"
is a frequent utterance by the Candidate in Egyptian rituals far
older than Solomon's Temple, and it signified "I have trodden
the narrow way and balanced the good and evil in myself".
In the Telesterium or great Initiation Hall of the temple at Delphi
there are said to be the pediments of two stone pillars between
which, authorities have suggested, the Candidate had to stand
and pass through. They are so close together that in standing
between them he touched both, uniting them as it were in his own
person, whilst to squeeze through them was a matter of effort
and difficulty. Hence the references elsewhere to "the narrow
way", to "passing through the eye of a needle"
and to "the street which is called Straight," (Acts
9 ; 11).
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