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THE BUILDERS
A STORY AND STUDY
OF MASONRY
BY
JOSEPH FORT NEWTON, LITT. D.
GRAND LODGE OF IOWA
_When I was a King and a Mason--
A master proved and skilled,
I cleared me ground for a palace
Such as a King should build.
I decreed and cut down to my levels,
Presently, under the silt,
I came on the wreck of a palace
Such as a King had built!_
--KIPLING
CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA
THE TORCH PRESS
NINETEEN FIFTEEN
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COPYRIGHT, 1914
BY JOSEPH FORT NEWTON
_First Printing, December, 1914_
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To
The Memory of
THEODORE SUTTON PARVIN
Founder of the Library of the Grand Lodge
of Iowa, with Reverence and Gratitude; to
LOUIS BLOCK
Past Grand Master of Masons in Iowa, dear Friend
and Fellow-worker, who initiated and inspired
this study, with Love and Goodwill; and
to the
YOUNG MASONS
Our Hope and Pride, for whom
this book was written
With
Fraternal Greeting
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THE ANTEROOM
Fourteen years ago the writer of this volume entered the temple of
Freemasonry, and that date stands out in memory as one of the most
significant days in his life. There was a little spread on the night
of his raising, and, as is the custom, the candidate was asked to give
his impressions of the Order. Among other things, he made request to
know if there was any little book which would tell a young man the
things he would most like to know about Masonry--what it was, whence
it came, what it teaches, and what it is trying to do in the world? No
one knew of such a book at that time, nor has any been found to meet a
need which many must have felt before and since. By an odd
coincidence, it has fallen to the lot of the author to write the
little book for which he made request fourteen years ago.
This bit of reminiscence explains the purpose of the present volume,
and every book must be judged by its spirit and purpose, not less than
by its style and contents. Written as a commission from the Grand
Lodge of Iowa, and approved by that Grand body, a copy of this book is
to be presented to every man upon whom the degree of Master Mason is
conferred within this Grand Jurisdiction. Naturally this intention has
determined the method and arrangement of the book, as well as the
matter it contains; its aim being to tell a young man entering the
order the antecedents of Masonry, its development, its philosophy, its
mission, and its ideal. Keeping this purpose always in mind, the
effort has been to prepare a brief, simple, and vivid account of the
origin, growth, and teaching of the Order, so written as to provoke a
deeper interest in and a more earnest study of its story and its
service to mankind.
No work of this kind has been undertaken, so far as is known, by any
Grand Lodge in this country or abroad--at least, not since the old
_Pocket Companion_, and other such works in the earlier times; and
this is the more strange from the fact that the need of it is so
obvious, and its possibilities so fruitful and important. Every one
who has looked into the vast literature of Masonry must often have
felt the need of a concise, compact, yet comprehensive survey to clear
the path and light the way. Especially must those feel such a need who
are not accustomed to traverse long and involved periods of history,
and more especially those who have neither the time nor the
opportunity to sift ponderous volumes to find out the facts. Much of
our literature--indeed, by far the larger part of it--was written
before the methods of scientific study had arrived, and while it
fascinates, it does not convince those who are used to the more
critical habits of research. Consequently, without knowing it, some of
our most earnest Masonic writers have made the Order a target for
ridicule by their extravagant claims as to its antiquity. They did not
make it clear in what sense it is ancient, and not a little satire has
been aimed at Masons for their gullibility in accepting as true the
wildest and most absurd legends. Besides, no history of Masonry has
been written in recent years, and some important material has come to
light in the world of historical and archaeological scholarship, making
not a little that has hitherto been obscure more clear; and there is
need that this new knowledge be related to what was already known.
While modern research aims at accuracy, too often its results are dry
pages of fact, devoid of literary beauty and spiritual appeal--a
skeleton without the warm robe of flesh and blood. Striving for
accuracy, the writer has sought to avoid making a dusty chronicle of
facts and figures, which few would have the heart to follow, with what
success the reader must decide.
Such a book is not easy to write, and for two reasons: it is the
history of a secret Order, much of whose lore is not to be written,
and it covers a bewildering stretch of time, asking that the contents
of innumerable volumes--many of them huge, disjointed, and difficult
to digest--be compact within a small space. Nevertheless, if it has
required a prodigious labor, it is assuredly worth while in behalf of
the young men who throng our temple gates, as well as for those who
are to come after us. Every line of this book has been written in the
conviction that the real history of Masonry is great enough, and its
simple teaching grand enough, without the embellishment of legend,
much less of occultism. It proceeds from first to last upon the
assurance that all that we need to do is to remove the scaffolding
from the historic temple of Masonry and let it stand out in the
sunlight, where all men can see its beauty and symmetry, and that it
will command the respect of the most critical and searching
intellects, as well as the homage of all who love mankind. By this
faith the long study has been guided; in this confidence it has been
completed.
To this end the sources of Masonic scholarship, stored in the library
of the Grand Lodge of Iowa, have been explored, and the highest
authorities have been cited wherever there is uncertainty--copious
references serving not only to substantiate the statements made, but
also, it is hoped, to guide the reader into further and more detailed
research. Also, in respect of issues still open to debate and about
which differences of opinion obtain, both sides have been given a
hearing, so far as space would allow, that the student may weigh and
decide the question for himself. Like all Masonic students of recent
times, the writer is richly indebted to the great Research Lodges of
England--especially to the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076--without
whose proceedings this study would have been much harder to write, if
indeed it could have been written at all. Such men as Gould, Hughan,
Speth, Crawley, Thorp, to name but a few--not forgetting Pike, Parvin,
Mackey, Fort, and others in this country--deserve the perpetual
gratitude of the fraternity. If, at times, in seeking to escape from
mere legend, some of them seemed to go too far toward another
extreme--forgetting that there is much in Masonry that cannot be
traced by name and date--it was but natural in their effort in behalf
of authentic history and accurate scholarship. Alas, most of those
named belong now to a time that is gone and to the people who are no
longer with us here, but they are recalled by an humble student who
would pay them the honor belonging to great men and great Masons.
This book is divided into three parts, as everything Masonic should
be: Prophecy, History, and Interpretation. The first part has to do
with the hints and foregleams of Masonry in the early history,
tradition, mythology, and symbolism of the race--finding its
foundations in the nature and need of man, and showing how the stones
wrought out by time and struggle were brought from afar to the making
of Masonry as we know it. The second part is a story of the order of
builders through the centuries, from the building of the Temple of
Solomon to the organization of the mother Grand Lodge of England, and
the spread of the Order all over the civilized world. The third part
is a statement and exposition of the faith of Masonry, its philosophy,
its religious meaning, its genius, and its ministry to the individual,
and through the individual to society and the state. Such is a bare
outline of the purpose, method, plan, and spirit of the work, and if
these be kept in mind it is believed that it will tell its story and
confide its message.
When a man thinks of our mortal lot--its greatness and its pathos, how
much has been wrought out in the past, and how binding is our
obligation to preserve and enrich the inheritance of humanity--there
comes over him a strange warming of the heart toward all his fellow
workers; and especially toward the young, to whom we must soon entrust
all that we hold sacred. All through these pages the wish has been to
make the young Mason feel in what a great and benign tradition he
stands, that he may the more earnestly strive to be a Mason not merely
in form, but in faith, in spirit, and still more, in character; and so
help to realize somewhat of the beauty we all have dreamed--lifting
into the light the latent powers and unguessed possibilities of this
the greatest order of men upon the earth. Everyone can do a little,
and if each does his part faithfully the sum of our labors will be
very great, and we shall leave the world fairer than we found it,
richer in faith, gentler in justice, wiser in pity--for we pass this
way but once, pilgrims seeking a country, even a City that hath
foundations.
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J.F.N.
_Cedar Rapids, Iowa_, September 7, 1914.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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THE ANTE-ROOM vii
PART I--PROPHECY
CHAPTER I. THE FOUNDATIONS 5
CHAPTER II. THE WORKING TOOLS 19
CHAPTER III. THE DRAMA OF FAITH 39
CHAPTER IV. THE SECRET DOCTRINE 57
CHAPTER V. THE COLLEGIA 73
PART II--HISTORY
CHAPTER I. FREE-MASONS 97
CHAPTER II. FELLOWCRAFTS 127
CHAPTER III. ACCEPTED MASONS 153
CHAPTER IV. GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND 173
CHAPTER V. UNIVERSAL MASONRY 201
PART III--INTERPRETATION
CHAPTER I. WHAT IS MASONRY 239
CHAPTER II. THE MASONIC PHILOSOPHY 259
CHAPTER III. THE SPIRIT OF MASONRY 283
BIBLIOGRAPHY 301
INDEX 306
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Part I--Prophecy
THE FOUNDATIONS
/#
_By Symbols is man guided and commanded, made happy, made
wretched. He everywhere finds himself encompassed with Symbols,
recognized as such or not recognized: the Universe is but one vast
Symbol of God; nay, if thou wilt have it, what is man himself but
a Symbol of God; is not all that he does symbolical; a revelation
to Sense of the mystic God-given force that is in him; a Gospel of
Freedom, which he, the Messiah of Nature, preaches, as he can, by
word and act? Not a Hut he builds but is the visible embodiment of
a Thought; but bears visible record of invisible things; but is,
in the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as real._
--THOMAS CARLYLE, _Sartor Resartus_
#/
CHAPTER I
_The Foundations_
Two arts have altered the face of the earth and given shape to the
life and thought of man, Agriculture and Architecture. Of the two, it
would be hard to know which has been the more intimately interwoven
with the inner life of humanity; for man is not only a planter and a
builder, but a mystic and a thinker. For such a being, especially in
primitive times, any work was something more than itself; it was a
truth found out. In becoming useful it attained some form, enshrining
at once a thought and a mystery. Our present study has to do with the
second of these arts, which has been called the matrix of
civilization.
When we inquire into origins and seek the initial force which carried
art forward, we find two fundamental factors--physical necessity and
spiritual aspiration. Of course, the first great impulse of all
architecture was need, honest response to the demand for shelter; but
this demand included a Home for the Soul, not less than a roof over
the head. Even in this response to primary need there was something
spiritual which carried it beyond provision for the body; as the men
of Egypt, for instance, wanted an indestructible resting-place, and so
built the pyramids. As Capart says, prehistoric art shows that this
utilitarian purpose was in almost every case blended with a religious,
or at least a magical, purpose.[1] The spiritual instinct, in seeking
to recreate types and to set up more sympathetic relations with the
universe, led to imitation, to ideas of proportion, to the passion for
beauty, and to the effort after perfection.
Man has been always a builder, and nowhere has he shown himself more
significantly than in the buildings he has erected. When we stand
before them--whether it be a mud hut, the house of a cliff-dweller
stuck like the nest of a swallow on the side of a canon, a Pyramid, a
Parthenon, or a Pantheon--we seem to read into his soul. The builder
may have gone, perhaps ages before, but here he has left something of
himself, his hopes, his fears, his ideas, his dreams. Even in the
remote recesses of the Andes, amidst the riot of nature, and where man
is now a mere savage, we come upon the remains of vast, vanished
civilizations, where art and science and religion reached unknown
heights. Wherever humanity has lived and wrought, we find the
crumbling ruins of towers, temples, and tombs, monuments of its
industry and its aspiration. Also, whatever else man may have
been--cruel, tyrannous, vindictive--his buildings always have
reference to religion. They bespeak a vivid sense of the Unseen and
his awareness of his relation to it. Of a truth, the story of the
Tower of Babel is more than a myth. Man has ever been trying to build
to heaven, embodying his prayer and his dream in brick and stone.
For there are two sets of realities--material and spiritual--but they
are so interwoven that all practical laws are exponents of moral laws.
Such is the thesis which Ruskin expounds with so much insight and
eloquence in his _Seven Lamps of Architecture_, in which he argues
that the laws of architecture are moral laws, as applicable to the
building of character as to the construction of cathedrals. He finds
those laws to be Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and,
as the crowning grace of all, that principle to which Polity owes its
stability, Life its happiness, Faith its acceptance, and Creation its
continuance--_Obedience_. He holds that there is no such thing as
liberty, and never can be. The stars have it not; the earth has it
not; the sea has it not. Man fancies that he has freedom, but if he
would use the word Loyalty instead of Liberty, he would be nearer the
truth, since it is by obedience to the laws of life and truth and
beauty that he attains to what he calls liberty.
Throughout that brilliant essay, Ruskin shows how the violation of
moral laws spoils the beauty of architecture, mars its usefulness, and
makes it unstable. He points out, with all the variations of emphasis,
illustration, and appeal, that beauty is what is imitated from natural
forms, consciously or unconsciously, and that what is not so derived,
but depends for its dignity upon arrangement received from the human
mind, expresses, while it reveals, the quality of the mind, whether it
be noble or ignoble. Thus:
/#[4,66]
All building, therefore, shows man either as gathering or
governing; and the secrets of his success are his knowing
what to gather, and how to rule. These are the two great
intellectual Lamps of Architecture; the one consisting in a
just and humble veneration of the works of God upon earth,
and the other in an understanding of the dominion over those
works which has been vested in man.[2]
#/
What our great prophet of art thus elaborated so eloquently, the early
men forefelt by instinct, dimly it may be, but not less truly. If
architecture was born of need it soon showed its magic quality, and
all true building touched depths of feeling and opened gates of
wonder. No doubt the men who first balanced one stone over two others
must have looked with astonishment at the work of their hands, and
have worshiped the stones they had set up. This element of mystical
wonder and awe lasted long through the ages, and is still felt when
work is done in the old way by keeping close to nature, necessity, and
faith. From the first, ideas of sacredness, of sacrifice, of ritual
rightness, of magic stability, of likeness to the universe, of
perfection of form and proportion glowed in the heart of the builder,
and guided his arm. Wren, philosopher as he was, decided that the
delight of man in setting up columns was acquired through worshiping
in the groves of the forest; and modern research has come to much the
same view, for Sir Arthur Evans shows that in the first European age
columns were gods. All over Europe the early morning of architecture
was spent in the worship of great stones.[3]
If we go to old Egypt, where the art of building seems first to have
gathered power, and where its remains are best preserved, we may read
the ideas of the earliest artists. Long before the dynastic period a
strong people inhabited the land who developed many arts which they
handed on to the pyramid-builders. Although only semi-naked savages
using flint instruments in a style much like the bushmen, they were
the root, so to speak, of a wonderful artistic stock. Of the Egyptians
Herodotus said, "They gather the fruits of the earth with less labor
than any other people." With agriculture and settled life came trade
and stored-up energy which might essay to improve on caves and pits
and other rude dwellings. By the Nile, perhaps, man first aimed to
overpass the routine of the barest need, and obey his soul. There he
wrought out beautiful vases of fine marble, and invented square
building.
At any rate, the earliest known structure actually discovered, a
prehistoric tomb found in the sands at Hieraconpolis, is already
right-angled. As Lethaby reminds us, modern people take squareness
very much for granted as being a self-evident form, but the discovery
of the square was a great step in geometry.[4] It opened a new era in
the story of the builders. Early inventions must have seemed like
revelations, as indeed they were; and it is not strange that skilled
craftsmen were looked upon as magicians. If man knows as much as he
does, the discovery of the Square was a great event to the primitive
mystics of the Nile. Very early it became an emblem of truth,
justice, and righteousness, and so it remains to this day though
uncountable ages have passed. Simple, familiar, eloquent, it brings
from afar a sense of the wonder of the dawn, and it still teaches a
lesson which we find it hard to learn. So also the cube, the
compasses, and the keystone, each a great advance for those to whom
architecture was indeed "building touched with emotion," as showing
that its laws are the laws of the Eternal.
Maspero tells us that the temples of Egypt, even from earliest times,
were built in the image of the earth as the builders had imagined
it.[5] For them the earth was a sort of flat slab more long than wide,
and the sky was a ceiling or vault supported by four great pillars.
The pavement, represented the earth; the four angles stood for the
pillars; the ceiling, more often flat, though sometimes curved,
corresponded to the sky. From the pavement grew vegetation, and water
plants emerged from the water; while the ceiling, painted dark blue,
was strewn with stars of five points. Sometimes, the sun and moon were
seen floating on the heavenly ocean escorted by the constellations,
and the months and days. There was a far withdrawn holy place, small
and obscure, approached through a succession of courts and columned
halls, all so arranged on a central axis as to point to the sunrise.
Before the outer gates were obelisks and avenues of statues. Such were
the shrines of the old solar religion, so oriented that on one day in
the year the beams of the rising sun, or of some bright star that
hailed his coming, should stream down the nave and illumine the
altar.[6]
Clearly, one ideal of the early builders was that of sacrifice, as
seen in their use of the finest materials; and another was accuracy of
workmanship. Indeed, not a little of the earliest work displayed an
astonishing technical ability, and such work must point to some
underlying idea which the workers sought to realize. Above all things
they sought permanence. In later inscriptions relating to buildings,
phrases like these occur frequently: "it is such as the heavens in all
its quarters;" "firm as the heavens." Evidently the basic idea was
that, as the heavens were stable, not to be moved, so a building put
into proper relation with the universe would acquire magical
stability. It is recorded that when Ikhnaton founded his new city,
four boundary stones were accurately placed, that so it might be
exactly square, and thus endure forever. Eternity was the ideal aimed
at, everything else being sacrificed for that aspiration.
How well they realized their dream is shown us in the Pyramids, of all
monuments of mankind the oldest, the most technically perfect, the
largest, and the most mysterious. Ages come and go, empires rise and
fall, philosophies flourish and fail, and man seeks him out many
inventions, but they stand silent under the bright Egyptian night, as
fascinating as they are baffling. An obelisk is simply a pyramid,
albeit the base has become a shaft, holding aloft the oldest emblems
of solar faith--a Triangle mounted on a Square. When and why this
figure became holy no one knows, save as we may conjecture that it was
one of those sacred stones which gained its sanctity in times far back
of all recollection and tradition, like the _Ka'aba_ at Mecca. Whether
it be an imitation of the triangle of zodiacal light, seen at certain
times in the eastern sky at sunrise and sunset, or a feat of masonry
used as a symbol of Heaven, as the Square was an emblem of Earth, no
one may affirm.[7] In the Pyramid Texts the Sun-god, when he created
all the other gods, is shown sitting on the apex of the sky in the
form of a Phoenix--that Supreme God to whom two architects, Suti and
Hor, wrote so noble a hymn of praise.[8]
White with the worship of ages, ineffably beautiful and pathetic, is
the old light-religion of humanity--a sublime nature-mysticism in
which Light was love and life, and Darkness evil and death. For the
early man light was the mother of beauty, the unveiler of color, the
elusive and radiant mystery of the world, and his speech about it was
reverent and grateful. At the gates of the morning he stood with
uplifted hands, and the sun sinking in the desert at eventide made him
wistful in prayer, half fear and half hope, lest the beauty return no
more. His religion, when he emerged from the night of animalism, was a
worship of the Light--his temple hung with stars, his altar a glowing
flame, his ritual a woven hymn of night and day. No poet of our day,
not even Shelley, has written lovelier lyrics in praise of the Light
than those hymns of Ikhnaton in the morning of the world.[9] Memories
of this religion of the dawn linger with us today in the faith that
follows the Day-Star from on high, and the Sun of Righteousness--One
who is the Light of the World in life, and the Lamp of Poor Souls in
the night of death.
Here, then, are the real foundations of Masonry, both material and
moral: in the deep need and aspiration of man, and his creative
impulse; in his instinctive Faith, his quest of the Ideal, and his
love of the Light. Underneath all his building lay the feeling,
prophetic of his last and highest thought, that the earthly house of
his life should be in right relation with its heavenly prototype, the
world-temple--imitating on earth the house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens. If he erected a square temple, it was an image
of the earth; if he built a pyramid, it was a picture of a beauty
shown him in the sky; as, later, his cathedral was modelled after the
mountain, and its dim and lofty arch a memory of the forest vista--its
altar a fireside of the soul, its spire a prayer in stone. And as he
wrought his faith and dream into reality, it was but natural that the
tools of the builder should become emblems of the thoughts of the
thinker. Not only his tools, but, as we shall see, the very stones
with which he worked became sacred symbols--the temple itself a vision
of that House of Doctrine, that Home of the Soul, which, though
unseen, he is building in the midst of the years.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Primitive Art in Egypt._
[2] Chapter iii, aphorism 2.
[3] _Architecture_, by Lethaby, chap. i.
[4] _Architecture_, by Lethaby, chap. ii.
[5] _Dawn of Civilization_.
[6] _Dawn of Astronomy_, Norman Lockyer.
[7] Churchward, in his _Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man_ (chap.
xv), holds that the pyramid was typical of heaven, Shu, standing on
seven steps, having lifted the sky from the earth in the form of a
triangle; and that at each point stood one of the gods, Sut and Shu at
the base, the apex being the Pole Star where Horus of the Horizon had
his throne. This is, in so far, true; but the pyramid emblem was older
than Osiris, Isis, and Horus, and runs back into an obscurity beyond
knowledge.
[8] _Religion and Thought in Egypt_, by Breasted, lecture ix.
[9] Ikhnaton, indeed, was a grand, solitary, shining figure, "the first
idealist in history," and a poetic thinker in whom the religion of
Egypt attained its highest reach. Dr. Breasted puts his lyrics
alongside the poems of Wordsworth and the great passage of Ruskin in
_Modern Painters_, as celebrating the divinity of Light (_Religion and
Thought in Egypt_, lecture ix). Despite the revenge of his enemies, he
stands out as a lonely, heroic, prophetic soul--"the first _individual_
in time."
THE WORKING TOOLS
/#
_It began to shape itself to my intellectual vision into something
more imposing and majestic, solemnly mysterious and grand. It
seemed to me like the Pyramids in their loneliness, in whose yet
undiscovered chambers may be hidden, for the enlightenment of
coming generations, the sacred books of the Egyptians, so long
lost to the world; like the Sphynx half buried in the desert._
_In its symbolism, which and its spirit of brotherhood are its
essence, Freemasonry is more ancient than any of the world's
living religions. It has the symbols and doctrines which, older
than himself, Zarathrustra inculcated; and it seemed to me a
spectacle sublime, yet pitiful--the ancient Faith of our ancestors
holding out to the world its symbols once so eloquent, and mutely
and in vain asking for an interpreter._
_And so I came at last to see that the true greatness and majesty
of Freemasonry consist in its proprietorship of these and its
other symbols; and that its symbolism is its soul._
--ALBERT PIKE, _Letter to Gould_
#/
CHAPTER II
_The Working Tools_
Never were truer words than those of Goethe in the last lines of
_Faust_, and they echo one of the oldest instincts of humanity: "All
things transitory but as symbols are sent." From the beginning man has
divined that the things open to his senses are more than mere facts,
having other and hidden meanings. The whole world was close to him as
an infinite parable, a mystical and prophetic scroll the lexicon of
which he set himself to find. Both he and his world were so made as to
convey a sense of doubleness, of high truth hinted in humble, nearby
things. No smallest thing but had its skyey aspect which, by his
winged and quick-sighted fancy, he sought to surprise and grasp.
Let us acknowledge that man was born a poet, his mind a chamber of
imagery, his world a gallery of art. Despite his utmost efforts, he
can in nowise strip his thought of the flowers and fruits that cling
to it, withered though they often are. As a fact, he has ever been a
citizen of two worlds, using the scenery of the visible to make vivid
the realities of the world Unseen. What wonder, then, that trees grew
in his fancy, flowers bloomed in his faith, and the victory of spring
over winter gave him hope of life after death, while the march of the
sun and the great stars invited him to "thoughts that wander through
eternity." Symbol was his native tongue, his first form of speech--as,
indeed, it is his last--whereby he was able to say what else he could
not have uttered. Such is the fact, and even the language in which we
state it is "a dictionary of faded metaphors," the fossil poetry of
ages ago.
I
That picturesque and variegated maze of the early symbolism of the
race we cannot study in detail, tempting as it is. Indeed, so
luxuriant was that old picture-language that we may easily miss our
way and get lost in the labyrinth, unless we keep to the right
path.[10] First of all, throughout this study of prophecy let us keep
ever in mind a very simple and obvious fact, albeit not less wonderful
because obvious. Socrates made the discovery--perhaps the greatest
ever made--that human nature is universal. By his searching questions
he found out that when men think round a problem, and think deeply,
they disclose a common nature and a common system of truth. So there
dawned upon him, from this fact, the truth of the kinship of mankind
and the unity of mind. His insight is confirmed many times over,
whether we study the earliest gropings of the human mind or set the
teachings of the sages side by side. Always we find, after comparison,
that the final conclusions of the wisest minds as to the meaning of
life and the world are harmonious, if not identical.
Here is the clue to the striking resemblances between the faiths and
philosophies of widely separated peoples, and it makes them
intelligible while adding to their picturesqueness and philosophic
interest. By the same token, we begin to understand why the same
signs, symbols, and emblems were used by all peoples to express their
earliest aspiration and thought. We need not infer that one people
learned them from another, or that there existed a mystic, universal
order which had them in keeping. They simply betray the unity of the
human mind, and show how and why, at the same stage of culture, races
far removed from each other came to the same conclusions and used much
the same symbols to body forth their thought. Illustrations are
innumerable, of which a few may be named as examples of this unity
both of idea and of emblem, and also as confirming the insight of the
great Greek that, however shallow minds may differ, in the end all
seekers after truth follow a common path, comrades in one great quest.
An example in point, as ancient as it is eloquent, is the idea of the
trinity and its emblem, the triangle. What the human thought of God is
depends on what power of the mind or aspect of life man uses as a lens
through which to look into the mystery of things. Conceived of as the
will of the world, God is one, and we have the monotheism of Moses.
Seen through instinct and the kaleidoscope of the senses, God is
multiple, and the result is polytheism and its gods without number.
For the reason, God is a dualism made up of matter and mind, as in the
faith of Zoroaster and many other cults. But when the social life of
man becomes the prism of faith, God is a trinity of Father, Mother,
Child. Almost as old as human thought, we find the idea of the trinity
and its triangle emblem everywhere--Siva, Vishnu, and Brahma in India
corresponding to Osiris, Isis, and Horus in Egypt. No doubt this idea
underlay the old pyramid emblem, at each corner of which stood one of
the gods. No missionary carried this profound truth over the earth. It
grew out of a natural and universal human experience, and is explained
by the fact of the unity of the human mind and its vision of God
through the family.
Other emblems take us back into an antiquity so remote that we seem to
be walking in the shadow of prehistoric time. Of these, the mysterious
Swastika is perhaps the oldest, as it is certainly the most widely
distributed over the earth. As much a talisman as a symbol, it has
been found on Chaldean bricks, among the ruins of the city of Troy, in
Egypt, on vases of ancient Cyprus, on Hittite remains and the pottery
of the Etruscans, in the cave temples of India, on Roman altars and
Runic monuments in Britain, in Thibet, China, and Korea, in Mexico,
Peru, and among the prehistoric burial-grounds of North America. There
have been many interpretations of it. Perhaps the meaning most usually
assigned to it is that of the Sanskrit word having in its roots an
intimation of the beneficence of life, _to be_ and _well_. As such, it
is a sign indicating "that the maze of life may bewilder, but a path
of light runs through it: _It is well_ is the name of the path, and
the key to life eternal is in the strange labyrinth for those whom God
leadeth."[11] Others hold it to have been an emblem of the Pole Star
whose stability in the sky, and the procession of the Ursa Major
around it, so impressed the ancient world. Men saw the sun journeying
across the heavens every day in a slightly different track, then
standing still, as it were, at the solstice, and then returning on its
way back. They saw the moon changing not only its orbit, but its size
and shape and time of appearing. Only the Pole Star remained fixed and
stable, and it became, not unnaturally, a light of assurance and the
footstool of the Most High.[12] Whatever its meaning, the Swastika
shows us the efforts of the early man to read the riddle of things,
and his intuition of a love at the heart of life.
Akin to the Swastika, if not an evolution from it, was the Cross, made
forever holy by the highest heroism of Love. When man climbed up out
of the primeval night, with his face to heaven upturned, he had a
cross in his hand. Where he got it, why he held it, and what he meant
by it, no one can conjecture much less affirm.[13] Itself a paradox,
its arms pointing to the four quarters of the earth, it is found in
almost every part of the world carved on coins, altars, and tombs, and
furnishing a design for temple architecture in Mexico and Peru, in the
pagodas of India, not less than in the churches of Christ. Ages before
our era, even from the remote time of the cliff-dweller, the Cross
seems to have been a symbol of life, though for what reason no one
knows. More often it was an emblem of eternal life, especially when
inclosed within a Circle which ends not, nor begins--the type of
Eternity. Hence the Ank Cross or Crux Ansata of Egypt, scepter of the
Lord of the Dead that never die. There is less mystery about the
Circle, which was an image of the disk of the Sun and a natural symbol
of completeness, of eternity. With a point within the center it
became, as naturally, the emblem of the Eye of the World--that
All-seeing eye of the eternal Watcher of the human scene.
Square, triangle, cross, circle--oldest symbols of humanity, all of
them eloquent, each of them pointing beyond itself, as symbols always
do, while giving form to the invisible truth which they invoke and
seek to embody. They are beautiful if we have eyes to see, serving not
merely as chance figures of fancy, but as forms of reality as it
revealed itself to the mind of man. Sometimes we find them united, the
Square within the Circle, and within that the Triangle, and at the
center the Cross. Earliest of emblems, they show us hints and
foregleams of the highest faith and philosophy, betraying not only the
unity of the human mind but its kinship with the Eternal--the fact
which lies at the root of every religion, and is the basis of each.
Upon this Faith man builded, finding a rock beneath, refusing to think
of Death as the gigantic coffin-lid of a dull and mindless universe
descending upon him at last.
II
From this brief outlook upon a wide field, we may pass to a more
specific and detailed study of the early prophecies of Masonry in the
art of the builder. Always the symbolic must follow the actual, if it
is to have reference and meaning, and the real is ever the basis of
the ideal. By nature an Idealist, and living in a world of radiant
mystery, it was inevitable that man should attach moral and spiritual
meanings to the tools, laws, and materials of building. Even so, in
almost every land and in the remotest ages we find great and beautiful
truth hovering about the builder and clinging to his tools.[14]
Whether there were organized orders of builders in the early times no
one can tell, though there may have been. No matter; man mixed thought
and worship with his work, and as he cut his altar stones and fitted
them together he thought out a faith by which to live.
Not unnaturally, in times when the earth was thought to be a Square
the Cube had emblematical meanings it could hardly have for us. From
earliest ages it was a venerated symbol, and the oblong cube signified
immensity of space from the base of earth to the zenith of the
heavens. It was a sacred emblem of the Lydian Kubele, known to the
Romans in after ages as Ceres or Cybele--hence, as some aver, the
derivation of the word "cube." At first rough stones were most sacred,
and an altar of hewn stones was forbidden.[15] With the advent of the
cut cube, the temple became known as the House of the Hammer--its
altar, always in the center, being in the form of a cube and regarded
as "an index or emblem of Truth, ever true to itself."[16] Indeed, the
cube, as Plutarch points out in his essay _On the Cessation of
Oracles_, "is palpably the proper emblem of rest, on account of the
security and firmness of the superficies." He further tells us that
the pyramid is an image of the triangular flame ascending from a
square altar; and since no one knows, his guess is as good as any. At
any rate, Mercury, Apollo, Neptune, and Hercules were worshiped under
the form of a square stone, while a large black stone was the emblem
of Buddha among the Hindoos, of Manah Theus-Ceres in Arabia, and of
Odin in Scandinavia. Everyone knows of the Stone of Memnon in Egypt,
which was said to speak at sunrise--as, in truth, all stones spoke to
man in the sunrise of time.[17]
More eloquent, if possible, was the Pillar uplifted, like the pillars
of the gods upholding the heavens. Whatever may have been the origin
of pillars, and there is more than one theory, Evans has shown that
they were everywhere worshiped as gods.[18] Indeed, the gods
themselves were pillars of Light and Power, as in Egypt Horus and Sut
were the twin-builders and supporters of heaven; and Bacchus among the
Thebans. At the entrance of the temple of Amenta, at the door of the
house of Ptah--as, later, in the porch of the temple of Solomon--stood
two pillars. Still further back, in the old solar myths, at the
gateway of eternity stood two pillars--Strength and Wisdom. In India,
and among the Mayas and Incas, there were three pillars at the portals
of the earthly and skyey temple--Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty. When
man set up a pillar, he became a fellow-worker with Him whom the old
sages of China used to call "the first Builder." Also, pillars were
set up to mark the holy places of vision and Divine deliverance, as
when Jacob erected a pillar at Bethel, Joshua at Gilgal, and Samuel at
Mizpeh and Shen. Always they were symbols of stability, of what the
Egyptians described as "the place of establishing forever,"--emblems
of the faith "that the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and He
hath set the world upon them."[19]
Long before our era we find the working tools of the Mason used as
emblems of the very truths which they teach today. In the oldest
classic of China, _The Book of History_, dating back to the twentieth
century before Christ, we read the instruction: "Ye officers of the
Government, apply the compasses." Even if we begin where _The Book of
History_ ends, we find many such allusions more than seven hundred
years before the Christian era. For example, in the famous canonical
work, called _The Great Learning_, which has been referred to the
fifth century B.C., we read, that a man should abstain from doing unto
others what he would not they should do to him; "and this," the writer
adds, "is called the principle of acting on the square." So also
Confucius and his great follower, Mencius. In the writings of Mencius
it is taught that men should apply the square and compasses morally to
their lives, and the level and the marking line besides, if they would
walk in the straight and even paths of wisdom, and keep themselves
within the bounds of honor and virtue.[20] In the sixth book of his
philosophy we find these words:
/#[4,66]
A Master Mason, in teaching apprentices, makes use of the
compasses and the square. Ye who are engaged in the pursuit
of wisdom must also make use of the compass and square.[21]
#/
There are even evidences, in the earliest historic records of China,
of the existence of a system of faith expressed in allegoric form, and
illustrated by the symbols of building. The secrets of this faith seem
to have been orally transmitted, the leaders alone pretending to have
full knowledge of them. Oddly enough, it seems to have gathered about
a symbolical temple put up in the desert, that the various officers of
the faith were distinguished by symbolic jewels, and that at its rites
they wore leather aprons.[22] From such records as we have it is not
possible to say whether the builders themselves used their tools as
emblems, or whether it was the thinkers who first used them to teach
moral truths. In any case, they were understood; and the point here is
that, thus early, the tools of the builder were teachers of wise and
good and beautiful truth. Indeed, we need not go outside the Bible to
find both the materials and working tools of the Mason so
employed:[23]
/#[4,66]
For every house is builded by some man; but the builder of
all things is God ... whose house we are.[24]
Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a tried stone, a
precious corner-stone, a sure foundation.[25]
The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of
the corner.[26]
Ye also, as living stones, are built up into a spiritual
house.[27]
When he established the heavens I was there, when he set the
compass upon the face of the deep, when he marked out the
foundations of the earth: then was I by him as a master
workman.[28]
The Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a
plumbline in his hand. And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what
seest thou? And I said, A plumbline. Then said the Lord,
Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people
Israel: I will not again pass by them any more.[29]
Ye shall offer the holy oblation foursquare, with the
possession of the city.[30]
And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as
the breadth.[31]
Him that overcometh I will make a pillar in the temple of my
God; and I will write upon him my new name.[32]
For we know that when our earthly house of this tabernacle is
dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens.[33]
#/
If further proof were needed, it has been preserved for us in the
imperishable stones of Egypt.[34] The famous obelisk, known as
Cleopatra's Needle, now in Central Park, New York, the gift to our
nation from Ismail, Khedive of Egypt in 1878, is a mute but eloquent
witness of the antiquity of the simple symbols of the Mason.
Originally it stood as one of the forest of obelisks surrounding the
great temple of the Sun-god at Heliopolis, so long a seat of Egyptian
learning and religion, dating back, it is thought, to the fifteenth
century before Christ. It was removed to Alexandria and re-erected by
a Roman architect and engineer named Pontius, B.C. 22. When it was
taken down in 1879 to be brought to America, all the emblems of the
builders were found in the foundation. The rough Cube and the polished
Cube in pure white limestone, the Square cut in syenite, an iron
Trowel, a lead Plummet, the arc of a Circle, the serpent-symbols of
Wisdom, a stone Trestle-board, a stone bearing the Master's Mark, and
a hieroglyphic word meaning _Temple_--all so placed and preserved as
to show, beyond doubt, that they had high symbolic meaning. Whether
they were in the original foundation, or were placed there when the
obelisk was removed, no one can tell. Nevertheless, they were there,
concrete witnesses of the fact that the builders worked in the light
of a mystical faith, of which they were emblems.
Much has been written of buildings, their origin, age, and
architecture, but of the builders hardly a word--so quickly is the
worker forgotten, save as he lives in his work. Though we have no
records other than these emblems, it is an obvious inference that
there were orders of builders even in those early ages, to whom these
symbols were sacred; and this inference is the more plausible when we
remember the importance of the builder both to religion and the state.
What though the builders have fallen into dust, to which all things
mortal decline, they still hold out their symbols for us to read,
speaking their thoughts in a language easy to understand. Across the
piled-up debris of ages they whisper the old familiar truths, and it
will be a part of this study to trace those symbols through the
centuries, showing that they have always had the same high meanings.
They bear witness not only to the unity of the human mind, but to the
existence of a common system of truth veiled in allegory and taught in
symbols. As such, they are prophecies of Masonry as we know it, whose
genius it is to take what is old, simple, and universal, and use it to
bring men together and make them friends.
/P
Shore calls to shore
That the line is unbroken!
P/
FOOTNOTES:
[10] There are many books in this field, but two may be named: _The
Lost Language of Symbolism_, by Bayley, and the _Signs and Symbols of
Primordial Man_, by Churchward, each in its own way remarkable. The
first aspires to be for this field what Frazer's _Golden Bough_ is for
religious anthropology, and its dictum is: "Beauty is Truth; Truth
Beauty." The thesis of the second is that Masonry is founded upon
Egyptian eschatology, which may be true; but unfortunately the book is
too polemical. Both books partake of the poetry, if not the confusion,
of the subject; but not for a world of dust would one clip their wings
of fancy and suggestion. Indeed, their union of scholarship and poetry
is unique. When the pains of erudition fail to track a fact to its
lair, they do not scruple to use the divining rod; and the result often
passes out of the realm of pedestrian chronicle into the world of
winged literature.
[11] _The Word in the Pattern_, Mrs. G.F. Watts.
[12] _The Swastika_, Thomas Carr. See essay by the same writer in which
he shows that the Swastika is the symbol of the Supreme Architect of
the Universe among Operative Masons today (_The Lodge of Research_, No.
2429, Transactions, 1911-12).
[13] _Signs and Symbols_, Churchward, chap. xvii.
[14] Here again the literature is voluminous, but not entirely
satisfactory. A most interesting book is _Signs and Symbols of
Primordial Man_, by Churchward, in that it surveys the symbolism of the
race always with reference to its Masonic suggestion. Vivid and popular
is _Symbols and Legends of Freemasonry_, by Finlayson, but he often
strains facts in order to stretch them over wide gaps of time. Dr.
Mackey's _Symbolism of Freemasonry_, though written more than sixty
years ago, remains a classic of the order. Unfortunately the lectures
of Albert Pike on _Symbolism_ are not accessible to the general reader,
for they are rich mines of insight and scholarship, albeit betraying
his partisanship of the Indo-Aryan race. Many minor books might be
named, but we need a work brought up to date and written in the light
of recent research.
[15] Exod. 20:25.
[16] _Antiquities of Cornwall_, Borlase.
[17] _Lost Language of Symbolism_, Bayley, chap, xviii; also in the
Bible, Deut. 32:18, II Sam. 22:3, 32, Psa. 28:1, Matt. 16:18, I Cor.
10:4.
[18] _Tree and Pillar Cult_, Sir Arthur Evans.
[19] I Sam. 2:8, Psa. 75:8, Job 26:7, Rev. 3:12.
[20] _Freemasonry in China_, Giles. Also Gould, _His. Masonry_, vol. i,
chap. i.
[21] _Chinese Classics_, by Legge, i, 219-45.
[22] Essay by Chaloner Alabaster, _Ars Quatuor Coronatorum_, vol. ii,
121-24. It is not too much to say that the Transactions of this Lodge
of Research are the richest storehouse of Masonic lore in the world.
[23] Matt. 16:18, Eph. 2:20-22, I Cor. 2:9-17. Woman is the house and
wall of man, without whose bounding and redeeming influence he would be
dissipated and lost (Song of Solomon 8:10). So also by the mystics
(_The Perfect Way_).
[24] Heb. 3:4.
[25] Isa. 28:16.
[26] Psa. 118:22, Matt. 21:42.
[27] I Pet. 2:5.
[28] Prov. 8:27-30, Revised Version.
[29] Amos 7:7, 8.
[30] Ezk. 48:20.
[31] Rev. 21:16.
[32] Rev. 3:12.
[33] II Cor. 5:1.
[34] _Egyptian Obelisks_, H.H. Gorringe. The obelisk in Central Park,
the expenses for removing which were paid by W.H. Vanderbilt, was
examined by the Grand Lodge of New York, and its emblems pronounced to
be unmistakably Masonic. This book gives full account of all obelisks
brought to Europe from Egypt, their measurements, inscriptions, and
transportation.
THE DRAMA OF FAITH
/#
_And so the Quest goes on. And the Quest, as it may be, ends in
attainment--we know not where and when: so long as we can conceive
of our separate existence, the quest goes on--an attainment
continued henceforward. And ever shall the study of the ways which
have been followed by those who have passed in front be a help on
our own path._
_It is well, it is of all things beautiful and perfect, holy and
high of all, to be conscious of the path which does in fine lead
thither where we seek to go, namely, the goal which is in God.
Taking nothing with us which does not belong to ourselves, leaving
nothing behind us that is of our real selves, we shall find in the
great attainment that the companions of our toil are with us. And
the place is the Valley of Peace._
--ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE, _The Secret Tradition_
#/
CHAPTER III
_The Drama of Faith_
Man does not live by bread alone; he lives by Faith, Hope, and Love,
and the first of these was Faith. Nothing in the human story is more
striking than the persistent, passionate, profound protest of man
against death. Even in the earliest time we see him daring to stand
erect at the gates of the grave, disputing its verdict, refusing to
let it have the last word, and making argument in behalf of his soul.
For Emerson, as for Addison, that fact alone was proof enough of
immortality, as revealing a universal intuition of eternal life.
Others may not be so easily convinced, but no man who has the heart of
a man can fail to be impressed by the ancient, heroic faith of his
race.
Nowhere has this faith ever been more vivid or victorious than among
the old Egyptians.[35] In the ancient _Book of the Dead_--which is,
indeed, a Book of Resurrection--occur the words: "The soul to heaven;
the body to earth;" and that first faith is our faith today. Of King
Unas, who lived in the third millennium, it is written: "Behold, thou
hast not gone as one dead, but as one living." Nor has any one in our
day set forth this faith with more simple eloquence than the Hymn to
Osiris, in the Papyrus of Hunefer. So in the Pyramid Texts the dead
are spoken of as Those Who Ascend, the Imperishable Ones who shine as
stars, and the gods are invoked to witness the death of the King
"Dawning as a Soul." There is deep prophecy, albeit touched with
poignant pathos, in these broken exclamations written on the pyramid
walls:
/#[4,66]
Thou diest not! Have ye said that he would die? He diest not;
this King Pepi lives forever! Live! Thou shalt not die! He
has escaped his day of death! Thou livest, thou livest, raise
thee up! Thou diest not, stand up, raise thee up! Thou
perishest not eternally! Thou diest not![36]
#/
Nevertheless, nor poetry nor chant nor solemn ritual could make death
other than death; and the Pyramid Texts, while refusing to utter the
fatal word, give wistful reminiscences of that blessed age "before
death came forth." However high the faith of man, the masterful
negation and collapse of the body was a fact, and it was to keep that
daring faith alive and aglow that The Mysteries were instituted.
Beginning, it may be, in incantation, they rose to heights of
influence and beauty, giving dramatic portrayal of the unconquerable
faith of man. Watching the sun rise from the tomb of night, and the
spring return in glory after the death of winter, man reasoned from
analogy--justifying a faith that held him as truly as he held it--that
the race, sinking into the grave, would rise triumphant over death.
I
There were many variations on this theme as the drama of faith
evolved, and as it passed from land to land; but the Motif was ever
the same, and they all were derived, directly or indirectly, from the
old Osirian passion-play in Egypt. Against the background of the
ancient Solar religion, Osiris made his advent as Lord of the Nile and
fecund Spirit of vegetable life--son of Nut the sky-goddess and Geb
the earth-god; and nothing in the story of the Nile-dwellers is more
appealing than his conquest of the hearts of the people against all
odds.[37] Howbeit, that history need not detain us here, except to say
that by the time his passion had become the drama of national faith,
it had been bathed in all the tender hues of human life; though
somewhat of its solar radiance still lingered in it. Enough to say
that of all the gods, called into being by the hopes and fears of men
who dwelt in times of yore on the banks of the Nile, Osiris was the
most beloved. Osiris the benign father, Isis his sorrowful and
faithful wife, and Horus whose filial piety and heroism shine like
diamonds in a heap of stones--about this trinity were woven the ideals
of Egyptian faith and family life. Hear now the story of the oldest
drama of the race, which for more than three thousand years held
captive the hearts of men.[38]
Osiris was Ruler of Eternity, but by reason of his visible shape
seemed nearly akin to man--revealing a divine humanity. His success
was chiefly due, however, to the gracious speech of Isis, his
sister-wife, whose charm men could neither reckon nor resist. Together
they labored for the good of man, teaching him to discern the plants
fit for food, themselves pressing the grapes and drinking the first
cup of wine. They made known the veins of metal running through the
earth, of which man was ignorant, and taught him to make weapons. They
initiated man into the intellectual and moral life, taught him ethics
and religion, how to read the starry sky, song and dance and the
rhythm of music. Above all, they evoked in men a sense of immortality,
of a destiny beyond the tomb. Nevertheless, they had enemies at once
stupid and cunning, keen-witted but short-sighted--the dark force of
evil which still weaves the fringe of crime on the borders of human
life.
Side by side with Osiris, lived the impious Set-Typhon, as Evil ever
haunts the Good. While Osiris was absent, Typhon--whose name means
serpent--filled with envy and malice, sought to usurp his throne; but
his plot was frustrated by Isis. Whereupon he resolved to kill Osiris.
This he did, having invited him to a feast, by persuading him to enter
a chest, offering, as if in jest, to present the richly carved chest
to any one of his guests who, lying down inside it, found he was of
the same size. When Osiris got in and stretched himself out, the
conspirators closed the chest, and flung it into the Nile.[39] Thus
far, the gods had not known death. They had grown old, with white hair
and trembling limbs, but old age had not led to death. As soon as Isis
heard of this infernal treachery, she cut her hair, clad herself in a
garb of mourning, ran thither and yon, a prey to the most cruel
anguish, seeking the body. Weeping and distracted, she never tarried,
never tired in her sorrowful quest.
Meanwhile, the waters carried the chest out to sea, as far as Byblos
in Syria, the town of Adonis, where it lodged against a shrub of
arica, or tamarisk--like an acacia tree.[40] Owing to the virtue of
the body, the shrub, at its touch, shot up into a tree, growing around
it, and protecting it, until the king of that country cut the tree
which hid the chest in its bosom, and made from it a column for his
palace. At last Isis, led by a vision, came to Byblos, made herself
known, and asked for the column. Hence the picture of her weeping over
a broken column torn from the palace, while Horus, god of Time, stands
behind her pouring ambrosia on her hair. She took the body back to
Egypt, to the city of Bouto; but Typhon, hunting by moonlight, found
the chest, and having recognized the body of Osiris, mangled it and
scattered it beyond recognition. Isis, embodiment of the old
world-sorrow for the dead, continued her pathetic quest, gathering
piece by piece the body of her dismembered husband, and giving him
decent interment. Such was the life and death of Osiris, but as his
career pictured the cycle of nature, it could not of course end here.
Horus fought with Typhon, losing an eye in the battle, but finally
overthrew him and took him prisoner. There are several versions of his
fate, but he seems to have been tried, sentenced, and executed--"cut
in three pieces," as the Pyramid Texts relate. Thereupon the faithful
son went in solemn procession to the grave of his father, opened it,
and called upon Osiris to rise: "Stand up! Thou shalt not end, thou
shalt not perish!" But death was deaf. Here the Pyramid Texts recite
the mortuary ritual, with its hymns and chants; but in vain. At length
Osiris awakes, weary and feeble, and by the aid of the strong grip of
the lion-god he gains control of his body, and is lifted from death to
life.[41] Thereafter, by virtue of his victory over death, Osiris
becomes Lord of the Land of Death, his scepter an Ank Cross, his
throne a Square.
II
Such, in brief, was the ancient allegory of eternal life, upon which
there were many elaborations as the drama unfolded; but always, under
whatever variation of local color, of national accent or emphasis, its
central theme remained the same. Often perverted and abused, it was
everywhere a dramatic expression of the great human aspiration for
triumph over death and union with God, and the belief in the ultimate
victory of Good over Evil. Not otherwise would this drama have held
the hearts of men through long ages, and won the eulogiums of the most
enlightened men of antiquity--of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato,
Euripides, Plutarch, Pindar, Isocrates, Epictetus, and Marcus
Aurelius. Writing to his wife after the loss of their little girl,
Plutarch commends to her the hope set forth in the mystic rites and
symbols of this drama, as, elsewhere, he testifies that it kept him
"as far from superstition as from atheism," and helped him to approach
the truth. For deeper minds this drama had a double meaning, teaching
not only immortality after death, but the awakening of man upon earth
from animalism to a life of purity, justice, and honor. How nobly this
practical aspect was taught, and with what fineness of spiritual
insight, may be seen in _Secret Sermon on the Mountain_ in the
Hermetic lore of Greece:[42]
/#[4,66]
What may I say, my son? I can but tell thee this. Whenever I
see within myself the Simple Vision brought to birth out of
God's mercy, I have passed through myself into a Body that
can never die. Then I am not what I was before.... They who
are thus born are children of a Divine race. This race, my
son, is never taught; but when He willeth it, its memory is
restored by God. It is the "Way of Birth in God." ...
Withdraw into thyself and it will come. _Will_, and it comes
to pass.
#/
Isis herself is said to have established the first temple of the
Mysteries, the oldest being those practiced at Memphis. Of these there
were two orders, the Lesser to which the many were eligible, and which
consisted of dialogue and ritual, with certain signs, tokens, grips,
passwords; and the Greater, reserved for the few who approved
themselves worthy of being entrusted with the highest secrets of
science, philosophy, and religion. For these the candidate had to
undergo trial, purification, danger, austere asceticism, and, at last,
regeneration through dramatic death amid rejoicing. Such as endured
the ordeal with valor were then taught, orally and by symbol, the
highest wisdom to which man had attained, including geometry,
astronomy, the fine arts, the laws of nature, as well as the truths of
faith. Awful oaths of secrecy were exacted, and Plutarch describes a
man kneeling, his hands bound, a cord round his body, and a knife at
his throat--death being the penalty of violating the obligation. Even
then, Pythagoras had to wait almost twenty years to learn the hidden
wisdom of Egypt, so cautious were they of candidates, especially of
foreigners. But he made noble use of it when, later, he founded a
secret order of his own at Crotona, in Greece, in which, among other
things, he taught geometry, using numbers as symbols of spiritual
truth.[43]
From Egypt the Mysteries passed with little change to Asia Minor,
Greece, and Rome, the names of local gods being substituted for those
of Osiris and Isis. The Grecian or Eleusinian Mysteries, established
1800 B.C., represented Demeter and Persephone, and depicted the death
of Dionysius with stately ritual which led the neophyte from death
into life and immortality. They taught the unity of God, the immutable
necessity of morality, and a life after death, investing initiates
with signs and passwords by which they could know each other in the
dark as well as in the light. The Mithraic or Persian Mysteries
celebrated the eclipse of the Sun-god, using the signs of the zodiac,
the processions of the seasons, the death of nature, and the birth of
spring. The Adoniac or Syrian cults were similar, Adonis being killed,
but revived to point to life through death. In the Cabirie Mysteries
on the island of Samothrace, Atys the Sun was killed by his brothers
the Seasons, and at the vernal equinox was restored to life. So, also,
the Druids, as far north as England, taught of one God the tragedy of
winter and summer, and conducted the initiate through the valley of
death to life everlasting.[44]
Shortly before the Christian era, when faith was failing and the world
seemed reeling to its ruin, there was a great revival of the
Mystery-religions. Imperial edict was powerless to stay it, much less
stop it. From Egypt, from the far East, they came rushing in like a
tide, Isis "of the myriad names" vieing with Mithra, the patron saint
of the soldier, for the homage of the multitude. If we ask the secret
reason for this influx of mysticism, no single answer can be given to
the question. What influence the reigning mystery-cults had upon the
new, uprising Christianity is also hard to know, and the issue is
still in debate. That they did influence the early Church is evident
from the writings of the Fathers, and some go so far as to say that
the Mysteries died at last only to live again in the ritual of the
Church. St. Paul in his missionary journeys came in contact with the
Mysteries, and even makes use of some of their technical terms in his
epistles;[45] but he condemned them on the ground that what they
sought to teach in drama can be known only by spiritual experience--a
sound insight, though surely drama may assist to that experience, else
public worship might also come under ban.
III
Toward the end of their power, the Mysteries fell into the mire and
became corrupt, as all things human are apt to do: even the Church
itself being no exception. But that at their highest and best they
were not only lofty and noble, but elevating and refining, there can
be no doubt, and that they served a high purpose is equally clear. No
one, who has read in the _Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius the initiation of
Lucius into the Mysteries of Isis, can doubt that the effect on the
votary was profound and purifying. He tells us that the ceremony of
initiation "is, as it were, to suffer death," and that he stood in the
presence of the gods, "ay, stood near and worshiped." _Far hence ye
profane, and all who are polluted by sin_, was the motto of the
Mysteries, and Cicero testifies that what a man learned in the house
of the hidden place made him want to live nobly, and gave him happy
hopes for the hour of death.
Indeed, the Mysteries, as Plato said,[46] were established by men of
great genius who, in the early ages, strove to teach purity, to
ameliorate the cruelty of the race, to refine its manners and morals,
and to restrain society by stronger bonds than those which human laws
impose. No mystery any longer attaches to what they taught, but only
as to the particular rites, dramas, and symbols used in their
teaching. They taught faith in the unity and spirituality of God, the
sovereign authority of the moral law, heroic purity of soul, austere
discipline of character, and the hope of a life beyond the tomb. Thus
in ages of darkness, of complexity, of conflicting peoples, tongues,
and faiths, these great orders toiled in behalf of friendship,
bringing men together under a banner of faith, and training them for a
nobler moral life. Tender and tolerant of all faiths, they formed an
all-embracing moral and spiritual fellowship which rose above barriers
of nation, race, and creed, satisfying the craving of men for unity,
while evoking in them a sense of that eternal mysticism out of which
all religions were born. Their ceremonies, so far as we know them,
were stately dramas of the moral life and the fate of the soul.
Mystery and secrecy added impressiveness, and fable and enigma
disguised in imposing spectacle the laws of justice, piety, and the
hope of immortality.
Masonry stands in this tradition; and if we may not say that it is
historically related to the great ancient orders, it is their
spiritual descendant, and renders much the same ministry to our age
which the Mysteries rendered to the olden world. It is, indeed, the
same stream of sweetness and light flowing in our day--like the fabled
river Alpheus which, gathering the waters of a hundred rills along the
hillsides of Arcadia, sank, lost to sight, in a chasm in the earth,
only to reappear in the fountain of Arethusa. This at least is true:
the Greater Ancient Mysteries were prophetic of Masonry whose drama is
an epitome of universal initiation, and whose simple symbols are the
depositaries of the noblest wisdom of mankind. As such, it brings men
together at the altar of prayer, keeps alive the truths that make us
men, seeking, by every resource of art, to make tangible the power of
love, the worth of beauty, and the reality of the ideal.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Of course, faith in immortality was in nowise peculiar to Egypt,
but was universal; as vivid in _The Upanishads_ of India as in the
Pyramid records. It rests upon the consensus of the insight,
experience, and aspiration of the race. But the records of Egypt, like
its monuments, are richer than those of other nations, if not older.
Moreover, the drama of faith with which we have to do here had its
origin in Egypt, whence it spread to Tyre, Athens, and Rome--and, as we
shall see, even to England. For brief expositions of Egyptian faith see
_Egyptian Conceptions of Immortality_, by G.A. Reisner, and _Religion
and Thought in Egypt_, by J.H. Breasted.
[36] Pyramid Texts, 775, 1262, 1453, 1477.
[37] For a full account of the evolution of the Osirian theology from
the time it emerged from the mists of myth until its conquest, see
_Religion and Thought in Egypt_, by Breasted, the latest, if not the
most brilliant, book written in the light of the completest translation
of the Pyramid Texts (especially lecture v).
[38] Much has been written about the Egyptian Mysteries from the days
of Plutarch's _De Iside et Osiride_ and the _Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius
to the huge volumes of Baron Sainte Croix. For popular reading the
_Kings and Gods of Egypt_, by Moret (chaps. iii-iv), and the
delightfully vivid _Hermes and Plato_, by Schure, could hardly be
surpassed. But Plutarch and Apuleius, both initiates, are our best
authorities, even if their oath of silence prevents them from telling
us what we most want to know.
[39] Among the Hindoos, whose Chrisna is the same as the Osiris of
Egypt, the gods of summer were beneficent, making the days fruitful.
But "the three wretches" who presided over winter, were cut off from
the zodiac; and as they were "found missing," they were accused of the
death of Chrisna.
[40] A literary parallel in the story of AEneas, by Vergil, is most
suggestive. Priam, king of Troy, in the beginning of the Trojan war
committed his son Polydorus to the care of Polymester, king of Thrace,
and sent him a great sum of money. After Troy was taken the Thracian,
for the sake of the money, killed the young prince and privately buried
him. AEneas, coming into that country, and accidentally plucking up a
shrub that was near him on the side of the hill, discovered the
murdered body of Polydorus. Other legends of such accidental
discoveries of unknown graves haunted the olden time, and may have been
suggested by the story of Isis.
[41] _The Gods of the Egyptians_, by E.A.W. Budge; _La Place des
Victores_, by Austin Fryar, especially the colored plates.
[42] _Quests New and Old_, by G.R.S. Mead.
[43] _Pythagoras_, by Edouard Schure--a fascinating story of that great
thinker and teacher. The use of numbers by Pythagoras must not,
however, be confounded with the mystical, or rather fantastic,
mathematics of the Kabbalists of a later time.
[44] For a vivid account of the spread of the Mysteries of Isis and
Mithra over the Roman Empire, see _Roman Life from Nero to Aurelius_,
by Dill (bk. iv, chaps. v-vi). Franz Cumont is the great authority on
Mithra, and his _Mysteries of Mithra_ and _Oriental Religions_ trace
the origin and influence of that cult with accuracy, insight, and
charm. W.W. Reade, brother of Charles Reade the novelist, left a study
of _The Veil of Isis, or Mysteries of the Druids_, finding in the
vestiges of Druidism "the Emblems of Masonry."
[45] Col. 2:8-19. See _Mysteries Pagan and Christian_, by C. Cheethan;
also _Monumental Christianity_, by Lundy, especially chapter on "The
Discipline of the Secret." For a full discussion of the attitude of St.
Paul, see _St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions_, by Kennedy, a work of
fine scholarship. That Christianity had its esoteric is plain--as it
was natural--from the writings of the Fathers, including Origen, Cyril,
Basil, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine, and others. Chrysostom often uses
the word _initiation_ in respect of Christian teaching, while
Tertullian denounces the pagan mysteries as counterfeit imitations by
Satan of the Christian secret rites and teachings: "He also baptises
those who believe in him, and promises that they shall come forth,
cleansed of their sins." Other Christian writers were more tolerant,
finding in Christ the answer to the aspiration uttered in the
Mysteries; and therein, it may be, they were right.
[46] _Phaedo._
THE SECRET DOCTRINE
/#
_The value of man does not consist in the truth which he
possesses, or means to possess, but in the sincere pain which he
hath taken to find it out. For his powers do not augment by
possessing truth, but by investigating it, wherein consists his
only perfectibility. Possession lulls the energy of man, and makes
him idle and proud. If God held inclosed in his right hand
absolute truth, and in his left only the inward lively impulse
toward truth, and if He said to me: Choose! even at the risk of
exposing mankind to continual erring, I most humbly would seize
His left hand, and say: Father, give! absolute truth belongs to
Thee alone._
G.E. LESSING, _Nathan the Wise_
#/
CHAPTER IV
_The Secret Doctrine_
I
God ever shields us from premature ideas, said the gracious and wise
Emerson; and so does nature. She holds back her secrets until man is
fit to be entrusted with them, lest by rashness he destroy himself.
Those who seek find, not because the truth is far off, but because the
discipline of the quest makes them ready for the truth, and worthy to
receive it. By a certain sure instinct the great teachers of our race
have regarded the highest truth less as a gift bestowed than as a
trophy to be won. Everything must not be told to everybody. Truth is
power, and when held by untrue hands it may become a plague. Even
Jesus had His "little flock" to whom He confided much which He kept
from the world, or else taught it in parables cryptic and veiled.[47]
One of His sayings in explanation of His method is quoted by Clement
of Alexandria in his _Homilies_:
/#[4,66]
It was not from grudgingness that our Lord gave the charge in
a certain Gospel: "_My mystery is for Me and the sons of My
house_."[48]
#/
This more withdrawn teaching, hinted in the saying of the Master, with
the arts of spiritual culture employed, has come to be known as the
Secret Doctrine, or the Hidden Wisdom. A persistent tradition affirms
that throughout the ages, and in every land, behind the system of
faith accepted by the masses an inner and deeper doctrine has been
held and taught by those able to grasp it. This hidden faith has
undergone many changes of outward expression, using now one set of
symbols and now another, but its central tenets have remained the
same; and necessarily so, since the ultimates of thought are ever
immutable. By the same token, those who have eyes to see have no
difficulty in penetrating the varying veils of expression and
identifying the underlying truths; thus confirming in the arcana of
faith what we found to be true in its earliest forms--the oneness of
the human mind and the unity of truth.
There are those who resent the suggestion that there is, or can be,
secrecy in regard to spiritual truths which, if momentous at all, are
of common moment to all. For this reason Demonax, in the Lucian play,
would not be initiated, because, if the Mysteries were bad, he would
not keep silent as a warning; and if they were good, he would proclaim
them as a duty. The objection is, however, unsound, as a little
thought will reveal. Secrecy in such matters inheres in the nature of
the truths themselves, not in any affected superiority of a few elect
minds. Qualification for the knowledge of higher things is, and must
always be, a matter of personal fitness. Other qualification there is
none. For those who have that fitness the Secret Doctrine is as clear
as sunlight, and for those who have it not the truth would still be
secret though shouted from the house-top. The Grecian Mysteries were
certainly secret, yet the fact of their existence was a matter of
common knowledge, and there was no more secrecy about their
sanctuaries than there is about a cathedral. Their presence testified
to the public that a deeper than the popular faith did exist, but the
right to admission into them depended upon the whole-hearted wish of
the aspirant, and his willingness to fit himself to know the truth.
The old maxim applies here, that when the pupil is ready the teacher
is found waiting, and he passes on to know a truth hitherto hidden
because he lacked either the aptitude or the desire.
All is mystery as of course, but mystification is another thing, and
the tendency to befog a theme which needs to be clarified, is to be
regretted. Here lies, perhaps, the real reason for the feeling of
resentment against the idea of a Secret Doctrine, and one must admit
that it is not without justification. For example, we are told that
behind the age-long struggle of man to know the truth there exists a
hidden fraternity of initiates, adepts in esoteric lore, known to
themselves but not to the world, who have had in their keeping,
through the centuries, the high truths which they permit to be dimly
adumbrated in the popular faiths, but which the rest of the race are
too obtuse, even yet, to grasp save in an imperfect and limited
degree. These hidden sages, it would seem, look upon our eager
aspiring humanity much like the patient masters of an idiot school,
watching it go on forever seeking without finding, while they sit in
seclusion keeping the keys of the occult.[49] All of which would be
very wonderful, if true. It is, however, only one more of those
fascinating fictions with which mystery-mongers entertain themselves,
and deceive others. Small wonder that thinking men turn from such
fanciful folly with mingled feelings of pity and disgust. Sages there
have been in every land and time, and their lofty wisdom has the unity
which inheres in all high human thought, but that there is now, or has
ever been, a conscious, much less a continuous, fellowship of superior
souls holding as secrets truths denied to their fellow-men, verges
upon the absurd.
Indeed, what is called the Secret Doctrine differs not one whit from
what has been taught openly and earnestly, so far as such truth can be
taught in words or pictured in symbols, by the highest minds of almost
every land and language. The difference lies less in what is taught
than in the way in which it is taught; not so much in matter as in
method. Also, we must not forget that, with few exceptions, the men
who have led our race farthest along the way toward the Mount of
Vision, have not been men who learned their lore from any coterie of
esoteric experts, but, rather, men who told in song what they had been
taught in sorrow--initiates into eternal truth, to be sure, but by the
grace of God and the divine right of genius![50] Seers, sages,
mystics, saints--these are they who, having sought in sincerity, found
in reality, and the memory of them is a kind of religion. Some of
them, like Pythagoras, were trained for their quest in the schools of
the Secret Doctrine, but others went their way alone, though never
unattended, and, led by "the vision splendid," they came at last to
the gate and passed into the City.
Why, then, it may be asked, speak of such a thing as the Secret
Doctrine at all, since it were better named the Open Secret of the
world? For two reasons, both of which have been intimated: first, in
the olden times unwonted knowledge of any kind was a very dangerous
possession, and the truths of science and philosophy, equally with
religious ideas other than those in vogue among the multitude, had to
seek the protection of obscurity. If this necessity gave designing
priestcraft its opportunity, it nevertheless offered the security and
silence needed by the thinker and seeker after truth in dark times.
Hence there arose in the ancient world, wherever the human mind was
alive and spiritual, systems of exoteric and esoteric instruction;
that is, of truth taught openly and truth concealed. Disciples were
advanced from the outside to the inside of this divine philosophy, as
we have seen, by degrees of initiation. Whereas, by symbols, dark
sayings, and dramatic ritual the novice received only hints of what
was later made plain.
Second, this hidden teaching may indeed be described as the open
secret of the world, because it is open, yet understood only by those
fit to receive it. What kept it hidden was no arbitrary restriction,
but only a lack of insight and fineness of mind to appreciate and
assimilate it. Nor could it be otherwise; and this is as true today as
ever it was in the days of the Mysteries, and so it will be until
whatever is to be the end of mortal things. Fitness for the finer
truths cannot be conferred; it must be developed. Without it the
teachings of the sages are enigmas that seem unintelligible, if not
contradictory. In so far, then, as the discipline of initiation, and
its use of art in drama and symbol, help toward purity of soul and
spiritual awakening, by so much do they prepare men for the truth; by
so much and no further. So that, the Secret Doctrine, whether as
taught by the ancient Mysteries or by modern Masonry, is less a
doctrine than a discipline; a method of organized spiritual culture,
and as such has a place and a ministry among men.
II
Perhaps the greatest student in this field of esoteric teaching and
method, certainly the greatest now living, is Arthur Edward Waite, to
whom it is a pleasure to pay tribute. By nature a symbolist, if not a
sacramentalist, he found in such studies a task for which he was
almost ideally fitted by temperament, training, and genius. Engaged in
business, but not absorbed by it, years of quiet, leisurely toil have
made him master of the vast literature and lore of his subject, to the
study of which he brought a religious nature, the accuracy and skill
of a scholar, a sureness and delicacy of insight at once sympathetic
and critical, the soul of a poet, and a patience as untiring as it is
rewarding; qualities rare indeed, and still more rarely blended.
Prolific but seldom prolix, he writes with grace, ease, and lucidity,
albeit in a style often opulent, and touched at times with lights and
jewels from old alchemists, antique liturgies, remote and haunting
romance, secret orders of initiation, and other recondite sources not
easily traced. Much learning and many kinds of wisdom are in his
pages, and withal an air of serenity, of tolerance; and if he is of
those who turn down another street when miracles are performed in the
neighborhood, it is because, having found the inner truth, he asks for
no sign.
Always he writes in the conviction that all great subjects bring us
back to the one subject which is alone great, and that scholarly
criticisms, folk-lore, and deep philosophy are little less than
useless if they fall short of directing us to our true end--the
attainment of that living Truth which is about us everywhere. He
conceives of our mortal life as one eternal Quest of that living
Truth, taking many phases and forms, yet ever at heart the same
aspiration, to trace which he has made it his labor and joy to essay.
Through all his pages he is following out the tradition of this Quest,
in its myriad aspects, especially since the Christian era, disfigured
though it has been at times by superstition, and distorted at others
by bigotry, but still, in what guise soever, containing as its secret
the meaning of the life of man from his birth to his reunion with God
who is his Goal. And the result is a series of volumes noble in form,
united in aim, unique in wealth of revealing beauty, and of unequalled
worth.[51]
Beginning as far back as 1886, Waite issued his study of the
_Mysteries of Magic_, a digest of the writings of Eliphas Levi, to
whom Albert Pike was more indebted than he let us know. Then followed
the _Real History of the Rosicrucians_, which traces, as far as any
mortal may trace, the thread of fact whereon is strung the romance of
a fraternity the very existence of which has been doubted and denied
by turns. Like all his work, it bears the impress of knowledge from
the actual sources, betraying his extraordinary learning and his
exceptional experience in this kind of inquiry. Of the Quest in its
distinctively Christian aspect, he has written in _The Hidden Church
of the Holy Graal_; a work of rare beauty, of bewildering richness,
written in a style which, partaking of the quality of the story told,
is not at all after the manner of these days. But the Graal Legend is
only one aspect of the old-world sacred Quest, uniting the symbols of
chivalry with Christian faith. Masonry is another; and no one may ever
hope to write of _The Secret Tradition in Masonry_ with more insight
and charm, or a touch more sure and revealing, than this gracious
student for whom Masonry perpetuates the instituted Mysteries of
antiquity, with much else derived from innumerable store-houses of
treasure. His last work is a survey of _The Secret Doctrine in
Israel_, being a study of the _Zohar_,[52] or Hebrew "Book of
Splendor," a feat for which no Hebrew scholar has had the heart. This
Bible of Kabbalism is indeed so confused and confusing that only a
"golden dustman" would have had the patience to sift out its gems from
the mountain of dross, and attempt to reduce its wide-weltering chaos
to order. Even Waite, with all his gift of research and narration,
finds little more than gleams of dawn in a dim forest, brilliant
vapors, and glints that tell by their very perversity and strangeness.
Whether this age-old legend of the Quest be woven about the Cup of
Christ, a Lost Word, or a design left unfinished by the death of a
Master Builder, it has always these things in common: first, the
memorials of a great _loss_ which has befallen humanity by sin, making
our race a pilgrim host ever in search; second, the intimation that
what was lost still exists somewhere in time and the world, although
deeply buried; third, the faith that it will ultimately be found and
the vanished glory restored; fourth, the substitution of something
temporary and less than the best, albeit never in a way to adjourn the
quest; fifth, and more rarely, the felt presence of that which was
lost under veils close to the hands of all. What though it take many
forms, from the pathetic pilgrimage of the _Wandering Jew_ to the
journey to fairyland in quest of _The Blue Bird_, it is ever and
always the same. These are but so many symbols of the fact that men
are made of one blood and born to one need; that they should seek the
Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He is
not far from every one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our
being.[53]
What, then, is the Secret Doctrine, of which this seer-like scholar
has written with so many improvisations of eloquence and emphasis, and
of which each of us is in quest? What, indeed, but that which all the
world is seeking--knowledge of Him whom to know aright is the
fulfillment of every human need: the kinship of the soul with God; the
life of purity, honor, and piety demanded by that high heredity; the
unity and fellowship of the race in duty and destiny; and the faith
that the soul is deathless as God its Father is deathless! Now to
accept this faith as a mere philosophy is one thing, but to realize it
as an experience of the innermost heart is another and a deeper thing.
_No man knows the Secret Doctrine until it has become the secret of
his soul, the reigning reality of his thought, the inspiration of his
acts, the form and color and glory of his life._ Happily, owing to the
growth of the race in spiritual intelligence and power, the highest
truth is no longer held as a sacred secret. Still, if art has efficacy
to surprise and reveal the elusive Spirit of Truth, when truth is
dramatically presented it is made vivid and impressive, strengthening
the faith of the strongest and bringing a ray of heavenly light to
many a baffled seeker.
Ever the Quest goes on, though it is permitted some of us to believe
that the Lost Word has been found, in the only way in which it can
ever be found--even in the life of Him who was "the Word made flesh,"
who dwelt among us and whose grace and beauty we know. Of this Quest
Masonry is an aspect, continuing the high tradition of humanity,
asking men to unite in the search for the thing most worth finding,
that each may share the faith of all. Apart from its rites, there is
no mystery in Masonry, save the mystery of all great and simple
things. So far from being hidden or occult, its glory lies in its
openness, and its emphasis upon the realities which are to the human
world what light and air are to nature. Its mystery is of so great a
kind that it is easily overlooked; its secret almost too simple to be
found out.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] Matt. 13:10, 11.
[48] _Unwritten Sayings of Our Lord_, David Smith, vii.
[49] By occultism is meant the belief in, and the claim to be able to
use, a certain range of forces neither natural, nor, technically,
supernatural, but more properly to be called preternatural--often,
though by no means always, for evil or selfish ends. Some extend the
term occultism to cover mysticism and the spiritual life generally, but
that is not a legitimate use of either word. Occultism seeks to get;
mysticism to give. The one is audacious and seclusive, the other humble
and open; and if we are not to end in blunderland we must not confound
the two (_Mysticism_, by E. Underhill, part i, chap. vii).
[50] Much time would have been saved, and not a little confusion
avoided, had this obvious fact been kept in mind. Even so charming a
book as _Jesus, the Last Great Initiate_, by Schure--not to speak of
_The Great Work_ and _Mystic Masonry_--is clearly, though not
intentionally, misleading. Of a piece with this is the effort,
apparently deliberate and concerted, to rob the Hebrew race of all
spiritual originality, as witness so able a work as _Our Own Religion
in Persia_, by Mills, to name no other. Our own religion? Assuredly, if
by that is meant the one great, universal religion of humanity. But the
sundering difference between the Bible and any other book that speaks
to mankind about God and Life and Death, sets the Hebrew race apart as
supreme in its religious genius, as the Greeks were in philosophical
acumen and artistic power, and the Romans in executive skill. Leaving
all theories of inspiration out of account, facts are facts, and the
Bible has no peer in the literature of mankind.
[51] Some there are who think that much of the best work of Mr. Waite
is in his poetry, of which there are two volumes, _A Book of Mystery
and Vision_, and _Strange Houses of Sleep_. There one meets a fine
spirit, alive to the glory of the world and all that charms the soul
and sense of man, yet seeing past these; rich and significant thought
so closely wedded to emotion that each seems either. Other books not to
be omitted are his slender volume of aphorisms, _Steps to the Crown_,
his _Life of Saint-Martin_, and his _Studies in Mysticism_; for what he
touches he adorns.
[52] Even the _Jewish Encyclopedia_, and such scholars as Zunz, Graetz,
Luzzatto, Jost, and Munk avoid this jungle, as well they might,
remembering the legend of the four sages in "the enclosed garden:" one
of whom looked around and died; another lost his reason; a third tried
to destroy the garden; and only one came out with his wits. See _The
Cabala_, by Pick, and _The Kabbalah Unveiled_, by MacGregor.
[53] Acts 17:26-28.
THE COLLEGIA
/#
_This society was called the Dionysian Artificers, as Bacchus was
supposed to be the inventor of building theaters; and they
performed the Dionysian festivities. From this period, the Science
of Astronomy which had given rise to the Dionysian rites, became
connected with types taken from the art of building. The Ionian
societies ... extended their moral views, in conjunction with the
art of building, to many useful purposes, and to the practice of
acts of benevolence. They had significant words to distinguish
their members; and for the same purpose they used emblems taken
from the art of building._
--JOSEPH DA COSTA, _Dionysian Artificers_
_We need not then consider it improbable, if in the dark centuries
when the Roman empire was dying out, and its glorious temples
falling into ruin; when the arts and sciences were falling into
disuse or being enslaved; and when no place was safe from
persecution and warfare, the guild of the Architects should fly
for safety to almost the only free spot in Italy; and here, though
they could no longer practice their craft, they preserved the
legendary knowledge and precepts which, as history implies, came
down to them through Vitruvius from older sources, some say from
Solomon's builders themselves._
--LEADER SCOTT, _The Cathedral Builders_
#/
CHAPTER V
_The Collegia_
So far in our study we have found that from earliest time architecture
was related to religion; that the working tools of the builder were
emblems of moral truth; that there were great secret orders using the
Drama of Faith as a rite of initiation; and that a hidden doctrine was
kept for those accounted worthy, after trial, to be entrusted with it.
Secret societies, born of the nature and need of man, there have been
almost since recorded history began;[54] but as yet we have come upon
no separate and distinct order of builders. For aught we know there
may have been such in plenty, but we have no intimation, much less a
record, of the fact. That is to say, history has a vague story to tell
us of the earliest orders of the builders.
However, it is more than a mere plausible inference that from the
beginning architects were members of secret orders; for, as we have
seen, not only the truths of religion and philosophy, but also the
facts of science and the laws of art, were held as secrets to be known
only to the few. This was so, apparently without exception, among all
ancient peoples; so much so, indeed, that we may take it as certain
that the builders of old time were initiates. Of necessity, then, the
arts of the craft were secrets jealously guarded, and the architects
themselves, while they may have employed and trained ordinary workmen,
were men of learning and influence. Such glimpses of early architects
as we have confirm this inference, as, for example, the noble hymn to
the Sun-god written by Suti and Hor, two architects employed by
Amenhotep III, of Egypt.[55] Just when the builders began to form
orders of their own no one knows, but it was perhaps when the
Mystery-cults began to journey abroad into other lands. What we have
to keep in mind is that all the arts had their home in the temple,
from which, as time passed, they spread out fan-wise along all the
paths of culture.
Keeping in mind the secrecy of the laws of building, and the sanctity
with which all science and art were regarded, we have a key whereby to
interpret the legends woven about the building of the temple of
Solomon. Few realize how high that temple on Mount Moriah towered in
the history of the olden world, and how the story of its building
haunted the legends and traditions of the times following. Of these
legends there were many, some of them wildly improbable, but the
persistence of the tradition, and its consistency withal, despite many
variations, is a _fact of no small moment_. Nor is this tradition to
be wondered at, since time has shown that the building of the temple
at Jerusalem was an event of world-importance, not only to the
Hebrews, but to other nations, more especially the Phoenicians. The
histories of both peoples make much of the building of the Hebrew
temple, of the friendship of Solomon and Hiram I, of Tyre, and of the
harmony between the two peoples; and Phoenician tradition has it that
Solomon presented Hiram with a duplicate of the temple, which was
erected in Tyre.[56]
Clearly, the two nations were drawn closely together, and this fact
carried with it a mingling of religious influences and ideas, as was
true between the Hebrews and other nations, especially Egypt and
Phoenicia, during the reign of Solomon. Now the religion of the
Phoenicians at this time, as all agree, was the Egyptian religion in a
modified form, Dionysius having taken the role of Osiris in the drama
of faith in Greece, Syria, and Asia Minor. Thus we have the Mysteries
of Egypt, in which Moses was learned, brought to the very door of the
temple of Solomon, and that, too, at a time favorable to their
impress. The Hebrews were not architects, and it is plain from the
records that the temple--and, indeed, the palaces of Solomon--were
designed and erected by Phoenician builders, and for the most part by
Phoenician workmen and materials. Josephus adds that the architecture
of the temple was of the style called Grecian. So much would seem to
be fact, whatever may be said of the legends flowing from it.
If, then, the laws of building were secrets known only to initiates,
there must have been a secret order of architects who built the temple
of Solomon. Who were they? They were almost certainly the _Dionysian
Artificers_--not to be confused with the play-actors called by the
same name later--an order of builders who erected temples, stadia, and
theaters in Asia Minor, and who were at the same time an order of the
Mysteries under the tutelage of Bacchus before that worship declined,
as it did later in Athens and Rome, into mere revelry.[57] As such,
they united the art of architecture with the old Egyptian drama of
faith, representing in their ceremonies the murder of Dionysius by the
Titans and his return to life. So that, blending the symbols of
Astronomy with those of Architecture, by a slight change made by a
natural process, how easy for the master-artist of the temple-builders
to become the hero of the ancient drama of immortality.[58] Whether
or not this fact can be verified from history, such is the form in
which the tradition has come down to us, surviving through long ages
and triumphing over all vicissitude.[59] Secret orders have few
records and their story is hard to tell, but this account is perfectly
in accord with the spirit and setting of the situation, and there is
neither fact nor reason against it. While this does not establish it
as true historically, it surely gives it validity as a prophecy, if
nothing more.[60]
After all, then, the tradition that Masonry, not unlike the Masonry we
now know, had its origin while the temple of King Solomon was
building, and was given shape by the two royal friends, may not be so
fantastic as certain superior folk seem to think it. How else can we
explain the fact that when the Knights of the Crusades went to the
Holy Land they came back a secret, oath-bound fraternity? Also, why is
it that, through the ages, we see bands of builders coming from the
East calling themselves "sons of Solomon," and using his interlaced
triangle-seal as their emblem? Strabo, as we have seen, traced the
Dionysiac builders eastward into Syria, Persia, and even India. They
may also be traced westward. Traversing Asia Minor, they entered
Europe by way of Constantinople, and we follow them through Greece to
Rome, where already several centuries before Christ we find them bound
together in corporations called _Collegia_. These lodges flourished in
all parts of the Roman Empire, traces of their existence having been
discovered in England as early as the middle of the first century of
our era.
II
Krause was the first to point out a prophecy of Masonry in the old
orders of builders, following their footsteps--not connectedly, of
course, for there are many gaps--through the Dionysiac fraternity of
Tyre, through the Roman Collegia, to the architects and Masons of the
Middle Ages. Since he wrote, however, much new material has come to
light, but the date of the advent of the builders in Rome is still
uncertain. Some trace it to the very founding of the city, while
others go no further back than King Numa, the friend of
Pythagoras.[61] By any account, they were of great antiquity, and
their influence in Roman history was far-reaching. They followed the
Roman legions to remote places, building cities, bridges, and temples,
and it was but natural that Mithra, the patron god of soldiers, should
have influenced their orders. Of this an example may be seen in the
remains of the ancient Roman villa at Morton, on the Isle of
Wight.[62]
As Rome grew in power and became a vast, all-embracing empire, the
individual man felt, more and more, his littleness and loneliness.
This feeling, together with the increasing specialization of industry,
begat a passion for association, and Collegia of many sorts were
organized. Even a casual glance at the inscriptions, under the heading
_Artes et Opificia_, will show the enormous development of skilled
handicrafts, and how minute was their specialization. Every trade soon
had its secret order, or union, and so powerful did they become that
the emperors found it necessary to abolish the right of free
association. Yet even such edicts, though effective for a little time,
were helpless as against the universal craving for combination. Ways
were easily found whereby to evade the law, which had exempted from
its restrictions orders consecrated by their antiquity or their
religious character. Most of the Collegia became funerary and
charitable in their labors, humble folk seeking to escape the dim,
hopeless obscurity of plebeian life, and the still more hopeless
obscurity of death. Pathetic beyond words are some of the inscriptions
telling of the horror and loneliness of the grave, of the day when no
kindly eye would read the forgotten name, and no hand bring offerings
of flowers. Each collegium held memorial services, and marked the tomb
of its dead with the emblems of its trade: if a baker, with a loaf of
bread; if a builder, with a square, compasses, and the level.
From the first the Colleges of Architects seem to have enjoyed special
privileges and exemptions, owing to the value of their service to the
state, and while we do not find them called Free-masons they were such
in law and fact long before they wore the name. They were permitted to
have their own constitutions and regulations, both secular and
religious. In form, in officers, in emblems a Roman Collegium
resembled very much a modern Masonic Lodge. For one thing, no College
could consist of less than three persons, and so rigid was this rule
that the saying, "three make a college," became a maxim of law. Each
College was presided over by a Magister, or Master, with two
_decuriones_, or wardens, each of whom extended the commands of the
Master to "the brethren of his column." There were a secretary, a
treasurer, and a keeper of archives, and, as the colleges were in part
religious and usually met near some temple, there was a _sacerdos_,
or, as we would say, a priest, or chaplain. The members were of three
orders, not unlike apprentices, fellows, and masters, or colleagues.
What ceremonies of initiation were used we do not know, but that they
were of a religious nature seems certain, as each College adopted a
patron deity from among the many then worshiped. Also, as the
Mysteries of Isis and Mithra ruled the Roman world by turns, the
ancient drama of eternal life was never far away.
Of the emblems of the Collegia, it is enough to say that here again we
find the simple tools of the builder used as teachers of truth for
life and hope in death. Upon a number of sarcophagi, still extant, we
find carved the square, the compasses, the cube, the plummet, the
circle, and always the level. There is, besides, the famous Collegium
uncovered at the excavation of Pompeii in 1878, having been buried
under the ashes and lava of Mount Vesuvius since the year 79 A.D. It
stood near the Tragic Theater, not far from the Temple of Isis, and by
its arrangement, with two columns in front and interlaced triangles on
the walls, was identified as an ancient lodge room. Upon a pedestal in
the room was found a rare bit of art, unique in design and exquisite
in execution, now in the National Museum at Naples. It is described by
S.R. Forbes, in his _Rambles in Naples_, as follows:
/#[4,66]
It is a mosaic table of square shape, fixed in a strong
wooden frame. The ground is of grey green stone, in the
middle of which is a human skull, made of white, grey, and
black colors. In appearance the skull is quite natural. The
eyes, nostrils, teeth, ears, and coronal are all well
executed. Above the skull is a level of colored wood, the
points being of brass; and from the top to the point, by a
white thread, is suspended a plumb-line. Below the skull is
a wheel of six spokes, and on the upper rim of the wheel
there is a butterfly with wings of red, edged with yellow;
its eyes blue.... On the left is an upright spear, resting on
the ground; from this there hangs, attached to a golden cord,
a garment of scarlet, also a purple robe; whilst the upper
part of the spear is surrounded by a white braid of diamond
pattern. To the right is a gnarled thorn stick, from which
hangs a coarse, shaggy piece of cloth in yellow, grey, and
brown colors, tied with a ribbon; and above it is a leather
knapsack.... Evidently this work of art, by its composition,
is mystical and symbolical.
#/
No doubt; and for those who know the meaning of these emblems there is
a feeling of kinship with those men, long since fallen into dust, who
gathered about such an altar. They wrought out in this work of art
their vision of the old-worn pilgrim way of life, with its vicissitude
and care, the level of mortality to which all are brought at last by
death, and the winged, fluttering hope of man. Always a journey with
its horny staff and wallet, life is sometimes a battle needing a
spear, but for him who walks uprightly by the plumb-line of rectitude,
there is a true and victorious hope at the end.
/P
Of wounds and sore defeat
I made my battle stay,
Winged sandals for my feet
I wove of my delay.
Of weariness and fear
I made a shouting spear,
Of loss and doubt and dread
And swift on-coming doom
I made a helmet for my head,
And a waving plume.
P/
III
Christianity, whose Founder was a Carpenter, made a mighty appeal to
the working classes of Rome. As Deissmann and Harnack have shown, the
secret of its expansion in the early years was that it came down to
the man in the street with its message of hope and joy. Its appeal was
hardly heard in high places, but it was welcomed by the men who were
weary and heavy ladened. Among the Collegia it made rapid progress,
its Saints taking the place of pagan deities as patrons, and its
spirit of love welding men into closer, truer union. When Diocletian
determined to destroy Christianity, he was strangely lenient and
patient with the Collegia, so many of whose members were of that
faith. Not until they refused to make a statue of AEsculapius did he
vow vengeance and turn on them, venting his fury. In the persecution
that followed four Master Masons and one humble apprentice suffered
cruel torture and death, but they became the Four Crowned Martyrs,
the story of whose heroic fidelity unto death haunted the legends of
later times.[63] They were the patron saints alike of Lombard and
Tuscan builders, and, later, of the working Masons of the Middle Ages,
as witness the poem in their praise in the oldest record of the Craft,
the _Regius MS._
With the breaking up of the College of Architects and their expulsion
from Rome, we come upon a period in which it is hard to follow their
path. Happily the task has been made less baffling by recent research,
and if we are unable to trace them all the way much light has been let
into the darkness. Hitherto there has been a hiatus also in the
history of architecture between the classic art of Rome, which is said
to have died when the Empire fell to pieces, and the rise of Gothic
art. Just so, in the story of the builders one finds a gap of like
length, between the Collegia of Rome and the cathedral artists. While
the gap cannot, as yet, be perfectly bridged, much has been done to
that end by Leader Scott in _The Cathedral Builders: The Story of a
Great Masonic Guild_--a book itself a work of art as well as of fine
scholarship. Her thesis is that the missing link is to be found in the
Magistri Comacini, a guild of architects who, on the break-up of the
Roman Empire, fled to Comacina, a fortified island in Lake Como, and
there kept alive the traditions of classic art during the Dark Ages;
that from them were developed in direct descent the various styles of
Italian architecture; and that, finally, they carried the knowledge
and practice of architecture and sculpture into France, Spain,
Germany, and England. Such a thesis is difficult, and, from its
nature, not susceptible of absolute proof, but the writer makes it as
certain as anything can well be.
While she does not positively affirm that the Comacine Masters were the
veritable stock from which the Freemasonry of the present day sprang,
"we may admit," she says, "that they were the link between the classic
Collegia and all other art and trade Guilds of the Middle Ages. _They
were Free-masons because they were builders of a privileged class,
absolved from taxes and servitude, and free to travel about in times of
feudal bondage_." The name Free-mason--_Libera muratori_--may not
actually have been used thus early, but the Comacines were _in fact
free builders long before the name was employed_--free to travel from
place to place, as we see from their migrations; free to fix their own
prices, while other workmen were bound to feudal lords, or by the
Statutes of Wages. The author quotes in the original Latin an Edict of
the Lombard King Rotharis, dated November 22, 643, in which certain
privileges are confirmed to the _Magistri Comacini_ and their
_colligantes_. From this Edict it is clear that it is no new order that
is alluded to, but an old and powerful body of Masters capable of
acting as architects, with men who executed work under them. For the
Comacines were not ordinary workmen, but artists, including architects,
sculptors, painters, and decorators, and if affinities of style left in
stone be adequate evidence, to them were due the changing forms of
architecture in Europe during the cathedral-building period. Everywhere
they left their distinctive impress in a way so unmistakable as to
leave no doubt.
Under Charlemagne the Comacines began their many migrations, and we
find them following the missionaries of the church into remote places,
from Sicily to Britain, building churches. When Augustine went to
convert the British, the Comacines followed to provide shrines, and
Bede, as early as 674, in mentioning that builders were sent for from
Gaul to build the church at Wearmouth, uses phrases and words found in
the Edict of King Rotharis. For a long time the changes in style of
architecture, appearing simultaneously everywhere over Europe, from
Italy to England, puzzled students.[64] Further knowledge of this
powerful and widespread order explains it. It also accounts for the
fact that no individual architect can be named as the designer of any
of the great cathedrals. Those cathedrals were the work, not of
individual artists, but of an order who planned, built, and adorned
them. In 1355 the painters of Siena seceded, as the German Masons did
later, and the names of individual artists who worked for fame and
glory begin to appear; but up to that time the Order was supreme.
Artists from Greece and Asia Minor, driven from their homes, took
refuge with the Comacines, and Leader Scott finds in this order a
possible link, by tradition at least, with the temple of Solomon. At
any rate, all through the Dark Ages the name and fame of the Hebrew
king lived in the minds of the builders.
An inscribed stone, dating from 712, shows that the Comacine Guild
was organized as _Magistri_ and _Discipuli_, under a _Gastaldo_, or
Grand Master, the very same terms as were kept in the lodges later.
Moreover, they called their meeting places _loggia_, a long list of
which the author recites from the records of various cities, giving
names of officers, and, often, of members. They, too, had their
masters and wardens, their oaths, tokens, grips, and passwords which
formed a bond of union stronger than legal ties. They wore white
aprons and gloves, and revered the Four Crowned Martyrs of the Order.
Square, compasses, level, plumb-line, and arch appear among their
emblems. "King Solomon's Knot" was one of their symbols, and the
endless, interwoven cord, symbol of Eternity which has neither
beginning nor end, was another. Later, however, the Lion's Paw seems
to have become their chief emblem. From illustrations given by the
author they are shown in their regalia, with apron and emblems, clad
as the keepers of a great art and teaching of which they were masters.
Here, of a truth, is something more than prophecy, and those who have
any regard for facts will not again speak lightly of an order having
such ancestors as the great Comacine Masters. Had Fergusson known
their story, he would not have paused in his _History of Architecture_
to belittle the Free-masons as incapable of designing a cathedral,
while puzzling the while as to who did draw the plans for those dreams
of beauty and prayer. Hereafter, if any one asks to know who uplifted
those massive piles in which was portrayed the great drama of
mediaeval worship, he need not remain uncertain. With the decline of
Gothic architecture the order of Free-masons also suffered decline, as
we shall see, but did not cease to exist--continuing its symbolic
tradition amidst varying, and often sad, vicissitude until 1717, when
it became a fraternity teaching spiritual faith by allegory and moral
science by symbols.
FOOTNOTES:
[54] _Primitive Secret Societies_, by H. Webster; _Secret Societies of
all Ages and Lands_, by W.C. Heckethorn.
[55] We may add the case of Weshptah, one of the viziers of the Fifth
Dynasty in Egypt, about 2700 B.C., and also the royal architect, for
whom the great tomb was built, endowed, and furnished by the king
(_Religion in Egypt_, by Breasted, lecture ii); also the statue of
Semut, chief of Masons under Queen Hatasu, now in Berlin.
[56] _Historians His. World_, vol. ii, chap. iii. Josephus gives an
elaborate account of the temple, including the correspondence between
Solomon and Hiram of Tyre (_Jewish Antiquities_, bk. viii, chaps. 2-6).
[57] _Symbolism of Masonry_, Mackey, chap. vi; also in Mackey's
_Encyclopedia of Masonry_, both of which were drawn from _History of
Masonry_, by Laurie, chap. i; and Laurie in turn derived his facts from
a _Sketch for the History of the Dionysian Artificers, A Fragment_, by
H.J. Da Costa (1820). Why Waite and others brush the Dionysian
architects aside as a dream is past finding out in view of the evidence
and authorities put forth by Da Costa, nor do they give any reason for
so doing. "Lebedos was the seat and assembly of the _Dionysian
Artificers_, who inhabit Ionia to the Hellespont; there they had
annually their solemn meetings and festivities in honor of Bacchus,"
wrote Strabo (lib. xiv, 921). They were a secret society having signs
and words to distinguish their members (Robertson's _Greece_), and used
emblems taken from the art of building (Eusebius, _de Prep. Evang._
iii, c. 12). They entered Asia Minor and Phoenicia fifty years before
the temple of Solomon was built, and Strabo traces them on into Syria,
Persia, and India. Surely here are facts not to be swept aside as
romance because, forsooth, they do not fit certain theories. Moreover,
they explain many things, as we shall see.
[58] Rabbinic legend has it that all the workmen on the temple were
killed, so that they should not build another temple devoted to
idolatry (_Jewish Encyclopedia_, article "Freemasonry"). Other legends
equally absurd cluster about the temple and its building, none of which
is to be taken literally. As a fact, Hiram the architect, or rather
artificer in metals, did not lose his life, but, as Josephus tells us,
lived to good age and died at Tyre. What the legend is trying to tell
us, however, is that at the building of the temple the Mysteries
mingled with Hebrew faith, each mutually influencing the other.
[59] Strangely enough, there is a sect or tribe called the Druses, now
inhabiting the Lebanon district, who claim to be not only the
descendants of the Phoenicians, but _the builders of King Solomon's
temple_. So persistent and important among them is this tradition that
their religion is built about it--if indeed it be not something more
than a legend. They have Khalwehs, or temples, built after the fashion
of lodges, with three degrees of initiation, and, though an
agricultural folk, they use signs and tools of building as emblems of
moral truth. They have signs, grips, and passwords for recognition. In
the words of their lawgiver, Hamze, their creed reads: "The belief in
the Truth of One God shall take the place of Prayer; the exercise of
brotherly love shall take the place of Fasting; and the daily practice
of acts of Charity shall take the place of Alms-giving." Why such a
people, having such a tradition? Where did they get it? What may this
fact set in the fixed and changeless East mean? (See the essay of
Hackett Smith on "The Druses and Their Relation to Freemasonry," and
the discussion following, _Ars Quatuor Coronatorum_, iv. 7-19.)
[60] Rawlinson, in his _History of Phoenicia_, says the people "had for
ages possessed the mason's art, it having been brought in very early
days from Egypt." Sir C. Warren found on the foundation stones at
Jerusalem Mason's marks in Phoenician letters (_A. Q. C._, ii, 125;
iii, 68).
[61] See essay on "A Masonic Built City," by S.R. Forbes, a study of
the plan and building of Rome, _Ars Quatuor Coronatorum_, iv, 86. As
there will be many references to the proceedings of the Coronatorum
Lodge of Research, it will be convenient hereafter to use only its
initials, _A. Q. C._, in behalf of brevity. For an account of the
Collegia in early Christian times, see _Roman Life from Nero to
Aurelius_, by Dill (bk. ii, chap. iii); also _De Collegia_, by Mommsen.
There is an excellent article in Mackey's _Encyclopedia of
Freemasonry_, and Gould, _His. Masonry_, vol. i, chap. i.
[62] See _Masonic Character of Roman Villa at Morton_, by J.F. Crease
(_A. Q. C._, iii, 38-59).
[63] Their names were Claudius, Nicostratus, Simphorianus, Castorius,
and Simplicius. Later their bodies were brought from Rome to Toulouse
where they were placed in a chapel erected in their honor in the church
of St. Sernin (_Martyrology_, by Du Saussay). They became patron saints
of Masons in Germany, France, and England (_A. Q. C._, xii, 196). In a
fresco on the walls of the church of St. Lawrence at Rotterdam,
partially preserved, they are painted with compasses and trowel in
hand. With them, however, is another figure, clad in oriental robe,
also holding compasses, but with a royal, not a martyr's, crown. Is he
Solomon? Who else can he be? The fresco dates from 1641, and was
painted by F. Wounters (_A. Q. C._, xii, 202). Even so, those humble
workmen, faithful to their faith, became saints of the church, and
reign with Solomon! Once the fresco was whitewashed, but the coating
fell off and they stood forth with compasses and trowel as before.
[64] _History of Middle Ages_, Hallam, vol. ii, 547.
Part II--History
FREE-MASONS
/#
_The curious history of Freemasonry has unfortunately been treated
only by its panegyrists or calumniators, both equally mendacious.
I do not wish to pry into the mysteries of the craft; but it would
be interesting to know more of their history during the period
when they were literally architects. They are charged by an act of
Parliament with fixing the price of their labor in their annual
chapters, contrary to the statute of laborers, and such chapters
were consequently prohibited. This is their first persecution;
they have since undergone others, and are perhaps reserved for
still more. It is remarkable, that Masons were never legally
incorporated, like other traders; their bond of union being
stronger than any charter._
--HENRY HALLAM, _The Middle Ages_
#/
CHAPTER I
_Free-Masons_
I
From the foregoing pages it must be evident that Masonry, as we find
it in the Middle Ages, was not a novelty. Already, if we accept its
own records, it was hoary with age, having come down from a far past,
bringing with it a remarkable deposit of legendary lore. Also, it had
in its keeping the same simple, eloquent emblems which, as we have
seen, are older than the oldest living religion, which it received as
an inheritance and has transmitted as a treasure. Whatever we may
think of the legends of Masonry, as recited in its oldest documents,
its symbols, older than the order itself, link it with the earliest
thought and faith of the race. No doubt those emblems lost some of
their luster in the troublous time of transition we are about to
traverse, but their beauty never wholly faded, and they had only to be
touched to shine.
If not the actual successors of the Roman College of Architects, the
great order of Comacine Masters was founded upon its ruins, and
continued its tradition both of symbolism and of art. Returning to
Rome after the death of Diocletian, we find them busy there under
Constantine and Theodosius; and from remains recently brought to
knowledge it is plain that their style of building at that time was
very like that of the churches built at Hexham and York in England,
and those of the Ravenna, also nearly contemporary. They may not have
been actually called Free-masons as early as Leader Scott insists they
were,[65] but _they were free in fact_, traveling far and near where
there was work to do, following the missionaries of the Church as far
as England. When there was need for the name _Free-masons_, it was
easily suggested by the fact that the cathedral-builders were quite
distinct from the Guild-masons, the one being a universal order
whereas the other was local and restricted. Older than Guild-masonry,
the order of the cathedral-builders was more powerful, more artistic,
and, it may be added, more religious; and it is from this order that
the Masonry of today is descended.
Since the story of the Comacine Masters has come to light, no doubt
any longer remains that during the building period the order of Masons
was at the height of its influence and power. At that time the
building art stood above all other arts, and made the other arts bow
to it, commanding the services of the most brilliant intellects and
of the greatest artists of the age. Moreover, its symbols were wrought
into stone long before they were written on parchment, if indeed they
were ever recorded at all. Efforts have been made to rob those old
masters of their honor as the designers of the cathedrals, but it is
in vain.[66] Their monuments are enduring and still tell the story of
their genius and art. High upon the cathedrals they left cartoons in
stone, of which Findel gives a list,[67] portraying with searching
satire abuses current in the Church. Such figures and devices would
not have been tolerated but for the strength of the order, and not
even then had the Church known what they meant to the adepts.
History, like a mirage, lifts only a part of the past into view,
leaving much that we should like to know in oblivion. At this distance
the Middle Ages wear an aspect of smooth uniformity of faith and
opinion, but that is only one of the many illusions of time by which
we are deceived. What looks like uniformity was only conformity, and
underneath its surface there was almost as much variety of thought as
there is today, albeit not so freely expressed. Science itself, as
well as religious ideas deemed heretical, sought seclusion; but the
human mind was alive and active none the less, and a great secret
order like Masonry, enjoying the protection of the Church, yet
independent of it, invited freedom of thought and faith.[68] The
Masons, by the very nature of their art, came into contact with all
classes of men, and they had opportunities to know the defects of the
Church. Far ahead of the masses and most of the clergy in education,
in their travels to and fro, not only in Europe, but often extending
to the far East, they became familiar with widely-differing religious
views. They had learned to practice toleration, and their Lodges
became a sure refuge for those who were persecuted for the sake of
opinion by bigoted fanaticism.
While, as an order, the Comacine Masters served the Church as
builders, the creed required for admission to their fraternity was
never narrow, and, as we shall see, it became every year broader.
Unless this fact be kept in mind, the influence of the Church upon
Masonry, which no one seeks to minify, may easily be exaggerated. Not
until cathedral building began to decline by reason of the
impoverishment of the nations by long wars, the dissolution of the
monasteries, and the advent of Puritanism, did the Church greatly
influence the order; and not even then to the extent of diverting it
from its original and unique mission. Other influences were at work
betimes, such as the persecution of the Knights Templars and the
tragic martyrdom of De Molai, making themselves felt,[69] and Masonry
began to be suspected of harboring heresy. So tangled were the
tendencies of that period that they are not easily followed, but the
fact emerges that Masonry rapidly broadened until its final break with
the Church. Hardly more than a veneer, by the time of the German
Reformation almost every vestige of the impress of the Church had
vanished never to return. Critics of the order have been at pains to
trace this tendency, not knowing, apparently, that by so doing they
only make more emphatic the chief glory of Masonry.
II
Unfortunately, as so often happens, no records of old Craft-masonry,
save those wrought into stone, were made until the movement had begun
to decline; and for that reason such documents as have come down to us
do not show it at its best. Nevertheless, they range over a period of
more than four centuries, and are justly held to be the title deeds of
the Order. Turning to these _Old Charges_ and _Constitutions_,[70] as
they are called, we find a body of quaint and curious writing, both in
poetry and prose, describing the Masonry of the late cathedral-building
period, with glimpses at least of greater days of old. Of these, there
are more than half a hundred--seventy-eight, to be exact--most of which
have come to light since 1860, and all of them, it would seem, copies
of documents still older. Naturally they have suffered at the hands of
unskilled or unlearned copyists, as is evident from errors,
embellishments, and interpolations. They were called _Old Charges_
because they contained certain rules as to conduct and duties which, in
a bygone time, were read or recited to a newly admitted member of the
craft. While they differ somewhat in details, they relate substantially
the same legend as to the origin of the order, its early history, its
laws and regulations, usually beginning with an invocation and ending
with an Amen.
Only a brief account need here be given of the dates and
characteristics of these documents, of the two oldest especially, with
a digest of what they have to tell us, first, of the Legend of the
order; second, its early History; and third, its Moral teaching, its
workings, and the duties of its members. The first and oldest of the
records is known as the _Regius MS_ which, owing to an error of David
Casley who in his catalogue of the MSS in the King's Library marked it
_A Poem of Moral Duties_, was overlooked until James Halliwell
discovered its real nature in 1839. Although not a Mason, Halliwell
was attracted by the MS and read an essay on its contents before the
Society of Antiquarians, after which he issued two editions bearing
date of 1840 and 1844. Experts give it date back to 1390, that is to
say, fifteen years after the first recorded use of the name
_Free_-mason in the history of the Company of Masons of the City of
London, in 1375.[71]
More poetical in spirit than in form, the old manuscript begins by
telling of the number of unemployed in early days and the necessity of
finding work, "that they myght gete there lyvyngs therby." Euclid was
consulted, and recommended the "onest craft of good masonry," and the
origin of the order is found "yn Egypte lande." Then, by a quick
shift, we are landed in England "yn tyme of good Kinge Adelstonus
day," who is said to have called an assembly of Masons, when fifteen
articles and as many points were agreed upon as rules of the craft,
each point being duly described. The rules resemble the Ten
Commandments in an extended form, closing with the legend of the Four
Crowned Martyrs, as an incentive to fidelity. Then the writer takes up
again the question of origins, going back this time to the days of
Noah and the Flood, mentioning the tower of Babylon and the great
skill of Euclid, who is said to have commenced "the syens seven." The
seven sciences are then named, to-wit, Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric,
Music, Astronomy, Arithmetic, Geometry, and each explained. Rich
reward is held out to those who use the seven sciences aright, and the
MS proper closes with the benediction:
/P
Amen! Amen! so mote it be!
So say we all for Charity.
P/
There follows a kind of appendix, evidently added by a priest,
consisting of one hundred lines in which pious exhortation is mixed
with instruction in etiquette, such as lads and even men unaccustomed
to polite society and correct deportment would need. These lines were
in great part extracted from _Instructions for Parish Priests_, by
Mirk, a manual in use at the time. The whole poem, if so it may be
called, is imbued with the spirit of freedom, of gladness, of social
good will; so much so, that both Gould and Albert Pike think it points
to the existence of symbolic Masonry at the date from which it speaks,
and may have been recited or sung by some club commemorating the
science, but not practicing the art, of Masonry. They would find
intimation of the independent existence of speculative Masonry thus
early, in a society from whom all but the memory or tradition of its
ancient craft had departed. One hesitates to differ with writers so
able and distinguished, yet this inference seems far-fetched, if not
forced. Of the existence of symbolic Masonry at that time there is no
doubt, but of its independent existence it is not easy to find even a
hint in this old poem. Nor would the poem be suitable for a mere
social, or even a symbolic guild, whereas the spirit of genial, joyous
comradeship which breathes through it is of the very essence of
Masonry, and has ever been present when Masons meet.
Next in order of age is the _Cooke MS_, dating from the early part of
the fifteenth century, and first published in 1861. If we apply the
laws of higher-criticism to this old document a number of things
appear, as obvious as they are interesting. Not only is it a copy of
an older record, like all the MSS we have, but it is either an effort
to join two documents together, or else the first part must be
regarded as a long preamble to the manuscript which forms the second
part. For the two are quite unlike in method and style, the first
being diffuse, with copious quotations and references to
authorities,[72] while the second is simple, direct, unadorned, and
does not even allude to the Bible. Also, it is evident that the
compiler, himself a Mason, is trying to harmonize two traditions as to
the origin of the order, one tracing it through Egypt and the other
through the Hebrews; and it is hard to tell which tradition he favors
most. Hence a duplication of the traditional history, and an odd
mixture of names and dates, often, indeed, absurd, as when he makes
Euclid a pupil of Abraham. What is clear is that, having found an old
Constitution of the Craft, he thought to write a kind of commentary
upon it, adding proofs and illustrations of his own, though he did not
manage his materials very successfully.
After his invocation,[73] the writer begins with a list of the Seven
Sciences, giving quaint definitions of each, but in a different order
from that recited in the _Regius Poem_; and he exalts Geometry above
all the rest as "the first cause and foundation of all crafts and
sciences." Then follows a brief sketch of the sons of Lamech, much as
we find it in the book of Genesis which, like the old MS we are here
studying, was compiled from two older records: the one tracing the
descent from Cain, and the other from Seth. Jabal and Jubal, we are
told, inscribed their knowledge of science and handicraft on two
pillars, one of marble, the other of lateres; and after the flood one
of the pillars was found by Hermes, and the other by Pythagoras, who
taught the sciences they found written thereon. Other MSS give Euclid
the part here assigned to Hermes. Surely this is all fantastic enough,
but the blending of the names of Hermes, the "father of Wisdom," who
is so supreme a figure in the Egyptian Mysteries, and Pythagoras who
used numbers as spiritual emblems, with old Hebrew history, is
significant. At any rate, by this route the record reaches Egypt
where, like the _Regius Poem_, it locates the origin of Masonry. In
thus ascribing the origin of Geometry to the Egyptians the writer was
but following a tradition that the Egyptians were compelled to invent
it in order to restore the landmarks effaced by the inundations of the
Nile; a tradition confirmed by modern research.
Proceeding, the compiler tells us that during their sojourn in Egypt
the Hebrews learned the art and secrets of Masonry, which they took
with them to the promised land. Long years are rapidly sketched, and
we come to the days of David, who is said to have loved Masons well,
and to have given them "wages nearly as they are now." There is but a
meager reference to the building of the Temple of Solomon, to which is
added: "In other chronicles and old books of Masonry, it is said that
Solomon confirmed the charges that David had given to Masons; and that
Solomon taught them their usages differing but slightly from the
customs now in use." While allusion is made to the master-artist of
the temple, his name is not mentioned, _except in disguise_. Not one
of the _Old Charges_ of the order ever makes use of his name, but
always employs some device whereby to conceal it.[74] Why so, when
the name was well known, written in the Bible which lay upon the
altar for all to read? Why such reluctance, if it be not that the name
and the legend linked with it had an esoteric meaning, as it most
certainly did have long before it was wrought into a drama? At this
point the writer drops the old legend and traces the Masons into
France and England, after the manner of the _Regius MS_, but with more
detail. Having noted these items, he returns to Euclid and brings that
phase of the tradition up to the advent of the order into England,
adding, in conclusion, the articles of Masonic law agreed upon at an
early assembly, of which he names nine, instead of the fifteen recited
in the _Regius Poem_.
What shall we say of this Legend, with its recurring and insistent
emphasis upon the antiquity of the order, and its linking of Egypt
with Israel? For one thing, it explodes the fancy that the idea of the
symbolical significance of the building of the Temple of Solomon
originated with, or was suggested by, Bacon's _New Atlantis_. Here is
a body of tradition uniting the Egyptian Mysteries with the Hebrew
history of the Temple in a manner unmistakable. Wherefore such names
as Hermes, Pythagoras, and Euclid, and how did they come into the old
craft records if not through the Comacine artists and scholars? With
the story of that great order before us, much that has hitherto been
obscure becomes plain, and we recognize in these _Old Charges_ the
inaccurate and perhaps faded tradition of a lofty symbolism, an
authentic scholarship, and an actual history. As Leader Scott
observes, after reciting the old legend in its crudest form:
/#[4,66]
_The significant point is that all these names and Masonic
emblems point to something real which existed in some
long-past time, and, as regards the organisation and
nomenclature, we find the whole thing in its vital and actual
working form in the Comacine Guild._[75]
#/
Of interest here, as a kind of bridge between old legend and the early
history of the order in England, and also as a different version of
the legend itself, is another document dating far back. There was a MS
discovered in the Bodleian Library at Oxford about 1696, supposed to
have been written in the year 1436, which purports to be an
examination of a Mason by King Henry VI, and is allowed by all to be
genuine. Its title runs as follows: "_Certain questions with answers
to the same concerning the mystery of masonry written by King Henry
the Sixth and faithfully copied by me, John Laylande, antiquarian, by
command of his highness_." Written in quaint old English, it would
doubtless be unintelligible to all but antiquarians, but it reads
after this fashion:
/#[4,66]
What mote it be?--It is the knowledge of nature, and the
power of its various operations; particularly the skill of
reckoning, of weights and measures, of constructing buildings
and dwellings of all kinds, and the true manner of forming
all things for the use of man.
Where did it begin?--It began with the first men of the East,
who were before the first men of the West, and coming with it,
it hath brought all comforts to the wild and comfortless.
Who brought it to the West?--The Phoenicians who, being great
merchants, came first from the East into Phoenicia, for the
convenience of commerce, both East and West by the Red and
Mediterranean Seas.
How came it into England?--Pythagoras, a Grecian, traveled to
acquire knowledge in Egypt and Syria, and in every other land
where the Phoenicians had planted Masonry; and gaining
admittance into all lodges of Masons, he learned much, and
returned and dwelt in Grecia Magna, growing and becoming
mighty wise and greatly renowned. Here he formed a great lodge
at Crotona, and made many Masons, some of whom traveled into
France, and there made many more, from whence, in process of
time, the art passed into England.
#/
III
With the conquest of Britain by the Romans, the _Collegia_, without
which no Roman society was complete, made their advent into the
island, traces of their work remaining even to this day. Under the
direction of the mother College at Rome, the Britons are said to have
attained to high degree of excellence as builders, so that when the
cities of Gaul and the fortresses along the Rhine were destroyed,
Chlorus, A.D. 298, sent to Britain for architects to repair or rebuild
them. Whether the _Collegia_ existed in Britain after the Romans left,
as some affirm, or were suppressed, as we know they were on the
Continent when the barbarians overran it, is not clear. Probably they
were destroyed, or nearly so, for with the revival of Christianity in
598 A.D., we find Bishop Wilfred of York joining with the Abbott of
Wearmouth in sending to France and Italy to induce Masons to return
and build in stone, as he put it, "after the Roman manner." This
confirms the Italian chroniclists who relate that Pope Gregory sent
several of the fraternity of _Liberi muratori_ with St. Augustine, as,
later, they followed St. Boniface into Germany.
Again, in 604, Augustine sent the monk Pietro back to Rome with a
letter to the same Pontiff, begging him to send more architects and
workmen, which he did. As the _Liberi muratori_ were none other than
the Comacine Masters, it seems certain that they were at work in
England _long before the period with which the_ OLD CHARGES _begin
their story of English Masonry_.[76] Among those sent by Gregory was
Paulinus, and it is a curious fact that he is spoken of under the title
of _Magister_, by which is meant, no doubt, that he was a member of the
Comacine order, for they so described their members; and we know that
many monks were enrolled in their lodges, having studied the art of
building under their instruction. St. Hugh of Lincoln was not the only
Bishop who could plan a church, instruct the workman, or handle a hod.
Only, it must be kept in mind that these ecclesiastics who became
skilled in architecture _were taught by the Masons_, and that it was
not the monks, as some seem to imagine, who taught the Masons their
art. Speaking of this early and troublous time, Giuseppe Merzaria says
that only one lamp remained alight, making a bright spark in the
darkness that extended over Europe:
/#[4,66]
It was from the _Magistri Comacini_. Their respective names
are unknown, their individual works unspecialized, but the
breadth of their spirit might be felt all through those
centuries, and their name collectively is legion. We may
safely say that of all the works of art between A.D. 800 and
1000, the greater and better part are due to that
brotherhood--always faithful and often secret--of the
_Magistri Comacini_. The authority and judgment of learned
men justify the assertion.[77]
#/
Among the learned men who agree with this judgment are Kugler of
Germany, Ramee of France, and Selvatico of Italy, as well as Quatremal
de Quincy, in his _Dictionary of Architecture_, who, in the article on
the Comacine, remarks that "to these men, who were both designers and
executors, architects, sculptors, and mosaicists, may be attributed
the renaissance of art, and its propagation in the southern countries,
where it marched with Christianity. Certain it is that we owe it to
them, that the heritage of antique ages was not entirely lost, and it
is only by their tradition and imitation that the art of building was
kept alive, producing works which we still admire, and which become
surprising when we think of the utter ignorance of all science in
those dark ages." The English writer, Hope, goes further and credits
the Comacine order with being the cradle of the associations of
Free-masons, who were, he adds, "the first after Roman times to enrich
architecture with a complete and well-ordinated system, which
dominated wherever the Latin Church extended its influence."[78] So
then, even if the early records of old Craft-masonry in England are
confused, and often confusing, we are not left to grope our way from
one dim tradition to another, having the history and monuments of this
great order which _spans the whole period_, and links the fraternity
of Free-masons with one of the noblest chapters in the annals of art.
Almost without exception the _Old Charges_ begin their account of
Masonry in England at the time of Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred
the Great; that is, between 925 and 940. Of this prince, or knight,
they record that he was a wise and pacific ruler; that "he brought the
land to rest and peace, and built many great buildings of castles and
abbeys, for he loved Masons well." He is also said to have called an
assembly of Masons at which laws, rules, and charges were adopted for
the regulation of the craft. Despite these specific details, the story
of Athelstan and St. Alban is hardly more than a legend, albeit dating
at no very remote epoch, and well within the reasonable limits of
tradition. Still, so many difficulties beset it that it has baffled
the acutest critics, most of whom throw it aside.[79] That is,
however, too summary a way of disposing of it, since the record,
though badly blurred, is obviously trying to preserve a fact of
importance to the order.
Usually the assembly in question is located at York, in the year 926,
of which, however, no slightest record remains. Whether at York or
elsewhere, some such assembly must have been convoked, either as a
civil function, or as a regular meeting of Masons authorized by legal
power for upholding the honor of the craft; and its articles became
the laws of the order. It was probably a civil assembly, a part of
whose legislation was a revised and approved code for the regulation
of Masons, and not unnaturally, by reason of its importance to the
order, it became known as a Masonic assembly. Moreover, the Charge
agreed upon was evidently no ordinary charge, for it is spoken of as
"_the_ Charge," called by one MS "a deep charge for the observation of
such articles as belong to Masonry," and by another MS "a rule to be
kept forever." Other assemblies were held afterwards, either annually
or semi-annually, until the time of Inigo Jones who, in 1607, became
superintendent general of royal buildings and at the same time head of
the Masonic order in England; and he it was who instituted quarterly
gatherings instead of the old annual assemblies.
Writers not familiar with the facts often speak of Freemasonry as an
evolution from Guild-masonry, but that is to err. They were never at
any time united or the same, though working almost side by side
through several centuries. Free-masons existed in large numbers long
before any city guild of Masons was formed, and even after the Guilds
became powerful the two were entirely distinct. The Guilds, as Hallam
says,[80] "were Fraternities by voluntary compact, to relieve each
other in poverty, and to protect each other from injury. Two
essential characteristics belonged to them: the common banquet, and
the common purse. They had also, in many instances, a religious and
sometimes a secret ceremonial to knit more firmly the bond of
fidelity. They readily became connected with the exercises of trades,
with training of apprentices, and the traditional rules of art."
Guild-masons, it may be added, had many privileges, one of which was
that they were allowed to frame their own laws, and to enforce
obedience thereto. Each Guild had a monopoly of the building in its
city or town, except ecclesiastical buildings, but with this went
serious restrictions and limitations. No member of a local Guild could
undertake work outside his town, but had to hold himself in readiness
to repair the castle or town walls, whereas Free-masons journeyed the
length and breadth of the land wherever their labor called them. Often
the Free-masons, when at work in a town, employed Guild-masons, but
only for rough work, and as such called them "rough-masons." No
Guild-mason was admitted to the order of Free-masons unless he
displayed unusual aptitude both as a workman and as a man of
intellect. Such as adhered only to the manual craft and cared nothing
for intellectual aims, were permitted to go back to the Guilds. For
the Free-masons, be it once more noted, were not only artists doing a
more difficult and finished kind of work, but an intellectual order,
having a great tradition of science and symbolism which they guarded.
Following the Norman Conquest, which began in 1066, England was
invaded by an army of ecclesiastics, and churches, monasteries,
cathedrals, and abbeys were commenced in every part of the country.
Naturally the Free-masons were much in demand, and some of them
received rich reward for their skill as architects--Robertus
Cementarius, a Master Mason employed at St. Albans in 1077, receiving
a grant of land and a house in the town.[81] In the reign of Henry II
no less than one hundred and fifty-seven religious buildings were
founded in England, and it is at this period that we begin to see
evidence of a new style of architecture--the Gothic. Most of the great
cathedrals of Europe date from the eleventh century--the piety of the
world having been wrought to a pitch of intense excitement by the
expected end of all things, unaccountably fixed by popular belief to
take place in the year one thousand. When the fatal year--and the
following one, which some held to be the real date for the sounding of
the last trumpet--passed without the arrival of the dreaded
catastrophe, the sense of general relief found expression in raising
magnificent temples to the glory of God who had mercifully abstained
from delivering all things to destruction. And it was the order of
Free-masons who made it possible for men to "sing their souls in
stone," leaving for the admiration of after times what Goethe called
the "frozen music" of the Middle Ages--monuments of the faith and
gratitude of the race which adorn and consecrate the earth.
Little need be added to the story of Freemasonry during the
cathedral-building period; its monuments are its best history, alike
of its genius, its faith, and its symbols--as witness the triangle and
the circle which form the keystone of the ornamental tracery of every
Gothic temple. Masonry was then at the zenith of its power, in its
full splendor, the Lion of the tribe of Judah its symbol, strength,
wisdom, and beauty its ideals; its motto to be faithful to God and the
Government; its mission to lend itself to the public good and
fraternal charity. Keeper of an ancient and high tradition, it was a
refuge for the oppressed, and a teacher of art and morality to
mankind. In 1270, we find Pope Nicholas III confirming all the rights
previously granted to the Free-masons, and bestowing on them further
privileges. Indeed, all the Popes up to Benedict XII appear to have
conceded marked favors to the order, even to the length of exempting
its members from the necessity of observance of the statutes, from
municipal regulations, and from obedience to royal edicts.
What wonder, then, that the Free-masons, ere long, took _Liberty_ for
their motto, and by so doing aroused the animosity of those in
authority, as well as the Church which they had so nobly served.
Already forces were astir which ultimately issued in the Reformation,
and it is not surprising that a great secret order was suspected of
harboring men and fostering influences sympathetic with the impending
change felt to be near at hand. As men of the most diverse views,
political and religious, were in the lodges, the order began first to
be accused of refusing to obey the law, and then to be persecuted. In
England a statute was enacted against the Free-masons in 1356,
prohibiting their assemblies under severe penalties, but the law seems
never to have been rigidly enforced; though the order suffered greatly
in the civil commotions of the period. However, with the return of
peace after the long War of the Roses, Freemasonry revived for a
time, and regained much of its prestige, adding to its fame in the
rebuilding of London after the fire, and in particular of St. Paul's
Cathedral.[82]
When cathedral-building ceased, and the demand for highly skilled
architects decreased, the order fell into decline, but never at any
time lost its identity, its organization, and its ancient emblems. The
Masons' Company of London, though its extant records date only from
1620, is considered by its historian, Conder, to have been established
in 1220, if not earlier, at which time there was great activity in
building, owing to the building of London Bridge, begun in 1176, and
of Westminster Abbey in 1221; thus reaching back into the cathedral
period. At one time the Free-masons seem to have been stronger in
Scotland than in England, or at all events to have left behind more
records--for the minutes of the Lodge of Edinburgh go back to 1599,
and the _Schaw Statutes_ to an earlier date. Nevertheless, as the art
of architecture declined Masonry declined with it, not a few of its
members identifying themselves with the Guilds of ordinary
"rough-masons," whom they formerly held in contempt; while others,
losing sight of high aims, turned its lodges into social clubs.
Always, however, despite defection and decline, there were those, as
we shall see, who were faithful to the ideals of the order, devoting
themselves more and more to its moral and spiritual teaching until
what has come to be known as "the revival of 1717."
FOOTNOTES:
[65] _The Cathedral Builders_, chap. i.
[66] "The honor due to the original founders of these edifices is
almost invariably transferred to the ecclesiastics under whose
patronage they rose, rather than to the skill and design of the Master
Mason, or professional architect, because the only historians were
monks.... They were probably not so well versed in geometrical science
as the Master Masons, for mathematics formed a part of monastic
learning in a very limited degree."--James Dallaway, _Architecture in
England_; and his words are the more weighty for that he is not a
Mason.
[67] _History of Masonry._ In the St. Sebaldus Church, Nuremburg, is a
carving in stone showing a nun in the embrace of a monk. In Strassburg
a hog and a goat may be seen carrying a sleeping fox as a sacred relic,
in advance a bear with a cross and a wolf with a taper. An ass is
reading mass at an altar. In Wurzburg Cathedral are the pillars of Boaz
and Jachin, and in the altar of the Church of Doberan, in Mecklenburg,
placed as Masons use them, and a most significant scene in which
priests are turning a mill grinding out dogmatic doctrines; and at the
bottom the Lord's Supper in which the Apostles are shown in well-known
Masonic attitudes. In the Cathedral of Brandenburg a fox in priestly
robes is preaching to a flock of geese; and in the Minster at Berne the
Pope is placed among those who are lost in perdition. These were bold
strokes which even heretics hardly dared to indulge in.
[68] _History of Masonry_, by Steinbrenner, chap. iv. There were,
indeed, many secret societies in the Middle Ages, such as the
Catharists, Albigenses, Waldenses, and others, whose initiates and
adherents traveled through all Europe, forming new communities and
making proselytes not only among the masses, but also among nobles, and
even among the monks, abbots, and bishops. Occultists, Alchemists,
Kabbalists, all wrought in secrecy, keeping their flame aglow under the
crust of conformity.
[69] _Realities of Masonry_, by Blake (chap. ii). While the theory of
the descent of Masonry from the Order of the Temple is untenable, a
connection between the two societies, in the sense in which an artist
may be said to be connected with his employer, is more than probable;
and a similarity may be traced between the ritual of reception in the
Order of the Temple and that used by Masons, but that of the Temple was
probably derived from, or suggested by, that of the Masons; or both may
have come from an original source further back. That the Order of the
Temple, as such, did not actually coalesce with the Masons seems clear,
but many of its members sought refuge under the Masonic apron (_History
of Freemasonry and Concordant Orders_, by Hughan and Stillson).
[70] Every elaborate History of Masonry--as, for example, that of
Gould--reproduces these old documents in full or in digest, with
exhaustive analyses of and commentaries upon them. Such a task
obviously does not come within the scope of the present study. One of
the best brief comparative studies of the _Old Charges_ is an essay by
W.H. Upton, "The True Text of the Book of Constitutions," in that it
applies approved methods of historical criticism to all of them (_A. Q.
C._, vii, 119). See also _Masonic Sketches and Reprints_, by Hughan. No
doubt these _Old Charges_ are familiar, or should be familiar, to every
intelligent member of the order, as a man knows the deeds of his
estate.
[71] _The Hole Craft and Fellowship of Masonry_, by Conder. Also
exhaustive essays by Conder and Speth, _A. Q. C._, ix, 29; x, 10. Too
much, it seems to me, has been made of both the name and the date,
since the _fact_ was older than either. Findel finds the name
_Free_-mason as early as 1212, and Leader Scott goes still further
back; but the fact may be traced back to the Roman Collegia.
[72] He refers to Herodotus as the _Master of History_; quotes from the
_Polychronicon_, written by a Benedictine monk who died in 1360; from
_De Imagine Mundi_, Isodorus, and frequently from the Bible. Of more
than ordinary learning for his day and station, he did not escape a
certain air of pedantry in his use of authorities.
[73] These invocations vary in their phraseology, some bearing more
visibly than others the mark of the Church. Toulmin Smith, in his
_English Guilds_, notes the fact that the form of the invocations of
the Masons "differs strikingly from that of most other Guilds. In
almost every other case, God the Father Almighty would seem to have
been forgotten." But Masons never forgot the corner-stone upon which
their order and its teachings rest; not for a day.
[74] Such names as Aynone, Aymon, Ajuon, Dynon, Amon, Anon, Annon, and
Benaim are used, deliberately, it would seem, and of set design. _The
Inigo Jones MS_ uses the Bible name, but, though dated 1607, it has
been shown to be apocryphal. See Gould's _History_, appendix. Also
_Bulletin_ of Supreme Council S. J., U. S. (vii, 200), that the
Strassburg builders pictured the legend in stone.
[75] _The Cathedral Builders_, bk. i, chap. i.
[76] See the account of "The Origin of Saxon Architecture," in the
_Cathedral Builders_ (bk. ii, chap. iii), written by Dr. W.M. Barnes in
England independently of the author who was living in Italy; and it is
significant that the facts led both of them to the same conclusions.
They show quite unmistakably that the Comacine builders were in England
as early as 600 A.D., both by documents and by a comparative study of
styles of architecture.
[77] _Maestri Comacini_, vol. i, chap. ii.
[78] _Story of Architecture_, chap. xxii.
[79] Gould, in his _History of Masonry_ (i, 31, 65), rejects the legend
as having not the least foundation in fact, as indeed, he rejects
almost everything that cannot prove itself in a court of law. For the
other side see a "Critical Examination of the Alban and Athelstan
Legends," by C.C. Howard (_A. Q. C._, vii, 73). Meanwhile, Upton points
out that St. Alban was the name of a town, not of a man, and shows how
the error may have crept into the record (_A. Q. C._, vii, 119-131).
The nature of the tradition, its details, its motive, and the absence
of any reason for fiction, should deter us from rejecting it. See two
able articles, pro and con, by Begemann and Speth, entitled "The
Assembly" (_A. Q. C._, vii). Older Masonic writers, like Oliver and
Mackey, accepted the York assembly as a fact established (_American
Quarterly Review of Freemasonry_, vol. i, 546; ii, 245).
[80] _History of the English Constitution._ Of course the Guild was
indigenous to almost every age and land, from China to ancient Rome
(_The Guilds of China_, by H.B. Morse), and they survive in the trade
and labor unions of our day. The story of _English Guilds_ has been
told by Toulmin Smith, and in the histories of particular companies by
Herbert and Hazlitt, leaving little for any one to add. No doubt the
Guilds were influenced by the Free-masons in respect of officers and
emblems, and we know that some of them, like the German Steinmetzen,
attached moral meanings to their working tools, and that others, like
the French Companionage, even held the legend of Hiram; but these did
not make them Free-masons. English writers like Speth go too far when
they deny to the Steinmetzen any esoteric lore, and German scholars
like Krause and Findel are equally at fault in insisting that they were
Free-masons. (See essay by Speth, _A. Q. C._, i, 17, and _History of
Masonry_, by Steinbrenner, chap. iv.)
[81] _Notes on the Superintendents of English Buildings in the Middle
Ages_, by Wyatt Papworth. Cementerius is also mentioned in connection
with the Salisbury Cathedral, again in his capacity as a Master Mason.
[82] Hearing that the Masons had certain secrets that could not be
revealed to her (for that she could not be Grand Master) Queen
Elizabeth sent an armed force to break up their annual Grand Lodge at
York, on St. John's Day, December 27, 1561. But Sir Thomas Sackville
took care to see that some of the men sent were Free-masons, who,
joining in the communication, made "a very honorable report to the
Queen, who never more attempted to dislodge or disturb them; but
esteemed them a peculiar sort of men, that cultivated peace and
friendship, arts and sciences, without meddling in the affairs of
Church or State" (_Book of Constitutions_, by Anderson).
FELLOWCRAFTS
/#
_Noe person (of what degree soever) shalbee accepted a Free Mason,
unless hee shall have a lodge of five Free Masons at least;
whereof one to be a master, or warden, of that limitt, or
division, wherein such Lodge shalbee kept, and another of the
trade of Free Masonry.
That noe person shalbee accepted a Free Mason, but such as are of
able body, honest parentage, good reputation, and observers of the
laws of the land.
That noe person shalbee accepted a Free Mason, or know the secrets
of said Society, until hee hath first taken the oath of secrecy
hereafter following: "I, A. B., doe in the presence of Almighty
God, and my fellows, and brethren here present, promise and
declare, that I will not at any time hereafter, by any act or
circumstance whatsoever, directly or indirectly, publish,
discover, reveal, or make known any of the secrets, privileges, or
counsels, of the fraternity or fellowship of Free Masonry, which
at this time, or any time hereafter, shalbee made known unto mee
soe helpe mee God, and the holy contents of this booke."_
--HARLEIAN MS, 1600-1650
#/