THE MEANING OF MASONRY
by W.L. WILMSHURST

Foreword

FREEMASONRY has had many great scholars who devoted their time and talents
to the philosophical exposition of the character of the Craft, the meaning
of Craft symbols, and the religious aspects of the Fraternity: Albert
Pike, Robert Freke Gould, Fort Newton, Albert Gallatin Mackey, and W. L.
Wilmshurst.

Walter Leslie Wilmshurst (1867-1939) was a mystic with a practical
knowledge and profound understanding of the religions of the world. The
Meaning of Masonry discloses the real purpose of modern Freemasonry and
clearly states the true body of teaching and practice concerning the
esoteric meanings of Masonic ritual.

Freemasonry is based on the three great principles: brotherly love,
relief, and truth. Over the years, brotherly love and relief have been so
stressed that the Craft is in serious danger of becoming primarily a
social and charitable organization. Truth, the most difficult principle to
recognize and thus the most difficult to achieve, has long been neglected.
Wilmshurst carefully places his designs upon the trestle board to build
his thesis that the alpha and omega of Freemasonry is not the repetition
of the ritual nor the safeguarding of secrets, but the regeneration of the
Brethren.

This book implores the reader to learn to see in Freemasonry something
more than a parochial system enjoining elementary morality, performing
perfunctory and insignificant rites, and serving as an agreeable accessory
to social life. The greater system of spiritual doctrine contained in the
rituals is strongly emphasized.

The Meaning of Masonry was written with a view toward promoting a deeper
understanding of the Fraternity, and this goal has been achieved. The
ideals of the Masonic Fraternity have a wide appeal to the best instincts
of men, and the Craft has become one of the greatest social institutions
in the world. In this new Aquarian age, when many individuals and groups
are working in various ways for the eventual restoration of the mysteries,
an increasing number of aspirants are beginning to recognize that
Freemasonry may well be the vehicle for this achievement.

We have here a sincere effort by a learned and earnest Brother to point to
the source of Masonic Light in elegant, and at times profound, language.
They who look with him may enjoy the same felicity.


The great value of this book is that it was written by one who sets an
example for all Masters of Lodges. His was a soul filled with the wonder
of wisdom, strength, and beauty. In these pages, he whispers the password
to those of us who still clamour at the gate, enabling us to enter that
inner chamber where we can join the true initiates and share experiences
now veiled from all but a handful of Brethren.

ALLAN BOUDREAU, PH.D. Curator and Librarian Grand Lodge of Free and
Accepted July, 1980 Masons of the State of New York

Introduction THE POSITION AND POSSIBILITIES OF THE MASONIC ORDER

The papers here collected are written solely for members of the Masonic
Order, constituted under the United Grand Lodge of England. To all such
they are offered in the best spirit of fraternity and goodwill and with
the wish to render to the Order some small return for the profit the
author has received from his association with it extending over thirty-two
years. They have been written with a view to promoting the deeper
understanding of the meaning of Masonry; to providing the explanation of
it that one constantly hears called for and that becomes all the more
necessary in view of the unprecedented increase of interest in, and
membership of, the Order at the present day.

The meaning of Masonry, however, is a subject usually left entirely
unexpounded and that accordingly remains largely unrealized by its members
save such few as make it their private study; the authorities of what in
all other respects is an elaborately organized and admirably controlled
community have hitherto made no provision for explaining and teaching the
" noble science " which Masonry proclaims itself to be and was certainly
designed to impart. It seems taken for granted that reception into the
Order will automatically be accompanied by an ability to appreciate
forthwith and at its full value all that one there finds. The contrary is
the case, for Masonry is a veiled and cryptic expression of the difficult
science of spiritual life, and the understanding of it calls for special
and of informed guidance on the one hand, and on the other a genuine and
earnest desire for knowledge and no small capacity for spiritual
perception on the part of those seeking to be instructed; and not
infrequen tly one finds Brethren discontinuing their interest or their
membership because they find that Masonry means nothing to them and that
no explanation or guidance is vouchsafed them. Were such instruction
provided, assimilated and responded to, the life of the Order would be
enormously quickened and deepened and its efficiency as a means of
Initiation intensified, whilst incidentally the fact would prove an added
safeguard against the admission into the Order of unsuitable members--by
which is meant not merely persons who fail to satisfy conventional
qualifications, but also those who, whilst fitted in these respects, are
as yet either so intellectually or spiritually unprogressed as to be
incapable of benefiting from Initiation in its true sense although passing
formally through Initiation rites. Spiritual quality rather than numbers,
ability to understand the Masonic system and reduce its implications into
personal experience rather than the perfunctory conferment of its rites,
are t he desider ata of the Craft to-day.

As a contribution to repairing the absence of explanation referred to
these papers have been compiled. The first two of them have often been
read as lectures at Lodge meetings. Many requests that they should be
printed and made more widely available led to my expanding their
subject-matter into greater detail than could be used for occasional
lectures, and accordingly they are here amplified by a paper containing
fuller notes upon Craft symbolism. To complete the consideration of the
Craft the system it was necessary also to add a chapter upon that which
forms the crown and culmination of the Order Craft Degrees and without
which they would be imperfect--the Order of the Royal Arch. Lastly a
chapter has been added upon the important subject which forms the
background of the rest--the relationship of modern Masonry to the Ancient
Mysteries, from which it is the direct, though greatly attenuated,
spiritual descendant.

Thus in the five papers I have sought to provide a survey of the whole
Masonic subject as expressed by the Craft and Arch Degrees, which it is
hoped may prove illuminating to the increasing number of Brethren who feel
that Freemasonry enshrines something deeper and greater than, in the
absence of guidance, they have been able to realize. It does not profess
to be more than an elementary and far from exhaustive survey; the subject
might be treated much more fully, in more technical terminology and with
abundant references to authorities, were one compiling a more ambitious
and scholarly treatise. But to the average Mason such a treatise would
probably prove less serviceable than a summary expressed in as simple and
untechnical terms as may be and unburdened by numerous literary
references. Some repetition, due to the papers having been written at
different times, may be found in later chapters of points already dealt
with in previous ones, though the restatement may be advantageous in
emphasizi ng those points and maintaining continuity of exposition. For
reasons of explained in the chapter itself, that on the Holy Royal Arch
will probably prove difficult of comprehension by those unversed in the
literature and psychology of religious mysticism; if so, the reading of it
may be deferred or neglected. But since a survey of the Masonic system
would, like the system itself, be incomplete without reference to that
supreme Degree, and since that Degree deals with matters of advanced
psychological and spiritual experience about which explanation must always
be difficult, the subject has been treated here with as much simplicity of
statement as is possible and rather with a view to indicating to what
great heights of spiritual attainment the Craft Degrees point as
achievable, than with the expectation that they will be readily
comprehended by readers without some measure of mystical experience and
perhaps unfamiliar with the testimony of the mystics thereto.

Purposely these papers avoid dealing with matters of Craft history and of
merely antiquarian or archaeological interest. Dates, particulars of
Masonic constitutions, historical changes and developments in the external
aspects of the Craft, references to old Lodges and the names of
outstanding people connected therewith--these and such like matters can be
read about elsewhere. They are all subordinate to what alone is of vital
moment and what so many Brethren are hungering for-- knowledge of the
spiritual purpose and lineage of the Order and the present-day value of
rites of Initiation.

In giving these pages to publication care has been taken to observe due
reticence in respect of essential matters. The general nature of the
Masonic system is, however, nowadays widely known to outsiders and and
easily ascertainable from many printed sources, whilst the large interest
in and output of literature upon mystical religion and the science of the
inward Order life during the last few years has familiarized many with a
subject of which, as is shown in these papers, Masonry is but a
specialized form. To explain Masonry in general outline is, therefore, not
to divulge a subject which is entirely exclusive to its members, but
merely to show that Masonry stands in line with other doctrinal systems
inculcating the same principles and to which no secrecy attaches, and that
it is a specialized and highly effective method of inculcating those
principles. Truth, whether as expressed in Masonry or otherwise, is at all
times an open secret, but is as a pillar of light to those able to receive
a nd profit by it, and to all others but one of darkness and
unintelligibility. An elementary and formal secrecy is requisite as a
practical precaution against the intrusion of improper persons and for
preventing profanation. In other respects the vital secrets of life, and
of any system expounding life, protect themselves even though shouted from
the housetops, because they mean nothing to those as yet unqualified for
the knowledge and unready to identify themselves with it by incorporating
it into their habitual thought and conduct.

In view of the great spread and popularity of Masonry to-day--when there
are some three thousand Lodges in Great Britain alone--it is as well to
consider its present bearings and tendencies and to give a thought to
future possibilities. The Order is a semi-secret, semi-public institution;
secret in respect of its activities intra moenia, but otherwise of full
public notoriety, with its doors open to any applicant for admission who
is of ordinary good character and repute. Those who enter it, as the
majority do, entirely ignorant of what they will find there, usually
because they have friends there or know Masonry to be an institution
devoted to high ideals and benevolence and with which it may be socially
desirable to be connected, may or may not be attracted and profit by what
is disclosed to them, and may or may not see anything beyond the bare form
of the symbol or hear anything beyond the mere letter of the word. Their
admission is quite a lottery; their Initiation too often remains but a
formality, not an actual awakening into an order and quality of life
previously unexperienced; their membership, unless such an awakening
eventually ensues from the careful study and faithful practice of the
Order's teaching, has little, if any, greater influence upon them than
would ensue from their joining a purely social club.

For " Initiation "--for which there are so many candidates little
conscious of what is implied in that for which they ask--what does it
really mean and intend? It means a new beginning (initium); a break-away
from an old method and order of life and the entrance upon a new one of
larger self knowledge, deepened understanding and intensified virtue. It
means a transition from the merely natural state and standards of life
towards a regenerate and super-natural state and standard. It means a
turning away from the pursuit of the popular ideals of the outer world, in
the conviction that those ideals are but shadows, images and temporal
substitutions for the eternal Reality that underlies them, to the keen and
undivertible quest of that Reality itself and the recovery of those
genuine secrets of our being which lie buried and hidden at " the centre "
or innermost part of our souls. It means the awakening of those hitherto
dormant higher faculties of the soul which endue their possessor with
"light " in the form of new enhanced consciousness and enlarged perceptive
faculty. And lastly, in words with which every Mason is familiar, it means
that the postulant will henceforth dedicate and devote his life to the
Divine rather than to his own or any other service, so that by the
principles of the Order he may be the better enabled to display that
beauty of godliness which previously perhaps has not manifested through
him.

To comply with this definition of Initiation-which it might be useful to
apply as a test not only to those who seek for admission into the Order,
but to ourselves who are already within it--it is obvious that special
qualifications of mind and intention are essential in a candidate of the
type likely to be benefited by the Order in the way that its doctrine
contemplates, and that it is not necessarily the ordinary man of the
world, personal friend and good fellow though he be according to usual
social standards, who is either properly prepared for, or likely to
benefit in any vital sense by, reception into it. The true candidate must
indeed needs be, as the word candidus implies, a " white man," white
within as symbolically he is white-vestured without, so that no inward
stain or soilure may obstruct the dawn within his soul of that Light which
he professes to be the predominant wish of his heart on asking for
admission; whilst, if really desirous of learning the secrets and
mysteries of his o wn being, he must be prepared to divest himself of all
past preconceptions and thought-habits and, with childlike meekness and
docility, surrender his mind to the reception of some perhaps novel and
unexpected truths which Initiation promises to impart and which will more
and more unfold and justify themselves within those, and those only, who
are, and continue to keep themselves, properly prepared for them. " Know
thyself ! " was the injunction inscribed over the portals of ancient
temples of Initiation, for with that knowledge was promised the knowledge
of all secrets and all mysteries. And Masonry was designed to teach
self-knowledge. But self-knowledge involves a knowledge much deeper,
vaster and more difficult than is popularly conceived. It is not to be
acquired by the formal passage through three or four degrees in as many
months; it is a knowledge impossible of full achievement until knowledge
of every other kind has been laid aside and a difficult path of life long
and strenuously pur sued that alone fits and leads its followers to its
attainment. The wisest and most advanced of us is perhaps still but an
Entered Apprentice at this knowledge, however high his titular rank. Here
and there may be one worthy of being hailed as a Fellow-Craft in the true
sense. The full Master- The Mason--the just man made perfect who has
actually and not merely ceremonially travelled the entire path, endured
all its tests and ordeals, and become the raised into conscious union with
the Author and Giver of Life and able to mediate and impart that Order
life to others--is at all times hard to find.

So high, so ideal an attainment, it may be urged, is beyond our reach; we
are but ordinary men of the world sufficiently occupied already with our
primary civic, social and family obligations and following the obvious
normal path of natural life ! Granted. Nevertheless to point to that
attainment as possible to us and as our destiny, to indicate that path of
self-perfecting to those who care and dare to follow it, modern
Speculative Masonry was instituted, and to emphasizing the fact these
papers are devoted. For Masonry means this or it means nothing worth the
serious pursuit of thoughtful men; nothing that cannot be pursued as well
outside the Craft as within it. It proclaims the fact that there exists a
higher and more secret path of life than that which we normally tread, and
that when the outer world and its pursuits and rewards lose their
attractiveness for us and prove insufficient to our deeper needs, as
sooner or later they will, we are compelled to turn back upon ourselves,
to seek a nd knock at the door of a world within; and it is upon this
inner world, and the path to and through it, that Masonry promises light,
charts the way, and indicates the qualifications and conditions of
progress. This is the sole aim and intention of Masonry. Behind its more
elementary and obvious symbolism, behind its counsels to virtue and
conventional morality, behind the platitudes and sententious phraseology
(which nowadays might well be subjected to competent and intelligent
revision) with which, after the fashion of their day, the
eighteenth-century compilers of its ceremonies clothed its teaching, there
exists the framework of a scheme of initiation into that higher path of
life where alone the secrets and mysteries of our being are to be learned;
a scheme moreover that, as will be shown later in these pages, reproduces
for the modern world the main features of the Ancient Mysteries, and that
has been well described by a learned writer on the subject as " an epitome
or reflecti on at a fa r distance of the once universal science."

But because, for long and for many, Masonry has meant less than this, it
 has not as yet fulfilled its original purpose of being the efficient
 initiating instrument it was designed to be; its energies have been
 diverted from its true instructional purpose into social and
 philanthropic channels, excellent in their way, but foreign to and
 accretions upon the primal main intention. Indeed, so little perceived or
 appreciated is that central intention that one frequently hears it
 confessed by men of eminent position in the Craft and warm devotion to it
 that only their interest in its great charitable institutions keeps alive
 their connection with the Order. Relief is indeed a duty incumbent upon a
 Mason, but its Masonic interpretation is not meant to be limited to
 physical necessities. The spiritually as well as the financially poor and
 distressed are always with us and to the former, equally with the latter,
 Masonry The was designed to minister. Theoretically every man upon
 reception into the Craft acknowledges himself and as within the category
 of the spiritually poor, and as content to renounce all temporal riches
 if haply by that sacrifice his hungry heart may be filled with those good
 things which money cannot purchase, but to which the truly initiated can
 help him.

But if Masonry has not as yet fulfilled its primary purpose and, though
engaged in admirable secondary activities, is as yet an initiating
instrument of low efficiency, it may be that, with enlarged understanding
of its designs, that efficiency may yet become very considerably
increased. During the last two centuries the Craft has been gradually
developing from small and crude beginnings into its present vast and
highly elaborated organization. To-day the number of Lodges and the
membership of the Craft are increasing beyond all precedent. One asks
oneself what this growing interest portends, and to what it will, or can
be made to, lead ? The growth synchronizes with a corresponding defection
of interest in orthodox religion and public worship. It need not now be
enquired whether or to what extent the simple principles of faith and the
humanitarian ideals of Masonry are with some men taking the place of the
theology offered in the various Churches; it is probable that to some
extent they do so . But the fact is with us that the ideals of the Masonic
Order are making a wide appeal to the best instincts of large numbers of
men and that the Order has imperceptibly become the greatest social
institution in the Empire. Its principles of faith and ethics are simple,
and of virtually universal acceptance. Providing means for the expression
of universal fraternity under a common Divine Fatherhood and of a common
loyalty to the headship and established government of the State, it leaves
room for divergences of private belief and view upon matters upon which
unity is impracticable and perhaps undesirable. It is utterly clean of
politics and political intrigue, but nevertheless has unconsciously become
a real, though unobtrusive, asset of political value, both in stabilizing
the social fabric and tending to foster international amity. The
elaborateness of its organization, the care and admirable control of its
affairs by its higher authorities, are praiseworthy in the extreme ,
whilst in the co nduct of its individual Lodges there has been and is a
progressive endeavour to raise the standard of ceremonial work to a far
higher degree of reverence and intelligence than was perhaps possible
under conditions existing not long ago. The Masonic Craft has grown and
ramified to dimensions undreamed of by its original founders and, at its
present rate of increase, its potentialities and influence in the future
are quite incalculable.

What seems now needed to intensify the worth and usefulness of this great
Brotherhood is to deepen its understanding of its own system, to educate
its members in the deeper meaning and true purpose of its rites and its
philosophy. Were this achieved the Masonic Order would become, in
proportion to that achievement, a spiritual force greater than it can ever
be so long as it continues content with a formal and unintelligent
perpetuation of rites, the real and sacred purpose of which remains
largely unperceived, and participation in which too often means nothing
more than association with an agreeable, semi-religious, social
institution. Carried to its fullest, that achievement would involve the
revival, in a form adapted to modern conditions, of the ancient
Wisdom-teaching and the practice of those Mysteries which became
proscribed fifteen centuries ago, but of which modern Masonry is the
direct and representative descendant, as will appear later in these pages.

The future development and the value of the Order as a moral force in
society depend, therefore, upon the view its members take of their system.
If they do not spiritualize it they will but increasingly materialize it.
If they fail to interpret its veiled purport, to enter into the
understanding of its underlying philosophy, and to translate its symbolism
into what is signified thereby, they will be mistaking shadow for
substance, a husk for the kernel, and secularizing what was designed as a
means of spiritual instruction and grace. It is from lack of instruction
rather than of desire to learn the meaning of Masonry that the Craft
suffers to-day. But, as one finds everywhere, that desire exists; and so,
for what they may be worth, these papers are offered to the Craft as a
contribution towards satisfying it.

Let me conclude with an apologue and an aspiration.

In the Chronicles of Israel it may be read how that, after long
preparatory labour, after employing the choicest material and the most
skilful artificers, Solomon the King at last made an end of building and
beautifying his Temple, and dedicated to the of service of the Most High
that work of his hands in a state as perfect as human provision could make
it; and how that then, but not till then, his offering was accepted and
the acceptance was signified by a Divine descent upon it so that the glory
of the Lord shone through and filled the whole house.

So--if we will have it so--may it be with the temple of the Masonic Order.
Since the inception of Speculative Masonry it has been a-building and
expanding now these last three hundred years. Fashioned of living stones
into a far-reaching organic structure; brought gradually, under the good
guidance of its rulers, to high perfection on its temporal side and in
respect of its external observances, and made available for high purposes
and giving godly witness in a dark and troubled world; upon these
preliminary efforts let there now be invoked this crowning and completing
blessing-- that the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding may descend upon
the work of our hands in abundant measure, prospering it still farther,
and filling and transfiguring our whole Masonic house.

Chapter I.

THE DEEPER SYMBOLISM OF FREEMASONRY

A CANDIDATE proposing to enter Freemasonry has seldom formed any definite
idea of the nature of what he is engaging in. Even after his admission he
usually remains quite at a loss to explain satisfactorily what Masonry is
and for what purpose his Order exists. He finds, indeed, that it is " a
system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols," but
that explanation, whilst true, is but partial and does not carry him very
far. For many members of the Craft to be a Mason implies merely connection
with a body which seems to be something combining the natures of a club
and a benefit society. They find, of course, a certain religious element
in it, but as they are told that religious discussion, which means, of
course, sectarian religious discussion, is forbidden in the Lodge, they
infer that Masonry is not a religious institution, and that its teachings
are intended to be merely secondary and supplemental to any religious
tenets they may happen to hold. One sometimes hears it remarke d that
Masonry is " not a religion "; which in a sense is quite true; and
sometimes that it is a secondary or supplementary religion, which is quite
untrue. Again Masonry is often supposed, even by its own members, to be a
system of extreme antiquity, that was practised and that has come down in
well-nigh its present form from Egyptian or at least from early Hebrew
sources: a view which again possesses the merest modicum of truth. In
brief, the vaguest notions obtain about the origin and history of the
Craft, whilst the still more vital subject of its immediate and present
purpose, and of its possibilities, remains almost entirely outside the
consciousness of many of its own members. We meet in our Lodges regularly;
we perform our ceremonial work and repeat our catechetical
instruction-lectures night after night with a less or greater degree of
intelligence and verbal perfection, and there our work ends, as though the
ability to pe rform this work creditably were the be-all and the end-all
of M asonic work. Seldom or never do we employ our Lodge meetings for that
purpose for which, quite as much as for ceremonial purposes, they were
intended, viz.: for " expatiating on the mysteries of the Craft," and
perhaps our neglect to do so is because we have ourselves imperfectly
realized what those mysteries are into which our Order was primarily
formed to introduce us.

Yet, there exists a large number of brethren who would willingly repair
this obvious deficiency; brethren to whose natures Masonry, even in their
more limited aspect of it, makes a profound appeal, and who feel their
membership of the Craft to be a privilege which has brought them into the
presence of something greater than they know, and that enshrines a purpose
and that could unfold a message deeper than they at present realize.

In a brief address like this it is hopeless to attempt to deal at all
adequately with what I have suggested are deficiencies in our knowledge of
the system we belong to. The most one can hope to do is to offer a few
hints or clues, which those who so desire may develop for themselves in
the privacy of their own thought. For in the last resource no one can
communicate the deeper things in Masonry to another. Every man must
discover and learn them for himself, although a friend or brother may be
able to conduct him a certain distance on the path of understanding. We
know that even the elementary and superficial secrets of the Order must
not be communicated to unqualified persons, and the reason for this
injunction is not so much because those secrets have any special value,
but because that silence is intended to be typical of that which applies
to the greater, deeper secrets, some of which, for appropriate reasons,
must not be communicated, and some of which indeed are not communicable at
all, because they transcend the power of communication.

It is well to emphasize then, at the outset, that Masonry is a sacramental
system, possessing, like all sacraments, an outward and visible side
consisting of its ceremonial, its doctrine and its symbols which we can
see and hear, and an inward, intellectual and spiritual side, which is
concealed behind the ceremonial, the doctrine and the symbols, and which
is available only to the Mason who has learned to use his spiritual
imagination and who can appreciate the reality that lies behind the veil
of outward symbol. Anyone, of course, can understand the simpler meaning
of our symbols, especially with the help of the explanatory lectures; but
he may still miss the meaning of the scheme as a vital hole.  It is absurd
to think that a vast organization like Masonry was ordained merely to
teach to grown-up men of the world the symbolical meaning of a few simple
builders' tools, or to impress upon us such Masonry elementary virtues as
temperance and justice:--the children in every village school are t aught
such things; or to enforce such simple principles of morals as brotherly
love, which every church and every religion teaches; or as relief, which
is practised quite as much by non-Masons as by us; or of truth, which
every infant learns upon its mother's knee. There is surely, too, no need
for us to join a secret society to be taught that the volume of the Sacred
Law is a fountain of truth and instruction; or to go through the great and
elaborate ceremony of the third degree merely to learn that we have each
to die. The Craft whose work we are taught to honour with the name of a "
science," a " royal art," has surely some larger end in view than merely
inculcating the practice of social virtues common to all the world and by
no means the monopoly of Freemasons. Surely, then, it behooves us to
acquaint ourselves with what that larger end consists, to enquire why the
fulfilment of that purpose is worthy to be called a scien ce, and to
ascertain what are those " mysteries " to which our doctr ine promises we
may ultimately attain if we apply ourselves assiduously enough to
understanding what Masonry is capable of teaching us.

Realizing, then, what Masonry cannot be deemed to be, let us ask what it
is. But before answering that question, let me put you in possession of
certain facts that will enable you the better to appreciate the answer
when I formulate it. In all periods of the world's history, and in every
part of the globe, secret orders and societies have existed outside the
Deeper limits of the official churches for the purpose of teaching what
are called " the Mysteries ": for imparting to suitable and prepared minds
certain truths of human life, certain instructions about divine things,
about the things that belong to our peace, about human nature and human
destiny, which it was undesirable to publish to the multitude who would
but profane those teachings and apply the esoteric knowledge that was
communicated to perverse and perhaps to disastrous ends.

These Mysteries were formerly taught, we are told, " on the highest hills
and in the lowest valleys," which is merely a figure of speech for saying,
first, that they have been taught in circumstances of the greatest
seclusion and secrecy, and secondly, that they have been taught in both
advanced and simple forms according to the understanding of their
disciples. It is, of course, common knowledge that great secret systems of
the Mysteries (referred to in our lectures as " noble orders of
architecture," i.e., of soul-building) existed in the East, in Chaldea,
Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Italy, amongst the Hebrews, amongst Mahommedans
and amongst Christians; even among uncivilized African races they are to
be found. All the great teachers of humanity, Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras,
Moses, Aristotle, Virgil, the author of the Homeric poems, and the great
Greek tragedians, along with St. John, St. Paul and innumerable other
great names--were initiates of the Sacred Mysteries. The form of the
teaching co mmunicated has varied considerably from age to age; it has
been expressed under different veils; but since the ultimate truth the
Mysteries aim at teaching is always one and the same, there has always
been taught, and can only be taught, one and the same doctrine. What that
doctrine was, and still is, we will consider presently so far as we are
able to speak of it, and so far as Masonry gives expression to it. For the
moment let me merely say that behind all the official religious systems of
the world, and behind all the great moral movements and developments in
the history of humanity, have stood what St. Paul called the keepers or "
stewards of the Mysteries." From that source Christianity itself came into
the world. From them originated the great school of Kabalism, that
marvellous system of secret, oral tradition of the Hebrews, a strong
element of which has been introduced into our Masonic system. From them,
too, also issued many fraternities and orders, such, for instance, as the
great o rders of Chivalry and of the Rosicrucians, and the school of
spiritual alchemy. Lastly, from them too also issued, in the seventeenth
century, modern speculative Freemasonry.

To trace the genesis of the movement, which came into activity some 250
years ago (our rituals and ceremonies having been compiled round about the
year 1700), is beyond the purpose of my present remarks. It may merely be
stated that the movement itself incorporated the slender ritual and the
elementary symbolism that, for centuries previously, had been employed in
connection with the medieval Building Guilds, but it gave to them a far
fuller meaning and a far wider scope. It has always been the custom for
Trade Guilds, and even for modern Friendly Societies, to spiritualize
their trades, and to make the tools of their trade point some simple
moral. No trade, perhaps, lends itself more readily to such treatment than
the builder's trade; but wherever a great industry has flourished, there
you will find traces of that industry becoming allegorized, and of the
allegory being employed for the simple moral instruction of those who were
operative members of the industry. I am acquainted, for instance , with an
Egyptian ceremonial system, some 5,000 years old, which taught precisely
the same things as Masonry does, but in the terms of shipbuilding instead
of in the terms of architecture. But the terms of architecture were
employed by those who originated modern Masonry because they were ready to
hand; because they were in use among certain trade-guilds then in
existence; and lastly, because they are extremely effective and
significant from the symbolic point of view.

All that I wish to emphasize at this stage is that our present system is
 not one coming from remote antiquity: that there is no direct continuity
 between us and the Egyptians, or even those ancient Hebrews who built, in
 the reign of King Solomon, a certain Temple at Jerusalem. What is
 extremely ancient in Freemasonry is the spiritual doctrine concealed
 within the architectural phraseology; for this doctrine is an elementary
 form of the doctrine that has been taught in all ages, no matter in what
 garb it has been expressed. Our own teaching, for instance, recognizes
 Pythagoras as having undergone numerous initiations in different parts of
 the world, and as having attained great eminence in the science. Now it
 is perfectly certain that Pythagoras was not a Mason at all in our
 present sense of the word; but it is also perfectly certain that
 Pythagoras was a very highly advanced master in the knowledge of the
 secret schools of the Mysteries, of whose doctrine some small portion is
 enshrined for us in our Masonic system.

What then was the purpose the framers of our Masonic system had in view
when they compiled it ? To this question you will find no satisfying
answer in ordinary Masonic books. Indeed there is nothing more dreary and
dismal than Masonic literature and Masonic histories, which are usually
devoted to considering merely unessential matters relating to the external
development of the Craft and to its antiquarian aspect. They fail entirely
to deal with its vital meaning and essence, a failure that, in some cases,
may be intentional, but that more often seems due to lack of knowledge and
perception, for the true, inner history of Masonry has never yet been
given forth even to the Craft itself. There are members of the Craft to
whom it is familiar, and who in due time may feel justified in gradually
making public at any rate some portion of what is known in interior
circles. But ere that time comes, and that the Craft itself may the better
appreciate what can be told, it is desirable, nay even necessar y, that
its own members should make some effort to realize the meaning of their
own institution, and should display symptoms of earnest desire to treat it
less as a system of archaic and perfunctory rites, and more as a vital
reality capable of entering into and dominating their lives; less as a
merely pleasant social order, and more as a sacred and serious method of
initiation into the profoundest truths of life It is written that " to him
that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away
even that which he hath "; and it remains with the Craft itself to
determine by its own action whether it shall enter into its full heritage,
or whether, by failing to realize and to safeguard the value of what it
possesses, by suffering its own mysteries to be vulgarized and profaned,
its organization will degenerate and pass into disrepute and deserved
oblivion, as has been the fate of many secret orders in the past.

There are signs, however, of a well-nigh universal increase of interest,
of a genuine desire for knowledge of the spiritual content of our Masonic
system, and I am glad to be able to offer to my Brethren some light and
imperfect outline of what I conceive to be the true purpose of our work,
which may tend to deepen their interest in the work of the Order they
belong to, and (what is of more moment still) help to make Masonry for
them a vital factor, and a living, serious reality, rather than a mere
pleasurable appendage to social life.

To state things briefly, Masonry offers us, in dramatic form and by means
of dramatic ceremonial a philosophy of the spiritual life of man and a
diagram of the process of regeneration. We shall see presently that
philosophy is not only consistent with the doctrine of every religious
system taught outside the ranks of the Order, but that it explains,
elucidates and more sharply defines, the fundamental doctrines common to
every religious system in the world, whether past or present, whether
Christian or non-Christian. The religions of the world, though all aiming
at teaching truth, express that truth in different ways, and we are more
prone to emphasize the differences than to look for the correspondences in
what they teach. In some Masonic Lodges the candidate makes his first
entrance to the Lodge room amid the clash of swords and the sounds of
strife, to intimate to him that he is leaving the confusion and jarring of
the religious sects of the exterior world, and is passing into a Temple
wher ein the Brethren dwell together in unity of thought in regard to the
basal truths of life, truths which can permit of no difference or schism.

Allied with no external religious system itself, Masonry is yet a
synthesis, a concordat, for men of every race, of every creed, of every
sect, and its foundation principles being common to them all, admit of no
variation. "As it was in the beginning, so it is now and ever shall be,
into the ages of ages." Hence it is that every Master of a Lodge is called
upon to swear that no innovation in the body of Masonry (i.e., in its
substantial doctrine) is possible, since it already contains a minimum,
and yet a sufficiency, of truth which none may add to nor alter, and from
which none may take away; and since the Order accords perfect liberty of
opinion to all men, the truths it has to offer are entirely " free to" us
according to our capacity to assimilate them, whilst those to whom they do
not appeal, those who think they can find a more sufficing philosophy
elsewhere, are equally at liberty to be " free from " them, and men of
honour will find it their duty to withdraw from the Order rather than
suffer the harmony of thought that should characterize the Craft to be
disturbed by their presence.

The admission of every Mason into the Order is, we are taught, " an
emblematical representation of the entrance of all men upon this mortal
existence." Let us reflect a little upon these pregnant words. To those
deep persistent questionings which present themselves to every thinking
mind, What am I ? Whence come I ? Whither go I ?, Masonry offers emphatic
and luminous answers. Each of us, it tells us, has come from that mystical
" East," the eternal source of all light and life, and our life here is
described as being spent in the " West " (that is, in a world which is the
antipodes of our original home, and under conditions of existence as far
removed from those we came from and to which we are returning, as is West
from East in our ordinary computation of space). Hence every Candidate
upon admission finds himself, in a state of darkness, in the West of the
Lodge. Thereby he is repeating symbolically the incident of his actual
birth into this world, which he entered as a blind and helpless ba be, and
through which in his early years, not knowing whither he was going, after
many stumbling and irregular steps, after many deviations from the true
path and after many tribulations and adversities incident to human life,
he may at length ascend, purified and chastened by experience, to larger
life in the eternal East. Hence in the E.A. degree, we ask, " As a Mason,
whence come you ? " and the answer, coming from an Meaning apprentice
(i.e., from the natural man of undeveloped M of knowledge) is " From the
West," since he supposes that his life has originated in this world. But,
in the advanced degree of M.M. the answer is that he comes " From the
East," for by this time the Mason is supposed to have so enlarged his
knowledge as to realize that the primal source of life is not in the "
West," not in this world; that existence upon this planet is but a
transitory sojourn, spent in search of " the genuine secrets," the ultim
ate realities, of life; and that as the spirit of man must return t o God
who gave it, so he is now returning from this temporary world of "
substituted secrets " to that " East " from which he originally came.

As the admission of every candidate into a Lodge presupposes his prior
existence in the world without the Lodge, so our doctrine presupposes that
every soul born into this world has lived in, and has come hither from, an
anterior state of life. It has lived elsewhere before it entered this
world: it will live elsewhere when it passes hence, human life being but a
parenthesis in the midst of eternity. But upon entering this world, the
soul must needs assume material form; in other words it takes upon itself
a physical body to enable it to enter into relations with the physical
world, and to perform the functions appropriate to it in this particular
phase of its career. Need I say that the physical form with which we have
all been invested by the Creator upon our entrance into this world, and of
which we shall all divest ourselves when we leave the Lodge of this life,
is represented among us by our Masonic apron ? This, our body of
mortality, this veil of flesh and blood clothing the inner soul of us,
this is the real " badge of innocence," the common " bond of friendship,"
with which the Great Architect has been pleased to invest us all: this,
the human body, is the badge which is " older and nobler than that of any
other Order in existence ": and though it be but a body of humiliation
compared with that body of incorruption which is the promised inheritance
of him who endures to the end, let us never forget that if we never do
anything to disgrace the badge of flesh with which God has endowed each of
us, that badge will never disgrace us.

Brethren, I charge you to regard your apron as one of the most precious
and speaking symbols our Order has to give you. Remember that when you
first wore it was a piece of pure white lambskin; an emblem of that purity
and innocence which we always associate with the lamb and with the
new-born child. Remember that you first wore it with the flap raised, it
being thus a five-cornered badge, indicating the five senses, by means of
which we enter into relations with the material world around us (our "
five points of fellowship " with the material world), but indicating also
by the triangular portion above, in conjunction with the quadrangular
portion below, that man's nature is a combination of soul and body; the
three-sided emblem at the top added to the four-sided emblem beneath
making seven, the perfect number; for, as it is written in an ancient
Hebrew doctrine with which Masonry is closely allied, " God blessed and
loved the number seven more than all things under His throne," by which is
mea nt that man, the seven-fold being, is of the most cherished of all the
Creator's works. And hence also it is that the Lodge has seven principal
officers, and that a Lodge, to be perfect, requires the presence of seven
brethren; though the deeper meaning of this phrase is that the individual
man, in virtue of his seven-fold constitution, in himself constitutes the
" perfect Lodge," if he will but know himself and analyse his own nature
aright.

To each of us also from our birth have been given three lesser lights, by
which the Lodge within ourselves may be illumined. For the " sun "
symbolizes our spiritual consciousness, the higher aspirations and
emotions of the soul; the " moon " betokens our reasoning or intellectual
faculties, which (as the moon reflects the light of the sun) should
reflect the light coming from the higher spiritual faculty and transmit it
into our daily conduct; whilst " the Master of the Lodge " is a symbolical
phrase denoting the will-power of man, which should enable him to be
master of his own life, to control his own actions and keep down the
impulses of his lower nature, even as the stroke of the Master's gavel
controls the Lodge and calls to order and obedience the Brethren under his
direction. By the assistance of these lesser lights within us, a man is
enabled to perceive what is, again symbolically, called the " form of the
Lodge," i.e., the way in which his own human nature has been composed and
cons tituted, the length, breadth, height and depth of his own being. By
their help, too, he will perceive that he himself, his body and his soul,
are " holy ground," upon which he should build the altar of his own
spiritual life, an altar Deeper which he should suffer no " iron tool," no
debasing habit of thought or conduct, to defile. By them, of too, he will
perceive how Wisdom, Strength and Beauty have been employed by the
Creator, like three grand supporting pillars, in the structure of his own
organism. And by these finally he will discern how that there is a
mystical " ladder of many rounds or staves," i.e., that there are
innumerable paths or methods by means of which men are led upwards to the
spiritual Light encircling us all, and in which we live and move and have
our being, but that of the three principal methods, the greatest of these,
the one that comprehends them all and brings us nearest heaven, is Love,
in the full exercise of which God-like virtue a Mason reaches the summit o
f his profession; that summit being God Himself, whose name is Love.

I cannot too strongly impress upon you, Brethren, the fact that,
throughout our rituals and our lectures, the references made to the Lodge
are not to the building in which we meet. That building itself is intended
to be but a symbol, a veil of allegory concealing something else. "Know ye
not " says the great initiate St. Paul, " that ye are the temples of the
Most High; and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? " The real Lodge
referred to throughout our rituals is our own individual personalities,
and if we interpret our doctrine in the light of this fact we shall find
that it reveals an entirely new aspect of the purpose of our Craft.

It is after investment with the apron that the initiate is placed in the
N.E. corner. Thereby he is intended to learn that at his birth into this
world the foundation-stone of his spiritual life was duly and truly laid
and implanted within himself; and he is charged to develop it; to create a
superstructure upon it. Two paths are open to him at this stage, a path of
light and a path of darkness; a path of good and a path of evil. The N.E.
corner is the symbolical dividing place between the two. In symbolical
language, the N. always signifies the place of imperfection and
undevelopment; in olden times the bodies of suicides, reprobates and
unbaptized children were always buried in the north or sunless side of a
churchyard. The seat of the junior members of the Craft is allotted to the
north, for, symbolically, it represents the condition of the spiritually
unenlightened man; the novice in whom the spiritual light latent within
him has not yet risen above the horizon of consciousness and dispers ed
the clouds of material interests and the impulses of the lower and merely
sensual life. The initiate placed in the N.E. corner is intended to see,
then, that on the one side of him is the path that leads to the perpetual
light of the East, into which he is encouraged to proceed, and that on the
other is that of spiritual obscurity and ignorance into which it is
possible for him to remain or relapse. It is a parable of the dual paths
of life open to each one of us; on the one hand the path of selfishness,
material desires and sensual indulgence, of intellectual blindness and
moral stagnation; on the other the path of moral and spiritual progress,
in pursuing which one may decorate and adorn the Lodge within him with the
ornaments a jewels of grace and with the invaluable furniture of true
knowledge, and which he may dedicate, in all his actions, to the service
of God and of his fellow men And mark that of those jewels some are said
to be moveable and transferable, because when displayed in o ur own lives
and natures their influence becomes transferred and communicated to others
and helps to uplift and sweeten the lives of our fellows; whilst some are
immoveable because they are permanently fixed and planted in the roots of
our own being, and are indeed the raw material which has been entrusted to
us to work out of chaos and roughness into due and true form.

The Ceremony of our first degree, then, is a swift and comprehensive
portrayal of the entrance of all men into, first, physical life, and
second, into spiritual life; and as we extend congratulations when a child
is born into the world, so also we receive with acclamation the candidate
for Masonry who, symbolically, is seeking for spiritual re-birth; and
herein we emulate what is written of the joy that exists among the angels
of heaven over every sinner who repents and turns towards the light. The
first degree is also eminently the degree of preparation, of
self-discipline and purification. It corresponds with that symbolical
cleansing accorded in the sacrament of Baptism, which, in the churches,
is, so to speak, the first degree in the religious life; and which is
administered, appropriately, at the font, near the entrance of the church,
even as the act itself takes place at the entrance of the spiritual
career. For to all of us such initial cleansing and purifying is
necessary. As has been beautifully written by a fellow-worker in the
Craft:--

"'Tis scarcely true that souls come naked down To take abode up in this
earthly town, Or naked pass, of all they wear denied. We enter slipshod
and with clothes awry, And we take with us much that by-and-by May prove
no easy task to put aside.

Cleanse, therefore, that which round about us clings, We pray Thee,
Master, ere Thy sacred halls We enter. Strip us of redundant things, And
meetly clothe us in pontificals.*

In the schools of the Mysteries, when aspirants for the higher life were
wont to quit the outer world and enter temples or sanctuaries of
initiation, prolonged periods were allotted to the practical achievement
of what is briefly summarized in our first degree. We are told seven or
more years was the normal period, though less sufficed in worthy cases.
The most severe tests of discipline, of purity, of self-balance were
required before a neophyte was permitted to pass forward, and a
reminiscence of these tests of fitness is preserved in our own working by
the conducting of the candidate to the two wardens, and submitting him to
a merely formal trial of efficiency. For it is impossible to-day, as it
was impossible in ancient times, for a man to reach the heights of moral
perfection and spiritual consciousness which were then, and are now, the
goal and aim of all the schools of the Mysteries and all the secret
orders, without purification and trial. Complete stainlessness of body,
utter purity o f

* Strange Houses of Sleep by A. E. Waite.


mind, are absolute essentials to the attainment of things of great and
final moment " Who " says Psalmist (and remember that the Psalms were the
sacred hymns used in the Hebrew Mysteries), " Who will go up to the hill
of the Lord, and ascend to His holy place ? Even he that hath clean hands
and a pure heart "; whence it comes that we wear white gloves and aprons
as emblems that we have purified our hearts and washed our hands in
innocency. So also our Patron Saint (St. John) teaches, " He who hath this
hope in him purifieth himself, even as He (i.e., the Master whom he is
seeking) is pure." For he who is not pure in body and mind: he who is
enslaved by passions and desires, or by bondage to the material interests
of this world, is, by the very fact of his uncleanness, prevented from
passing on. Nothing unclean or that defileth a man, we are told, can enter
into the kingdom; and, therefore, our candidates are told that if they
have " money or metals about them "; if, that is, they are subject t o any
physical attraction or mental defilement, their real initiation into the
higher things, of which our ceremony is but a dramatic symbol, must be
deferred and repeated again and again until they are cleansed and fitted
to pass on. After purification come contemplation and enlightenment, which
are the special subjects of the second degree. Aforetime the candidate for
the Mysteries, after protracted discipline and purification enabling his
mind to acquire complete control over his passions and his lower physical
nature, was advanced, as he may advance himself to-day, to the study of
his more interior faculties, to understand the science of the human soul,
and to trace these faculties in their development from their elementary
stage until he realizes that they connect with, and terminate in, the
Divine itself. The secrets of his mental nature and the principles of
intellectual life became at this stage gradually unfolded to his view. You
will thus perceive, Brethren, that the F.C. degree, sometimes regarded by
us as a somewhat uninteresting one, typifies in reality a long course of
personal development requiring the most profound knowledge of the mental
and psychical side of our nature. It involves not merely t he cleansing
and control of the mind, but a full comprehension of our inner
constitution, of the more hidden mysteries of our nature and of spiritual
psychology. In this degree it is that our attention is called to the fact
that the Mason who has attained proficiency in this grade has been enabled
to discover a sacred symbol, placed in the centre of the building, and
alluding to the G.G.O.T.U. Doubtless we have often asked ourselves what
that phrase and what that symbol imply. Need I repeat that the building
alluded to is not the edifice we meet in, but is our own selves, and that
the sacred symbol at the centre of the roof and of the floor of this
outward temple is but symbolic of that which exists at the centre of
ourselves, and which was spoken of by the Christian Master when He
proclaimed that " the kingdom of heaven is within you "; that at the
depths of our own being, concealed beneath the heavy veils of the sensual,
lower nature , there resides that vital and immortal principle, which is
said to " a llude to " the G.G. because it is nothing other than a spark
of God Himself immanent within us. Over the old temples of the Mysteries
was Deeper written the injunction " Man, know thyself, and thou shalt know
the universe and God." Happy then is the Mason who has so far purified and
developed his own nature as to realize in its fulness the meaning of the "
sacred symbol " of the second degree, and found God present not outside
but within himself. But in order to find the " perfect points of entrance
" to this secret (and we are told elsewhere that " straight is the way and
narrow the gate, and few there be that find it ") emphasis again is laid
in our teaching upon the necessity of complete moral rectitude, of utter
exactness of thought, word and action, as exemplified by rigid observance
of the symbolic principles of the square, level and plumb-rule.

Here again the symbolism of our work becomes extremely profound and
interesting. He who desires to rise to the heights of his own being must
first crush and crucify his own lower nature and inclinations; he must
perforce tread what elsewhere is described as the way of the Cross; and
that Cross is indicated by the conjunction of those working tools (which
when united form a cross); and that " way " is involved in the scrupulous
performance of all that we know those working tools signify. By perfecting
his conduct, by struggles against his own natural propensities, the
candidate is working the rough ashlar of his own nature into the perfect
cube, and I would ask you to observe also that the cube itself contains a
secret, for unfolded, it itself denotes and takes the form of the cross.

The inward development which the second degree symbolizes is typified by
the lowering of the triangular flap of the apron upon the rectangular
portion below. This is equivalent to the rite of Confirmation in the
Christian Churches. It denotes " the progress we have made in the
science," or in other words it indicates that the higher nature of the
man, symbolized by the trinity of spirit, has descended into and is now
permeating his lower nature. Hitherto, in his state of ignorance and moral
blindness, the spiritual part of his nature has, as it were, but hovered
above him; he has been unconscious of its presence in his constitution;
but now, having realized its existence, the day-spring from on high has
visited him, and the nobler part of him descends into his lower nature,
illuminating and enriching it.

Now the man who so develops himself, speedily becomes more conscious of
the difficulties of his task, more sensitive to the obstacles the life of
the outer world places in the way of the spiritual life. But he is taught
to persist with fortitude and with prudence, to develop the highest within
him with " fervency and zeal." Upon self scrutiny, too, i.e., upon
entering into that " porchway " of contemplation which like a winding
staircase leads inward to the Holy of Holies within himself, he realizes
that difficulties and obstacles placed in his way are utilised by the
Eternal Wisdom as the necessary means of developing the latent and
potential good in him, and that as the rough ashlar can only be squared
and perfected by chipping and polishing, so he also can be made perfect
only by toil and by suffering. He sees that difficulty, adversity and
persecution serve a beneficent purpose. These are his " wages ": and he
learns to accept them " without scruple and without diffidence, knowing
that he is justly entitled to them, and from the confidence he has in the
integrity " of that Employer who has sent him into this far-off world to
prepare the materials for building the temple of the heavenly city. And
so, as the sign peculiar to the degree suggests, he endeavours to examine
and lay bare his heart, to cast away all impurity from it, and he stands,
like Joshua, praying that the light of day may be extended to him until he
has accomplished the overthrow of his own inward enemies and of every
obstacle to his complete development.

The aspirant who attains proficiency in the work of self-perfecting to
which the F.C. grade alludes, has passed away from the N. side of the
Lodge, the side of darkness and imperfection; and now stands on the S.E.
side in the meridian sunlight of moral illumination (so far as the natural
man may possess it), but yet still far removed from that fuller
realization of himself and of the mysteries of his own nature which it is
possible for the spiritual adept or Master Mason to attain. Before that
attainment is reached there remains for him " that last and greatest trial
" by which alone he can enter into the great consolations and make
acquaintance with the supreme realities of existence. In the places where
the great Mysteries have always been taught, what is ceremonially
performed in our third degree is no mere symbolical representation as with
us, but an actual, vital experience of a most severe character: one the
nature of which can hardly be made intelligible, or even credible, to
those unfa miliar with the subject. I refrain, therefore, from more than
mere mention of it, observing only that it is one not involving physical
death, and in this respect only is our ceremony in accord with the
experience symbolized. For if you follow closely the raising ceremony,
although distinct reference to the death of the body is made, yet such
death is obviously intended to be merely symbolical of another kind of
death, since the candidate is eventually restored to his former worldly
circumstances and material comforts, and his earthly Masonic career is not
represented as coming to a close at this stage. All that has happened in
the third degree is that he has symbolically passed through a great and
striking change: a rebirth, or regeneration of his whole nature. He has
been " sown a corruptible body "; and in virtue of the self-discipline and
self development he has undergone, there has been raised in him " an
incorruptible body," and death has been swallowed up in the victory he has
attained o ver himself. I sometimes fear that the too conspicuous display
of the emblems and trappings of mortality in our Lodges is apt to create
the false impression that the death to which the third degree alludes is
the mere physical change that awaits all men. But a far deeper meaning is
intended. The Mason who knows his science knows that the death of the body
is only a natural transition of which he need have no dread whatever; he
knows also that when the due time for it arrives, that transition will be
a welcome respite from the bondage of this world, from his prison-like
husk of mortality, and from the daily burdens incident to existence in
this lower plane of life. All that he fears is that when the time comes,
he may not be free from those " stains of of falsehood and dishonour,"
those imperfections of his own nature, that may delay his after-progress.
No ! the death to which Masonry alludes, using the analogy of bodily death
and under the veil of a reference to it, is that death-in -life to a man's
own lower self which St. Paul referred to when he protested " I die
daily." It is over the grave, not of one's dead body but of one's lower
self, that the aspirant must walk before attaining to the heights. What is
meant is that complete self-sacrifice and self-crucifixion which, as all
religions teach, are essential before the soul can be raised in glory "
from a figurative death to a reunion with the companions of its former
toils " both here and in the unseen world. The perfect cube must pass
through the metamorphosis of the Cross. The soul must voluntarily and
consciously pass through a state of utter helplessness from which no
earthly hand can rescue it, and in trying to raise him from which the grip
of any succouring human hand will prove but a slip: until at length Divine
Help itself descends from the Throne above and, with the " lion's grip "
of almighty power, raises the faithful and regenerated soul to union w ith
itself in an embrace of reconciliation and at-one-ment.

In all the schools of the Mysteries, as well as in all the great religions
of the world, the attainment of the spiritual goal just described is
enacted or taught under the veil of a tragic episode analogous to that of
our third degree; and in each there is a Master whose death the aspirant
is instructed he must imitate in his own person. In Masonry that prototype
is Hiram Abiff: but it must be made clear that there is no historical
basis whatever for the legendary account of Hiram's death. The entire
story is symbolical and was purposely invented for the symbolical purposes
of our teaching. If you examine it closely you will perceive how obvious
the correspondence is between this story and the story of the death of the
Christian Master related in the Gospels; and it is needless to say that
the Mason who realizes the meaning of the latter will comprehend the
former and the veiled allusion that is implied. In the one case the Master
is crucified between the two thieves; in the other he is done t o death
between two villains. In the one case appear the penitent and the
impenitent thief; in the other we have the conspirators who make a
voluntary confession of their guilt and were pardoned, and the others who
were found guilty and put to death; whilst the moral and spiritual lessons
deducible from the stories correspond. As every Christian is taught that
in his own life he must imitate the life and death of Christ, so every
Mason is " made to represent one of the brightest characters recorded in
our annals "; but as the annals of Masonry are contained in the volume of
the Sacred Law and not elsewhere, it is easy to see who the character is
who is alluded to. As that great authority and initiate of the Mysteries,
St. Paul, taught, we can only attain to the Master's resurrection by "
being made conformable unto His death," and we must die with Him if we are
to be raised like Him ": and it is in virtue of that conformity, in vi
rtue of being individually made to imitate the Grand Master in H is death,
that we are made worthy of certain " points of fellowship " with Him: for
they " five points of fellowship " of the third degree are the five wounds
of Christ The three years' ministry of the Christian Master ended with His
death and, these refer to the three degrees of the Craft which also end in
the mystical death of the Masonic candidate and his subsequent raising or
resurrection.

The name Hiram Abiff signifies in Hebrew " the teacher (Guru, or
enlightened one) from the Father ": a fact which may help you still
further to recognize the concealed purpose of the teaching. Under the name
of Hiram, then, and beneath a veil of allegory, we see an allusion to
another Master; and it is this Master, this Elder Brother who is alluded
to in our lectures, whose " character we preserve, whether absent or
present," i.e., whether He is present to our minds or no, and in regard to
whom we " adopt the excellent principle, silence," lest at any time there
should be among us trained in some other than the Christian Faith, and to
whom on that account the mention of the Christian Master's name might
possibly prove an offence or provoke contention.

To typify the advance by the candidate at this stage of his development,
the apron here assumes greater elaborateness. It is garnished with a light
blue border and rosettes, indicating that a higher than the natural light
now permeates his being and radiates from his person, and that the
wilderness of the natural man is now blossoming as the rose, in the
flowers and graces incident to his regenerated of nature; whilst upon
either side of the apron are seen two columns of light descending from
above, streaming into the depths of his whole being, and terminating in
the seven-fold tassels which typify the seven-fold prismatic spectrum of
the supernal Light. He is now lord of himself; the true Master Mason; able
to govern that lodge which is within himself; and as he has passed through
the three degrees of purifying and self-perfecting, and squared, levelled,
and harmonized his triple nature of body, soul and spirit, he also wears,
on attaining Mastership, the triple Tau; which comprises the form of a
level, but is also the Hebrew form of the Cross; the three crosses upon
the apron thus corresponding with the three crosses of Calvary.

To sum up the import of the teaching of the three degrees, it is clear,
therefore, that from grade to grade the candidate is being led from an old
to an entirely new quality of life. He begins his Masonic career as the
natural man; he ends it by becoming through its discipline, a regenerated
perfected man. To attain this transmutation, this metamorphosis of
himself, he is taught first to purify and subdue his sensual nature; then
to purify and develop his mental nature; and finally, by utter surrender
of his old life and losing his soul to save it, he rises from the dead a
Master, a just man made perfect, with larger consciousness and faculties,
an efficient instrument for use by the Great Architect in His plan of
rebuilding the Temple of fallen humanity, and capable of initiating and
advancing other men to a participation in the same great work.

This--the evolution of man into superman--was always the purpose of the
ancient Mysteries, and the real purpose of modern Masonry is, not the
social and charitable purposes to which so much attention is paid, but the
expediting of the spiritual evolution of those who aspire to perfect their
own nature and transform it into a more god-like quality. And this is a
definite science, a royal art, which it is possible for each of us to put
into practice; whilst to join the Craft for any other purpose than to
study and pursue this science is to misunderstand its meaning. Hence it is
that no one should apply to enter Masonry unless from the deepest
promptings of his own heart, as it hungers for light upon the problem of
its own nature. We are all imperfect beings, conscious of something
lacking to us that would make us what, in our best moments, we fain would
be. What is that which is lacking to us ? " What is that which is lost ? "
And the answer is " The genuine secrets of a Master Mason," the true
knowledge of ourselves, the conscious realization of our divine
potentialities.

The very essence of the Masonic doctrine is that all men in this world are
in search of something in their own nature which they have lost, but that
with proper instruction and by their own patience and industry they may
hope to find. Its philosophy implies that this temporal world is the
antipodes of another and more real world from which we originally came and
to which we may accelerate our return by such a course of self-knowledge
and self-discipline as our teaching inculcates. It implies that this
present world is the place where the symbolic stones and timber are being
prepared " so far off " from that mystical Jerusalem where one day they
will be found put together and, collectively, to constitute that Temple
which even now is being built without hands and without the noise or help
of metal tools. And this world, therefore, being but a transient temporary
one for us, it is necessarily one of shadows, images and merely "
substituted secrets," until such time as being raised not merely sym
bolically but actually, in character and knowledge and consciousness, to
the sublime degree of Master Mason, we fit ourselves to learn something of
the " genuine secrets," something of the living realities, that lurk and
live in concealment behind the outward show of things. All human life,
having originated in the mystical " East " and journeyed into this world
which, with us, is the " West," must return again to its source. To quote
again the verse of the Brother I have already cited;--

" From East to West the soul her journey takes; At many bitter founts her
fever slakes; Halts at strange taverns by the way to feast, Resumes her
load, and painful progress makes Back to the East."

Masonry, by means of a series of dramatic representations, is intended to
furnish those who care to discover its purport and to take advantage of
the hints it throws out in allegorical form, with an example and with
instructions by which our return to the " East " may be accelerated. It
refers to no architecture of a mundane kind, but to the architecture of
the soul's life. It is not in itself a religion; but rather a dramatized
and intensified form of religious processes inculcated by every religious
system in the world. For there is no religion but teaches the lesson of
the necessity of bodily purification of our first degree; none but
emphasizes that of the second degree, that mental, moral and spiritual
developments are essential and will lead to the discovery of a certain
secret centre " where truth abides in fulness," and that centre is a "
point within a circle " of our own nature from which no man or Mason can
ever err, for it is the divine kingdom latent within us all, into which we
h ave as yet failed to enter. And there is none but insists upon the
supreme lesson of self-sacrifice and mystical death to the things of this
world so graphically portrayed in our third degree; none but indicates
that in that hour of greatest darkness the light of the primal divine
spark within us is never wholly extinguished, and that by loyalty to that
light, by patience and by perseverance, time and circumstances will
restore to us the " genuine secrets," the ultimate truths and realities of
our own nature. We are here, Masonry teaches, as it were in captivity, by
the waters of Babylon and in a strange land; and our doctrine truly tells
us that the richest harmonies of this life are as nothing in comparison
with the songs of Zion; and that, even when we are installed into the
highest eminences this world or the Craft may offer, it were better that
our right hand should forget its cunning and that we should fling the
illusory treasures of this transitory world behind our backs, than in all
ou r doings fail to remember the Jerusalem that lies beyond.

Our teaching is purposely veiled in allegory and symbol and its deeper
import does not appear upon the surface of the ritual itself. This is
partly in correspondence with human life itself and the world we live in,
which ale themselves but allegories and symbols of another life and the
veils of another world; and partly intentional also, so that only those
who have reverent and understanding minds may penetrate into the more
hidden meaning of the doctrine of the Craft. The deeper secrets in
Masonry, like the deeper secrets of life, are heavily veiled; are closely
hidden. They exist concealed beneath a great reservation; but whoso knows
anything of them knows also that they are " many and valuable," and that
they are disclosed only to those who act upon the hint given in our
lectures, " Seek and ye shall find; ask and ye shall have; knock and it
shall be opened unto you." The search may be long and difficult, but great
things are not acquired without effort and search; but it may be affirmed
th at to the candidate who is " properly prepared " (in a much fuller
sense than we conventionally attach to that expression) there are doors
leading from the Craft that, when knocked, will assuredly open and admit
him to places and to knowledge he at present recks little of. For him,
too, who would enter upon the greater initiations, the same rule applies
as that which was symbolically represented upon his first entrance into
the Order, but this time it will no longer be a symbol, but a realistic
fact. He will find, I mean, that a drawn sword is always threatening in
front of him, and that a cable-tow is still around his neck. Danger,
indeed, awaits the candidate who would rush precipitately and in a state
of moral unfitness into the deeper mysteries of his being, which are
indeed " serious, solemn and awful "; but, on the other hand, for him who
has once entered upon the path of light it is moral suicide to turn back.
And now, Brethren, to bring to an end this brief and imperfect survey of
the deeper meaning and purposes of our Craft, I pray that what is now
spoken may help to prove to some of you a further restoration to that
light which is, at all times, the predominant wish of our hearts. It rests
with ourselves whether Masonry remains for us what upon its outward and
superficial side appears to be merely a series of symbolic rites, or
whether we allow those symbols to pass into our lives and become realities
therein. Whatever formalities we may have gone through in connection with
our admission into the Order, we cannot be said to have been " regularly
initiated " into Masonry so long as we regard the Craft as merely an
incident of social life and treat its ceremonies as but rites of an
archaic and perfunctory nature. The Craft, as I have already suggested,
was given out to the world, from more secret sources still, as a great
experiment and means of grace, and as a great opportunity for those who
cared to avail themselves of what is little known and little taught
outside certain sanctuaries of concealment. It was intended to furnish
forth an epitome or synopsis, in dramatic form, of the spiritual
regeneration of man; and to throw out hints and suggestions that might
lead those capable of discerning its deeper purpose and symbolism into of
still deeper initiations than the merely superficial ones enacted in our
Lodges. For, as on the external side of the Order we may be called to
occupy positions of honour and office in the Provincial Grand Lodge, or
may enter other Masonic grades outside the Craft, so also upon its
internal side there are eminences to which we may be called that, whilst
offering us no social distinction and no visible advancement, are yet
really the true prizes, the most valuable attainments, of Masonic desire.
To this goal all may attain who truly seek to do so and who prepare the
way for themselves by appropriating the truths lying beneath the
superficial allegory an d the symbolic veils of the Craft teaching. And
since there seems to-day a genuine and widespread desire on the part of
many members of the Order to enter into a fuller understanding of what the
Order itself conceals rather than reveals, I feel I should not be
discharging my duties as a Master in the Craft did I not take advantage of
that position to share with them some measure at least of what I have been
able to glean for myself.

But, finally, I must ask you to remember that, in accordance with the
general design of our system, every Master of a Lodge is but a symbol and
a substitution, and that behind him, and behind all other the grand
officers of the Masonic hierarchy, there stands the " Great White Head,"
the " Great Initiator " and Grand Master of all true Masons throughout the
Universe, whether members of our Craft or not. To whom let us all bow in
gratitude for the invaluable gift accorded to us in this our The Order;
and to whose protection, and to whose Deeper enlightening guidance into
its deeper mysteries, I recommend you all.

Chapter II. MASONRY AS A PHILOSOPHY

Signs are not wanting that a higher Masonic consciousness is awakening in
 the Craft. Members of the Order are gradually, and here and there,
 becoming alive to the fact that much more than meets the eye and ear lies
 beneath the surface of Masonic doctrine and symbols. They are beginning
 to think for themselves instead of taking the face-value of things for
 granted, and, as their thought develops, facts that previously remained
 unperceived assume prominence and significance. They discern the Masonic
 system to be something deeper than a code of elementary morality such as
 all men are expected to observe whether formally Masons or not. They
 reflect that the phenomenal growth of the Craft is scarcely accountable
 for upon the supposition that modern speculative Masonry perpetuates
 nothing more than the private associations that once existed in
 connection with the operative builders' trade. They recognize that there
 can be no peculiar virtue or interest in continuing to imitate the
 customs of ancient trade-guilds for the mere sake of so doing; or of
 keeping on foot a costly organization for teaching men the elementary
 symbolism of a few building tools, supplemented by a considerable amount
 of social conviviality. Upon a little thought it becomes pretty obvious
 that our Third Degree and the great central legend that forms the climax
 of the Craft system cannot have, and can never have had, any direct or
 practical bearing upon, or connection with, the trade of the operative
 mason. It may be urged that we have our great charity system and that the
 social side of our proceedings is a valuable and humanizing asset.
 Granted, but other people and other societies are philanthropic and
 social as well as we; and a secret society is not necessary to promote
 such ends, which are merely supplemental to the original purpose of the
 Order. The discernment of such facts as these, then, suggests to us that
 the Craft has not yet entered into the full heritage of understanding its
 own syst em and that side-mat ters connected with Masonry which we have
 long emphasized so strongly, valuable in their own way as they are, are
 not after all the primary and proper work of the Order. The work of the
 Order is to initiate into certain secrets and mysteries, and obviously if
 the Order fails to expound its own secrets and mysteries and so to confer
 real initiations as distinguished from passing candidates through certain
 formal ceremonies, it is not fulfilling its original purpose whatever
 other incidental good it may be doing.

Now as these facts are the basis upon which this lecture proceeds, let me
at the outset make my first point by stating that as the progress in the
Craft of every Brother admitted into its ranks is by gradual, successive
stages, in like manner the understanding of the Masonic system and
doctrine is also a matter of gradual development. Stated in the simplest
terms possible, the theory of Masonic progress is that every Member
admitted to the Order enters in a state of darkness and ignorance as to
what Masonry teaches, and that later on he is supposed to be brought to
light and knowledge. Putting it in other terms, he enters the Craft
symbolically as a rough ashlar and it is his business so to develop both
his character and his understanding that ultimately, in virtue of what he
has learned and practised, he may be as a finished and perfect cube.

Now the understanding of the Masonic scheme tends to develop upon
precisely similar lines. Its meaning is not discernible all at once, and
unless our minds are properly prepared and our understandings carefully
trained, they are unlikely ever to participate in the real secrets and
mysteries of Masonry at all, however often we may watch the performance of
external ceremonial or however proficient we may be in memorizing the
rituals and instruction lectures. The first stage, the first conception of
what Masonry involves, is concerned merely with the surface-value of the
doctrine; with an acquaintance with the literal side of the imparted
knowledge which we all obtain upon entering the Craft. Beyond this stage
the vast majority of Masons, it is to be feared, never passes. This is the
stage of knowledge in which the Craft is regarded as a social,
semi-public, semi-secret community to which it is agreeable and
advantageous to belong for sociable or even for ulterior purposes; in
which the goal of t he Mason's ambition is to attain office and high
preferment and to wear a breastful of decorations; in which he takes a
literal, superficial and historic view of the subject-matter of the
doctrine; in which ability to perform the ceremonial work with dignity and
effectiveness and to know the instruction catechisms by heart, so that not
a syllable is wrongly rendered, is deemed the height of Masonic
proficiency; and where, after discharging these functions with a certain
degree of credit, his idea is often to have the Lodge closed as speedily
as may be and get away to the relaxation of the festive board.

Now all these things belong to what may be called the very rough-ashlar
stage of the Masonic conception. I am not, of course, alluding to any
individual Mason. I confess frankly to having come within this category
myself, and I think we may agree that we have all passed through the phase
I have described, for the simple reason that we knew nothing better and
had no one able to teach us something better. Let us not complain. If we
look back upon the progress of the Craft during the last 150 years we
cannot but congratulate ourselves upon the enormous, if gradual, strides
made in Masonic progress and decorum even in the rough-ashlar stage of our
conception of it. Anyone familiar with the records of old Lodges will have
been brought into close touch with times when almost every element of
reverence and dignity seems to have been lacking. Lodges were held in the
public rooms of taverns. Whatever official furniture decorated these
primitive temples, quart-pots and " churchwardens " figured largely among
the unauthorized equipment. In one of the great London galleries there
hangs a famous picture called " Night " by the great artist and moralist
of his age, Hogarth. His purpose was to depict a characteristic
night-scene in the streets of London as they appeared in his time. Among
the typical specimens of depravity haunting those ill-lit streets, the
great artist has held up to the derision of all time the figure of a
Freemason staggering home drunk, still wearing his apron and being
assisted by the tyler of the Lodge. No true Mason can regard this picture
without a burning sense of shame, and without registering a resolution to
redeem the Craft from this stigma. We have, I hope, got past such things
as these. We have awakened to some sense of dignity and self-reverence.
The Craft is well governed by its higher authorities, and individual
Lodges take a pride in providing proper temples and in conducting their
assemblies w ith due regard to the solemnity of Masonic doctrine. May the
Order n ever relapse into the primitive and chaotic condition from which
it has emerged.

But this improvement in matters of external deportment, great and welcome
as it is, is not enough. To prevent the Order settling down into a state
of self-satisfaction with its social privileges and the agreeableness of
friendly intercourse among its members; to prevent its making its claims
to being a system of knowledge and science as perfunctory and little
onerous as possible, the improvement I have spoken of must be attended
(and I believe is destined to be attended) by an awakening to the deep
significance of the Craft's internal purposes. And since I have referred
to what I have termed the " rough - ashlar " conception of that purpose
you have the right to ask me now to state that loftier conception which
may be regarded, in comparison, as the " perfect cube." The answer to this
enquiry I shall not attempt to state in so many words. I invite you to
regard this whole lecture as an indication of what as a that answer must
be. To some extent I endeavoured to formulate that answer upon a previous
occasion, but whilst I then entered rather into the details and minutae of
the Craft system and symbols, I shall treat the subject now upon broader
lines and deal with Masonry in its wider and more philosophic aspect. I
said upon that occasion--and I must repeat it now--that in its broad and
more vital doctrine Masonry was essentially a philosophic and religious
system expressed in dramatic ceremonial. It is a system intended to supply
answers to the three great questions that press so inexorably upon the
attention of every thoughtful man and that are the subject around which
all religions and all philosophies move: What am I ? Whence come I ?
Whither go I ? It is a truism to say that in our quieter and more serious
moments we all feel the need of some reliable answer to these questions.
Light upon them is " the predominant wish of our hearts "; and upon such
light as we can obtain, whether from Masonry or elsewhere, depends our
philosophy of life and the rule of conduct by which we regulate our life.
In a larger sense, then, than our conventional limited one, the Masonic
candidate is presumed to enter the Order in search of light upon these
problems; light that he is presumed not to have succeeded in finding
elsewhere. If his candidature is actuated by any motive other than a
genuine desire for knowledge upon these problems, which beyond all others
are vital to his peace, and by a sincere wish to render himself, by the
help of that knowledge, serviceable to his fellow creatures, then his
candidature is less than a worthy one. The reason why no man should be
solicited to join the Order is that in regard to these matters of sacred
and momentous import, the first springs of impulse must originate within
the postulant himself; the first place of his preparation must ever be in
his own heart, and it is to the cry and knocking of his inward need, and
fo r no less a motive, that--in theory, though s carcely in practice
---the door to the Mysteries is opened and the seeker enters in and finds
help. At another stage of his symbolical progress the candidate learns
from his superior brethren, that they, along with himself, are in search
of something that is lost and which they have hopes of finding. And it is
here that the great motive of this and of all quests, as well as the clue
to the real purpose of Masonry, appears prominently and is stated in
emphatic terms. Masonry is the quest after something that has been lost.
Now what is it that has been lost ? Consider the matter thus. Why should
we, or the world at large, require systems of religion and philosophy at
all ? What is the motive and reason for the existence of a Masonic Order
and of many other Orders of Initiation, both of the past and the present?
Why should they exist at all ? I might reduce the matter to the compass of
a small and personal point by asking why have you come to hear this
lecture, and why should I have been striving for many years to acquire the
information that enables me to give it ?--if it be not the fact,--as
indeed it is, that every man in his reflective moments realizes the sense
of some element of his own being having become lost; that he is conscious,
if he be honest with himself, of the sense of moral imperfection, of
ignorance, of restricted knowledge about himself and his surroundings;
that he is aware, in short, of some radical deficiency in his
constitution, which, were it but found and made good, would satisfy this
craving for information, for completeness and perfection, would " lead him
from darkness to light," and would put him beyond ignorance and beyond the
touch of the many ills that flesh is heir to. The point is too obvious to
need pressing further, and the answer to it is to be found by a reference
to a great doctrine that forms the philosophic basis of all systems of
religion, and all the great systems of the Mysteries and of Initiation of
antiquity, viz., that which is popularly known as the Fall of Man. However
we may choose to regard this event--and throughout the history of the
human race it has been taught in innumerable ways and in all manner of
parables, allegories, myths and legends--its sole and single meaning is
that humanity as a whole has fallen away from its original parent source
and place; that from being imbedded in the eternal centre of life man has
become projected to the circumference; and that in this present world of
ours he is undergoing a period of restriction, of ignorance, of discipline
and experience, that shall ultimately fit him to return to the centre
whence he came and to which he properly belongs. " Paradise Lost " is the
real theme of Masonry no less than of Milton, as it is also of all the
ancient systems of the Mysteries. The Masonic doctrine focuses and
emphasizes the fact and the sense of this loss. Beneath a veil of allegory
describing the intention to build a certain temple that could not be
finished because of an untimely disaster , Masonry implies that Humanity
is the real temple whose building became obstructed, and that we, who are
both the craftsmen and the building materials of what was intended to be
an unparalleled structure, are, owing to a certain unhappy event, living
here in this world in conditions where the genuine and full secrets of our
nature are, for the time being, lost to us; where the full powers of the
soul of man are curtailed by the limitations of physical life; and where,
during our apprenticeship of probation and discipline, we have to put up
with the substituted knowledge derivable through our limited and very
fallible senses.

But, whilst Masonry emphasizes this great truth, it indicates also--and
this is its great virtue and real purpose the method by which we may
regain that which is lost to us. It holds out the great promise that, with
divine assistance and by our own industry, the genuine realities of which
we at present possess but the imperfect shadows shall be restored to us,
and that patience and perseverance will eventually entitle every worthy
man to a participation in them. This large subject is mirrored in
miniature in the Craft ceremonial. The East of the Lodge is the symbolic
centre; the source of all light; the place of the throne of the Master of
all life. The West, the place of the disappearing sun, is this world of
imperfection and darkness from which the divine spiritual light is in
large measure withdrawn and only shines by reflection. The ceremonies
through which the candidate passes are symbolic of the as a stages of
progress that every man--whether a formal member of the Craft or not-- may
mak e by way of self-purification and self-building, until he at length
lies dead to his present natural self, and is raised out of a state of
imperfection and brought once more into perfect union with the Lord of
life and glory into whose image he has thus become shaped and conformed.

It is in this large sense, then, that Masonry may become for us--as indeed
 it was intended to become by those who instituted our present speculative
 system--a working philosophy for those brought within its influence. It
 supplies a need to those who are earnestly enquiring into the purpose and
 destiny of human life. It is a means of initiating into reliable
 knowledge those who feel that their knowledge of life and their path of
 life have hitherto been but a series of irregular steps made at haphazard
 and under hoodwinked conditions as to whither they are going. Not without
 good reason does our catechism assert that Masonry contains " many and
 invaluable secrets." But these of course are not the formal and symbolic
 signs, tokens and words communicated ceremonially to candidates; they are
 rather those secrets which we instinctively keep locked up in the
 recesses and safe repository of our hearts; secrets of the deep and
 hidden things of the soul, about which we do not often talk, and which,
 by a natural instinct, we are not in the habit of communicating to any
 but such of our brethren and fellows as share with us a common and a
 sympathetic interest in the deeper problems and mysteries of life.

I have said already that Masonry is a modern perpetuation of great systems
of initiation that have existed for the spiritual instruction of men in
all parts of the world since the beginning of time. The reason for their
existence has been the obvious one, resulting from the cardinal truth
already alluded to, that man in his present natural state is inherently
and radically imperfect; that sooner or later he becomes conscious of a
sense of loss and deprivation and feels an imperative need of learning how
to repair that loss. The great world-religions have been ordained to teach
in their respective manners the same truths as the Mystery systems have
taught. Their teaching has always been twofold. There has always existed
an external, elementary, popular doctrine which has served for the
instruction of the masses who are insufficiently prepared for deeper
teaching; and concurrently therewith there has been an interior, advanced
doctrine, a more secret knowledge, which has been reserved for riper minds
and into which only proficient and properly prepared candidates, who
voluntarily sought to participate in it, were initiated. Whether in
ancient India, Egypt, Greece, Italy or Mexico, or among the Druids of
Europe, temples of initiation have ever existed for those who felt the
inward call to come apart from the multitude and to dedicate themselves to
a long discipline of body and mind with a view to acquiring the secret
knowledge and developing the spiritual faculties by means of experimental
processes of initiation of which our present ceremonies are the faint
echo. It is far beyond my present scope to describe any of these great
systems or the methods of initiation they employed. But in regard to them
I will ask you to accept my statement upon two points: (1) that although
these great schools of the Mysteries have long dropped out of the public
mind, they, or the doctrine they taught, have never ceased to exist; the e
nmity of official ecclesiasticism and the tendencies of a materialist ic
and commercial age have caused them to subside into extreme secrecy and
concealment, but their initiates have never been absent from the world;
and (2) that it was through the activity and foresight of some of these
advanced initiates that our present system of speculative Masonry is due.
You must not imply from this that modern Masonry is by any means a full or
adequate presentation of these older and larger systems. It is but their
pale and elementary shadow. But such as they are, and so far as they do
go, our rituals and doctrine are an authentic embodiment of a secret
doctrine and a secret process that have always existed for the
enlightenment of such aspirants as, putting their trust in God (as our
present candidates are made to say), have knocked at the door of certain
secret sanctuaries in the confidence that door would open and that they
would find in due course that for which they were seeking. Those who
institut ed modern speculative Masonry some 250 years ago took certain
material s lying ready to hand. They took, that is, the elementary rites
and symbols pertaining to medieval operative guilds of stone-masons and
transformed them into a system of religio-philosophic doctrine.
Thenceforward, from being related to the trade which deals in stones and
bricks, the intention of Masonry was to deal solely and simply with the
greater science of soul-building; and, save for retaining certain
analogies which the art of the practical stone-mason provided,
thenceforward it became dedicated to purposes that are wholly spiritual,
religious and philosophic.

Perhaps the chief evidence of the transformation thus effected was the
incorporation of the central legend and traditional history comprised in
our Third Degree. Obviously that legend can have had no relation to, or
practical bearing upon, the operative builders' trade. I will ask you to
reflect that no building of stone, no temple or other edifice capable of
being built with hands, has remained unfinished through the death of any
professional architect such as Hiram Abiff is popularly supposed to have
been. The principles of architecture, the genuine secrets of the building
trade, are not and never have been lost; they are thoroughly well known,
and the absurdity is manifest of supposing that Masons of any kind are
waiting for time or circumstances to restore any lost knowledge as to the
manner in which temporal buildings ought to be constructed. We know how to
erect buildings to-day quite as well as our Hebrew forefathers did who
built the famous temple at Jerusalem, and indeed a well known architect
has stated that most of our London churches are, both for size and
ornamentation, far larger and more splendid than that temple ever was. Our
duty then is to look behind the literal story; to pierce the veil of
allegory contained in the great legend and to grasp the significance of
its true purport. That which is lost is to be found, we are told, with the
Centre. But if we enquire what a Centre is, the average Mason will give
you nothing more than the official, enigmatic and not very luminous answer
that it is a point within a circle from which every part of the
circumference is equidistant. But what circle? and what circumference ?,
for there are no such things as centres or circles in respect of ordinary
buildings or architecture. And here the average Mason is at an utter loss
to explain. Press him further, " Why with the Centre? " and again he can
only give you the elusive and perplexing answer " Because that is a point
from which a Master Mason cannot err," and you are no wiser.

Brethren, it is just this elusiveness, these intentional enigmas, this
purposed puzzle-language, that are intended to put us on the scent of
something deeper than the words themselves convey, and if we fail to find,
to realize and to act upon, the intention of what is veiled behind the
letter of the rituals, we can scarcely claim to understand our own
doctrine; we can scarcely claim to have been regularly initiated, passed
and raised in the higher sense of those expressions, whatever ceremonies
we have formally passed through. " The letter killeth, the spirit giveth
life." Let us enquire what the spirit of this puzzle-language is. The
method of all great religious and initiatory systems has been to teach
their doctrine in the form of myth, legend or allegory. As our first
tracing-board lecture says, " The philosophers, unwilling to expose their
mysteries to vulgar eyes, Meaning concealed their tenets and principles of
philosophy under hieroglyphical figures," and our traditional history is
one of these hieroglyphical figures. Now the literally-minded never see
behind the letter of the allegory. The truly initiated mind discerns the
allegory's spiritual value. In fact, part of the purpose of all initiation
was, and still is, to educate the mind in penetrating the outward shell of
all phenomena, and the value of initiation depends upon the way in which
the inward truths are allowed to influence our thought and lives and to
awaken in us still deeper powers of consciousness.

The legend of the Third Degree, then, in which the essence of Masonic
 doctrine lies, was brought into our system by some advanced minds who
 derived their knowledge from other and concealed sources. The legend is
 an adaptation of a very old one and existed in various forms long before
 its association with modern Masonry. In the guise of a story about the
 building of a temple by King Solomon at Jerusalem, they were promulgating
 the truth which I have alluded to before and which is generally known as
 the Fall of Man. As our legend runs, upon the literal side of it, it was
 the purpose of a great king to erect a superb structure. He was assisted
 in that work by another king who supplied the building materials, by a
 skilful artificer whose business was to put these together according to a
 pre-ordained plan, and by large companies of craftsmen and labourers. But
 in the course of the work an evil conspiracy arose, resulting in the
 destruction of the chief artificer and preventing the completion of the
 building, which remains unfinished, therefore, to this day.

Now I will ask you to observe that this legend cannot refer to any
historical building built in the old metropolis of Palestine. If we refer
to the Bible as an authority you will find that temple was completed; it
was afterwards destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed again on more than one
occasion. Moreover, the biblical accounts make no reference whatever to
the conspiracy, or to the death of Hiram. On the other hand they state
expressly that Hiram " made an end of building " the temple; that it was
finished and completed in every particular. It is very clear then that we
must keep the two subjects entirely separate in our minds; and recognize
that the Masonic story deals with something quite distinct from the
biblical story. What temple then is referred to ? The temple, brethren,
that is still incomplete and unfinished is none that can be built with
hands. It is that temple of which all material edifices are but the types
and symbols it is the temple of the collective body of humanity itself; of
which the great initiate St. Paul said " Know ye not that ye are the
temple of God ? " A perfect humanity was the great Temple which, in the
counsels of the Most High, was intended to be reared in the mystical Holy
City, of which the local Jerusalem was the type. The three great
Master-builders, Solomon and the two Hirams, are a triad corresponding
after a manner with the Holy Trinity of the Christian religion; Hiram
Abiff being the chief architect, he " by whom all things were made " and "
in whom (as St. Paul said, using Masonic language) the whole building
fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord." The
material of this mystical temple was the souls of men, at once the living
stones, the fellow craftsmen and collaborators with the divine purpose.

But in the course of the construction of this ideal temple, something
happened that wrecked the scheme and delayed the fulfilment indefinitely.
This was the Fall of Man; the conspiracy of the craftsmen. Turn to the
book of Genesis, you will find the same subject related in the allegory of
Adam and Eve. They were intended, as you know, for perfection and
happiness, but their Creator's project became nullified by their
disobedience to certain conditions imposed upon them. I will ask you to
observe that their offence was precisely that committed by our Masonic
conspirators. They had been forbidden to eat of the Tree of Knowledge; or,
in Masonic language, they were under obligation " not to attempt to extort
the secrets of a superior degree " which they had not attained. Now the
Hebrew word Hiram means Guru, teacher of " supreme knowledge," divine
light and wisdom, and the liberty that comes therewith. But this knowledge
is only for the perfected man. It is that knowledge that Hiram said was "
kno wn to but three in the world," i.e., known only in the counsels of the
Divine Trinity, but it is knowledge that with patience and perseverance
every Mason, every child of the Creator, " may in due time become entitled
to a participation in." But just as Adam and Eve's attempt to obtain
illicit knowledge caused their expulsion from Eden and defeated the divine
purpose until they and their posterity should regain the Paradise they had
lost, so also the completion of the great mystical Temple was prevented
for the time being by the conspirators' attempt to extort from Hiram the
Master's secrets, and its construction is delayed until time and
circumstances-- God's time, and the circumstances we create for
ourselves--restore to us the lost and genuine secrets of our nature and of
the divine purpose in us.

The tragedy of Hiram Abiff, then, is not the record of any vulgar, brutal
murder of an individual man. It is a parable of cosmic and universal loss;
an allegory of the breakdown of a divine scheme. We are dealing with no
calamity that occurred during the erection of a building in an eastern
city, but with a moral disaster to universal humanity. Hiram is slain; in
other words, the faculty of enlightened wisdom has been cut off from us.
Owing to that disaster mankind is here to-day in this world of imperfect
knowledge, of limited faculties, of chequered happiness, of perpetual
toil, of death and frequent bitterness and pain; our life here is (to use
a poet's words):--

" An ever-moaning battle in the mist, Death in all life and lying in all
love; The meanest having power upon the highest, And the high purpose
broken by the worm."

The temple of human nature is unfinished and we know not how to complete
it. The want of plans and designs to regulate the disorders of individual
and social life indicates to us all that some heavy calamity has befallen
us as a race. The absence of a clear and guiding principle in the world's
life reminds us of the utter confusion into which the absence of that
Supreme Wisdom, which is personified as Hiram, has thrown us all, and
causes every reflective mind to attribute to some fatal catastrophe his
mysterious disappearance. We all long for that light and wisdom which have
become lost to us. Like the craftsmen in search of the body, we go our
different ways in search of what is lost. Many of us make no discovery of
importance throughout the length of our days. We seek it in pleasure, in
work, in all the varied occupations and diversions of our lives; we seek
it in intellectual pursuits, in religion, in Masonry, and those who search
farthest and deepest are those who become most conscious of the loss and
who are compelled to cry " Machabone ! Macbenah ! the Master is smitten,"
or, as the Christian Scriptures word it, " They have taken away my Lord,
and I know not where they have laid him."

Hiram Abiff is slain. The high light and wisdom ordained to guide and
enlighten humanity are wanting to us. The full blaze of light and perfect
knowledge that were to be ours are vanished from the race, but in the
Divine Providence there still remains to us a glimmering light in the
East. In a dark world, from which as it were the sun has disappeared, we
have still our five senses and our rational faculties to work with, and
these provide us with the substituted secrets that must distinguish us
before we regain the genuine ones.

Where is Hiram buried ? We are taught that the Wisdom of the Most High -
 personified as King Solomon ordered him to be interred in a fitting
 Masonry sepulchre outside the Holy City, " in a grave from the centre 3
 feet between N. and S., 3 feet between E. and W., and 5 feet or more
 perpendicular." Where, Brethren, do you imagine that grave to be? Can you
 locate it by following these minute details of its situation ? Probably
 you have never thought of the matter as other than an ordinary burial
 outside the walls of a geographical Jerusalem. But the grave of Hiram is
 ourselves. Each of us is the sepulchre in which the smitten Master is
 interred. If we know it not it is a further sign of our benightedness. At
 the centre of ourselves, deeper than any dissecting-knife can reach or
 than any physical investigation can fathom, lies buried the " vital and
 immortal principle," the " glimmering ray " that affiliates us to the
 Divine Centre of all life, and that is never wholly extinguished however
 evil or imperfect our lives may be. We are the grave of the Master. The
 lost guiding light is buried at the centre of ourselves. High as your
 hand may reach upwards or downwards from the centre of your own
 body--i.e., 3 feet between N. and S.-- far as it can reach to right or
 left of the middle of your person--i.e., 3 feet between W. and E.--and 5
 feet or more perpendicular--the height of the human body- -these are the
 indications by which our cryptic ritual describes the tomb of Hiram Abiff
 at the centre of ourselves. He is buried " outside the Holy City," in the
 same sense that the posterity of Adam have all been placed outside the
 walls of Paradise, for, " nothing unclean can enter into the holy place "
 which elsewhere in our Scriptures is called the Kingdom of Heaven.

What then is this " Centre," by reviving and using which we may hope to
 regain the secrets of our lost nature ? We may reason from analogies. As
 the Divine Life and Will is the centre of the whole universe and controls
 it; as the sun is the centre and life-giver of our solar system and
 controls and feeds with life the planets circling round it, so at the
 secret centre of individual human life exists a vital, immortal
 principle, the spirit and the spiritual will of man. This is the faculty,
 by using which (when we have found it) we can never err. It is a point
 within the circle of our own nature and, living as we do in this physical
 world, the circle of our existence is bounded by two grand parallel
 lines; " one representing Moses; the other King Solomon," that is to say,
 law and wisdom; the divine ordinances regulating the universe on the one
 hand; the divine "wisdom and mercy that follow us all the days of our
 life " on the other. Very truly then the Mason who keeps himself thus
 circumscribed cannot err.

Masonry, then, is a system of religious philosophy in that it provides us
with a doctrine of the universe and of our place in it. It indicates
whence we are come and whither we may return. It has two purposes. Its
first purpose is to show that man has fallen away from a high and holy
centre to the circumference or externalized condition in which we now
live; to indicate that those who so desire may regain that centre by
finding the centre in ourselves for, since Deity is as a circle whose
centre is every where, it follows that a divine centre, a " vital and
immortal principle," exists within ourselves by developing which we may
hope to regain our lost and primal stature. The second purpose of the
Craft doctrine is to declare the way by which that centre may be found
within ourselves, and this teaching is embodied in the discipline and
ordeals delineated in the three degrees. The Masonic doctrine of the
Centre--or, in other words, the Christian axiom that " the Kingdom of
Heaven is within you " --is nowhere better stated than by the poet
Browning:

" Truth is within ourselves. It takes no rise From outward things,
whate'er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in ourselves Where
truth abides in fullness; and to know Rather consists in finding out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape Than by effecting entrance for
a light Supposed to be without."

Brethren, may we all come to the knowledge how to " open the Lodge upon
the centre " of ourselves and so realize in our own conscious experience
the finding of the " imprisoned splendour " hidden in the depths of our
being, whose rising within ourselves will bring us peace and salvation.
How then does the Craft doctrine prescribe for the liberation of this
imprisoned centre ? Its first injunctions are those of our first degree.
There must be purity of thought and purpose. I need scarcely remind you
that the word candidate derives from the Latin candidus, white (in the
sense of purity), or that our postulants before entering the Lodge leave
behind them in the precincts the garments that belong to the fashion of
the outer world whose ideals they are desirous of relinquishing, and enter
the Lodge clad of in white as emblematic of the blamelessness of their
thought and the purification of their lives. As this symbolic white
clothing is worn during each of the three degrees, it is as though the see
ker after the high light of the Centre must always come uttering the
triple ascription, " Holy, Holy, Holy," as the token of the threefold
purity of body, soul and spirit, which is essential to the achievement of
his quest. He has left all money and metals behind him, for the gross
things of this world are superfluous in the world that lies within; whilst
if any dross of thought or imperfections of character remain in him, he
will find the impossibility of attaining to the consciousness of his
highest self; he will learn that he must renounce them and begin again,
and that his attempt at real initiation must be repeated.

He must be animated by a spirit of universal sympathy. Financial doles and
practical relief to the pecuniarily poor and distressed are admirable
practices as far as they go, but they by no means exhaust the meaning of
the term charity as Masonry intends it. The payment of a few guineas to
philanthropic institutions is scarcely a fulfilment of St. Paul's great
definition of charity so often read in our Lodges, by exercising which we
are wont to say that a Mason " attains the summit of his profession."

There is a far larger sense of Brotherhood than the limited conventional
one obtaining among those who are members of a common association. There
is that deep sense in which a man feels himself not only in fraternity
with his fellow-men, whether masonically his brethren or not, but realizes
himself brother to all that is, part of the universal life that thrills
through all things. A great illuminate, St. Francis of Assisi, expressed
what I refer to when he wrote in his famous canticle, of his brothers the
sun and the wind; his sisters the moon and the sea; his brethren the
animals and the birds; as being all parts of a common life, all
constituents in the scheme of the Great Architect for the restoration of
the Temple of Creation and its dedication to His service, and as all
worthy of a common love upon our part, even as they are the subject of a
common solicitude upon His.

And passing from these primary qualifications we proceed to what is
signified by our second degree, wherein is inculcated the analysis and
cultivation of the mental and rational faculties; the study of the secrets
of the marvellous, complex, psychical nature of man; the relation of these
with the still higher and spiritual part of him which, in turn, he may
learn to trace " even to the throne of God Himself " with which he is
affiliated at the root essence of his being. These studies, brethren, so
lightly touched upon in our passing-ceremony, so glibly referred to as we
recite our ritual, when undertaken with the seriousness that attached to
them in the old mystery-systems are not without just reason described in
our own words as " serious, solemn and awful." The depths of human nature
and self knowledge, the hidden mysteries of the soul of man are not, as
real initiates well know, probed into with impunity except by the "
properly prepared." The man who does so has, as it were, a cable-tow ar
ound his neck; because when once stirred by a genuine desire for the
higher knowledge that real initiation is intended to confer, he can never
turn back on what he learns thereof without committing moral suicide; he
can never be again the same man he was before he gained a glimpse of the
hidden mysteries of life. And as the Angel stood with a flaming sword at
the entrance of Eden to guard the way to the Tree of Life, so will the man
whose initiation is not a conventional one find himself threatened at the
door of the higher knowledge by opposing invisible forces if he rashly
rushes forward in a state of moral unfitness into the deep secrets of the
Centre. Better remain ignorant than embark upon this unknown sea unwisely
and without being properly prepared and in possession of the proper
passports.

And eventually the aspirant, after these preliminary disciplines, has to
learn the great truth embodied in the third degree; that he who would be
raised to perfection and regain what he has long realized has been lost to
himself, may do so only by utter self-abnegation, by a dying to all that
to the eyes and the reason of the uninitiated outer world is precious and
desirable. The third degree, brethren, is an exposition in dramatic
ceremonial of the text " Whoso would save his life must lose it." Beneath
the allegory of the death of the Master-- and remember that it is
allegory- -is expressed the universal truth that mystical death must
precede mystical rebirth. " Know ye not that ye must be born again ? " "
Unless a grain of corn fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; if
it die it bringeth forth much fruit." And it is only thus that all
Master-Masons can be raised from a figurative as a (not a physical) death
to a regenerated state and to the full stature of human nature.

The path of true initiation into fullness of life by way of a figurative
death to one's lower self is the path called in the Scriptures the narrow
way, of which it is also said that few there be who find it. It is the
narrow path between the Pillars, for Boaz and Jachin stand impliedly at
the entrance of every Masonic Temple and between them we pass each time we
enter the Lodge. Very great prominence is accorded these pillars in the
ritual, but very little explanation of their import is given, and it is
desirable to know something of their great significance. To deal with them
at all fully would require an entire lecture upon this one subject, and
even then there would have to remain unsaid in regard to these great
symbols much that is unsuited to treatment in a general lecture.

The pillars form, and have always formed, a prominent feature in the
 temples of all great systems of religion and initiation, whether Masonic
 or not. They have been incorporated into Christian architecture. If you
 recall the construction of York Minster or Westminster Abbey, you will
 recognize the pillars in the two great towers flanking the main entrance
 to those cathedrals at the west end of the structure. Non-Masons,
 therefore, enter these temples, as we do, between the pillars in the
 West; they look through them along the straight path that leads to the
 high altar, just as the Mason's symbolic passage is also from the West to
 the throne in the East. That path is, as it were, the straight path of
 life, beginning in this outer world and terminating at the throne, or
 altar, in the East. Many centuries before our Bible was written or the
 temple of Solomon described in the Books of Kings and Chronicles was
 thought of, the two pillars were used in the great temples of the
 Mysteries in Egypt, and one of the great annual public festivals was that
 of the setting up of the pillars. What, then, did they signify ? I can
 deal with the subject but very superficially here. In one of their
 aspects they stand for what is known in Eastern philosophy as the " pairs
 of opposites." Everything in nature is dual and can only be known in
 contrast with its opposite, whilst the two in combination produce a
 metaphysical third which is their synthesis and perfect balance. Thus we
 have good and evil; light and darkness (and one of the pillars was always
 white and the other black); active and passive; positive and negative;
 yes and no; outside and inside; man and woman. Neither of these is
 complete without the other; taken together they form stability. Morning
 and evening unite to form the complete day. Man is proverbially imperfect
 without his " better half," woman; the two marry to impart strength to
 each other and to establish their common house. Physical science shows
 all matter to be composed of positi ve and negative electric forces in
 perfect balance and that things would disintegrate and disappear if they
 did not stand firm in perfect union. Every drop of healthy blood in our
 bodies is a combination of red and white corpuscles, by the due balance
 of which we are established in strength and health, whilst lack of
 balance is attended by disease. The pillars therefore typify, in one of
 their aspects, perfect integrity of body and soul such as are essential
 to achieving spiritual perfection. In the terms of ancient philosophy all
 created things are composed of fire and water; fire being their spiritual
 and water their material element, and so the pillars represented also
 these universal properties. In one of the Apocryphal Scriptures (2
 Esdras, 7; 7-8), the path to true wisdom and life is spoken of as an
 entrance between a fire on the right hand and a deep water on the left,
 and so narrow and painful that only one man may go through it at once.
 This is in allusion to the narrow and painful p th of real initiation of
 which our entrance into the Lodge between the pillars is a symbol.

Now all great symbols are shadowed forth in the person of man himself. The
human organism is the true Lodge that must be opened and wherein the great
Mysteries are to be found, and our Lodge rooms are so built and furnished
as to typify the human organism. The lower and physical part of us is
animal and earthy, and rests, like the base of Jacob's ladder, upon the
earth; whilst our higher portion is spiritual and reaches to the heavens.
These two portions of ourselves are in perpetual conflict, the spiritual
and the carnal ever warring against one another; and he alone is the wise
man who has learned to effect a perfect balance between them and to
establish himself in strength so that his own inward house stands firm
against all weakness and temptation. And in still another sense the two
pillars may be seen exemplified in the human body. There are our two legs,
upon both of which we must stand firm to acquire a perfect physical
balance. And Y having discerned this simple truth, and having seen that
the path of true initiation, which is one of spiritual rebirth, is an
arduous and painful progress to him who undertakes it, let me ask you to
consider in all sacredness another physical phenomenon, the great mystery
of which we perhaps think little of by reason of its frequency and of our
familiarity with it. I refer to the incident--the great mystery, I might
say--of child-birth. Brethren, every child born into this world, coming
into this life as into a great house of initiation, trial and discipline,
passes, amid pain and travail, through a strait and narrow way and between
the two pillars that support the temple of its mother's body. And thus in
the commonplaces of life, in which for those who have clean hearts there
is nothing common or unclean but everything is sacred and symbolic, the
act of physical birth is an image and a foreshadowing of that mystical
rebirth and of that passing through a strait gate and a narro w way in a
deeper sense, without which it is written that a man sha ll not enter into
the Kingdom of Heaven.

The regenerated man, the man who not merely in ceremonial form but in
vital experience, has passed through the phases of which the Masonic
degrees are the faint symbol, is alone worthy of the title of Master-Mason
in the building of the Temple that is not made with hands but that is
being built invisibly out of the souls of just men made perfect. Not only
in this world is this temple being built; only the foundations of the
intended structure are perceptible here. The Craft contemplates other and
loftier planes of life, other storeys of the vast structure than this we
live and work in. Just as our Craft organization has its higher assemblies
and councils in the form of the Provincial and the Grand Lodges that
regulate and minister to the need of the Lodges of common craftsmen, so in
the mighty system of the universal structure there are grades of higher
life, hierarchies of celestial beings working and ministering in the
loftier portions of the building, beyond our present ken. And as here at
the head of our limited and temporal brotherhood there rules a Grand
Master, so too over the cosmic system there presides the Great Architect
and Most Worshipful Grand Master of all, whose officers are holy Angels;
and the recognition of this truth may tend to consecrate us in the
discharge of the little symbolic part we severally perform in the system
which is the image of the great scheme.


The world at large, Brethren, is as it were, but one great Lodge and place
of initiation, of which our Masonic Lodges are the little mirrors. Mother
Earth is also the Mother-Lodge of us all. As its vast work goes on, souls
are ever descending into it and souls are being called out of it at the
knocks of some great unseen Warden of life and death, who calls them here
to labour and summons them hence for refreshment. After the Lodge, the
festive board; after the labour of this world, the repast and refreshment
of the heavenly places. And thus, although our after-proceedings have no
formal place in the Masonic system, any more than the after-life is in
formal connection with us whilst our sphere of activity is in this present
world, still it plays a striking and of appropriate part calculated to
awaken us to the deep significance of our customary conviviality. Upon
such occasions we are wont to drink the toast of " the King and the
Craft," remembering as loyal subjects and loving brethren our ear thly
sovereign and our Masonic comrades throughout the world. But here again I
would ask every Master who gives and every brother who drinks this toast,
to lift his thoughts to a greater King and to a larger craft than our
limited and symbolic fraternity. I would remind you how in the Christian
Mysteries there was another Master whom unconsciously we imitate, who also
after supper took the cup and when he had given thanks to the King of
kings, pledged himself, as it were, to that larger Craft which is
co-extensive with humanity itself; directing them in this manner to show
forth symbolically a certain great mystery until his coming again. But
this, Brethren, is none other than what is implied in our own Masonic
words when we also are directed to use certain substituted secrets until
time and circumstances shall restore to us the genuine ones.

In submitting, then, these thoughts to you, it may be claimed that Masonry
offers to those capable of appreciating it a working philosophy and a
practical rule of life. It discloses to us the scheme of the universe-- a
scheme once shattered and arrested, but left in the hands of humanity to
restore. It indicates our place, our purpose and our destiny in that
universe. It is as a great house of instruction and initiation into the
Mysteries of a larger and fuller life than the unenlightened worldling is
as yet ripe Masonry for appreciating. Let us, therefore, value and
endeavour fully to appreciate its mysteries. Let us also be careful not to
cheapen the Order by failing to realize its meaning and by admitting to
its ranks those who are unready or unfitted to understand its import. I
said at the outset of this lecture that some Masons are beginning to awake
to a larger consciousness of the true meaning and purport of our Craft. I
say now at the end, Brethren ! lift up your hearts; throw wide ope n the
shutters of your minds and imaginations. Learn to see in Masonry something
more than a parochial system enjoining elementary morality, performing
perfunctory and meaningless rites, and serving as an agreeable accessory
to social life. But look to find in it a living philosophy, a vital guide
upon those matters which of all others are the most sacred and the most
urgent to our ultimate well-being. Realize that its secrets which are "
many and invaluable " are not upon the surface; that they are not those of
the tongue, but of the heart; and that its mysteries are those eternal
ones that treat of the spirit rather than of the body of man. And with
this knowledge clothe yourselves and enter the Lodge--not merely the
Lodge-room of our symbolic Craft, but the larger Lodge of life, wherein,
silently and without the sound of metal tool, is proceeding the perpetual
work of rebuilding the unfinished and invisible Temple of which t he
mystical stones and timber are the souls of men. In that rebuild ing, men
and women are taking part who, whilst formally not members of our Craft,
are still unconsciously Masons in the best of senses. For whosoever is
carefully and deliberately " squaring his stone " is fitting himself for
his place in the " intended structure " which gradually is being " put
together with exact nicety " and which, though erected by ourselves, one
day will become manifest to our clearer vision and will appear " like the
work of the Great Architect of the Universe than that of human hands."
Upon us Masons therefore, who have the advantage of a regular and
organized system which provides and inculcates for us an outline of the
great truths that we have been considering and that always in the world
have been regarded as secret, as sacred, and as vital, there rests the
responsibility attaching to our privilege, and it must be our aim to
endeavour to enter into the full heritage of understanding and practising
the system to which we belong.

Chapter III

FURTHER NOTES ON CRAFT SYMBOLISM.

" There is no darkness but ignorance." (Shakespeare). " Lighten our
darkness, we beseech Thee, and defend us from all perils and dangers of
this night." (Anglican Liturgy).

" Belov'd All-Father, and all you gods that haunt this place, grant me to
be beautiful in the inner man, and all I have of outer things to be one
with those within ! May I count only the wise man rich, and may my store
of gold be such as none but the good can bear. Anything more ? That
prayer, I think, is enough for me ! " (Prayer of Socrates).

In the Lecture on the First Degree tracing board Masonry is spoken of as "
an art founded on the principles of Geometry," and also as being " a
science dealing with the cultivation and improvement of the human mind."
Its usages and customs are also there said to have derived " from the
ancient Egyptians whose philosophers, unwilling to expose their mysteries
to vulgar eyes, conceal their principles and philosophy under signs and
symbols," which are still perpetuated in the Masonic Order.

Something of these signs and symbols, as well as the purpose of the
Masonic system as a whole, has already been outlined in previous papers.
In the present notes it is proposed to extend the consideration of the
subject in greater detail.

The Instruction Lectures associated with each Degree of the Craft purport
to expound the doctrine of the system and interpret the symbols and
rituals. But these Lectures themselves stand in similar need of
interpretation. Indeed, they are contrived with very great cunning and
concealment. Their compilers were confronted with the dual task of giving
a faithful, if partial, expression of esoteric doctrine and at the same
time of so masking it that its full sense would not be understood without
some effort or enlightenment, and should convey little or nothing at all
to those unworthy of or unripe for the " gnosis " or wisdom-teaching. They
discharged that task with signal success and in a way which provokes
admiration from those who can appreciate it for their profound knowledge
of, and insight into, the science of self-knowledge and regeneration. They
were obviously Initiates of an advanced type, well versed in the secret
tradition and philosophy of the Mystery systems of the past and acutely pe
rceptive of the deeper and mystical sense of the Holy Scriptures to which
they constantly make luminous reference.

To deal with these explanatory Lectures in complete detail would involve a
very long task. We will, however, proceed to speak of some of the more
prominent matters with which they deal and so elaborate the subject-matter
of our previous papers.

Attention must first be called to the term " Geometry," the art upon which
the entire system is stated to be founded. To the ordinary man Geometry
means nothing more than the branch of mathematics associated with the
problems of Euclid, a subject obviously having no relation to Masonic
ceremonial and ideals. Another explanation of the term must therefore be
looked for.

Now Geometry was one of the " seven noble arts and sciences " of ancient
philosophy. It means literally the science of earth-measurement. But the "
earth " of the ancients did not mean, as it does to us, this physical
planet. It meant the primordial substance, or undifferentiated soul-stuff
out of which we human beings have been created, the " mother-earth " from
which we have all sprung and to which we must all undoubtedly return. Man
was made, the Scriptures teach, out of the dust of the ground, and it is
that ground, that earth or fundamental substance of his being, which
requires to be " measured " in the sense of investigating and
understanding its nature and properties. No competent builder erects a
structure without first satisfying himself about the nature of the
materials with which he proposes to build, and in the speculative or
spiritual and " royal " art of Masonry no Mason can properly build the
temple of his own soul without first understanding the nature of the raw
material he h as to work upon.

Geometry, therefore, is synonymous with self knowledge, the understanding
of the basic substance of our being, its properties and potentialities.
Over the ancient temples of initiation was inscribed the sentence " Know
thyself and thou shalt know the universe and God," a phrase which implies
in the first place that the uninitiated man is without knowledge of
himself, and in the second place that when he attains that knowledge he
will realize himself to be no longer the separate distinctified individual
he now supposes himself to be, but to be a microcosm or summary of all
that is and to be identified with the Being of God.

Masonry is the science of the attainment of that supreme knowledge and is,
therefore, rightly said of to be founded on the principles of Geometry as
thus defined.

But do not let it be supposed that the physical matter of which our mortal
bodies are composed is the " earth " referred to. That is but corruptible
impermanent stuff which merely forms a temporary encasement of the
imperishable true " earth " or substance of our souls, and enables them to
enter into sense-relations with the physical world. The distinction must
be clearly grasped and held in mind, for Masonry has to deal not so much
with the transient outward body as with the eternal inward being of man,
although the outward body is temporarily involved with the latter. It is
the immortal soul of man which is the ruined temple and needs to be
rebuilt upon the principles of spiritual science. The mortal body of it,
with its unruly wills and affections, stands in the way of that
achievement. It is the rubble which needs to be cleared before the new
foundations can be set and the new structure reared. Yet even rubble can
be made to serve useful purposes and be rearranged and worked into the new
e rection, and accordingly man's outer temporal nature can be disciplined
and utilized in the reconstruction of himself. But in order to effect this
reconstruction he must first have a full understanding of the material he
has to work with and to work upon. For this purpose he must be made
acquainted with what is called " the form of the Lodge."



THE FORM OF THE LODGE

This is officially described as " an oblong square; in length between East
and West, in breadth between North and South, in depth from the surface of
the earth to its centre, and even as high as the heavens."

This is interpretable as alluding to the human individual. Man himself is
a Lodge. And just as the Masonic Lodge is " an assemblage of brethren and
fellows met to expatiate upon the mysteries of the Craft," so individual
man is a composite being made up of various properties and faculties
assembled together in him with a view to their harmonious interaction and
working out the purpose of life. It must always be remembered that
everything in Masonry is figurative of man and his human constitution and
spiritual evolution. Accordingly, the Masonic Lodge is sacramental of the
individual Mason as he is when he seeks admission to a Lodge. A man's
first entry into a Lodge is symbolical of his first entry upon the science
of knowing himself.

His organism is symbolised by a four-square or four-sided building. This
is in accordance with the very ancient philosophical doctrine that four is
the arithmetical symbol of everything which has manifested or physical
form. Spirit, which is unmanifest and not physical, is expressed by the
number three and the triangle. But Spirit which has so far projected
itself as to become objective and wear a material form or body, is denoted
by the number four and the quadrangle or square. Hence the Hebrew name of
Deity, as known and worshipped this outer world, was the great unspeakable
name of four letters or Tetragrammaton, whilst the cardinal points of
space are also four, M of and every manifested thing is a compound of the
four basic metaphysical elements called by the ancients fire, water, air
and earth. The foursidedness of the Lodge, therefore, is also a reminder
that the human organism is compounded of those four elements in balanced
proportions. " Water " represents the psychic nature; "Air," the
mentality; " Fire," the will and nervous force; whilst " Earth " is the
condensation in which the other three become stabilized and encased.

But it is an oblongated (or duplicated) square, because man's organism
does not consist of his physical body alone. The physical body has its "
double " or ethereal counterpart in the astral body, which is an extension
of the physical nature and a compound of the same four elements in an
impalpable and more tenuous form. The oblong spatial form of the Lodge
must therefore be considered as referable to the physical and ethereal
nature of man in the conjunction in which they in fact consist in each of
us.

The four sides of the Lodge have a further significance. The East of the
Lodge represents man's spirituality, his highest and most spiritual mode
of consciousness, which in most men is very little developed, if at all,
but is still latent and slumbering and becomes active only in moments of
stress or deep emotion. The West (or polar opposite of the East)
represents his normal rational understanding, the consciousness he employs
in temporal every-day affairs, his material-mindedness or, as we might
say, his " common sense." Midway between these East and West extremes is
the South, the halfway house and meeting-place of the spiritual intuition
and the rational understanding; the point denoting abstract
intellectuality and our intellectual power develops to its highest, just
as the sun attains its meridian splendour in the South. The antipodes of
this is the North, the sphere of benightedness and ignorance, referable to
merely sense-reactions and impressions received by that lowest and least
reli able mode of perception, our physical sense nature.

Thus the four sides of the Lodge point to four different, yet progressive,
modes of consciousness available to us. Sense-impression (North), reason
(West), intellectual ideation (South), and spiritual intuition (East);
making up our four possible ways of knowledge. Of these the ordinary man
employs only the first two or perhaps three, in accordance with his
development and education, and his outlook on life and knowledge of truth
are correspondingly restricted and imperfect. Full and perfect knowledge
is possible only when the deep seeing vision and consciousness of man's
spiritual principle have been awakened and superadded to his other
cognitive faculties. This is possible only to the true Master, who has all
four methods of knowledge at his disposal in perfect balance and adjusted
like the four sides of the Lodge; and hence the place of the Master and
Past-Masters being always in the East.

The " depth " of the Lodge (" from the surface of the earth to its centre
") refers to the distance or difference of degree between the superficial
consciousness of our earthly mentality and the supreme of divine degree of
consciousness resident at man's spiritual centre when he has become able
to open his Lodge upon that centre and to function in and with it.

The " height " of the Lodge (" even as high as the heavens ") implies that
the range of consciousness possible to us, when we have developed our
potentialities to the full, is infinite. Man who has sprung from the earth
and developed through the lower kingdoms of nature to his present rational
state, has yet to complete his evolution by becoming a god-like being and
unifying his consciousness with the Omniscient--to promote which is and
always has been the sole aim and purpose of all Initiation.

To scale this " height," to attain this expansion of consciousness, is
achieved " by the use of a ladder of many rounds or staves, but of three
principal ones, Faith, Hope and Charity," of which the greatest and most
effectual is the last. That is to say, there are innumerable ways of
developing one's consciousness to higher degrees, and in fact every
common-place incident of daily experience may contribute to that end if it
be rightly interpreted and its purpose in the general pattern of our life
scheme be discerned; yet even these should be subordinate to the three
chief qualifications, namely, Faith in the possibility of attaining the
end in view; Hope, or a persistent fervent desire for its fulfilment; and
finally an unbounded Love which, seeking God in all men and all things,
despite their outward appearances, and thinking no evil, gradually
identifies the mind and nature of the aspirant with that ultimate Good
upon which his thought, desire and gaze should be persistently directed.


It is important to note here that this enlargement of consciousness is in
no way represented as being dependent upon intellectual attainments,
learning or book-knowledge. These may be, and indeed are, lesser staves of
the ladder of attainment; but they are not numbered among the principal
ones. Compare St. Paul's words " Though I have all knowledge and have not
love, I am nothing ;" and those of a medieval mystic " By love He may be
gotten and holden, but by wit and understanding never."

The Lodge is " supported by three grand pillars, Wisdom, Strength and
Beauty." Again the references are not to the external meeting-place, but
to a triplicity of properties resident in the individual soul, which will
become increasingly manifest in the aspirant as he progresses and adapts
himself to the Masonic discipline. As is written of the youthful Christian
Master that " he increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God
and man," so will it also become true of the neophyte Mason who aspires to
Mastership. He will become conscious of an increase of perceptive faculty
and understanding; he will become aware of having tapped a previously
unsuspected source of power, giving him enhanced mental strength and
self-confidence; there will become observable in him developing graces of
character, speech and conduct that were previously foreign to him.

The Floor, or groundwork of the Lodge, a chequer-work of black and white
squares, denotes the dual quality of everything connected with terrestrial
life and the physical groundwork of human nature the mortal body and its
appetites and affections. " The web of our life is a mingled yarn, good
and ill together," wrote Shakespeare. Everything material is characterized
by inextricably interblended good and evil, light and shade, joy and
sorrow, positive and negative. What is good for me may be evil for you;
pleasure is generated from pain and ultimately degenerates into pain
again; what it is right to do at one moment may be wrong the next; I am
intellectually exalted to-day and to-morrow correspondingly depressed and
benighted. The dualism of these opposites governs us in everything, and
experience of it is prescribed for us until such time as, having learned
and outgrown its lesson, we are ready for advancement to a condition where
we outgrow the sense of this chequer-work existence and those op posites
cease to be perceived as opposites, but are realized as a unity or
synthesis. To find that unity or synthesis is to know the peace which
passes understanding-- i.e. which surpasses our present experience,
because in it the darkness and the light are both alike, and our present
concepts of good and evil, joy and pain, are transcended and found
sublimated in a condition combining both. And this lofty condition is
represented by the indented or tesselated border skirting the black and
white chequer-work, even as the Divine Presence and Providence surrounds
and embraces our temporal organisms in which those opposites are inherent.

Why is the chequer floor-work given such prominence in the Lodge-furniture
? The answer is to be found in the statement in the Third Degree Ritual: "
The square pavement is for the High Priest to walk upon." Now it is not
merely the Jewish High Priest of centuries ago that is here referred to,
but the individual member of the Craft. For every Mason is intended to be
the High Priest of his own personal temple and to make of it a place where
he and Deity may meet. By the mere fact of being in this dualistic world
every living being, whether a Mason or not, walks upon the square pavement
of mingled good and evil in every action of his life, so that the
floor-cloth is the symbol of an elementary philosophical truth common to
us all. But, for us, the words "walk upon" imply much more than that. They
mean that he who aspires to be master of his fate and captain of his soul
must walk upon these opposites in the sense of transcending and dominating
them, of trampling upon his lower sensual nature and keeping it beneath
his feet in subjection and control. He must become able to rise above the
motley of good and evil, to be superior and indifferent to the ups and
downs of fortune, the attractions and fears governing ordinary men and
swaying their thoughts and actions this way or that. His object is the
development of his innate spiritual potencies, and it is impossible that
these should develop so long as he is over-ruled by his material
tendencies and the fluctuating emotions of pleasure and pain that they
give birth to. It is by rising superior to these and attaining serenity
and mental equilibrium under any circumstances in which for the moment he
may be placed, that a Mason truly " walks upon " the chequered ground work
of existence and the conflicting tendencies of his more material nature.

The Covering of the Lodge is shown in sharp contrast to its black and
white flooring and is described as " a celestial canopy of divers colours,
even the heavens."

If the flooring symbolizes man's earthy sensuous nature, the ceiling
typifies his ethereal nature, his " heavens " and the properties resident
therein. The one is the reverse and the opposite pole of the other. His
material body is visible and densely composed. His ethereal surround, or "
aura," is tenuous and invisible, (save to clairvoyant vision), and like
the fragrance thrown off by a flower. Its existence will be doubted by
those unprepared to accept what is not physically demonstrable, but the
Masonic student, who will be called upon to accept many such truths
provisionally until he knows them as certainties, should reflect (I) that
he has entered the Craft with the professed object of receiving light upon
the nature of his own being, (2) that the Order engages to assist him to
that light in regard to matters of which he is admittedly ignorant, and
that its teachings and symbols were devised by wise and competent
instructors in such matters, and (3) that a humble, docile and receptive
me ntal attitude towards those symbols and their meanings will better
conduce to his advancement than a critical or hostile one.

The fact that man throws off, or radiates from himself, an ethereal
 surround or " covering " is testified to by the aureoles and haloes shown
 in works of art about the persons of saintly characters. The unsaintly
 are not so distinctified, not because they are not so surrounded, but
 because in their case the " aura " exists as but an irregularly shaped
 and coloured cloud reflecting their normal undisciplined mentality and
 passional nature, as the rain-clouds reflect the sunlight in different
 tints. The " aura " of the man who has his mentality clean and his
 passions and emotions well in hand becomes a correspondingly orderly and
 shapely encasement of clearly defined form and iridescence, regularly
 striated like the colours of the spectrum or the rainbow. Biblically,
 this " aura " is described as a " coat of many colours " and as having
 characterized Joseph, the greatest of the sons of Jacob, in contrast with
 that patriarch's less morally and spiritually developed sons who were not
 distinctified by any such coat.

In Masonry the equivalent of the aureole is the symbolic clothing worn by
Provincial and Grand Lodge Officers. This is of deep blue, heavily fringed
with gold, in correspondence with the deep blue centre and luminous
circumference of flame. " His ministers are flames of fire." Provincial
and Grand Lodge Officers are drawn from those who are Past Masters in the
Craft; that is, from those who theoretically have attained sanctity,
regeneration and Mastership of themselves, and have become joined to the
Grand Lodge above where they " shine as the stars."

It follows from all this that the Mason who seriously yields himself to
the discipline of the Order of is not merely improving his character and
chastening his thoughts and desires. He is at the same time unconsciously
building up an inner ethereal body which will form his clothing, or
covering, when his transitory outer body shall have passed away. " There
are celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial......and as we have borne the
image of the earthly we also shall bear the image of the heavenly." And
the celestial body must be built up out of the sublimated properties of
the terrestrial one. This is one of the secrets and mysteries of the
process of regeneration and self-transmutation, to promote which the Craft
was designed. This is the true temple-building that Masonry is concerned
with. The Apron being the Masonic symbol of the bodily organism, changes
and increasing elaborateness in it as the Mason advances to higher stages
in the Craft symbolize (in theory) the actual development that is
gradually taking place in his nature.

Moreover, as in the outer heavens of nature the sun, moon and stars exist
and function, so in the personal heavens of man there operate metaphysical
forces inherent in himself and described by the same terms. In the make-up
of each of us exists a psychic magnetic field of various forces,
determining our individual temperaments and tendencies and influencing our
future. To those forces have also been given the names of " sun," " moon "
and planets, and the science of their interaction and outworking was the
ancient science of astronomy, or, as it is now more often called
astrology, which is one of the liberal arts and sciences recommended
further to the study of every Mason and the pursuit of which Notes on
belongs in particular to the Fellow-Craft stage.

THE POSITIONS OF THE OFFICERS OF THE LODGE.

The seven Officers- three principal and three subordinate ones, with an
additional minor one serving as a connecting link with the ourside world
-represent seven aspects or faculties of consciousness psychologically
interactive and co-ordinated into a unity so as to constitute a "just and
perfect Lodge." As a man, any one of whose faculties is disordered or
uncoordinated, is accounted insane, so a Lodge would be imperfect and
incapacitated for effective work if tis functional mechanism were
incomplete.

Seven is universally the number of completeness. The time-periods of
creation were seven. The spectrum of light consists of seven colours; the
musical scale of seven days; our physiological changes run in cycles of
seven years. Man himself is a seven-fold organism in correspondence with
all these and the normal years of his life are seven multiplied by ten.

The "Master," or Chief Officer, in man is the spiritual principle in him,
which is the apex and the root of his being and to which all his
subsidiary faculties should be subordinate and responsive. when the
Master's gavel knocks, those of the Wardens at once repeat the knocks.
When the Divine Principle in man speaks in the depth of his being, the
remaining portions of his nature should reverberate in sympathy. Without
the presence of this Divine Principle in him man would be less than human.
Because of its presence in him he can become more than human. By
cultivating his consciousness of it he may become unified with it in
proportion as he denies and renounces everything in himself that is less
than divine. It is the inextinguishable light of a Master Mason which,
being immortal and eternal, continues to shine when everything temporal
and mortal has disappeared.

The Senior Warden, whilst the Master's chief executive officer, is his
anthesis and opposite pole. He personifies the soul, the psychic or
animistic principle in man, which, if unassociated with and unillumined by
the greater light of the Spirit or Master-principle, has no inherent light
of its own at all. At best he in the West can but reflect and transmit
that greater light from the East, as the moon receives and reflects
sunlight. Wherefore in Masonry his light is spoken of as the moon. In
Nature when the moon is not shone upon by the sun it is invisible and
virtually non-existent for us; when it is, it is one of the most
resplendent of phenomena. Similarly human intelligence is valuable or
negligible according as it is enlightened by the Master-light of the
Divine Principle, or merely darkly functioning from its own unillumined
energies. In the former case it is the chief executive faculty or
transmitting medium of the Supreme Wisdom; in the latter it can display
nothing better than brute- reason.

Midway between the Master-light from the East and the " Moon " in the West
 is placed the Junior Warden in the South, symbolizing the third greater
 light, the " Sun." And, masonically, the " sun " stands for the
 illuminated human intelligence and Craft understanding, which results
 from the material brain-mind being thoroughly permeated and enlightened
 by the Spiritual Principle; it denotes these two in a state of balance
 and harmonious interaction, the Junior Warden personifying the
 balance-point or meeting-place of man's natural reason and his spiritual
 intuition. Accordingly it is he who, as representing this enlightened
 mental condition, asserts in the Second Degree (which is the degree of
 personal development where that condition is theoretically achieved) that
 he has been enabled in that degree to discover a sacred symbol placed in
 the centre of the building and alluding to the G.G.O.T.U. What is meant
 is, of course, that the man who has in reality (and not merely
 ceremonially) advanced to the second degree of self development has now
 discerned that God is not outside him, but within him and overshadowing
 his own " building " or organism; a discovery which he is thereupon urged
 to follow up with fervency and zeal so that he may more and more closely
 unify himself with this Divine Principle. This, however, is a process
 requiring time, effort and self-struggle. The unification is not achieved
 suddenly. There are found to be obstacles, " enemies " in the way,
 obstructing it, due to the aspirant's own imperfections and limitations.
 These must first be gradually overcome, and it is the eradication of
 these which is alluded to in the sign of the degree, indicating that he
 desires to cleanse his heart and cast away all evil from it, to purify
 Meaning himself for closer alliance with that pure Light. It is only by
 this " sun-light," this newly found illumination, that he has become able
 to see into the depths of his own nature; and this is the " Sun " which,
 like Joshua, he prays may " stand still " and its light be retained by
 him until he has achieved the conquest of all these enemies. The problem
 of the much discredited biblical miracle of the sun standing still in the
 heavens disappears when its true meaning is perceived in the light of the
 interpretation given by the compilers of the Masonic ritual, who well
 knew that it was not the solar orb that was miraculously stayed in its
 course in violation of natural law, but that the "sun " in question
 denotes an enlightened perceptive state experienced by every one who in
 this " valley of Ajalon " undertakes the task of self-conquest and "
 fighting the battles of the Lord " against his own lower propensities.

We have now spoken of the Senior and Junior Wardens in their respective
psychological significances and as being described as the " Moon " and "
Sun." In this connection it is well to point out here that the lights of
both Moon and Sun become extinguished in the darkness of the Third Degree.
In the great work of self-transformation they are lights and helps up to a
point. When that point is reached they are of no further avail; the grip
of each of them proves a slip and the Master-Light, or Divine Principle,
alone takes up and completes the regenerative change: " The sun shall be
no more thy light by day, neither for brightness shall the moon give light
unto thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light and thy
God thy glory; and the days of thy mourning shall be ended." (Is. lx.
19-20).

The three lesser Officers and Tyler, who, with the three principal ones,
complete the executive septenary, represent the three greater Officers'
energies transmitted into the lower faculties of man's organism. The
Senior Deacon, as the Master's adjutant and emissary, forms the link
between East and West. The Junior Deacon, as the Senior Warden's adjutant
and emissary, forms the link between West and South; whilst the Inner
Guard acts under the immediate control of the Junior Warden and in
mutually reflex action with the Outer Guard or contact-point with the
outer world of sense-impressions.

The whole seven thus typify the mechanism of human consciousness; they
represent a series of discrete but co-ordinated parts connecting man's
outer nature with his inmost Divine Principle and providing the necessary
channels for reciprocal action between the spiritual and material poles of
his organism.

In other words, and to use an alternative symbol of the same fact, man is
potentially a seven-branched golden candlestick. Potentially so, because
as yet he has not transmuted the base metals of his nature into gold, or
lit up the seven candles or parts of his organism with the Promethean fire
of the Divine Principle. Meanwhile that symbol of what is possible to him
is offered for his reflection and contemplation, and he may profitably
study the description of regenerated, perfected man given in Meaning
Revelation 1, 12-20.

To summarize, the seven Officers typify the Masonry following sevenfold
parts of the human mechanism:

W.M. Spirit (Pneuma). S.W. Soul (Psyche). J.W. Mind (Nous, Intellect).
S.D. The link between Spirit and Soul. J.D. The link between Soul and
Mind. I.G. The inner sense-nature (astral). O.G. The outer sense-nature
(physical).

THE GREATER AND LESSER LIGHTS

The purpose of Initiation may be defined as follows:--it is to stimulate
and awaken the Candidate to direct cognition and irrefutable demonstration
of facts and truths of his own being about which previously he has been
either wholly ignorant or only notionally informed; it is to bring him
into direct conscious contact with the Realities underlying the
surface-images of things, so that, instead of holding merely beliefs or
opinions about himself, the Universe and God, he is directly and
convincingly confronted with Truth itself; and finally it is to move him
to become the Good and the Truth revealed to him by identifying himself
with it. (This is of course a gradual process involving greater or less
time and effort in proportion to the capacity and equipment of the
candidate himself.)

The restoration to light of the candidate in the First Degree is,
therefore, indicative of an important crisis. It symbolizes the first
enlargement of perception that, thanks to his own earnest aspirations and
the good offices of the guides and instructors to whom he has yielded
himself, Initiation brings him. It reveals to him a threefold symbol,
referred to as the three great though emblematic lights in Masonry--the
Holy Bible, Square and Compasses in a state of conjunction, the two latter
resting on the first-named as their ground or base. As this triple symbol
is the first object his outward eye gazes upon after enlightenment, so in
correspondence what they emblematize is the first truth his inward eye is
meant to recognize and contemplate upon.

He is also made aware of three emblematic lesser lights, described as
alluding to the " Sun," " Moon " and " Master of the Lodge," (the
psychological significance of which has already been explained in our
interpretation of the Officers of the Lodge).

Now the fact is that the candidate can only see the three greater Lights
by the help of the three lesser ones. In other words the lesser triad is
the instrument by which he beholds the greater one; it is his own
perceptive faculty (subject) looking out upon something larger (object)
with which it is not yet identified, just as so small a thing as the eye
can behold the expanse of the heavens and the finite mind can contemplate
infinitude.

What is implied, then, is that the lesser lights of the candidate's normal
finite intelligence are employed to reveal to him the greater lights or
fundamental essences of his as yet undeveloped being. A pigmy rudimentary
consciousness is being made aware of its submerged source and roots, and
placed in sharp contrast with the limitless possibilities available to it
when those hidden depths have been developed and brought into function.
The candidate's problem and destiny is to lose himself to find himself, to
unify his lesser with his greater lights, so that he no longer functions
merely with an elementary reflex consciousness but in alliance with the
All-Conscious with which he has become identified. In the Royal Arch
Degree he will discover that this identification of the lesser and greater
lights has theoretically become achieved. The interlaced triangles of
lights surrounding the central altar in that Supreme Degree imply the
union of perceptive faculty with the object of their contemplati on; the
blending of the human and the Divine consciousness.

What then do the three Greater Lights emblematize, and what does their
intimate conjunction connote ?

(1) The written Word is the emblem and external expression of the
unwritten Eternal Word, the Logos or Substantial Wisdom of Deity out of
which every living soul has emanated and which, therefore, is the ground
or base of human life. " In the beginning was the Word and the Word was
with God and the Word was God; without Him was not anything made that was
made; in Him was life and the life was the light of men; and the light
shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not." In an
intelligently conducted Lodge the Sacred Volume should lie open at the
first chapter of the Gospel by St. John, the patron-saint of Masonry, so
that it may be these words that shall meet the candidate's eyes when
restored to light and remind him that the basis of his being is the Divine
Word resident and shining Further within his own darkness and ignorance,
which Notes on realize and comprehend not that fact. He has lost Craft all
consciousness of that truth, and this dereliction is the " lost Word " of
whic h every Mason is theoretically in search and which with due
instruction and his own industry he hopes to find. Finding that, he will
find all things, for he will have found God within himself. Let the
candidate also reflect that it is the secret motions and promptings of
this Word within him that have impelled him to enter the Craft and to seek
initiation into light. In the words of a great initiate " thy seeking is
the cause of thy finding "; for the finding is but the final coming to
self-consciousness of that inward force which first impelled the quest for
light. Hence it is that no one can properly enter the Craft, or hope for
real initiation, if he joins the Order from any less motive than that of
finding God, the " hid treasure," within himself. His first place of
preparation must needs be in the heart, and his paramount desire and
heart-hunger must be for that Light which, when attained, is Omniscience
coming to consciousness in him; otherwise all ceremonial initiation will
be with out a vail and he will fail even to understand the external
symbols and allegories of it.

(2) The Square, resting upon the Sacred Volume, is the symbol of the human
soul as it was generated out of the Divine Word which underlies it. That
soul was created " square," perfect, and like everything which proceeded
from the Creator's hand was originally pronounced " very good," though
invested with freedom of choice and capacity for error. The builder's
square, however, used as a Craft symbol, is really an approximation of a
triangle with its apex downwards and base upwards, which is a very ancient
symbol of the soul and psychic constitution of man and is known as the
Water Triangle.

(3) The Compasses interlaced with the square are the symbol of the Spirit
of the Soul, its functional energy or Fire. Of itself the soul would be a
mere inert passivity, a negative quantity unbalanced by a positive
opposite. Its active properties are the product of the union of itself
with its underlying and inspiring Divine basis, as modified by the good or
evil tendencies of the soul itself. God " breathed into man the breath of
life and man became--no longer a soul, which he was previously--but a
living (energizing) soul." This product, or fiery energy, of the soul is
the Spirit of man (a good or evil force accordingly as he shapes it) and
is symbolized by what has always been known as the Fire Triangle (with
apex upward and base downward), which symbol is approximately reproduced
in the Compasses.

To summarize; the three Greater Lights emblematize the inextricably
interwoven triadic groundwork of man's being; (1) the Divine Word or
Substance as its foundation; (2) a passive soul emanated therefrom; (3) an
active spirit or energizing capacity generated in the soul as the result
of the interaction of the former two. Man himself therefore (viewed apart
from the temporal body now clothing him) is a triadic unit, rooted in and
proceeding from the basic Divine Substance.

Observe that in the First Degree the points of the Compasses are hidden by
the Square. In the Second Degree, one point is disclosed. In the Third
both are exhibited. The implication is that as the Candidate progresses,
the inertia and negativity of the soul become increasingly transmuted and
superseded by the positive energy and activity of the Spirit. The Fire
Triangle gradually assumes preponderance over the Water Triangle,
signifying that the Aspirant becomes a more vividly and spiritually
conscious being than he was at first.

OPENING AND CLOSING THE LODGE

FIRST OR ENTERED APPRENTICE DEGREE

If the Lodge with its appointments and officers be a sacramental figure of
oneself and of the mechanism of personal consciousness, opening the Lodge
in the successive Degrees implies ability to expand, open up and intensify
that consciousness in three distinct stages surpassing the normal level
applicable to ordinary mundane affairs.

This fact passes unrecognized in Masonic Lodges. The openings and closings
are regarded as but so much casual formality devoid of interior purpose or
meaning, whereas they are ceremonies of the highest instructiveness and
rites with a distinctive purpose which should not be profaned by casual
perfunctory performance or without understanding what they imply.

As a flower " opens its Lodge " when it unfolds its petals and displays
its centre to the sun which vitalizes it, so the opening of a Masonic
Lodge is sacramental of opening out the human mind and heart to God. It is
a dramatized form of the psychological processes involved in so doing.

Three degrees or stages of such opening are postulated. First, one
appropriate to the apprentice stage of development; a simple Sursum corda!
or call to " lift up your hearts ! " above the everyday level of external
things. Second, a more advanced opening, adapted to those who are
themselves more advanced in the science and capable of greater things than
apprentices. This opening is proclaimed to be " upon the square," which
the First Degree opening is not. By which is implied that it is one
specially involving the use of the psychic and higher intellectual nature
(denoted, as previously explained, by the Square or Water Triangle).
Third, a still more advanced opening, declared to be " upon the centre,"
for those of Master Mason's rank, and pointing to an opening up of
consciousness to the very centre and depths of one's being.

How far and to what degree any of us is able to open his personal Lodge
determines our real position in Masonry and discloses whether we are in
very fact Masters, Craftsmen or Apprentices, or only titularly such.
Progress in this, as in other things, comes only with intelligent practice
and sustained sincere effort. But what is quite overlooked and desirable
to emphasize is the power, as an initiatory force, of an assemblage of
individuals each sufficiently progressed and competent to " open his Lodge
" in the sense described. Such an assembly, gathered in one place and
acting with a common definite purpose, creates as it were a vortex in the
mental and psychical atmosphere into which a newly initiated candidate is
drawn. The tension created by their collective energy of thought and
will--progressively intensifying as the Lodge is opened in each successive
degree, and correspondingly relaxing as each Degree is closed--acts and
leaves a permanent effect upon the candidate (assuming always that he is
equally in earnest and " properly prepared " in an interior sense),
inducing a favourable mental and spiritual rapport between him and those
with whom he seeks to be elevated into organic spiritual membership; and,
further, it both stimulates his perceptivity and causes his mentality to
become charged and permeated with the ideas and uplifting influences
projected upon him by his initiators.

The fact that a candidate is not admitted within the Lodge-portals without
certain assurances, safeguards and tests, and that even then he is menaced
by the sword of the I.G., is an indication that peril to the mental and
spiritual organism is recognized as attending the presumptuous engaging in
the things with which Initiation deals. As the flaming sword is described
as keeping the way to the Tree of Life from those as yet unfitted to
approach it, so does the secret law of the Spirit still avenge itself upon
those who are unqualified to participate in the knowledge of its
mysteries. Hence the commandment " Thou shalt not take the name of the
Lord thy God in vain," that is by invoking Divine Energy for unworthy or
vain purposes.

Here, and upon the general subject of the signs, tokens and words employed
and communicated in Initiatory Rites, may usefully be quoted the following
words by a well-informed Mason, who is of course speaking of them not as
the merely perfunctory acts they are in ordinary Lodges, but as they are
when intelligently employed by those fully instructed in spiritual science
and able to use signs, tokens and words with dynamic power and real
efficiency:-

" The symbols of the Mysteries embodied in the design of the Square and
Circle constitute the eternal language of the gods, the same in all
worlds, from all eternity. They have had neither beginning of years nor
end of days. They are contemporary with time and with eternity. They are
the Word of God, the Divine Logos, articulate and expressed in forms of
language. Each sign possesses a corresponding vocal expression, bodily
gesture or mental intention. This fact is of great importance to the
student of the Wisdom, for in it rests the main reason of the secrecy and
the intense watchfulness and carefulness of the stewards of the Mysteries
lest the secret doctrines find expression on the lips or through the
action of unfit persons to possess the secrets. For the secret power of
the Mysteries is within the signs. Any person attaining to natural and
supernatural states by the process of development, if his heart be untuned
and his mind withdrawn from the Divine to the human within him, that power
b ecomes a power of evil instead of a power of good. An unfaithful
initiate, in the degree of the Mysteries he has attained, is capable, by
virtue of his antecedent preparations and processes, of diverting the
power to unholy, demoniacal, astral and dangerous uses..The use of the
signs, the vocal sounds, physical acts and mental intentions, was
absolutely prohibited except under rigorously tested conditions. For
instance, the utterance of a symbolical sound, or a physical act,
corresponding to a sign belonging to a given degree, in a congregation of
an inferior degree, was fatal in its effects. In each degree no initiates
who have not attained that degree are admitted to its congregations. Only
initiates of that degree, and above it, are capable of sustaining the
pressure of dynamic force generated in the spiritual atmosphere and
concentrated in that degree. The actual mental ejaculation of a sign,
under such circumstances, brought the immediate putting forth of an occult
power corresponding to it. In all the congregations of the initiates an
Inner Guard was stationed within the sanctuary, chancel or oratory at the
door of entrance, with the drawn sword in his hand, to ward off
unqualified trespassers and intruders. It was no mere formal or
metaphorical performance. It was at the risk of the life of any man
attempting to make an entrance if he succeeded in crossing the threshold.
Secret signs and passwords and other tests were applied to all who knocked
at the door, before admission was granted. The possession of the
Mysteries, after initiation, and the use of the signs, either vocally,
actionally or ejaculatorily, with " intention " in their use (not as mere
mechanical repetition), were attended by occult powers directed to the
subjects of their special intention, whether absent or present, or for
purposes beneficial to the cause in contemplation." (H. E. Sampson's
Progressive Redemption, pp. 171-174).

To " open the Lodge " of one's own being to the higher verities is no
simple task for those who have closed and sealed it by their own habitual
thought-modes, preconceptions and distrust of whatever is not sensibly
demonstrable. Yet all these propensities must be eradicated or shut out
and the Lodge close tyled against them; they have no part or place in the
things of the inward man. Effort and practice also are needed to attain
stability of mind, control of emotion and thought, and to acquire interior
stillness and the harmony of all our parts. As the formal ceremony of
Lodge-opening is achieved only by the organized co-operation of its
constituent officers, so the due opening of our inner man to God can only
be accomplished by the consensus of all our parts and faculties. Absence
or failure of any part invalidates the whole. The W.M. alone cannot open
the Lodge; he can only invite his brethren to assist him to do so by a
concerted process and the unified wills of his subordinates. So too wit h
opening the Lodge of man's soul. His spiritual will, as master-faculty,
summons his other faculties to assist it; " sees that none but Masons are
present " by taking care that his thoughts and motives in approaching God
are pure; calls all these " brethren " to order to prove their due
qualification for the work in hand; and only then, after seeing that the
Lodge is properly formed, does he undertake the responsibility of invoking
the descent of the Divine blessing and influx upon the unified and
dedicated whole.

Of all which the Psalmist writes: " How good and joyful a thing it is for
brethren to dwell together in unity...It is like the precious ointment
(anointing) which flows down unto the skirts of the clothing," implying
that the Divine influx, when it descends in response to such an
invocation, floods and illuminates the entire human organism even to its
carnal sense-extremities (which are the " skirts of the clothing " of the
soul). Compare also the Christian Master's words: " When thou prayest,
enter into thy secret chamber (the Lodge of the soul) and when thou hast
shut thy door (by tyling the mind to all outward concerns and thoughts),
pray to the Father who seeth in secret, who shall reward thee openly " (by
conscious communion).

The foregoing may help both to interpret the meaning and solemn purpose of
the Opening in the First Degree, and to indicate the nature of the
conditions and spiritual atmosphere that ought to exist when a Lodge is
open for business in that Degree. If the Lodge-opening be a real opening
in the sense here indicated and not a mere ceremonial form, if the
conditions and atmosphere referred to were actually induced at a Masonic
meeting, it will be at once apparent that they must needs react powerfully
upon a candidate who enters them seeking initiation and spiritual
advancement. If he be truly a worthy candidate, properly prepared in his
heart and an earnest seeker for the light, the mere fact of his entering
such an atmosphere will so impress and awaken his dormant soul-faculties
as in itself to constitute an initiation and an indelible memory, whilst
the sensitive-plate of his mind thus stimulated will be readily receptive
of the ideas projected into it by the assembled brethren who are initiatin
g him and receiving him into spiritual communion with themselves. On the
other hand if he be an unworthy or not properly prepared candidate, that
atmosphere and those conditions will prove repellent to him and he will
himself be the first to wish to withdraw and not to repeat the experience.

The Closing of the First Degree implies the reverse process of the
Opening; the relaxing of the inward energies and the return of the mind to
its former habitual level. Yet not without gratitude expressed for Divine
favours and perceptions received during the period of openness, or without
a counsel to keep closed the book of the heart and lay aside the use of
its jewels until we are duly called to resume them; since silence and
secrecy are essential to the gestation and growth of the inward man. " He
who has seen God is dumb."

SECOND OR FELLOW-CRAFT DEGREE

The Opening of the Second Degree presupposes an ability to open up the
inner nature and consciousness to a much more advanced stage than is
possible to the beginner, who in theory is supposed to undergo a long
period of discipline and apprenticeship in the elementary work of
self-preparation and to be able to satisfy certain tests that he has done
so before being qualified for advancement to the Fellow-craft stage of
self-building.

Again that opening may be a personal work for the individual Mason or a
collective work in an assembly of Fellow-crafts and superior Masons to
pass an Apprentice to Fellow-craft rank.

The title admitting the qualified Apprentice to a Fellow-craft Lodge is
one of great significance, which ordinarily passes without any observation
or understanding of its propriety. It is said to denote " in plenty " and
to be illustrated by an " ear of corn near to a fall of water " (which two
objects are literally the meaning of the Hebrew word in question). It is
desirable to observe that this is meant to be descriptive of the candidate
himself, and of his own spiritual condition. It is he who is as an ear of
corn planted near and nourished by a fall of water. His own spiritual
growth, as achieved in the Apprentice stage, is typified by the ripening
corn; the fertilizing cause of its growth being the down-pouring upon his
inner nature of the vivifying dew of heaven as the result of his
aspiration towards the light.

The work appropriated to the Apprentice Degree is that of gaining purity
and control of his grosser nature, its appetites and affections. It is
symbolized by working the rough ashlar, as dug from the quarry, into due
shape for building purposes. The " quarry " is the undifferentiated raw
material or group-soul of humanity from which he has issued into
individuated existence in this world, where his function is to convert
himself into a true die or square meet for the fabric of the Temple
designed by the Great Architect to be built in the Jerusalem above out of
perfected human souls.

The apprentice-work, which relates to the subdual of the sense-nature and
its propensities, being achieved, the next stage is the development and
control of the intellectual nature; the investigation of the " hidden
paths of nature (i.e., the human psychological nature) and science " (the
gnosis of self-knowledge, which, pushed to its limit, the candidate is
told " leads to the throne of God Himself" and reveals the ultimate
secrets of his own nature and the basic principles of intellectual as
distinct from moral truth). It should be noted that the candidate is told
that he is now " permitted to extend his researches " into these hidden
paths. There is peril to the mentality of the candidate if this work is
undertaken before the purifications of the Apprentice stage have been
accomplished. Hence the permission is not accorded until that preliminary
task has been done and duly tested.

The work of the Second Degree is accordingly a purely philosophical work,
involving deep psychological self-analysis, experience of unusual
phenomena, as the psychic faculties of the soul begin to unfold
themselves, and the apprehension of abstract Truth (formerly described as
mathematics). This work is altogether beyond both the mental horizon and
the capacity of the average modern Mason, though in the Mysteries of
antiquity the Mathesis (or mental discipline) was an outstanding feature
and produced the intellectual giants of Greek philosophy. Hence it is that
to-day the Degree is found dull, unpicturesque and unattractive, since
psychic experience and intellectual principles cannot be made spectacular
and dramatic.

The Ritual runs that our ancient brethren of this Degree met in the
 porchway of King Solomon's Temple. This is a way of saying that natural
 philosophy is the porchway to the attainment of Divine Wisdom; that the
 study of man leads to knowledge of God, by revealing to man the ultimate
 divinity at the base of human nature. This study or self-analysis of
 human nature Plato called Geometry; earth-measuring; the probing,
 sounding and determining the limits, proportions and potentialities of
 our personal organism in its physical and psychical aspects. The ordinary
 natural consciousness is directed outwards; perceives only outward
 objects; thinks only of an outward Deity separate and away from us. It
 can accordingly cognize only shadows, images and illusions. The science
 of the Mysteries directs that process must be reversed. It says: " Just
 as you have symbolically shut and close-tyled the door of your Lodge
 against all outsiders, so you must shut out all perception of outward
 images, all desire for external things and material welfare, and turn
 your consciousness and aspirations wholly inward. For the Vital and
 Immortal Principle-- the Kingdom of Heaven--is within you; it is not to
 be found outside you. Like the prodigal son in the parable you have
 wandered away from it into a far country and lost all consciousness of
 it. You have come down and down, as by a spiral motion or a winding
 staircase, into this lower world and imperfect form of existence; coiling
 around you as you came increasingly thickening vestures, culminating in
 your outermost dense body of flesh; whilst your mentality has woven about
 you veil after veil of illusory notions concerning your real nature and
 the nature of true Life. Now the time and the impulse have at last come
 for you to turn back to that inward world. Therefore reverse your steps.
 Look no longer outwards, but inwards. Go back up that same winding
 staircase. It will bring you to that Centre of Life and Sanctum Sanctorum
 from which you have wandered."

When the Psalmist writes " Who will go up the hill of the Lord ? Even he
that hath clean hands and a pure heart," the meaning is identical with
what is implied in the ascent of the inwardly " winding staircase " of the
Second Degree. Preliminary purification of the mind is essential to its
rising to purer realms of being and loftier conscious states than it has
been accustomed to. If " the secrets of nature and the principles of
intellectual truth " are to become revealed to its view, as the Degree
intends and promises, the mentality must not be fettered by mundane
interests or subject to disturbance by carnal passions. If it is to "
contemplate its own intellectual faculties and trace them from their
development " until they are found to " lead to the throne of God Himself
" and to be rooted in Deity, it must discard all its former
thought-habits, prejudices and preconceptions, and be prepared to receive
humbly the illumination that will flood into it from the Light of Divine
Wisdom.

For the determined student of the mental discipline implied by the Second
Degree there may be recommended two most instructive sources of
information and examples of personal experience. One is the Dialogues of
Plato and the writings of Plotinus and other Neo-Platonists. The other is
the records of the classical Christian contemplatives, such as Eckhart or
Ruysbroeck or the " Interior Castle " of St. Theresa. The Phoedrus of
Plato, in particular, is an important record by an initiate of the ancient
Mysteries of the psychological experiences referred to in the Fellow-Craft
Degree.

The subject is too lengthy for further exposition here beyond again
indicating that it is in the illumined mental condition attained in this
Degree that the discovery is made of the Divine Principle at the centre of
our organism; and that the sign of the Degree is equivalent to a prayer
that the sunlight of that exalted state may " stand still " and persist in
us until we have effected the overthrow of all our " enemies " and
eradicated all obstacles to our union with that Principle.

The reference to our ancient brethren receiving their wages at the
porchway of the Temple of Wisdom is an allusion to an experience common to
every one in the Fellow-Craft stage of development. He learns that old
scores due by him to his fellowmen must be paid off and old wrongs
righted, and receives the wages of past sins recorded upon his
subconsciousness by that pencil that observes and there records all our
thoughts, words and actions. The candidate leading the philosophic life
realizes that he is justly entitled to those wages and receives them
without scruple or diffidence, knowing himself to be justly entitled to
them and only too glad to expiate and purge himself of old offences. For
we are all debtors to some one or other for our present position in life,
and must repay what we owe to humanity--perhaps with tears or
adversity--before we straighten our account with that eternal Justice with
which we aspire to become allled.

THIRD, OR MASTER-MASON'S DEGREE

Before dealing with the opening and closing of the Third Degree, it should
be observed that in the Lodge symbolism the teaching of the First and
Second Degrees is carried forward into the Third. The traditional
Tracing-Board of the Third Degree exhibits in combination (1) the
chequered floorwork, (2) the two pillars at the porchway of the Temple,
(3) the winding staircase, and (4) a dormer window above the porchway. The
brief explanation is given that the chequer-work is for the High Priest to
walk upon and the dormer-window is that which gave light to it. The entire
symbol is but one comprehensive glyph or pictorial diagram of the
condition of a candidate aspiring to Master Mason's rank. As high priest
of his own personal temple he must have his bodily nature and its varied
desires under foot. He must have developed strength of will and character
to " walk upon " this chequer-work and withstand its appeals. He must also
be able to ascend the winding staircase of his inner nature, to educate a
nd habituate his mentality to higher conscious states and so establish it
there that he will be unaffected by seductive or affrighting perceptions
that there may meet him. By the cultivation of this " strength " and the
ability to " establish " himself upon the loftier conscious levels he
co-ordinates the two pillars at the porchway of his inmost
sanctuary--namely, the physical and psychical supports of his
organism--and acquires the " stability " involved in regeneration and
requisite to him before passing on to " that last and greatest trial "
which awaits him. " In strength will I establish My house that it may
stand firm." Man's perfected organism is what is meant by " My house." It
was the same organism and the same stability that the Christian Master
spoke of in saying " Upon this rock will I build my church and the gates
of the underworld shall not prevail against it."

During all the discipline and labour involved in attaining this stability
there has shone light on the path from the first moment that his
Apprentice's vision was opened to larger truth; light from the science and
philosophy of the Order itself which is proving his " porchway " to the
ultimate sanctuary within; light from friendly helpers and instructors;
above all, light from the sun in his own " heavens," streaming through the
" dormer-window" of his illumined intelligence and slowly but surely
guiding his feet into the way of peace.

But now the last and greatest trial of his fortitude and fidelity, one
imposing upon him a still more serious obligation of endurance, awaits him
in the total withdrawal of this kindly light. Hitherto, although guided by
that light, he has progressed in virtue of his own natural powers and
efforts. Now the time has come when those props have to be removed, when
all reliance upon natural abilities, self-will and the normal rational
understanding, must be surrendered and the aspirant must abandon himself
utterly to the transformative action of his Vital and Immortal Principle
alone, passively suffering it to complete the work in entire independence
of his lesser faculties. He must " lose his life to save it "; he must
surrender all that he has hitherto felt to be his life in order to find
life of an altogether higher order.

Hence the Third Degree is that of mystical death, of which bodily death is
 taken as figurative, just as bodily birth is taken in the First Degree as
 figurative of entrance upon the path of regeneration. In all the
 Mystery-systems of the past will be found this degree of mystical death
 as an outstanding and essential feature prior to the final stage of
 perfection or regeneration. As an illustration one has only to refer to a
 sectional diagram of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, which was so constructed
 as to be not merely a temple of initiation, but to record in permanent
 form the principles upon which regeneration is attainable. Its entrance
 passage extends for some distance into the building as a narrow ascending
 channel through which the postulant who desires to reach the centre must
 creep in no small discomfort and restrictedness. This was to emblematise
 the discipline and up-hill labour of self-purification requisite in the
 Apprentice Degree. At a certain point this restricted passage opens out
 into a long and lofty gallery, still upon a steeply rising gradient, up
 which the postulant had to pass, but in a condition of ease and liberty.
 This was to symbolize the condition of illumination and expanded
 intellectual liberty associated with the Fellow-craft Degree. It ended at
 a place where the candidate once more had to force his way on hands and
 knees through the smallest aperture of all, one that led to the central
 chamber in which stood and still stands the great sarcophagus in which he
 was placed and underwent the last supreme ordeal, and whence he was
 raised from the dead, initiated and perfected.

The title of admission communicated to the candidate for the Third Degree
is noteworthy, as also the reason for it. It is a Hebrew name, said to be
that of the first artificer in metals and to mean " in worldly
possessions." Now it will be obvious that the name of the first man who
worked at metal-making in the ordinary sense can be of no possible
interest or concern to us to-day, nor has the information the least
bearing upon the subject of human regeneration. It is obviously a veil of
allegory concealing some relevant truth. Such it will be found to be upon
recognizing that Hebrew Biblical names represent not persons, but
personifications of spiritual principles, and that Biblical history is not
ordinary history of temporal events but a record of eternally true
spiritual facts. The matter is, therefore, interpretable as follows: We
know from the teaching of the Entered Apprentice Degree what " money and
metals" are in the Masonic sense, and that they represent the attractive
power of tempora l possessions, and earthly belongings and affections of
whatever description. We know too that from the attraction and
seductiveness of these things, and even from the desire for them, it is
essential to be absolutely free if one desires to attain that Light and
those riches of Wisdom for which the candidate professes to long. Not that
it is necessary for him to become literally and physically dispossessed of
worldly possessions, but it is essential that he should be so utterly
detached from them that he cares not whether he owns any or not and is
content, if need be, to be divested of them entirely if they stand in the
way of his finding " treasure in heaven "; for so long as he clings to
them or they exercise control over him, so long will his initiation into
anything better be deferred.

It follows then that it is the personal soul of the candidate himself
which is the " artificer in metals " referred to, and which during the
whole of its physical existence has been engaged in trafficking with "
metals." Desire for worldly possessions, for sensation and experience in
this outward world of good and evil, brought the soul into this world.
There it has woven around itself its present body of flesh, every desire
and thought being an " artificer " adding something to or modifying its
natural encasement. The Greek philosophers used to teach that souls
secrete their bodies as a snail secretes his shell, and our own poet
Spenser truly wrote:

" For of the soul the body form doth take, And soul is form and doth the
body make."

If, then, desire for physical experience and material things brought the
soul into material conditions (as is also indicated in the great parable
of the Prodigal Son), the relinquishing of that desire is the first
necessary step to ensure its return to the condition whence it first
emanated. Satiation with and consequent disgust at the " husks " of things
instigated the Prodigal Son to aspire to return home. Similar repletion
and revolt drives many a man to lose all desire for external things and to
seek for peace within himself and there redirect his energies in quest of
possessions which are abiciing and real. This is the moment of his true "
conversion," and the moment when he is ripe for initiation into the hidden
Mysteries of his own being. The First and Second Degrees of Masonry imply
that the candidate has undergone lengthy discipline in the renunciation of
external things and the cultivation of desire for those that are within.
But, notwithstanding that he has passed through all the di scipline of
those Degrees, he is represented at the end of them as being still not
entirely purified and to be still " in worldly possessions " in the sense
that a residue of attraction by them and reliance upon himself lingers in
his heart; and it is these last subtle close-clinging elements of " base
metal " in him that need to be eradicated if perfection is to be attained.
The ingrained defects and tendencies of the soul as the result of all its
past habits and experiences are not suddenly eliminated or easily subdued.
Self-will and pride are very subtle in their nature and may continue to
deceive their victim long after he has purged himself of grosser faults.
As Cain was the murderer of Abel, so every taint of base metal in oneself
debases the gold of the Vital and Immortal Principle. It must be
renounced, died to and transmuted in the crucial process of the Third
Degree. Hence it is that the candidate is entrusted with a name tha t
designates himself at this stage and that indicates that he is still " in
worldly possessions ;" that is, that some residue of the spirit of this
world yet lingers in him which it is necessary to eliminate from his
nature before he can be raised to the sublime degree of Master.

Examination of the text of the opening and closing of the Lodge in the
Third Degree discloses the whole of the philosophy upon which the Masonic
system is reared. It indicates that the human soul has originated in the
eternal East--that " East" being referable to the world of Spirit and not
to any geographical direction--and that thence it has directed its course
towards the " West"--the material world which is the antipodes of the
spiritual and into which the soul has wandered. Its purpose in so
journeying from spiritual to physical conditions is declared to be the
quest and recovery of something it has lost, but which by its own industry
and suitable instruction it hopes to find. From this it follows that the
loss itself occurred prior to its descent into this world, otherwise that
descent would not have been necessary. What it is that has been lost is
not explicitly declared, but is implied and is stated to form " the
genuine secrets of a Master Mason." It is the loss of a word, or rather o
f The Word, the Divine Logos, or basic root and essence of our own being.
In other words the soul of man has ceased to be God-conscious and has
degenerated into the limited terrestrial consciousness of the ordinary
human being. It is in the condition spoken of in the cosmic parable of
Adam when extruded from Eden, an exile from the Divine Presence and
condemned to toil and trouble. The quest after this lost Word is declared
by the Wardens to have been so far abortive, and to have resulted in the
discovery, not of that Reality, but of substitutional images of it. All
which implies that, in the strength of merely his natural temporal
intelligence, man can find and know nothing more in this world than
shadows, images and phenomenal forms of realities which abide eternally
and noumenally in the world of Spirit to which his temporal faculties are
at present closed. Yet there remains a way of regaining consciousness of
that higher world and life. It is by bringing into function a now dormant
and sub merged faculty resident at the depth and centre of his being. That
dormant faculty is the Vital and Immortal Principle which exists as the
central point of the circle of his individuality. As the outward Universe
is the externalized projection of an indwelling immanent Deity, so is the
outward individual man the externalization and diffusion of an inherent
Divine germ, albeit perverted and distorted by personal self-will and
desire which have dislocated and shut off his consciousness from his root
of being. Recover contact with that central Divine Principle by a
voluntary renunciation of the intervening obstructions and inharmonious
elements in oneself, and man at once ceases to be merely the rationalized
animal he now is and becomes grafted upon a new and Divine life-principle,
a sharer of Omniscience and a co-operator with Deity. He recovers the lost
and genuine secrets of his own being and has for ever finished with
substitutions, shadows and simulacra of Reality. He reaches a point and
liv es from a centre from which no Master Mason can ever err or will ever
again desire to err, for it is the end, object and goal of his existence.

Meanwhile, until actual recovery of that lost secret, man must put up with
its substitutions and regard these as sacramental of concealed realities,
contact with which will be his great reward if he submits himself to the
conditions upon which alone he may discover them. The existence of those
realities and the regimen essential to their enjoyment are inculcated by
Masonry as they have been by every other initiatory Order of the past, and
it is for the fact that this knowledge is and always has been conserved in
the world, so as to be ever available for earnest aspirants towards it,
that gratitude is expressed to the Grand Master of all for having never
left Himself, or the way of return to Him, without witness in this outer
world.

As much has been said about the Ceremony of the Third Degree in other
papers it is unnecessary here to expound it further. It may be stated,
however, that it alone constitutes the Masonic Initiation. The First and
Second Degrees are, strictly, but preparatory stages leading up to
Initiation; they are not the Initiation itself; they but prescribe the
purification of the bodily and mental nature necessary to qualify the
candidate for the end which crowns the whole work. To those unacquainted
with what is really involved in actual as distinct from merely ceremonial
initiation, and who have no notion of what initiation meant in the old
schools of Wisdom and still means for those who understand the theory of
Regenerative Science, it is well nigh impossible to convey any idea of its
process or its results. The modern Mason, however high in titular rank, is
as little qualified to understand the subject as the man who has never
entered a Lodge. " To become initiated (or perfected)," says an old author
ity, Plutarch, " involves dying"; not a physical death, but a moral way of
dying in which the soul is loosened from the body and the sensitive life,
and becoming temporarily detached therefrom is set free to enter the world
of Eternal Light and Immortal Being. This, after most drastic preliminary
disciplines, was achieved in a state of trance and under the supervision
of duly qualified Masters and Adepts who intromitted the candidate's
liberated soul into its own interior principles until it at last reached
the Blazing Star or Glory at its own Centre, in the light of which it
simultaneously knew itself and God, and realized their unity and the "
points of fellowship " between them. Then it was that, from this at once
awful and sublime experience, the initiated soul was brought back to its
bodily encasement again and "reunited to the companions of its former
toils," to resume its temporal life, but with conscious realization of
Life Eternal superadded to its knowledge and its powers. Then only was it
entitled to the name of Master Mason. Then only could it exclaim, in the
words of another initiate (Empedocles), " Farewell, all earthly allies;
henceforth am I no mortal wight, but an immortal angel, ascending up into
Divinity and reflecting upon that likeness of it which I have found in
myself. "

The " secrets " of Freemasonry and of initiation are largely connected
with this process of intro version of the soul to its own Centre, and
beyond this brief reference to the subject it is inexpedient here to say
more. But in confirmation of what has been indicated it may be useful to
refer to the 23rd Psalm, in which the Hebrew Initiates speak of both the
supreme experience of being passed through " the valley of the shadow of
death " and the preliminary phases of mental preparation for that ordeal.
Stripping that familiar psalm of the gorgeous metaphor given it in the
beautiful Biblical translation, its real meaning may be paraphrased and
explained for Masonic students as follows:-

" The Vital and Immortal Principle within me is my Initiator; and is
all-sufficient to lead me to God.

It has made me lie down (in self-discipline and humiliation) in " green
pastures " of meditation and mental sustenance.

It has led me beside " still waters " of contemplation (as distinct from
the " rough sea of passion " of my natural self).

It is restoring my soul (reintegrating it out of chaos and disorder).

Even when I come to pass through the valley of deadly gloom (my own
interior veils of darkness) I will fear no evil; for It is with me (as a
guiding star); Its directions and disciplines will safeguard me.

It provides me with the means of overcoming my inner enemies and
weaknesses; It anoints my intelligence with the oil of wisdom; the cup of
my mind brims over with new light and consciousness.

The Divine Love and Truth, which I shall find face to face at my centre,
will be a conscious presence to me all the days of my temporal life; and
there- after I shall dwell in a " house of the Lord " (a glorified
spiritual body) for ever."

The Third Degree is completed in, and can only be more fully expounded by
reference to, the Holy Royal Arch Ceremony. A separate further paper will,
therefore, be devoted to that Ceremony.

THE MASONIC APRON

From what has been said in these pages the full significance of the Apron
will now be perceived and may be summarized thus:-

1. The Apron is the symbol of the corporeal vesture and condition of the
soul (not so much of the temporal physical body, as of its permanent
invisible corporeity which will survive the death of the mortal part).

2. The soul fabricates its own body or " apron " by its own desires and
thoughts (see Genesis III, 7, " they made themselves aprons ") and as
these are pure or impure so will that body be correspondingly transparent
and white, or dense and opaque.

3. The investiture of the candidate with the Apron in each Degree by the
Senior Warden as the Master's delegate for that purpose is meant to
inculcate this truth; for the Senior Warden represents the soul which, in
accordance with its own spirituality, automatically clothes itself with
its own self-made vesture in a way that marks its own progress or regress.

4. The unadorned white Apron of the First Degree indicates the purity of
soul contemplated as being attained in that Degree.

5. The pale blue rosettes added to the Apron in the Second Degree indicate
that progress is being made in the science of regeneration and that the
candidate's spirituality is beginning to develop and bud through. Blue,
the colour of the sky, is traditionally associated with devotion to
spiritual concerns.

6. In the Third Degree still further progress is emblematized by the
increased blue adornments of the Apron, as also by its silver tassels and
the silver serpent used to fasten the apron-strings. In the First and
Second Degrees no metal has appeared upon the Apron. The candidate has
been theoretically divesting himself of all base metals and transmuting
them into spiritual riches. With Mastership he has attained an influx of
those riches under the emblem of the tassels of silver, a colourless
precious metal always associated with the soul, as gold by reason of its
supreme value and warm colour is associated with Spirit. The silver
serpent is the emblem of Divine Wisdom knitting the soul's new-made
vesture together.

7. The pale blue and silver of the Master Mason's Apron become intensified
in the deep blue and gold ornamentation worn by the Grand Lodge Officers,
who in theory have evolved to still deeper spirituality and transmuted
themselves from silver into fine gold. " The king's daughter (the soul) is
all glorious within; her clothing is of wrought gold," i.e., wrought or
fabricated by her own spiritual energies.

A PRAYER AT LODGE CLOSING

O Sovereign and Most Worshipful of all Masters, who, in Thy infinite love
and wisdom, hast devised our Order as a means to draw Thy children nearer
Thee, and hast so ordained its Officers that they are emblems of Thy
sevenfold power;

Be Thou unto us an Outer Guard, and defend us from the perils that beset
us when we turn from that which is without to that which is within; Be
Thou unto us an Inner Guard, and preserve our souls that desire to pass
within the portal of Thy holy mysteries;

Be unto us the Younger Deacon, and teach our wayward feet the true and
certain steps upon the path that leads to Thee: Be Thou also the Elder
Deacon, and guide us up the steep and winding stairway to Thy throne;

Be unto us the Lesser Warden, and in the meridian sunlight of our
understanding speak to us in sacraments that shall declare the splendours
of Thy unmanifested light;

Be Thou also unto us the Greater Warden, and in the awful hour of
disappearing light, when vision fails and thought has no more strength, be
with us still, revealing to us, as we may bear them, the hidden mysteries
of Thy shadow;

And so, through light and darkness, raise us, Great Master, till we are
made one with Thee, in the unspeakable glory of Thy presence in the East.

So mote it be.

Chapter IV.

THE HOLY ROYAL ARCH OF JERUSALEM.

FREEMASONRY, under the English Constitution, reaches its climax and
conclusion in the Order of the Holy Royal Arch. There exists a variety of
other degrees ramifying from the main stem of the Masonic system which
either elaborate side-points of its doctrine or re-express its teachings
in alternative symbolism. These, while of greater or less merit and
interest, are beyond our present consideration, and, indeed, are
superfluities tending rather to diffuse the student's attention than to
deepen his insight into the central purpose of the Craft. The taking of
additional higher degrees may be indulged in almost indefinitely, but to
what purpose if the initial ones, which contain all that is necessary for
the understanding of the subject, remain imperfectly assimilated ? It is a
fallacy to suppose that the multiplying of degrees will result in the
discovery of important arcane secrets which one has failed to find in the
rites of the Craft and the Royal Arch. The higher degrees indeed
illustrate tru ths of much interest and often set forth with impressive
ceremonial beauty, the appreciation of which will be the greater after and
not before the meaning of the preliminary ones has been thoroughly
absorbed; whilst the pursuit of " secrets " is certain to prove illusory,
for the only secrets worth the name or the finding are those
incommunicable ones which discover themselves within the personal
consciousness of the seeker who is in earnest to translate ceremonial
representation into facts of spiritual experience.

It was accordingly a sound instinct that prompted those who settled the
present constitution of the Order to exclude these supplementary
refinements and to declare that " Masonry consists of the three Craft
Degrees and the Holy Royal Arch and no more," for within that compass is
exhibited, or at least outlined, the entire process of human regeneration;
so that after the Royal Arch there really remains nothing more to be said,
although what has been said is of course capable of elaboration.

The completeness of regeneration theoretically postulated in those four
stages is marked, it should be observed, by the very significant
expression used in connection with a Royal Arch Chapter, which is
interpreted as meaning " My people having obtained mercy," which in its
further analysis signifies that all the parts and faculties (" people ")
of the candidate's organism have at last, and as the result of his
previous discipline and ordeals, become sublimated and integrated in a new
quality and higher order of life than that previously enjoyed in virtue of
his merely temporal nature. In a word, he has become regenerated. He has
achieved the miracle of " squaring the circle "--a metaphorical expression
for regeneration, as shall be explained presently.

Although but an expansion and completion of the Third Degree, of which at
 one time it formed part, there were good reasons for detaching the Royal
 Arch portion from what now forms the Degree of Master Mason. The two
 parts in combination made an inconveniently long rite, whilst a change in
 the symbolic appointments and officers of the temple of initiation was
 necessary, as the ceremony proceeded, to give appropriate spectacular
 representation to the further points calling for expression. Despite this
 re-arrangement the Royal Arch is the natural conclusion and fulfilment of
 the Third Degree. The latter inculcates the necessity of mystical death
 and dramatizes the process of such death and revival therefrom into
 newness of life. The Royal Arch carries the process a stage farther, by
 showing its fulfilment in the " exaltation " or apotheosis of him who has
 undergone it. The Master Mason's Degree might be said to be represented
 in the terms of Christian theology by the formula " He suffered and was
 buried and rose again," whilst the equivalent of the exaltation ceremony
 is " He ascended into heaven."

The Royal Arch Degree seeks to express that new and intensified life to
which the candidate can be raised and the exalted degree of consciousness
that comes with it. From being conscious merely as a natural man and in
the natural restricted way common to every one born into this world, he
becomes exalted (whilst still in his natural flesh) to consciousness in a
supernatural and illimitable way. As has been said in previous papers, the
purpose of all initiation is to lift human consciousness from lower to
higher levels by quickening the latent spiritual potentialities in man to
their full extent through appropriate discipline. No higher level of
attainment is possible than that in which the human merges in the Divine
consciousness and knows as God knows. And that being the level of which
the Order of the Royal Arch treats ceremonially, it follows that Masonry
as a sacramental system reaches its climax and conclusion in that Order.

As has also been already shown, to attain that level involves as its
essential prerequisite the total abnegation, renouncement and renovation
of one's original nature, the surrender of one's natural desires,
tendencies and preconceptions, and the abandonment and nullifying of one's
natural self-will, by such a habitual discipline and self-denial and
gradual but vigorous opposition to all these as will cause them gradually
to atrophy and die down. " He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he
that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. Except
a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it
die it bringeth forth much fruit." As with a seed of wheat, so with man.
If he persists in clinging to the present natural life he knows, if he
refuses to recognize that a higher quality of life is here and now
possible to him, or is unwilling to make the necessary effort to attain
it, he " abideth alone," gets nowhere, and only frustrates his own
spiritual evolution. But if he is willing to " die " in the sense
indicated, if he will so re-orientate his will and silence his natural
energies and desires as to give the Vital and Immortal Principle within
him the chance to assert itself and supersede them, then from the
disintegrated material of his old nature that germ of true life will
spring into growth in him and bear much fruit, and by the stepping-stones
of initiation he will rise from his dead self to higher things than he can
otherwise experience.

This necessity of self-dying--not, we repeat, the physical death of the
body but a mystical death-in life of everything except the body--is the
first and fundamental fact to be grasped before one may hope to realize or
even to understand the mystery of the Royal Arch Degree. " Mors janua
vitae "; death to self is the portal to true life. There is no other way.
It is the unescapable law and condition of the soul's progress.

But since it is a process involving a " most serious trial of fortitude
and fidelity " and a grapple with oneself from which the timorous and
self-diffident may well shrink, the Mystery-systems have always exhibited
an example for the instruction, encouragement and emulation of those
prepared to make the attempt and the necessary sacrifice. To hearten them
to the task the Initiatory Colleges have held up a prototype in the person
of some great soul who has already trodden the same path and emerged
triumphant therefrom. It matters nothing whether the prototype be one
whose historic actuality and identity can be demonstrated, or whether he
can be regarded only as legendary or mythical; the point being not to
teach a merely historical fact, but to enforce a spiritual principle. In
Egypt the prototype was Osiris, who was slain by his malignant brother
Typhon, but whose mangled limbs were collected in a coffer from which he
emerged reintegrated and divinized. In Greece the prototype was Bacchus,
wh o was torn to pieces by the Titans. Baldur in Scandinavia and Mithra in
Greco-Roman Europe were similar prototypes. In Masonry the prototype is
Hiram Abiff, who met his death as the result of a conspiracy by a crowd of
workmen of whom there were three principal ruffians. In the Christian and
chief of all systems, since it comprehends and re-expresses all the
others, the greatest of the Exemplars died at the hands of the mob, headed
also by three chief ruffians, Judas, Caiaphas and Pilate. If in Masonry
the mystical death is dramatized more realistically than the resurrection
that follows upon it, that resurrection is nevertheless shown in the "
raising " of the candidate to the rank of Master Mason and his " reunion
with the companions of former toils," implying the reintegration and
resumption of all his old faculties and powers in a sublimated state, just
as the limbs of the risen Osiris were said to reunite into a new whole and
as the Christian Master withdrew His mutilated body from the to mb' and
reassumed it, transmuted into one of supernatural substance and splendour.

We have, therefore, now to consider how the Royal Arch Degree exhibits the
attainment of a new order of life. But it may be as well to say in advance
that for those unhabituated to looking beyond surface-values and material
meanings the exposition about to be given, dealing as it will with the
profound spiritual truths and advanced psychological experience
allegorized by the external ceremonial, is likely to present some
difficulty of comprehension and acceptance. The Royal Arch, however, would
not be the Supreme Degree it is did it not move upon a supremely high
level of thought and instruction. It was not compiled to accommodate the
elementary intelligence theoretically characterizing the philosophically
untrained neophyte. It presupposes that its candidate has passed through a
long, strenuous period of purification and mental discipline, in the
course of which his understanding has become very considerably widened and
deepened, whilst his fidelity to the high inward Light which has conducte
d him safely so far, has induced in him a humility and docility fitting
him for what still awaits him--the attainment of that Wisdom which is
concealed from this world's wise and prudent, but is revealed unto babes.
It is a rite of initiation dealing less with his gross corporeal nature
and his ordinary temporal mentality (which have been the subject of
purification in the earlier degrees) than with the higher reaches and
possibilities of his understanding and consciousness. As it is, what can
be said here can at best be but a partial and incomplete exposition of a
theme calling rather for disciplined imagination and reverent reflection
than for reasoned argument. Certain things must perforce be omitted from
explanation entirely, whilst others are mentioned with diffidence and at
the risk of their being misunderstood or rejected by such as do not yet
realize that in these matters " the letter killeth, the spirit vivifieth "
and that " spiritual truths must be spiritually discerned."

Before interpreting the Ceremony itself it is desirable first to indicate
four noteworthy features connected with this Supreme Order and
distinctifying it from the three grades leading to it. In speaking even of
these incidentals the before mentioned difficulties of both exposition and
apprehension will already make themselves felt.

First, no one can be received into a Chapter without first having attained
Master Mason's rank.

Second, the circular symbol of the Grand Geometrician, which in the Second
Degree shone high above in the ceiling of the Temple, and in the Third
Degree had moved downwards and burned as a glimmering ray in the East to
guide the candidate's feet into the way of peace, has now descended
completely to the chequer-work floor, where it rests as the centre and
cubical focus of the entire organism and bears the Sacred and Ineffable
Name, as also those of Solomon and the two Hirams.

Third, the constitution of the Assembly is no longer one of seven
officers, but of nine, who are grouped in three triads about the Central
Sacred Symbol.

Fourth, the Assembly, regarded as a unity, is no longer designated a
Lodge, but a Chapter.

The first of these points--that none but a Master Mason can enter the
Royal Arch--has already been accounted for. It is not feasible, nor is it
within the law governing the process of spiritual evolution, for any who
has not experienced the stage of mystical death to have experience of that
which lies beyond that death. As an unborn physical infant can know
nothing of this world, in which nevertheless it exists, until actually
initiated into it by birth, so the embryonic spiritual child cannot be
born into conscious function upon the plane of the Spirit until it has
become entirely detached from the enfolding carnal matrix and tendencies
to which it has been habituated.

The second and third points can be considered together. The re-arrangement
of the factors constituting the ceremonial temple are symbolic of a
structural re-arrangement which has occurred in the candidate's own
psychical organization. This has undergone a repolarization as the result
of the descent into it of that high central Light which at first but shone
as it were in his " heavens," afar off and above him, illumining the
dormer-window of his natural intelligence. Consider deeply what this
change implies. The Day-star from on high has now visited him; the fontal
source of all consciousness has descended into the very chequer work
material of his transient physical organism, not merely permeating it
temporarily with light, but taking root and becoming grafted there
substantially and permanently. In theological language, God has become
man, and man has become divinized, in virtue of this descent and union. In
Masonic terms, the Vital and Immortal Principle resident in the candidate
has at las t superseded his temporal life-principle and established him
upon a new centre of incorruptible life. Now, and perhaps only now,
becomes thoroughly appreciable the necessity for the earlier
purifications, discipline, self-crucifixion and death of all the lower
nature. How could the purity of the Divine Essence tabernacle in the
coarse body of the sensualist? How could the Eternal Wisdom unfold its
treasures in a mind benighted or caring for nothing but base metals and
material pursuits? How could the Universal Will co-operate with and
function through the man whose petty personal will blocks its channel,
antagonizing it at every turn with his selfish preferences and disordered
desires ? A Master Mason, then, in the full sense of the term, is no
longer an ordinary man, but a divinized man; one in whom the Universal and
the personal consciousness have come into union. Obviously the quality of
life and consciousness of such an one must differ vastly from that of
other men. His whole be ing is diff erently qualitated and geared upon
another centre. That new centre is described as the Grand Geometrician of
man's personal universe, inasmuch as its action upon the organism of
whoever surrenders himself to its influence causes a redisposition of
functional and conscious faculty. The knowledge of this fact was with the
wise ancients the true and original science of Geometry (literally " earth
measuring "; determining the occult potentialities of the human earth or
temporal organism under spiritual stresses). " God geometrizes " wrote
Plato, with intimate knowledge of the subject. Many of the Euclidean and
Pythagorean theorems, now regarded merely as mathematical demonstrations,
were originally expressions, veiled in mathematical glyphs, of the
esoteric science of soul-building or true Masonry. The well-known 47th
Proposition of the First Book of Euclid is an example of this and in
consequence has come (though few modern Masons could explain why) to be
inscr ibed upon the Past Master's official jewel. Again, the squaring of
the circle that problem which has baffled so many modern mathematicians
--is an occult expression signifying that Deity, symbolized by the
all-containing circle, has attained form and manifestation in a " square "
or human soul. It expresses the mystery of the Incarnation, accomplished
within the personal soul.

Under the stress then of the Geometrizing Principle now found symbolically
 integrated within the candidate's temporal organism, a re-distribution of
 his component powers has become effected. His repolarized condition is
 symbolized by an equilateral triangle with a point at its centre, and
 such a triangle will be found, worked in gold, upon the sash worn by the
 Companions of the Order. The significance of this triangle is that the
 tripartite aspects of him who wears it (that is, the spiritual, psychical
 and physical parts of him) now stand equalized and equilibrated around
 their common Life-Principle at the centre, fitted and equipped for Its
 purpose. Yet each of these three divisions, though in itself unitary, is
 philosophically triadic in composition when subjected to intellectual
 analysis. " Every monad is the parent of a triad " is another maxim of
 the Ancients, who anticipated the modern Hegelian proposition of
 metaphysics that thesis, antithesis and synthesis are the essential
 ingredients of a given truth. Hence it comes about that the three aspects
 of each of the three sides of our equilateral triangle are ceremonially
 personified by the nine officers of the Chapter--three in the East
 representing the spiritual side, three in the West figuring the soul or
 psychical side, and three subordinate links connecting these other two.
 (These will be further and more conveniently treated of later when the
 symbolic nature of the officers is dealt with).

The fourth point to be noticed was the change of designation from "Lodge "
to " Chapter." The word " Chapter " derives from Caput, head. The reason
for the change of name lies, however, much deeper than in the fact that
the Royal Arch stands at the head or summit of the Craft. It has reference
in a twofold way to the capitular rank and consciousness of the Arch Mason
himself. In virtue of his headship or supremacy over his material nature
he has passed beyond mere Craftwork and governing the Lodge of his lower
nature, which he has now made the docile instrument and servant of his
spiritual self. Henceforth his energies are employed primarily upon the
spiritual plane. The " head " of the material organism of man is the
spirit of man, and this spirit consciously conjoined with the Universal
Spirit is Deity's supreme instrument and vehicle in the temporal world.
Such a man's physical organism and brain have become sublimated and keyed
up to a condition and an efficiency immensely in advance of av erage
humanity. Physiological processes are involved which cannot be discussed
here, beyond saying that in such a man the entire nervous system
contributes to charge certain ganglia and light up certain brain-centres
in a way of which the ordinary mind knows nothing. The nervous system
provides the storage-batteries and conductive medium of the Spirit's
energies just as telegraph wires are the media for transmitting electrical
energy. But the true Master Mason, in virtue of his mastership, knows how
to control and apply those energies. They culminate and come to
self-consciousness in his head, in his intelligence. And in this respect
we may refer to a very heavily veiled Scriptural testimony, the import of
which goes quite unperce*ed to the uninstructed reader. The Gospels record
that the Passion of the Great Exemplar and Master concluded " at the place
called Golgotha in the Hebrew tongue; that is, the place of a skull ";
that is to say it terminated in the head or seat of intelligence and in a
mystery of the spiritual consciousness. The same truth is also testified
to, though again under veils of symbolic phrasing, in the reference to the
sprig of acacia planted at the head of the grave of the Masonic Grand
Master and prototype, Hiram Abiff. The grave is the candidate's soul; the
sprig of acacia typifies the latent akasa (to use an Eastern term) or
divine germ planted in that soil and waiting to become quickened into
activity in his intelligence, the " head " of that plane. When that sprig
of acacia blooms at the head of his soul's sepulchre, he will understand
at one and the same moment the mystery of Golgotha, the mystery of the
death of Hiram, and the meaning of the Royal Arch ceremony of exaltation.
It is a mystery of spiritual consciousness, the efflorescence of the mind
in God, the opening up of the human intelligence in conscious association
with the Universal and Omniscient Mind. It is for this reason that the
cranium or skull is given prominence in the Master Mason's Deg ree.

With this premised we proceed to considering the Ceremony of Exaltation.

THE CEREMONY OF EXALTATION

Again the candidate is in a state of darkness. But the reason of this
darkness differs entirely from that which existed at the Entered
Apprentice stage. Then he was but an ignorant beginner upon the quest,
making his first irregular benighted efforts towards the light. Now, he
has long passed beyond that stage; he comes with all the qualifications
and equipment of a Master Mason. Long ago he found the light he first
sought, and for long he has been directing his steps and nourishing his
growth by its rays. And more; after all this intimacy with it he has known
it recede from him and disappear in the great ordeal of dereliction of the
Third Degree, when, in the " dark night of the soul " and utter
helplessness of all his powers, he learned how strength could be perfected
out of weakness by the potent efficacy of the Vital and Immortal Principle
within him, in whose presence the darkness and the light are both alike.
His present initial deprivation of light is the darkness of the Third
Degree ca rried over into this further experience. It betokens rather a
momentary failure to adjust his perception to the new quality of life he
is now entering upon, just as a new-born child is unable at first to
coordinate its sight to objects before it. For a while, but only for a
brief while, the candidate feels himself in darkness; but he is really
blinded rather by excess of light than by lack of it.

In this condition he undertakes the opening out of a certain place which
he proceeds to enter and explore, keeping touch meanwhile with his
companions by a cord or life-line. The symbolism of all this is singularly
rich in allusion to certain interior processes of introspection well
defined in the experience of the contemplative mystics and well attested
in their records. The place entered emblematizes once again the material
and psychical organism, a dense compact of material particles coating the
more tenuous interior spirit of man as a shell surrounds the contents of
an egg. " Roll away the stone," it will be recalled, was the first
injunction of the Master at the raising of Lazarus. This obstruction
removed, the psychical organism becomes detached from the physical and the
mind is free to become introverted and work exploratively upon its own
ground, to search the contents of its own unplumbed depths, to probe
deeper and deeper into itself, eradicating defects and removing rubble,
pushing in and in by the energy of a persistent will, yet retaining
contact the while with the outer physical nature by a subtle filament or
life-line which prevents their entire separation. The position is the same
as when the body sleeps whilst the mind is dreaming and vividly active,
save that in dreams the will is not functioning as a consciously directive
instrument as is hypothetically the case with one who, having attained
Mastership, has all his faculties under volition and control. Yet all this
interior work, so rapidly summarized and symbolically enacted in the
Ceremony, is not the work of a day nor the casual task of a weakling. The
ancients referred to it as the twelve labours of Hercules, whilst its
arduousness is further graphically described by the initiate poet Virgil
in the sixth Aneid and by more recent illuminates. Nor, even when its
nature is fully apprehended, is it a work to be lightly undertaken.
Throughout the Ceremony the utmost humility is enjoined upon the candidate
as the e ssential qualification for entering upon this process of
self-exploration He is bidden to draw nigh to the Centre, but to halt and
make obeisance at three several stages, at each of which he is told he is
approaching more nearly to that central Essence, that holy ground of his
being upon which only the humble can walk, that " earth " which only the
meek shall inherit.

It is in this state that the introverted mind, groping for its own
foundation and centre, reaches at length the bedrock of its being. As the
symbolic ceremony exhibits the grasping of an emblem embodying the Word of
Life, so literally and in fact the questing mind, in coming upon the Vital
and Immortal Principle animating it, " lays hold on Eternal Life." It
discovers the Lost Word, the divine root of its being, from which it has
hitherto been so long dissociated. It fails to realize the fact at first,
for " the Light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it
not." Presently that darkness will disappear; when " the day (the new
consciousness) dawns and the shadows (the old mentality) flee away."

Therefore it is that this work of the introverted mind and the discovery
it makes, are exhibited as taking place darkly and amid subterranean
gloom. There remains, therefore, one concluding psychological process--to
extrovert that knowledge and bring it forward into formalized
brain-consciousness, so that what the spirit and the soul already know
interiorly the outer mind may also know exteriorly. Subjective awareness
does not become knowledge until it has been cerebrated and passed through
the alembic of the brain and the logical understanding. When it has so
passed through and become formalized, a reciprocal and reflex action
between the inner and outer natures is set up resulting in the
illumination of the whole. This extroversion of subjective perceptions is
symbolically achieved by the return of the candidate from the subterranean
depths to the surface and there rejoining his former companion-sojourners
and effecting a unification of all his component parts.

It is then that the Mystery is consummated. The Great Light breaks. The
Vital and Immortal Principle comes to self-consciousness in him. The Glory
of the Lord is revealed to and in him, and all his flesh sees it.

So far as it is possible for symbolic ceremonial to portray it this
consummation is represented by the restoration to light and the revelation
that then meets the candidate's gaze. His condition differs now from any
that has preceded it. It is not merely one of illumination by the Supernal
Light. It is one of identification with It. He and It have become one, as
a white-hot iron is indistinguishable from the furnace-flame engulfing it.
At the outset of his Masonic quest the predominant wish of his heart was
Light. The impulse was not his own; it was that of the Light Itself--the
primal Light of light, the Divine Substantial Word--seeking
self-development in him. Consciousness is that Light become
self-perceptive by polarization within an efficient physiological
organism. Man provides the only organism adapted to the attainment of that
self-perception; but only when that organism is purified and prepared
sufficiently for the achievement. In the Royal Arch that achievement is
hypothetically effe cted.

The condition attained by the illumined candidate is the equivalent of
what in Christian theology is known as Beatific Vision and in the East as
Samadhi. It is also spoken of as universal or cosmic consciousness, since
the percipient, transcending all sense of personal individualization, time
and space, is co-conscious with all that is. He has entered the bliss and
peace surpassing that temporal understanding which is limited to
perceiving the discords, antinomies and contrasts characterizing finite
existence; he has risen to that exalted state where all these find their
resolution in the blissful concord of the Eternal. He is in conscious
sympathy and identity of feeling with all that lives and feels, in virtue
of that universal charity and limitless love which is the corollary of
perceiving the unity of all in the Being of Deity, and which at the outset
of his progress he was told was the summit of the Mason's profession. He
sees too that there is a universe within as well as without him; th at he
himself microcosmically sums up and contains all that manifested to his
temporal intelligence as the vast spacial universe around him. He is
himself conscious of being the measure of the universe; he realizes that
the earth, the heavens, and all their contents, are externalizations,
projected images, of corresponding realities present within himself. As
the perfected head of creation, he beholds how he sums up in himself all
the lower forms of life through which his organism has passed to attain to
that perfection. The four symbolic standards exhibiting the lion, ox, man
and eagle are a very ancient glyph, declaring among other things the story
of the soul's evolution and its progress from the passional wild-beast
stage to one which, while still sensuous and animal, is docile and
disciplined for service, and thence to the stage of human rationality,
which at length culminates in upward-soaring spirituality. Similarly the
displayed banners of the twelve Israelitish tribes are again but fi gures
of their prototypes, the twelve zodiacal sections of those heavens which
could not exist or be discernible to the outward eye were they not also
the phenomenalized aspect of a reality cognizable by the inward eye;
whilst, gathered beneath these emblems, are those who represent the tribes
of no terrestrial nation, but are the " tribes of God," the heavenly
hierarchies that constitute an archetypal canopy or holy royal arch above
the visible creation and that mediate to it the effluences of that all
embracing triune Spirit of Power, Wisdom and Love in which the entire
composite structure lives, moves and has its being.

" In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth
was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And
God said, Let there be light, and there was light." With these words
begins the Sacred Script which is the sacramental token of that Living
Word by whom all things were made, and are still in the making, and whose
life is the light of men. The candidate who recovers that lost Word, in
the sense of regaining vital organic integration into it, and who,
therefore, is one with its Life and its Light, is able to verify this old
creation-story in its personal application to himself. He stands in the
presence of his own " earth "--the stone vault or dense matrix out of
which his finer being has emerged-and of his own " heavens " or ethereal
body of substantialized radiance which (as the iridescent sash of the
Order is meant to denote) now covers him with light as with a garment. He
is able to discern that it was himself who at first was " without form and
void " and who in virtue of that Fiat Lux ! has at last become transformed
from chaos and unconsciousness into a form so perfect and lucid as to
become a co-conscious vehicle of Divine Wisdom itself.

With this symbolic attainment of Beatific Vision at the restoration to
light, the effective part of the Royal Arch Ceremony as an initiatory rite
concludes. What follows upon it is anti-climax and allegorical exposition
of a similar nature to the traditional history in the Master Mason's
Degree. This takes the form of a mythos or dramatic narrative by the three
sojourners, describing their release from captivity in Babylon, their
return to Jerusalem under an impulse to assist in rebuilding the destroyed
national temple, their work among its ruins and the discovery of an
ancient and apparently important archive The perspicacious mind will not
fail to perceive in this historical or quasi-historical narrative an
allegory of the spiritual process which has been going on within the
candidate himself. It is he, as it is every human soul, that has been in
Babylonian bondage, in captivity to the Babel-confusion of mundane
existence, the tyranny of material interests, and the chaos of his own
disordere d nature. It is he who, in revolt from these, has in reflective
moments " sat down and wept by the waters of Babylon "--the transient flux
of temporal things-and " remembered Zion," in a yearning for inward
freedom and permanent peace of heart. It is he who finds the temple of his
old natural self worthless and in ruins, and realizes that upon its site
he must rebuild another and worthier one. From within himself comes the
urge of the inward Lord (Kurios) which (under the mask of Cyrus the king)
bids him forthwith depart from his captivity and go up to his true
native-land and re-erect the Lord's house. It is himself who discovers
among the rubble of his old self the plans and the material for the new
structure. And ultimately when that new structure is completed and, when
from natural man he has become reorganized into spiritual man, it is he
who is able to perceive the wonders of his own constitution, to behold his
own " earth " and his own " heavens " now fused into a unity to whi ch
both hi s material and his spiritual nature were necessary contributors.

The constitution of the Chapter as first revealed to the candidate is,
therefore, a symbol of his perfected organism. He sees that it is
polarized East and West; the East occupied by the three Principals,
signifying his spiritual pole; the West, occupied by the three Sojourners,
his psychic and materialized pole; each triad being the reflex of the
other, yet each triad being an organic unity in itself. St. John testifies
to this (and the ceremonial rite is made conformable to the teaching of
that great Initiate) when he writes: " There are three that bear record in
heaven, and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in
earth, and these three agree in one." The meaning of this metaphysical
assertion is that, just as a ray of white light splits up (as in the
rainbow) into three primary colours which still remain organically united,
so both the self-knowing Spirit in man and his psychical nature, although
monadic essentially, are prismatically dissociable into a trinity. The Sp
irit in man in its triple aspects is, therefore, appropriately typified by
the three Principals. They represent the three high attributes of the
Spirit--Holiness, Royal Supremacy, Functional Power--referred to in the
title of the Order; Holy-Royal-Arch. The middle and neutral term of these
three must be considered as differentiating itself into a passive and an
active, or a negative and a positive aspect; although all three act
conjointly and as one (as is in fact the case with the three Principals of
a Chapter). These three aspects of monadic Spirit are personified as
Haggai (passive), Joshua (active), with Zerubabel as the middle term from
which the other two issue and into which they merge. For the central
Majesty is in one of its aspects silent and withdrawn and in the other
functionally active and compulsive.

So too, with the triad of Sojourners at the other pole. They represent the
 unitary human Ego or personality also in its threefold aspects. They are
 the incarnated antitype or physicalized reflex of man's archetypal
 unincarnated and overshadowing Spirit. Hence they are designated
 Sojourners, as being but transient consociated pilgrims or wayfarers upon
 a plane of impermanence, in contrast with the enduring life of the
 deathless spirit whose projection upon this lower world they are.
 Psychologically, human personality is distributed into a passive negative
 subconsciousness and an active positive intelligence, linked together by
 a central co-ordinating principle, the combined three constituting man's
 unitary individuality. My Ego with its central and directive power of
 will is my principal sojourner; my subconsciousness with its passive
 intuitional capacity, and my practical intelligence with its active and
 connecting powers of thought and understanding, are my assistant
 sojourners. Let me see to it that, like their symbolic representatives,
 they are kept clothed in white and so able to reflect and react to their
 correspondences in the eastern or spiritual pole of my being.

The nexus or connecting medium between man's spiritual and bodily poles is
represented by a third triad impersonated by the two Scribes and the
Janitor. The more important of these scribes is attached to the East pole
and is as it were its emissary towards the West; the other is associated
with the Western pole and his activities are directed Eastwards; whilst
the Door-keeper is the point of contact with the world without. In one of
their many significances they typify the middle term between Spirit and
Matter--the astral medium or psychic bridge, in virtue of which contact
between them is possible.

Heavily veiled beneath the sacrementalism of a council of the Jewish
Sanhedrim, the Royal Arch Ceremony therefore exhibits in a most graphic
manner the psychologic rationale of the final stage of regeneration. To
the literalist, unacquainted with the fact that, in both Sacred Writ and
the teaching of the Mysteries, surface appearances are always intended to
be transposed into spiritual values and that quasi-historic characters are
meant to be impersonations of philosophic facts or principles, some
difficulty may be felt on being asked to translate the quasi-historicity
of the ceremonial text into the spiritualized interpretation here offered.
The education and enlightenment of the understanding is, however, one of
the deliberate intentions of Initiatory Rites, and until the mind is able
to rise above merely material facts and habituate itself to functioning in
the truer realm of ideas which materialize into facts and make facts
possible, there is small chance of its profiting from Rites like t hose of
Masonry, which are of wholly negligible value but for the spiritual force
and vitalizing energy of their inherent ideas. It may, therefore, be both
helpful and a corroboration of what has been said if we scrutinize the
Hebrew names of a Chapter's officers; what they yield upon analysis will
demonstrate that those officers impersonate ideas rather than represent
persons.

1. " Zerubabel, prince of the people." The name literally means " a
sprouting forth from Babel, or from among the people." " Babel " and
"people " are two forms of expressing the same idea and the English word
is almost identical with the Hebrew one. Society as a whole, the
multitude, " the people " (" bebeloi," as it is in Greek), at all times of
the world's history constitutes a Babel of confused aims and interests.
But there are always individuals intellectually or spiritually in advance
of the crowd and whose ideas, teachings or example shoot ahead of it, and
to such leaders the name Zerubabel would apply. But this illustration does
not express the deeper sense in which the word must be construed, which is
one of personal application. The individual is himself a mob, a chaos, a
multitude of confused desires, thoughts, passions, until these are brought
into discipline. But, present even amidst these and sprouting up from
among them, the ordinary man is conscious of a higher and spiritual el
ement in him, which he may cultivate or disregard, but which in his best
moments flames up above his lower disordered nature, convinces him of the
errors of his ways, and entices him to live from that higher level. That
loftier element is expressed by the word "Zerubabel "; it is the apex and
focus point of his spirituality as distinguished from his ordinary carnal
intelligence; the summit of all his faculties, the " prince " of his "
people." Those same faculties or " people" are referred to in the word
meaning " My people having obtained mercy" (or become regenerate), and in
the text " The people that sat in darkness have seen a great light."

2. " Haggai the Prophet." As has been shown before, the spiritual
principle differentiates into a passive and an active aspect. " Haggai "
represents the passive aspect and signifies at once the blissful and
self-contemplative nature of the spirit. It is called " the prophet"
because of the power of insight and omniscience characterizing that which
transcends the sense of time and abides eternally, and because it projects
into the lower intelligence intuitions, fore glimpses and intimations of a
prophetic nature. From the same word is derived The Greek word " hagios,"
holy.

3. " Joshua, the son of Josedek, the high priest," personifies the active
executive aspect of spirit. Literally Joshua means the " divine saviour,"
and Josedek " divine righteousness," whilst the " high priest " connotes a
mediatorial factor between man and Deity. The title in its entirety
therefore intimates that the human spirit or divine principle in man
functions intermediately between Deity and man's lower nature to promote
the latter's salvation and perfection. We have previously shown how the
Master Mason must be his own high priest and " walk upon " the chequered
floor-work of his elementary nature by learning to trample upon it. Thus
the Three Principals form a unity figuring man's spiritual pole in its
triple aspects; they represent the summit of his being as it lives on the
plane of the Spirit--holy, royal, supreme blissful because in a state of
holiness or wholeness; royal because a son of the King of all; powerful
because of its power to subdue, transmute and redeem all that is be low
its own purity and perfection.

4 & 5. Ezra and Nehemiah. In the great Mystery system of Egypt, which long
anteceded the Hebrew system, the regenerate candidate, who had achieved
the highest possible measure of self-transmutation of his lower nature,
was accorded the title of Osiris. It was the equivalent of attaining
Christhood. The nature of the perfectioning process and the rituals in
connection therewith are, thanks to certain modern scholars, available to
us and are recommended to the student who desires to know how arduous and
real that process was and the extremely high degree of regeneration aimed
at. In Hebrew the title Osiris became changed into Azarias (and sometimes
Zeruiah) and shall further corrupted into Esdras and Ezra, the name of the
senior Scribe of the Royal Arch. To understand the significance of the two
Scribes Ezra and Nehemiah it is necessary to recall that, in the Biblical
account of the return from Babylonian captivity, these two were leading
men. Transposing this historicized narrative into its spi ritual
implication, Ezra and Nehemiah personify two distinct stages of the
mystical progress made by the candidate who essays to renounce the Babel
of his lower nature and, by reorganizing himself, regain his native
spiritual home and condition. "Nehemiah " (whose place in the Chapter is
in the South West) is a figure of a certain measure of that reorganization
and return. Like his Biblical prototype, he symbolizes the candidate
engaged in rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem, and occupied in the great
work of self-reconstruction, from which he will not be beguiled into
coming down by the appeals and blandishments of the outer world. " Ezra "
(whose position is in the North East) indicates a much more advanced
measure of progress from West to East. The discerning student who will
peruse the Biblical books of Nehemiah and Ezra (including the Apocryphal
books of Esdras) in this light, and with this key to their true purport,
will not fail to profit by the instruction they will yield. Hence too they
are called " scribes "; both of them are recorders of, and testifiers to,
distinct but representative experiences encountered in the inner man at
different stages of the " great work " of self-integration and journeying
from a Babylon condition to the spiritual Jerusalem.

Here we bring to an end our examination of the true meaning and purpose of
the Royal Arch Ceremony. Dealing as it does with a supreme human
experience which none can fully appreciate without undergoing it, it is
the greatest and most momentous rite in Masonry, and no one who studies it
comprehendingly and in its sacramental significance will withhold
admiration either for the profound knowledge and insight of the now
unidentifiable mystic and initiate who conceived it or for the skill with
which he compiled it and cast his knowledge into dramatic expression. The
pity of it is that those who practise the rite make no effort to penetrate
its meaning and are content with the unenlightened perfunctory performance
of a ritual which even exoterically is singularly striking, beautiful and
suggestive. The least reflection upon it must suggest that Masonry is here
dealing with the building-work of no outward structure, but with the
re-erection of the fallen, disordered temple of the human soul; and tha t
even assuming that it but memorialized some long past historic events,
those events can have no vital bearing upon the life, character or conduct
of anyone to-day and would not justify the existence of an elaborate
secret Order to perpetuate them. But if those events and this rite be
symbolic of something deeper and something personal; if they
sacramentalize truths perpetually valid and capable of present realization
in those who ceremonially re-enact them, then they call for fuller and
more serious attention than is usually accorded. Moreover, if the Royal
Arch be the symbolic representation of a supreme experience attained and
attainable only in sanctity and by the regenerate, it follows that the
Craft Degrees leading up to and qualifying for it will take on a much
deeper sense than they commonly receive and must be regarded as solemn
instructions in the requisite preparation for that regenerate condition.
The Craft wo rk is unfinished without the attainment forth shadowed in the
Royal Arch . That attainment in turn is impossible without the discipline
of the preliminary labours, the purification of mind and desire, and that
crucifixion unto death of the self will which constitute the tests of
merit qualifying for entrance to that Jerusalem which has no geographical
site and which is called the " City of Peace " because it implies
conscious rest of the soul in God. For many, the suggestion that the
attainment of such a condition is possible or thinkable whilst we are
still here in the flesh may be surprising or even incredible. But such
doubt is unwarranted, and the Masonic doctrine negates it. As has been
already shown to the contrary, that doctrine postulates not the absence
but the possession of the material organism as a necessary factor in
advancing the evolution of the human spirit; that organism is the vessel
in which our base metal has to be transmuted into gold; it is the fulcrum
furnishing the resistance requisite for the spirit's energizing into
unfoldment a nd self-con sciousness. Physical death is therefore not an
advancement of, but an interference with, the work of regeneration. " The
night cometh when no man can work," and when the soul merely passes from
labour to refreshment until recalled to labour once more at the task of
self-conquest. It is but figurative of that necessary dying to self which
implies the voluntary decreasing assertiveness of our temporal nature to
permit of a corresponding ascendancy of the spiritual.

But if in the hands of its present exponents Masonry is now rather a dead
letter than a living effectual Initiatory Rite capable of quickening the
spirituality of its candidates, it still remains for the earnest and
perspicuous aspirant to the deeper verities an instructive economy of the
science of self-gnosis and regeneration. For such these papers are
written, that they may both learn something of the original design of the
Order and educate their imagination in the principles of that science. And
to such, in conclusion, may be commended that Temple-hymn of the Hebrew
Initiates, which of all the Psalms of David refers with most pointed
reference to the subject-matter of the supreme Order of the Holy Royal
Arch of Jerusalem and the personal attainment of the blessed and perfected
condition which that title implies:-

" I was glad when they said unto me, let us go up into the house of the
Lord; Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem is
builded as a city that is compact together; Thither the tribes go up, the
tribes of the Lord.... For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones
of the house of David. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem ! they shall
prosper that love it. Peace is within her wills and plenteousness within
her palaces. For my brethren and companions' sake I will say, Peace be
within thee.   (Psalm CXXII.)

In those few lines is sketched all that is implied in the symbolic
 spectacle that greets the eyes of the Royal Arch Mason at the supreme
 moment of his restoration to light. Exalted into and become identified
 with the supreme bliss, peace and selfconsciousness of the All-Pervasive
 and Omniscient Spirit, he sees how he has " gone up " out of the Babylon
 of his old complex and disordered nature and upon its ruins has built for
 himself an ethereal body of glory, a " house of the Lord." He sees how
 this ecstatic condition and this new-made celestial body are the
 sublimated products of his former self and its temporal organism. He sees
 how each separate part and faculty of that old nature, or as it were each
 of the zodiacal divisions of his own microcosm, has contributed its
 purified essence to form a new organism, " a new heaven and a new earth
 "; and how these essences, like twelve diversified tribes, have assembled
 convergently and finally coalesced and become fused into a unity or new
 whole, " a city that is compact together." And it is this " city," this
 blessed condition, which mystically is called "Jerusalem," within whose
 walls is the peace which passeth understanding and whose palaces reveal
 to the enfranchised soul the unfailing plenteousness and fecundity of the
 indissoluble trinity of Wisdom and Love and Power from which man and the
 universe have issued and into which they are destined to return.

The antithesis of this " heavenly city " is the confused Babylon city of
this world, of which it is written to all captives therein, " Come out of
her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye receive
not of her plagues ! " (Rev. xviii. 4). And, in a word, the Royal Arch
Ceremony sacramentally portrays the last phase of the mystical journey of
the exiled soul from Babylon to Jerusalem as it escapes from its captivity
to this lower world and, " passing the veils " of matter and form, breaks
through the bondage of corruption into the world of the formless Spirit
and realizes the glonous liberty of the children of God.


Chapter V.

FREEMASONRY IN RELATION TO THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES.

EVERY Mason is naturally desirous to know something of the origin and
history of the Craft. The available literature on the subject is diffuse
and unsatisfying. It offers a mass of disconnected details of archaeology
and comparative religion without unifying them into any helpful light and
deals rather with matters of minor and temporal history than with what
alone is of real moment, the spiritual lineage of the Craft. In this
paper, therefore, it is proposed to trace a rough outline and, in the
space available, only a very rough one is possible--of a movement which is
as old as humanity itself and the purpose and doctrine of which are still
faithfully, if very rudimentarily, preserved in the Masonic system. But
such a sketch, by providing a general outline for the enquirer to
contemplate and the details of which he may fill in for himself by
subsequent study of his own, may perhaps prove more serviceable than a
mass of fragmentary facts over which one may pore indefinitely and with
much inter est, yet without perceiving their inter-relation or
coordinating them into one comprehensive impressive scheme.

No really serviceable work upon Masonry exists that treats of its history
and purpose in the only way that matters vitally. The student is apt to
waste much time to little profit by turning for information to
publications the titles of which seem to promise full enlightenment, but
that leave him unsatisfied and unconvinced. Desultory collections of
information upon points of symbolism, archaeology and anthropology, the
tracing of connections between modern Masonry and medieval building-guilds
and other communities may be all very interesting, but these are but as
the dry bones of a subject of which one desires to know the living spirit.
They fail to answer the main questions one asks from the heart and is
anxious to have answered; such as, What was the nature of the Ancient
Mysteries of which modern Masonry purports to be the perpetuation ? To
what end and purpose did they exist ? What need is there to perpetuate
them to-day ? For what purpose was Initiation instituted ? Did it at any
time ser ve any real purpose or can it now ? Was it ever more than it is
to-day, a mere perfunctory ceremonial leading to nothing of essential
value and emphasizing only a few moral principles and elementary truths
which we know already? It is to answering such questions as these that the
present paper is directed.

Now one of the first things to strike any student of Masonic literature
and comparative religion is the remarkable presence of common factors,
common beliefs, doctrines, practices and symbols, in the religions of all
races alike, whether ancient or modern, eastern or western, civilized or
barbarian, Christian or pagan. However separated from others by time or
distance, however intellectualized or primitive, however elaborated or
simple their religion or morals, and however wide their differences in
important respects, each people is found to have employed and still to be
employing certain ideas, symbols and practices in common with every other;
perhaps with or without some slight modification of form. Masonic
treatises abound with demonstrations of this uniformity in the use of
various symbols prominent in every Lodge. Authors delight in supplying
evidence of the close correspondences in various unrelated systems and in
demonstrating how ancient and universal such and such ideas, symbols and p
ractices have been. But they do not go so far as to explain the reason for
this antiquity and universality, and it is this point which it will be
well to clear up at the outset, since it furnishes the clue to the entire
problem of the genesis, the history, and the reason for the existence of
Masonry.

If research and reflection be pushed far enough it becomes clear that the
universality and uniformity referred to are due to the fact that at one
time, long back in the world's past, there existed or was implanted in the
minds of the whole human family--which was doubtless much smaller and more
concentrated then than now--a Proto-Evangelium or Root-Doctrine in regard
to the nature and destiny of the soul of man and its relation to the
Deity. We of to-day pride ourselves upon being wiser and more advanced
than primitive humanity. We assume that our ancestors lived in moral
benightedness out of which we have since gradually emerged into
comparative light. All the evidence, however, negatives these
suppositions. It indicates that primitive man, however childish and
intellectually undeveloped according to modern standards, was spiritually
conscious and psychically perceptive to a degree undreamed of by the
modern mind, and that it is ourselves who, for all our cleverness and
intellectual developme nt in temporal matters, are nevertheless plunged in
darkness and ignorance about our own nature, the invisible world around .
us, and the eternal spiritual verities. In all Scriptures and cosmologies
the tradition is universal of a " Golden Age," an age of comparative
innocence, wisdom and spirituality, in which racial unity and individual
happiness and enlightenment prevailed; in which there was that open vision
for want of which a people perisheth, but in virtue of which men were once
in conscious conversation with the unseen world and were shepherded,
taught and guided by the " gods " or discarnate superintendents of the
infant race, who imparted to them the sure and indefeasible principles
upon which their spiritual welfare and evolution depended.

The tradition is also universal of the collective soul of the human race
having sustained a " fall," a moral declension from its true path of life
and evolution, which has severed it almost entirely from its creative
source, and which, as the ages advanced, has involved its sinking more and
more deeply into physical conditions, its splitting up from a unity
employing a single language into a diversity of conflicting races of
different speeches and degrees of moral advancement, accompanied by a
progressive densification of the material body and a corresponding
darkening of the mind and atrophy of the spiritual consciousness. To some
who read this the statement will probably be rejected as fabulous and
incredible. The supposition of a " fall of man " is nowadays an unpopular
doctrine, rejected by many who contend that everything points rather to a
rise of man, yet who fail to reflect that logically a rise necessarily
involves an antecedent fall from which a rise becomes possible. This
point, how ever, we cannot stop to discuss and must be content merely with
indicating what in both the Scriptures of all races and the
Wisdom-tradition of the sages of antiquity is unanimously recorded to be
the fact.

From that " fall," which was not due to the transgression of an
individual, but to some weakness or defect in the collective or group-soul
of the Adamic race, and which was not the matter of a moment but a process
covering vast time-cycles, it was necessary and within the Divine counsels
and providence that humanity should be redeemed and restored to its
pristine state; that it should be brought back once more into vital
association with the Divine Principle from which by its secession it
became increasingly detached, as its materialistic tendencies overpowered
and quenched its native spirituality. This restoration in turn required
vast time-cycles for its achievement. And it required something further.
It required the application of an orderly and scientific method to effect
the restoration of each fallen soul-fragment and bring it back to its
primitive pure and perfect condition. I emphasize that the method was
necessarily to be not a haphazard, but a scientific one. Anyone may fall
from a h ousetop and break his bones; skilled surgery and intelligent
effort by some friendly hand are required to heal the patient and get him
back to the place he fell from. So with humanity. It fell--out of Eden, as
our Scriptures describe the lapse from super-physical to physical
conditions--why and how, again we must not stay to enquire. It fell,
through inherent weakness and lack of wisdom. Unable to effect its own
recovery it required skilled scientific assistance from other sources to
bring about its restoration. Whence could come that skill and scientific
knowledge if not from the Divine and now invisible world, from those "
gods " and angelic guardians of the erring race of whom all the ancient
traditions and sacred writings tell? Would not that regenerative method be
properly described if it were called, as in Masonry it is called, a "
heavenly science," and welcomed in the words that Masons in fact use, "
Hail, Royal Art ! " ?

Thus, then, was the origin and birth of Religion. And Religion is a word
implying a " binding back " (re-ligare). As with the setting and bandaging
a broken limb, so the collective soul of humanity, fractured and
comminuted by its fall into countless individuations and their subsequent
respective progenies, each separately damaged and imperfect, needed to be
restored to the condition from which it had become dislocated and once
more built up into a perfect harmonious whole.

To the spiritual guardians of primitive man, then, one must attribute the
communication of that universal science of rebuilding the fallen temple of
humanity, of which science we now surprisedly find traces in every race
and religion of the world. To this source we must credit the distribution,
in every land and among every people, of the same or equivalent symbols,
practices and doctrines, modified only locally and in accordance with the
intelligence of particular peoples, yet all manifesting a common root and
purpose.

This was the one Holy Catholic (or universal) Religion " throughout all
 the world "; at once a theoretic doctrine and a practical science
 intended to reunite man to his Maker. That religion could only be one, as
 it could not be otherwise than catholic and for all men equally and
 alike; though, owing to the perverse distortive tendencies of humanity
 itself, it was susceptible of becoming (as has so happened) debased and
 sectarianized into as many forms as there are peoples. Moreover, its main
 principles could never be susceptible of alteration, though they might be
 (as they have been) exoterically understood by some and esoterically by
 others, and their full import would not all at once be apparent, but
 develop with increasing fidelity to and understanding of them. It
 provided the unalterable " landmarks " of knowledge concerning human
 nature, human potentialities and human destiny. It laid down the ancient
 and established " usages and customs" to be followed at all times by
 everyone content to accept its discipline and which none might deviate
 from or add innovations to, save at his own peril. It was the "Sacred Law
 " for the guidance of the fallen soul, a law valid from the dawn of time
 till its sunset, and of which it is written "As it was in the beginning,
 is now and ever shall be, world without end." It was the science of
 life--of temporal limited life lived with the intention of its conversion
 and sublimation into eternal universal life; and, therefore, it called
 for a scientific or philosophic method of living, every moment and action
 of which should be directed to that great goal;--a method very different
 from the modern method, which is entirely utilitarian in its outlook and
 totally unscientific in its conduct.

This Proto-Religion is related to have originated in the East, from which
 proverbially all light comes, and, as humanity itself became diffused and
 distributed over the globe, to have gradually spread towards the West, in
 a perpetual watchfulness of humanity's spiritual interests and an
 unfailing purpose to retrieve " that which was lost "--the fallen human
 soul. We have already said that in early times the humanity then under
 its influence was far less materialized and far more spiritually
 sensitive and perceptive than it subsequently became or is now; and
 accordingly it follows that with the increasing age and density of the
 race the influence of the Proto-Religion itself became correspondingly
 diminished, though its principles remained as valid and effective as
 before; for the self-willed vagaries and speculative conceptions of man
 cannot alter the principles of static Truth and Wisdom. To follow in any
 detail the course of its history is not now necessary and would require a
 long treatise. And to do so would also be like following the course of a
 river backwards from its broad mouth to a point where it becomes an
 insignificant and scarcely traceable channel. For the race itself has
 wandered backwards, farther and farther from the original
 Wisdom-teaching, so that the once broad and bright flood of light upon
 cosmic principles and the evolution of the human soul has now become
 contracted into minute points. But that light, like that of a Master
 Mason, has never been wholly extinguished, however dark the age, and, by
 the tradition, this of ours is spiritually the darkest of the dark ages.
 " God has never left Himself without a witness among the children of
 men," and among the witnesses to the Ancient Wisdom and Mysteries is the
 system of Masonry; a faint and feeble flicker, perhaps, but nevertheless
 a true light and in the true line of succession of the primitive
 doctrine, and one still able to guide our feet into the way of peace and
 perfection.

The earliest teaching of the Mysteries traceable within historic time was
in the Orient and in the language known as Sanscrit--a name itself
significant and appropriate, for it means Holy Writ or " Sanctum
Scriptum"; and for very great lights upon the ancient Secret Doctrine one
must still refer to the religious and philosophical scriptures of India,
which was in its spiritual and temporal prime when modern Europe was
frozen beneath an ice-cap.

But races, like men, have their infancy, manhood and old age; they are but
units, upon a larger scale than the individual, for furthering the general
life-purpose. When a given race has served or failed in that purpose, the
stewardship of the Mysteries passes on to other and more effectual hands.
The next great torch-bearer of the Light of the world was Egypt, which,
after many centuries of spiritual supremacy, in turn became the arid
desert it now is both spiritually and materially, leaving nevertheless a
mass of structural and written relics still testifying to its possession
of the Doctrine in the days of its glory. From Egypt, as civilizations
developed in adjoining countries, a great irradiation of them took place
by the diffusion of its knowledge and the institution of minor centres for
the imparting of the Divine Science in Chaldea, Persia, Greece and Asia
Minor. " Out of Egypt have I called My son " is, in one of its many
senses, a biblical allusion to this passing on of the catholic M ysteries
from Egypt to new and virgin regions, for their enlightenment.

Of these various translations those that concern us chiefly are two; the
one to Greece, the other to Palestine. We know from the Bible that Moses
was an initiate of the Egyptian mysteries and became learned in all its
wisdom, while Philo tells us that Moses there became " skilled in music,
geometry, arithmetic, hieroglyphics and the whole circle of arts and
sciences." In other words he became in a real sense a Master Mason and, as
such, qualified himself for his subsequent great task of leadership of the
Hebrew people and the formulating of their religious system and rule of
life as laid down in the Pentateuch. The Mosaic system continued, as we
know, along the channel indicated in the books of the Old Testament, and
then, after many centuries and vicissitudes, effloresced in the greatest
of all expressions of the Mysteries, as disclosed in the Gospels of the
New Testament (or New Witness), involving the supersession of all previous
systems under the Supreme Grand Mastership of Him who is call ed the Light
of the World and its Saviour.

Concurrently with the existence of the Hebrew Mysteries under the Mosiac
dispensation, the great Greek school of the Mysteries was developing,
which, originating in the Orphic religion, culminated and came to a focus
at Delphi and generated the philosophic wisdom and the aesthetic glories
associated with Athens and the Periclean age. Greece was the spiritual
descendant and infant prodigy of both India and Egypt, though developing
along quite different lines. We know that Pythagoras, like Moses, after
absorbing all his native teachers could impart, journeyed to Egypt to take
his final initiation prior to returning and founding the great school at
Crotona associated with his name. We know, too, from the Timaus of Plato
how aspirants for mystical wisdom visited Egypt for initiation and were
told by the priests of Sais that " you Greeks are but children " in the
Secret Doctrine, but were admitted to information enabling them to promote
their own spiritual advancement. We know from the corresponden ce,
recorded by Iamblichus, between Anebo and Porphyry, the fraternal
relations existing between the various schools or lodges of instruction in
different lands; how their members visited, greeted and assisted one
another in the secret science, the more advanced being obliged, as every
initiate still is when called upon, to " afford assistance and instruction
to his brethren in the inferior degrees." And we know that at the
Nativity--or shall we say the installation in this world--of the Great
Master, there came to Him from afar Magi or initiate visitors who knew of
His impending advent and had seen His star in the East and desired to
acknowledge and pay Him reverence. In all these world moving incidents in
times when initiation was a real event and not a mere ceremonial form as
now, it is of interest to notice the practice upon a grand scale of the
same customs and courtesies as are still observed, though alas
unintelligently, by the Craft of to-day.

We must now speak more fully of the Mysteries and the " Royal Art " as
pursued by the Greek school. With the Greeks it took the form of a quest
of philosophy; i.e., for wisdom, for the Sophia, just as in the Hebrew and
Christian schools it took the form of a quest for the Lost Word. The end
was of course the same in both cases, but the approach to it was by
different means and, as we shall see, the two methods coalesced into one
at a later date. The Greek approach was primarily an intellectual one and
by what Spinoza has termed Amor intellectualis Dei. The Christian approach
was primarily through the affections and the adoration of the heart. Both
strained after " that which was lost," but one sought after the lost ideal
by intellectual and the other by devotional energy. Humanity is but slowly
educated; " line upon line; precept upon precept; here a little and there
a little," one faculty after another being developed and trained unto the
refashioning of the perfect organism. And if philosoph ic Wisdom and the
sense of Beauty stood forth--as they did stand forth--most prominently as
the main pillars of the Greek system, the Greeks had yet to learn of a
third and middle pillar that synthesized and comprised them both--that of
the Strength of the supreme virtue of Love, when towards the object of all
desire it pours from a pure and perfect heart.

The Greek's quest of wisdom was something much more than a mere desire for
larger information and maturer judgment about one's place in the universe.
Merely to know certain facts about the hidden side of life profits nothing
unless the knowledge is allowed to influence and adapt our method of
living to the truths disclosed. Then the knowledge becomes transmuted into
wisdom; one becomes the truth one sees; and a man's life becomes truth
made substantial and dynamic. But to bring this about one must first be
informed about or initiated into certain elements of the truth and be
persuaded that it is truth before setting about to become it. The Greek
method, therefore, began by initiating the mind into certain truths about
the soul's own nature, history, destiny and potentialities, and then left
the individual to follow up the information by a course of conduct in
which the teaching imparted would become converted into assured conviction
and living power, whilst his increasing progress in the scien ce would
itself result in awakening him to still deeper truths.

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that no one can learn spiritual
science, whether as taught by Masonry or any other system inculcating it,
without submitting himself to its processes and living them out in
practical experience. In this supreme study, knowing depends entirely upon
doing; comprehension is conditional upon and the corollary of action. " He
that will do the will shall know of the doctrine."

Hence it is that in Masonry an installed Master is still called a " Master
of Arts and Sciences," for he is supposed to have mastered the art of
living in accordance with the theoretic gnosis or science imparted to him
in the course of his progress. Real Masonic knowledge will never be
achieved merely by oral explanation, hearing lectures and studying books.
These may be useful in giving a preliminary start to earnest seekers
needing but a little guidance to set them on that path of personal
practice and experience where they will soon develop an automatic
understanding of the doctrine for themselves; for those with but a casual
dilletante interest the doctrine will continue veiled and secret. For
example, it is one thing to hear explained what is meant by being divested
of money and metals in the philosophic sense; it is quite another to have
become insusceptible to all attraction by material interests and
sense-allurements and to be consciously possessed of the wisdom accruing
from that expe rience. It may interest to be told why, at a certain stage
of progress, the candidate is likened to an ear of corn by a fall of
water; but the explanation will be forgotten to-morrow, unless as the
result of his own effort the hearer has become personally aware of an
inward substantial growth ripening to harvest within him from the ground
of his own being and fertilized by supersensual nourishment falling like
the gentle rain from heaven upon his ardent and aspiring soul. Again, it
may seem instructive to know that the great ritual of the Third Degree
signifies a death unto sin and self and a new birth unto righteousness,
but how will the information profit those who nevertheless mean to go on
living the old manner of life, which at every moment negates all that
ritual implies ?

The Ancient Mysteries, then, involved much more than a merely notional
philosophy. They required also a philosophic method of living--or rather
of dying. For as Socrates said (in Plato's Phoedo, from which much Masonic
teaching is directly drawn and which every Masonic student should study
deeply) " the whole study of the philosopher (or wisdom-seeker) is nothing
else than to die and be dead "; an assertion repeated by Plutarch, " to be
initiated is to die "; and by the Christian apostle, " I die daily." Their
method was divided into two parts, the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries.
The Lesser were those in which the more elementary instruction was
imparted, so that candidates might forthwith set about to purify and adapt
their lives to the truths disclosed. The Greater Mysteries related to the
developments of consciousness within the soul itself, as the result of
fidelity to the prescribed rule of life. To draw a faint analogy, the
Lesser Mysteries bore the same relation to the Greater as the present
Craft Degrees do to the Holy Royal Arch.

To deal adequately with the Mystery-systems would involve a lengthy study
in itself. We will refer to but one of the most famous of them, the
Eleusinian, which existed in Greece and for several centuries was the
focus-point of religion and philosophy for the then civilized portion of
Europe. " Eleusis " means light, and initiation into the Mysteries of
Eleusis, therefore, meant a quest of the aspirant for light, in precisely
the same, but a far more real, sense as the modern Mason declares light to
be the predominant wish of his heart. It meant, as it ought to mean to-day
but does not, not merely light in the sense of being given some secret
information not obtainable elsewhere or about any matter of worldly
interest, but the opening up of the candidate's whole intellectual and
spiritual nature in the super-sensual light of the Divine world and
raising him to God-consciousness. The ordinary and uninitiated man knows
nothing of that super-sensual light by his merely natural reason; he is
consci ous only of the outer world and things perceptible by his natural
faculties. In the words of St. Paul " the natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither
can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Initiation,
therefore, meant a process whereby natural man became transformed into
spiritual or ultra-natural man, and to effect this it was necessary to
change his consciousness, to gear it to a new and higher principle, and
so, as it were, make of him a new man in the sense of attaining a new
method of life and a new outlook upon the universe. " Be ye transformed by
the renewing of your minds," says the Apostle, referring to this process.
As has previously been shown in these papers, the transference of the
symbol of the Divine Presence from the ceiling to the floor of the Masonic
Lodge is to indicate how the Vital and Immortal Principle in man can be
brought down from his remoter psychological region into his physical o
rganism and function there through his body and brain, thus as it were
dislocating and superseding his natural mentality and regenerating him.
This truth is still further reproduced in Masonry by the name " Lewis,"
traditionally associated with the Craft. "Lewis " is a modern corruption
of Eleusis and of other Greek and Latin names associated with Light. In
our instruction Lectures it is said to designate " the son of a Mason."
This, however, has no reference to human parentage and sonship. It refers
to the mystical birth of the Divine Light in oneself; as a familiar
Scriptural text has it, " Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is
given." It is the Divine Principle, the Divine Wisdom, brought to birth
and function within the organism of the natural man, who virtually becomes
its parent. It is further described in our Lectures as something " which
when properly dovetailed into a stone forms a clamp, enabling Masons to
lift great weights with little inconvenience whilst fixing them on their p
roper b ases." All which is a concealed way of expressing the fact that,
when the Divine Light is brought forward from man's submerged depths and
firmly grafted or dovetailed into his natural organism, he then becomes
able easily to grapple with difficulties, problems and " weights " of all
kinds which to the unregenerate are insuperable, and to perceive all
things sub specie ceternitatis and in their true relations, as is not
possible to other men who behold them only sub specie temporis and are
consequently unable to judge their real values and " fix them on their
proper bases."

In the time that the Mysteries flourished, every educated man entered them
in the same way that men enter a University in modern times. They were the
recognized source of instruction in the only things that really matter,
those affecting the culture of the human soul and its education in the
science of itself and its divine nature. Candidates were graded according
to their moral efficiency and their intellectual or spiritual stature. For
years they underwent disciplinary intellectual exercises and bodily
asceticism, punctuated at intervals by appropriate tests and ordeals to
determine their fitness to proceed to the more serious, solemn and awful
processes of actual initiation, administered only to the duly qualified,
and which were of a secret and closely guarded character. Their education,
differing greatly from the scholastic methods of a utilitarian age like
our own, was directed solely to the cultivation of the " four cardinal
virtues " and the " seven liberal arts and sciences " as quali fications
prerequisite to participation in the higher order of life to which
initiation would eventually admit the worthy and properly prepared
candidate. The construction put upon these virtues and sciences was a much
more advanced one than the modern mind considers adequate. Virtues with
them were more than abstractions and ethical sentiments; as the word
itself implies they involved positive valours and virility of soul.
Temperance involved complete control of the passional nature under every
circumstance; Fortitude, the courage that no adversity will dismay or
deflect from the goal in view; Prudence, the deep insight that begets the
prophetic or forward-seeing faculty of seer-ship (providentia); justice,
unswerving righteousness of thought and action.* The " arts and sciences "
were called " liberal " because they tended to liberate the soul from
defects and illusions normally enslaving it, thus totally differing from
science i n the modern sense, the tendency of which is, as we know, mater
ialistic and soul-benumbing. Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric with the Ancients
were disciplines of the moral nature, by which the irrational tendencies
of a human being were purged away and he was trained to become a living
witness of the universal Logos and a living mouth-piece of the Divine
Word. Geometry and Arithmetic were sciences of transcendental space and
numeration (seeing that, as in the words of our own Scriptures, God has "
made everything by measure, number and weight "), the comprehension of
which provides the key, not only to the problems of one's being, but to
those physical ones which are found so baffling by the inductive methods
of to-day. Astronomy for them required no telescopes; it dealt not with
the stars of the sky, but was the science of metaphysics and the
understanding of the distribution of the forces latent in, and determining
the destiny of, individuals, nations and the race. Finally Music (or
Harmony) was for them not of the vocal or instrumental kind; it meant the
l iving practice of philosophy, the adjustment of human life into harmony
with God, until the personal soul became unified with Him and consciously
heard, because it now participated

* The four cardinal virtues are referred to in both Plato's Phoedo and the
Book of Wisdom, ch. viii, 5-7, indicating community of teaching between
the Greek and Hebrew schools.


in, the music of the spheres. As Milton puts it:--

"How lovely is Divine Philosophy, Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools
suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute And a perpetual feast of nectar'd
sweets Where no crude surfeit reigns "


Every possible device was employed and practised to train the mind to
acquire dominion over the passions and to loosen and detach it from the
impressions and attractions of the senses, to destroy the illusions and
false imaginations under which it labours when using no higher light than
its own, and to qualify it for a higher method of cognition and for the
reception of supersensual truth and the light of the Divine world. The
idealism of Greek architecture and sculpture was entirely due to the same
motive and with a view to elevating the imagination beyond the visible
level and fitting the mind for the apprehension of ultra-physical form and
beauty. Even athletic exercises were made to subserve the same purpose;
wrestling and racing were not vulgar sports; they were regarded
sacramentally, as the type of combats the soul must engage in against the
competition of the fleshly desires; and the victor's crown of laurel or
olive was the emblem of wisdom and illumination resulting to him in whom
th e spirit conquers the flesh. Thus every intellectual and physical
interest was made subservient to the one idea of separating the soul from
material bondage and was purposely of a purifying or "cathartic " nature
that should cleanse the thoughts and desires of the aspirant and make him
white within and without even as the modern candidate for the Craft is
clothed in white. This inward purity of heart and mind, coupled with the
possession of the four cardinal virtues, was and still is an absolute
essential to the ordeals of actual initiation, which otherwise rendered
the candidate liable to insanity and obsessions of which the modern mind
in its ignorance of what initiation involves can form no opinion. Those
who became proficient and properly prepared in this curriculum of the
Lesser Mysteries were eventually admitted to initiation in the Greater
Mysteries. Those who failed to qualify were restrained from advancement.
As now, the numbers of really earnest and qualified aspirants were only a
pe rcentage of the total of those who entered the Mysteries, for in the
spiritual life, as in the world of nature, the biological phenomenon
prevails that the available raw material greatly exceeds the perfected
product. Every year far more seeds are borne, far more eggs are laid or
spawned, than reach maturity, although every seed and egg is potentially
capable of growth and fruition. Plato, speaking of the Mysteries in his
own day, quotes a still older authority that " the thyrsus bearers* (or
candidates for initiation) are numerous, but the Bacchuses (or perfected
initiates) are few." The same truth is restated in the words in the
Gospels, " Many are called, but few are chosen."

One qualification above all was essential to the

* The thyrsus (or Caduceus) was an elaborate wand borne by the candidate,
to the symbolism of which deep meaning attached. Its present form is the
wand carried by the deacon accompanying the candidate.


aspirant, as it is still to-day,--humility. The wisdom into which the
Mysteries and initiation admit a man is foolishness to the world; it is a
reversal and revolution of all orthodox and academic standards. To attain
it a man must be prepared for that complete and voluntary self-denial
which may involve his finding negated everything he has previously held to
be true, or which those among whom he ordinarily mingles believe to be
true. He must be content to " become a fool for the kingdom of heaven's
sake " and to suffer adversity, ridicule and obloquy for it if needs be.
This was one of the prime reasons for secrecy and one though not the only
one--of the origins of the Masonic injunction as to secrecy. The world's
wisdom and that to which initiation admits are so antipodal in their
nature that any intrusion of the latter will infallibly provoke resentment
from the former. Hence it is written " Cast not your pearls before swine,
neither give that which is holy unto dogs--lest they turn and re nd you."
Silence and secrecy are, therefore, desirable if only in self-defence,
though there are other reasons; but humility is indispensable. In the
public processions of the Lesser Mysteries--for the public were permitted
at certain festivals to participate to a small extent in some of the more
exoteric knowledge --the sacred emblems and eucharistic vessels used in
the rites were carried with great reverence upon the back of an ass. With
the same intention, it is said that one of the great Greek philosophers
always had an ass by his side in his lecture-room when instructing his
students. The explanation is given in the words of one of the old
authorities upon initiation as follows: " There is no creature so able to
receive divinity as an ass, into whom if ye be not turned, ye shall in no
wise be able to carry the divine mysteries." In the light of this, one
will at once discern the symbolical significance of the Christian Maste r
riding into Jerusalem upon an ass.

Another and a greatly educative means employed in the Mysteries was that
of instructing, enlarging and purifying the imagination by means of myths,
expressing either in doctrinal form or by spectacular representation,
truths of the Divine world and of the soul's history. The modern mind in
its passion for actual concrete facts is little sympathetic to a method of
teaching which dispenses with demonstrable facts and prefers to enunciate
the eternal principles underlying such facts and of which those facts are
but the manifested resultant consequence. Facts--of history or science
tend, however, to congest the mind and paralyse the imagination, as Darwin
lamented in his own case. Principles stimulate and illumine the
imagination, and enable the mind to interpret facts and adjust them to
their proper relation. The Greek mythologists were adepts at expressing
cosmic and philosophic truths in the guise of fables which at once
expressed theosophic teaching to the discerning and veiled it from the car
eless and ignorant. Myth-making was a science, not an indulgence in
irresponsible fiction, and by exhibiting some of these myths in dramatic
form candidates were instructed in various fundamental verities of life.

One of the chief and best known of the numerous myths was that of Demeter
and her daughter Persephone, annually performed with great ceremony and
elaboration at the Eleusinia, and of which it may be useful to speak
briefly. It told how the maiden Persephone strayed away from Arcadla
(heaven) and her mother Demeter, to pluck flowers in the meads of Enna,
and how the soil there opened and caused her to fall through into the
lower dark world of Hades ruled over by Pluto. The despair of her mother
at the loss reached Zeus, the chief of the Gods, with the result that he
relieved the position by ordaining that, if the girl had not eaten of the
fruit of Hades, she should forthwith be restored to her mother for ever,
but that if she had so eaten she must abide a third of each year with
Pluto and return to Demeter for the other two thirds. It proved that
Persephone had unfortunately eaten a pomegranate in the lower world, so
that her restoration to her mother could not be permanent, but only
periodic.

This myth, and the importance once attached to it, will be appreciated
 only upon understanding its interpretation. It is the story of the soul
 and is of the same nature as the Mosaic myth of Adam and Eve and the
 apple, and as the cosmic parable of the Prodigal Son, neither of these
 being meant to be regarded as historically true, but as a fiction
 spiritually true of cosmic facts. Persephone is the human soul, generated
 out of that primordial incorruptible mother-earth which the Greeks
 personified as Demeter, just as the Mosaic narrative speaks of God
 forming man out of the dust of the ground. Her straying from her Arcadian
 home and heavenly mother in quest of flowers (or fresh experiences on her
 own account) in the fields of Enna, corresponds with the same promptings
 of desire that led to Adam's disobedience in Eden and his fall thence to
 this outer world. All unruly desires end in dissatisfaction and
 bitterness, and " Enna " (signifying darkness and bitterness) is the same
 word as still meets us in Gehenna. One may, however, profit by one's
 mistakes. It is they which breed wisdom, and it is the riches of wisdom
 and experience that are signified by Pluto, the god of riches, into whose
 kingdom Persephone falls. She might have returned thence to her mother
 for ever, Zeus decreed, had she not still further injured herself by
 eating of the fruit of the lower world, but having done so her
 restoration can only be partial and temporary. This alludes to the soul's
 still further self-soilure and degradation by lusting after the inferior
 pleasures of this lower plane, which, as the pomegranate symbolizes, is
 many seeded with illusions and vanities. Until these false tendencies are
 eradicated, until the desires of the heart are utterly weaned from
 external delights, there can be no permanent restoration of the soul to
 its source, but merely the periodic respite and refreshment that death
 brings when it withdraws the soul from Pluto's realm to the heaven-world,
 to be follo wed again and again b y periodic descents into material
 limitations and reascents into discarnate conditions, until it becomes
 finally purged and perfected.

By this great myth, therefore, instruction was imparted as to the history
of the soul, its destiny and prospects, and the doctrine of reincarnation*
was emphasized.

How Masonry follows this traditional method of instruction by myths. Its
canon of teaching in the Craft degrees contains two myths. One is that of
the building of King Solomon's Temple. The other is that of the death and
burial of Hiram Abiff narrated in the traditional history. The Royal Arch
contains a third myth in the story of the return from captivity after the
destruction of the first temple, the commencement to build the second, and
the discovery then made. This third myth has already been expounded in our
paper on the Royal Arch degree, so that we need now speak only of the
Craft Myths.

To the literal-minded the building of Solomon's temple at Jerusalem (which
is of course largely but not entirely based upon the Hebrew Scriptures)
appears to be the history of an actual stone and mortar structure erected
by three Asiatic notables, one of whom conceived the idea, another
supplying the building material, whilst the third was the practical
architect and chief of works. The two former are said to have been kings
of adjacent small nations; the third was not a royalty, but apparently a
person of no social dignity and a " widow's son."

As has previously been said in these papers, these details of an
enterprise undertaken more than two

* As this doctrine is not popularly inculcated in the West as it is in the
East, and will be novel and probably unacceptable to some readers, its
acceptance is not pressed here. We are merely recording what the secret
doctrine teaches.

thousand years ago can have no possible value to anyone to-day and if they
related merely to historic fact modern Masonry might as well close its
doors and cease to exist for any benefit that fact could impart to serious
or reflective minds. But if the narrative were never intended as a record
of temporal historic fact, but be a myth enshrining philosophic truths
concerning eternal principles, then it must be interpreted with spiritual
discernment and its analysis will reveal matters of real importance.


The story of the building of the temple, then, is a philosophical
instruction, garbed in quasi-historical form, concerning the structure of
the human soul. That temple is not one of common brick and stone, but of
the " unhewn stone " or incorruptible raw material of which the Creator
fashioned the human organism. The Jerusalem in which it was built was not
the geographical one in Palestine, but the eternal " city of peace " in
the heavens; not, as St. Paul says, " the Jerusalem which now is, but the
Jerusalem above, which is the mother of us all," like the Greek Demeter.
Its builders were not three human personages resident in the Levant, but
the Divine energy considered in its three constituent principles spoken of
in our Instruction Lectures as Wisdom, Strength and Beauty, which as "
pillars of His work " run through and form the metaphysical warp and basis
of all created things. These three metaphysical principles may be defined
in modern terms as Life-Essence (or the substantial spirit of Wisdom);
incorruptible Matter, serving as the mould, matrix or vehicle of that
Life-Essence, to give it fixity, form and objectiveness (Strength); and
lastly the fabricative intellectual principle or Logos binding these two
together and constituting the whole an intelligent and functionally
effective instrument (Beauty). Of these three principles, or upon these
three pillars, was the human soul originally and divinely built in the
heaven-world, and our Lectures, therefore, rightly say that those three
pillars " also allude to Solomon, King of Israel; Hiram, King of Tyre; and
Hiram Abiff," because those names personify the indissociable triadic
constituents of the Divine Unity. (They are also shown inscribed upon the
central symbolic altar in the Royal Arch Degree as further evidence of
this divine construction of the human soul). The temple of the soul has,
however, now been destroyed and thrown down from its primitive eminence
and grandeur. Humanity, instead of being a collective united organ ic
whole, has become shattered into innumerable fragmentary separated parts,
not one stone standing upon another of its ruined building. It has lost
consciousness of the genuine secrets of its own origin and nature and has
now to be content with the spurious substituted knowledge it picks up from
sense-impressions in this outer world. Like Persephone it has eaten the
pomegranates of Pluto's dark realm in preference to the ambrosia of
Arcady, and until that poison is eliminated from its system it cannot
permanently reattain its unfallen state, but at best must endure a rhythm
of deaths and rebirths and of intermittent periods of labour in this world
and refreshment beyond it. But it may become cleansed; the temple can be
rebuilt, and each Mason's soul that is wrought into a true die or square
by his work upon himself here, becomes one more new stone of the restored
temple in the heavens

A further word is necessary as to the concealed significance of Solomon
and the two Hirams. Solomon personifies the primordial Life-Essence or
substantialized Divine Wisdom which is the basis of our being. It is
defined in the Book of Wisdom (chap. vii., 25-27), as " a pure influence
flowing from the glory of the Almighty; the brightness of the everlasting
light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God and the image of His
goodness." It is described as a " king " because it must needs transcend
and over-rule whatever is inferior to itself, and as " king of Israel "
because " Israel " itself means " co-operating or ruling with God " as
distinct from being associated with beings or affairs of a sub-divine
order. To conjoin this transcendental Life-Essence to a vehicle which
should give it fixity and form required the assistance of another dominant
or " kingly " principle, personified as Hiram, King of Tyre, who supplied
the " building material." Now inasmuch as we are dealing with purely
metaph ysical ideas, it will be obvious that the Tyre in question has no
relation to the Levantine sea-port of that name. The name Tyre in Hebrew
means " rock " and the strength, compactness and durability which we
associate with rock, whilst the same word recurs in Greek as Turos and in
Latin as Terra, earth, and as Durus, implying form, hardness, consistency
and durability. " King of Tyre," therefore, is interpretable as the cosmic
principle which gives solidity and form to the spiritual fluidic and
formless Life-Essence, and which is comparable to a cup intended to hold
liquid. Solomon and Hiram of Tyre therefore contribute their respective
properties of Life-Essence and durable form and " building material " as
the groundwork of the soul, which then is made functionally effective by
the addition of the third principle described as Hiram Abiff, the widow's
son, and personifying the active intellectual principle or Logos. In a
word, Hiram Abiff is the Christ principle immanent in every soul; crucif
ied, dead and buried in all who are not alive to its presence, but
resident in all as a saving force--" Christ in you, the hope of glory."
Consistently with Christlike humility, Hiram Abiff (literally, "the
teacher from the Father ") is not described as a " king " as are Solomon
and Hiram of Tyre, but as one " of no reputation," a " widow's son "; a
beautiful touch of Gnostic symbolism referable to the derelict or widowed
nature of the Divine Motherhood or Sophia owing to the errancy and
defection from wisdom of her frail children. Such of those children as
have rejoined, or are striving to rejoin, their mother are alone worthy to
be called the " widow's sons," and it is to the cry to those who have
rejoined her from those still labouring at that task in the flesh, and
perhaps wiping from their brow the bloody sweat of their Gethsemane
anguish in the struggle, that the traditional petition applies, " Come to
my help, ye s ons of the Widow, for I am the Widow's son ! " The temple of
the human soul, primordially constituted of the three principles just
spoken of in due balance and proportion and divinely pronounced to be "
very good," has deflected from that state. Its fall has been effected by
the disproportioned, unbalanced and, therefore, disorderly abuse of its
inherent powers. Just as a man in a temper becomes temporarily unbalanced
and liable to do what he would not in serene moments, so the soul has
disorganized its own nature utterly. Of the three pillars that should
support it, Wisdom (Gnosis) has fallen and become replaced by a flexible
and shifting prop of speculative opinion: Strength (divine dynamic energy)
has become exchanged for the frailty of the perishing flesh: Beauty, the
god-like radiant form that should adorn and liken man to his Divine
Creator, has become superseded by every ugliness of imperfection. Man is
now a ruined temple, over which is written " Ichabod ! Ichabod ! the g
lory is departed ! " Severed from conscious intercourse with his Vital and
Immortal Principle, he is a prisoner in captivity to himself and his lower
temporal nature. It remains for him to retrace his steps and rebuild his
temple; to continue no longer a bondslave to his self-made illusions and
the attractions of " worldly possessions," but become a free man and
mason, engaged in shaping himself into a living and precious stone for the
cosmic temple of a regenerate Humanity unto which, when completed and
dedicated, Deity will again enter and abide.

To be " installed in the chair of King Solomon," therefore, means in its
true sense the reattainment of a Wisdom we have lost and the revival in
ourselves of the Divine Life-Essence which is the basis of our being. With
the reattainment of that Wisdom all that is comprised in the terms
Strength and Beauty will be reattained also, for the three pillars stand
in eternal association and balance. Not to reattain it, not to revive the
Divine Life-Essence, during our sojourn in this world, is to miss the
opportunity which life in physical conditions provides, since the
after-death state is one not of labour at this work, but of refreshment
and rest, where no real progress is possible. Initiation, therefore, was
instituted to impart the science of its reattainment and so lift the
individual soul to a new life-basis from which it could proceed to work
out its own salvation and develop its inherent powers along the true line
of its destiny and evolution. But, as the Ancient Mysteries taught, the
soul t hat never even begins this work in this world will not be able to
begin it hereafter, but will remain suspended in the more tenuous planes
of this planet until such time as it is once again indrawn into the vortex
of generation by the ever-turning wheel of life. To quote Plato again,
"those who instituted the Mysteries for us taught us that whosoever
descended into Hades (the after-death state) uninitiated and without being
a partaker in the Mysteries, will be plunged into mire and darkness, but
whoever arrived there purified and initiated will dwell with the Gods."
This teaching is reproduced in Masonry in the reference to the
Master-Mason being " admitted to the assembly of the just made perfect ":
the implication being that those who have not reached that proficiency and
are neither " just " (i.e., rectified) nor perfected, will abide upon a
lower level of post-mortem existence. For the levels of superphysical life
are numerous--" in my Father's house are many mansions," or, literall y,
rest ing places--and they and their occupants are graduated in
hierarchical order according to their degree of fitness and spiritual
eminence. The disordered modern world, with its perverse democratic ideals
of equality and uniformity, has lost all sense of the hierarchic
principle, which since it obtains in the higher world ought to be
reflected in this.

" Order is Heaven's first law and, that confessed, Some are, and must be,
greater than the rest."

But Masonry preserves the witness to this graduation, and to the existence
 of separate tiers of life in the heaven-places, in the symbolic
 distribution of its more advanced members. Above the Craft Lodges there
 presides the Provincial Grand Lodge; beyond that rules the Grand Lodge of
 the nation. Theoretically higher than any of these is the Royal Arch
 Chapter, with the Provincial and Grand Chapters towering beyond that. In
 the symbolic clothing worn by the members of each of these ranks the
 observant student will perceive the intention to give appropriate
 expression to the truth thereby signified. The Masonic apron has been
 explained in an earlier paper as a figure of the soul's corporeality--the
 body (not to be confused with the gross physical body) which it wears and
 will display when it passes from this life. Its pure white is fringed in
 the case of junior brethren with a pale shade of that blue which, even in
 physical nature, is the colour of the heavens. With seniors in the
 Provincial and Grand Lodges this has intensified to the deepest degree of
 that hue in correspondence with their theoretical spiritual development,
 whilst the gold lace adornments of the clothing emblematize what is
 referred to in the Psalmist's words, " The King's daughter (the soul) is
 all glorious within; her clothing is of wrought gold": for as the
 Life-Essence or Wisdom becomes increasingly " wrought " or
 substantialized in us, it becomes the objectified corporeality of the
 soul. In the Royal Arch the Craft devotional blue is intershot with red,
 the colour of fire or spiritual ardour, the blend resulting in that
 purple which both in earth and heaven is the prerogative of royalty.
 Thus, by their clothing in the various grades, the members of Masonry
 emblematize on earth the angels and archangels and all the company of
 Heaven. Some of them are dothed with light as with a garment; others are
 ministers of flaming fire.

In a short paper such as this our reference to the Ancient Mysteries is
 necessarily brief and has been restricted to the Greek Eleusinian system.
 Many others of course existed and an extensive, though scattered,
 literature is available for those who would pursue the subject further in
 the direction of the Egyptian, Samothracian, Chaldean, Mithraic, Gnostic
 and other systems. In their respective days and localities they formed
 the authoritative centres of religion and philosophy, using those terms
 as but phases of an indivisible subject which nowadays has become split
 up into many brands of theology and speculative philosophy having little
 and often no possible connection with each other. What the old writers
 made public about the Mysteries of course discreetly avoids descriptions
 of the deeper truths they imparted or of the actual processes of
 initiation. These must always remain a subject of secrecy, but by the
 perspicuous reader enough can be found in their purposely obscure and
 metaphorical accounts to indicate what occurred, and with what effect
 upon the candidate. Initiation, we have already said, is something which
 but few are fit to receive, even after long and rigorous preparation, and
 fewer still are competent to impart. It was an experience of which a
 writer has said in regard to the candidate, Vel invenit sanctum, vel
 facit--it either finds him holy or makes him so. Virgil's account in the
 sixth Aneid of the initiation of Aneas into Elysium (or the supernatural
 light), or that of Lucius (again a name signifying enlightenment) in the
 "Golden Ass " of Apuleius, when he was permitted to " see the sun at
 midnight," are instructive instances. So also the exclamation of Clement
 of Alexandria, who had been received into the Gnostic school: " O truly
 sacred Mysteries ! O pure Light ! I am led by the light of the torch to
 the view of heaven and of God. I become holy by initiation. The Lord
 Himself is the hierophant who, leading the candidate for initiation to
 the Li ght, seals him and presents him to the Father to be preserved for
 ever. These are the orgies of my Mysteries. If thou wilt, come and be
 thou also initiated, and thou shalt join in the dance with the angels
 around the uncreated, imperishable and only true God, the Word of God
 joining in the strain ! "

The Mysteries came to an end as public institutions in the sixth century,
 when from political considerations they and the teaching of the secret
 doctrine and philosophy became prohibited by the Roman Government, under
 Justinian, who aimed at inaugurating an official uniform state-religion
 throughout its Empire. Subsequently, as the Roman Empire declined and
 broke up, the Roman Catholic Church emerged from it, which, as we know,
 has resolutely discountenanced any authority in religion and philosophy
 as a rival to her own and at the same time claimed supremacy and an
 over-riding jurisdiction in temporal matters also. For the Freemason the
 result of that Church's conduct is instructive. For when an authority
 upon matters wholly spiritual and belonging to a kingdom which is not of
 this world, lays claim to temporal power and secular possessions, as the
 Roman Church has done and still does, it at once vitiates and neutralizes
 its own spiritual qualifications. It becomes infected with the virus of "
 worldly possessions." It loads itself with the " money and metals " from
 which it is essential to keep divested. The result has been that what
 might have been, and was designed to be, the greatest spiritually
 educative force in the world's history, has become a materialized
 institution, exercising an intellectual tyranny which has estranged the
 minds of millions from religion altogether. As Lot's wife is
 metaphorically said to have crystallized into a pillar of salt through
 turning back in desire to what she ought to have renounced altogether, so
 in trying to serve Mammon and God at the same time the Roman Church has
 failed in both and, as the result of the false steps and abuses of
 centuries. the world is to-day a chaos of disunited sects and popular
 religious teaching is as materialistic as Masonry. It is a pity, for in
 its original design and practice Christianity was intended to serve as a
 system of initiation upon a catholic or universal scale, and to take
 over, supersede and amplify all that previously was taught, in a less
 efficacious way and to a more restricted public, in the Ancient
 Mysteries. It is not possible here to enter upon the extremely
 interesting questions involved in the transition from pre-Christian to
 Christian religion, or to explain why and how the Christian Mysteries are
 the efflorescence of the earlier ones and transcend them. In their
 central teachings, as in the philosophic method of life they demand, the
 two methods are identical. The differences between them are only such as
 are due to amplification and formal expression. Christianity came not to
 destroy, but to fulfil and expand. That fulfilment and expansion were
 consequent upon an event of cosmic importance which we speak of as The
 Incarnation. By that event something had happened affecting the very
 fabric of our planet and every item of the human family. What that
 something was and the nature of the change it wrought is too great and
 deep a theme to develop now, b ut, to illustrate it by Masonic s
 ymbolism, it was an event which is the equivalent of, and is represented
 by, the transference of the Sacred Symbol of the Grand Geometrician of
 the Universe from the ceiling of the Lodge, where it is located in the
 elementary grades of the Craft, to the floor, where it is found in the
 Royal Arch Degree surrounded with flaming lights and every circumstance
 of reverence and sanctity. How many Masons are there in the Order to-day
 who recognize that, in this piece of symbolism, Masonry is giving
 affirmation and ocular testimony to precisely the same fact as the
 churchman affirms when he recites in his Creed the words " He came down
 from heaven, and was incarnate and was made man ? "

By a tacit and quite unwarranted convention the members of the Craft avoid
mention in their Lodges of the Christian Master and confine their
scriptural readings and references almost exclusively to the Old
Testament, the motive being no doubt due to a desire to observe the
injunction as to refraining from religious discussion and to prevent
offence on the part of brethren who may not be of the Christian faith. The
motive is an entirely misguided one and is negated by the fact that the "
greater light " upon which every member is obligated, and to which his
earnest attention is recommended from the moment of his admission to the
Order, is not only the Old Testament, but the volume of the Sacred Law in
its entirety. The New Testament is as essential to his instruction as the
Old, not merely because of its moral teaching, but in virtue of its
constituting the record of the Mysteries in their supreme form and
historic culmination. The Gospels themselves, like the Masonic degrees,
are a record of p reparation and illumination, leading up to the ordeal of
death, followed by a raising from the dead and the attainment of
Mastership, and they exhibit the process of initiation carried to the
highest conceivable degree of attainment. The New Testament is full of
passages in Masonic terminology and there is not a little irony in the
failure by modern Masons to recognize its supreme importance and relevancy
to their Lodge proceedings and in the fact that in so doing they may be
likening themselves to those builders of whom it is written that they
rejected the chief Corner Stone. They would learn further that the Grand
Master and Exemplar of Masonry, Hiram Abiff, is but a figure of the Great
Master and Exemplar and Saviour of the world, the Divine Architect by whom
all things were made, without whom is nothing that hath been made, and
whose life is the light of men. If, in the words of the Masonic hymn:

" Hiram the architect Did all the Craft direct How they should build,"

it is equally true that the protagonist of the Christian Scriptures also
taught universal humanity " how they should build " and reconstruct their
own fallen nature, and that the method of such building is one which
involves the cross as its working tool and one which culminates in a death
and a raising from the dead. And, of those who attain their initiation and
mastership by that method, is it not further written there that they
become of the household of God and built into a spiritual temple not made
with hands, but eternal and in the heavens and of which "Jesus Christ is
the chief corner stone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together,
groweth unto an holy temple builded for an habitation of God ? "

Neither the Ancient Mysteries nor Modern Masonry, their descendant,
therefore, can be rightly viewed without reference to their relation to
the Christian evangel, into which the pre-Christian schools became
assumed. The line of succession and evolution from the former to the
latter is direct and organic. Allowing for differences of time, place and
form of expression, both taught exactly the same truths and inculcated the
necessity for regeneration. In such a matter there cannot be a diversity
of doctrine. The truth concerning it must be static and uniform at all
periods of the world's history. Hence we find St. Augustine affirming that
there has never existed but one religion in the world since the beginning
of time (meaning by religion the science of rebinding the dislocated soul
to its source), and that religion began to be called Christian in
apostolic times. And hence too it is that both the Roman Church and
Masonry, although so widely divergent in outlook and method, have this
feature in common, that each declares and insists that no alteration or
innovation in its central doctrine is permissible and that it is unlawful
to remove or deviate from its ancient landmarks. Each is right in its
insistence, for in the system of each is enshrined the age-old doctrine of
regeneration and divinization of the human soul, obscured in the one case
by theological and other accretions foreign to the main purpose of
religion, and unperceived in the other because its symbolism remains
uninterpreted. To clear vision, Christian and Masonic doctrine are
identical in intention though different in method. The one says " Via
Crucis "; the other " Via Lucis "; yet the two ways are but one way. The
former teaches through the ear, the latter through the eye and by
identifying the aspirant with the doctrine by passing him personally and
dramatically through symbolic rites which he is expected to translate from
ceremonial form into subjective experience. As Patristic literature shows,
the prim itive metho d of the Christian Church was not that which now
obtains, under which the religious offices and teaching are administered
to the whole public alike and in a way implying a common level of doctrine
for all and uniform power of comprehension by every member of the
congregation. It was, on the other hand, a graduated method of instruction
and identical with the Masonic system of degrees conferred by reason of
advantage merit and ability. To cite one of the most instructive of early
Christian treatises (Dionysius: On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy), with
which every Masonic student should familiarize himself, it will be found
that admission to the early Church was by three ceremonial degrees exactly
corresponding in intention with those of Masonry. " The most holy
initiation of the Mystic Rites has as its first Godly purpose the holy
cleansing of the initiated; and as second, the enlightening instruction of
the purified; and finally and as the completion of the former, the perfe
cting of those instru cted in the science of their appropriate
instructions. The order of the Ministers in the first class cleanses the
initiated through the Mystic Rites; in the second, conducts the purified
to light; and, in the last and highest, makes perfect those who have
participated in the Divine Light by the scientific contemplations of the
illuminations contemplated." This brief passage alone suffices to show
that originally membership of the Christian Church involved a sequence of
three initiatory rites identical in intention with those of the Craft
to-day. The names given to those who had qualified in those Rites were
respectively Catechumens, Leiturgoi, and Priests or Presbyters; which in
turn are identifiable with our Entered Apprentices, Fellow Crafts and
Master Masons. Their first degree was that of a rebirth and purification
of the heart; their second related to the illumination of the
intelligence; and their third to a total death unto sin and a new birth
unto righteousness, i n which the candidate died with Christ on the cross,
as with us he is made to imitate the death of Hiram, and was raised to
that higher order of life which is Mastership.

When Christianity became a state-religion and the Church a world-power,
the materialization of its doctrine proceeded apace and has only increased
with the centuries. Instead of becoming the unifying force its leaders
meant it to be, its association with " worldly possessions" has resulted
in making it a disintegrative one. Abuses led to schisms and sectarianism,
and whilst the parent body, in the form of the Greek and Roman Churches,
still possesses and jealously conserves all the original credentials,
traditions and symbols in their superb liturgies and rites, more
importance is attached to the outer husk of its heritage than to its
kernel and spirit, whilst the Protestant communities and so-called "free"
churches have unhappily become self-severed altogether from the original
tradition and their imagined liberty and independence are in fact but a
captivity to ideas of their own, having no relation to the primitive
gnosis and no understanding of those Mysteries which must always lie
deeper t han the exoteric popular religion of a given period. Regeneration
as a science has long been, and still is, entirely outside the purview of
orthodox religion. The Christian Master's affirmation " Ye must be born
again" is regarded as but a pious counsel towards an indefinite
improvement of conduct and character, not as a reference to a drastic
scientific revolution and reformation of the individual in the way
contemplated by the rites of initiation prescribed in the Mysteries.
Popular religion may indeed produce " good " men, as the world's standard
of goodness goes. It does not and cannot produce divinized men endued with
the qualities of Mastership, for it is ignorant of the traditional wisdom
and methods by which that end is to be attained.

That wisdom and those traditional methods of the Mysteries have, however,
never been without living witness in the world, despite the jealousy and
inhibitions of official orthodoxy. Since the suppression of the Mysteries
in the sixth century, their tradition and teaching have been continued in
secret and under various concealments, and to that continuation our
present Masonic system is due. As previously intimated in these papers, it
was compiled and projected between two and three centuries ago as an
elementary expression of the ancient doctrine and initiatory method, by a
group of minds which were far more deeply instructed in the old tradition
and secret science than are those who avail themselves of their work
to-day, or even than the text of the Masonic rites indicates. If they
remained obscure and anonymous, so that the modern student's research is
unable to identify them, it is only what is to be expected, for the true
initiate is one who never proclaims himself as such and is content e ver
to remain impersonal and out of sight and notoriety, planting his seed for
the welfare of his fellow men indifferently and leaving others to water it
and God to give it increase. But, within the limits they allowed
themselves, they achieved their work well and truly and, as has been
sought to demonstrate in these pages, made it a rescript, faithful at
least in outline and main principles, of the ancient teaching and
perfecting rites of the philosophic Mysteries. It has been well said by a
writer of authority on the subject that they put forward the system of
speculative Masonry as " an experiment upon the mind of the age," and with
a view to exhibiting to at least a small section of a public living in a
time of gross darkness and materialism an evidence of the doctrine of
regeneration which might serve as a light to such as could profit
therefrom. If this theory be true, their intention may at first sight
appear to have b ecome falsified by subsequent developments, in the course
of which th ere has sprung up an organization of world-wide dimensions and
vast membership, animated undoubtedly in the main with worthy ideals and
accomplishing a certain measure of benevolent work, but nevertheless
failing entirely in perceiving its true and original purpose as an order
for promoting the science of human regeneration, and unconscious that by
this default its achievements in other directions are of small or no
account. But a broader and wiser view of the situation would be one that,
whilst recognizing a great diffusion of energy to little present purpose,
sees also that, in the long run and in the amplitude of time, that energy
is not wasted but conserved, and that, besides benefiting individuals here
and there who are capable of truly profiting from the Order, it preserves
the witness and keeps burning the light of the perpetual Mysteries in a
dark age. Like the light of a Master Mason which never becomes wholly
extinguished, so in the world's darkest days the light of the M ysteries
nev er goes out entirely, and God and the way to Him are not left without
witness. If, in comparison with other witnesses, Masonry is but a
glimmering ray rather than a powerful beam of light, it is none the less a
true ray; a kindly light lit from the world's central altar-flame, and
sufficing to lead at least some of us on amid the encircling gloom, until
the night is gone. Light is granted in proportion to the desire of our
hearts, but for the majority of Masons their Order sheds no light at all,
because light is not their desire, nor is initiation in its true sense
understood or wished for. They move among the symbols, simulacra and
substituted secrets of the Mysteries without comprehending them, without
wishing to translate them into reality. The Craft is made to subserve
social and philanthropic ends foreign to its purpose and even to gratify
the desire for outward personal distinction; but as an instrument of
regeneration it remains wholly ineffective.

Is this nescience, this imperviousness and failure to comprehend, however,
to no purpose ? Perhaps not. Each of us lives in the presence of natural
mysteries he fails to discern or understand, and even when the desire for
wisdom is at last awakened, the education of the understanding is a long
process. Nature in all her kingdoms builds slowly, perfecting her aims
through endless repetitions and apparently wanton waste of material. And
in the things of the Kingdom which transcends Nature, the same method
prevails. Souls are drawn but slowly to the Light, and their perfecting
and transmutation into that Light is often very gradual. For long before
it is able to distinguish shadow from substance, Humanity must try its
prentice-hand upon illusory toys and substitutions for the genuine secrets
of Reality. For long before it is worthy of actual initiation upon the
path that leads to God it must be permitted to indulge in preliminary
unintelligent rehearsals of the processes therein involved. The app
roaches to the ancient temples of the Mysteries were lined with statues of
the Gods, having no value of themselves but intended to habituate the
minds of neophytes to the spiritual concepts and divine attributes to
which those statues were meant to give objective form and semblance. But
within the temple itself all graven images, all formal figures, symbols
and ceremonial types, ceased; for the mind had then finally to learn to
dispense with their help, and, in the strength of its own purity and
understanding alone, to rise into unclouded perception of their formless
prototypes and " see the Nameless of the hundred names."

Get knowledge, get wisdom; but with all thy meaning gettings, get
understanding," exclaims the old Teacher, in a counsel that may well be
commended to the Masonic Fraternity to-day, which so little understands
its own system. But understanding depends upon the gift of the Supernal
Light, which gift in turn depends upon the ardour of our desire for it. If
Wisdom to-day is widowed, all Masons are actually or potentially the
widow's sons, and she will be justified of her children who seek her out
and who labour for her as for hid treasure. It remains with the Craft
itself whether it shall enter upon its own heritage as a lineal successor
of the Ancient Mysteries and Wisdom-teaching, or whether, by failing so to
do, it will undergo the inevitable fate of everything that is but a form
from which its native spirit has departed.
