Every Mason is naturally desirous to know something of the origin and history of the Craft. The available literature on the subject is diffuse and unsatisfying. It offers a mass of disconnected details of archeology and comparative religion without unifying them into any helpful light and deals rather with matters of minor and temporal history than with what alone is of real moment, the spiritual lineage of the Craft.
In this paper, therefore, it is proposed to trace a rough outline – and, in the space available, only a very rough one is possible – of a movement which is as old as humanity itself and the purpose and doctrine of which are still faithfully, if very rudimentarily, preserved in the Masonic system. But such a sketch, by providing a general outline for the enquirer to contemplate and the details of which he, may fill in for himself by subsequent study of his own, may perhaps prove more serviceable than a mass of fragmentary facts over which one may pore indefinitely and with much interest, yet without perceiving their inter-relation or coordinating them into one comprehensive impressive scheme.
No really serviceable work upon Masonry exists that treats of its history and purpose in the only way that matters vitally. The student is apt to waste much time to little profit by turning for information to publications the titles of which seem to promise full enlightenment, but that leave him unsatisfied and unconvinced. Desultory collections of information upon points of symbolism, archaeology and anthropology, the tracing of connections between modern Masonry and mediaeval building-guilds and other communities may be all very interesting, but these are but as the dry bones of a subject of which one desires to know the living spirit.
They fail to answer the main questions one asks from the heart and is anxious to have answered; such as, What was the nature of the Ancient Mysteries of which modern Masonry purports to be the perpetuation? To what end and purpose did they exist? What need is there to perpetuate them to-day? For what purpose was Initiation instituted? Did it at any time serve any real purpose or can it now? Was it ever more than it is to-day, a mere perfunctory ceremonial leading to nothing of essential value and emphasizing only a few moral principles and elementary truths which we know already? It is to answering such questions as these that the present paper is directed. Now one of the first things to strike any student of Masonic literature and comparative religion is the remarkable presence of common factors, common beliefs, doctrines, practices and symbols, in the religions of all races alike, whether ancient or modem, eastern or western, civilized or barbarian, Christian or pagan.
However separated from others by time or distance, however intellectualized or primitive, however elaborated or simple their religion or morals, and however wide their differences in important respects, each people is found to have employed and still to be employing certain ideas, symbols and practices in common with every other; perhaps with or without some slight modification of form. Masonic treatises abound with demonstrations of this uniformity in the use of various symbols prominent in every Lodge. Authors delight in supplying evidence of the close correspondences in various unrelated systems and in demonstrating how ancient and universal such and such ideas, symbols and practices have been. But they do not go so far as to explain the reason for this antiquity and universality, and it is this point which it will be well to clear up at the outset, since it furnishes the clue to the entire problem of the genesis, the history, and the reason for the existence of Masonry.
If research and reflection be pushed far enough it becomes clear that the universality and uniformity referred to are due to the fact that at one time, long back in the world’s past, there existed or was implanted in the minds of the whole human family which was doubtless much smaller and more concentrated then than now-a Proto-Evangelium or Root-Doctrine in regard to the nature and destiny of the soul of man and its relation to the Deity. We of to-day pride ourselves upon being wiser and more advanced than primitive humanity. We assume that our ancestors lived in moral benightedness out of which we have since gradually emerged into comparative light. All the evidence, however, negatives these suppositions.
It indicates that primitive man, however childish and intellectually undeveloped according to modern standards, was spiritually conscious and psychically perceptive to a degree undreamed of by the modern mind, and that it is ourselves who, for all our cleverness and intellectual development in temporal matters, are nevertheless plunged in darkness and ignorance about our own nature, the invisible world around us, and the eternal spiritual verities. In all Scriptures and cosmologies the tradition is universal of a “Golden Age”, an age of comparative innocence, wisdom and spirituality, in which racial unity and individual happiness and enlightenment prevailed; in which there was that open vision for want of which a people perisheth, but in virtue of which men were once in conscious conversation with the unseen world and were shepherded, taught and guided by the “gods” or discarnate superintendents of the infant race, who imparted to them the sure and indefeasible principles upon which their spiritual welfare and evolution depended.
The tradition is also universal of the collective soul of the human race having sustained a “fall”, a moral declension from its true path of life and evolution, which has severed it almost entirely from its creative source, and which, as the ages advanced, has involved its sinking more and more deeply into physical conditions, its splitting up from a unity employing a single language into a diversity of conflicting races of different speeches and degrees of moral advancement, accompanied by a progressive densification of the material body and a corresponding darkening of the mind and atrophy of the spiritual consciousness. To some who read this the statement will probably be rejected as fabulous and incredible.
The supposition of a “fall of man” is nowadays an unpopular doctrine, rejected by many who contend that everything points rather to a rise of man, yet who fail to reflect that logically a rise necessarily involves an antecedent fall from which a rise becomes possible. This point, however, we cannot stop to discuss and must be content merely with indicating what in both the Scriptures of all races and the Wisdom-tradition of the sages of antiquity is unanimously recorded to be the fact. From that “fall”, which was not due to the transgression of an individual, but to some weakness or defect in the collective or group-soul of the Adamic race, and which was not the matter of a moment but a process covering vast time-cycles, it was necessary and within the Divine counsels and providence that humanity should be redeemed and restored to its pristine state; that it should be brought back once more into vital association with the Divine Principle from which by its secession it became increasingly detached, as its materialistic tendencies overpowered and quenched its native spirituality.
This restoration in turn required vast time-cycles for its achievement. And it required something further. It required the application of an orderly and scientific method to effect the restoration of each fallen soul-fragment and bring it back to its primitive pure and perfect condition. I emphasize that the method was necessarily to be not a haphazard, but a scientific one. Anyone may fall from a housetop and break his bones; skilled surgery and intelligent effort by some friendly hand are required to heal the patient and get him back to the place he fell from. So with humanity. It fell – out of Eden, as our Scriptures describe the lapse from super-physical to physical conditions – why and how, again we must not stay to enquire. It fell, through inherent weakness and lack of wisdom.
Unable to effect its own recovery it required skilled scientific assistance from other sources to bring about its restoration. Whence could come that skill and scientific knowledge if not from the Divine and now invisible world, from those “gods” and angelic guardians of the erring race of whom all the ancient traditions and sacred writings tell? Would not that regenerative method be properly described if it were called, as in Masonry it is called, a “heavenly science”, and welcomed in the words that Masons in fact use, “Hail, Royal Art!” ? Thus, then, was the origin and birth of Religion. And Religion is a word implying a “binding back” (re-ligare).
As with the setting and bandaging a broken limb, so the collective soul of humanity, fractured and comminuted by its fall into countless individuations and their subsequent respective progenies, each separately damaged and imperfect, needed to be restored to the condition from which it had become dislocated and once more built up into a perfect harmonious whole. To the spiritual guardians of primitive man, then, one must attribute the communication of that universal science of rebuilding the fallen temple of humanity, of which science we now surprisedly find traces in every race and religion of the world.
To this source we must credit the distribution, in every land and among every people, of the same or equivalent symbols, practices and doctrines, modified only locally and in accordance with the intelligence of particular peoples, yet all manifesting a common root and purpose. This was the one Holy Catholic (or universal) Religion “throughout all the world”; at once a theoretic doctrine and a practical science intended to reunite man to his Maker. That religion could only be one, as it could not be otherwise than catholic and for all men equally and alike; though, owing to the perverse distortive tendencies of humanity itself, it was susceptible of becoming (as has so happened) debased and sectarianized into as many forms as there are peoples.
Moreover, its main principles could never be susceptible of alteration, though they might be (as they have been) exoterically understood by some and esoterically by others, and their full import would not all at once be apparent, but develop with increasing fidelity to and understanding of them. It provided the unalterable “landmarks” of knowledge concerning human nature, human potentialities and human destiny. It laid down the ancient and established “usages and customs” to be followed at all times by everyone content to accept its discipline and which none might deviate from or add innovations to, save at his own peril. It was the “Sacred Law” for the guidance of the fallen soul, a law valid from the dawn of time till its sunset, and of which it is written “As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end”.
It was the science of life – of temporal limited life lived with the intention of its conversion and sublimation into eternal universal life; and, therefore, it called for a scientific or philosophic method of living, every moment and action of which should be directed to that great goal; – a method very different from the modern method, which is entirely utilitarian in its outlook and totally unscientific in its conduct. This Proto-Religion is related to have originated in the East, from which proverbially all light comes, and, as humanity itself became diffused and distributed over the globe, to have gradually spread towards the West, in a perpetual watchfulness of humanity’s spiritual interests and an unfailing purpose to retrieve “that which was lost”- the fallen human soul. We have already said that in early times the humanity then under its influence was far less materialized and far more spiritually sensitive and perceptive than it subsequently became or is now; and accordingly it follows that with the increasing age and density of the race the influence of the Proto-Religion itself became correspondingly diminished, though its principles remained as valid and effective as before; for the self-willed vagaries and speculative conceptions of man cannot alter the principles of static Truth and Wisdom.
To follow in any detail the course of its history is not now necessary and would require a long treatise. And to do so would also be like following the course of a river backwards from its broad mouth to a point where it becomes an insignificant and scarcely traceable channel. For the race itself has wandered backwards, farther and farther from the original Wisdom-teaching, so that the once broad and bright flood of light upon cosmic principles and the evolution of the human soul has now become contracted into minute points. But that light, like that of a Master Mason, has never been wholly extinguished, however dark the age, and, by the tradition, this of ours is spiritually the darkest of the dark ages. “God has never left Himself without a witness among the children of men”, and among the witnesses to the Ancient Wisdom and Mysteries is the system of Masonry; a faint and feeble flicker, perhaps, but nevertheless a true light and in the true line of succession of the primitive doctrine, and one still able to guide our feet into the way of peace and perfection.
The earliest teaching of the Mysteries traceable within historic time was in the Orient and in the language known as Sanscrit – a name itself significant and appropriate, for it means Holy Writ or “Sanctum Scriptum”; and for very great lights upon the ancient Secret Doctrine one must still refer to the religious and philosophical scriptures of India, which was in its spiritual and temporal prime when modern Europe was frozen beneath an ice-cap. But races, like men, have their infancy, manhood and old age; they are but units, upon a larger scale than the individual, for furthering the general life-purpose.
When a given race has served or failed in that purpose, the stewardship of the Mysteries passes on to other and more effectual hands. The next great torch-bearer of the Light of the world was Egypt, which, after many centuries of spiritual supremacy, in turn became the and desert it now is both spiritually and materially, leaving nevertheless a mass of structural and written relics still testifying to its possession of the Doctrine in the days of its glory. From Egypt, as civilizations developed in adjoining countries, a great irradiation of them took place by the diffusion of its knowledge and the institution of minor centres for the imparting of the Divine Science in Chaldea, Persia, Greece and Asia Minor. “Out of Egypt have I called My son” is, in one of its many senses, a biblical allusion to this passing on of the catholic 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 Bible that Moses was an initiate of the Egyptian mysteries and became learned in all its wisdom, while Philo tells us that Moses there became “skilled in music, geometry, arithmetic, hieroglyphics and the whole circle of arts and sciences”. In other words he became in a real sense a Master Mason and, as such, qualified himself for his subsequent great task of leadership of the Hebrew people and the formulating of their religious system and rule of life as laid down in the Pentateuch. The Mosaic system continued, as we know, along the channel indicated in the books of the Old Testament, and then, after many centuries and vicissitudes, effloresced in the greatest of all expressions of the Mysteries, as disclosed in the Gospels of the New Testament (or New Witness), involving the supersession of all previous systems under the Supreme Grand Mastership of Him who is called the Light of the World and its Saviour.
Concurrently with the existence of the Hebrew Mysteries under the Mosiac dispensation, the great Greek school of the Mysteries was developing, which, originating in the Orphic religion, culminated and came to a focus at Delphi and generated the philosophic wisdom and the aesthetic glories associated with Athens and the Periclean age. Greece was the spiritual descendant and infant prodigy of both India and Egypt, though developing along quite different lines. We know that Pythagoras, like Moses, after absorbing all his native teachers could impart, journeyed to Egypt to take his final initiation prior to returning and founding the great school at Crotona associated with his name. We know, too, from the Timaeus of Plato how aspirants for mystical wisdom visited Egypt for initiation and were told by the priests of Sais that “you Greeks are but children” in the Secret Doctrine, but were admitted to information enabling them to promote their own spiritual advancement. We know from the correspondence, recorded by Iamblichus, between Anebo and Porphyry, the fraternal relations existing between the various schools or lodges of instruction in different lands; how their members visited, greeted and assisted one another in the secret science, the more advanced being obliged, as every initiate still is when called upon, to “afford assistance and instruction to his brethren in the inferior degrees”. And we know that at the Nativity – or shall we say the installation in this world – of the Great Master, there came to Him from afar Magi or initiate visitors who knew of His impending advent and had seen His star in the East and desired to acknowledge and pay Him reverence.
In all these world moving incidents in times when initiation was a real event and not a mere ceremonial form as now, it is of interest to notice the practice upon a grand scale of the same customs and courtesies as are still observed, though alas unintelligently, by the Craft of to-day. We must now speak more fully of the Mysteries and the “Royal Art” as pursued by the Greek school. With the Greeks it took the form of a quest of philosophy; i.e., for wisdom, for the Sophia, just as in the Hebrew and Christian schools it took the form of a quest for the Lost Word. The end was of course the same in both cases, but the approach to it was by different means and, as we shall see, the two methods coalesced into one at a later date.
The Greek approach was primarily an intellectual one and by what Spinoza has termed Amor intellectualis Dei. The Christian approach was primarily through the affections and the adoration of the heart. Both strained after “that which was lost”, but one sought after the lost ideal by intellectual and the other by devotional energy. Humanity is but slowly educated; “line upon line; precept upon precept; here a little and there a little”, one faculty after another being developed and trained unto the refashioning of the perfect organism. And if philosophic Wisdom and the sense of Beauty stood forth – as they did stand forth-most prominently as the main pillars of the Greek system, the Greeks had yet to learn of a third and middle pillar that synthesized and comprised them both – that of the Strength of the supreme virtue of Love, when towards the object of all desire it pours from a pure and perfect heart.