The Word of God, which creates the Light, seems to be uttered by every
Intelligence that can take cognizance of Forms and will look. "Let the
Light BE! The Light", in fact, exists, in its condition of splendor, for
those eyes alone that gaze at it; and the Soul, amorous of the spectacle
of the beauties of the Universe, and applying its attention to that
luminous writing of the Infinite Book which is called "The Visible,"
seems to utter, as God did on the dawn of the first day, that sublime
and creative word, "BE! LIGHT!"
It is not beyond the tomb, but in life itself, that we are to seek for
the mysteries of death. Salvation or reprobation begins here below and
the terrestrial world too has its Heaven and its Hell. Always, even here
below, virtue is rewarded; always, even here below vice is punished; and
that which makes us sometimes believe in the impunity of evil-doers is
that riches, those instruments of good and of evil, seem sometimes to be
given them at hazard. But woe to unjust men, when they possess the key
of gold! It opens, for _them_, only the gate of the tomb and of Hell.
All the true Initiates have recognized the usefulness of toil and
sorrow. "Sorrow," says a German poet, "is the dog of that unknown
shepherd who guides the flock of men." To learn to suffer, to learn to
die, is the discipline of Eternity, the immortal Novitiate.
The allegorical picture of Cebes, in which the Divine Comedy of Dante
was sketched in Plato's time, the description whereof has been preserved
for us, and which many painters of the middle age have reproduced by
this description, is a monument at once philosophical and magical. It is
a most complete moral synthesis, and at the same time the most audacious
demonstration ever given of the Grand Arcanum, of that secret whose
revelation would overturn Earth and Heaven. Let no one expect us to give
them its explanation! He who passes behind the veil that hides this
mystery, understands that it is in its very nature inexplicable, and
that it is death to those who win it by surprise, as well as to him who
reveals it.
This secret is the Royalty of the Sages, the Crown of the Initiate whom
we see redescend victorious from the summit of Trials, in the fine
allegory of Cebes. The Grand Arcanum makes him master of gold and the
light, which are at bottom the same thing, he has solved the problem of
the quadrature of the circle, he directs the perpetual movement, and he
possesses the philosophical stone. Here the Adepts will understand us.
There is neither interruption in the toil of nature, nor gap in her
work. The Harmonies of Heaven correspond to those of Earth, and the
Eternal Life accomplishes its evolutions in accordance with the same
laws as the life of a dog. "God has arranged all things by weight,
number, and measure," says the Bible; and this luminous doctrine was
also that of Plato.
Humanity has never really had but one religion and one worship. This
universal light has had its uncertain mirages, its deceitful
reflections, and its shadows; but always, after the nights of Error, we
see it reappear, one and pure like the Sun.
The magnificences of worship are the life of religion, and if Christ
wishes poor ministers, His Sovereign Divinity does not wish paltry
altars. Some Protestants have not comprehended that worship is a
teaching, and that we must not create in the imagination of the
multitude a mean or miserable God. Those oratories that resemble
poorly-furnished offices or inns, and those worthy ministers clad like
notaries or lawyer's clerks, do they not necessarily cause religion to
be regarded as a mere puritanic formality, and God as a Justice of the
Peace?
We scoff at the Augurs. It is so easy to scoff, and so difficult well to
comprehend. Did the Deity leave the whole world without Light for two
score centuries, to illuminate only a little corner of Palestine and a
brutal, ignorant, and ungrateful people? Why always calumniate God and
the Sanctuary? Were there never any others than rogues among the
priests? Could no honest and sincere men be found among the Hierophants
of Ceres or Diana, of Dionusos or Apollo, of Hermes or Mithras? Were
these, then, all deceived, like the rest? Who, then, constantly deceived
them, without betraying themselves, during a series of centuries?--for
the cheats are not immortal! Arago said, that outside of the pure
mathematics, he who utters the word "impossible," is wanting in prudence
and good sense.
The true name of Satan, the Kabalists say, is that of Yahveh reversed;
for Satan is not a black god, but the negation of God. The Devil is the
personification of Atheism or Idolatry.
For the Initiates, this is not a _Person_, but a _Force_, created for
good, but which _may_ serve for evil. _It is the instrument of Liberty
or Free Will_. They represent this Force, which presides over the
physical generation, under the mythologic and horned form of the God
PAN; thence came the he-goat of the Sabbat, brother of the Ancient
Serpent, and the Light-bearer or _Phosphor_, of which the poets have
made the false Lucifer of the legend.
Gold, to the eyes of the Initiates, is Light condensed. They style the
sacred numbers of the Kabalah "golden numbers," and the moral teachings
of Pythagoras his "golden verses." For the same reason, a mysterious
book of Apuleius, in which an ass figures largely, was called "The
Golden Ass."
The Pagans accused the Christians of worshipping an ass, and they did
not invent this reproach, but it came from the Samaritan Jews, who,
figuring the data of the Kabalah in regard to the Divinity by Egyptian
symbols, also represented the Intelligence by the figure of the Magical
Star adored under the name of _Remphan_, Science under the emblem of
Anubis, whose name they changed to _Nibbas_, and the vulgar faith or
credulity under the figure of _Thartac_, a god represented with a book,
a cloak, and the head of an ass. According to the Samaritan Doctors,
Christianity was the reign of _Thartac_, blind Faith and vulgar
credulity erected into a universal oracle, and preferred to Intelligence
and Science.
Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemaïs, a great Kabalist, but of doubtful
orthodoxy, wrote:
"The people will always mock at things easy to be misunderstood; it must
needs have impostures."
"A Spirit," he said, "that loves wisdom and contemplates the Truth close
at hand, is forced to disguise it, to induce the multitudes to accept
it.... Fictions are necessary to the people, and the Truth becomes
deadly to those who are not strong enough to contemplate it in all its
brilliance. If the sacerdotal laws allowed the reservation of judgments
and the allegory of words, I would accept the proposed dignity on
condition that I might be a philosopher at home, and abroad a narrator
of apologues and parables.... In fact, what can there be in common
between the vile multitude and sublime wisdom? The truth must be kept
secret, and the masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect
reason."
Moral disorders produce physical ugliness, and in some sort realize
those frightful faces which tradition assigns to the demons.
The first Druids were the true children of the Magi, and their
initiation came from Egypt and Chaldæa, that is to say, from the pure
sources of the primitive Kabalah. They adored the Trinity under the
names of _Isis_ or _Hesus_, the Supreme Harmony; of _Belen_ or
_Bel_ which in Assyrian means Lord, a name corresponding to that of
ADONAÏ; and of _Camul_ or _Camaël_, a name that in the Kabalah
personifies the Divine Justice. Below this triangle of Light they
supposed a divine reflection, also composed of three personified rays:
first, _Teutates_ or _Teuth_, the same as the _Thoth_ of the Egyptians,
the Word, or the Intelligence formulated; then Force and Beauty, whose
names varied like their emblems. Finally, they completed the sacred
Septenary by a mysterious image that represented the progress of the
dogma and its future realizations. This was a young girl veiled, holding
a child in her arms; and they dedicated this image to "The Virgin who
will become a mother;--_Virgini pariturœ_."
Hertha or Wertha, the young Isis of Gaul, Queen of Heaven, the Virgin
who was to bear a child, held the spindle of the Fates, filled with wool
half white and half black; because she presides over all forms and all
symbols, and weaves the garment of the Ideas.
One of the most mysterious pantacles of the Kabalah, contained in the
Enchiridion of Leo III., represents an equilateral triangle reversed,
inscribed in a double circle. On the triangle are written, in such
manner as to form the prophetic Tau, the two Hebrew words so often found
appended to the Ineffable Name, [Hebrew: אלהמ] and [Hebrew: צבאוה],
ALOHAYIM, or the Powers, and TSABAOTH, or the starry Armies and their
guiding spirits; words also which symbolize the Equilibrium of the
Forces of Nature and the Harmony of Numbers. To the three sides of the
triangle belong the three great Names [Hebrew: ארני,יהוה], and [Hebrew:
אנלא], IAHAVEH, ADONAÏ, and AGLA. Above the first is written in Latin,
_Formatio_, above, the second _Reformatio_, and above the third,
_Transformatio_. So Creation is ascribed to the FATHER, Redemption or
Reformation to the SON, and Sanctification or Transformation to the HOLY
SPIRIT, answering unto the mathematical laws of Action, Reaction, and
Equilibrium. IAHAVEH is also, in effect, the Genesis or Formation of
dogma, by the elementary signification of the four letters of the Sacred
Tetragram; ADONAÏ is the realization of this dogma in the Human Form, in
the Visible LORD, who is the Son of God or the perfect Man; and AGLA
(formed of the initials of the four words _Ath Gebur Laulaïm Adonaï_)
expresses the synthesis of the whole dogma and the totality of the
Kabalistic science, clearly indicating by the hieroglyphics of which
this admirable name is formed the Triple Secret of the Great Work.
Masonry, like all the Religions, all the Mysteries, Hermeticism and
Alchemy, _conceals_ its secrets from all except the Adepts and Sages, or
the Elect, and uses false explanations and misinterpretations of its
symbols to mislead those who deserve only to be misled; to conceal the
Truth, which it calls Light, from them, and to draw them away from it.
Truth is not for those who are unworthy or unable to receive it, or
would pervert it. So God Himself incapacitates many men, by
color-blindness, to distinguish colors, and leads the masses away from
the highest Truth, giving them the power to attain only so much of it as
it is profitable to them to know. Every age has had a religion suited to
its capacity.
The Teachers, even of Christianity, are, in general, the most ignorant
of the true meaning of that which they teach. There is no book of which
so little is known as the Bible. To most who read it, it is as
incomprehensible as the Sohar.
So Masonry jealously conceals its secrets, and intentionally leads
conceited interpreters astray. There is no sight under the sun more
pitiful and ludicrous at once, than the spectacle of the Prestons and
the Webbs, not to mention the later incarnations of Dullness and
Commonplace, undertaking to "explain" the old symbols of Masonry, and
adding to and "improving" them, or inventing new ones.
To the Circle inclosing the central point, and itself traced between two
parallel lines, a figure purely Kabalistic, these persons have added the
superimposed Bible, and even reared on that the ladder with three or
nine rounds, and then given a vapid interpretation of the whole, so
profoundly absurd as actually to excite admiration.
[Illustration]
IV.
SECRET MASTER.
Masonry is a succession of allegories, the mere vehicles of great
lessons in morality and philosophy. You will more fully appreciate its
spirit, its object, its purposes, as you advance in the different
Degrees, which you will find to constitute a great, complete, and
harmonious system.
If you have been disappointed in the first three Degrees, _as you have
received them_, and if it has seemed to you that the performance has not
come up to the promise, that the lessons of morality are not new, and
the scientific instruction is but rudimentary, and the symbols are
imperfectly explained, remember that the ceremonies and lessons of those
Degrees have been for ages more and more accommodating themselves, by
curtailment and sinking into commonplace, to the often limited memory
and capacity of the Master and Instructor, and to the intellect and
needs of the Pupil and Initiate; that they have come to us from an age
when symbols were used, not to _reveal_ but to _conceal_; when the
commonest learning was confined to a select few, and the simplest
principles of morality seemed newly discovered truths; and that these
antique and simple Degrees now stand like the broken columns of a
roofless Druidic temple, in their rude and mutilated greatness; in many
parts, also, corrupted by time, and disfigured by modern additions and
absurd interpretations. They are but the entrance to the great Masonic
Temple, the triple columns of the portico.
You have taken the first step over its threshold, the first step toward
the inner sanctuary and heart of the temple. You are in the path that
leads up the slope of the mountain of Truth; and it depends upon your
secrecy, obedience, and fidelity, whether you will advance or remain
stationary.
Imagine not that you will become indeed a Mason by learning what is
commonly called the "work," or even by becoming familiar with our
traditions. Masonry has a history, a literature, a philosophy. Its
allegories and traditions will teach you much; but much is to be sought
elsewhere. The streams of learning that now flow full and broad must be
followed to their heads in the springs that well up in the remote past,
and you will there find the origin and meaning of Masonry.
A few rudimentary lessons in architecture, a few universally admitted
maxims of morality, a few unimportant traditions, whose real meaning is
unknown or misunderstood, will no longer satisfy the earnest inquirer
after Masonic truth. Let whoso is content with these, seek to climb no
higher. He who desires to understand the harmonious and beautiful
proportions of Freemasonry must read, study, reflect, digest, and
discriminate. The true Mason is an ardent seeker after knowledge; and he
knows that both books and the antique symbols of Masonry are vessels
which come down to us full-freighted with the intellectual riches of the
Past; and that in the lading of these argosies is much that sheds light
on the history of Masonry, and proves its claim to be acknowledged the
benefactor of mankind, born in the very cradle of the race.
Knowledge is the most genuine and real of human treasures; for it is
Light, as Ignorance is Darkness. It is the _development_ of the human
soul, and its acquisition the _growth_ of the soul, which at the birth
of man knows nothing, and therefore, in one sense, may be said to _be_
nothing. It is the seed, which has in it the _power_ to grow, to
acquire, and by acquiring to be developed, as the seed is developed into
the shoot, the plant, the tree. "We need not pause at the common
argument that by learning man excelleth man, in that wherein man
excelleth beasts; that by learning man ascendeth to the heavens and
their motions, where in body he cannot come, and the like. Let us rather
regard the dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that
whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is immortality or
continuance. For to this tendeth generation, and raising of Houses and
Families; to this buildings, foundations, and monuments; to this tendeth
the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and in effect the strength
of all other human desires." That our influences shall survive us, and
be living forces when we are in our graves; and not merely that our
names shall be remembered; but rather that our works shall be read, our
acts spoken of, our names recollected and mentioned when we are dead, as
evidences that those influences live and rule, sway and control some
portion of mankind and of the world,--this is the aspiration of the
human soul. "We see then how far the monuments of genius and learning
are more durable than monuments of power or of the hands. For have not
the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without
the loss of a syllable or letter, during which time infinite palaces,
temples, castles, cities, have decayed and been demolished? It is not
possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander,
Caesar, no, nor of the Kings or great personages of much later years;
for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose of the
life and truth. But the images of men's genius and knowledge remain in
books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual
renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they
generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking
and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages; so that if
the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches
and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote
regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to
be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and
make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illumination, and
inventions, the one of the other."
To learn, to attain knowledge, to be wise, is a necessity for every
truly noble soul; to teach, to communicate that knowledge, to share that
wisdom with others, and not churlishly to lock up his exchequer, and
place a sentinel at the door to drive away the needy, is equally an
impulse of a noble nature, and the worthiest work of man.
"There was a little city," says the Preacher, the son of David, "and few
men within it; and there came a great King against it and besieged it,
and built great bulwarks against it. Now there was found, in it a poor
wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered
that same poor man. Then, said I, wisdom is better than strength:
nevertheless, the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not
heard." If it should chance to you, my brother, to do mankind good
service, and be rewarded with indifference and forgetfulness only,
still be not discouraged, but remember the further advice of the wise
King. "In the morning sow the seed, and in the evening withhold not thy
hand; for thou knowest not which shall prosper, this or that, or whether
both shall be alike good." Sow you the seed, whoever reaps. Learn, that
you may be enabled to do good and do so because it is right, finding in
the act itself ample reward and recompense.
To attain the truth, and to serve our fellows, our country, and
mankind--this is the noblest destiny of man. Hereafter and all your life
it is to be your object. If you desire to ascend to that destiny,
advance! If you have other and less noble objects, and are contented
with a lower flight, halt here! let others scale the heights, and
Masonry fulfill her mission.
If you will advance, gird up your loins for the struggle! for the way is
long and toilsome. Pleasure, all smiles, will beckon you on the one
hand, and Indolence will invite you to sleep among the flowers, upon the
other. Prepare, by secrecy, obedience, and fidelity, to resist the
allurements of both!
Secrecy is indispensable in a Mason of whatever Degree. It is the first
and almost the only lesson taught to the Entered Apprentice. The
obligations which we have each assumed toward every Mason that lives,
requiring of us the performance of the most serious and onerous duties
toward those personally unknown to us until they demand our aid,--duties
that must be performed, even at the risk of life, or our solemn oaths be
broken and violated, and we be branded as false Masons and faithless
men, teach us how profound a folly it would be to betray our secrets to
those who, bound to us by no tie of common obligation, might, by
obtaining them, call on us in their extremity, when the urgency of the
occasion should allow us no time for inquiry, and the peremptory mandate
of our obligation compel us to do a brother's duty to a base impostor.
The secrets of our brother, when communicated to us, must be sacred, if
they be such as the law of our country warrants us to keep. We are
required to keep none other, when the law that we are called on to obey
is indeed a law, by having emanated from the only source of power, the
People. Edicts which emanate from the mere arbitrary will of a despotic
power, contrary to the law of God or the Great Law of Nature,
destructive of the inherent rights of man, violative of the right of
free thought, free speech, free conscience, it is lawful to rebel
against and strive to abrogate.
For obedience to the Law does not mean submission to tyranny; nor that,
by a profligate sacrifice of every noble feeling, we should offer to
despotism the homage of adulation. As every new victim falls, we _may_
lift our voice in still louder flattery. We _may_ fall at the proud
feet, we _may_ beg, as a boon, the honor of kissing that bloody hand
which has been lifted against the helpless. We may do more: we may bring
the altar and the sacrifice, and implore the God not to ascend too soon
to Heaven. This we may do, for this we have the sad remembrance that
beings of a human form and soul have done. But this is all we can do. We
can constrain our tongues to be false, our features to bend themselves
to the semblance of that passionate adoration which we wish to express,
our knees to fall prostrate; but our heart we cannot constrain. There
virtue must still have a voice which is not to be drowned by hymns and
acclamations; there the crimes which we laud as virtues, are crimes
still, and he whom we have made a God is the most contemptible of
mankind; if, indeed, we do not feel, perhaps, that we are ourselves
still more contemptible.
But that law which is the fair expression of the will and judgment of
the people, is the enactment of the whole and of every individual.
Consistent with the law of God and the great law of nature, consistent
with pure and abstract right as tempered by necessity and the general
interest, as contra-distinguished from the private interest of
individuals, it is obligatory upon all, because it is the work of all,
the will of all, the solemn judgment of all, from which there is no
appeal.
In this Degree, my brother, you are especially to learn the duty of
obedience to that law. There is one true and original law, conformable
to reason and to nature, diffused over all, invariable, eternal, which
calls to the fulfillment of duty, and to abstinence from injustice, and
calls with that irresistible voice which is felt in all its authority
wherever it is heard. This law cannot be abrogated or diminished, or its
sanctions affected, by any law of man. A whole senate, a whole people,
cannot dissent from its paramount obligation. It requires no commentator
to render it distinctly intelligible: nor is it one thing at Rome,
another at Athens; one thing now, and another in the ages to come; but
in all times and in all nations, it is, and has been, and will be, one
and everlasting;--one as that God, its great Author and Promulgator,
who is the Common Sovereign of all mankind, is Himself One. No man can
disobey it without flying, as it were, from his own bosom, and
repudiating his nature; and in this very act he will inflict on himself
the severest of retributions, even though he escape what is regarded as
punishment.