Between the times when the Grand Lodge laid a censorship on Masonic writers and speakers, and the founding of modern Masonic scholarship, a number of theories became active, and in some instances became popular, which have no standing in Masonic knowledge now. Since they are thus more or less dead theories a Mason has no need to take the time to study them; but since he will encounter them here and there in books, especially in old books, or in occasional discussions, it will be useful for him to know enough about them to be able to identify them and to know what is being talked about. The following paragraphs are for that purpose.
From six or seven centuries before the beginning of our Christian Era until some two or three centuries after it, there were in Britain, Europe, the Near East, and Egypt a large number of organizations which are now called Ancient Mysteries, or Mystery Cults. It is now impossible to discover how many there were, because many were small, or local, or temporary, and some were too secret to leave any records behind them, but the total number must have amounted to some hundreds. Among the most famous of them were the ones called The Eleusinia (Greater and Lesser), Mithraism, Samothrace, Magna Mater, Isis, Osiris, Serapis, Orpheus; many of the old stories, and much of the mythology which in later centuries passed into art, and especially into poetry, plays, and fiction and which have been described as "classical" are not classical because they did not come from the Greek and Roman classics but from the Mystery Cults. Those Cults were somewhat like a modern fraternity, and at the same time were similar to a modern religious sect or denomination. They were secret, admitted members by initiation, were organized in local bodies with officers, used rites and symbolism, had many ceremonies, and had fraternalism, fellowship, and relief among their purposes. They were destroyed by the Church, many of them being so completely obliterated that their very names were forgotten until recovered by archeologists. Many attempts were made in the Nineteenth Century to show that some one or two of them had survived, and been preserved in the form of Freemasonry, but the gap in time is mo wide, and no evidence of any historical connection between the last Mystery and the earliest Lodges has ever been discovered and scholars do not expect that one will ever be discovered because in spite of superficial resemblances Freemasonry is in principles, Landmarks, and purposes unlike any Ancient Mystery about which we have any knowledge.
During the whole of Ancient Times each craft, profession, art, trade and calling had an organization of its own. Among Latinspeaking peoples they were called collegia (from which we have our word "college"); in other languages they had similar names. They were somewhat like Medieval gilds, and also somewhat similar to modern trade unions. Each collegium had a local town or parish as its jurisdiction; met in a room of its own; had its own officers; governed its members by its own rules and regulations; and gave members much fraternalism, sociability, and charity. The collegia of architects in Rome were called Collegia fabrorum ("fabric" is an old name for a building); it was once hoped that an historical connection between them and the first Lodge of Freemasons could be found, but that hope was not realized.
Astrology was never confined to an organization, or to one people, or country, but always was a loose name for a collection of popular beliefs about stars as far back as the most ancient times there were many astrologies and astrologers but there never was the astrology, or the astrologers. Modern astronomers know that a star or a planet (there are many millions of planets, large and small) is a material body composed of materials of the same kind as are in the earth or the sun or moon-stars are nothing but stars. But before the period of modern astronomy it was almost impossible for men to believe that stars are bodies of the same kind as the earth. If they were lumps of matter in space, why did thee not fall? If they moved, what pulled or pushed them around? What kept them alive with light and color? Although they are far off, they have observable effects on the earth and on us; see what happens when the sun rises? see how the moon pulls the tide along without the use of visible means! It was argued that the stars and planets must have a life of their own, and be possessed of supernatural powers, and that through these powers they influenced or settled the fate of men. This was the doctrine of astrology. To foresee these influences, or to control them, or to protect themselves against them, astrologers invented horoscopes, charms, incantations, the zodiac, etc., and accumulated a mass of facts about the heavens many of these facts were taken over bodily by the science of astronomy. In their books and charts astrologers used many signs, emblems, symbols as when a point within a circle was used as an emblem of the sun and a number of these were so similar to Masonic emblems and symbols that a few writers propounded the theory that Freemasonry had an astrological origin. At its best this theory rested at no time on anything stronger than a few points of similarity, which always is a weak foundation for a theory. At no place or time during the past eight centuries have Lodges or Grand Lodges been composed of, or been influenced by astrologers.
The peculiar form of occultism which is called Kabbalism contained some astrology, but cannot be included under that head because it was a distinctive arid separate movement with its own literature. The Hebrew word "Kabbala" (or cabala, or Kabbalah, etc.) means an official collection of writings, a canon; it came into general use as the name for some four or five books written by a circle of Spanish Jews in the Thirteenth Century, and when correctly used denotes that collection of writings only. In them were a strange assortment of speculations on mysticism black and white magic, secrets of the Jewish religions, and they employed many emblems and symbols. They were little read outside of a small group in Spain and would have been forgotten had not a few leaders in the Protestant Reformation chanced to become interested in them. After the Reformation almost any form of occultism was called "Kabbalism." Since a small number of the emblems and symbols used in this "Kabbalism" were very similar to a few Masonic emblems and symbols a number of writers set up the theory that Freemasonry had originated in Kabbalism; but even if the theory had possessed two or three times as many of these similarities it would have been impossible because the Masonic Fraternity had been in existence centuries before the original Kabbalistic books were written.
Alchemy, like astrology, with which it was often combined, is difficult to describe because it was never organized, had no books of its own, and floated about at large taking many forms. The name might be applied to the search for an elixir of perpetual youth, or to the secret of turning metals into gold, or to some secret knowledge which would be the key to all knowledge; or it might be used as the name for medicine (medical physicians were often called alchemists), or for chemistry, or for laboratory physics. Since alchemy was forbidden by both church and civil laws, it was carried on under-ground, and alchemistic writings took the form of emblems, symbols, codes, and other disguises. Here again a few of these devices and symbols were similar to Masonic symbols, and it was once a somewhat popular theory to assert that Freemasonry itself was a form of alchemy. There is nothing in the buildings left behind by the Freemasons, or in the Old Charges, or in the Book of Constitutions, or in the Ritual to show that the Masons in any period were alchemists, or were ever even interested in it.
A gentle-minded and religiously devout German
named John Valentine Andrea published a book entitled Fama Fraternitatis
in 1615 A.D. In this short, extraordinary, and for a long time
little-known volume, he tells a story about a character named
Christian Rosencreuz which in some of its passages reminds a reader
of one of the old saints' legends, and in others resembles Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress. It is neither biography nor history, but a
mystical tale, and its author may have intended it to be an allegory.
According to the tale Rosencreuz was a seer or mystic possessed
of supernatural powers, and when he died did not actually die
but remained miraculously present at the center of his small circle
of apostles who were sometimes called the Brotherhood of hood
of Rosicrucianism, and sometimes the Brothers of the Rosy Cross.
This was not the first telling of a tale about a Rosy Cross, or
Rose Croix; on the contrary it was one of the last and it may
be that it won a certain fame for itself for that reason. There
is no evidence that any Society of Rosicrucianism was ever organized
with that name until a Masonic Side Order was set up in England
late in the Nineteenth Century: it never consisted of anything
except a book, and the tale told about Rosencreuz. Nevertheless
it came to have a certain popularity in both Britain and America
in the Eighteenth Century, and because there was neither an
organization nor an official literature to hold it in check, the
name ran loose and came to denote any one of eight or ten different
theories or movements; it was the name for Andrea's own followers;
one of the names used for both chemistry and alchemy; the name
for a form of communistic socialism; the name for almost any form
of occultism; and so on forth. A number of writers have tried
to show that it was the origin of Freemasonry but theirs has been
an even more hopeless attempt than had been that on behalf of
Kabbalists and alchemists because the Masonic Fraternity was already
centuries old when Andrea wrote his book.
Godfrey Higgins was one of those men whom we believe to be impossible until he arrives in flesh and blood, because it will alway appear impossible for any man to read as much as Higgins did, in countless volumes of erudition, and remember as much of it as he did. In 1836 A.D. he published a work entitled Anacalypsis. It was as ponderous as Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, as erudite as Dr. Francis Drake's Eboracum, and as startlingly unorthodox as Darwin's Origin of Species. In it he packed away endless histories of tribes and peoples whom everybody else had forgotten, and dead religions, and queer religions, and philologies and etymologies, and occultisms, and biographies, the whole of it ranging at large over Europe, Asia, and the Americas. There is, however, a key, or a master-trail, into the otherwise impenetrable jungles. Higgins himself believed this to be the key, or master-trail, to the whole meaning and history of the world. This was Higgins' theory: that ever since the Creation there has been in the world a single, true religion; that this religion has always kept underground, or gone disguised, or masked itself behind temporary and only half-true religions; that it has always been secret because only adepts can understand it; that it has always had such adepts, working behind the scenes; that these adepts, one after another, working from behind the scenes and adapting themselves to circumstances, were the real founders of such religions as Brahminism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, the Ancient Mysteries, and thousands of primitive and nowforgotten cults. Higgins then went on to argue that these adepts also were the fathers and organizers of Freemasonry, and that the ancient British Druidism, a religion in England and Ireland before Christianity arrived, had been Freemasonry in its earliest form.
This Higgins theory can serve as the specimen or type for a number of theories of a like kind, for a description of the rest of which there is no space. Among these are such anacalyptic theories as that our Ritual is a survival of primitive initiation ceremonies; that Freemasonry originated with the Druses, an occult religion in the Lebanon Mountains; that it is a "cultural survival" of the "mysteries" of the "Maya Indians" of 20,000 years ago; that the Brahma priests of India invented it; that it originally was the secret cult of the Assassins in the Syrian Mountains, brought to Europe by the Crusaders; that it was set up for purposes of their own by a circle of "Great Masters" who live hidden away in Thibet, who created and rule the world, and never die; that the Masonic Lodge is a perpetuation of the "Mens' Home" of tribes in Africa and the Pacific Islands; that in generation after generation a few mystics have known and understood the "secrets of all things"; have maintained a "Hidden Church" and perpetuated their secrets by means of the "Secret Tradition" and that Freemasonry is a disguise for their teachings.
There are the equally numerous theories that Freemasonry was founded by some one great man, in Ancient, or in Medieval, or in Modern times, to carry out a purpose of his own, and such theories have named Adam, Noah, Pythagoras, Athelstan, Charlemagne, Francis Bacon, Oliver Cromwell, Ignatius Loyola, etc., etc.: and there are theories that it began as a secret science in Egypt when the Pyramids were built, or as an heretical church, such as the Bulgars or the Huguenots or the Anabaptists, or as a political party such as the Jacobites.
Though they differ among themselves to the
very extremes of difference, though there have been hundreds of
them, they one and all have in common the one point, that they
ask a Freemason to believe that Freemasonry was never itself but
always was something else in disguise! It is because they make
this impossible demand on our credulity that none of these theories
can be true. The whole story of the origin of our Fraternity can
be told in a sentence of six words: Freemasonry was founded by
the Freemasons. The Freemasons who erected the Abbey Church of
St. Denis at Paris, or Cologne Cathedral, or York Minster were
Freemasons and they themselves knew it; they knew that they were
not Crusaders or Assassins, or Maya Indians in disguise. The Brethren
who sat in the first permanent Lodges under authority of the Old
Charges knew that they had taken the Masonic obligation, and not
a Brahmin or a Druidic obligation. Nowhere in the records embodied
in the Fabric Rolls, or the Borough Records, or old Minutes, or
in the Proceedings of the first Grand Lodges are references anywhere
made to alchemy, or Kabbalism, or astrology, or Rosicrucianism
but they invariably are Masonic records. We ourselves who now
belong to the Fraternity know who and what we are, and it would
never cross our minds that we could be Druses, or Crusaders, or
Jesuits without knowing it. It would be possible for a small number
of men to call themselves by a name and to carry on ostensible
practices as a cover for activities of another kind but it would
be impossible for Freemasonry to do it, because it has always
been too large, too public, too open to inspection, and is at
work in too many countries. For centuries the Operative Freemasons
used the Fraternity for operative purposes; when the Fraternity
passed into the keeping of non-Operatives those non-Operatives
did not turn the old Craft into a secret or occult cult but preserved
it as it was, and though they used it for non-Operative purposes
they did everything possible to keep it unchanged. We have now
a great mass of documents and other records, and the mass is growing
rapidly; nowhere in the whole of it is there a hint that at any
time in its long history the Fraternity has ever been anything
more or anything other than the Fraternity of Freemasonry.
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