I - THE PAST
Beginnings, whether of nations, religions, institutions, or even of the world and life itself, are notoriously obscure and difficult of precise fixation. The reason is that nothing actually "begins" to be, but there merely takes place a transformation into new conditions of something that pre-existed in other conditions. Call the point or moment at which the change occurs a "beginning" if you wish; it will be found that such beginning is but an effect generated by, and issuing from, interior causes. Life itself does not, at physical birth, begin to be; it merely then enters physical conditions and assumes physical guise. A corresponding change occurs at the birth or beginning of human institutions; they are developments and formalizations of something which previously existed in a fluid incohesive condition. This is the case with Masonry, and accounts for the tradition that it is as old as man himself, whatever forms it has assumed, and that it is of Divine origin.
Modern Speculative Freemasonry had a beginning in the early years of the 8th century, but only in the sense that in 1717 originated that which afterwards developed into, and now subsists as, the English Masonic Constitution. Masonry itself existed long before that time, and in two forms: (1) exoterically, in the Operative Building Guilds, and (2) esoterically, in a variety of secret communities of mystics and occultists, having no relation to the practical building trade but often using builders' terminology for symbolical purposes of their own.
Modern Masonry is a blend of both of these; its constitutions, charges, rituals, and instruction lectures incorporate elements drawn from each of them. The Ancient Charge, for instance, which is delivered to every Masonic candidate on admission to the Order today, is an example of what has come over from the Operative Masons. It is patently an instruction of the kind one would expect to find given to a youth on becoming entered as an apprentice to a handicraft and embarking upon adult and civic responsibilities; it is a mere admonition to him to be a moral man, a worthy citizen, a creditable workman and member of his trade-guild, to fear God, honor the King, love his country, and generally educate and improve himself. It does not contain the least reference to any knowledge or wisdom of an extraordinary kind, or suggest any vestige of acquaintance with subjects of a mystical or occult character.
But on turning to the ceremonial rituals, especially that of the Third Degree, and to the "Traditional History" and instruction lectures, we find, mixed up with references to the Operative Builders' trade, matters of a highly esoteric and mystical nature, having no possible operative or materialistic connection and not to be thought of as associated with the technical equipment of a workman in material stone and brick.
This esoteric element descended, of course, not from the Operative Guilds, but from less public organizations of symbolic or mystical Masons, and it is the latter alone whose necessarily obscure history and purpose repay investigation at this time of day.
These organizations were the representatives
of a stream of Hermetic tradition and practice, the upper reaches
of which go back into pre-Christian times, into Egypt, and to
the Rabbinical mystics and Kabbalists, among whom existed a secret,
guarded lore of the Cosmos and of human life; a lore which found
only partial, though cryptic, expression in the Hebrew Scriptures
in terms of building. With them the building and the subsequent
vicissitudes of Solomon's Temple (whether this was ever an historical
material erection or not) provided a great glyph or mythos of
the up-building of the human soul, whether considered individually
or collectively; and as the course of Hebrew history advanced
and the stream of circumstances and mystical tradition widened
into its Christian development, the same symbolic terminology
continued to be used.
Accordingly the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse are
found to teem with Masonic imagery and allusions to spiritual
building. It is in these that the human soul becomes expressly
declared to be the real Temple pre-figured by the previous historic
or quasi-historic one. A spiritual Chief Corner-stone, rejected
of certain builders, is mentioned; one in which the entire social
fabric is to grow together into a single universal Temple. St.
John himself, as the "beloved disciple" or most advanced
Initiate of the Christian Master, becomes, according to the esoteric
tradition, his Chief Warden and entrusted as every Senior Warden
in our symbolic lodges is with the task of keeping order in the
West and, after the days of his flesh, of occultly controlling
from the heavens the development of the law of Christ in the Occidental
world. Hence he became, and still is acknowledged as, the Masonic
Patron Saint, and is found spoken of in the Rosicrucian reference
in Dante's Paradiso as:
He that lay upon the breast
Of Him who is our mystic pelican,
And from the Cross was named for office blest;
whilst one of his known pupils, St. Ignatius who is reputed to have been the little child whom the Lord once took and set in the midst as a type of fitness for realizing the kingdom of heaven is found expounding religion in these purely Masonic terms "Forasmuch as ye are stones of a Temple which were prepared beforehand for a building of God, the Father, being hoisted up to the heights by the working tool of Jesus Christ, which is the Cross, and using for a rope the Holy Spirit; your faith being a windlass, and love the way leading up to God. So then ye are all Companions in the way, spiritual temples, carrying your Divine principle within you, your shrine, your Christ and your holy things, being arrayed from head to foot with the commandments of Christ."*
(*Ignatius; Epistle to Ephesians.)
The pronounced Masonic imagery used by Ignatius (who was martyred at Rome in A.D. 107) tends to corroborate the tradition that the Square, Level and Plumb-rule, now allocated to the Master and two Wardens of a Lodge, were originally associated with the Bishop, Priest and Deacon, when serving at the secret altars of the persecuted Christians. Put together, the three tools form a Cross, which, on the worshippers being disturbed by the secular authorities, could quickly be knocked apart and appear but as builders' implements.
The most popular religious book of the earliest
Christian centuries was The Shepherd of Hermas, a collection of
teachings, visions and similitudes, couched n terms of Masonic
allegory and veiling (as the title implied) the hermetic or esoteric
instruction of some "Shepherd," as the Hierophants and
Adept teachers of the Mysteries were, and in the canonical Scriptures
are,
uniformly designated.
To define the position which, after the event known as the Christian Incarnation, seems to have been assumed by all the mystical Builders, the spiritual Alchemists, the Rosicrucians, and the divers other schools of the secret Gnosis who accepted that fact as the central pivotal one of human spiritual evolution and the culmination of earlier Mystery Systems, it may be said that they regarded themselves as one great Fraternity in the Divine Mysteries under the unseen but actual guidance of Jesus Christ, "the Carpenter" (Tekton), as Supreme Grand Master, with the greater Initiate, St. John the Divine, and the lesser Initiate, St. John Baptist, as Senior and Junior Grand Wardens; the winter and summer solstices (the times of the sun's lowest annual declension and meridian height) being allocated to the two latter as festival days or time points peculiarly favorable for spiritual contact between the Grand Lodge Above and the lesser Lodges below.
All down the stream of history will be found the similitude of the human soul to a stone and directions for working it from a crude to a perfect state. The career of the patriarch Jacob begins with a stone. The Dervishes of the Arabian Desert are given a cubed stone smeared with blood on their initiation. The sacred object and palladium of the Moslem faith is the Kaabeh or Cubical Stone. The stone is found described as Lapis exilis and Lapis ex Coelis; it is always one said to have come from heaven, whence it is now in exile in this outer world. As a protest against materializing the idea of it, one finds exclamations such as Cornelius Agrippa's famous Transmutemini! Transmutemini in viventes lapides! become ye transformed into living stones! Those more advanced mystics, the spiritual Alchemists, have provided us with a wealth of obscure lore concerning the "Stone of the Philosophers"; and all through the Christian centuries, behind the activities of public elementary religion and the official work of the Church, can be traced evidences of this higher, esoteric, more abstruse and difficult work of mystical Masonry and stone working being wrought by abbots, monks, and laymen, either in solitude or communities of less or greater size, yet in severest concealment.
The history of this movement in England cannot be written in detail here, but a few points of it may be cited as evidence of the fact that, beyond all operative trade connections, the primary work of Masonry was one of mystical religion and had to do with the arcana of the human soul; that it was an intellectual and a spiritual science promoting the development of the individual initiate and, through him, the advancement of the general weal.
The English Masonic Constitutions of 1784, for example, reproduce a memorandum "concemynge the Mystery of Maconrye," said to have been written early in the 15th century by King Henry VI with his own hand probably for private rather than for state purposes, since he himself is alleged to have been made a Mason. Transposing his words from archaic into modem English, the King's memorandum indicates as follows: that Masonry is a spiritual science; that it originated in the East (in both a mystical and a geographical sense) and reached the junior human races in the West through traveling Phoenicians (misdescribed as "Venetian"); that its development had been greatly advanced by Pythagoras (curiously miscalled by the English names "Peter Gower"), who, after receiving his own initiations, founded the great Crotona school and instructed others in the science; that the science itself involves knowledge of and power over hidden forces of Nature, so that the expert Mason can perform acts which to the uninitiated would appear miraculous; that progress in the science comes by instruction, practice and silence; that the science is to be imparted only to worthy and suitable men, since abuse of it and of the powers arising with it would result in both personal and general evil; that Masons understand and can effect the art of alchemic transmutation and possess a universal symbolic language of their own by which they can intercommunicate, whatever their race or country; that they have the "skill of becoming good and perfect," apart from all motives of fear and hope such as influence lesser minds and are held out by popular religion; that not all Masons realize their attainments or become perfect, for many fail in capacity, and more still in the arduous personal effort essential to the acquisition of this wisdom.
The genuineness of the King's memorandum has been questioned, though prima facie it is well attested. But whether a genuine script of his or not, its contents, within their limits, accurately represent the nature of Masonry itself.
No one can read English or European history
from the period of that memorandum onward without realizing that
to that history there has been an inner side not cognized or treated
of by academic historians, or without feeling behind the march
of external events and as it were connected with or even directing
them the concealed presence of minds more than normally capable
Initiates, possessing and wielding the very powers testified to
in Henry VI's memorandum. The lives and literary remains of such
men as to name no others Paracelsus, Abbot Tritheim, Basil Valentine,
Jacob Boehme, George Johan Gichtel, Thomas Vaughan, and Elias
Ashmole, provide above surface indications of a strong current
of sub surface activity, a
current of which no record exists or is ever likely now to be
made. But to that current one must look for the perpetuation of
the secret Masonic science, and to its projection, in a highly
diluted and elementary form, into publicity in modem speculative
Masonry.
The religious Reformation of the 15th century
was the first great episode in a far reaching revolutionary movement
in the intellectual, social and political life of the West, a
movement the end of which is not yet. Amid the intensifying unspirituality
and materialism of the times and the
impending disintegration of public instituted religion, a decision
seems to have been come to by some far seeing enlightened minds
to put forward the old mystical Gnosis and tradition in a simple
form and to attempt to interest a small section of the public
in it. This suggestion is incapable of rigorous proof, and will
perhaps commend itself only to those who are in any measure conscious
of the inner mechanism controlling the visible clock face of historic
events. But be this as it may, we find, about the year 1600 and
onwards, the first small signs of a movement that has eventuated
in the vast modern Masonic Craft, with its as yet further indeterminate
possibilities.
The first recorded reception of a non-operative Mason to an operative Lodge occurred at Edinburgh in 1600. The Operative Lodges were then becoming obsolete and defunct, and by 1620 Operative Masonry had become entirely superseded in London by Speculative, the members of the former working no longer in guilds but striving still to keep alive their old form of fellowship. The first traceable initiation, on English soil, of a non-operative Mason occurred at Newcastle in 1641; and the secondzthat of Elias Ashmole, already a student of arcane science at Warrington in 1646. Accretions to the ranks of the Craft proceeded to be made, but were at first few and gradual, owing to disturbed political conditions. The Charter of the Royal Society, dated 1663, as drawn up by Dr. (afterwards Sir) Christopher Wren, seems to have been prepared with a view to giving official sanction not to science as at present secularly understood and pursued, but to science of a more occult character such as Masonry as before defined deals with, for the preamble of that document refers to private meetings of certain men devoted to the investigation of the "hidden causes of things" in the public interest.
In 1717 four old London Lodges combined to constitute a new nucleus. From them the first Grand Lodge was formed and thus Modern Masonry was born, at an inn, the Apple Tree Tavern, in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
In 1721 Dr. Anderson was entrusted with
the drawing up of the Constitutions of the new community. The
conditions of the Craft in that year may be deduced from a statement
of the eminent antiquary Dr. Stukeley, who writes: "I was
the first person made a Freemason for many years. We had great
difficulty to find members enough to perform the ceremony. Immediately
after that it took a run, and ran itself out of breath through
the folly of its members."
Abuses supervened from the admission of
all and sundry without due qualifications. In 1724 a Brother protested
in a public journal that "the late prostitution of our Order
is in some measure the betraying of it. The weak heads of vintners,
drawers, wigmakers, weavers, etc., admitted into
our Freemasonry, have not only brought contempt upon the Institution,
but do very much endanger it." In the same year was established
"for poor brethren" the first benevolent fund, which
since has developed into the great Charity organizations now connected
with the Craft.
In the course of the next fifty years the numbers of the Craft so increased that central headquarters were found advisable, and on May Day of 1775, the foundation-stone of the present Freemasons' Hall in London was laid with great ceremony. Despite the fact that men were being admitted to the Order who were little qualified to appreciate the science of Masonry, and that consequently the understanding of that science was becoming increasingly debased, elements of the original intention still remained, and echoes of it can be caught in some of the recorded incidents of the occasion. In the Foundation stone itself was inserted a plate perpetuating the event and the names of the then Grand Master, his deputy and the Grand Wardens; and stating that Masonry was of heavenly origin, "descendit e ccelo"; and concluding with the maxim of Solon in Greek characters, "Know thyself." At the religious service performed upon the occasion was sung an anthem of praise to the Great Architect:
"Who deign'd the human soul to raise
By mystic secrets sprung from heaven;"
whilst a specially composed ode affirmed of the new Aula Latomorum that:
"Religion, untainted, here dwells;
Here the morals of Athens are taught;
Great Hiram's tradition here tells
How the world out of chaos was brought."
From these extracts it is clear that, at
least to its leading minds, Masonry was a secret science of soul-building,
and that the great central legend and mythos expressed in the
Traditional History in the Craft's Third Degree referred to no
events in earthly time or history, but to Cosmic events of a metaphysical
and mystical character. Further, from the preface to the Constitutions
of 1784 it is made clear that the practical builder's art is to
be considered only as the substratum of Speculative Masonry; that
the history of the Operative side is negligible, for when Speculative
Masons became a separate body of men the science had no further
concern with practical building; and that the Speculative work
is a personal mystical one, rising like a pyramid "tending
regularly up to a summit of attainments, ever concealed by intervening
clouds from the promiscuous multitudes of common observers below."
Freemasons' Hall being completed, it was, on 23rd May 1776, triply dedicated, again with great ceremony; firstly to Masonry; a second time to Virtue; and a third time to Universal Charity and Benevolence. The last named of the three purposes came in course of time to dominate completely at least the first of them. The Craft became a great money raising institution for relieving its own needy members and their relatives, and as a charitable society does excellent work which commands the devoted interest of many good Brethren who know nothing, and seek to know nothing, of Masonry itself in its only proper and primary aspect of spiritual science, and who regard it merely as a luxurious item of social life and maintain their connection with it solely from philanthropic motives.
From the facts thus roughly outlined it
is clear that the pre 1717 Brethren were men of a very different
caliber, and held a vastly higher conception of Masonry, from
those who subsequently came to constitute the Craft and have expanded
it to its present great dimensions. Of the latter
class, whatever their merits, virtues, and good works in other
respects, they cannot be said to have been either theoretic or
practical mystics or to have cultivated the knowledge of Masonry
as that science must be primarily understood. They cannot say
of themselves as their predecessors truly could and did:
We have the Mason Word and second sight,
for growth in the life of the spirit and
the enhanced faculty and inward vision that come therewith have
not been within the ambit of their desire. As one of the most
deeply learned and understanding writers upon the subject afhrms,
(the authoress of A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery)
"The outward form (or present practice) of Masonry is too
absurd to be perpetuated were it not for a certain secret response
of common sense to the original mystery. The Initiated moved one
another on by words of power. The Masons ape this but have lost
the magic key to open the door into the Hermetic garden. They
want the words, which are only to be found by seeking them in
the subjective fundamental life, from which they are as far out
as the tools they use. The true tools also may be found on the
way in; they will be given one after another as they are wanted."
Another learned author, who had every motive to speak well of
the Craft the late Brother John Yarker was constrained to write
in 1872, in his able and most instructive Notes on the Scientific
and Religious Mysteries that: "As the Masonic fraternity
is now governed, the Craft is fast becoming the paradise of the
bon vivant, of the charitable hypocrite who forgets the version
of St. Paul and adorns his breast with the 'charity jewel';
(having by this judicious expenditure obtained the purple, he
metes out judgment to other brethren of greater ability and morality
but less means); the manufacturer of paltry Masonic tinsel, etc.
No other institution is so intrinsically valuable as Craft Masonry,
or capable of such superhuman things. As now governed, few societies
perform less. None profess such great objects; few accomplish
so very little real and substantial good. May reformation be speedy
and effective!"
Such facts are not pleasant to contemplate, nor would they be proclaimed here without good purpose and a constructive motive. But it is well to face them before proceeding further, since what remains to be said will not only deal with a happier aspect of the subject, but is based upon the premise that the otherwise deplorable perversion and materialization of the true Masonic intention has been both an inevitable and a necessary prelude to a spiritual efflorescence which in due course will manifest itself and of which the beginnings are already perceptible.
In no censorious or reproachful spirit, therefore, are such observations as the foregoing recorded. They might indeed be extensively amplified if to do so would serve any useful purpose, but no one with intimate experience of the Craft will fail to recognize either their truth or the cogency of their reproach. It is undeniable that, through ignorance of the true principles of Masonry, the Craft has suffered itself to become debased and overrun with members lacking alike the intellectuality, the temperament, and the desire, to appreciate those principles. Today's newspaper, for example, contains the advertisement of a turf bookmaker who proclaims himself to be "on the square," and on the strength of that qualification seeks to engage the services of a betting tout. It is well known that commercial houses today find it advantageous, for business purposes, to insist upon their more important employees being members of the Order. In the Order itself advancement is notoriously connected with social position and the extent of a member's contributions to the Charities. Honors, and even medals, are bestowed for money payments to this or that subscription list. Any man with a title, from a mayor to a prince, needs only to be a Mason a matter of months to find himself elevated to some figurehead position in the Craft, without the least merit of a purely Masonic kind or any understanding of the science itself. The central ideas and teachings of the Craft are left unexplained; ceremonies are discharged quite perfunctorily, and with the majority are of entirely subservient importance to the in dissociable feasting and wearisome rounds of speechmaking that follow; and the general ignorance of Masonic truth provides ample scope for the self assertion of men whose ideas of moral grandeur and Masonic virtue are evidenced by an ambition to attain office in the Craft and to adorn their persons with as much purple and jewelry as they can acquire.
It is all woefully wrong and misconceived. Of course worthier traits exist. The heart of English Masonry is sound, if its head be obtuse and muddled and the work of its hands not of the character it might and ought to be.
When the worst has been said that can be charged against the methods of modern Masonry, it amounts merely to an exhibition of venial human weakness, vanity and sycophancy, the growth of which, whilst obscuring and falsifying Masonic principles, has been due to failure to grasp what those principles imply and entail. Many tares have sprung up among the corn; but good corn has not failed to grow, and that the two can grow together in the same field is a tribute to the richness of the soil from which both spring and the nourishing power of the Masonic intention, which, like sunlight, shines impartially upon both and quickens whatever seed is sown within its field, whether tares or wheat.
There are few received into the Craft to
whom Masonry does not bring, if but dimly and momentarily, some
measure of new vision, some impulse towards its ideals; few who
do not feel it to contain something far greater than they know
or than appears upon its surface presentation. Moreover, in the
deep heart of every man exists a responsiveness to ultimate truth,
and a fondness, amounting sometimes to a passion, for it when
expressed in ceremonial grandeur and impressiveness; a sub-conscious
reminiscence, as Plato would explain, of truth and glories it
has once known and must one day know again, and which Masonic
ritual does something to revive, as was of course the intention
of all the Initiation systems of the past and is still the intention
of our present Order. And how often one finds minds which are
denied, or which would repudiate, the use of symbolic ritual in
their Church, leap to it with admiration and affection in their
Lodge, as though the Protestant rejection, in the religious sphere,
of the rich symbolism and sacramentalism wisely once devised for
instructing eye, ear, and mind, and exalting the imagination towards
spiritual verities, had starved them of their rightful nourishment.
It is not surprising that to many such minds Masonry becomes,
as they themselves say, a religion, or at
all events a precious fact to which their souls respond however
inarticulately, and that for them the door of the Lodge is, as
was once said of the Altar rails, "the thin barrier dividing
the world of sense from the world of spirit."
II - THE FUTURE
In the fact that, amidst so much imperfect apprehension of its meaning and intention, Masonry should not only have survived, but should continue to make an ever widening appeal to the imagination, exists the proof that, inherent in it, however deeply veiled, is a vibrant, indestructible vital principle which awakens a never failing response, whether loud or feeble, in its devotees. The Light is in the darkness, though as yet that darkness comprehendeth it not. The modern Craftsman may not as yet "have the Mason Word" in his own possession, like his earlier Brethren; but, nevertheless, that Word itself abides within the Masonic system, and he faintly hears and responds to its overtones; it is, for most, a Lost Word, but it patiently awaits recovery; and many today are impatiently seeking to find it.
That vital principle became implanted in
the Order system by those wise, far seeing, now untraceable minds
which, as we have said, some three centuries ago conceived and
inspired, if they did not directly devise, the formation of the
Order as a means of perpetuating in an elementary way the ancient
Secret Doctrine through a period of darkness and disruption, and
until such time as that Doctrine, and the Mysteries that once
taught it, can again be revived in a larger way.
The evidences of the presence in the Masonic system and texts of the ancient arcane teaching are threefold. Firstly, the grading of the system itself into the three traditional stages of spiritual perfecting, involving in turn the discipline and purification of the body and sense nature; the control, self knowledge and illumination of the mind; and, finally, that entire abnegation of the will and death of the sense of personality which lead to union with the Divine Will, beyond personality and separateness. Secondly, the incorporation of the myths of the building of Solomon's Temple and the death of Hiram, both of which are allegories and portray not historic, but metaphysical, truth of profound importance. Thirdly, the insertion into the texts of the Ceremonies and side lectures of a number of pieces of esoteric teaching common to all the Initiation doctrine of East and West, but not known to be such by the average Brother who is unfamiliar with that doctrine, and so cryptically expressed and so interwoven with more elementary moral teaching as only to be recognizable to the more fully instructed observer. Examples of this esoteric teaching and of its implications are given in the second section of this volume, dealing with "Light on the Way."
The compilation of the text of the present
Rituals and Instruction Lectures is supposed to have been, and
no doubt was, undertaken in or soon after 1717, by Dr. Anderson
and others whose personality is now of no moment.* Nor is it material
to inquire how far those compilers were deliberately obscuring
and crypticising occult knowledge they personally possessed or,
if personally lacking it, were unconsciously led into perpetuating
greater wisdom than they knew. The subject has been ably and exhaustively
discussed in a work of very high value to the Masonic student,
Studies in Mysticism, by Brother A. E. Waite, who takes the view
that the compilers did not for the most part know what they were
doing, yet that they wrote as if guided by a blind though unerring
instinct "which made even the foolish old scholars of the
past see through their inverted and scoriated glasses something
of what Masonry actually is, and therefore, in the midst of much
idle talk, they provided, unconsciously to themselves, a master
key of the Sanctuary."
(Royal Arch Masonry was introduced into England in 1778 by a Jewish
Brother, Moses Michael Hayes.)
This is probably a true verdict, for from
various evidences Anderson and his colleagues show little signs
of having been esotericists of any depth or ability. But, be it
accurate or not, the fact remains that our system was so designed
and devised as to be a true compendium of universal
Initiation; one that reproduces the salient features of every
system that has existed, or that elsewhere still exists, for advancing
human perfecting.
In that fact lays the strength, the vitality, the attractive power, of the Masonic system; the subtle charm that it casts over minds sensitive to its implications, but as yet unable to interpret them or to understand their own responsiveness to them. And in the demonstration and elucidation of the doctrine concealed in the system lies the hope of the Craft gradually educating itself and fulfilling its original design in the years now before it.
The point up to which these observations are meant to lead can now be stated. It is that before the true spirit and inward content of Masonry could be appreciated upon a scale sufficiently wide to constitute the Order a real spiritual force in the social body (as one hopes and sees indications that it will become), it has been necessary in the first instance to build up a great, vigorous and elaborate physical organization as a vehicle in which that spirit may eventually and efficaciously manifest. In view of the importance of the ultimate objective aimed at, it matters nothing that from two to three centuries have been needed to develop that organization, to build up that requisite physical framework, or that the material of which it has been constructed has not been so far of ideal quality. With the larger prospect in view we can afford to look both charitably and philosophically upon momentary matters that may be regarded as regrettable and as falling far below the standard of even the surface and letter of Masonic principle; we can be content that the Order has been composed so largely of men little understanding or capable of assimilating its profounder purpose; that its energies have run off from their true channel to the subsidiary ones of social amenities and charitable relief; that its higher ranks have been filled, not with adepts and experts in spiritual science, capable of ministering wisdom and instruction to the humbler ranks below (as the symbolism of our great hierarchical system surely implies their doing), but with "great kings, dukes and lords" and other social dignitaries, displaying no signs of possessing arcane wisdom and placed in their complimentary or administrative positions (which they nevertheless admirably and efficiently fulfill) merely to give the Order social sanction and-as the nauseous doggerel runs" our mysteries to put a good grace on."
The growth of a great institution-a nation,
a Church, a system of the Mysteries is a slow growth, proceeding
from material apparently unpromising, and involving continual
selection, rejection, and refining, before something becomes finally
sublimated from it and forged into an efficient instrument. To
take the most appropriate analogy, the erection of Solomon's Temple
was a work of years, of diversely collected material and engaging
numerous interests; but not until it was completed, dedicated
and consecrated as a tabernacle worthy of the Shekinah, did that
Presence
descend upon it, illumining and flooding, the whole House and
enabling the earthy vehicle to fulfill a spiritual purpose.
So now, too, with the Masonic Order. As a physical vehicle, a material organization, it is as complete, as elaborated and as efficiently controlled, as perhaps it can ever be expected to be. It now stands awaiting illumination. That illumination must come from within itself, as the Divine Presence manifested within the symbolic Temple. The Order awaits the liberation and realization of its own inner consciousness, hitherto dormant and repressed by surface elements now proving to be of no, or of illusory, value. No sooner is the deeper and true nature of the Masonic design revealed to Brethren than upon all hands they leap to recognition of it and desire to realize it; and, for such, there can be no going back to old ways and old outlooks. The people that have sat in darkness have seen glimpses of a great light; they will now cultivate that light themselves, and be the means that others behold it also. In this way the Craft throughout the world will become gradually regenerated in its understanding and so fulfill the destiny planned for it by those who inspired its formation three centuries ago. And it will become in due course the portal to still higher and more important spiritual eventuations.
The coming change must be and will be worked
out, not from anything emanating from the higher ranks of the
Craft the Grand Lodge and Provincial Grand Lodges but from the
floor of the individual private Lodge. For the private Lodge is
the Masonic unit. The higher ranks are but recruited there from
at present for complimentary or administrative purposes, although
when the time comes for those hierarchies to realize their own
symbolic value, it will be their members who will descend upon
the Lodges of common Craftsmen, no longer as makers of merely
complimentary speeches, but as real authorities upon Masonic wisdom
and instructive missionaries and purveyors of Masonic truth. The
private Lodge is the point from which the transformation must
be achieved. One such Lodge in a town or district, that applies
itself to Masonic work upon the lines indicated in these pages,
will be as a powerful leavening influence and set up wholesome
reactions in neighboring Lodges. Some resistance, and even derision,
may
be anticipated at first from those content with old standards
and not yet ripe to appreciate a higher one, for the "nations"
of less refined understanding may always be expected to "rage
furiously together" at any suggestion involving departure
from habitual methods or implying a possible reflection upon their
wisdom. This, however, can be met with patience and charitable
thought, and will soon disappear before a quiet, resolute adherence
to principle. Moreover, the problem of the admission of unsuitable
applicants for membership of a Lodge will soon settle itself when
the standard of Masonic interpretation has been thus raised.
Let it here be emphasized that nothing in this volume is intended to advocate the least departure from or alteration of current Masonic working, or any deflection from loyalty to established usage or the governing authority. Those forms are so efficiently contrived, so perfectly adapted to the work of the Order, that, save perhaps in a matter of detail here and there, they can be altered only to their disadvantage and at the peril of disturbing ancient landmarks fixed where they are with greater wisdom than is perhaps at present recognized. Even as things are, in the haste to get through ceremonial work as quickly as may be, there is an unfortunate tendency already in official quarters to clip and curtail certain ceremonies, thereby depriving the Brethren of some valuable and significant pieces of ritual which, if continued to remain unworked, will soon become obsolete and forgotten.
Nevertheless, a little flexibility in matters of Lodge procedure would be permissible and is even desirable when Degrees are conferred. Merely to reel off a memorized ritual in a formal, mechanical way too often results in but mechanical effects, and the subject of the Ceremony goes away perhaps unimpressed or bewildered. There is nothing to prevent the delivery of the official rite being supplemented by unofficial words of explanation and encouragement such as would lend that rite additional impressiveness, a more intimate and personal bearing, and awaken in him who undergoes it a more deep and real sense of becoming vitally incorporated into living truth and into a Brotherhood to whom that truth is no mere sentiment but a profound reality. Moreover, with a view to inducing favorable atmosphere and conditions for the conferment of a Ceremony, before the candidate enters, the assembled Brethren should always. be notified from the Chair that they are about to engage in a deeply solemn act which claims the concentrated thought and aspiration of each of them, to the intent that what is done and signified ceremonially may be realized spiritually in both themselves and him to whom they desire to minister. Further, the ceremonial preparation of the candidate before being brought into the Lodge should be treated, not with levity or as a mere incidental formality, but as a profoundly sacramental act, in the significance of which both the officiating deacons and the candidate himself should be instructed. Let all Brethren be assured that there is no detail of Masonic ceremonial but is charged with very deep purpose and significance; this will appear to them more and more fully and luminously in proportion to their faithful endeavor to realize the intention of even simple and apparently unimportant points of ritual.
Sundry other matters may here be mentioned as deserving the consideration of the Craft.
The first is the co-ordination of the Rituals with a view to securing uniformity of working and instruction throughout the Craft, coupled with a certain but slight amount of desirable revision.
An official standardized Ritual would be
beneficial and would no doubt be widely adopted even if its adoption
were left optional to Lodges preferring to continue their present
form of working. Upon all new Lodges, constituted after the date
of standardization, the official working should
be imposed, so that, in course of time, virtual uniformity of
procedure would be achieved. The present divergences in the working
of Lodges are not great and are easily capable of adjustment so
as to secure a common footing of work throughout the Craft. Some
Lodges use points of working not used in others and which they
are rightly jealous in desiring to conserve; for example, many
Lodges neither work nor know of the traditional five signs connected
with the Third Degree, and merely communicate three of them, omitting
two which are of great significance. On the other hand, some Lodges
retain details brought over from the Operative
bodies, details now obsolete and without moment to Speculative
Masonry and which nowadays might well be dropped. The "Ancient
Charge" delivered to Entered Apprentices on their reception,
is an instance of an Operative tradition, for which, if it be
not abandoned altogether, an alternative Charge, more suited to
present conditions and more in consonance with Speculative Masonry,
might well be substituted. For a Charge that was intended for,
and that was delivered to, youths upon entering an Operative Building
Guild is unsuited to men already immersed in civic, family, and
business responsibilities, and seeking now to acquire knowledge
of a purely mystical character; it is absurd and grotesque to
counsel a middle-aged experienced man to perform elementary duties
of citizenship, or to express to perhaps an ecclesiastical dignitary
who joins the. Order, the hope that he "will become respectable
in life"!
Revision of the Rituals would, of course,
be a delicate task; one not to be undertaken at haphazard or to
meet the chance whims and uninstructed notions of this or that
Brother, but one calling for the enlightened guidance of minds
conversant with Initiation science; otherwise the Craft may lose
more than it may gain, and good plants may be pulled up and thrown
away in mistake for weeds. As an example of a point needing revision
and excision, let me instance those passages in which a candidate
is enjoined to extend charity and relief to those needing it "if
he can do so without detriment to himself or connections."
These qualifying words surely vitiate
the whole spirit of "Charity" If Charity means anything
and mere financial help is not charity, but only one form of its
practical manifestation it involves a wise but unstinted selflessness,
a
self-sacrifice at whatever personal cost. To hedge round that
supreme virtue with a cautious verbal reservation in one's own
favor is a limitation entirely unworthy of Masonic magnanimity
and the words come as a shock to one's moral sensitiveness.
To come to the next point the Festive Board. In previous pages it has been indicated that the customary practice of refreshment and social conviviality is not only practically useful, but has a deep sacramental value. It is, of course, technically extra Masonic and non-official, or perhaps quasi-official; but it provides real and useful opportunities for fraternizing, and intellectual opportunities for enlarging upon Masonic matters not dealt with in the Lodge sanctuary itself; whilst, in its symbolic and higher aspect, it illustrates that relaxation from labor, and that refreshment derived from the inter-communion of those united in a common work, which in the providential order are arranged for us both in this life and hereafter.
The value, or otherwise, of the Festive
Board, depends, therefore, upon its good use or its abuse. If
it be regarded and used as the natural extension of the more formal
work of the Lodge, it can exercise a ministry of great service;
if, on the other hand, it be but an occasion for junketing and
social frivolity under the cover of Masonry, but with little or
no Masonic relevance, it is apt to become a thing of reproach;
the sublimities of the Lodge work are falsified by it and any
good issuing from that work is forthwith neutralized. The test
of true Masonic devotion and sincerity would be the honest answer
each Brother can give to the question: "How far would my
interest in Masonry extend and continue, if the practice of the
Festive Board did not exist and Masonic proceedings were confined
to the formal work of the Lodge?" With this reflection the
matter may be left to the good judgment of the Craft.
There must also be mentioned a question which has already rankled as a thorn in the side of Grand Lodge and will doubtless become still more troublesome the "Women's question"; and if I approach it, it is not with the idea of presuming to offer suggestions to the governing authority of the Craft, but of defining the position for the guidance of the average Brother.
As things stand, Grand Lodge is the trustee
of a system which it has inherited, which it is pledged to continue
upon established lines, and which it has no power to alter if
it wished, save at the request and by the common consent of those
whose interests it exists to conserve. It has no
power to sanction the admission of women into the order, nor is
there any desire in its ranks that it should; indeed the fact
that women can today take elsewhere precisely the same degrees
as the Craft confers is a fact unknown to the majority of Brethren.
Whether Grand Lodge should extend official
recognition to societies professing to be Masonic and admitting
members of both sexes is another matter, and depends upon the
view to be taken of the regularity or irregularity of the societies
in question. Can such societies produce satisfactory evidence
of their regularity and right to recognition, or have they sprung
into existence through the treachery or disloyalty of members
of the Craft? That is not a question falling to the present writer
to determine, nor has he sufficient material before him to do
so. The only conclusion he can come to for himself, and the only
advice he can offer to others, is to abide loyally by the existing
ordinances of the duly constituted authority. The Craft so far
has been the "Men's House," and must so remain until
such time as circumstances which do not now exist and
for a long time to come are unlikely to exist clearly warrant
a departure from the present position. It may be that the "Men"
do not make the best use of their "House"; it may be
that the now banned societies have sprung into existence because
of that fact; it may be and there are grounds for supposing it
that in those societies Masonry is worked with greater decorum,
a far fuller understanding, a deeper reverence and appreciation
of what it implies, than in the orthodox Craft. But the fact remains
that we are committed and pledged to our own Constitution for
the present and we shall do neither it nor our individual selves
a service by departing from strict loyalty to it.
Upon the general question of the fitness of women to receive the Masonic or any alternative form of Initiation, I must record an affirmative conviction of the same strength as the negative one I make to the suggestion that women should be admitted to the Craft or that visiting relations between the latter and the unauthorized societies should be sanctioned; for, in existing conditions, such relationship is undesirable and might prove disastrous to both. Although the sexes meet upon a common footing in the field of both religious and secular affairs, and although the whole modem tendency is towards equality of rights, function and responsibility, Masonry at present stands outside both the religious and the secular categories, and by the majority of its members is viewed merely as a social luxury and a casual appendage to other activities of life. Until it is accorded a far higher appreciation than this, until it can be viewed from a standpoint not merely of ordinary morality -but from one involving a high standard of personal sanctity; until the mental conception of it is sufficiently lofty and compelling to neutralize emotional frailty and the chances of moral lapse, Masonry is far better reserved as the "Men's House," even though that House be, in the prophet's words, one "of untempered mortar" and lacking the advantage of feminine association.
The human soul is essentially sexless, yet to the feminine side of humanity is notoriously credited exceptional intuitive power and capacity for the finer apprehension of truth, and upon this account, in the days of the Eleusinia, women were never excluded from initiation into the Mysteries, but were allotted special rites of their own, and, in the processions of the Thesmophorim, passed along the public street bearing upon their heads the volumes of the Sacred Law, an eloquent symbolic tribute and testimony to the superior power of the feminine understanding to intuitise the finer sense and implications of that Law. It was to a woman the mysterious Diotima of Megara that the amazed Socrates owed his supreme initiation into that last Mystery of Love about which he speaks in the Symposium with such awe and moving eloquence; yet a woman with whom stands exhibited, in purposed contrast, that opposite pole of womanhood the futile, mindless Xantippe whom he had wedded. There have been Egerias, Aspasias and Hypatias, besides those known to history; and Dante's hierophantess, Beatrice, but types that "eternal womanly" which, Goethe truly divined, always exists with us to lead the male intellect ever upward and on. It is almost needless to point to the mass of work done by women still living in the exposition of mystical philosophy and religion, or to say that such great mines of instruction in matters of Masonic moment as Isis Unveiled, The Secret Doctrine, and A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery, have come from the pens of women learned and enlightened in things pertaining to the Craft to a degree seldom evidenced by its own members.
In every interest, then, it is desirable
that the "women's question" should rest where it is.
Nothing can prevent those, of whichever sex, who are really builders
in the spirit, from privately fraternizing in that spirit. To
such, formal collaboration, however agreeable it might be were
it
permissible, can be dispensed with, for their work is not dependent
upon facilities of a formal character, and they will be the first
to recognize the wisdom of Order accepting and the expedience
of conforming to current technical necessity. When the time and
conditions arrive for present barriers to be removed, it will
be because the Craft itself will have removed them by entering
into a fuller realization of its purpose than now obtains, and
because Grand Lodge will have been influenced to alter its laws
by an authority higher even than itself the Grand Lodge Above.
To pass now from these considerations of things of the moment to the larger vista towards which those things are leading, what is the prospect before the Order?
That prospect is perhaps sufficiently indicated by the familiar words written at the head of this paper: "First, that which is natural; after, that which is spiritual." For nearly three centuries the Craft has been developing from a small germ to a great robust body characterized by tendencies of a purely natural kind, manifesting natural human weaknesses, and displaying the inexperience, the irresponsibility, and the limitations of outlook common to all youth. It has meant well, even when it has misconceived its purpose. If it has provided a field in which numbers of men, blind to the Order's real significance, have sought merely social amusement and personal distinction, it has also proved a source of light and guidance to many obscure souls not subject to those vanities and who have realized and profited by its implications, and some of whom, from the portal of the Craft, have passed on in silence to more advanced methods or colleges of spiritual instruction. A sacramental system is not invalidated by the default of those accepting its jurisdiction; and as saints often flourished in the Church amid most unsaintly conditions, so not a few Masons have won to the Light despite the surrounding darkness of their Brethren.
But now is coming 'a change, and it is significant
that it comes not from the higher ranks of the Craft where, with
all desire for the Craft's best interests, every tendency is towards
conservatism and the sufficiency of old standards, but from the
rank and file, from the younger, newer blood
now flowing into the veins of the Order. It is, of course, not
a movement even remotely resembling disaffection, but now, as
never before, Brethren in numbers are asking from Masonry bread
of life; they are caring less and less for ceremonies and ancient
usages unless these can be shown to have supporting justification;
they look to the leaders and teachers of the Craft for, not a
perpetual reiteration of complimentary but unsatisfying speeches,
but for instruction in real Masonic light and wisdom.
The future of the Order cannot be appraised without reference to the general social life surrounding it; for it is not something apart and detached from that life but an integral element of it, and between the two there is perpetual interaction and reaction. The gradual disintegration of the Churches affects the Craft, tending both to increase it numerically and to advance the exploration of its concealed spiritual resources. Religion will not die, the religious instinct can never die, nor will "the Church" in some form cease to exist and to fulfill a certain ministry. But today a supplementary form of ministry is required and Masonry can provide it. A regrouping and redistribution of energy is taking place, in the course of which we may come to find that that powerful psychological phenomenon, a new group consciousness the Masonic consciousness has been in process of formation; a consciousness which may become in time as potent a factor as was the Church consciousness of mediaeval days, or as was the moral power of the Delphian Mysteries during the seventeen centuries of their great influence.
When the time ripens, the Mysteries as a
science of life and an art of so living as to qualify for attaining
ultra natural life will come to be restored. For long past, both
within and without the Church, the tide of human persuasion and
events has been deadest against the tradition of
regeneration into that ultra natural life, as originally taught
and practiced. But that which has been is that which, in the course
of cyclic recurrence, shall be again, and upon a higher level
of development than before. It is not that the Christian Church
is not a steward of the Mysteries or at least that portion of
it which does not reject the authentic sacramental signs and channels
through which those Mysteries may be realized, but, from reasons
too complex and lengthy here to detail, there has been failure
on the human side to realize them as they are now presented, with
the result that the Christian Ecclesia has degenerated into a
state analogous to that into which the pre-Christian Mystery systems
had fallen when the new era began. To the clear seeing eye the
narrative in the Gospels, apart from all questions of historicity,
is a drama of Initiation written for that time, for every eye
to see, and for every mind to profit by; for what previously had
been but adumbrated and approached by a few individuals in the
concealment of the Mystery schools, became, at the Incarnation,
objectified, universalized and made generally accessible; in other
words the Gospels became a manual of Initiation instruction to
the whole world according to the measure of individual capacity
to receive it, notwithstanding that large tracts of knowledge
remained unproclaimed in those Gospels but were reserved for more
private communication. The recurrent cycle of the Church's year,
with its feasts and fasts, its symbolic seasons pointing to inhibitions
and expansions of the soul's consciousness, is a true chart of
the path to be followed by those who themselves seek initiation
under the mastership of the Great Hierophant and Exemplar of regenerative
science; while in the Sacrament of the Altar is portrayed, albeit
under different symbolism, the actual process of Initiation and
the same transmutative changes in the body and mind of the recipient
as are emblematized to the Masonic candidate in the Craft Degrees.
Truth remains static, although temporal expressions and ministries of it follow the temporal order, and are born and die. When this form of the Mysteries becomes neglected or abused, or that steward of them decrepit or ineffective, another in the Divine providence and patience stands ready to carry forward their torch; truth becomes "fulfilled in many ways lest one good custom should corrupt the world." The Masonic system was devised three centuries ago, at a time of general unrest and change, as a preparatory infant school in which once again the alphabet of a world old Gnosis might be learned and an elementary acquaintance made with the science of human regeneration. However misunderstood and misapplied, however materialistically conceived, have been its rites, the soul and consciousness of every voluntary participant in them stands imperishably impressed with the memory of them. The maxim "Once a Mason, always a Mason" expresses an occult truth not realized by those who are unaware of the subjective value and persistence of one's deliberated objective actions; though the Church implies the same truth when it deems the act of sacramental baptism to bring a given soul within the fold of Christ for ever. In each case, and especially so when the deliberate will of the neophyte assents to the act, a new addition is made to the group soul of the community into which the individual becomes incorporated; and, in the case of the Masonic initiate, the aggregate and volume of what we have termed the Masonic Consciousness is enlarged. Reactions and consequences follow of a nature perhaps too abstruse to dilate upon here, but to which the Roman Initiated poet referred in the well known words:
Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
Iam redit et Virgo; redeunt Saturnia regna;
Iam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto.
Meanwhile, tinctured and affected by this metaphysical influence from the subjective world, the work of the Craft proceeds within this born of time and place; beginning, as we have shown, crudely and following the grosser tendencies of the natural order, until a moment is reached when a new birth becomes possible. Then the natural gives way to the spiritual, and the great material organization, a "body prepared," becomes the requisite physical vehicle for a correspondingly great office as a minister of real Wisdom.
Operative Masonry preceded and became spiritualized
into Speculative, and the gross beginnings of the latter are now
becoming sublimated into a more subtle conception and tending
to a scientific mysticism at once theoretic and practical. We
may look forward to the gradual increasing spiritualization of
the Craft and to its becoming in a future the nearness or distance
of which no one can presume to indicate the portal to a still
more advanced expression of the Sacred Mysteries. For, foretold
the Great Master, the time will surely come when in the present
ways of neither this "mountain" neither this Church
nor that Craft nor any Jerusalem that now
serves as a place of peace, will men worship the Universal Father,
but after another manner and mystically, that is, after the manner
of the eternal Mysteries. "For salvation is of the Jews,"
He added, and it has previously been explained that by "Jews"
is implied the Initiates of those Mysteries, acting under the
Grand Mastership of Him who was named "the King of the Jews."*
(*See footnote to page 176, ante.)
The Churches, therefore, may be left to continue to discharge their proper ministry, whilst those who feel the need of a larger science, an alternative and perhaps richer fare than the Churches provide, may find it in the ancient Gnosiss to which Freemasonry serves as a portal of entrance. By following the path to which that portal leads, they may be brought to a deeper knowledge of themselves and of the mysteries of their own being; to which end, and which end alone, the Masonic Craft was designed.
That Craft will only become what its individual
members make it. If they see in it only a ceremonial procedure,
at such it will remain, and their initiation will be but one in
name and not in fact. But if they strive to realize and make their
own the living spirit and intention behind the
outward rites and formal usages, the dramatized quest of Light
and of the Lost Word may result for them in a blessed finding
of that which they profess to seek, and what they find themselves
they will become able to communicate to other seekers, until the
Craft is justified of all its
children, and itself becomes as it was intended to become a great
light in a dark world.
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