God, the Unknown Father of the Gnostics, the Source of Divine Life, and
of all force, the Plenitude of all, comprehending all things in Himself,
the original Light. He _creates_ nothing; but everything _emanates_ from
Him: and all other Gods are but his manifestations. From Him, by the
utterance of a Word, emanated _Neith_, the Divine Mother of all things,
the Primitive THOUGHT, the FORCE that puts everything in movement, the
SPIRIT everywhere extended, the _Deity of Light and Mother of the Sun_.
Of this Supreme Being, _Osiris_ was the image, Source of all Good in the
moral and physical world, and constant foe of Typhon, the Genius of
Evil, the Satan of Gnosticism, brute matter, deemed to be always at feud
with the spirit that flowed from the Deity; and over whom Har-Oeri, the
Redeemer, Son of Isis and Osiris, is finally to prevail.
In the Zend-Avesta of the Persians the Supreme Being is _Time without
limit_, ZERUANE AKHERENE.--No origin could be assigned to Him; for He
was enveloped in His own Glory, and His Nature and Attributes were so
inaccessible to human Intelligence, that He was but the object of a
silent veneration. The commencement of Creation was by emanation from
Him. The first emanation was the Primitive Light, and from this Light
emerged _Ormuzd_, the _King of Light_, who, by the WORD, created the
World in its purity, is its Preserver and Judge, a Holy and Sacred
Being, Intelligence and Knowledge, Himself Time without limit, and
wielding all the powers of the Supreme Being.
In this Persian faith, as taught many centuries before our era, and
embodied in the Zend-Avesta, there was in man a pure Principle,
proceeding from the Supreme Being, produced by the Will and Word of
Ormuzd. To that was united an impure principle, proceeding from a
foreign influence, that of Ahriman, the Dragon, or principle of Evil.
Tempted by Ahriman, the first man and woman had fallen; and for twelve
thousand years there was to be war between _Ormuzd_ and the Good Spirits
created by him, and _Ahriman_ and the Evil ones whom he had called into
existence.
But pure souls are assisted by the Good Spirits, the Triumph of the Good
Principle is determined upon in the decrees of the Supreme Being, and
the period of that triumph will infallibly arrive. At the moment when
the earth shall be most afflicted with the evils brought upon it by the
Spirits of perdition, three Prophets will appear to bring assistance to
mortals. Sosiosch, Chief of the Three, will regenerate the world, and
restore to it its primitive Beauty, Strength, and Purity. He will judge
the good and the wicked. After the universal resurrection of the Good,
the pure Spirits will conduct them to an abode of eternal happiness.
Ahriman, his evil Demons, and all the world, will be purified in a
torrent of liquid burning metal. The Law of Ormuzd will rule everywhere;
all men will be happy; all, enjoying an unalterable bliss, will unite
with Sosiosch in singing the praises of the Supreme Being.
These doctrines, with some modifications, were adopted by the Kabalists
and afterward by the Gnostics.
Apollonius of Tyana says: "We shall render the most appropriate worship
to the Deity, when to that God whom we call the First, who is One, and
separate from all, and after whom we recognize the others, we present no
offerings whatever, kindle to Him no fire, dedicate to Him no sensible
thing; for he needs nothing, even of all that natures more exalted than
ours could give. The earth produces no plant, the air nourishes no
animal, there is in short nothing, which would not be impure in his
sight. In addressing ourselves to Him, we must use only the higher word,
that, I mean, which is not expressed by the mouth,--the silent inner
word of the spirit.... From the most Glorious of all Beings, we must
seek for blessings, by that which is most glorious in ourselves; and
that is the spirit, which needs no organ."
Strabo says: "This one Supreme Essence is that which embraces us all,
the water and the land, that which we call the Heavens, the World, the
Nature of things. This Highest Being should be worshipped, without any
visible image, in sacred groves. In such retreats the devout should lay
themselves down to sleep, and expect signs from God in dreams."
Aristotle says: "It has been handed down in a mythical form, from the
earliest times to posterity, that there are Gods, and that The Divine
compasses entire nature. All besides this has been added, after the
mythical style, for the purpose of persuading the multitude, and for the
interest of the laws and the advantage of the State. Thus men have given
to the Gods human forms, and have even represented them under the figure
of other beings, in the train of which fictions followed many more of
the same sort. But if, from all this, we separate the original
principle, and consider it alone, namely, that the first Essences are
Gods, we shall find that this has been divinely said; and since it is
probable that philosophy and the arts have been several times, so far as
that is possible, found and lost, such doctrines may have been preserved
to our times as the remains of ancient wisdom."
Porphyry says: "By images addressed to sense, the ancients represented
God and his powers--by the visible they typified the invisible for those
who had learned to read in these types, as in a book, a treatise on the
Gods. We need not wonder if the ignorant consider the images to be
nothing more than wood or stone; for just so, they who are ignorant of
writing see nothing in monuments but stone, nothing in tablets but wood,
and in books but a tissue of papyrus."
Apollonius of Tyana held, that birth and death are only in appearance;
that which separates itself from the _one_ substance (the _one_ Divine
essence), and is caught up by matter, seems to be born; that, again,
which releases itself from the bonds of matter, and is reunited with the
one Divine Essence, seems to die. There is, at most, an alteration
between becoming visible and becoming invisible. In all there is,
properly speaking, but the one essence, which alone acts and suffers, by
becoming all things to all; the Eternal God, whom men wrong, when they
deprive Him of what properly can be attributed to Him only, and transfer
it to other names and persons.
The New Platonists substituted the idea of the Absolute, for the Supreme
Essence itself;--as the first, simplest principle, anterior to all
existence; of which nothing determinate can be predicated; to which no
consciousness, no self-contemplation can be ascribed; inasmuch as to do
so, would immediately imply a quality, a distinction of subject and
object. This Supreme Entity can be known only by an intellectual
intuition of the Spirit, transcending itself, and emancipating itself
from its own limits.
This mere logical tendency, by means of which men thought to arrive at
the conception of such an absolute, the [Greek: όν], was united with a
certain mysticism, which, by a transcendent state of feeling,
communicated, as it were, to this abstraction what the mind would
receive as a reality. The absorption of the Spirit into that
superexistence ([Greek: τό έπέκεινα τής ούσίας]), so as to be entirely
identified with it, or such a revelation of the latter to the spirit
raised above itself, was regarded as the highest end which the spiritual
life could reach.
The New Platonists' idea of God, was that of One Simple Original
Essence, exalted above all plurality and all becoming; the only true
Being; unchangeable, eternal [[Greek: Εϊς ών ένί τώ νύν τό άει πεπλήρωκε
καί μόνον έστι τό κατά τούτον όντως ών]]: from whom all Existence in its
several gradations has emanated--the world of Gods, as nearest akin to
Himself, being first, and at the head of all. In these Gods, that
perfection, which in the Supreme Essence was inclosed and unevolved, is
expanded and becomes knowable. They serve to exhibit in different forms
the image of that Supreme Essence, to which no soul can rise, except by
the loftiest flight of contemplation; and after it has rid itself from
all that pertains to sense--from all manifoldness. They are the
mediators between man (amazed and stupefied by manifoldness) and the
Supreme Unity.
Philo says: "He who disbelieves the miraculous, simply as the
miraculous, neither knows God, nor has he ever sought after Him; for
otherwise he would have understood, by looking at that truly great and
awe-inspiring sight, the miracle of the Universe, that these miracles
(in God's providential guidance of His people) are but child's play for
the Divine Power. But the truly miraculous has become despised through
familiarity. The universal, on the contrary, although in itself
insignificant, yet, through our love of novelty, transports us with
amazement."
In opposition to the anthropopathism of the Jewish Scriptures, the
Alexandrian Jews endeavored to purify the idea of God from all admixture
of the Human. By the exclusion of every human passion, it was sublimated
to a something devoid of all attributes, and wholly transcendental; and
the mere Being [Greek: όν], the Good, in and by itself, the Absolute of
Platonism, was substituted for the personal Deity [[Hebrew: יהוה]] of
the Old Testament. By soaring upward, beyond all created existence, the
mind, disengaging itself from the Sensible, attains to the intellectual
intuition of this Absolute Being; of whom, however, it can predicate
nothing but existence, and sets aside all other determinations as not
answering to the exalted nature of the Supreme Essence.
Thus Philo makes a distinction between those who are in the proper sense
Sons of God, having by means of contemplation raised themselves to the
highest Being, or attained to a knowledge of Him, in His immediate
self-manifestation, and those who know God only in his mediate
revelation through his operation--such as He declares Himself in
creation--in the revelation still veiled in the letter of
Scripture--those, in short, who attach themselves simply to the Logos,
and consider this to be the Supreme God; who are the sons of the Logos,
rather than of the True Being, (όν)
"God," says Pythagoras, "is neither the object of sense, nor subject to
passion, but invisible, only intelligible, and supremely intelligent In
His body He is like the _light_, and in His soul He resembles truth. He
is the universal _spirit_ that pervades and diffuseth itself over all
nature. All beings receive their _life_ from Him. There is but one only
God, who is not, as some are apt to imagine, seated above the world,
beyond the orb of the Universe; but being Himself all in all, He sees
all the beings that fill His immensity; the only Principle, the _Light_
of Heaven, the Father of all. He _produces everything_; He orders and
disposes everything; He is the REASON, the LIFE, and the MOTION of all
being."
"I am the LIGHT of the world; he that followeth Me shall not walk in
DARKNESS, but shall have the LIGHT OF LIFE." So said the Founder of the
Christian Religion, as His words are reported by John the Apostle.
God, say the sacred writings of the Jews, appeared to Moses in a FLAME
OF FIRE, in the midst of a bush, which was not consumed. He descended
upon Mount Sinai, as the smoke of a _furnace_; He went before the
children of Israel, by day, in a pillar of cloud and, by night, in a
pillar of _fire_, to give them _light_. "Call _you_ on the name of
_your_ Gods," said Elijah the Prophet to the Priests of Baal, "and I
will call upon the name of ADONAI; and the God that answereth _by fire_,
let him be God."
According to the Kabalah, as according to the doctrines of Zoroaster,
everything that exists has emanated from a source of infinite light.
Before all things, existed _the Primitive Being_, THE ANCIENT OF DAYS,
_the Ancient King of Light_; a title the more remarkable, because it is
frequently given to the Creator in the Zend-Avesta, and in the Code of
the Sabeans, and occurs in the Jewish Scriptures.
The world was His Revelation, God revealed; and subsisted only in Him.
His attributes were there reproduced with various modifications and in
different degrees; so that the Universe was His Holy Splendor, His
Mantle. He was to be adored in silence; and perfection consisted in a
nearer approach to Him.
Before the creation of worlds, the PRIMITIVE LIGHT filled all space, so
that there was no void. When the Supreme Being, existing in this Light,
resolved to display His perfections, or manifest them in worlds, He
withdrew within Himself, formed around Him a void space, and shot forth
His first emanation, a ray of light; the cause and principle of
everything that exists, uniting both the generative and conceptive
power, which penetrates everything, and without which nothing could
subsist for an instant.
Man fell, seduced by the Evil Spirits most remote from the Great King of
Light; those of the fourth world of spirits, Asiah, whose chief was
Belial. They wage incessant war against the pure Intelligences of the
other worlds, who, like the Amshaspands, Izeds, and Ferouers of the
Persians are the tutelary guardians of man. In the beginning, all was
unison and harmony; full of the same divine light and perfect purity.
The Seven Kings of Evil fell, and the Universe was troubled. Then the
Creator took from the Seven Kings the principles of Good and of Light,
and divided them among the four worlds of Spirits, giving to the first
three the Pure Intelligences, united in love and harmony, while to the
fourth were vouchsafed only some feeble glimmerings of light.
When the strife between these and the good angels shall have continued
the appointed time, and these Spirits enveloped in darkness shall long
and in vain have endeavored to absorb the Divine light and life, then
will the Eternal Himself come to correct them. He will deliver them from
the gross envelopes of matter that hold them captive, will re-animate
and strengthen the ray of light or spiritual nature which they have
preserved, and re-establish throughout the Universe that primitive
Harmony which was its bliss.
Marcion, the Gnostic, said, "The Soul of the True Christian, adopted as
a child by the Supreme Being, to whom it has long been a stranger,
receives from Him the Spirit and Divine life. It is led and confirmed,
by this gift, in a pure and holy life, like that of God; and if it so
completes its earthly career, in charity, chastity, and sanctity, it
will one day be disengaged from its material envelope, as the ripe grain
is detached from the straw, and as the young bird escapes from its
shell. Like the angels, it will share in the bliss of the Good and
Perfect Father, re-clothed in an aerial body or organ, and made like
unto the Angels in Heaven."
You see, my brother, what is the meaning of Masonic "Light." You see why
the EAST of the Lodge, where the initial letter of the Name of the Deity
overhangs the Master, is the place of Light. Light, as
contradistinguished from darkness, is Good, as contradistinguished from
Evil: and it is that Light, the true knowledge of Deity, the Eternal
Good, for which Masons in all ages have sought. Still Masonry marches
steadily onward toward that Light that shines in the great distance, the
Light of that day when Evil, overcome and vanquished, shall fade away
and disappear forever, and Life and Light be the one law of the
Universe, and its eternal Harmony.
The Degree of Rose teaches three things;--the unity, immutability and
goodness of God; the immortality of the Soul; the ultimate defeat and
extinction of evil and wrong and sorrow, by a Redeemer or Messiah, yet
to come, if he has not already appeared.
It replaces the three pillars of the old Temple, with three that have
already been explained to you,--Faith [in God, mankind, and man's self],
Hope [in the victory over evil, the advancement of Humanity, and a
hereafter], and Charity [relieving the wants and tolerant of the errors
and faults of others]. To be trustful to be hopeful, to be indulgent;
these, in an age of selfishness, of ill opinion of human nature, of
harsh and bitter judgment, are the most important Masonic Virtues, and
the true supports of every Masonic Temple. And they are the old pillars
of the Temple under different names. For he only is wise who judges
others charitably; he only is strong who is hopeful; and there is no
beauty like a firm faith in God, our fellows and ourself.
The second apartment, clothed in mourning, the columns of the Temple
shattered and prostrate, and the brethren bowed down in the deepest
dejection, represents the world under the tyranny of the Principle of
Evil; where virtue is persecuted and vice rewarded; where the righteous
starve for bread, and the wicked live sumptuously and dress in purple
and fine linen; where insolent ignorance rules, and learning and genius
serve; where King and Priest trample on liberty and the rights of
conscience; where freedom hides in caves and mountains, and sycophancy
and servility fawn and thrive; where the cry of the widow and the orphan
starving for want of food, and shivering with cold, rises ever to
Heaven, from a million miserable hovels; where men, willing to labor,
and starving, they and their children and the wives of their bosoms, beg
plaintively for work, when the pampered capitalist stops his mills;
where the law punishes her who, starving, steals a loaf, and lets the
seducer go free; where the success of a party justifies murder, and
violence and rapine go unpunished; and where he who with many years'
cheating and grinding the faces of the poor grows rich, receives office
and honor in life, and after death brave funeral and a splendid
mausoleum:--this world, where, since its making, war has never ceased,
nor man paused in the sad task of torturing and murdering his brother;
and of which ambition, avarice, envy, hatred, lust, and the rest of
Ahriman's and Typhon's army make a Pandemonium: this world, sunk in sin,
reeking with baseness, clamorous with sorrow and misery. If any see in
it also a type of the sorrow of the Craft for the death of Hiram, the
grief of the Jews at the fall of Jerusalem, the misery of the Templars
at the ruin of their order and the death of De Molay, or the world's
agony and pangs of woe at the death of the Redeemer, it is the right of
each to do so.
The third apartment represents the consequences of sin and vice and the
hell made of the human heart, by its fiery passions. If any see in it
also a type of the Hades of the Greeks, the Gehenna of the Hebrews, the
Tartarus of the Romans, or the Hell of the Christians, or only of the
agonies of remorse and the tortures of an upbraiding conscience, it is
the right of each to do so.
The fourth apartment represents the Universe, freed from the insolent
dominion and tyranny of the Principle of Evil, and brilliant with the
true Light that flows from the Supreme Deity; when sin and wrong, and
pain and sorrow, remorse and misery shall be no more forever; when the
great plans of Infinite Eternal Wisdom shall be fully developed; and all
God's creatures, seeing that all apparent evil and individual suffering
and wrong were but the drops that went to swell the great river of
infinite goodness, shall know that vast as is the power of Deity, His
goodness and beneficence are infinite as His power. If any see in it a
type of the peculiar mysteries of any faith or creed, or an allusion to
any past occurrences, it is their right to do so. Let each apply its
symbols as he pleases. To all of us they typify the universal rule of
Masonry,--of its three chief virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity; of
brotherly love and universal benevolence. We labor here to no other end.
These symbols need no other interpretation.
The obligations of our Ancient Brethren of the Rose were to fulfill
all the duties of friendship, cheerfulness, charity, peace, liberality,
temperance and chastity: and scrupulously to avoid impurity,
haughtiness, hatred, anger, and every other kind of vice. They took
their philosophy from the old Theology of the Egyptians, as Moses and
Solomon had done, and borrowed its hieroglyphics and the ciphers of the
Hebrews. Their principal rules were, to exercise the profession of
medicine charitably and without fee, to advance the cause of virtue,
enlarge the sciences, and induce men to live as in the primitive times
of the world.
When this Degree had its origin, it is not important to inquire; nor
with what different rites it has been practised in different countries
and at various times. It is of very high antiquity. Its ceremonies
differ with the degrees of latitude and longitude, and it receives
variant interpretations. If we were to examine all the different
ceremonials, their emblems, and their formulas, we should see that all
that belongs to the primitive and essential elements of the order, is
respected in every sanctuary. All alike practise virtue, that it may
product fruit. All labor, like us, for the extirpation of vice, the
purification of man, the development of the arts and sciences, and the
relief of humanity.
None admit an adept to their lofty philosophical knowledge, and
mysterious sciences, until he has been purified at the altar of the
symbolic Degrees. Of what importance are differences of opinion as to
the age and genealogy of the Degree, or variance in the practice,
ceremonial and liturgy, or the shade of color of the banner under which
each tribe of Israel marched, if all revere the Holy Arch of the
symbolic Degrees, first and unalterable source of Free Masonry; if all
revere our conservative principles, and are with us in the great
purposes of our organization?
If, anywhere, brethren of a particular religious belief have been
excluded from this Degree, it merely shows how gravely the purposes and
plan of Masonry may be misunderstood. For whenever the door of any
Degree is closed against him who believes in one God and the soul's
immortality, on account of the other tenets of his faith, that Degree is
Masonry no longer. No Mason has the right to interpret the symbols of
this Degree for another, or to refuse him its mysteries, if he will not
take them with the explanation and commentary superadded.
Listen, my brother, to _our_ explanation of the symbols of the Degree,
and then give them such further interpretation as you think fit.
The _Cross_ has been a sacred symbol from the earliest Antiquity. It is
found upon all the enduring monuments of the world, in Egypt, in
Assyria, in Hindostan, in Persia, and on the Buddhist towers of Ireland.
Buddha was said to have died upon it. The Druids cut an oak into its
shape and held it sacred, and built their temples in that form. Pointing
to the four quarters of the world, it was the symbol of universal
nature. It was on a cruciform tree, that Chrishna was said to have
expired, pierced with arrows. It was revered in Mexico.
But its peculiar meaning in this Degree, is that given to it by the
Ancient Egyptians. _Thoth_ or _Phtha_ is represented on the oldest
monuments carrying in his hand the _Crux Ansata_, or _Ankh_, [a Tau
cross, with a ring or circle over it]. He is so seen on the double
tablet of Shufu and Noh Shufu, builders of the greatest of the Pyramids,
at Wady Meghara, in the peninsula of Sinai. It was the hieroglyphic for
_life_, and with a triangle prefixed meant _life-giving_. To us
therefore it is the symbol of _Life_--of that life that emanated from
the Deity, and of that Eternal Life for which all hope; through our
faith in God's infinite goodness.
The ROSE was anciently sacred to Aurora and the Sun. It is symbol of
_Dawn_, of the resurrection of Light and the renewal of life, and
therefore of the dawn of the first day, and more particularly of the
resurrection: and the Cross and Rose together are therefore
hieroglyphically to be read, _the Dawn of Eternal Life_ which all
Nations have hoped for by the advent of a Redeemer.
The _Pelican_ feeding her young is an emblem of the large and bountiful
beneficence of Nature, of the Redeemer of fallen man, and of that
humanity and charity that ought to distinguish a Knight of this Degree.
The Eagle was the living Symbol of the Egyptian God _Mendes_ or
_Menthra_, whom _Sesostris-Ramses_ made one with _Amun-Re_, the God of
Thebes and Upper Egypt, and the representative of the Sun, the word RE
meaning _Sun_ or _King_.
The _Compass_ surmounted with a crown signifies that notwithstanding the
high rank attained in Masonry by a Knight of the Rose Croix, equity and
impartiality are invariably to govern his conduct.