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MORALS AND DOGMA
OF THE
ANCIENT AND ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE
OF
FREEMASONRY
PREPARED FOR THE
SUPREME COUNCIL OF THE THIRTY-THIRD DEGREE
FOR THE
SOUTHERN JURISDICTION OF THE UNITED STATES
AND
PUBLISHED BY ITS AUTHORITY.
CHARLESTON A.'. M.'. 5632
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by ALBERT PIKE,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Entered
according to Act of Congress, in the year 1906, by THE SUPREME COUNCIL
OF THE SOUTHERN JURISDICTION, A. A. S. R., U. S. A.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, L. H.
Jenkins, Inc. Edition Book Manufacturers Richmond. Va. Reprinted,
February, 1944.
PREFACE.
The following work has been prepared by authority of the Supreme Council
of the Thirty-third Degree, for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United
States, by the Grand Commander, and is now published by its direction.
It contains the Lectures of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in
that jurisdiction, and is specially intended to be read and studied by
the Brethren of that obedience, in connection with the Rituals of the
Degrees. It is hoped and expected that each will furnish himself with a
copy, and make himself familiar with it; for which purpose, as the cost
of the work consists entirely in the printing and binding, it will be
furnished at a price as moderate as possible. No _individual_ will
receive pecuniary profit from it, except the agents for its sale.
It has been copyrighted, to prevent its republication elsewhere, and the
copyright, like those of all the other works prepared for the Supreme
Council, has been assigned to Trustees for that Body. Whatever profits
may accrue from it will be devoted to purposes of charity.
The Brethren of the Rite in the United States and Canada will be
afforded the opportunity to purchase it, nor is it _forbidden_ that
other Masons shall; but they will not be solicited to do so.
In preparing this work, the Grand Commander has been about equally
Author and Compiler; since he has extracted quite half its contents from
the works of the best writers and most philosophic or eloquent thinkers.
Perhaps it would have been better and more acceptable if he had
extracted more and written less.
Still, perhaps half of it is his own; and, in incorporating here the
thoughts and words of others, he has continually changed and added to
the language, often intermingling, in the same sentences, his own words
with theirs. It not being intended for the world at large, he has felt
at liberty to make, from all accessible sources, a Compendium of the
Morals and Dogma of the Rite, to re-mould sentences, change and add to
words and phrases, combine them with his own, and use them as if they
_were_ his own, to be dealt with at his pleasure and so availed of as to
make the whole most valuable for the purposes intended. He claims,
therefore, little of the merit of authorship, and has not cared to
distinguish his own from that which he has taken from other sources,
being quite willing that every portion of the book, in turn, may be
regarded as borrowed from some old and better writer.
The teachings of these Readings are not sacramental, so far as they go
beyond the realm of Morality into those of other domains of Thought and
Truth. The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite uses the word "Dogma" in
its true sense, of _doctrine_, or _teaching_; and is not _dogmatic_ in
the odious sense of that term. Every one is entirely free to reject and
dissent from whatsoever herein may seem to him to be untrue or unsound.
It is only required of him that he shall weigh what is taught, and give
it fair hearing and unprejudiced judgment. Of course, the ancient
theosophic and philosophic speculations are not embodied as part of the
_doctrines_ of the Rite; but because it is of interest and profit to
know what the Ancient Intellect thought upon these subjects, and because
nothing so conclusively proves the radical difference between our human
and the animal nature, as the capacity of the human mind to entertain
such speculations in regard to itself and the Deity. But as to these
opinions themselves, we may say, in the words of the learned Canonist,
Ludovicus Gomez: _"Opiniones secundum varietatem, temporum senescant et
intermoriantur, aliæque diversæ vel prioribus contrarioe renescantur et
deinde pubescant."_
Titles of Degrees as herein given have in some instances been changed.
Correct titles are as follows:
1°--Apprentice.
2°--Fellow-craft.
3°--Master.
4°--Secret Master.
5°--Perfect Master.
6°--Intimate Secretary.
7°--Provost and Judge.
8°--Intendant of the Building.
9°--Elu of the Nine.
10°--Elu of the Fifteen.
11°--Elu of the Twelve.
12°--Master Architect.
13°--Royal Arch of Solomon.
14°--Perfect Elu.
15°--Knight of the East.
16°--Prince of Jerusalem.
17°--Knight of the East and West.
18°--Knight Rose Croix.
19°--Pontiff.
20°--Master of the Symbolic Lodge.
21°--Noachite or Prussian Knight.
22°--Knight of the Royal Axe or Prince of Libanus.
23°--Chief of the Tabernacle.
24°--Prince of the Tabernacle.
25°--Knight of the Brazen Serpent.
26°--Prince of Mercy.
27°--Knight Commander of the Temple.
28°--Knight of the Sun or Prince Adept.
29°--Scottish Knight of St. Andrew.
30°--Knight Kadosh.
31°--Inspector Inquisitor
32°--Master of the Royal Secret.
MORALS AND DOGMA.
LODGE OF PERFECTION.
MORALS AND DOGMA.
[Illustration]
I.
APPRENTICE.
THE TWELVE-INCH RULE AND THE COMMON GAVEL.
Force, unregulated or ill-regulated, is not only wasted in the void,
like that of gunpowder burned in the open air, and steam unconfined by
science; but, striking in the dark, and its blows meeting only the air,
they recoil and bruise itself. It is destruction and ruin. It is the
volcano, the earthquake, the cyclone;--not growth and progress. It is
Polyphemus blinded, striking at random, and falling headlong among the
sharp rocks by the impetus of his own blows.
The blind Force of the people is a Force that must be economized, and
also managed, as the blind Force of steam, lifting the ponderous iron
arms and turning the large wheels, is made to bore and rifle the cannon
and to weave the most delicate lace. It must be regulated by Intellect.
Intellect is to the people and the people's Force, what the slender
needle of the compass is to the ship--its soul, always counselling the
huge mass of wood and iron, and always pointing to the north. To attack
the citadels built up on all sides against the human race by
superstitions, despotisms, and prejudices, the Force must have a brain
and a law. Then its deeds of daring produce permanent results, and there
is real progress. Then there are sublime conquests. Thought is a force,
and philosophy should be an energy, finding its aim and its effects in
the amelioration of mankind. The two great motors are Truth and Love.
When all these Forces are combined, and guided by the Intellect, and
regulated by the RULE of Right, and Justice, and of combined and
systematic movement and effort, the great revolution prepared for by the
ages will begin to march. The POWER of the Deity Himself is in
equilibrium with His WISDOM. Hence the only results are HARMONY.
It is because Force is ill regulated, that revolutions prove failures.
Therefore it is that so often insurrections, coming from those high
mountains that domineer over the moral horizon, Justice, Wisdom, Reason,
Right, built of the purest snow of the ideal after a long fall from rock
to rock, after having reflected the sky in their transparency, and been
swollen by a hundred affluents, in the majestic path of triumph,
suddenly lose themselves in quagmires, like a California river in the
sands.
The onward march of the human race requires that the heights around it
should blaze with noble and enduring lessons of courage. Deeds of daring
dazzle history, and form one class of the guiding lights of man. They
are the stars and coruscations from that great sea of electricity, the
Force inherent in the people. To strive, to brave all risks, to perish,
to persevere, to be true to one's self, to grapple body to body with
destiny, to surprise defeat by the little terror it inspires, now to
confront unrighteous power, now to defy intoxicated triumph--these are
the examples that the nations need and the light that electrifies them.
There are immense Forces in the great caverns of evil beneath society;
in the hideous degradation, squalor, wretchedness and destitution, vices
and crimes that reek and simmer in the darkness in that populace below
the people, of great cities. There disinterestedness vanishes, every one
howls, searches, gropes, and gnaws for himself. Ideas are ignored, and
of progress there is no thought. This populace has two mothers, both of
them stepmothers--Ignorance and Misery. Want is their only guide--for
the appetite alone they crave satisfaction. Yet even these may be
employed. The lowly sand we trample upon, cast into the furnace, melted,
purified by fire, may become resplendent crystal.
They have the brute force of the HAMMER, but their blows help on the
great cause, when struck within the lines traced by the RULE held by
wisdom and discretion.
Yet it is this very Force of the people, this Titanic power of the
giants, that builds the fortifications of tyrants, and is embodied in
their armies. Hence the possibility of such tyrannies as those of which
it has been said, that "Rome smells worse under Vitellius than under
Sulla. Under Claudius and under Domitian there is a deformity of
baseness corresponding to the ugliness of the tyranny. The foulness of
the slaves is a direct result of the atrocious baseness of the despot. A
miasma exhales from these crouching consciences that reflect the master;
the public authorities are unclean, hearts are collapsed, consciences
shrunken, souls puny. This is so under Caracalla, it is so under
Commodus, it is so under Heliogabalus, while from the Roman senate,
under Cæsar, there comes only the rank odor peculiar to the eagle's
eyrie."
It is the force of the people that sustains all these despotisms, the
basest as well as the best. That force acts through armies; and these
oftener enslave than liberate. Despotism there applies the RULE. Force
is the MACE of steel at the saddle-bow of the knight or of the bishop in
armor. Passive obedience by force supports thrones and oligarchies,
Spanish kings, and Venetian senates. Might, in an army wielded by
tyranny, is the enormous sum total of utter weakness; and so Humanity
wages war against Humanity, in despite of Humanity. So a people
willingly submits to despotism, and its workmen submit to be despised,
and its soldiers to be whipped; therefore it is that battles lost by a
nation are often progress attained. Less glory is more liberty. When the
drum is silent, reason sometimes speaks.
Tyrants use the force of the people to chain and subjugate--that is,
_enyoke_ the people. Then they plough with them as men do with oxen
yoked. Thus the spirit of liberty and innovation is reduced by bayonets,
and principles are struck dumb by cannonshot; while the monks mingle
with the troopers, and the Church militant and jubilant, Catholic or
Puritan, sings Te Deums for victories over rebellion.
The military power, not subordinate to the civil power, again the HAMMER
or MACE of FORCE, independent of the RULE, is an armed tyranny, born
full-grown, as Athene sprung from the brain of Zeus. It spawns a
dynasty, and begins with Cæsar to rot into Vitellius and Commodus. At
the present day it inclines to _begin_ where formerly dynasties _ended_.
Constantly the people put forth immense strength, only to end in immense
weakness. The force of the people is exhausted in indefinitely
prolonging things long since dead; in governing mankind by embalming old
dead tyrannies of Faith; restoring dilapidated dogmas; regilding faded,
worm-eaten shrines; whitening and rouging ancient and barren
superstitions; saving society by multiplying parasites; perpetuating
superannuated institutions; enforcing the worship of symbols as the
actual means of salvation; and tying the dead corpse of the Past, mouth
to mouth, with the living Present. Therefore it is that it is one of the
fatalities of Humanity to be condemned to eternal struggles with
phantoms, with superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, the
formulas of error, and the pleas of tyranny. Despotisms, seen in the
past, become respectable, as the mountain, bristling with volcanic rock,
rugged and horrid, seen through the haze of distance is blue and smooth
and beautiful. The sight of a single dungeon of tyranny is worth more,
to dispel illusions, and create a holy hatred of despotism, and to
direct FORCE aright, than the most eloquent volumes. The French should
have preserved the Bastile as a perpetual lesson; Italy should not
destroy the dungeons of the Inquisition. The Force of the people
maintained the Power that built its gloomy cells, and placed the living
in their granite sepulchres.
The FORCE of the people cannot, by its unrestrained and fitful action,
maintain and continue in action and existence a free Government once
created. That Force must be limited, restrained, conveyed by
distribution into different channels, and by roundabout courses, to
outlets, whence it is to issue as the law, action, and decision of the
State; as the wise old Egyptian kings conveyed in different canals, by
sub-division, the swelling waters of the Nile, and compelled them to
fertilize and not devastate the land. There must be the _jus et norma_,
the law and _Rule_, or _Gauge_, of constitution and law, within which
the public force must act. Make a breach in either, and the great
steam-hammer, with its swift and ponderous blows, crushes all the
machinery to atoms, and, at last, wrenching itself away, lies inert and
dead amid the ruin it has wrought.
The FORCE of the people, or the popular will, in action and exerted,
symbolized by the GAVEL, regulated and guided by and acting within the
limits of LAW and ORDER, symbolized by the TWENTY-FOUR-INCH RULE, has
for its fruit LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and FRATERNITY,--liberty regulated by
law; equality of rights in the eye of the law; brotherhood with its
duties and obligations as well as its benefits.
You will hear shortly of the _Rough_ ASHLAR and the _Perfect_ ASHLAR, as
part of the jewels of the Lodge. The rough Ashlar is said to be "a
stone, as taken from the quarry, in its rude and natural state." The
perfect Ashlar is said to be "a stone made ready by the hands of the
workmen, to be adjusted by the working-tools of the Fellow-Craft." We
shall not repeat the explanations of these symbols given by the York
Rite. You may read them in its printed monitors. They are declared to
allude to the self-improvement of the individual craftsman,--a
continuation of the same superficial interpretation.
The rough Ashlar is the PEOPLE, as a mass, rude and unorganized. The
perfect Ashlar, or cubical stone, symbol of perfection, is the STATE,
the rulers deriving their powers from the consent of the governed; the
constitution and laws speaking the will of the people; the government
harmonious, symmetrical, efficient,--its powers properly distributed and
duly adjusted in equilibrium.
If we delineate a cube on a plane surface thus: [Illustration:] we have
visible _three_ faces, and _nine_ external lines, drawn between _seven_
points. The complete cube has _three_ more faces, making _six_; _three_
more lines, making _twelve_; and _one_ more point, making _eight_. As
the number 12 includes the sacred numbers, 3, 5, 7, and 3 times 3, or 9,
and is produced by adding the sacred number 3 to 9; while its own two
figures 1, 2, the unit or monad, and duad, added together, make the
same sacred number 3; it was called the perfect number; and the cube
became the symbol of perfection.
Produced by FORCE, acting by RULE; hammered in accordance with lines
measured by the Gauge, out of the rough Ashlar, it is an appropriate
symbol of the Force of the people, expressed as the constitution and law
of the State; and of the State itself the three visible faces represent
the three departments,--the Executive, which executes the laws; the
Legislative, which makes the laws; the Judiciary, which interprets the
laws, applies and enforces them, between man and man, between the State
and the citizens. The three invisible faces, are Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity,--the threefold soul of the State--its vitality, spirit, and
intellect.
* * * * *
Though Masonry neither usurps the place of, nor apes religion, prayer is
an essential part of our ceremonies. It is the aspiration of the soul
toward the Absolute and Infinite Intelligence, which is the One Supreme
Deity, most feebly and misunderstandingly characterized as an
"ARCHITECT." Certain faculties of man are directed toward the
Unknown--thought, meditation, prayer. The unknown is an ocean, of which
conscience is the compass. Thought, meditation, prayer, are the great
mysterious pointings of the needle. It is a spiritual magnetism that
thus connects the human soul with the Deity. These majestic irradiations
of the soul pierce through the shadow toward the light.
It is but a shallow scoff to say that prayer is absurd, because it is
not possible for us, by means of it, to persuade God to change His
plans. He produces foreknown and foreintended effects, by the
instrumentality of the forces of nature, all of which are _His_ forces.
Our own are part of these. Our free agency and our will are forces. We
do not absurdly cease to make _efforts_ to attain wealth or happiness,
prolong life, and continue health, because we cannot by any effort
change what is predestined. If the effort also is predestined, it is not
the less _our_ effort, made of _our free will_. So, likewise, we pray.
Will is a force. Thought is a force. Prayer is a force. Why should it
not be of the law of God, that prayer, like Faith and Love, should have
its effects? Man is not to be comprehended as a starting-point, or
progress as a goal, without those two great forces, Faith and Love.
Prayer is sublime. Orisons that beg and clamor are pitiful. To deny the
efficacy of prayer, is to deny that of Faith, Love, and Effort. Yet the
effects produced, when our hand, moved by our will, launches a pebble
into the ocean, never cease; and every uttered word is registered for
eternity upon the invisible air.
Every Lodge is a Temple, and as a whole, and in its details symbolic.
The Universe itself supplied man with the model for the first temples
reared to the Divinity. The arrangement of the Temple of Solomon, the
symbolic ornaments which formed its chief decorations, and the dress of
the High-Priest, all had reference to the order of the Universe, as then
understood. The Temple contained many emblems of the seasons-the sun,
the moon, the planets, the constellations Ursa Major and Minor, the
zodiac, the elements, and the other parts of the world. It is the Master
of this Lodge, of the Universe, Hermes, of whom Khūrūm is the
representative, that is one of the lights of the Lodge.
For further instruction as to the symbolism of the heavenly bodies, and
of the sacred numbers, and of the temple and its details, you must wait
patiently until you advance in Masonry, in the mean time exercising your
intellect in studying them for yourself. To study and seek to interpret
correctly the symbols of the Universe, is the work of the sage and
philosopher. It is to decipher the writing of God, and penetrate into
His thoughts.
This is what is asked and answered in our catechism, in regard to the
Lodge.
* * * * *
A "Lodge" is defined to be "an assemblage of Freemasons, duly
congregated, having the sacred writings, square, and compass, and a
charter, or warrant of constitution, authorizing them to work." The room
or place in which they meet, representing some part of King Solomon's
Temple, is also called the Lodge; and it is that we are now considering.
It is said to be supported by three great columns, WISDOM, FORCE or
STRENGTH, and BEAUTY, represented by the Master, the Senior Warden, and
the Junior Warden; and these are said to be the columns that support the
Lodge, "because Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty, are the perfections of
everything, and nothing can endure without them." "Because," the York
Rite says, "it is necessary that there should be Wisdom to conceive,
Strength to support, and Beauty to adorn, all great and important
undertakings." "Know ye not," says the Apostle Paul, "that ye are the
temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man
desecrate the temple of God, him shall God destroy, for the temple of
God is holy, which temple ye are."
The Wisdom and Power of the Deity are in equilibrium. The laws of
nature and the moral laws are not the mere despotic mandates of His
Omnipotent will; for, then they might be changed by Him, and order
become disorder, and good and right become evil and wrong; honesty and
loyalty, vices; and fraud, ingratitude, and vice, virtues. Omnipotent
power, infinite, and existing alone, would necessarily not be
constrained to consistency. Its decrees and laws could not be immutable.
The laws of God are not obligatory on us because they are the enactments
of His POWER, or the expression of His WILL; but because they express
His infinite WISDOM. They are not right because they are His laws, but
His laws because they are right. From the equilibrium of infinite wisdom
and infinite force, results perfect harmony, in physics and in the moral
universe. Wisdom, Power, and Harmony constitute one Masonic triad. They
have other and profounder meanings, that may at some time be unveiled to
you.
As to the ordinary and commonplace explanation, it may be added, that
the wisdom of the Architect is displayed in combining, as only a
skillful Architect can do, and as God has done everywhere,--for example,
in the tree, the human frame, the egg, the cells of the
honeycomb--strength, with grace, beauty, symmetry, proportion,
lightness, ornamentation. That, too, is the perfection of the orator and
poet--to combine force, strength, energy, with grace of style, musical
cadences, the beauty of figures, the play and irradiation of imagination
and fancy; and so, in a State, the warlike and industrial force of the
people, and their Titanic strength, must be combined with the beauty of
the arts, the sciences, and the intellect, if the State would scale the
heights of excellence, and the people be really free. Harmony in this,
as in all the Divine, the material, and the human, is the result of
equilibrium, of the sympathy and opposite action of contraries; a single
Wisdom above them holding the beam of the scales. To reconcile the moral
law, human responsibility, free-will, with the absolute power of God;
and the existence of evil with His absolute wisdom, and goodness, and
mercy,--these are the great enigmas of the Sphynx.
You entered the Lodge between two columns. They represent the two which
stood in the porch of the Temple, on each side of the great eastern
gateway. These pillars, of bronze, four fingers breadth in thickness,
were, according to the most authentic account--that in the First and
that in the Second Book of Kings, confirmed in Jeremiah--eighteen cubits
high, with a capital five cubits high. The shaft of each was four cubits
in diameter. A cubit is one foot 707/1000. That is, the shaft of each
was a little over thirty feet eight inches in height, the capital of
each a little over eight feet six inches in height, and the diameter of
the shaft six feet ten inches. The capitals were enriched by
pomegranates of bronze, covered by bronze net-work, and ornamented with
wreaths of bronze; and appear to have imitated the shape of the
seed-vessel of the lotus or Egyptian lily, a sacred symbol to the Hindus
and Egyptians. The pillar or column on the right, or in the south, was
named, as the Hebrew word is rendered in our translation of the Bible,
JACHIN: and that on the left BOAZ. Our translators say that the first
word means, "_He shall establish_;" and the second, "_In it is
strength._"
These columns were imitations, by Khūrūm, the Tyrian artist, of the
great columns consecrated to the Winds and Fire, at the entrance to the
famous Temple of Malkarth, in the city of Tyre. It is customary, in
Lodges of the York Rite, to see a celestial globe on one, and a
terrestrial globe on the other; but these are not warranted, if the
object be to imitate the original two columns of the Temple. The
symbolic meaning of these columns we shall leave for the present
unexplained, only adding that Entered Apprentices keep their
working-tools in the column JACHIN; and giving you the etymology and
literal meaning of the two names.
The word _Jachin_, in Hebrew, is [Hebrew]. It was probably pronounced
_Ya-kayan_, and meant, as a verbal noun, _He that strengthens_; and
thence, _firm, stable, upright_.
The word _Boaz_ is [Hebrew] Baaz. [Hebrew] means _Strong, Strength,
Power, Might, Refuge, Source of Strength, a Fort_. The [Hebrew] prefixed
means "_with_" or "_in_," and gives the word the force of the Latin
gerund, _roborando--Strengthening_.
The former word also means _he will establish_, or _plant in an erect
position_--from the verb [Hebrew] _Kūn, he stood erect_. It probably
meant _Active_ and _Vivifying Energy_ and _Force_; and _Boas, Stability,
Permanence_, in the _passive_ sense.
The Dimensions of the Lodge, our Brethren of the York Rite say, "are
unlimited, and its covering no less than the canopy of Heaven." "To this
object," they say, "the mason's mind is continually directed, and
thither he hopes at last to arrive by the aid of the theological ladder
which Jacob in his vision saw ascending from earth to Heaven; the three
principal rounds of which are denominated Faith, Hope, and Charity; and
which admonish us to have Faith in God, Hope in Immortality, and Charity
to all mankind." Accordingly a ladder, sometimes with nine rounds, is
seen on the chart, resting at the bottom on the earth, its top in the
clouds, the stars shining above it; and this is deemed to represent that
mystic ladder, which Jacob saw in his dream, set up on the earth, and
the top of it reaching to Heaven, with the angels of God ascending and
descending on it. The addition of the three principal rounds to the
symbolism, is wholly modern and incongruous. The ancients counted seven
planets, thus arranged: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn. There were seven heavens and seven spheres of these
planets; on all the monuments of Mithras are seven altars or pyres,
consecrated to the seven planets, as were the seven lamps of the golden
candelabrum in the Temple. That these represented the planets, we are
assured by Clemens of Alexandria, in his Stromata, and by Philo Judaeus.
To return to its source in the Infinite, the human soul, the ancients
held, had to ascend, as it had descended, through the seven spheres. The
Ladder by which it reascends, has, according to Marsilius Ficinus, in
his Commentary on the Ennead of Plotinus, seven degrees or steps; and in
the Mysteries of Mithras, carried to Rome under the Emperors, the
ladder, with its seven rounds, was a symbol referring to this ascent
through the spheres of the seven planets. Jacob saw the Spirits of God
ascending and descending on it; and above it the Deity Himself. The
Mithraic Mysteries were celebrated in caves, where gates were marked at
the four equinoctial and solstitial points of the zodiac; and the seven
planetary spheres were represented, which souls needs must traverse in
descending from the heaven of the fixed stars to the elements that
envelop the earth; and seven gates were marked, one for each planet,
through which they pass, in descending or returning. We learn this from
Celsus, in Origen, who says that the symbolic image of this passage
among the stars, used in the Mithraic Mysteries, was a ladder reaching
from earth to Heaven, divided into seven steps or stages, to each of
which was a gate, and at the summit an eighth one, that of the fixed
stars. The symbol was the same as that of the seven stages of Borsippa,
the Pyramid of vitrified brick, near Babylon, built of seven stages, and
each of a different color. In the Mithraic ceremonies, the candidate
went through seven stages of initiation, passing through many fearful
trials and of these the high ladder with seven rounds or steps was the
symbol. You see the Lodge, its details and ornaments, by its Lights. You
have already heard what these Lights, the greater and lesser, are said
to be, and how they are spoken of by our Brethren of the York Rite. The
Holy Bible, Square, and Compasses, are not only styled the Great Lights
in Masonry, but they are also technically called the Furniture of the
Lodge; and, as you have seen, it is held that there is no Lodge without
them. This has sometimes been made a pretext for excluding Jews from our
Lodges, because they cannot regard the New Testament as a holy book. The
Bible is an indispensable part of the furniture of a Christian Lodge,
only because it is the sacred book of the Christian religion. The Hebrew
Pentateuch in a Hebrew Lodge, and the Koran in a Mohammedan one, belong
on the Altar; and one of these, and the Square and Compass, properly
understood, are the Great Lights by which a Mason must walk and work.
The obligation of the candidate is always to be taken on the sacred book
or books of his religion, that he may deem it more solemn and binding;
and therefore it was that you were asked of what religion you were. We
have no other concern with your religious creed. The Square is a right
angle, formed by two right lines. It is adapted only to a plane surface,
and belongs only to geometry, earth-measurement, that trigonometry which
deals only with planes, and with the earth, which the ancients supposed
to be a plane. The Compass describes circles, and deals with spherical
trigonometry, the science of the spheres and heavens. The former,
therefore, is an emblem of what concerns the earth and the body; the
latter of what concerns the heavens and the soul. Yet the Compass is
also used in plane trigonometry, as in erecting perpendiculars; and,
therefore, you are reminded that, although in this Degree both points of
the Compass are under the Square, and you are now dealing only with the
moral and political meaning of the symbols, and not with their
philosophical and spiritual meanings, still the divine ever mingles with
the human; with the earthly the spiritual intermixes; and there is
something spiritual in the commonest duties of life. The nations are not
bodies-politic alone, but also souls-politic; and woe to that people
which, seeking the material only, forgets that it has a soul. Then we
have a race, petrified in dogma, which presupposes the absence of a soul
and the presence only of memory and instinct, or demoralized by lucre.
Such a nature can never lead civilization. Genuflexion before the idol
or the dollar atrophies the muscle which walks and the will which moves.
Hieratic or mercantile absorption diminishes the radiance of a people,
lowers its horizon by lowering its level, and deprives it of that
understanding of the universal aim, at the same time human and divine,
which makes the missionary nations. A free people, forgetting that it
has a soul to be cared for, devotes all its energies to its material
advancement. If it makes war, it is to subserve its commercial
interests. The citizens copy after the State, and regard wealth, pomp,
and luxury as the great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth
rapidly, and distributes it badly. Thence the two extremes, of monstrous
opulence and monstrous misery; all the enjoyment to a few, all the
privations to the rest, that is to say, to the people; Privilege,
Exception, Monopoly, Feudality, springing up from Labor itself: a false
and dangerous situation, which, making Labor a blinded and chained
Cyclops, in the mine, at the forge, in the workshop, at the loom, in the
field, over poisonous fumes, in miasmatic cells, in unventilated
factories, founds public power upon private misery, and plants the
greatness of the State in the suffering of the individual. It is a
greatness ill constituted, in which all the material elements are
combined, and into which no moral element enters. If a people, like a
star, has the right of eclipse, the light ought to return. The eclipse
should not degenerate into night.
The three lesser, or the Sublime Lights, you have heard, are the Sun,
the Moon, and the Master of the Lodge; and you have heard what our
Brethren of the York Rite say in regard to them, and why they hold them
to be Lights of the Lodge. But the Sun and Moon do in no sense light the
Lodge, unless it be symbolically, and then the lights are not they, but
those things of which they are the symbols. Of what they are the symbols
the Mason in that Rite is not told. Nor does the Moon in any sense rule
the night with regularity.
The Sun is the ancient symbol of the life-giving and generative power of
the Deity. To the ancients, light was the cause of life; and God was the
source from which all light flowed; the _essence_ of Light, the
_Invisible_ Fire, developed as Flame _manifested_ as light and splendor.
The Sun was His manifestation and visible image; and the Sabæans
worshipping the Light-God, _seemed_ to worship the Sun, in whom they saw
the manifestation of the Deity.
The Moon was the symbol of the passive capacity of nature to produce,
the female, of which the life-giving power and energy was the male. It
was the symbol of Isis, Astarte, and Artemis, or Diana. The "_Master of
Life_" was the Supreme Deity, above both, and manifested through both;
Zeus, the Son of Saturn, become King of the Gods; Horus, son of Osiris
and Isis, become the Master of Life; Dionusos or Bacchus, like Mithras,
become the author of Light and Life and Truth.
* * * * *
The Master of Light and Life, the Sun and the Moon, are symbolized in
every Lodge by the Master and Wardens: and this makes it the duty of the
Master to dispense light to the Brethren, by himself, and through the
Wardens, who are his ministers.
"Thy sun," says ISAIAH to Jerusalem, "shall no more go down, neither
shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the LORD shall be thine everlasting
light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also
shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever." Such is
the type of a free people.
Our northern ancestors worshipped this triune Deity; ODIN, the Almighty
FATHER; FREA, his wife, emblem of universal matter; and THOR, his son,
the mediator. But above all these was the Supreme God, "the author of
everything that existeth, the Eternal, the Ancient, the Living and Awful
Being, the Searcher into concealed things, the Being that never
changeth." In the Temple of Eleusis (a sanctuary lighted only by a
window in the roof, and representing the Universe), the images of the
Sun, Moon, and Mercury, were represented.
"The Sun and Moon," says the learned Bro.'. DELAUNAY, "represent the two
grand principles of all generations, the active and passive, the male
and the female. The Sun represents the actual light. He pours upon the
Moon his fecundating rays; both shed their light upon their offspring,
the Blazing Star, or HORUS, and the three form the great Equilateral
Triangle, in the centre of which is the omnific letter of the Kabalah,
by which creation is said to have been effected."
The ORNAMENTS of a Lodge are said to be "the Mosaic Pavement, the
Indented Tessel, and the Blazing Star." The Mosaic Pavement, chequered
in squares or lozenges, is said to represent the ground-floor of King
Solomon's Temple; and the Indented Tessel "that beautiful tesselated
border which surrounded it." The Blazing Star in the centre is said to
be "an emblem of Divine Providence, and commemorative of the star which
appeared to guide the wise men of the East to the place of our Saviour's
nativity." But "there was no stone seen" within the Temple. The walls
were covered with planks of cedar, and the floor was covered with planks
of fir. There is no evidence that there was such a pavement or floor in
the Temple, or such a bordering. In England, anciently, the
Tracing-Board was surrounded with an indented border; and it is only in
America that such a border is put around the Mosaic pavement. The
tesseræ, indeed, are the squares or lozenges of the pavement. In
England, also, "the indented or denticulated border" is called
"tesselated," because it has four "tassels," said to represent
Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence, and Justice. It was termed the Indented
Trassel; but this is a misuse of words. It is a _tesserated_ pavement,
with an indented border round it.
The pavement, alternately black and white, symbolizes, whether so
intended or not, the Good and Evil Principles of the Egyptian and
Persian creed. It is the warfare of Michael and Satan, of the Gods and
Titans, of Balder and Lok; between light and shadow, which is darkness;
Day and Night; Freedom and Despotism; Religious Liberty and the
Arbitrary Dogmas of a Church that thinks for its votaries, and whose
Pontiff claims to be infallible, and the decretals of its Councils to
constitute a gospel.
The edges of this pavement, if in lozenges, will necessarily be indented
or denticulated, toothed like a saw; and to complete and finish it a
bordering is necessary. It is completed by tassels as ornaments at the
corners. If these and the bordering have any symbolic meaning, it is
fanciful and arbitrary.
To find in the BLAZING STAR of five points an allusion to the Divine
Providence, is also fanciful; and to make it commemorative of the Star
that is said to have guided the Magi, is to give it a meaning
comparatively modern. Originally it represented SIRIUS, or the Dog-star,
the forerunner of the inundation of the Nile; the God ANUBIS, companion
of Isis in her search for the body of OSIRIS, her brother and husband.
Then it became the image of HORUS, the son of OSIRIS, himself symbolized
also by the Sun, the author of the Seasons, and the God of Time; Son of
Isis, who was the universal nature, himself the primitive matter,
inexhaustible source of Life, spark of uncreated fire, universal seed of
all beings. It was HERMES, also, the Master of Learning, whose name in
Greek is that of the God Mercury. It became the sacred and potent sign
or character of the Magi, the PENTALPHA, and is the significant emblem
of Liberty and Freedom, blazing with a steady radiance amid the
weltering elements of good and evil of Revolutions, and promising serene
skies and fertile seasons to the nations, after the storms of change and
tumult.
In the East of the Lodge, over the Master, inclosed in a triangle, is
the Hebrew letter YŌD [Hebrew] or [Hebrew]. In the English and
American Lodges the Letter G.'. is substituted for this, as the initial
of the word GOD, with as little reason as if the letter D., initial of
DIEU, were used in French Lodges instead of the proper letter. YŌD
is, in the Kabalah, the symbol of Unity, of the Supreme Deity, the first
letter of the Holy Name; and also a symbol of the Great Kabalistic
Triads. To understand its mystic meanings, you must open the pages of
the Sohar and Siphra de Zeniutha, and other kabalistic books, and ponder
deeply on their meaning. It must suffice to say, that it is the Creative
Energy of the Deity, is represented as a _point_, and that point in the
centre of the _Circle_ of immensity. It is to us in this Degree, the
symbol of that unmanifested Deity, the Absolute, who has no name.
Our French Brethren place this letter YŌD in the centre of the
Blazing Star. And in the old Lectures, our ancient English Brethren
said, "The Blazing Star or Glory in the centre refers us to that grand
luminary, the Sun, which enlightens the earth, and by its genial
influence dispenses blessings to mankind." They called it also in the
same lectures, an emblem of PRUDENCE. The word _Prudentia_ means, in its
original and fullest signification, _Foresight_; and, accordingly, the
Blazing Star has been regarded as an emblem of Omniscience, or the
All-seeing Eye, which to the Egyptian Initiates was the emblem of
Osiris, the Creator. With the YŌD in the centre, it has the
kabalistic meaning of the Divine Energy, manifested as Light, creating
the Universe.
The Jewels of the Lodge are said to be six in number. Three are called
"_Movable_," and three "_Immovable_." The SQUARE, the LEVEL, and the
PLUMB were anciently and properly called the Movable Jewels, because
they pass from one Brother to another. It is a modern innovation to call
them immovable, because they must always be present in the Lodge. The
immovable jewels are the ROUGH ASHLAR, the PERFECT ASHLAR or CUBICAL
STONE, or, in some Rituals, the DOUBLE CUBE, and the TRACING-BOARD, or
TRESTLE-BOARD.
Of these jewels our Brethren of the York Rite say: "The _Square_
inculcates Morality; the _Level_, Equality; and the _Plumb_, Rectitude
of Conduct." Their explanation of the immovable Jewels may be read in
their monitors.
* * * * *
Our Brethren of the York Rite say that "there is represented in every
well-governed Lodge, a certain point, within a circle; the point
representing an individual Brother; the Circle, the boundary line of his
conduct, beyond which he is never to suffer his prejudices or passions
to betray him."
This is not to _interpret_ the symbols of Masonry. It is said by some,
with a nearer approach to interpretation, that the point within the
circle represents God in the centre of the Universe. It is a common
Egyptian sign for the Sun and Osiris, and is still used as the
astronomical sign of the great luminary. In the Kabalah the point is
YŌD, the Creative Energy of God, irradiating with light the circular
space which God, the universal Light, left vacant, wherein to create the
worlds, by withdrawing His substance of Light back on all sides from one
point.
Our Brethren add that, "this circle is embordered by two perpendicular
parallel lines, representing Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the
Evangelist, and upon the top rest the Holy Scriptures" (an open book).
"In going round this circle," they say, "we necessarily touch upon these
two lines as well as upon the Holy Scriptures; and while a Mason keeps
himself circumscribed within their precepts, it is impossible that he
should materially err."
It would be a waste of time to comment upon this. Some writers have
imagined that the parallel lines represent the Tropics of Cancer and
Capricorn, which the Sun alternately touches upon at the Summer and
Winter solstices. But the tropics are not perpendicular lines, and the
idea is merely fanciful. If the parallel lines ever belonged to the
ancient symbol, they had some more recondite and more _fruitful_
meaning. They probably had the same meaning as the twin columns Jachin
and Boaz. That meaning is not for the Apprentice. The adept may find it
in the Kabalah. The JUSTICE and MERCY of God are in equilibrium, and the
result is HARMONY, because a Single and Perfect Wisdom presides over
both.
The Holy Scriptures are an entirely modern addition to the symbol, like
the terrestrial and celestial globes on the columns of the portico. Thus
the ancient symbol has been denaturalized by incongruous additions, like
that of Isis weeping over the broken column containing the remains of
Osiris at Byblos.
* * * * *
Masonry has its decalogue, which is a law to its Initiates. These are
its Ten Commandments:
I. [Symbol: Earth]: God is the Eternal, Omnipotent, Immutable WISDOM
and Supreme INTELLIGENCE and Exhaustless LOVE.
Thou shalt adore, revere, and love Him!
Thou shalt honor Him by practising the virtues!
II. [Symbol: Full moon]: Thy religion shall be, to do good because
it is a pleasure to thee, and not merely because it is a duty.
That thou mayest become the friend of the wise man, thou
shalt obey his precepts!
Thy soul is immortal! Thou shalt do nothing to degrade it!
III. [Symbol: Earth]: Thou shalt unceasingly war against vice!
Thou shalt not do unto others that which thou wouldst not
wish them to do unto thee!
Thou shalt be submissive to thy fortunes, and keep burning
the light of wisdom!
IV. [Symbol: Full moon]: Thou shalt honor thy parents!
Thou shalt pay respect and homage to the aged!
Thou shalt instruct the young!
Thou shalt protect and defend infancy and innocence!
V. [Symbol: Earth]: Thou shalt cherish thy wife and thy children!
Thou shalt love thy country, and obey its laws!
VI. [Symbol: Full moon]: Thy friend shall be to thee a second self!
Misfortune shall not estrange thee from him!
Thou shalt do for his memory whatever thou wouldst do for him, if he
were living!
VII. [Symbol: Earth]: Thou shalt avoid and flee from insincere
friendships!
Thou shalt in everything refrain from excess.
Thou shalt fear to be the cause of a stain on thy memory!
VIII. [Symbol: Full moon]: Thou shalt allow no passions to become thy
master!
Thou shalt make the passions of others profitable lessons
to thyself!
Thou shalt be indulgent to error!
IX. [Symbol: Earth]: Thou shalt hear much: Thou shalt speak little: Thou
shalt act well!
Thou shalt forget injuries!
Thou shalt render good for evil!
Thou shalt not misuse either thy strength or thy superiority!
X. [Symbol: Full moon]: Thou shalt study to know men; that thereby thou
mayest learn to know thyself!
Thou shalt ever seek after virtue!
Thou shalt be just!
Thou shalt avoid idleness!
But the great commandment of Masonry is this: "A new commandment give I
unto you: that ye love one another! He that saith he is in the light,
and hateth his brother, remaineth still in the darkness."
Such are the moral duties of a Mason. But it is also the duty of Masonry
to assist in elevating the moral and intellectual level of society; in
coining knowledge, bringing ideas into circulation, and causing the mind
of youth to grow; and in putting, gradually, by the teachings of axioms
and the promulgation of positive laws, the human race in harmony with
its destinies.
To this duty and work the Initiate is apprenticed. He must not imagine
that he can effect nothing, and, therefore, despairing, become inert. It
is in this, as in a man's daily life. Many great deeds are done in the
small struggles of life. There is, we are told, a determined though
unseen bravery, which defends itself, foot to foot, in the darkness,
against the fatal invasion of necessity and of baseness. There are noble
and mysterious triumphs, which no eye sees, which no renown rewards,
which no flourish of trumpets salutes. Life, misfortune, isolation,
abandonment, poverty, are battle-fields, which have their
heroes,--heroes obscure, but sometimes greater than those who become
illustrious. The Mason should struggle in the same manner, and with the
same bravery, against those invasions of necessity and baseness, which
come to nations as well as to men. He should meet _them_, too, foot to
foot, even in the darkness, and protest against the national wrongs and
follies; against usurpation and the first inroads of that hydra,
Tyranny. There is no more sovereign eloquence than the truth in
indignation. It is more difficult for a people to keep than to gain
their freedom. The Protests of Truth are always needed. Continually, the
right must protest against the fact. There is, in fact, Eternity in the
Right. The Mason should be the Priest and Soldier of that Right. If his
country should be robbed of her liberties, he should still not despair.
The protest of the Right against the Fact persists forever. The robbery
of a people never becomes prescriptive. Reclamation of its rights is
barred by no length of time. Warsaw can no more be Tartar than Venice
can be Teutonic. A people may endure military usurpation, and subjugated
States kneel to States and wear the yoke, while under the stress of
necessity; but when the necessity disappears, if the people is fit to be
free, the submerged country will float to the surface and reappear, and
Tyranny be adjudged by History to have murdered its victims.