history 4

HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY

CHAPTER IV

THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES

by H.L. Haywood

NO theories of the beginnings of Freemasonry have been more

alluring than those which assume they are to be found among the

Ancient Mysteries of Greece and Rome. The study of those

societies is in itself entrancing. It leads the imagination into realms of enchantment - lands of pagan temples, white and mysterious upon lordly hills, and of sylvan glades bathed in moonlight and redolent of incense and flowers. It murmurs of tinkling cymbals, sensuous music and languorous antiphones, of chanting priests; it discloses garlanded youths and maidens dancing in mystic measures, altars alight with sacrificial fires and subterranean crypts were fear-struck neophytes tremble under solemn and portentous ordeals. Here the population of an Attic village streams out in procession, following the kalathos, or sacred basket, and shouting praises to Demeter, goddess of the harvest. There the adepts of a Pythagorean cult shroud themselves in secrecy and silence.

The sophisticated student will discover behind most of the

ceremonials the operation of a mechanism which in all ages has

driven occult associations along a well-defined system of

development. If he be familiar with modern Masonic ritual and

know something of the growth of the Fraternity, at almost every

step he will stumble over a movement that is familiar, and

contemplating these he is likely to neglect the concomitant

observation that there are differences almost as important as the

similarities.

It will be well for that student if he keeps always before his mind

that sound Masonic precept which bids a man beware lest he be

misled by resemblance or similitude. There is not one of the

Ancient Mysteries which has not been solemnly nominated for the

honor of being acclaimed the fount and origin of Freemasonry.

Where candidates are so numerous and the vote is so evenly

distributed, election must be difficult. It is simpler to dismiss the

contest with the assumption that each society left its impress upon

the social consciousness of the Graeco-Roman world and that

Freemasonry is indebted to all of them. It must be remembered that with the coming of modern civilization these cults did not pass away, as night passes with the coming of day, but that they entered into new forms and continued, under other names and with other objects.

The cult influence which flowed into Europe from the Orient and

the Levant came in two major streams. The older - and by older is

meant the one which has ascertainable chronological precedence -

came along the highway that entered the West through Greece.

When Greek civilization gave way to Roman, Hellenic culture

passed along what it had borrowed from the East, enriched by the

embellishments wrought by Grecian genius and learning. Rome

again tapped the Oriental store to add to what she had already

taken from her illustrious neighbor. But when Roman religions and

religious societies made way for new faiths, there was no clearing

away of old cults. Rather there was gradual transformation in

which old and new commingled. Thus that learned student of

Mithraism, Franz Cumont, was able to condense much

philosophical history into a single paragraph when, in The Oriental

Religions in Roman Paganism, he said:

"About the time of the Severi the religion of Europe must have

presented an aspect of surprising variety. Although dethroned, the

old native Italian, Celtic and Iberian divinities were still alive.

Though eclipsed by foreign rivals, they lived on in the devotion of

the lower classes and the traditions of the rural districts. For a long

time the Roman gods had been established in every town and had

received the homage of an official clergy according to pontifical

rites. Beside them, however, were installed the representatives of

all the Asiatic pantheons, and these received the most fervent

adoration from the masses. New powers had arrived from Asia

Minor, Egypt, Syria, and the dazzling Oriental sun outshone the

stars of Italy's temperate sky. All forms of paganism were

simultaneously received and retained, while the exclusive

monotheism of the Jews kept its adherents, and Christianity

strengthened its churches and fortified its orthodoxy, at the same

time giving birth to the baffling vagaries of gnosticism. A hundred

different currents carried away hesitating and undecided minds, a

hundred contrasting sermons made appeals to the conscience of the

people."

An epoch of such seething mental and spiritual unrest was ideal for

the development of cults. Wherever men could seize upon an ideal

and build it into a religious, philosophical, ethical, social or

industrial system, they were certain to do so. Withdrawing

themselves from the profane, securing themselves from intrusion

by secret methods of identifying the true believers, the members

felt themselves free behind the tyled door which shut their own

circle in and shut all others out. But each true leader among them

was possessed of notions of how things should be done which he

had learned in previous associations; he cast his ideas into the

melting pot. Out of this in time emerged the distinguishing

practices of the new society.

A cursory examination of the important traits of the Ancient

Mystery is therefore of considerable importance in any serious

effort to comprehend some of the phenomena of those times which

afterwards were destined to play a part in the evolution of

Freemasonry. It has additional virtue in that it throws light upon

what has been a puzzle to many - the process by which the modern

speculative society grew out of a medieval guild and by which the

medieval guild doubtless grew out of earlier organizations.

The Mysteries, which in Greece and Rome were frequently divided

into two classes of Greater and Lesser, stood to the society of

classical times much as religious denominations stand to that of

our own age. Each had its peculiar set of ethical and religious

dogmas, orders of priesthood, in many cases ranks or grades of

members; they were frequently governed by official hierarchies

and spread their beliefs in all possible places. A degree of secrecy

usually attached to their ceremonies; when such was the case,

admittance was by a ritual Of initiation. Among the most famous

of them were those of Isis, Osiris, Serapis, Magna Mater, Mithra,

the Cabiri, Adonis, Dionysos and the Eleusinia. It should be borne

in mind that the Greeks did not use the word, mystery, in its

modern sense, but rather as indicating a cleansing after pollution.

Of these perhaps the most famous were the Eleusinian Mysteries, a

system of rites celebrated at Eleusis, originally a community apart

from Athens but later a suburb of that city. They were observed in

honor of Demeter, the Greek Ceres, and her daughter, Persephone,

or Proserpina. In the course of centuries they underwent steady

elaboration, so that what at first was a local and relatively simple

rite became in time a complex and national religious institution.

Archeological discoveries indicate that the rites were performed at

Eleusis long before the peoples afterwards known as Greeks came

there from some northern or eastern region. In that prehistoric

period they consisted of primitive magical practices, intended to

increase the fertility of the land. Their magical character is inferred

from the fact that the ceremonies did not at that time seek to

inculcate a set of ideas to be believed, after the fashion of theology,

but were made up of acts to be performed as a means of coercing

the powers of nature into bringing about specific and practical

results. These acts were considered as essential as the rude

mechanics of plowing, sowing and reaping. The secrets of such

rites were deemed to have what nowadays would be considered a

money value, since to use them meant a plentiful yield of grain and

to neglect them meant crop failure. In this early form the rites had

the same general character and were as jealously guarded from

outside knowledge as the secrets of the mason trade guilds came to

be in later centuries.

As time passed, Eleusis was drawn into the environs of Athens,

wheat fields gave way to city lots, the farmer was replaced by

mechanics and tradesmen, deities once local became national gods

and goddesses, and primitive customs of worship were transformed

from their old pragmatic nature into the basis of a religious

fraternity. There were no wheat growers to fight for the old secrets,

but these relics of a simpler day served admirably as symbolical

religious mysteries for the general welfare of the urban soul. In

time the Eleusinia spread their influence beyond the confines of

Athens and became the framework of a brotherhood for admission

into which all Greeks were eligible.

At the stage of their highest development, the rites were divided

into the Greater and the Lesser Mysteries. For the several weeks

during which they were celebrated a general truce was proclaimed

affecting all persons save those under penalty f or conspiracy or

treason. Exiles could return home for the festival and none could

be arrested for debt. Days were set apart for attendant amusements,

such as athletic contests and horse racing, and there was a

prolonged holiday of which the pleasure-loving Greeks took fullest

advantage.

The mysteries proper were invested with such solemnity that any

person not correctly introduced - the cowans and eavesdroppers of

the times - might be punished with death for intruding upon them.

Secrets of a solemn and inviolable character were intrusted to each

initiate. If he revealed them he would be so accursed of the gods

that it would be dangerous to dwell in the same house with him lest

the roof fall. For betrayal of his trust he was liable to public and

ignominious death. No individual could be admitted until after

strict inquiry into his character to ascertain that he had not been

guilty of murder or impiety. Men and women were admitted when

the preliminary requirements had been satisfied.

Initiation began with a nine-day period of purification at Agrae.

During this time the candidates had to keep themselves chaste and

unpolluted. The primary stage - or first degree - concluded with a

ceremony in which, wearing garlands and having under their feet

the skin of some animal which had been slain on an altar of Zeus,

the novices offered prayer and made sacrifices.

A year later the neophytes sacrificed a sow to Demeter and were

then entitled to take higher degrees, thereby becoming known as

Ephoroi and Epoptikoteroi. Wearing wreaths of myrtle, they

repaired to their temple and underwent a symbolical purification

by washing their hands in sacred water. The mystical lore was then

read to them from a sacred book of two stones cemented together.

After a brief catechism by the officiating priest, they were

subjected to certain ordeals, in which terrifying objects were

suddenly presented, the floors seemed to shake, lightning flashed

on every hand and there were thunderous noises. When this

ceremony of autopsia had been completed, the assemblage was

dismissed in liturgical form. What Masons would call the Work of

the evening was directed by a chief hierophant, who was assisted

by three attendants, a torch-bearer, a crier and a person who, since

he officiated at the altar, may be called a chaplain. There were

various additional subordinate officials to look after incidental

duties.

Striking as this evolutionary development of the Eleusinian cult

must be considered, the story of Mithraism is even more

remarkable. In it the historian traces a succession of religious and

ethical theories from before the dawn of history almost to the

present day. It alone Is sufficient to convince the skeptical that a

well-defined cult or social movement is capable of adhering to a

few simple basic ideas throughout innumerable transformations

and to reproduce itself in countless forms and variations.

Mithra was one of the earliest of the gods of Iranian peoples,

originally, it is believed, the god of light before dawn. As his name

is close to the Sanskrit word mitra, for the sun, it is likely that he

soon became identified with that planet and thus, in a fashion, was

the Persian equivalent of Apollo. In Zoroastrianism he was exalted

to the godhead, along with Ormazd. After the transfer of his

worship to Phrygia, however, he was made the central divinity of a

separate cult. The baptism of his followers in the blood of a young

bull was a custom of Phrygian origin.

The image of this deity as venerated in Persia and earlier was

hideous in the extreme, but this handicap was removed by some

unidentified Greek sculptor of extraordinary genius, who devised

the statue or plaque which ultimately became famous. In this the

youthful god, with a Phrygian cap on his head and his garment

thrown back, is shown resting his knee upon a bull prone on the

ground. With one hand the god holds the creature by one horn

while with the other he plunges a knife into its neck. As is usual

with such symbolical representations, there are several

interpretations. One is that Mithra represents the sun while the bull

represents the earth, containing in its body the seeds of all fruitful

things which the sun causes to spring forth. Another is that it

represents the struggle of light with darkness, of good with evil. In

most legendary accounts of the encounter the contest is placed in a

cavern. In time the image became the most sacred object of a

carefully organized cult, offering to its devotees a scheme of

salvation backed by a long tradition, with its own priesthood,

sacred books and ethical code. It appealed powerfully to men,

especially to soldiers. Its place of assembly was called a mithreum.

The cult made its appearance in Italy in the first century before the

Christian era, being carried thither by soldiers and itinerant

merchants. It made rapid headway; in the course of time it attracted

the most powerful and influential men of Rome, so that after

Antoninus Pius most of the emperors became converts, with many

famous philosophers, statesmen and literary men. With such

prestige at the capital of the civilized world and with soldiers as

evangelists, Mithraism soon spread to Northern Africa, made its

way to England, Scotland, Germany and to the lands east of the

Danube.

At the center of Mithraic theology stood a dual godhead similar to

that on which Zoroastrianism was built. Ormazd was the chief

deity on high; over the infernal regions reigned Ahriman, a Spirit

of Evil. A divine trinity was created by the birth of Mithra, son of

Ormazd, who in some versions was said to have been born of a

mortal virgin. Ormazd and Mithra were represented as waging

ceaseless warfare against the Spirit of Evil. The followers of

Mithra were conceived of as a world army, led by the god, and

military virtues were strongly emphasized in the moral teachings

of the cult. A man entered this army by being initiated in a

mithreum, usually a room built partly underground to represent the

famous cave, scene of the god's struggle with the bull. There were

usually seven grades of membership. A symbolical drama was

performed at one stage of advancement and this represented death

and resurrection, together with a baptism in the blood of a bull.

Each local branch had its own officials, its own treasury and

dispensed its own charity.

For a time Mithraism was a formidable opponent of Christianity,

but it was gradually pounded to pieces by the missionary zeal of

the Western Church. Internal discords weakened it still further, and

it went into a decline. It was rescued from oblivion, however, by

the followers of Mani, and underwent reincarnation as the cult of

Manichaeism. Mani, according to Mohammedan tradition, was a

Persian of Ecbatana, born in about the year 215 A.D. His theology

revived the dualism which long had stood at the center of

Mithraism, dividing the universe into light and darkness, good and

evil, with a god of light on one hand and a god of darkness on the

other. The cult, after gaining a foothold in Persia, passed on to

Rome about the fourth century and there became a powerful rival

of the Christian Church. There in due season it was demolished by

Leo the Great, Valentinian III and Justinian.

Once more the scattered fragments of its loyal following were

gathered together to reappear, with elements borrowed from

gnosticism and Christianity, under the name of Paulicianism. This

sect spread over Armenia and Asia Minor from the fifth century

onward, taking its name, according to one of its traditions, from a

certain Paul, a patriarch of the Christian Church at Antioch;

another tradition asserts that a certain Constantine was founder.

The first of its canons, according to F. C. Conybeare, was belief in

the ancient divine dualism of the Iranians. Its adepts anathematized

Mani, yet in substance adopted his dualistic theory, affirming that

there is a heavenly father, who rules not this world but the world to

come; and an evil demiurge, lord and god of this world, who made

all flesh. In spite of violent persecutions - the Byzantine empress,

Theodora, caused 100,000 to be slain - the cult profoundly affected

Catholic theology, specially of the Eastern Church. It survived in

the Balkans, particularly in Bulgaria, down to the thirteenth

century. Five hundred years later it reappeared in Armenia and

traces of it were found there early in the nineteenth century.

Meanwhile this strange compound of Catholicism, Manichxism,

gnosticism and Zoroastrianism had sown the seeds of new

religious cults in Europe. Among these were the Bogomiles, a

Bulgarian sect, the Patarini of Italy and the various branches of the

Cathari, which flourished in France from the eleventh to the

thirteenth centuries. All of these retained a few traces of

Manichaeism and its parent Mithraism, although in some instances

they are not easily discovered. According to Albert Henry

Newman, the Cathari rejected, after the manner of the

Manichaecans, intercourse of the sexes. They asserted they held to

nothing but the Scriptures, repudiated ceremonial marriage and the

veneration of confessors, considered baptism, and especially the

baptism of infants, useless, taught that a private room was as

sacred as a consecrated place of worship and said altars were no

better than other heaps of stones. They practiced austere self-denial

and abounded in charitable deeds.

This heretical movement reached its flower in the sect of the

Albigenses, who flourished to such power that Innocent III, taking

alarm at their prosperity, organized a crusade against them. A large

army under the fanatical papal legate, Arnold, hunted them to the

death, sacking town after town, slaughtering and outraging the

populations. The work of destruction went on for years. Some of

the Albigenses fled to Spain were they were hunted down by the

Inquisition. Others found asylum in the Netherlands.

It is a long and devious journey from nineteenth-century Armenia

back to the Iranian cult of Mithra, or even from the French Cathari

back to the same indistinct beginning. For him who would trace its

course history sometimes offers but the frailest of clews. But it is a

trip worth taking for the light it throws upon the intricate problem

of cult inheritances. If it proves nothing else, it demonstrates that

human societies may retain certain peculiarities through countless

changes, and that these characteristics can be passed from group to

group, although each successive heir may be utterly unconscious of

the source from which they were derived.

Puritanism in England and in New England was in some respects a

modern embodiment of the ancient dualistic theory; and the same

general theory, to cite a cause nearer home, was mixed with all

kinds of gnostic vagaries and built into the secret society known as

the Order of the Illuminati. This system, which was allied with

Freemasonry, was founded in Bavaria in the latter part of the

eighteenth century by Adam Weishaupt. The Illuminati, along with

other Masonic "higher grades" and pseudo-Masonic occultist

societies which came into existence about the same time,

undoubtedly derived their inspiration from a culture stream

flowing from the Graeco-Roman period of a thousand years ago.

Other illustrations of this same tendency could be used. There was

the stream of gnosticism; there was the stream of Jewish

theosophic mysticism which culminated in the Kabbala; there was

that other and better known stream, perpetuated by classic

literature, the rediscovery of which gave rise to Europe's

Renaissance; there was the stream of astrology, one branch of

which took the form of alchemy and its attendant occultism; there

was the subterranean stream of pagan belief which resulted in fairy

cults and witchcraft cults and thoroughly saturated folk beliefs in

England and Europe. Christianity, Catholic and Protestant alike,

has not hesitated to give Christian interpretations to vague notions

which awed the pagans of the past, and has even usurped and taken

into its own service ancient rites and ceremonials, traces of which

survive in the annual festivals of Christmas and Easter. In the

spiritual confusion that was imperial Rome, when the old gods

died and men sought new faiths in which to put their trust, eager

minds were quick to grasp at every promise of hope, and society

after society came into being, flourished and passed away, leaving

always some essence of its philosophy or ritual to enrich or to

complicate the thinking of posterity.

That Ancient Craft Masonry has in fact retained just such

inheritances is clearly apparent from the extraordinary complexity

of its symbolism. To cite a single instance, where many might be

brought to attention, there may be found in its legends and ritual

survivals of the Pythagorean philosophy of numbers and

particularly of the number three, with its relation to the triangle.

Both the equilateral and the right triangle have been venerated by

the Craft from a day beyond which we possess no record. The

oldest traditions mention Euclid and Pythagoras and the

forty-seventh proposition of Euclid has long been regarded as a

Masonic symbol of the first importance. But in spite of the

attribution of Greek origin for this mathematical theorem, there is

evidence to show it may have been known by the Egyptians long

before Pythagoras. The Egyptians considered the base line as

representing Osiris, the male principle; the vertical line as

representing Isis, the female principle, and the hypothenuse as

representing Horus, product of the two. Thus in the earliest times

the problem had definite religious significance. It is not possible to

say precisely how that idea was preserved and transmitted through

many centuries until, in altered form and with its earlier meaning

lost, it reappeared in the practices of medieval operative masons.

The important thing to remember is that however the explanation

of it had changed, it continued to be invested with mystical

connotations. With the strange history of Mithraism in mind, the

assumption must be that it was passed along from cult to cult until

it reached an architectural association which from its calling was

particularly likely to cherish it.

Pythagoras founded a cult in which there was an outer and an inner

teaching, one for ordinary minds and the other for the truly

intelligent. He made numbers into symbols for the divine mind. As

all numbers rise from the number one, so he conceived all nature

as rising from one Deity. Carrying the notion a step further, letting

the Monad represent the active principle in nature, or God, the

Duad represent the passive principle, union of the two produced

the Triad, which represented the soul of the world, and the

Quadrate or Square represented the perfection or completion of

nature. Other combinations and elaborations of the same idea

naturally afforded symbolical dress for the most abstruse

metaphysical reflections.

The effect of such a doctrine upon an intellectual world already

grown too wise to believe in the old gods was profound. It was

based on the best science of the day, was plausible and intelligible.

Best of all, it could be imparted only to minds competent to work

out its subtle implications. Those who penetrated to its innermost

arcana believed they had approached very near to the great

objective of all religious cults, knowledge of the meaning and

nature of God. Those who never quite reached that point had

reason to feel they were on their way. As for less able or less

curious minds, they were content with the belief that they were in

the presence of secrets of incalculable potency, mere proximity to

which gave them a decided advantage over their uninitiated

neighbors.

Practically every one of these Pythagorean theories survives in

some obscure form in modern Freemasonry. This has led

incautious students to the conclusion that the Pythagorean cult was

an early form of Freemasonry. Such an assumption is scarcely

warranted by the facts. It is far more likely that in every important

secret society of the Graeco-Roman world which attracted the

adherence of learned men, Pythagoreanism had repercussions. Its

teachings, often garbled and misunderstood, passed into the

common stock of knowledge, theory and belief, which was worked

over and over again into new legends and rituals.

It is of importance to remember, in this connection, that in the days

of the emperors Rome was not only the military capital of the

world but was also its chief center of intellectual energy. That

section of the early Christian Church which established itself in the

Eternal City rapidly became the most militant and most successful.

Alexandria and Northern Africa, Antioch and Byzantium made

priceless contributions to early Christian philosophy and literature,

but Rome carried the banner of the Cross to the remotest confines

of the known world and to the far-away islands of the seas. But

Christianity, destined to become the greatest of Rome's religious

systems, was not its only one. Indeed for centuries it was not the

most important one from the standpoint of its popularity with the

masses of Roman intellectuals.

With the break-up of the empire came a break-up of its social

organizations. Such of the Ancient Mysteries as had continued to

that time shared the common fate. The general culture they

represented did not pass away with them, but persisted in many

forms and through divers transmutations down into the Middle

Ages and beyond. Somehow and at some undeterminable time

Freemasonry emerged, bearing within itself traces of that culture.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that data will at some future time

be discovered, or other internal evidence will be found, to prove

that certain specific rites in the Masonic system were definitely

practiced at a time coincident with the Mysteries, or else with some

of the private or local cults which in all essentials were at one with

the Mysteries themselves.

If that should come to pass it may even turn out that the Legend of

H.A. in its primitive form was a ceremony in some Ancient

Mystery, perhaps in one of the colleges composed of workers in

the building trades. The facts as now known are far from proving

any such theory; but there may be some use - and certainly there

can be little harm - in holding that possibility as a working

hypothesis. It is impossible to believe that this legend could have

been fabricated or first introduced during the Grand Lodge era in

the early eighteenth century, when innovations of incalculably

smaller moment were bitterly resented by operative Masons and in

fact proved highly disruptive. Moreover it is difficult to believe

that such a mystery - alien in its every aspect from the practical

interests of medieval guilds - could have been fabricated by guild

operative members. It would have been so much more natural for

them to manufacture a legend out of materials nearer home.

In its essentials the Legend of H-A. bears a strange resemblance to rites of several cults of the greatest antiquity. It may well be that the guilds inherited it, along with many other ancient matters, from

ancestors which flourished in the Graeco-Roman period and which

in turn borrowed it from their ancestors.

At any rate it is plain that mystery cults of the classical period must not be regarded as something exceptional in that time, or as

standing apart from general culture as Freemasonry today stands

apart from other modern societies. If this be a true reading of the

case, it explains the difficulties under which all those have labored

who, from William Hutchinson and Dr. Oliver down, have tried to

show that Freemasonry is the particular descendant of some

particular Ancient Mystery. It is a hypothesis more easily

defensible to suppose that in a sense it has descended from all of

them, since all belong to one vast body of social experience.