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IN his facetious search
for a "Brand New Theory of Masonic
Origins" in last February's AMERICAN FREEMASON, the
Editor "found all countries and nations of antiquity
preempted.
Paradise, the Garden of Eden, Egypt, India, Ancient
Britain and
prehistoric America had been exploited, while
Gymnosophists,
Buddhists, Thibetan Lamas, Chinamen, Mayas, Incas,
Benedictine Monks and Jesuit Fathers had been laid under
contribution, and each heralded in turn as responsible for
the
beginnings of Masonry.
The writer is but too familiar with the resources of
Masonic
bibliography not to feel sympathetically akin to the
shepherd
lad "with his sling and five small stones from a
brook," who
sallied forth to meet the giant Philistine; but like David
of old he
does not despair of returning with the head of the giant
problem which will never cease to puzzle humanity until it
is
adequately worked out.
The purpose of this paper is less to enter point blank
upon the
labyrinthine paths of solution than to define the exact
character
of the "riddle of the ages" and hazard a theory
of how it may or
can, - yes, has been solved.
The growing body of students of comparative religion, who
term themselves "Theosophists," have a precisely
similar
difficulty to cope with, and as among interested Masonic
students, hundreds are at work endeavouring to localize
and
historicize principles which are ever elusive, because the
truth
concerning them is that they are everywhere manifest and
have been so during all time. The beginning of
Masonry
cannot he found, for the precise reason that "before
Abraham
was, Masonry is."
That which Masonry searches, that which Theosophy
searches, that which dogmatic religion fears to search, or
rather fears the discovery of, is one and the selfsame
thing.
Theosophy, for want of a better term, calls it the
"Ancient
Wisdom," and is in a measure right, but not even
Theosophy
has fully grasped the specific identity of the lost
science of the
Logos.
And yet, Theosophy is full of it, Masonry is full of it
and the
religions of the world are full of it; full of its
fragments, its
unidentified debris, its mutilated fractions, scattered
like those
of Osiris upon the waves.
"Paradise" and Noah's Ark are indeed part of it
and the
Creation epic of Hawaii is but an echo of that of Babylon.
There is a LAW, so simple in itself and in its
applications that
the veriest child may be made to comprehend its lessons,
by
which the Universe unfolds like a plant from within the
germ
heart of its seed, and to man exhibits, as though upon an
unrolled scroll, all those marvellous philosophies which
have
conferred immortality upon the Sages of Hellas and the
Orient.
This LAW reveals at once the nature of our Creator; enough
of
the bent of His infinite mind for us to be assured that
our own
finite natures are truly reflexes of the Divine prototype,
so that
the assurance that "God made man in His own
image" ceases
to be but pointless babble.
It reveals, by the minute and incontrovertible testimonies
which
it gives to that effect, that all of the historical
mythologies and
religious philosophies which the world has ever harboured
were originally designed as exoteric, recordable veils for
esoteric, unrevealable, unrecordable FACTS, classed today
as
"Mysteries," not as unknowable but as unknown.
The "keeping of this LAW," in the aspirational,
emotional,
sacrificial sense, even though it be today unidentified
except as
a vague longing of the human heart for a reality which is
sensed rather than comprehended, is RELIGION.
The knowledge of this LAW, the power to grasp and apply
it, to
consciously and knowingly work, hand in hand, with the
G.A.O.T.U., to live in a close bond of union with an ever
present Master, and realize that physical death is but
loving
initiation to a loftier degree, was once MASONRY.
Religion was the promise, Masonry the pledge.
That pledge exists to-day enshrined in every Lodge, for he
who
can penetrate behind the veil may read in every sign and
symbol the story and the reason of his being. As
beautiful and
inspiring as is the Masonic ritual and as full of manifest
heart-searching truth as it may be, it has been completely
voided of its ancient science. Many of its
monitorial injunctions,
though full of benevolence and solicitude for the brother,
are
vapid and unhistoric or unscientific. It has become
a species of
religion also, to be taken on faith in statements which
make no
tax upon the understanding.
Yet Masonry and Religion are children of the same divine
parentage. Alike, each had its rise in a precise,
God-communicated fund of practicable, ponderable fact.
This
is the reason for the universality of symbolisms.
The salient features of the ancient Mysteries of various
lands in
which initiations were the requisites of practical
worship, as
differentiated from mere prayers, offerings and sacrifices
in full
light of day, have been ably handled by several
generations of
Masonic writers, but the nature of the superior
information
conveyed to the high initiate has not only eluded
discovery,
and in most cases no suspicion has been entertained by
modern writers that there was any more to the ceremonies
of
the ancient Mysteries than a sort of super-heated Italian
apprentisaggio, which taught the neophyte wholesome
respect
for the power of his order.
It is upon this point that we base our dissent from the
theory
that the controversy anent Masonic origins be closed,
because
we are personally convinced that it has not even yet
begun.
In expectation of further light on this interesting topic,
we may
be permitted to hazard a few hints as to the direction
from
which it may be anticipated.
There is not a symbol or article of furniture in the Lodge
which
has not a reason for its shape, size, number, (if plural)
and
presence, utterly outside of and transcending the
monitorial
explanation thereof, as a scientific demonstration of
which the
moral deduction gives no hint whatsoever.
The higher the degree, the more this divergence becomes
apparent, for while the symbolism becomes more expressive
and claims to embody more subtle teachings, it fails to
convey
to initiates therein certain positive knowledge, the
possession
of which would raise them head and shoulders above the
lewd
of non-initiates, intellectually, without reference to the
resonance of their titles or the size of their medals or
jewels.
This knowledge, which was the fruit of ancient initiations
was
not only positive, but practical.
It would enable a single individual to give arts, letters
and
science to a race of nomad barbarians within the space of
his
own life-time, and the semi-myths of Hermes, Thoth, Cadmus,
Oannes, Fo-Hi and others who are enshrined in the
histories of
ancient peoples as having actually done so, are but
embodiments of the truth that it was of a superior manner
of
imparting practical knowledge and the impressing of such
as
the direct gift of God, made manifest as the giver
entitled to the
gratitude and claiming it, that initiation consisted.
The universality of these "first civilizer"
myths therefore direct
our attention to the possibility of a teaching capable of
transforming the poor, blind and ignorant, wherever found,
into
masters of the work of civilization and enlightenment by
process of initiation, rather than education, although the
one is
the corollary of the other.
To the universality of the "Teacher" myths must
be added the
universality of the majority of Masonic symbols, which as
we
have noted, are being pointed out under every sky as proof
positive that whatever it was, which has since become
Masonry, originated at that latitude and longitude.
We have therefore to halt in our wild globe scurry after
the site
of the legendary Masonic "Garden of Eden" and
realize that in
pursuit of something of which we find the prehistoric
traces
EVERYWHERE, coupled with traditions of Divine origin, we
may have to recast our notions and re-focus our binoculars
upon some principle or set of correlated principles which
express the same things to all peoples, times and places,
because they are eternal verities and not mere toys.
Now the
astonishing part of it all is that Masonry possesses this
marvellous treasure and do" not know it.
"He came unto his own and they knew him not,"
applies with as
great force to the pseudo Jew of the Lodge as to the
racial Jew
of be "promised land."
The Masonic ritual of the civilized world bespeaks a line
of
descent more particularly from the Jewish deposit of the
"Ancient Wisdom," than from, for example, the
Chinese or the
Aztec.
Therefore we will probably not go far astray in tracing
our
ritualistic development along that historical line of
racial
progress.
The history of the Jewish people is something widely apart
from the trash taught with the avowed object of fastening
the
crime of the ages upon the heads of this people.
Their historical contacts with Persia, Babylonia and Egypt
during both Pharaohonic and Ptolemaic times and their
contacts with Greek philosophy must be placed in the
balance.
We must not forget that the Old Testament of the Christian
was
translated not from the "Thorah," but from the
copied
"Pentateuch," a work which filled the orthodox
Jewish world, at
the time the original translation was made, with horror,
because
the Egyptian-Greek-Hebrew rabbis who made it injected
therein the glyphs of the secret philosophy of the
Sun-priests of
Heliopolis, so that Kohaleth, son of David, surnamed
"Shelomoh," "the Prince of Peace,"
became for all time
Sol-Om-On, "The Sun, breathing life upon Heliopolis,"
and the
fundamental principles of the Babylonian Kabbalah, or
number
philosophy of the ancient Magi, which the Thorah already
embodied, applied to the construction of proper names,
extended so as to make them conceal a sort of Baconian
cipher of the "Wisdom of the Egyptians," a
system which
develops in excelsis in the subsequent construction of the
"New Testament."
That this cipher is a concealment of the true meanings of
the
symbols of the Masonic Lodge and the revelation of the LAW
to which they bear witness, of its Divinity, of its
globe-encircling
universality, and of its eternal truth, it is the promise
of the
immediate future to make manifest.
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