by: Unknown

“If a man die, shall he live again?  (Job 14:14)

Freemasonry has been called a religion which can be all things to all men.

Many dispute the statement that Freemasonry is a religion at all, on the theory that a religion is a specified manner of worship, whereas Freemasonry has neither creed nor dogma.  Freemasonry is much more properly religion than “a” religion.

Freemasonry may, indeed, be all things religious to all men.  Each may take from it, each may read into it, any creed or dogma which fits his personal religious belief – and find his faith fits with the teachings of the gentle Craft.

For be a man’s faith what it may, it must be founded on the rock of a belief in Deity and a faith in a future life.  Here, indeed, Freemasonry touches hands with religion and sees eye to eye with all beliefs.  The Master Mason’s Degree, the Hiramic Legend, the Search For That Which Was Lost and the Sprig of Acacia all answer the cry of Job with comfort and assurance.

Pull the flower to pieces; remain the petals, a perfume, but no rose.  Play the symphony, isolate note by note; sound is heard, but no music. 

Every word Milton wrote is in the dictionary; but great poems may not be found there, So of any written account of this degree; we may write of its symbols, analyze its legend, tell of its meaning, but we pronounce but words without rhyme, make a flower of wax, a song muted.  The best we may do is to point out a path to the high mountain of spiritual experience which is the Sublime Degree, that he who climbs may see it with a new view – and clearer eyes.  To the universal and yearning hope of all mankind throughout all ages Freemasonry answers; there “is” a hope of immortality; there “is” a Great Architect by whose mercy we may live again, leaving to each brother his choice of interpretation by which he may read the Great Beyond.

The Third Degree teaches of the power- and the powerlessness – of evil.  For those who are happy to believe in the resurrection of the physical body, the Sublime degree has comfort.  For those whose hope is in the raising only of that spiritual body of which Paul taught, the degree assures of all the longing heart can wish.  When the greatest hope and the dearest wish of all mankind is made manifest, the Sublime Degree turns to “this” life and “this” brotherhood, and ties together the Hiramic Legend and daily living in a manner which no thoughtful man may see and hear without a thrill; a way at once awe inspiring and heartening; terrible and beautiful; sternly uncompromising yet strangely comforting in that land of inner life, that home of the spirit, where each man thinks the secret thoughts he tells never – never.

In his quiet hours, first among those matters unspoken is the age old question of Job.  When he sees his children growing up and realizes that he is getting older, older and some day to be really old, he asks it.  When he stands beside the coffin of his departed brother to cast into the open grave the Sprig of Acacia he asks it again, sometimes not knowing that the very act which gives rise to the question is Freemasonry’s answer.

Acacia was a symbol of immortality before Freemasonry existed.  It is the shittim wood of the Old Testament, the erica or tamarisk at the foot of which the body of the dead Osiris was cast ashore so that, when found, it would rise again.

The Jews have always considered shittim a sacred wood; a symbol of life.  Logs used in houses sprouted long after the tree was destroyed that the beam might be made from it.  Shittim wood was used to construct the table for the shew bread, the tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, the sacred furniture of the Temple.  Everyone was familiar with the evergreen which does not seem to die in cold weather, as do less hardy trees which shed their leaves and sleep through the winter.

But if Freemasonry did not make Acacia a symbol, the Craft adopted it as symbolic of our own special Rite and beliefs.  Acacia marked the spot where lay all that was mortal of the Widow’s Son.  The Hiramic Legend is of an immortality which was made manifest in the very shade of acacia; how should the plant “not” stand for the most blessed hope of man?

In the stately prayer in the Master’s degree we hear “for there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again – .”  Later we learn of man who “cometh forth as a flower and is cut down,” by the scythe of time which gathers him “to the land where his fathers have gone before him.”

“Where is that land?”

Uncounted millions have asked.  Freemasonry’s reply is, that glorious immortality symbolized by the acacia, its reality attested by every hope of every man born of woman since the first infant cried its birth cry.

The Sprig of acacia has another and equally beautiful implication besides that of the certainty of spiritual survival.  “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  The Sprig of Acacia is not only the emblem of a future life, but of faith.

It matters little what faith that is.  It is the existence of “some” faith which is important; the certainty of “things not seen.”  The Masons may be a Methodist, Baptist, Spiritualist, Evolutionist, Unitarian. Trinitarian, Mohammedan or Brahmin.  He may believe in an orthodox heaven of Golden Streets and Milk and Honey; his faith may send him to a whole realm of seven planets which he may visit in turn with esoteric Buddist; he may believe in the succession of planes of Spiritualism or the Nirvana of the Orient – the Sprig of Acacia is at once a symbol of the immortality taught by his faith, and of the faith itself.

One cannot “prove” immortality any more than one can prove God. 

Proof is the result of logic , and logic is a process of the mind.  Faith is the product of a process of the heart.  We cannot reason ourselves into or of love; we cannot reason ourselves into or out of faith.

The Sprig of Acacia proves nothing – nor does it try to.  It means everything to him who has the faith.  It is Freemasonry’s attestation to her children and to the world that brethren drop their tears on the body of the deceased brother in full faith that – where nor how we presume not to say, leaving it wholly to the eye which Sees the Everlasting Arms which enfold – he, even as we, shall live again.  He knows past all forgetting because he has learned the lesson of the Hiramic Legend.

Learned students have attempted to fix the date -as if dates mattered! – when that story first made its appearance in Freemasonry.  Their conclusions are more negative than positive, and none have gone behind the fact that in one form or another the Hiramic Legend is among the oldest as it is among the dearest myths of the race.  One may agree that documentary evidence does not put the legend of the martyred master workman into the third degree prior 1725, and still see in it the recasting of the race-old drama of man’s hope for immortality.

A dozen or more suggestions have been made by Masonic students as to “what it means.”  Some take the legend literally.  Others believe it is another way of telling the story of Isis and Osiris – itself a legend which could hardly have been foisted full born from the brain of some clever priest, but must have been a heritage from the Hyskos, or even earlier inhabitants of Egypt.  Some see it in a modern version of the death of Abel at the hands of Cain, and of course thousands visualize it as the death and resurrection of the Man of Galilee.

With such speculations the average Master Mason need have no concern.  Nor need his heart be troubled as to whether the drama is “true” or not.

Search the Great Light how we will, we find no account of the tragedy of Hiram Abif.  We learn of Hiram, or Huram.  If we delve deeply enough in Hebrew, we learn that modern scholarship translates Hiram Abif as “Hiram, my father” meaning a Hiram looked up to, venerated, given a title of honor, as the father of a tribe, the father of an art, the father of the sacred vessels of the Temple.  But of the three, the tragedy, and the Lost Word, the Old Testament is silent.  Nor can we find in secular history any account of the drama of Hiram.  For its truth we must seek into the myths and legends and fairy stories in which the race has half concealed, half revealed, those truths which do not bear telling in plain words.  Is there a Santa Claus?  For Six Years Old there is.  For his elders Santa Claus is a means of telling a beautiful truth in terms which Six Years Old can understand.  Is the legend “True?”  What is meant by  “True?”  Historically Santa Claus nor Hiram Abif are “true.”  But if “true” means “containing a Great Truth” then both the myth of the Yule Tide Saint and the legend of the Master Builder are “true” in the most real sense.

Raised to the Sublime Degree, many men see the drama of the Master only literally, a teaching of the virtues of fortitude and inflexible fidelity.  For those whose ears hear only the melody and are deaf to harmonies, for those whose eyes are so blinded by the sunset as not to see the colors, this is good enough.

Yet, any liberal interpretation of the legend and our ceremony which exemplifies it misses its heart.

The Legend of Hiram Abif is at once the tragedy and the hope of man.  It is the story of the resurrection of that “which bears the nearest affinity to that supreme intelligence which pervades all nature.”  It is the answer to Job.  It is at once the beginning of the sacred legend of That Which Was Lost and the assurance that at long last he who seeks shall find.

Any man who has belief in a Great Architect and a hope of immortality may see in it the assurance that death is but a pause, not an end; a gateway, not a wall.

How long is a rope?  A silly question!  It can be measured, presumably, if one can find one end and measure it to the other.  Suppose the rope has only one end!  Sillier and sillier!  But if true of a rope, it is true of space, time and eternity.  If time has a beginning, it has an ending.  If space commences somewhere, there is also will be its end to be found.  “If eternity has a beginning it is not eternal!”

Here is the shock, the surprise and the glory of the third degree.  It presents us with eternity in the midst of life.  It pushes back the confines of our little dimensions, our tiny measurements of time, our small comprehension of space, and shows us that we enter eternity at neither birth nor death.  We have always been in eternity if we are in it at all.  Hiram Abif was gathered to his fathers when the selfishness and sin of misguided men struck him down.  But they were powerless against the Paw of the Lion and the Power of Freemasonry.  Each of us is born, lives his little life, and, wearing his little white apron, is laid where our forefathers have gone before us.  The drama of the third degree assures us that the life from birth to death, and including both, is but an episode, a single note in the great symphony.

The Hiramic Legend is the glory of Freemasonry; the search for That Which Was Lost in the glory of life.

We gaze through the microscope and telescope; and catch no sight of its shadow.  We travel in many lands and far and find it not.  We listen to all the words of all the tongues which all men have ever spoken and will speak – the Lost Word is not heard.  Were it but a Word, how easy to invent another!  But it is not a word, but “The Word”, The great secret, the unknowability which the Great Architect sets before his children, a will o’ the wisp to follow, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Never here is it to be found, but the search for it is the reason for life.

The Sublime Degree teaches that, in another life, it may be found.

“That is why it is the sublime degree!”

The post FREEMASONRY’S ANSWER TO JOB appeared first on Freemasons Community.

Masonic legends differ from ordinary historical accounts in their reliance on oral tradition rather than documentary evidence. Within Freemasonry, these tales are not judged by their factual accuracy but by the moral and philosophical truths they embody. A Mason’s focus lies not in verifying events but in interpreting their symbolic resonance and relevance to core teachings. For instance, the legend of Hiram Abiff in the Master Mason degree transcends historical detail, instead symbolizing virtues like integrity and the soul’s immortality.

Equally vital are Masonic symbols, rooted in antiquity—a time when knowledge was often conveyed through symbolic language. Each emblem, from the ubiquitous square and compass to lesser-known marks, is imbued with layered meaning. These symbols act as visual metaphors, instructing Masons in principles such as justice, equality, and balance. The plumb line, for example, represents not just a builder’s tool but a call to moral uprightness.

Though transmitted differently—one visually, the other orally—Masonic symbols and legends are deeply interconnected. Together, they articulate a cohesive moral and spiritual philosophy, blending ethical reflection with esoteric insight. This synergy underscores Freemasonry’s pedagogical emphasis on experiential learning and introspection over rote memorization.

Beyond moral instruction, these symbols and legends invite exploration of life’s existential questions: the divine, ethics, and humanity’s place in the cosmos. By engaging with metaphor, Masons are urged to look past the literal and contemplate universal truths, connecting them to a timeless tradition of philosophical inquiry that transcends cultural and historical boundaries.

Freemasonry confronts existential themes unflinchingly. Lodge discussions delve into concepts of divinity, the soul, and the afterlife, framed through allegory and symbol. This creates a space where theological and philosophical exploration thrives, anchored by centuries of symbolic pedagogy.

Studying Masonic philosophy through its allegories is an act of peeling back layers to uncover a rich philosophical core—a journey toward the “hidden mysteries of Nature and Science” the fraternity venerates. Decoding these requires discernment, as symbols are not mere relics but living vessels of wisdom and ethics.

In essence, Freemasonry employs legends and symbols not as antiquated curiosities but as dynamic, vital tools for transmitting sacred philosophy. Their encoded lessons—reflections on virtue, existence, and the divine—remain as pertinent today as ever. True understanding arises not from mere recognition of these elements but from grasping their deeper implications for one’s life and the world.

The post The Role of Legends and Symbols in Masonic Teaching appeared first on Freemasons Community.

It is a somewhat saddening reflection that in spite of the presumable millions of years of human life on this planet, there is no general belief as to whence we come and whither we go, or indeed as to why there is any coming or going at all. The meaning and purpose of life are still beyond the scope of physical science; they are matters of faith at best and not infrequently of despair. The pain of the world, the transparent ruthlessness of Nature, the amazing inequalities of human existence, the seeming gr ave injustices in the lives of the majority, are, as far as our reason goes, as great enigmas to us today in the twentieth century as they have ever been so long as we have any trace of human history. In such a state of affairs we cannot afford to cast aside without hearing any theory that attempts seriously to throw light on the darkness.

The general hypothesis of pre-existence (under which the special doctrine of reincarnation falls) does not, it is true, solve the fundamental problems but it pushes back some of the initial difficulties. It furnishes an ampler ground for the development of the individual than the cribbed, cabined, and confined area of one short earth-life, and by providing a stage or series of stages for the acts and scenes of the age-long drama of the man-soul prior to the present existence, permits us to entertain the no tion of a law of moral causation conditioning our present relation to circumstances in a way that does not clash with our innate sense of justice.

As a fact susceptible of scientific demonstration reincarnation is incapable either of proof or disproof. Such evidence of it as exists is but circumstantial and tending to a probability. However, if we care to accept – what it is imprudent to ignore – the authority of the past, we find the Scriptures and traditions of Oriental races with a great spiritual and philosophic record emphatic in their inculcation of the doctrine. So, too, are the Pythagorean and Platonist systems. Outside the Greek philosophi cal and mystical schools the European mind has been unacquainted with the dogma, but nothing hangs upon the ignorance of it by the peoples of a continent whose civilisation is of quite recent growth and whose populace was barbarian long after Egypt and the Far and Middle East had declined from their high positions as centres of religious and philosophic wisdom. The history of civilised Europe synchronises virtually with that of the Christian Church, which has held (or withheld) the keys of information upon arcane matters, and since that Church was silent upon reincarnation, no means existed by which the idea could be propagated in the West until it became introduced by the “Theosophical” movement towards the close of the nineteenth century. Its acceptance was then facilitated by two causes; first, by the translation and popularisation among us of the sacred and philosophic literature of the East, where the doctrine is universal; and secondly, by the recognitio n by Western science of an evolutionary process at work in Nature, a process suggesting that all life advances by gradations and through a succession of ascending morphological changes. The mind can hardly be otherwise than gratified at observing a gradual perfecting process involving a sequence of births and deaths, and at contemplating life sleeping in the mineral, dreaming in the plant, waking in the animal, attaining self-consciousness and freedom of action in man, with the added prospect of further spiritualisation and advancement as time goes on. W hat the mystical mind of the East has intuitively discerned and ever held as true, the practical intellect of the West has at last hit upon by scientific inductive research, the results of which suggest that all life advances to more and more perfect consciousness, by slow patient gradation and through countless modes and forms. That one of the most powerful arguments in favour of preexistence and reincarnation is furnished by our general conception of Divine Creative Pow er, and by the analogy between psyc hological and biological evolution. If higher biological types have appeared successively and not simultaneously with the lower species – if God, refraining from supernatural intervention, derives the species from each other in a natural succession, then it seems also likely that higher psychological types within the same biological species should not be suddenly created, but produced as the result of a natural development of lower types. The true conception of Divine Creative Power, su ch as we know it from biology, leads to the conclusion that what strikes us as genius or sanctity must have been prepared by conscious endeavours of a free human will, and not suddenly created by God without any connection with the general evolution of spiritual life. Indeed, such a sudden creation of higher types who have done nothing to deserve that higher level would be unfair towards those who rise slowly to higher levels by conscious endeavour and effort. Why should others surpass us immediately from the beginning withou t having done anything to attain the goal of our own aspirations? Though every striving spirit knows the wonderful action of Divine grace within, even this experience shows us God as acting upon a living soul, lifting that already existing soul to higher levels, and not as suddenly introducing into human life angelic perfection without spontaneous effort or previous experience. We know this working of our Creator in us always as an addition to something that depends upon our own free will, and this is at l east one meaning of the Gospel saying: “To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance”. God acts according to His general laws, which man is able to discover and to apply. These laws do not limit Divine omnipotence; they are only a reflection of that omnipotence in human minds. To perceive a Divine law is simply to give human expression (according to the capacities of human intelligence) to a Divine reality which in God has not the shape of any human formula. With that restriction we may tre at clearly conceived formulas as laws of existence and of life, and as there is a law of gravity which explains the fall of a stone, and a law of movement which explains the flight of a bird – so we gather from experience an equally universal law of the spirit, according to which within our earthly experience higher stages of intellectual or moral power are attained by effort, training, renunciation, and voluntary mortification. The mere existence of a hi gher stage implies, therefore, preceding efforts, an d if in our actual life there has been no room for them, we are justified in admitting that the necessary efforts were made in the forgotten past of each higher spirit, and, in the case of human spirits, they could have been made only in past human incarnations, implying, as they do, a knowledge and an experience of human conditions which could be acquired in that way alone. The efforts of each individual spirit are supported by Divine grace, but only those who hav e attained something by themselves can exp ect Divine help to achieve more beyond their own deserving. The analogy between the evolution of organisms and the growth of a soul shows the necessity of many human incarnations for each individual spirit, so that the greatness manifested in a brief lifetime may be considered as having developed in the course of numerous preceding lifetimes.

Now evolution, although today freely admitted to be a universal process in Nature, is still generally supposed to be a modern discovery. This view however, is incorrect because the Ancient Wisdom, which forms the philosophical background of our modern Freemasonry, knew and acted upon it ages before scientists accepted the theory in the nineteenth century. The Ancient Wisdom teaching recognised that in all the Universe there is but One Life broken up and differentiated into innumerable forms, and evolving t hrough these forms from less to greater degrees of perfection. In Masonic metaphor, Nature was seen to be the vast general quarry and forest out of which individual lives have been hewn like so many stones and timber, which when duly perfected are destined to be fitted together and built into a new and higher synthesis, a majestic Temple worthy of the Divine indwelling, and of which the Temple of Solomon was a type. The Ancient Wisdom affirmed that all life has issued from out of the “East” (the Great Worl d of infinite Spirit), and has journeyed to the “West” (the Little World of finite form and embodiment), whence, when finally perfected by experience in restricted conditions, it is ordained to return to the “East”. Life, then, was seen to be broken up and distributed into innumerable individualised lives or souls, and to be passing from one bodily form to another in a perpetual progression. These individualised souls were called “stones”, and all down the stre am of history is to be found this similitude o f the human soul to a stone, together with directions for working it from a crude to a perfect state. Expressed in the language of modern Freemasonry, the lineal descendant of the Ancient Wisdom, these “stones” are designated “rough ashlars” or “perfect ashlars”, accordingly as they exist in the rough or have been squared, worked upon, and polished. The bodily form with which the soul becomes invested upon entering this world, was seen to be transient, variable, p erishable, and of small moment when compared with the life or soul animating it; yet it has regarded as being of the greatest importance in another way, since it provided a fulcrum or point of resistance for the soul’s education and development. For this reason it was known as, and in Freemasonry we still term it so, “the tomb of transgression”; the “grave” into which the soul has descended for the purpose of working out its own salvation, for transforming and improving itself, and out of which it ascends the stronger and wiser for the experience. To enable us to grasp clearly the Ancient Wisdom teaching, it is essential to bear in mind the distinction which is made between the individuality and the personality, between life and form, spirit and body. The Secret Doctrine presupposes that man is a spiritual Being or Ego, with the triple powers of WILL, WISDOM and CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE, and that he enters into relationship with matter in order to shape for himself a succession of bodies which constitute his succe ssive personalities, and by means of which he gains the experiences that are essential for mental, moral and spiritual growth, until gradually his real nature shines out in all its Wisdom, Strength and Beauty. Accordingly, the personality is deemed to include the soul (as this is understood in our modern terminology) as well as the body, or, stated alternatively; the personality embraces expression as well as the form. The soul, then, being the reflection of the three-fold nature of the Spirit necessarily has al so three attributes (modes of express ion), and these are the familiar thoughts, feelings and actions of the human personal consciousness. Hence, the soul requires, for the full expression of its triple nature, three bodies or vehicles:-

1..MENTAL BODY – vehicle for thought. 2..EMOTIONAL BODY – vehicle for sensation and emotion. 3..PHYSICAL BODY – vehicle for action.

Finally, the Ancient Wisdom proclaims that the “centre” of Being is the Spiritual Intelligence, which is the Higher or real Self of man, and the doctrine teaches that if man would find that Self, he must learn how to retreat inwards beyond the soul consciousness.

An important part of the curriculum of the Ancient Mysteries was instruction in Cosmology, or the science of the Universe, and the intention of this instruction was to disclose to Candidates the physical and the metaphysical constitution of the world, together with the place and destiny of man in it. By this means Candidates learned of the continual flux of matter, of the transiency of bodily forms, and of the abiding permanence of the One Lift or Spirit which has descended and embodied itself in matter. T here was also demonstrated to them the dual cosmic method of Involution and Evolution, by which the universally diffused Life-force involves and circumscribes itself within material limitations and physical conditions, and thence evolves and arises out of them, enriched by the experience. They were further given instruction concerning the different levels and graduations of the Universe, some of them material and some ethereal, the planes and sub -planes, upon which the great scheme is being carried out; wh ich levels and planes, all progressively linked together, constitute one vast ladder of many rounds, staves, or rungs, a veritable “Ladder of Life”. Candidates thus came to understand that the Universe consists of embodied consciousness, and that these embodied consciousness exist in a practically infinite gradation of varying degrees of perfection – a real “Ladder of Life” or “Stair of Life”, stretching endlessly in either direction, for our imagination can conceive no limits except a hierarchical one; and such hierarchical limitation is but spacial, and not actual, qualitative and formal. They were shown that the “Ladder of Life” is marked at certain intervals by landing places, so to speak, which the Mysteries called “planes of being” (different spheres of consciousness, to express the idea in alternative terms). Can didates in the old systems were gi ven instruction in these matters before being admitted to. Initiation, and the knowledge gained served to explain to them their own nature and constitution, and their place in the World-system. Today, Freemasonry, perpetuating the ancient teaching, exhibits to the Brethren a simple ladder, a symbol which when properly interpreted is calculated to open widely the eyes of their imagination. It is true that the ladder portrayed on the T.B. of the First Degree is given a mora l significance in the Instruction l ecture, but, as students of Hebrew mysticism are well aware, “Jacob’s Ladder” is also a symbol of the Universe with its succession of step-like planes reaching from the heights to the depths. Indeed, we learn from the V. of the S.L., that the Fathers House has many mansions, many levels and resting places for His creatures in their different conditions and degrees of progress; and it is these levels, these planes and sub-planes, that are denoted by the rungs and staves of the symbolic ladd er. Of these plane s there are, for us in our present state of evolutionary unfoldment, three principal ones: –

1 .. PHYSICAL PLANE 2 .. PLANE OF DESIRE AND EMOTION 3 .. MENTAL PLANE.

These three levels of the world are reproduced in man; the first (physical plane) corresponds with his material physique, his sense-body; the second (plane of desire and emotion) with his desire and emotional nature; and the third (mental plane), with his mentality, which forms the link between his physical nature and his spiritual being. The Universe and man himself are therefore constructed ladder-wiser and the ladder with its three principal staves may be seen everywhere in Nature. It appears in the sept enary scale of musical sound with its three dominants; in the prismatic scale of light with its three primary colours; in the septenary physiological changes in our bodily organism, and in the similar periodicities known to physics and every branch of science. The Ancient Wisdom teaches that the one universal substance composing the differentiated parts the Universe “descends” from a state of the utmost etheriality, by successive steps of incr easing densification, until gross materialisation is reached, an d thence, “ascends” through a similarly ordered gradation of planes to its original place, but enriched by the experience gained by its activities during the process. In like manner, we ourselves, have each descended into this world (the nadir of materiality), and we have each to ascend from it by the same steps of “Jacob’s Ladder”, “which reaches to the heavens” (the zenith – “an etheral mansion veiled from mortal eyes by the stary firmament”). In some Masonic diagrams and Tracing Boards there is exhibite d upon the ladder a small cross, in a tilted unstable position, as if ascending it; that cross represents all who are engaged in mounting the ladder to the heights, and who, ln the words of the poem:-

“Rise by stepping-stones From their dead selves to higher things”.

Indeed, each of us carries his own cross (cruciform body) as he ascends; the material vesture whose tendencies are ever at cross-purposes with the desire of his spirit and militate against the ascent. Nevertheless, thus weighted, each must climb, and climb alone; yet reaching out (as the secret tradition teaches and the arms of the tilted cross signify) one hand to invisible helpers above, and the other to assist the ascent of feebler brethren below, for as the sides and the separate rungs of the ladder con stitute a unity, so all life and all lives are fundamentally one, and none lives to himself alone. Masonic students who recognise that every reference in Speculative Freemasonry is figurative and carries a symbolic significance behind the literal sense of the words, will dismiss from their minds any suggestion that the allusion to the familiar biblical episode in the Fourth Section of the First Lecture (see Genesis, Chapter 28), was intended by the compilers of our system to indicate a subject capable only of a moral interpretation. We may be well assured that the Founders of our Order had a much deeper purpose in view than that of merely reminding us of the Pauline triad of theological virtues (Faith, Hope and Charity), excellent as these may be. Admittedly, the moral interpretation is both warranted and salutary, but none the less it is far from being exhaustive, while it also conceals rather than reveals the meaning of the Scriptural reference an d what the symbol of the Ladder is meant to convey to disce rning minds. Now, if we would correctly interpret the Scriptural account of “Jacob’s Ladder” as given in the Instruction-lecture, we must of necessity have recourse to an ancient Hebrew mystical doctrine with which Freemasonry is closely allied – the KABBALAH. The Kabbalah accords a prominent place to what are called the seven kings of EDOM, and the student will find that these kings are represented in the Book of Genesis as seven ancient royalties preceding the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel; but the Kabbalah further explains that they are descriptive images of seven worlds created prior to that inhabited by man, worlds which are incapable of permanent endurance as the Divine Image is not assumed in them. The humanity which assumes the Divine Image (i.e. man perfected) is termed Israel, and the seven kings or kingdoms of Edom are shown to be seven stations or planetary worlds through which the soul must pass in order to attain perfection. Such a state of perfection is a ttained only when by the full restoration and exaltation of the soul to oneness with the Spirit, the masculine and feminine principles are in perfect balance with each other. These principles (masculine and feminine) are called the King and Queen, and are respectively the Archetypal Idea (Adam Kadmon), who subsists prior to creation, and this Idea realised in creation. And, as declared in the Kabbalistic “Book of Occultations”:

“Until the balance is established, and while yet the King and Queen look not face to face upon each other, the seven worlds of Edom have no continuance. But when the Queen appears upon her throne, then all the seven kingdoms of Edom shall be resumed in Israel and re-born under other names, For all that is not, all that is, and that shall be; are borne on the balance of the King and Queen looking face to face upon each other.”

A careful perusal of this passage from the “Book of Occultations” discloses that the condition signified is precisely that also described by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians, when he says “But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away; for now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.”. (1, Corinthians, 13, 10 – 12). It is, then, apparent that the kings of Edom (i.e. Adam or earth), are an occult figure of the seven progressive dominions, spheres , planets or stages, through which the soul passes on the way to the heavenly royalty within and beyond the earthly plane, to where man perfected becomes “a Prince and Ruler in Israel”. Hence, the evanescence of the seven kingdoms of Edom; they represent rudimentary and embryonic stages in the “making” (perfecting) of man. Hence also the Apocalyptic declaration: “And the seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in heaven, saying, the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, an d of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever”, (Revelation, 11, 15). Further, it is important, to enable the student to comprehend the meaning of the cryptic reference to Esau in the Instruction-lecture, to keep in mind that the V. of the S.L., informs us that, “Essau is Edom, and the father of the kings thereof” (Genesis, chapter 36). Now, Esau is the brother of Jacob, and as it is the dynasty of Jacob which succeeds that of Edom, it follows that Esau is a figure of corporeal nature, while Jacob is a figure of spiritual life. Here is the link with our symbol of “Jacob’s Ladder”, for we can discern that the seven staves of the ladder are also the seven temporary kingdoms of Esau, whose dominion Jacob is destined, by surmounting the ladder, to supplant and supersede; doing this, and attaining the summit (t he place of the Lord), Jacob becomes ISRAEL, or “Prince with God”. Attention is particularly directed to Genesis, 28, verse 12: “And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.” Interpreting this passage, the Kabbalah explains that the angels on the Ladder denote souls descending into incarnation, to the lowest degree of the Universe (matter at its nethermost point), and ascending again into Heaven. At the foot of the Ladder at hight Jacob (the pilgrim soul) lies asleep, having for pillow a stone, and as the material world is the place of the greatest darkness and division from God, the place of the vision is called Luz.(or Luza), signifying “separation”. Nevertheless, the soul knows that the nethermost point is also the turning-point of the pilgrimage, and that hence forth the journey is upwards and “eastwards”. This is the stage in which the soul perceives that even in the lowest abyss of matter th ere is no real separation from the Divine presence and life; and that in the very Valley of the Shadow of Death, the “Rod and Staff” (i.e. the Trees of Life and of Knowledge – symbolised in the Craft by the Square, a variant of the Cross) comfort it – see Psalm 23, verse 4, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me”. Hence, the exclamation of Jacob on awaking , “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I know it no t,” (Genesis 28, 16), and the consequent re-naming of the place, BETH-EL (i.e. House of God) – verse 18. The Kabbalistic version of Jacob’s dream is the Hebrew expression of the Secret Doctrine upon which, from the beginning, all the great religions of East and West have been built, namely the doctrine of the “Gilgal Neschamoth”, or the transmigration and progression of souls.

In many of the Ancient Mystery systems a Ladder, having seven steps or gates, was used in order to demonstrate the seven stages of the soul’s progress through the world of materiality. The Greek Mysteries, for instance, represented existence by the river Styx, the “daughter” of Oceanus (water of eternity), and by some called “mother” of Persephone (the soul), as the vehicle whereby she is borne down into the under-world and carried from mansion to mansion of the dark abodes. Seven circuits are made by the Styx, each of which includes and forms a world or station. During these rounds of planetary evolution, Styx becomes the mother of four Children, who denote respectively the four divisions of man’s nature the emotional, the volitional, the intellectual, and the-psychic. These children have for father the giant Pallas (elemental force), for her victory over whom the goddess Athene was called Pallas (i.e. Pallas Athone). The word Styx means literally “hatef ul”, and signifies the imperfect nature of existence as compared with pure being; this “River of Existence” is also variously called the “Astral Fluid”, the “Serpent”, and “Lucifer”. The seven stages of existence constitute what is known as a planetary chain, the term “planetary” denoting “wandering” (i.e. pilgrimage), and they are classified as follow:-

1.. ETHEREAL. 2.. ELEMENTAL 3.. GASEOUS. 4.. MINERAL. 5.. VEGETABLE. 6.. ANIMAL 7.. HUMAN

It must be borne in mind that those stages are not localities, but conditions, and that in the soul’s passage none is left behind, all are taken up into man, one being put on (as it were) after another, and the whole being comprised in the perfected individual. Each of the seven stages has a part in the evolution of the consciousness, which, it should be noted is single until the lowest stage (the mineral) is reached; the mineral stage is the “nethermost” point and lies at the foot of the “Ladder of Life”. Here occurs the “deep sleep” of Adam (as also of Jacob), the consciousness single and not involving self-consciousness, having in this the grossest mode of matter attained its minimum. From this point there commences the process of re-duplication, or reflection of the consciousness, by means of which the soul gradually passes into the consciousness of Self and of God. The consciousness being single until the fourth or lowest stage of existence is reached (the w orld of mineral nature), the commencement of r eduplication takes place in the fifth station (the world of vegetable nature), and it is at this stage that the soul becomes gathered up and formulated into a distant individuality. In the sixth station the capacity for “sin” originates through the awakening of a sympathetic consciousness; at this stage, “sin” first becomes possible, because so long as the individual has only the simple consciousness of rudimentary nature, he knows no will but the Divine Will expressed in nat ural law, and there is for him no better or worse – all is “good”. Stated in alternative terms: Adam while yet alone, cannot be tempted, cannot sin, for mere mind cannot sin; only the soul can win. It is by the advent or manifestation of “EVE” (the soul, “the woman”) that there comes the “knowledge of good and evil”; and it is to her, not Adam, that the tempter, when at length he makes his appearance, addresses his beguilements. The “sin” of Eve is not in the eating of “the fruit of the tree” herself, but in the giving of it to Adam (se e Genesis 3, 12), since this constitutes a retrogression on the path of evolution, in that it refers the polaric point (i.e. the One Life which is centred in the soul), backward and downward to the lower reason; for “sin” consists in a voluntary retrogression from the higher to the lower. The “serpent” which tempts to “sin” is the astral or magnetia self, which, recognising matter only, mistakes the illusory for the substantial. Yielding to the “tempter”, the soul falls under the power of the lower nature ( “Adam”) see Genesis 4, 16 – “and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee”; like Lot’s wife she (Eve; – the soul) has looked back, and forthwith becomes a “Pillar of salt” the Alchemic synonym for matter. In this subjection of the “woman” to the “man”, and the dire results engendered of it, consists the “Fall”, and the fact that it entails these results demonstrates that such subjection is not according to the Divine order, but is an in version of that order. The soul should ever seek upwards to the Divine Will (of the Spirit); and instead of seeking downwards to the mind, should draw the mind up with her. Thus it comes to be that in the sixth station (the world of animal nature), which corresponds to the sixth creative “day” of Genesis, man is still in the making, and in order to attain to the “measure stature of the Christ”, and from man potential become man actual and perfect, he must enter upon the seventh and last world of Kabbalistic evolution, the topmost round of the Ladder of Ja cob, which is the vary threshold of the Divine. The seventh station (the world of human nature) is the world of the demigods and heroes of Greek myth, of the Saints of Christendom; and of the Buddhas of the Orient. Here man is no more merely a superior animal, for the nature of the beast is expunged, and new and more subtle senses replace the old; Divine illumination and transcendent knowledge have closed the avenues of passion and sin – this is the first Nir vana, or Resurrection. But one step more, and th e second Nirvana is reached, and “Regina and Rex look face to face upon each other” (the Idea and the Realisation are poised face to face); for the plane of earth and of time is wholly transcended, the indissoluble, a selfhood and life eternal are gained – the manhood is taken into God. Thus is celebrated the mystic marriage of the Immaculate Virgin (the Soul) with her spouse the Holy spirit; the yoke of bondage to Adam is broken, and for ever the curse is r eversed by the Ave Maria of Regeneration. The Gree k Mysteries dealt with two subjects only, the first being the drama of the “rape” and restoration of Persephone, and the second, that of the incarnation, martyrdom, and resuscitation of Dionysos; by Persephone was intended the Soul, and by Dionysos, the Spirit. The myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone told how the maiden strayed away from Arcadia (heaven) and from her mother, to pluck flowers in the meads of Enna, and how the soil there opened and caused her t o 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 th e 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, can 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; Persephone is the human soul, and her straying from her heavenly home and heavenly mother in quest of flowers (symbol of fresh experiences) in the fields of Enna (signifying darkness and bitterness), corresponds with the same promptines of desire t hat led to Adam’s disobedience in Eden and his fall thence to this outer world. The eating of the fruit of Hades, alludes to the further degradation of the soul by lusting after the inferior pleasures of this lower plane, which, as symbolised by the pomegranate, is filled with the seeds of illusion and vanity. Therefore, until these false tendencies are eradicated and the desires of the heart are utterly weaned from external delights, it is decreed that there can be no permanent restoration of the soul to its source, but merely periodic respite and refreshment (“from labour to refreshment”) that death brings when it with-draws the soul from the realm of Pluto to the heaven-world; to be followed again and again by periodic descents into material limitations and reascents into discarnate conditions, until the soul becomes finally purged and perfected. By means of this great myth, instruction was imparted concerning the history of the soul, its destiny and prospects, and the doctrine of reincarna tion was also g iven emphasis.

The great drama of the Greek Mysteries enunciates, as well as veils, two cardinal verities: the Fall, and Redemption from that Fall. Thus from the sad and woeful state into which Persophone falls she is finally rescued and restored to the supernal abodes; but not until the coming of the Saviour, represented in the Hermetic parable under the name of Osiris (“the risen from the tomb”)- the Man Regenerate. This Redeemer, himself of divine origin; is in other allegories represented under other names, but the i dea is always defined, and the intention obvious. Indeed, Osiris is the Jesus of our Christian doctrine, the supreme Initiate or “Captain of Salvation”; He is the reflection and counterpart in Man of the supreme Lord of the Universe (Greek – Dionysos, Hebrew – Adonai), the ideal type of humanity. He is represented as in all things “instructed” and directed by Hermes; famed as the celestial conductor of souls from the “dark abodes”; the wise and ubiquitous God in whom the student recognises the Genius of th e Understanding, or Divine Reason, the “nous” of Platonic doctrine – and the mystic “Spirit of Christ”. As the understanding of holy things and the faculty of their interpretation are the gift of Hermes, the name of this God is given to all science and revelation of an occult and divine nature. Hermes was therefore regarded as the Messenger or Angel of the Gods, descending alike to the depths of the Hadean world to bring up souls from thence, and ascendi ng up beyond all heavens that he might fill all thin gs. Lactantius, (a Christian apologist of the early part of the fourth century), in his “Divine Institutions”, says: “Hermes affirms that those who know God are safe from the attacks of the demon, and that they are not even subjected to Fate.” Now, the powers of Fate reside in the stars – that is, in the “astral” sphere, whether Cosmic or micro-Cosmic – and the astral power was in Greek fable, typified by Argos (the hundred-eyed genius of the starry zone), ” Panoptes”, the all-seeing giant, whom it was the g lory of Hermes to have outwitted and slain. The meaning of this allegory is, that they who have the Hermetic secret are not subject to Fate, but have passed beyond the thrall of metempsychosis and have freed themselves from “ceaseless whirling on the wheel” of Destiny. The spheres of delusion, dominated by the sevenfold astral Powers, lie between the soul and God; beyond those spheres are the celestial “Nine Abodes” wherein, say the Mysteries Demeter vainly sought t he lost Persephone. For from these abode s Persephone had lapsed into a mundane and material state, and thereby had fallen under the power of the planetary rulers; that is, of Fate, personified by Hekate. On the tenth day the Divine Drama shews Dometer meeting the Goddess of Doom and Retribution, the terrible Hekate Triformis (personification of “Karma”) by whom she is told of Persephone’s abduction and detention in the Hadean world; thereafter Hekate becomes the constant attendant upon Persephone. All this i s, of course, pregnant with the deepes t significance; until the Soul falls into Matter, she has no Fate or Karma, for Fate is the appanage and result of Time and Manifestation. In the sevenfold astral spheres the Moon is representative of Fate, and presents two aspects, the benign and the malignant. Under the benign aspect the Moon is Artemis, reflecting to the soul the divine light of Phoebus; under the malignant aspect she is Hekate the Avenger, dark of countenance and three-headed, being swift as a horse, su re as a dog, and as implacable as a lion. The Tree of Good and Evil, says the Kabbalah, has its roots in Malkuth – the Moon. It is sometimes asserted that the doctrine of Karma is peculiar to Hindu theology, but on the contrary it is clearly exhibited alike in the Hebrew, Hellenic, and Christian Mysteries; the Greeks called it Fate, and the Christians know it as Original Sin.

Modern Freemasonry, in the line of succession from the Ancient Mysteries, follows the traditional method of imparting instruction by means of myths, and its canon of teaching in the Craft degrees contains two; one, the building of King Solomon’s Temple; the other, the death and burial of Hiram Abiff. The story of the building of the Temple is a myth enshrining philosophic truths, garbed in quasi-historical form, and relating to the structure of the human soul, the Temple of the collective soul of Humanity. This “magnificent structure” has now been destroyed and thrown down from its primitive eminence and grandeur; Humanity instead of being a collective united organic whole, has become shattered into innumerable fragmentary 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 fro m sense-impressions in this outer world. (See Paper, “The Mysti cal Quest in Freemasonry”). The Masonic myth of the martyrdom of Hiram Abiff affords us one of the profoundest mysteries open to contemplation. Students of the mysteries will discern that the true purpose of the central legend of our Craft is not to recount the temporal event of the death-agony of a murdered Master, but to narrate the parable of a cosmic and universal loss. We are here dealing with no tragedy that occurred during the erection of a building in an eastern city, but with a moral disaster to u niversal humanity. Hiram Abiff is slain. The high light and wisdom ordained to guide and enlighten humanity are wanting to us, and 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. Indeed, the absence of clear and guiding principle in the world’s life forcibly reminds us of the utter confusion into which the loss of that Supreme Wisdom, per sonified as Hiram, has thrown us all; and causes every refle ctive 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, and 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 pursuit s, in Freemasonry, and those who search farthest and deepest are those who become most conscious of the loss and who are compelled to confess, in the words of the Christian Scriptures: “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him”. 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 sepulchre outside the Holy City. 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 Scripture is called the Kingdom of Heaven. Our ritual in cryptic terms indicates that the grave of Hiram is ourselves; each of us is the sepulchre in which the smitten Muster is interred. At the centre of ourselves lies buried the “vital and immortal principle” that affiliates us to the Divine Centre of all life, and that is never extinguished however imperfect our lives may be. In other wor ds, Hiram Abiff represents the Christ-principle immanent in every soul; crucified, dead and buried in all who are not alive to its presence, but resident in all as a saving force; to quote St. Paul – “Christ in you, the hope of glory”. Thus the temple of the human soul; primordially constituted of the three principles WISDOM, STRENGTH and BEAUTY, in due balance and proportion, and divinely pronounced to be “very good”, has deflected from that state. Of the three pillars that should support it, WISDOM (Gnosis ) has fallen and become replaced by a flexib le and shifting prop of speculative opinion; STRENGTH (divine dynamic energy) has become exchanged for the frailty of the perishing flesh; and 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, then severed from conscious intercourse with his Vital and Immortal Principle, is now a prisoner in captivity to himself and his lower temporal nature. It remains for him to retra ce his steps and rebuild his temple; to continue no longer a bondsslave to his self-made illusions and the attractions of “worldly possessions”, but to become a free man and mason, engaged in shaping himself into a living stone, for the cosmic temple of a regenerate Humanity. Hence, to be installed in the chair of King Solomon, means in its true sense the re-attainment 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 a ll that is comprised in the terms Strength and Beauty will be re-attained also, for the three pillars stand in eternal association and balance. On the other hand, not to re-attain-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, as the Ancient Mysteries taught, is not one of labour at this work, but of refreshment and rest, when no real progress, is possible. Labour, understood in the sense here defined, an d Refreshment after it, constitute a rhythm of activity and passivity: a rhythm similar to that which we daily experience in respect of waking and sleeping, working and resting. To speak of Refreshment, however, in the deeper sense implied in Freemasonry is even more difficult than to speak of the philosophic Labour; for it involves a subject to which few devote deep thought – the subjective side of the soul’s life as distinct from the objective side which, for most men, is the only one at pres ent known to them. But to the wise, the study of the subjective half of life is as important us that of the objective half, and without it he cannot make the circle of his self-knowledge complete. Even the observant Masonic student is made aware by the formula used at Lodge-closing, that by some great Warden of life and death each soul is called into this objective world to labour upon itself, and is in due course summoned from it to rest from its labours a nd enter into subjective celestial refreshment, until once agai n it is recalled to labour. For each the “day,” the opportunity for work at self-perfecting, is duly given; for each the “night” cometh when no man can work at that task; which morning and evening constitute but one creative day of the soul’s life, each portion of that day being a necessary complement to the other. Perfect man has to unify these opposites in himself; so that for him, as for his Maker, the darkness and the light become both alike. The world-old secret teaching upon this subject, common to the whole of the East, to Egypt, the Pythagoreans and Platonists, and every College of the Mysteries, is to be found summed up as clearly as one could wish in the “Phaedo” of Plato, to which the student is referred as one of the most instructive of treatises upon the deeper side of the science. It testifies to the great rhythm of life and death above spoken of, and demonstrates how that the soul in the course of its career weaves and wears out many bodies and is continually migrating between objective and subjective conditions, passing from labour to refreshment and back again many times in its great task of self-fulfilment. And if Plato was, as was once truly said of him, but Moses speaking Attic Greek, we shall not be surprised at finding the same initiate-teaching disclosed in the words of Moses himself. Does not the familiar Psalm of Moses declare that man is continually “brought to destruction”, that subsequently a voice goes forth saying “Come again, ye children of men !” and that the subjective spiri tual world is his refuge from one objective manifestation to another? What else than a paraphrase of this great word of comfort is the Masonic pronouncement that, in the course of its task of self-perfecting, the soul is periodically summoned to alternating periods of labour and refreshment? It must be labour, and it must rest from its labours; its works will follow it, and in the subjective world every Brother’s soul will receive its due for its work in the objective one, until such time a s its work is com pleted and it is made “a pillar in the House of God and no more goes out” as a journeyman-builder into this sublunary workshop.

“Pray far the peace of Jerusalem! they shall prosper that love it. Peace is within her walls and plenteousness within her palaces. For my brethren and companions’ sake I will say, Peace be within thee.”

(Psalm CXXII)

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Now one of the first things to impress itself upon 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, civilised or barbarian, Christian or pagan. However separated from others by time or distance, however intellectualised or primitive, and however wide-their differences in important respects, each people is found to have employed and still t o be employing certain ideas, symbols and practices in common with every other. A close examination of Masonic literature confirms and amplifies this impression, for the student will find that numerous authors connected with the Craft have demonstrated that there isa close correspondence to be found in the various apparently unrelated systems, and they have further emphasised how ancient and universal are the ideas, symbols and practices which are embodied in our modern system of Freemasonry. There is one thing, however, that the student invariably has great difficulty in determining, and this is the reason for the antiquity and universality so clearly in evidence according to the existing records. It is unfortunate that the majority of those who have written treaties on Masonic history and purpose have neglected to give an explanation on this point, and since it furnishes us with the essential clue to the entire problem of the genesis, the history, and the reason for the existence of Freemasonry, it is so important to clear up the matter before proceeding with the general outline of our subject.

If one perseveres with research and reflection, it will become apparent to the student that the universality and uniformity noted by historians are due to the fact that at one time, long back in the world’s past, there was implanted in the minds of the whole human family – which was then, doubtless, much more concentrated than at present – a root- doctrine in regard to the nature and destiny of the soul of man and its relation to the Deity. 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 it is recorded that a people perisheth, but in virtue of which man were once in conscious conversation with the unseen worlds and were shepherded, taught and guided by the “gods” or discarnate superintendents of the infant race, who imparted to them the sure principles upon which their spiritual welfare and ev olution depended. The testimony concerning this “Golden Age” is found to be recorded in all languages, and it is unanimously stated to be the period of the early beginnings of the Human Race. In these early days we learn that the psychic and physical intellect in man was dormant, and we are told that it was on this account that infant humanity was guided and taught under the direct superintendence of divine Teachers and Instructors. It is of particular si gnificance to Freemasons to find that tradition affir ms that it was under the guidance of these Instructors that humanity was taught its first notions of all the arts and sciences, and that it was They who laid the foundation-stone of those ancient civilizations which so sorely puzzle our modern generation of scholars. This will account for the fact that no matter how far back into the night of time archaeological or other investigations are extended, high stages of civilisation are found, each having an elaborate numerical system; where, according to modern scientific theories, only the most primitive conditions might be expected. The presence of fully developed numerical systems in ancient civilisations proves that the science of numbers was not slowly evolved by primitive man learning to count on his fingers, as is popularly supposed, and confirms the tradition of a fully elaborated system of computation which was revealed to the priesthood of the early Races by the Spiritual Teachers of mankind.

We of today 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. In fact it indicates that primitive man, notwithstanding his intellectual undevelopment according to modern standards, was spiritually conscious and psychically perceptive to a degree undreamed of in our day. It is therefore ourselves who , for all our cleverness and intellectual development in temporal mattes, are nevertheless plunged in darkness and ignorance about our own nature, the invisible world around us, and the eternal spiritual verities. We may, then, well enquire how it is that we have departed so far from our original state, and once again tradition comes to our assistance.

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 had the effect of severing it almost entirely from its creative source, and which, as the ages advanced, has involved its sinking more and more deeply into physical conditions. This has resulted in its splitting up from a unity employing a single language into a diversity of conflicting races of different speeches and degrees of moral advan cement, and has been accompanied by a progressive densification of the material body and a corresponding atrophy of the spiritual consciousness. This tradition of our extrusion of Fall, howsoever occasioned, from the more immediate precincts of Deity is so catholic a one that it must have been a canon of the root-doctrine or protoevangel which lies at the back of all the great religious systems of history. Antiquity and universality constitute; of course, inadequate evidence of its truth for modern rationalism, but for the genuine student testimony to it can be adduced from another quarter. This will be found in the voluble sacrementalism of Nature where it is perpetuated and registered in such a manner as will be readily discerned by the seeing eye and understanding mind. In our day, evolution, or the perpetual tendency of things upwards, has came to be generally accepted as a cosmic process. But does not th e capacity for rising imply necessarily an antecedent failing? The logical value of the evolutionary hypothesis, as of every hypothesis can only be appraised by contrasting it with its antithesis, and the laws of human logic, as Freemasons should well know, are shadows of those of the LOGOS, the Divine Logician. The truth, then, of the Fall, has been perpetuated in our phenomenal world by the fact that to fall is the property of everything material Purified spirit alone is capable of ascension, of counteract ing the law of gravitation, which, as shown in the allegory of the flaming sword of the Cherubim guarding Eden, rigidly excludes from ascending all that is unfit to inhabit a world more advanced than a physical one. Thus the initial act in the earthly existence of every seed, and germ, and egg, of every newborn animal and child, is to fall to the ground. At the very outset of its career it therefore rehearses in its own form or person the primal Fall of Cosmic Spirit into the plane of Nature, while its subsequent function is to rise and grow physically or morally according to its kind.

So far as it affects humanity, the doctrine of the Fall, portrayed in the Biblical legend of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Eden, was not due, as is popularly supposed, to the transgression of an individual, but was the result of a defect in the collective or group-soul of the Adamic Race, and was a process covering vast cycles of time. Such is the unanimous testimony of the Ancient Wisdom-tradition and despite its rejection by many in our day, it is my conviction that we cannot adequately apprehend the divine scheme unless we realise that the Fall was an incident thereof that was ordained by, and that existed primally in the prescience of, Deity; that the descent of spirit and its incarnation in the material world was a process as gradual as has been, and is, the rise, the emergence, of spiritual life from within its present physical limitations. The incarceration of spirit, therefore, in material conditions, involving, as it did and does still, the struggle for emancipation and the knowledge of evil, was, and is, essential and necessary to enable the spirit of man to become self-conscious of its own inherent perfection and divinity, by undergoing an experience which is the antithesis of its own birthright in a plane of existence which is the antipodes of its natural home. Hence it follows that Redemption is the necessary complement of Creation, and accordingly we find that tradition assert s that as a consequence of the Fall it was nec essary and within the Divine Providence that humanity should be redeemed and restored to its former high estate, the restoration in turn requiring vast time cycles for its achievement. And it required something further; It required the application of an orderly and scientific method under skilled direction, and we may reasonably enquire; whence could come that skill and scientific knowledge if not from the Divine and now invisible world, from those “god s” and guardians of the erring race of whom all the an cient traditions and sacred writings tell? Would not that skilled method be properly described if it were termed, as in our modern Freemasonry it is termed, a “heavenly science” and a “noble science”, and would it not be welcomed in the words that Freemasons in fact use, “Hail, Royal Art!” Those of our Brethren who here responsible for the inscription set out on the Foundation Stone of the first Freemason’s Hall, which was consecrated on the 1st, May, 1775, cl early recognised this fact, because in declaring the authority under which the English Craft claims precedence and jurisdiction over the “whole body of Brethren throughout the world”, they re-affirmed the “Ancient Landmark” concerning the origin of the Science in the significant words, “It comes down from Heaven”.

To the spiritual guardians of primitive man, then, we must attribute the communication of that universal science of rebuilding the fallen temple of humanity, and to this source we must credit the distribution, in every land and among every people, of the same or equivalent symbols, practices and doctrines. This was the one holy Catholic Religion “throughout all the world”, and it laid down the ancient and established “usages and customs” to be followed at all times by everyone willing to accept its discipli ne. It was the “Sacred Law” for the guidance of fallen humanity, a law valid from “time immemorial”, or, in other words, 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”.

This universal science is related to have originated in the East, for the East, in every sense, geographically, astronomically, and spiritually, is ever the source of light “Ex Oriente Lux” (Out of the East Light) – and as humanity itself became diffused and distributed over the globe, to have gradually spread towards the West. The record of this truth is retained in our modern Instruction Lectures in the cryptic phrase, “Learning originated in the East and thence spread its benign influence towards the West” (Fourth Section, First Lecture). During the process of the distribution of humanity there came about that progressive densificati on of the material body and consequent at rophy of spiritual perception already mentioned, and on account of this the influence of the Wisdom-teaching became correspondingly diminished, although its principles remained as valid and effective. To follow the course of its progress in any detail would require a long treatise, and is therefore outside the scope of the present Paper, but it should be noted that despite human vagaries and conceptions the Light, like that of a Master Mason, has never b een wholly extinguished, however dark the age, and acc ording to tradition the present age is spiritually the darkest of the dark ages. It is truly declared that “God has never left himself without a living witness among men”, and among the witnesses to the Ancient Wisdom is the system we know as Freemasonry; a faint and feeble flicker, perhaps, but nevertheless a true light and in the true line of succession of the primitive doctrine.

The earliest teaching of the Mysteries traceable within historic time was in the Orient and in the language known as Sanskrit – a name itself significant and appropriate, for it means Holy Writ or “Sanctum Scriptum”; and for the very great lights on the Ancient Wisdom 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-cup. But races of men, like individuals, 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 man y centuries of spiritual su premacy, 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 civilisations developed in adjoining countries, minor centres for impacting the knowledge were instituted in Chaldea, Persia, Greece and Asia Minor, and a record of this diffusion is preserved in the V. of the S.L., for the EXODUS is, in one of its many allusion s, a witness to the passing on of the catholic mysteries 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 V. of the S.L., that Moses was an initiate of the Egyptian Mysteries and became learned in all its wisdom, while the writings of the Alexandrian Philosopher Philo Judaeus, called Philo the Jew, inform us that in Egypt Moses became “skilled in Music, Geometry, Arithmetic, Hieroglyphics and the whole circle of the 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, effloresced in the greatest of all expressions of the Mysteries, as disclosed in the Gospels of the New Testament, or New Witness, involving the enfoldment, comprehension, and in gathering of the religious past of the whole world, centralised under the Supreme Grand Mastership of Him who is called the Light of the World, and embodying all the characteristics, legends, and sy mbols hitherto appertaining to the central figures of prece ding dispensations, proclaiming the unity of all human aspiration, and formulating in one grand system the doctrines of both the East and West.

Concurrently with the existence of the Hebrew Mysteries under the Mosaic dispensation, the great Greek school was developing, which originating in the Orphic religion, culminated and came to a focus at Delphi and generated the philosophic wisdom associated with Athens and the Periclean age. Greece was the spiritual descendant of both India and Egypt, and we know that the great Initiate who is accorded the title of Pythagoras journeyed to India before being received in Egypt to take his final initiation prior to founding the school at Crotona associated with him. Plato also tells us that aspirants for initiation visited Egypt before promoting spiritual advancement in Greece.

It will not be possible to deal adequately with all the Mystery-systems in this Paper, although for purposes of illustration in regard to our present subject a reference will be made to one of the most famous of them, the Eleusinian, which existed in Greece for several centuries. The word “Eleusis” means light, and therefore initiation into the Mysteries of Eleusis proclaimed the quest of the aspirant for light, in precisely the same sense as the Freemason today is made to declare that “Light” is the predominant wish” of his heart. In alternative terms, the candidate sought to be endued with “a competency of the Divi ne wisdom”, and was prepared to voluntarily submit himself to a process whereby he became transformed from the natural state into a spiritual state. Initiation, therefore, meant the gearing of the consciousness of the candidate to a new and higher principle, the making of a new man in the sense of attaining a new method of life and a new outlook upon the universe. Speaking of this process St. Paul writes in his Epistle to the Ephesians. “And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new ma n, which after God is created in righteousness and true holin ess”. This process of “putting on the new man” spoken of by St. Paul in the 4th Chapter of his Epistle to the Ephesians (verses 23 and 24) involves our comprehension of the esoteric or spiritual interpretation of an Immaculate Conception, or, in other words, the bringing to birth of the Divine Principle to function within the organism of the natural man. In Freemasonry this mystical birth is reproduced by the name “Lewis”, which is traditionally associated with the Craft. The word “Lewis” is an excellent example of the crypt ic language deliberately employed by the compilers of our Ritual, for on close examination it will be found to be a corruption of Eleusis and other Greek and Latin names indicating Light. Hence it is that in our Instruction Lectures “Lewis” is said to designate “the son of a Freemason”, but assuredly this has no reference to human parentage and sonship. It refers to the mystical birth of the Divine Light, the Light of the World, in oneself; as a familiar Scriptural text has it, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given”, truly an exalted parentage. The Instruction Lectures furt her describe a “Lewis” as something which “when dovetailed into a stone forms a clamp and enables the Mason to raise great weights to certain heights, while fixing them on their proper bases”, all of which is a concealed way of expressing the fact that, when the Light of Divine Wisdom 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 an d “weights” of all kinds which to the ordinary man are insuper able.

In the time that the Eleusinian Mysteries flourished as a public institution it was regarded as essential by the cultured to apply for initiation, on the grounds that the training and instruction were religiously conducive to the making of good men and good citizens, and it is worthy of mention that in our day substantially the same message has been convoyed to the popular world through the medium of the public press by the Aims and Relations Committee of the United Grand Lodge of England. In former times, however, the principles of the Initiation science were not communicated to candidates, merely by the discharge of certain ceremonial formalities, and educated men applied to enter the Mysteries in the same way that in our day students go into residence at a University and are required to graduate. The future development and value of the Masonic Order as a moral force in society will depend, therefore, upon a revival, in a form adapted to modern conditions, of the ancient Wisdom-teaching and also of the prac tice of those Mysteries which became prescribed fifteen centuries ago, but of which modern Freemasonry is the direct and representative descendant.

At the time when the Mysteries flourished, accepted candidates were graded according to their moral efficiency and their intellectual or spiritual stature. For a period of years they underwent disciplinary intellectual exercises and bodily asceticism, during which they were subjected to periodical tests in order to determine their fitness to proceed to the more solemn and serious processes of actual initiation. Initiation was administered only to those who were duly qualified, and the precise nature was of a secret and closely guarded character. An echo of this progress by regular stages is found in our present day ritual, in the information given to the candidate during the Ceremony of Initiation, stipulating that “their are several degrees in Freemasonry with peculiar secrets restricted to each” and the accompanying reminder that these are “not confe rred upon candidates indiscriminately, but only according to merit and ability”. The education of aspirants for Initiation was directed solely to the cultivation of the “four cardinal virtues”, and this at once brings to mind the reference in our own Lectures wherein it is affirmed that “tradition informs us” that they “were constantly practised by the majority of our ancient Brethren”. A further qualification prerequisite to a participation in the higher order of life was the study of the “seven liberal arts and sciences”. The construction put upon these virtues and sciences was, however, a much more advanced one than the modern mind considers adequate; and it is interesting to note that although we have not departed from the essential curriculum in theory in the Craft today, in the matter of practice there is a wide difference. For instance, with our Ancient Brethren the virtue of TEMPERANCE involved the complete control of the passional nature; FORTITUDE, implied a courage which is undismayed by adversi ty, and w hich permits of no deflection from the goal in view; PRUDENCE, comprehended that deep insight leading to forward-seeing and producing the prophetic faculty of seer-ship; JUSTICE, demanded unswerving righteousness of thought, word and deed. The “arts and sciences” were also of a positive nature, and they were termed “liberal” because the educational curriculum was expressly designed to “liberate” the soul of the aspirant from the illusions incident to the natural state. Thus GRAMMAR, LOGIC and RH ETORIC wer e treated as disciplines of the moral nature, by means of which irrational tendencies were eradicated and candidates trained to become living witnesses of the universal Logos and effectively speaking with the “tongue of good report”. GEOMETRY and ARITHMETIC were sciences of transcendental space and numeration, the complete comprehension of which provided the key to both the Universe and man himself, for each expression of life was shown to have its number, rate of vibration or wave length, its form and particular place in the Grand Plan of T.G.A.O.T.U. The science of AS TRONOMY not only included the observation of the heavenly bodies, but was primarily directed to the study of metaphysics and the correct understanding of the distribution of the forces in, and determining the destiny of, individuals, nations and the race. Finally, MUSIC, was not confined to the study of vocal or instrumental works, but was concerned with the adjustment of the personal life into harmony with the Centre of All Life, God, by the living practice of philosophy.

The Eleusinian Mysteries, then, involved much more than a merely notional philosophy; they required also a philosophic method of living, and this method was divided into two main parts, which were known as the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries. In the Lesser Mysteries the elementary instruction was imparted, but the object of these was to enable candidates to proceed with the task of purifying and adapting their lives to the truths which were disclosed to them. The Greater Mysteries related to developments of consciousness within the soul itself, and were connected with the new and intensified life which was the direct result of fidelity to the prescribed disciplines. To draw a faint analogy, the Lesser Mysteries stood in the same relationship to the Greater as our present Craft degrees do to the Holy Royal Arch. Candidates who became proficient and properly prepared in accordance with the curriculum of the Lesser myste ries were eventually admitted to initiation in the Greater, while those who failed to qualify were not permitted to proceed. The decree restraining unqualified candidates from advancement to the Greater Mysteries was not arbitrary, but was absolutely necessary in the interests of candidates themselves because inward purity of heart and mind, coupled with the possession of the four cardinal virtues, was essential to the ordeals of actual initiation, which otherwise rendered the aspirant liable to insanity and obsessions. It was for this reason that the number of qualified candidates amounted to only a small percentage of those who entered the Mysteries, and this law remains valid in our day for we find the same truth restated in the V. of the S.L., which is the text book of our modern system, in the familiar words, “Many are called, but few are chosen”.

One qualification above all was demanded from those who applied to enter the Mysteries, – humility, and it is for admission into important to note that the candidate for admission into Freemasonry is still required to come “humbly soliciting”. The reason for this was, and still is today, that the wisdom into which the Mysteries and initiation admit a man is foolishness to the worldly minded. To attain it a candidate must therefore be prepared for a complete and voluntary renunciation of worldly wisdom and this may involve his finding negated everything he has previously held to be true, and which, furthermore, those among whom he o rdinarily mingles will continue to be lieve, and insist, to be true. Speaking of this manner of approach to the comprehension of things spiritual, St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, declares, “Let no man deceive himself, if any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise” (1st. Corinthians; Chapter 3, verse 18). The candidate for the Christian Mysteries was instructed that he was to be content to “become a fool for the kingdom of heaven’s sake”, and was to be ready t o suffer adversity a nd ridicule, should the necessity arise. 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. In the public processions of the Lesser Mysteries of Eleusis, the sacramental vessels and elements were carried upon the back of an ass, to signify that for the reception of divine knowledge “humility is an essential virtue”, while in the V. of the S.L., the same thing is symbolised by the Palm-Sunday ride into J erusalem of popular conception, of which we read, “thy King cometh unto thee, just and having salvation; lowly and riding upon an ass”. Apuleius, in the “Golden Ass”, provides the explanation when he writes, “There is no creature so able to receive divinity as an ass; into which if ye be not turned, ye shall in no wise be able to carry the divine mysteries”.

In addition to the practical instruction included in the curriculum of the Mysteries, another and greatly educative means employed was the expression by means of myths of truths of the Divine world and the entire spiritual history of man. The Greek mythologists were adepts at expressing cosmic and philosophic truths in the guise of fables which conveyed theosophic teaching to the discerning and veiled it from the profane. Myth-making was a science, and not, as many allege, an indulgence in irresponsible fi ction, and by their presentation in dramatic form candidates were instructed in the fundamental verities of life. One of the best known of the Greek myths is that of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, which was performed annually with great ceremony at the Eleusinia. It told how the maiden Persephone strayed away from Arcadia (heaven) and from her mother Demeter, to pluck flowers in the fields of Enna, and how the soil there opened and caused her to fall int o the lower dark world of Hades ruled over by P luto. The despair of the mother at the loss of her daughter reached Zeus, the chief of the Gods, with the result that he ordained that providing that 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. Enquiry proved that unfortunately Persephone had eaten a pomegranate in the lower world, so that her restoration to her mother could n ot be permanent, but only periodic. This myth is the story of the human soul and is of precisely the same nature as the Mosaic myth of Adam and Eve and the apple, and, as the parable of the Prodigal Son, neither of which have any physical reference. Persephone denotes the human soul, generated out of that primordial incorruptible mother-earth which the Greeks personified as Demeter, in the same way as the Mosaic narrative speaks of God forming man out of the dust of the gr ound. Her straying from her Arcad ian home and heavenly mother in quest of flowers (flowers symbolising fresh experiences) in the fields of Enna, corresponds with the same promptings of desire that led to Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden and his fall thence to this outer world, The word “Enna” signifies “darkness and bitterness”, which is the result of unruly desires, and a fuller explanation of the meaning will be found in the V. of the S.L., where it is translated from the original as GEHENNA. Pluto, is designated the “god of riches”, meaning the riches of wisdom and experience, and it is into his kingdom that Persephone fell. The “eating of fruit” alludes to the inferior pleasures of this lower plane of existence, which, as the Pomegranate symbolises, is many-seeded with illusions and vanities. Until these false tendencies are eradicated until the desires of the heart are utterl y weaned from external delights, there can be no permanent restoration of the soul to its source, but merely the periodic respite and refreshment that physical death brings when it withdraws the soul from Pluto’s realm to the heaven-world, to be followed again and again by periodic descents into material limitations and re-ascents into discarnate, conditions, until it becomes fully perfected.

Freemasonry, as already indicated, being the lineal descendant of the ancient Wisdom-teaching, follows the traditional method of imparting instruction by means of myths, and its canon of teaching in the Craft degrees contains two such myths. The first is that of the building of King Solomon’s Temple, and the second, the narrative of the death and burial of the Master Builder related in the traditional history. To the literal-minded, the building of the Temple at Jerusalem appears to be the history of an ac tual stone and mortar structure which was 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 was apparently a person of no social dignity and a widow’s son. For the good of Freemasonry in general, let it be clearly stated in the wo rds of St. Paul, “Which things are an allegory”, for th e Masonic Temple of Solomon is not one of common brick and stone. It is fashioned out of that “unhewn stone” or incorruptible raw material out of which the Creator formed the human organism. The Jerusalem in which this temple was built was obviously not the geographical one in Palestine, but refers to the eternal “city of peace” in the heavens, or, in other words, “that House not made with hands”; not, as St, Paul also affirms, “the Jerusalem which now is”, but “the Jerusalem which is above, which is the m other of us all” (Epistle to the Galatians, Chapter 4, verse 26), and thus corresponding to the Greek

Demeter. Neither were the builders of the Temple three human personages resident in the Levant, for their names are the personification of the Divine energy considered in its three constituent principles, which are otherwise spoken of in our Lectures as Wisdom, Strength and Beauty. These three principles of “Pillars” as they are also termed in the Instruction Lectures, are personified by S. K. of I., H.K. of T., and H.A., and an explanation of their concealed significance is necessary in order to properly i nterpret the myth. Solomon personifies the primordial Life-Essence or substantialised Divine Wisdom which is the basis of our being; this is described as “King of Israel” because Israel means “co-operating or ruling with God”. To conjoin this transcendental Life-Essence to a vehicle which should give it fixity and form required the assistance of another “kingly” principle, personified as “King of Tyre”, who therefore may correctly be said to have supplied the “building material”. In Hebrew th e name “Tyre” signifies “rock” and refers to strength or durability, and the conjunction of Solomon and Hiram of Tyre (Life-Essence and Mould or Matrix) therefore represents the groundwork of the soul, which is made functionally effective by the addition of the third principle described as the “widow’s son”, and personifying the active intellectual principle or Logos. Thus H. A. is the Christ-principle immanent in every soul; crucified, dead and buried in all who are not alive to its presence, but nevertheless resident i n all as a saving force. Again to quote St. Paul, “Christ in you, the hope of glory”. The description of this principle as “the widow’s son reflects in our modern system a beautiful piece of the Gnostic symbolism, and refers to the widowed nature of the Divine Motherhood as the result of the defection from wisdom of her frail children. The true Gnosis informs us that only those children who are striving while in the flesh to rejoin their Mother are worthy to be known as “sons of the widow”, and as our cere monial rite clearly indicates, it is from these labouring at the task that the traditional petition is addressed to all those who have rejoined her, “Come to my help ye sons of the Widow, for I also am the Widow’s son”.

The Temple of the human soul, primordially constituted of the three principles exemplified in due balance and proportion and divinely pronounced to be “very good”, has owing to the certain untoward incident, which is the subject of our central Masonic legend, been thrown down from its primitive eminence. Its fall has been effected by the disproportioned, unbalanced, and therefore, disorderly abuse of its inherent powers. Thus man is now, figuratively speaking, a ruined temple, over which it is written, “Ic habod”, – “the glory has departed” for severed from conscious intercourse with his Vital and Immortal Principle, man is a prisoner in captivity to himself and his temporal nature; it remains for him to retrace his steps and rebuild his temple. Hence it is that the Masonic candidate is counselled to continue no longer in bondage to his self-made illusions and the attractions of “worldly possessions”, but to become a free man and a mason, engaged in the work of sh aping himself into a “living stone” for the c osmic temple of a regenerate Humanity. In the Craft to be installed in the “Chair of King Solomon” means, therefore, in the true sense; the re-attainment of “that which is lost”, and this is rightly represented to be the aim of every Freemason. In fact if we do not re-attain the Divine Wisdom during our sojourn in this world, we miss the opportunity, since it is universally attested to that the after-death state is not one of labour, but of refreshment and rest, where no real progress is possible. Initiation, therefore, was instituted to impart the science of re-attainment, but we are reminded as the Ancient Mysteries taught, that the soul that never even begins this work in this world, will not be able to begin it in the hereafter, and will remain suspended in the more tenuous planes of this planet, until such time as it is again indrawn into the vortex of generation by the ever-turning wheel of life. It is for this reason that the Masonic candidate is admonished, “be careful to perform your allotted task while it is yet day”, the implication being that stated in the V, of the S.L., “Now is the time for salvation, for the night cometh when no man can work”. The Masonic conception of the “Grand Lodge Above” is also in accord with the teaching contained in the V. of the S.L.concerning the post-mortem levels of existence, for we read that, “In my Father’s house are many mansions”, or, literally, resting places, a nd that they and their oc cupants are graduated in Hierarchical order according to their degree of spiritual eminence. “As Above, so Below”, affirms the ancient axiom, but unfortunately the modern world has lost all sense of the principle of hierarchy, which, since it obtains in the higher world, ought to be reflected in this. Freemasonry, however, preserves the witness to this graduation in the symbolic distribution of its membership, for above the Craft Lodge there presides the Provincial Grand Lodge, while beyo nd that rules the Grand Lodge of the nation. Then theoretically higher than any of these is the Royal Arch Chapters with the Provincial and Grand Chapters at the summit. Also 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 which is thereby signified. Thus the pure white Masonic Apron is fringed with a pale blue in the case of junior brethren, a pale shade of that blue which, even in physical nature, is the colo ur of the heavens. In the case of the seniors of the Provincial and Grand Lodges the pale blue of the craft is intensified to the deepest degree, and the clothing is adorned with gold lace, thus emblematising that which is referred to by the Psalmist, “The King’s daughter (the soul) is all glorious within, her clothing is wrought of gold”. Proceeding to the Royal Arch it will be observed that the devotional blue of the craft is now indented with red, the colour of fire denoting spiritua l arbour, and the bl end of these results in purple which in both earth and heaven is always the prerogative of royalty. Thus it is, that by their clothing in the various grades, the members of the Masonic Order are emblematic on earth of the angels, archangels and all the company of Heaven.

And now, brethren, may I conclude this Paper, and close, as every Lodge is closed, in peace and concord with all my Brethren, and with the ancient prayer that the Order may be preserved of God, and its members cemented with every virtue. If, in what I have written, Freemasonry has been given a conception spiritualised beyond the measure of its common understanding, I have but followed the example of our Ancient Brethren, who lifting their eyes to the hills whence cometh strength, wrought their work upon the highest eminences of the mind and discerned the Mysteries, not with eyes of flesh, but with the vision and understanding of the spirit. It may be that few are prepared to ascend to those high hills today, in this more than usually troubled and dark age, but nevertheless some are ready and eager to do so despite the great trials and tribulations which are incident to world in upheaval, and for them I have especially compiled this record. At the mome nt, the World-spirit is dominant in all institutions. Wisd om is little apparent; for want of vision the people perish; and the quest for light has to be pursued under conditions of peculiar adversity. But, we are reminded that there is a mystery of darkness no less than one of Light; and, in the moulding hands of the Great Architect of the House of Life, the darkness and the light are both alike and serve as twin pillars, that, finally, will establish the House in strength. Those, then, who are not yet prepared to mount the higher path of understanding the things of the Craft, are nevertheless incorporated in our great Fraternity, for as we are reminded by the words of a familiar Masonic Ode, we are charged and required to extend:-

“A welcome sweet to all we meet Within our sacred walls; May God still grant that those we greet May haste when Duty calls.”

Finally, 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 to do so, it will undergo the inevitable fate of everything that is but form, from which the spirit has departed.

SO MOTE IT BE.

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Such questions are much in the minds of the leaders of the Craft everywhere.  It is a condition, and not a theory, that confronts us.  The influx of members during the Great War, and in the years following it, has subsided.  In some states the number of initiates has fallen below pre-war days.  The vast mass of those who came in on the impulse of war-time are now numbered among the casual Masons.  The feeling grows that something is wrong, and that we must seek to set it right, if we are to have an alert and active Masonry.

Just now The Masonic Service Association is working on this problem with the leaders of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, and we beg to give here the findings arrived at, both as to the meaning of the fact and the method of dealing with it.  Clearly we have failed “to set the Craft to work and give them proper instruction,” or else they would not drop out of our membership, or regard  Masonry as merely another Order to “belong to” and nothing more.  To that end, we must begin at the beginning and lay the basis of a real Masonic life.

What is needed is extra-ritualistic preparation of the man applying for the Degrees before, during and after his reception into the Lodge.  Of the three the first, if not the most vital, is surely profoundly important, and it has been almost entirely neglected.  Let any man recall, if he can, his state of mind regarding the Craft when he knocked at its door, and he will realize that he had but the faintest idea of what Masonry is and of what it meant to be initiated into it.  the method now proposed takes account of that fact, and takes him in hand as soon as he has expressed a desire to join the Lodge, and even before he has made his application for the Degrees.

In this way, by making strict inquiry of an aspirant for the Degrees to see if he has in him the stuff of which a Mason may be made, no end of embarrassment may be avoided, and the Craft Strengthened or protected accordingly.  The first duty of the committee, as well as the last, is to see whether or not the man before them has the qualities of character which will enable him to add to the good name and integrity of the Craft, and also whether he will actually make such a contribution.  In short, is he in his daily life and acts going to be a Mason, in fact, or in name only?

Such information or impression can be obtained by examining him as to his attitude toward Masonry.  Why is he applying?  What induced him to take this step?  What is his opinion of Masonry and upon what does his opinion rest?  It should be emphasized, in plain terms, that his privilege of membership in the Craft carries with it certain obligations that will rest upon him toward the Craft.  It must be explained to the applicant that it is the business of Masonry to teach the virtues of the moral life – chastity, charity and service – and his known attitude in regard to these matters ought to determine whether he is a man fit for the fellowship of the Fraternity.

Also, care must be taken to impress upon the applicant the fact that the moral life obtains its sanction and authority from Spiritual Faith.  He ought to be asked, not obtrusively but candidly and earnestly, his ideas regarding God.  If he has not clearly confronted his mind with the Supreme Reality, he ought to be asked to do so.  No man who is uncertain about God, or who treats the idea of God as a piece of Lodge furniture, has any place in a Masonic Lodge.

It is important that an applicant should know what duties devolve upon him as a member of a Lodge.  Such as acquaintance with the ritual and other items of Masonic information.  Attendance upon the Lodge as a duty, and whether or not he is in a position to attend.  Whether he is willing to assist in the work of the Lodge, by serving on Committees or otherwise.  As to his financial obligation – can he afford what it will be necessary for him to spend?

When his petition has been voted upon, along with his notice of election the applicant ought to receive a copy of the pamphlet entitled “Preparation,” with the request that he read it carefully.  After he has received the entered Apprentice Degree he should be given a birds-eye view of Masonry, so to put it, showing geographical distribution in Grand Lodges, both at home and abroad.  He will realize that Masonry encircles the earth, but is strongest in America, where three-fourths of the Craft live and toil.  He ought to be told of the leading men in the State and the Nation who are and have been Masons, if only to let him see what kind and quality of men the Craft attracts and develops.

It is not an accident that Masonry lures strong men and makes them stronger.  Its teachings are the basic principles of civilized society, the very ground-work of Church, State and Home. Every man needs to realize that the truths of Masonry are not secret, but only the method and symbols by which they are taught.  The parts of our ceremonies which are secret ought to be pointed out, and the candidate cautioned about disclosing what he has received.

Those who “Post” the candidate on the “Work” of the Degree ought to tell him something of what it means, after the manner of the “Intenders” in the old Lodges of Scotland.  Such a book as “The Symbolism of the Three Degrees,” by Street, is useful for this purpose, not that it should be read to the candidate, but its facts told him as he goes along.  He should know the use of the Tools of the Craft, the meaning of the Great Lights – especially the Great Light; its teachings about Brotherly Love, Relief, and Faith; its cardinal virtues of Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence and Justice.

As in the Scottish Lodges, the obligation should be explained, particularly the figurative character of its penalty, and the fashion in which the oath was sealed and why.  He ought to know the Due-Guard and Sign of the Degree, and when and how they are to be used in the Lodge.  It is not enough to tell him these facts.  He ought to be fully clothed, and asked to enter and retired from the Lodge in the proper manner.  A candidate is in novel surroundings, and while he does not remember all that is told him, it is not easy for him to forget what he acts out.

In a like manner, the Second degree is to be studied, showing in what ways it differs from the First, in the greater inclusiveness of the obligation, as well as in its emphasis upon the arts and sciences, with particular reference to Geometry and its meaning and use by the Craft.  The initiate is asked to read The Masonic service Association Bulletin 3-5-7 before taking the third degree.  It is a pity that neither the ritual nor the lecture tells us the meaning of the Great Degree, which has in it the sublime secret of Masonry and of life itself.  All effort must be made to get the initiate to grasp the truth with which it deals – the truth of the Eternal Life.

Having received the Degrees of Masonry, an initiate needs to know something of the regulations of the Craft, its constitution, its Landmarks; and the nature and authority of the Grand Lodge under whose obedience he lives.  It is only fair to tell him the relation of the Blue Lodge to other Masonic Bodies, both York Rite and Scottish Rite;  and in a way to emphasize the supremacy of Craft Masonry.  It will be useful for him to know that the Shrine, the Grotto and other such organizations, while made up of Masons, are not Masonic any more than any club made up of Masons is Masonic.  More important still is the etiquette of the Craft, in the Lodge and outside, and the discretion necessary in making himself known as a Mason, or in responding to the advances of others.

Such simple things about Masonry and how to use it ought to be taught every Mason in the Lodge; and such extra-ritualistic instruction the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts proposes to give the men who enter its fellowship – using the literature and other helps prepared by The Masonic Service association.  It is hoped that other Grand Lodges will take up the plan, or some other equally good, in simple fairness to men who are made Masons – that they may be duly and truly prepared for the better appreciation and service of the Craft.  Some of us, looking back, wish very much that we had been thus set to work and taught the meaning and uses of our tools.

The adoption of such a plan by an old and great Grand Lodge marks a long step in the right direction – a new epoch in Masonic education, of which we have heard so much and seen so little result.  It is like a dream come true, the full meaning of which few can realize save those who have worked and planned for years to see it become a fact.  Such things we can do together, each borrowing from the wisdom of the other.  Those of us who had to wait long and work hard for information about Masonry which should have been taught us by our mother Lodge, look with envy upon the young men of the Old Bay State.

by: Unknown

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This Short Talk Bulletin has been adapted from excerpts of a paper presented by John T Freeman, Secretary-Treasurer, Vancouver Masonic Service Bureau, at The 33^rd biennial meeting of the Masonic Relief Association of The United States and Canada in Louisville, KY, September, 1959

How often do we hear the phrase, “The Masons will take care of everything?”

Those of us who are in contact with the relief problems of the Craft probably have this statement, or its implications, thrust at us more often than any other Masonic group.

With us lies the task of making explanations, in detail, of the obligations of a Lodge to the survivors of a deceased member, or to such other persons who are acting on behalf of distressed members or their families. Therefore, with us would seem to lie the responsibility of encouraging Lodges to properly educate their Brethren on such matters so that they, in turn, will not misinform their families and friends regarding the obligations of the Fraternity.

To do this effectively it is necessary to search for the origin of such a misleading statement, as well as other similar phrases having the same import. Enquiries are constantly received as to the procedure for collecting Masonic insurance, paying funeral expenses, paying doctor’s and hospital bills, and other similar requests, all apparently made in good faith.

Unfortunately, many of these requests do not come directly from the family concerned. More often than not a well-meaning friend, a family lawyer, and sometimes a trust company will approach a Lodge or Board of Relief for such information. In all cases a long and detailed explanation is required to insure that the applicant does not gain the impression that the Masonic Order is evading a responsibility or breaking a contract.

In many cases such assistance is demmanded, rather than requested, which would indicate that the applicants have a firm conviction that the Fraternity has entered into a contract with its members to provide financial aid when requested.

The fact that such enquiries emanate from so many varied sources denotes that somehow, and somewhere, the families and friends of many Brethren are given the definite impression that such benefits are automatic with membership in the Order.

Even when an explanation has been made, an argument will quite often be put forward by the applicant to the effect that the distressed or deceased Brother has paid Lodge dues for so many years that a substantial sum must have accrued. Such persons fail to realize that a considerable portion of Lodge dues is always required to operate the Lodge in such general expenses as rental of premises, taxes, flowers, postage, insurance, stationary, refreshments, printing and other administrative costs, usually leaving very little for extensive financial assistance. Coupled with this seems to be the general idea that the Masonic Order has unlimited financial resources.

This erroneous idea of the wealth of the Fraternity is probably gained by non-members, and very often by members, when they see, or hear of the many charitable acts carried out be the Lodges, other Masonic bodies, and individual members. Those of us in active participation in relief work know that the widow and the orphan, and also the member in distress, is dealt with most generously if an actual need is seen to exist. It is doubtful if any estimate of the combined efforts of Lodges and Brethren in this direction could be made, inasmuch as such charitable acts are not publicized by the benefactors thereof.

In the Bureaus which we represent, for example, there are records of many cases where the assistance given in individual instances has, ovcr a period of years, passed the ten thousand dollar mark. We have one such case where a small rural Lodge assisted an ailing Brother, then his widow, and now his incapacitated daughter, over a twenty year period.

Thus it is that the charitable activities of our organization are interpreted as being the discharge of a rightful financial obligation, rather than a voluntary expression of Masonic principles.

The Brother who assures his family, either by inference or direct statement, that the Masonic Order will take care of everything, is shelving his responsibility as a husband and a father. Individual members go to make up the Fraternity as a whole, and the dissemination of such halftruths casts a reflection on the Craft in general.

It is a very unpleasant duty, more especially when emotional stress is present, to convey the information to the distressed that they have been misinformed. It must come as a rude shock to a widow for her to find that she has no entitlement to automatic financial assistance such as she has been led to believe is forthcoming. Our experience has been that many widows have contracted for funerals at an expense far beyond their means, on the supposition that the cost would be borne by the Masonic Order.

In our ceremonies of initiation the candidate is impressed with the necessity of secrecy but this seems to be carried so far in some cases that he, under the questioning of family or friends, will impart information that is interpreted as implying that the Order extends all the benefits of life insurance, social security, free legal and medical advice, unlimited financial assistance, and excep-tional employment opportunities.

Based on pure supposition, and rarely corrected, he implies that his acceptance into the Order, following a thorough investigation into his qualifications, is an assurance that all his security worries and problems have been solved. This type of new member rarely extols the virtues of membership to the extent that he may be more susceptible to giving than receiving.

Such statements from a newly-made member can be condoned, especially if the true facts have not been impressed upon him during the investigation and subsequent ceremonies. The member of long standing, however, has no excuse, for, if he is an active member of his Lodge and takes an average interest in its affairs, he would realize the folly of giving such impression to his loved ones.  Before a Brother boasts to his family and his friends of the extensive benefits of membership he should ask himself these questions:

Do I contribute as liberally toward distress as I have promised my Brethren I will do?

Do l go out of my way to make life easier for Masonic widows and orphans?

Have I, with the exception of paying dues, contributed financially to the benevolent fund of my Lodge to the extent that it is as wealthy as I would imply?

Do I go out of my way to assist a Brother in gaining employment?  Such self-examination would bring a realization of the actual facts to any Brother so that he could not, with a clear conscience, assure his potential survivors that the “Masons will take care of everything.” If he persists in disseminating such information he is not honest with his family, his friends, or his Lodge.

Why do they do it?

There is sufficient in Freemasonry to make a man proud of membership, without necessity of boasting of premiums, bonuses, or financial benefits. Such advertising will attract to our Fraternity many whose only incentive would be financial gain.

It would be well for every Lodge to ensure, from now on, that each and every Brother gains a complete understanding of Masonic charity so that, in the years to come, our successors will not continue to reap a harvest of misinformed widows and orphans.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

The Masonic Relief Association of the United States and Canada is designed to help coordinate work of the Masonic Boards of Relief of the United States and Canada and assist with their problems in helping the sojourning Mason and his family. Functioning in that capacity since their organization in 1886, they provide a valuable and appreciated SERVICE.

S .M . L . P .

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In 1973, at the 26th Annual Tri-State Confer-ence held in Portland, Oregonm, the Junior Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of Washington Pre-sented a paper entitled “How to Promote Effec-tive Leadership in Our Constituent Lodges.”  This Short Talk Bulletin has heen adapted from that paper. The author. Most Worshipful Brother Alden H. Jones, served as Grand Master of Masons in Washington in 1975-76.

What is effective leadership? Who provides Lodge leadership? What can the lodge leader be expected reasonably to do? What happens if hec doesn’t do these things? Why isn’t lodge leader-ship automatic? How do you promote some-thing that doesn’t exist? Who leads the leader?  We have leadership problems in some, if not many, of our lodges. Another way to describe the situation is to say that we have many prob-lems in our lodges and some of them are the result of ineflective leadership. An evaluation report from one of our District Deputies stated recently that the affairs of a ccrtain lodge had not been well handled during the ycar because “The Worshipful Master is not gifted with the qualities of leadership.”

What exactly was our Deputy telling us?  First, that the constructive activities of the lodge had not been implemented; second, that this is a one-man lodge–the members look solely to the Master for lodge Leadership; third, that the one man was not aware of what he is expected to do or of how to do it, and, fourth.  that the members were r3signed to letting the affairs of the lodge drift along for another year.  Let’s examine these points. What are the constructive activities of the lodge which re-quire implementation? Prompt opening and closing of meetings, proficient opening and closing ceremonies, courteous reception of visi-tors, considerate attention to candidates, order-ly and harmonious disposal of lodge business, informative special programs, community pro-jects and public ceremonies, Masonic encour-agement and inspiration for the Brethren.  These are examples of constructive activities of a lodge. They are the things that we expect to find when we go to a lodge meeting, for we know that lodges die if they don’t engage in purposeful activities.

Now, what about leadership of the symbolic lodge? To whom do we look for leadership?  Why, to the Master, of course. Then what if he isn’t a leader? We cannot demand it of him. He is chosen democratically by a majority vote and any member is eligible to be chosen Master of his lodge. This is for a good Masonic reason and it has nothing to do with his gift of leader-ship. More often than not, the primary qualify-ing factor for a Master is his willingness to take the office, rather than his gift of leadership.

Our selection of officers sets in motion a situation which, by its own horsepower, isn’t likely to provide the effective leadership we desperately need. The Master was originally ap-pointed to the line because of his regular and early attendance at our meetings, plus, perhaps, his ability to make good ham sandwiches or his good companionship as a fishing partner. The new Steward was instructed to assist the Deacons and other officers and he was encour-aged to expect advancement through the line.  In due course he was elected Master of his lodge and at his installation he pledged his allegiance to Grand Lodge, promised to observe the By-Laws of his lodge and to carefully perform “all the duties appertaining to his office.” Then he was given fifteen paragraphs of charges and regulations and not once were the words “leader” or “leadership” spoken. We extracted from him a promise to attend Grand Lodge but when we required his pledge to “pay attention to all the duties of Masonry” we immediately gave him an out by adding “on convenient occasions. ” As a crowning gesture we told him, apparently with tongue in cheek, that he is now to be installed “Master of Temple Lodge in full confidence of your skill and capacity to govern the same.” Then we spent the next twelve months grumbling because he didn’t have the gift of leadership.

We have dwelt on this superficial and exag-gerated appraisal in a negative, and therefore a non-Masonic manner in order to emphasize this point. The installation of a Worshipful Master does not automatically assure leadership in a lodge. Leadership is not a Masonic virtue. We should separate our expectation of Masonic at-tributes and when leadership qualities are miss-ing, we should be willing to become involved and offer our leadership knowledge to help fill the gap.

Let us turn to our third element and con-sider the details of the leadership pattern which must prevail if constructive activities are to be implemented in the lodge.

1. THE LEADER ORCANIZES. He plans ahead, assigns committees, delegates work, holds officer meetings, gets people involved.

2. THE LEADER IS ORDERLY AND REGULAR.

He comes early to the Temple, starts meetings on time, and anticipates prob- lems, acts decisively, avoids late meetings.

3. THE LEADER ARRANGES INTERESTINC MEETINCS.

He provides instruction, motivation and inspiration, invites guest speakers, recalls great moments in Masonry, holds special nights to generate interest.

4. THE LEADER PRESERVES THE LANDMARKS.

He schedules a review and discussion of these to point out their great im- portance, calls attention when one is involved in lodge work.

5 . THE LEADER ENHANCES MASONRY’S IMAGE.  He keeps the Temple bright and clean, encourages public ceremonies such as installations, Ladies Nights, School Awards, Church attendance clothed as Masons.

6. THE LEADER FOLLOWS THE STANDARD WORK.

He studies the Ritual regularly and asks other officers to do the same, encourages corrections, observes work in other lodges.

7. THE LEADER PRACTICES BROTHERHOOD.

He is considerate, gives credit, shows appreciation, holds honor nights, is responsible and on call when needed.

8. THE LEADER IS REALISTIC.

HE faces duties with honesty, withholds praise if it is not due, pulls no punches when hard deci-sions have to be made.

9. THE LEADER ADOPTS A MAJOR PROJECT.

He involves the lodge in something to sustain its interest for several months, or all year, such as a Sojourners Program, a Community Project, a Youth Program, a Bulletin, a Masonic Library.

10. THE LEADER SPONSORS MASONRY’S HIGH PURPOSE.

He makes meetings a source of inspiration for the spirit, encourages thinking on a high plane, focuses attention on man’s potential for excellence and greatness.

Ah, yes, if the Master is gifted with the qualities of leadership, he performs these and similar acts and thus creates opportunity and impetus for an ongoing lodge program. But if he isn’t gifted, how do we help him? How do we give him leadership? The key word is HOW.  HOW do we promote leadership when it is missing?

We contend that we are all a part of this drama and that we have a duty to make it work.  Some of us may have a personal involvement; each of us has watched the developing picture in our lodge and has a deep concern for the out-come. We should look in the mirror and say, “You own a piece of this action. Don’t give me your old wornout excuse that nobody interferes with the Worshipful Master. What about Brotherhood? What about Service? What about Unity? What about the Instructive Tongue? What about reminding a Brother in a most friendly manner?”

Obviously, not all who see the need are qualified to lead the leader, but there are those in any group who know at least part of the answer and who can be trusted to provide per-sonal counseling with propriety. This should be encouraged. Practical advice or a discrcct sug-gestion from a respected Brother can often con-vey a crucial message. Past Masters who have the precious gift of seeing a lodge problem for its relevance with 1983 and not as a carry-over from 1957 belong in this elite group of private counselors. District Deputies are uniquely qual-ified for leadership guidance. Not only were they appointed because of their leadership qual-ities, but they are charged to assist the lodges to the best of their ability and they are supportcd by the authority of the Grand Master. This authority is not used nearly olten enough to pry open stubborn doors.

One step beyond private counseling is the action which can be taken within the lodgc by individual officers or Brethren as a means of encouraging decisiveness thus, leadership, on the part of the Master. Proposals can be made for lodge projects of programs, and discussions can be introduccd to bring information into the open and obtain an indication of interest hy the lodge members and set the stage for the Master’s decision. Motions for lodge commit-ment can be useful in forcing a leadership deci-sion. Such strategy would be utilized for the primary purpose of promoting lodge activity but it should be done invariably in a manner to accommodate the lodge Master and as a step in developing his leadership potential. If he is ful-ly informed of the proposed business bcfore the meeting, then so much the better.

A third type of correction for ineffcctive leadership is in group study of leadership prin-ciples. Lodge officer associations should Spon-sor such studies through discussion, lecture or seminar programs. Grand Lodge Officcrs and Committees should be involved in the leader-ship improvement effort by the offer of instruc-tional programs in lodges or officcr associa-tions. As a last resort, we may look eventually to Grand Lodge for a formal program of lead-ership training for officers of constituent lodges. In fact, the time for that may be later than we think.

In summary, although we look to the Wor-shipful Master for leadership, we often find him with limited ability and we cannot demand more from him; that lodge leadership is a man-agement function and should not be confused with the philosophical duties of the Master; that when leadership qualities are absent, the welfare of the lodge is in danger; that the tech-nique of leadership and the pattern of lodge management can be defined and transmitted as a counseling or training process; that when the need for guidance is evident, those qualified to provide it should do so as a Masonic duty; and, finally, that any action taken should be express-ly for the assistance of the Worshipful Master and at his will and pleasure even when we use a 2 x 4 to get his attention, tenderly, of course.

Alden H. Jones, PGM (Wash.) resides at 130

Jones Road, Kelso, WA 98626

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Bro. Jan L. Beaderstadt is a member and Past Master of Copper Country Lodge135, Hancock, Michigan; a member and present Junior Warden of Bowring Lodge414 of Standish, Michigan and Editor of the Michigan Masonic Publication, From Point-to-Pointe. Editor

“But in modern times they are dedicated to St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, who were eminent patrons of Masonry; and since their time there is represented in every regular and well governed Lodge a certain Point within a circle; the Point representing an individual Brother; the Circle representing the boundary which he is never to suffer his passions, prejudices or interests, to betray him on any occasion.

This Circle is embroidered by two perpendicular parallel lines, representing St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, who are perfect parallels in Christianity as well as Masonry. Upon the vertex rests the book of Holy Scriptures, which points out the whole duty of man. In going round this Circle, we necessarily touch upon these two lines, as well as upon the Holy Scriptures; and while a Mason keeps himself thus circumscribed it is impossible that he should materially err.” (Michigan Monitor)

As a new entered apprentice, I stood and looked at that circle with the two parallel lines, and at my proficiency examination, recited it with perfection. But what does this really mean to me, a Man and a Mason? And why the Sts. John?

Indeed, why? They were unique characters of Christianity who were strange in their own right.

Peculiar Parallels

At first glance in the Scriptures, they seem like strange people to hold up as examples. John the Baptist’s diet consisted of wild honey and locusts. Honey certainly is appealing, but the locust! A study of Middle Eastern customs indicate that they could be eaten fried, boiled, dried or raw. Certainly not a person you’d want to invite to your lodge’ s next potluck.

He dressed in camel hair clothing and his hair and beard had a wild look about it. And he didn’t have a lot of tact, he told you the truth straight to your face. He called the Pharisees a “brood of vipers” and was fond of telling every-one to repent. In our “politically correct” era, he would certainly not be riding high in the polls.

St. John the Evangelist was also a different sort. He was a rich kid (Scripture tells us that his father owned at least one fishing boat on the Galilee and they had servants) and at the beginning of the Gospel of John he was looking to find himself. He first attached himself to John the Baptist until called by Christ.

He was hot tempered, so much so that Jesus called John and his brother James “boanerges” meaning “sons of thunder.” He lived up to that name when the villagers in a small town in Samaria refused to welcome Jesus and the disciples, so he asked Jesus if he (John) could rain fire and brimstone down upon them (Luke 9:51-55). Fortunately for the village, Jesus rebuked him.

John was also self-seeking, asking with his brother James for thrones on the right and left of Christ when Jesus set up his early kingdom, thus placing himself above the other disciples.

But when one goes beyond their faults, the Sts. John have some strong qualities that every Mason should exhibit.

When looking at John the Baptist, one must look at him through an Eastern light. John was a Nazirite from birth, literally set aside for service to God. He let his hair and beard grow wild, because like Sampson, he could not cut his hair, which was forbidden by Mosaic law. His appearance brought to mind, to the people who heard him, the stories of Elijah the prophet who had dressed in similar manner. His clothing was of camel hair, because that was what poor people wore. It was plentiful when the camels shed their coats. It was cheap, warm, and although scratchy, quite waterproof.

John taught “change of character.” He pointed fearlessly to the truth, even at the cost of his life. It was better to die for truth than to live a lie, because he knew that the Great Light upon the Altar, the holy scriptures, pointed to a better way, a life with God.

St. John the Evangelist teaches us to subdue our passions, one of the first things every Mason is taught in lodge.

When we follow the Gospels and the Book of Acts in the New Testament, we see a major transformation of young John. He goes from being the hot-tempered young man to one who exhibits peace in his old age. He goes from being intolerant of others, to working with others in sharing his theology of a better way of life.

John is loyal. He was the only disciple to attend the trial of Jesus as well as to be at the foot of the cross for the crucifixion. And when he heard about the empty tomb on Sunday morning, he was the first of the disciples to arrive.  He also took care of the widows taking Mary, the mother of Jesus, into his home until she died.

A study of John’s writings shows that he teaches truth with love. He didn’t waiver from his convictions, but he knew the power of truth and love in a person’s life.

Applying The Sts. John To Our Lives

If they form the two parallels, then a Mason traveling the circle must touch both of the Sts. John and learn from each of them.

He must learn to subdue his passions. A story is told in my lodge about a man who took his entered apprentice degree and then 20 years later came back to take his proficiency. When asked why he waited so long, he replied, “It took me this long to learn to subdue my passions!”

Learning to subdue our passions is a lifelong process. Zeal not tempered by love becomes extremism and leads to misuse of power. The problems in Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the Middle East can be directly related to failure to subdue one’s passions.

While subduing one’s passions is good, a Mason must always stand for truth. Truth, even when it is unpopular, is still better than the alternative. Truth will always reign. Even when some dictator tries to re-write it, the real truth will always emerge.

Like St. John the Evangelist, a Mason must help the widow and orphan. In our lodges today, are we doing enough?  Recently, I received a call from a new widow who’s husband had unexpectedly died, and she was about to lose her house due to the loss of income with his death. “If anything ever happens to me, call the Masons” he would always tell her.  But she wondered what they could do. And I wondered, what would her husband’s lodge do? It’s up to every Mason to look after the widows and orphans.

Every Mason must practice brotherly love, which is the unique characteristic of our fraternity. St. John writes about the true meaning of brotherly love when he says: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.  If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need, but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” I John 3:16-17.

A Mason is called to practice charity. We must hear the cries of a needy brother, but we must also be aware of each other to see when we are in need. Masons must care, which we learn from traveling the circle.

Where Parallel Lines Meet

If one travels the circle, he quickly finds that the two parallel lines meet at the point where the circle touches upon the Volume of Sacred Law.

In Masonry, the Bible is called the Great Light and is placed in an open position in the center of the lodge. A brother is admonished to open it and learn from its wisdom in all the three degrees of Masonry.

Indeed, the Sts. John were well versed in Scripture, and held it in high esteem. They looked with reverence to its knowledge, because they knew the answers of life were contained within its pages. They were not afraid to quote it, to trust it, to read it, and to apply it to their lives.

Masons must likewise emulate the Sts. John in their application of this Holy Light in their lives. Only by its constant attention and application can a Mason improve his own life.

If Masonry is to grow today, it will not be through some flashy change or altering of ritual, it will be when each brother begins to travel the circle on a regular basis, touching upon each of the patrons of Masonry as well as the Scriptures. Each time we touch the Scriptures or the Sts.  John, something should rub off on each of us, just as brushing against chalk will leave its mark, no matter how light the touch.

Values like truth, subduing passions, brotherly love, care of widows and orphans and practicing charity never go out of style. They are timeless values, and no matter how often attacked, always rise victorious in the end.

The Sts. John are timeless examples for each of us. Their foibles simply show their humanness. It is in their humanness that we can relate to them, and see that if we apply Scripture and our Masonic teachings, we too can become better men!

What Is The “Lodge of the Holy Sts. John at Jerusalem”?

Originally, lodges were dedicated to King Solomon. Later–at least as early as 1598–Masonry connected her name with that of St. John the Evangelist. Dedications to the Sts. John were made by other organizations as early as the third century, when the Church adopted the two pagan celebrations of summer and winter solstices and made them our St.  John’s Day in Summer and St. John’s Day in Winter. It was wholly natural for operative Masons, having dedicated their Craft to the Holy Sts. John, to begin to believe that both Johns were themselves Craftsmen. Craftsmen must have a lodge–where should that lodge be, but in Jerusalem? Hence “The Lodge of the Holy Sts. John of Jerusalem” came into imaginary existence.

No such lodge ever existed in fact, and yet it is not a fiction–it is an ideal, and without such ideals our life would be dim and drab. The thought back of the question and answer, then, is that we come from an ideal lodge into this actual workaday world, where our ideals are to be tested.  Today, we use the phrase as the starting point for a Masonic career, Masons mean only that their Craft is dedicated to these holy men, whose precepts and practices, ideas and virtues, teachings and examples, all Freemasons should try to follow.

From MSA Digest 101 Questions

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The Voice of Masonry 1880

ENTHUSIASTIC neophytes, after listening to the work and admonitions of Freemasonry, are confronted with the question: “What shall we read to thoroughly acquaint ourselves with the ethics of the Fraternity?” They look around, make inquiries of the Craft, especially of senior members, and sometimes get the desired information, but too often are told that the Manual of the Lodge is the only literature they have ever seen bearing upon the subject. Or they are told that Brother A. or B. is thoroughly posted in the ritual, and they had better take lessons of him. Meeting with such obstacles on every hand, in their researches after hid- den treasures, they are soon disconcerted, and too often their embryotic enthusiasm is “nipped in the bud” by a premature frost, and the sunshine of future development is unable to resuscitate it.

Young Masonic minds are in an active condition; better qualified, more apt and willing to receive instruction than weary operators, fatigued and exhausted by delving in the quarries, where they have borne the sunshine and heat of the day, therefore, they should promptly receive proper assistance in discovering and obtaining the ” beacon lights” of Masonic literature. The wheat must be sifted from the chaff that no deleterious particles may take root and develop into unprofitable plants.

Every lodge should possess a library, selected by competent brethren, and kept under the supervision of a trusty Librarian.

The Master’s admonition to the newly-made brother to be a lover of the arts and sciences should go further, and advise him to give attention to moral and religious science, so that he may attain and possess all the virtues which tend to make men valuable members of society. It should impress upon his understanding the landmarks of the Fraternity, and imbue it with divine teachings, so that his mind, unfolding in manliness, shall be actuated to extend its researches far into the realms of history, science, and philosophy.

The Masonic magazines and papers published in this country contain nourishing dainties, worthy of the most exacting intellectual epicures. Lodges, as well as brethren, should subscribe for them, that they may be within the reach of all. The Masonic reader becomes a better member of society, his brain and heart thus receiving a stimulant which makes man shine with a divine light.

I would admonish the young Mason not to adopt the custom of studying the Ritual to the exclusion of all other Masonic teachings. I am aware that there are many Masters of lodges who stand in need of this admonition, as they never have studied anything Masonic beyond the Ritual, the Trestleboard, and the Constitution and Regulations of the Grand Lodge, and are not even thorough in them. No Mason should accept of the responsible position of Master of a lodge, unless his reading has been extensive and his mind thoroughly cultured in moral and religious lore, that his admonitions may be heeded and productive of good.

The Bible – the noblest gift of GOD to man – should be mental and spiritual food for us by day and night, for in its pages we are taught the great principles of Freemasonry, and if we obey its precepts we will become living examples of what GOD intended we should be. Let us not despise nor neglect the Holy Writings, for the golden truths taught therein make them the greatest of Masonic works, and the best attestor of the divine origin of the Fraternity.

The arts and sciences should be studied. Geometry, that science which treats of the “relation of properties, and measurement of solids, surfaces, lines, and angles,” should be diligently studied, that we may be able to ‘work and receive Master’s wages. The pages of ancient history have recorded much, pointing directly to societies having like secrets and requirements to those of Freemasonry, while Mythology, ever ready with its mysteries, shows us various scenic representations of mythical legends, pointing directly to societies and religious institutions of the Middle Ages.

Every Craftsman should possess an Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry, which should contain a complete synopsis of Masonic literature. Such a. work is indispensable, and, as a work of reference, has no equal.

In conclusion, I would admonish every neophyte to cultivate a love of literature; to visit Masonic libraries; to purchase those Masonic books best suited to his taste and thoroughly study them, as thereby he will enrich his mind with knowledge that will be beneficial in all his subsequent life.

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W. Bro. Ridchar Friedamn is a Past Master of E.R.A.C.  Lodge943, Rochester, N.Y. He authored the 12-90 STB “Brother Bring a Friend Night” which has proved to be one of the most popular and motivating STB’s put out by the MSA.

·  Editor

In the Short Talk Bulletin of December 1990. I proposed a program called “Brother Bring a Friend Night” to spur efforts towards Membership Development. My own Lodge, District and parts of New York State use the program actively. In areas where it is utilized we are making new Masons.

Three years later we are faced with a different problem: how do we keep the new Mason involved and reinvigorate the senior Mason to the point where we do not see the frustrating rise in the loss of membership due to non payment of dues or demits?

In short, how do we get focused on MEMBERSHIP RETENTION?

Following the World Wars, Masonry saw a huge rise in membership. I have seen Lodge programs from my own small Lodge which indicated 70 men in waiting for the various degrees. Sadly, history tells us that Masonry, as a whole, did little or nothing to retain these men as active members in Craft Masonry.

With the start of a new era in bringing in Masons, we must not repeat the mistakes of the past. We must make new Masons and retain them as vital links in the Masonic Chain, especially at the level of the “Blue Lodge”.

This Short Talk will deal with some of the key points for Membership Retention from a LODGE level and in a programmatic way. It will present a vision of how one Lodge, having somewhat solved its Membership Development problems took on the challenge of retaining its members.

I am well aware that most of the ideas about to be presented have been out in the field for years. The tragedy is that our Brethren DO NOT USE THE TOOLS AVAILABLE TO THEM !

THE SCENARIO

Over the course of the last several years, Can Do Lodge7777 convinced its members to adopt a Membership Development program.  Using the Brother Bring a Friend Night and materials from the Masonic Renewal Task Force, the Lodge members were motivated to go out and bring in new members. The Lodge responded and brought in 20 new members in three years.

At a recent Lodge meeting only 8 of those new members were present. At the same meeting 6 senior members were dropped for non-payment of dues and 4 demits were read. The Master of the Lodge knew something was wrong.

Where were the new guys who looked so excited by the degree work?

The Master commissioned a Lodge Task Force to review the situation and make recommendations for implementation.

THE KEY QUESTIONS

The first task the TEAM faced was to come up with a list of honest questions which would clarify the problem.

These were the questions they developed and asked themselves honestly :

Do we call our members regularly?

Do we REACH OUT and OFFER aid and

assistance or do we sit back and assume that all is well if we do not hear from a Brother?

Have we asked our new members what they are interested in regarding Freemasonry?

Did we assign them a Shepherd or Mentor after they were raised?

Have we gone out of our way to provide Masonic education?

Has the Lodge REALLY taken an interest in its members old and new?

Do we communicate with our Brothers?

Do we acknowledge Masonic and non Masonic

birthdays or anniversaries prior to 40 or 50 50 year members?

Have we asked our Brethren what they would like to see in our Lodge Trestleboard?

What were we doing to encourage meaningful family involvement both in and outside of the Lodge?

Were we defining family involvement as every member of the family joining appendant Masonic bodies?

How are we addressing the needs of young members who have young families and working parents?

Were we doing enough to include the wives in the life of the Lodge?

Why was the Lodge having a problem in garnering line officers?

Were we really active in the community?

Was there enough fun in the Lodge?

Were we paying enough attention to “paying

the Craft their wages, if any be due, that none may go away dissatisfied”?

THE EVALUATION: EXCEDRIN HEADACHE7777

The Task Force quickly realized that the painful questions that they asked led them to the even more painful reality that the Lodge was lacking in many areas.

The Task Force put the key questions in writing and sent them to the membership. This began a process of letting the members know that the leadership understood that THEY mattered to the future of the Lodge.

When Can Do Lodge had a severe membership problem they had DISCUSSED it outside of the normal Lodge meeting in a risk free environment and as a TEAM.

The Retention Task Force followed this pattern and got the Master to schedule a brain storming session. They mailed an invitation to attend to the entire membership.

At the brainstorming session it was obvious that many of the brothers held similar concerns and gave similar suggestions to the Task Force. The Task force in turn asked the brother in attendance to commit to working in areas of their CHOICE in the membership retention effort.

The Task Force was now ready to make suggestions for an action plan.

THE PLAN: BROTHERLY LOVE,

EDUCATION, COMMUNICATION

AND CHANGE!

The Task Force proposed the formation of several action Teams working in different but focused areas to address positive solutions to the key questions arising from the evaluation and feedback phase.

Each action team developed specific implementation goals to recommend to the Lodge.

The following section details the different action teams specific recommendations. Each TEAM knew that it would be accountable for following through on its suggestions.

The Family Involvement Action Team. This team recommended:

looking at the Lodge Trestle board and urging more open programming, prevailing on the Master to close the Lodge by 9:00 p.m.  whenever possible investigating the feasibility of providing co-op baby-sitters at the Lodge during meetings.  Writing a procedure for Investigating Teams to make this first impression of the Craft favorable for the wife, candidate and family.

Producing a letter from the Master describing Masonry and the family’s role, to be sent to the wife of every petitioner.  Implementing several purely social outings which contained NO Masonic SPEECHES so that the whole family could have fun!

The Masonic Education Action Team. ThisTEAM recommended:

making sure that every petitioner had a Shepherd or Mentor for at least one year following the degrees.

Using the trestleboard of the Lodge, in part.

to expose new members and the Lodge as a whole, to all current educational material.  seeing that a Lodge Library was started to make available Masonic publications and videos.

actively encouraging brothers to visit other Lodges both within the area and without.  urging each sponsor of a new member to purchase “The Craft and Its Symbols”‘ by Allen E. Roberts and give it as a gift to the new member.

urging the Lodge to buy a years subscription to the Masonic Service Association “Short Talk Bulletin” for each new member.

The Masters Wages Action Team. This TEAM recommended:

making sure that each member was contacted as regularly as possible.

Creating a phone list of all local brethren and calling them before each meeting, offering rides if needed.  Producing a data base to include all relevant personal information, creating contact sheets on each brother to keep a record of the Lodges communication efforts and their response to them.  creating a public “Awards Night” to include certificates for 10 years of service and up, as well as “Mason of the Year”, “Most Improved Ritualist”‘, “Best Lodge Function Attendance, ‘*Membership'” and other motivational awards.

sending out Masonic Birthday Cards to all members once a year asking for some news

and acknowledging their membership.

coordinating visitations to sick and shut in members.  asking the Lodge to sponsor a widows program.

asking the Lodge to sponsor a holiday party and summer picnic for the kids.

Insuring that every member in danger of suspension for non-payment of dues or who requested a demit be personally contacted by the Lodge, preferably by someone whom the Brother knew, to find out if there was anything the Lodge could do to assist and to forestall negative action.

The Executive Program Action Team. This

TEAM recommended:

creating a Long Range PIan for the Lodge.  working with every line officer from top to bottom on program planning, ritual, protocol and administration.  working with officers on how to run a meeting developing and publishing a handbook of job descriptions for each Station and Place in the Lodge, with a clear outline of duties and role.

recruiting new blood into the line and making recommendations to the Master as to appointments.

insuring that each officer was a graduate of a leadership course, (if one is available) or had attended a certain number of seminars about Masonic Leadership or had a working knowledge of certain books pertaining to Masonic Leadership.

The Community Involvement Team

This TEAM recommended:

reaching out to the local community and

flnding ways to be of service.

making sure that the Lodge was actively

involved in charitable work.

attempting to create relationships with the

local news media in order to get the Lodges

actions publicized in the community.

creating ways of using the Lodge as a central community hub, such as letting boy/girl scout troops, AA meetings and other community groups use the facility.

The Feedback, Fun and Continuity ActionTeam. This TEAM recommended:

continual evaluation of whether the Lodge was having enough fun, as defined by participation, attendance and feedback by the brethren.

continuous assessment of whether the needs

of the Brethren were being met.

Continuous input of creative new ways to interact with one another.

WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD

“Behold how good and how pleasant it is

for brethren to dwell together in unity”

The Lodge had come to understand that the key to membership retention was the creation of a culture whereby a Brother feels that he really misses something great when he can’t attend a meeting.

Can Do Lodge had become a place where every brother could relate, from the heart, to the words of the ancient Scottish Tyler’s toast:

“Happy to meet, sorry to part, happy to meet again”

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