Intelligences, Powers of Good and Evil, and Angels. We have spoken of
those imagined by the Persians and the Kabalists. In the Talmud, every
star, every country, every town, and almost every tongue has a Prince of
Heaven as its Protector. JEHUEL is the guardian of fire, and MICHAEL, of
water. Seven spirits assist each; those of fire being _Seraphiel_,
_Gabriel_, _Nitriel_, _Tammael_, _Tchimschiel_, _Hadarniel_, and
_Sarniel_. These seven are represented by the square columns of this
Degree, while the columns JACHIN and BOAZ represent the angels of fire
and water. But the columns are not representatives of these alone.
To Basilides, God was without name, uncreated, at first containing and
concealing in Himself the Plenitude of His Perfections; and when these
are by Him displayed and manifested, there result as many particular
Existences, all analogous to Him, and still and always Him. To the
Essenes and the Gnostics, the East and the West both devised this faith;
that the Ideas, Conceptions, or Manifestations of the Deity were so many
Creations, so many Beings, all God, nothing without Him, but more than
what we now understand by the word _ideas_. They emanated from and were
again merged in God. They had a kind of middle existence between our
modern ideas, and the intelligences or ideas, elevated to the rank of
genii, of the Oriental mythology.
These personified attributes of Deity, in the theory of Basilides, were
the [Greek: Πρωτόγονος] or _First-born_, [Greek: Νου̃ς][_Nous_ or
_Mind_]: from it emanates [Greek: Λογος] [_Logos_, or THE WORD] from it
[Greek: Φρόνησις]: [_Phronesis, Intellect_]: from it [Greek: Σοφια]
[_Sophia, Wisdom_]: from it [Greek: Δύναμις] [_Dunamis, Power_]: and
from it [Greek: Δικαιοσύνη] [_Dikaiosune, Righteousness_]: to which
latter the Jews gave the name of [Greek: Ειρηνη] [_Eirene, Peace_, or
_Calm_], the essential characteristics of Divinity, and harmonious
effect of all His perfections. The whole number of successive emanations
was 365, expressed by the Gnostics, in Greek letters, by the mystic word
[Greek: ΑΒΡΑΞΑΣ] [_Abraxas_]; designating God as manifested, or the
aggregate of his manifestations; but not the Supreme and Secret God
Himself. These three hundred and sixty-five Intelligences compose
altogether the Fullness or _Plenitude_ [[Greek: Πληρωμα]] of the Divine
Emanations.
With the Ophites, a sect of the Gnostics, there were seven inferior
spirits [inferior to Ialdabaoth, the Demiourgos or Actual Creator]:
_Michaël, Surièl, Raphaël, Gabriel, Thauthabaoth, Erataoth_, and
_Athaniel_, the genii of the stars called the Bull, the Dog, the Lion,
the Bear, the Serpent, the Eagle, and the Ass that formerly figured in
the constellation Cancer, and symbolized respectively by those animals;
as _Ialdabaoth, Iao, Adonaï, Eloï, Oraï_, and _Astaphaï_ were the genii
of Saturn, the Moon, the Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury.
The WORD appears in all these creeds. It is the _Ormuzd_ of Zoroaster,
the _Ainsoph_ of the Kabalah, the _Nous_ of Platonism and Philonism, and
the _Sophia_ or _Demiourgos_ of the Gnostics.
And all these creeds, while admitting these different manifestations of
the Supreme Being, held that His identity was immutable and permanent.
That was Plato's distinction between the Being always the same [Greek:
τό όυ] and the perpetual flow of things incessantly changing, the
Genesis.
The belief in dualism in some shape, was universal. Those who held that
everything emanated from God, aspired to God, and re-entered into God,
believed that, among those emanations were two adverse Principles, of
Light and Darkness, Good and Evil. This prevailed in Central Asia and in
Syria; while in Egypt it assumed the form of Greek speculation. In the
former, a second Intellectual Principle was admitted, active in its
Empire of Darkness, audacious against the Empire of Light. So the
Persians and Sabeans understood it. In Egypt, this second Principle was
Matter, as the word was used by the Platonic School, with its sad
attributes, Vacuity, Darkness, and Death. In their theory, matter could
be animated only by the low communication of a principle of divine life.
It resists the influences that would spiritualize it. That resisting
Power is Satan, the rebellious Matter, Matter that does not partake of
God.
To many there were two Principles; the Unknown Father, or Supreme and
Eternal God, living in the centre of the Light, happy in the perfect
purity of His being; the other, eternal Matter, that inert, shapeless,
darksome mass, which they considered as the source of all evils, the
mother and dwelling-place of Satan.
To Philo and the Platonists, there was a Soul of the world, creating
visible things, and active in them, as agent of the Supreme
Intelligence; realizing therein the ideas communicated to Him by that
Intelligence, and which sometimes excel His conceptions, but which He
executes without comprehending them.
The Apocalypse or Revelations, by whomever written, belongs to the
Orient and to extreme antiquity. It reproduces what is far older than
itself. It paints, with the strongest colors that the Oriental genius
ever employed, the closing scenes of the great struggle of Light, and
Truth, and Good, against Darkness, Error, and Evil; personified in that
between the New Religion on one side, and Paganism and Judaism on the
other. It is a particular application of the ancient myth of Ormuzd and
his Genii against Ahriman and his Devs; and it celebrates the final
triumph of Truth against the combined powers of men and demons. The
ideas and imagery are borrowed from every quarter; and allusions are
found in it to the doctrines of all ages. We are continually reminded
of the Zend-Avesta, the Jewish Codes, Philo, and the Gnosis. The Seven
Spirits surrounding the Throne of the Eternal, at the opening of the
Grand Drama, and acting so important a part throughout, everywhere the
first instruments of the Divine Will and Vengeance, are the Seven
Amshaspands of Parsism; as the Twenty-four Ancients, offering to the
Supreme Being the first supplications and the first homage, remind us of
the Mysterious Chiefs of Judaism, foreshadow the Eons of Gnosticism, and
reproduce the twenty-four Good Spirits created by Ormuzd and inclosed in
an egg.
The Christ of the Apocalypse, First-born of Creation and of the
Resurrection, is invested with the characteristics of the Ormuzd and
Sosiosch of the Zend-Avesta, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah and the
Carpistes [Greek: Καρπιστης] of the Gnostics. The idea that the true
Initiates and Faithful become Kings and Priests, is at once Persian,
Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic. And the definition of the Supreme Being,
that He is at once Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end--He that
was, and is, and is to come, _i.e._, Time illimitable, is Zoroaster's
definition of Zerouane-Akherene.
The depths of Satan which no man can measure; his triumph for a time by
fraud and violence; his being chained by an angel; his reprobation and
his precipitation into a sea of metal; his names of the Serpent and the
Dragon; the whole conflict of the Good Spirits or celestial armies
against the bad; are so many ideas and designations found alike in the
Zend-Avesta, the Kabalah, and the Gnosis.
We even find in the Apocalypse that singular Persian idea, which regards
some of the lower animals as so many Devs or vehicles of Devs.
The guardianship of the earth by a good angel, the renewing of the earth
and heavens, and the final triumph of pure and holy men, are the same
victory of Good over Evil, for which the whole Orient looked.
The gold, and white raiments of the twenty-four Elders are, as in the
Persian faith, the signs of a lofty perfection and divine purity.
Thus the Human mind labored and struggled and tortured itself for ages,
to explain to itself what it felt, without confessing it, to be
explicable. A vast crowd of indistinct abstractions, hovering in the
imagination, a train of words embodying no tangible meaning, an
inextricable labyrinth of subtleties, was the result.
But one grand idea ever emerged and stood prominent and unchangeable
over the weltering chaos of confusion. God is great and good, and wise.
Evil and pain and sorrow are temporary and for wise and beneficent
purposes. They _must_ be consistent with God's goodness, purity, and
infinite perfection; and there _must_ be a mode of explaining them, if
we could but find it out; as, in all ways we will endeavor to do.
Ultimately, Good will prevail, and Evil be overthrown. God alone _can_
do this, and He _will_ do it, by an Emanation from Himself, assuming the
Human form and redeeming the world.
Behold the object, the end, the result, of the great speculations and
logomachies of antiquity; the ultimate annihilation of evil, and
restoration of Man to his first estate, by a Redeemer, a Masayah, a
Christos, the incarnate Word, Reason, or Power of Deity.
This Redeemer is the Word or Logos, the Ormuzd of Zoroaster, the Ainsoph
of the Kabalah, the Nous of Platonism and Philonism; He that was in the
Beginning with God, and was God, and by Whom everything was made. That
He was looked for by all the People of the East is abundantly shown by
the Gospel of John and the Letters of Paul; wherein scarcely anything
seemed necessary to be said in proof that such a Redeemer was to come;
but all the energies of the writers are devoted to showing that Jesus
was that Christos whom all the nations were expecting; the "Word," the
Masayah, the Anointed or Consecrated One.
In this Degree the great contest between good and evil, in anticipation
of the appearance and advent of the Word or Redeemer is symbolized; and
the mysterious esoteric teachings of the Essenes and the Cabalists. Of
the practices of the former we gain but glimpses in the ancient writers;
but we know that, as their doctrines were taught by John the Baptist,
they greatly resembled those of greater purity and more nearly perfect,
taught by Jesus; and that not only Palestine was full of John's
disciples, so that the Priests and Pharisees did not dare to deny John's
inspiration; but his doctrine had extended to Asia Minor, and had made
converts in luxurious Ephesus, as it also had in Alexandria in Egypt;
and that they readily embraced the Christian faith, of which they had
before not even heard.
These old controversies have died away, and the old faiths have faded
into oblivion. But Masonry still survives, vigorous and strong, as when
philosophy was taught in the schools of Alexandria and under the
Portico; teaching the same old truths as the Essenes taught by the
shores of the Dead Sea, and as John the Baptist preached in the Desert;
truths imperishable as the Deity, and undeniable as Light. Those truths
were gathered by the Essenes from the doctrines of the Orient and the
Occident, from the Zend-Avesta and the Vedas, from Plato and Pythagoras,
from India, Persia, Phœnicia, and Syria, from Greece and Egypt, and from
the Holy Books of the Jews. Hence we are called Knights of the East and
West, because their doctrines came from both. And these doctrines, the
wheat sifted from the chaff, the Truth separated from Error, Masonry has
garnered up in her heart of hearts, and through the fires of
persecution, and the storms of calamity, has brought them and delivered
them unto us. That God is One, immutable, unchangeable, infinitely just
and good; that Light will finally overcome Darkness,--Good conquer Evil,
and Truth be victor over Error;--these, rejecting all the wild and
useless speculations of the Zend-Avesta, the Kabalah, the Gnostics, and
the Schools, are the religion and Philosophy of Masonry.
Those speculations and fancies it is useful to study; that knowing in
what worthless and unfruitful investigations the mind may engage, you
may the more value and appreciate the plain, simple, sublime,
universally-acknowledged truths, which have in all ages been the Light
by which Masons have been guided on their way; the Wisdom and Strength
that like imperishable columns have sustained and will continue to
sustain its glorious and magnificent Temple.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
XVIII.
KNIGHT ROSE CROIX.
[Prince Rose Croix.]
Each of us makes such applications to his own faith and creed, of the
symbols and ceremonies of this Degree, as seems to him proper. With
these special interpretations we have here nothing to do. Like the
legend of the Master Khūrūm, in which some see figured the condemnation
and sufferings of Christ; others those of the unfortunate Grand Master
of the Templars; others those of the first Charles, King of England; and
others still the annual descent of the Sun at the winter Solstice to the
regions of darkness, the basis of many an ancient legend; so the
ceremonies of this Degree receive different explanations; each
interpreting them for himself, and being offended at the interpretation
of no other.
In no other way could Masonry possess its character of Universality;
that character which has ever been peculiar to it from its origin; and
which enables two Kings, worshippers of different Deities, to sit
together as Masters, while the walls of the first temple arose; and the
men of Gebal, bowing down to the Phœnician Gods, to work by the side of
the Hebrews to whom those Gods were abomination; and to sit with them in
the same Lodge as brethren.
You have already learned that these ceremonies have one general
significance, to every one, of every faith, who believes in God, and the
soul's immortality.
The primitive men met in no Temples made with human hands. "God," said
Stephen, the first Martyr, "dwelleth not in Temples made with hands." In
the open air, under the overarching mysterious sky, in the great
World-Temple, they uttered their vows and thanksgivings, and adored the
God of Light; of that Light that was to them the type of Good, as
darkness was the type of Evil.
All antiquity solved the enigma of the existence of Evil, by supposing
the existence of a Principle of Evil, of Demons, fallen Angels, an
Ahriman, a Typhon, a Siva, a Lok, or a Satan, that, first falling
themselves, and plunged in misery and darkness, tempted man to his fall,
and brought sin into the world. All believed in a future life, to be
attained by purification and trials; in a state or successive states of
reward and punishment; and in a Mediator or Redeemer, by whom the Evil
Principle was to be overcome, and the Supreme Deity reconciled to His
creatures. The belief was general, that He was to be born of a Virgin,
and suffer a painful death. The Indians called him Chrishna; the
Chinese, Kioun-tse; the Persians, Sosiosch; the Chaldeans, Dhou-vanai;
the Egyptians, Har-Oeri; Plato, Love; and the Scandinavians, Balder.
Chrishna, the Hindoo Redeemer, was cradled and educated among Shepherds.
A Tyrant, at the time of his birth, ordered all the male children to be
slain. He performed miracles, say his legends, even raising the dead. He
washed the feet of the Brahmins, and was meek and lowly of spirit. He
was born of a Virgin; descended to Hell, rose again, ascended to Heaven,
charged his disciples to teach his doctrines, and gave them the gift of
miracles.
The first Masonic Legislator whose memory is preserved to us by history,
was Buddha, who, about a thousand years before the Christian era,
reformed the religion of Manous. He called to the Priesthood all men,
without distinction of caste, who felt themselves inspired by God to
instruct men. Those who so associated themselves formed a Society of
Prophets under the name of Samaneans. They recognized the existence of a
single uncreated God, in whose bosom everything grows, is developed and
transformed. The worship of this God reposed upon the obedience of all
the beings He created. His feasts were those of the Solstices. The
doctrines of Buddha pervaded India, China, and Japan. The Priests of
Brahma, professing a dark and bloody creed, brutalized by Superstition,
united together against Buddhism, and with the aid of Despotism,
exterminated its followers. But their blood fertilized the new doctrine,
which produced a new Society under the name of Gymnosophists; and a
large number, fleeing to Ireland, planted their doctrines there, and
there erected the round towers, some of which still stand, solid and
unshaken as at first visible monuments of the remotest ages.
The Phœnician Cosmogony, like all others in Asia, was the Word of God,
written in astral characters, by the planetary Divinities, and
communicated by the Demi-gods, as a profound mystery, to the brighter
intelligences of Humanity, to be propagated by them among men. Their
doctrines resembled the Ancient Sabeism, and being the faith of Hiram
the King and his namesake the Artist, are of interest to all Masons.
With them, the First Principle was half material, half spiritual, a dark
air, animated and impregnated by the spirit; and a disordered chaos,
covered with thick darkness. From this came the WORD, and thence
creation and generation; and thence a race of men, children of light,
who adored Heaven and its Stars as the Supreme Being; and whose
different gods were but incarnations of the Sun, the Moon, the Stars,
and the Ether. _Chrysor_ was the great igneous power of Nature, and
_Baal_ and _Malakarth_ representations of the Sun and Moon, the latter
word, in Hebrew, meaning Queen.
Man had fallen, but not by the tempting of the serpent. For, with the
Phœnicians, the serpent was deemed to partake of the Divine Nature, and
was sacred, as he was in Egypt. He was deemed to be immortal, unless
slain by violence, becoming young again in his old age, by entering into
and consuming himself. Hence the Serpent in a circle, holding his tail
in his mouth, was an emblem of eternity. With the head of a hawk he was
of a Divine Nature, and a symbol of the sun. Hence one Sect of the
Gnostics took him for their good genius, and hence the brazen serpent
reared by Moses in the Desert, on which the Israelites looked and lived.
"Before the chaos, that preceded the birth of Heaven and Earth," said
the Chinese Lao-Tseu, "a single Being existed, immense and silent,
immutable and always acting; the mother of the Universe. I know not the
name of that Being, but I designate it by the word Reason. Man has his
model in the earth, the earth in Heaven, Heaven in Reason, and Reason in
itself."
"I am," says Isis, "Nature; parent of all things, the sovereign of the
Elements, the primitive progeny of Time, the most exalted of the
Deities, the first of the Heavenly Gods and Goddesses, the Queen of the
Shades, the uniform countenance; who dispose with my rod the numerous
lights of Heaven, the salubrious breezes of the sea, and the mournful
silence of the dead; whose single Divinity the whole world venerates in
many forms, with various rites and by many names. The Egyptians, skilled
in ancient lore, worship me with proper ceremonies, and call me by my
true name, Isis the Queen."
The Hindu Vedas thus define the Deity:
"He who surpasses speech, and through whose power speech is expressed,
know thou that He is Brahma; and not these perishable things that man
adores.
"He whom Intelligence cannot comprehend, and He alone, say the sages,
through whose Power the nature of Intelligence can be understood, know
thou that He is Brahma; and not these perishable things that man adores.
"He who cannot be seen by the organ of sight, and through whose power
the organ of seeing sees, know thou that He is Brahma; and not these
perishable things that man adores.
"He who cannot be heard by the organ of hearing, and through whose power
the organ of hearing hears, know thou that He is Brahma; and not these
perishable things that man adores.
"He who cannot be perceived by the organ of smelling, and through whose
power the organ of smelling smells, know thou that He is Brahma; and not
these perishable things that man adores."
"When God resolved to create the human race," said _Arius_, "He made a
Being that He called The WORD, The Son, _Wisdom_, to the end that this
Being might give existence to men." This WORD is the _Ormuzd_ of
Zoroaster, the _Ainsoph_ of the Kabalah, the [Greek: Νου̃ς] of Plato and
Philo, the _Wisdom_ or _Demiourgos_ of the Gnostics.
That is the True Word, the knowledge of which our ancient brethren
sought as the priceless reward of their labors on the Holy Temple: the
Word of Life, the Divine Reason, "in whom was Life, and that Life the
Light of men"; "which long shone in darkness, and the darkness
comprehended it not;" the Infinite Reason that is the Soul of Nature,
immortal, of which the Word of this Degree reminds us; and to believe
wherein and revere it, is the peculiar duty of every Mason.
"In the beginning," says the extract from some older work with which
John commences his Gospel, "was the Word, and the Word was near to God,
and the Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was
not anything made that was made. In Him was Life, and the life was the
Light of man; and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did
not contain it."
It is an old tradition that this passage was from an older work. And
Philostorgius and Nicephorus state, that when the Emperor Julian
undertook to rebuild the Temple, a stone was taken up, that covered the
mouth of a deep square cave, into which one of the laborers, being let
down by a rope, found in the centre of the floor a cubical pillar, on
which lay a roll or book, wrapped in a fine linen cloth, in which, in
capital letters, was the foregoing passage.
However this may have been, it is plain that John's Gospel is a polemic
against the Gnostics; and, stating at the outset the current doctrine in
regard to the creation by the Word, he then addresses himself to show
and urge that this Word was Jesus Christ.
And the first sentence, fully rendered into our language, would read
thus: "When the process of emanation, of creation or evolution of
existences inferior to the Supreme God began, the Word came into
existence and was: and this word was [Greek: προς τον Θεον] _near to_
God; _i.e._ the immediate or first emanation from God: and it was God
Himself, developed or manifested in that particular mode, and in action.
And by that Word everything that is was created."--And thus Tertullian
says that God made the World out of nothing, by means of His Word,
Wisdom, or Power.
To Philo the Jew, as to the Gnostics, the Supreme Being was the
_Primitive Light_, or _Archetype of Light_,--_Source_ whence the rays
emanate that illuminate Souls. He is the _Soul_ of the World, and as
such acts everywhere. He himself fills and bounds his whole existence,
and his forces fill and penetrate everything. His Image is the WORD
[LOGOS], a form more brilliant than fire, which is not pure light. This
WORD dwells in God; for it is within His Intelligence that the Supreme
Being frames for Himself the Types of Ideas of all that is to assume
reality in the Universe. The WORD is the Vehicle by which God acts on
the Universe; the World of Ideas by means whereof God has created
visible things; the more Ancient God, as compared with the Material
World; Chief and General Representative of all Intelligences; the
Archangel, type and representative of all spirits, even those of
Mortals; the type of Man; the primitive man himself. These ideas are
borrowed from Plato. And this WORD is not only the Creator ["_by Him was
everything made that was made_"], but acts _in the place_ of God; and
through him act all the Powers and Attributes of God. And also, as first
representative of the human race, he is the protector of Men and their
Shepherd, the "Ben H'Adam," or Son of Man.
The actual condition of Man is not his primitive condition, that in
which he was the image of the Word. His unruly passions have caused him
to fall from his original lofty estate. But he may rise again, by
following the teachings of Heavenly Wisdom, and the Angels whom God
commissions to aid him in escaping from the entanglements of the body;
and by fighting bravely against Evil, the existence of which God has
allowed solely to furnish him with the means of exercising his free
will.