Zelator
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Freemasons first of all are great. I believ in the end some of the higher levels are waching out for the real people of this world. Masons are the non political everyday guy that can in the end save us.
If i may post a very long story. Here this is fantastic stuff.
a livingstonemusic.net/article
This is text from 'Morals and Dogmas' by Albert Pike.
XXXII SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET
[Master of Royal Secret]
The Occult Science of the Ancient Magi was concealed
under the shadows of the Ancient Mysteries: it was
imperfectly revealed or rather disfigured by the
Gnostics: it is guessed at under the obscurities that
cover the pretended crimes of the Templars; and it is
found enveloped in enigmas that seem impenetrable, in
the Rites of the Highest Masonry.
Magism was the Science of Abraham and Orpheus, of
Confucius and Zoroaster. It was the dogmas of this
Science that were engraven on the tables of stone by
Hanoch and Trismegistus. Moses purified and re-veiled
them, for that is the meaning of the word reveal. He
covered them with a new veil, when he made of the Holy
Kabalah the exclusive heritage of the people of Israel,
and the inviolable Secret of its priests. The Mysteries
of Thebes and Eleusis preserved among the nations some
symbols of it, already altered, and the mysterious key
whereof was lost among the instruments of an
ever-growing superstition. Jerusalem, the murderess of
her prophets, and so often prostituted to the false
gods of the Syrians and Babylonians, had at length in
its turn lost the Holy Word, when a Prophet announced
to the Magi by the consecrated Star of Initiation, came
to rend asunder the worn veil of the old Temple, in
order to give the Church a new tissue of legends and
symbols, that still and ever conceals from the Profane,
and ever preserves to the Elect the same truths.
It was the remembrance of this scientific and religious
Absolute, of this doctrine that is summed up in a word,
of this Word, in fine, alternately lost and found
again, that was transmitted to the Elect of all the
Ancient Initiations: it was this same remembrance,
preserved, or perhaps profaned in the celebrated Order
of the Templars, that became for all the secret
associations, of the Rose-Croix, of the Illuminati, and
of the Hermetic Freemasons, the reason of their strange
rites, of their signs more or less conventional, and,
above all, of their mutual devotedness and of their
power.
The Gnostics caused the Gnosis to be proscribed by the
Christians, and the official Sanctuary was closed
against the high initiation. Thus the Hierarchy of
Knowledge was compromitted by the violences of usurping
ignorance, and the disorders of the Sanctuary are
reproduced in the State; for always, willingly or
unwillingly, the King is sustained by the Priest, and
it is from the eternal Sanctuary of the Divine
instruction that the Powers of the Earth, to insure
themselves durability, must receive their consecration
and their force.
The Hermetic Science of the early Christian ages,
cultivated also by Geber, Alfarabius, and others of the
Arabs, studied by the Chiefs of the Templars, and
embodied in certain symbols of the higher Degrees of
Freemasonry, may be accurately defined as the Kabalah
in active realization,or the Magic of Works. It has
three analogous Degrees, religious, philosophical, and
physical realization.
Its religious realization is the durable foundation of
the true Empire and the true Priesthood that rule in
the realm of human intellect: its philosophical
realization is the establishment of absolute Doctrine,
known in all times as the "Holy Doctrine," and of which
PLUTARCH, in the Treatise "de Iside et Osiride," speaks
at large but mysteriously; and of a Hierarchical
instruction to secure the uninterrupted succession of
Adepts among the Initiates: its physical realization is
the discovery and application, in the Microcosm, or
Little World, of the creative law that incessantly
peoples the great Universe.
Measure a corner of the Creation, and multiply that
space in proportional progression, and the entire
Infinite will multiply its circles filled with
universes, which will pass in proportional segments
between the ideal and elongating branches of your
Compass. Now suppose that from any point whatever of
the Infinite above you a hand holds another Compass or
a Square, the lines of the Celestial triangle will
necessarily meet those of the Compass of Science, to
form the Mysterious Star of Solomon.
All hypotheses scientifically probable are the last
gleams of the twilight of knowledge, or its last
shadows. Faith begins where Reason sinks exhausted.
Beyond the human Reason is the Divine Reason, to our
feebleness the great Absurdity, the Infinite Absurd,
which confounds us and which we believe. For the
Master, the Compass of Faith is above the Square of
Reason; but both rest upon the Holy Scriptures and
combine to form the Blazing Star of Truth.
All eyes do not see alike. Even the visible creation is
not, for all who look upon it, of one form and one
color. Our brain is a book printed within and without,
and the two writings are, with all men, more or less
confused.
The primary tradition of the single revelation has been
preserved under the name of the "Kabalah," by the
Priesthood of Israel. The Kabalistic doctrine, which
was also the dogma of the Magi and of Hermes, is
contained in the Sepher Yetsairah, the Sohar, and the
Talmud. According to that doctrine, the Absolute is the
Being, in which The Word Is, the Word that is the
utterance and expression of being and life.
Magic is that which it is; it is by itself, like the
mathematics; for it is the exact and absolute science
of Nature and its laws.
Magic is the science of the Ancient Magi: and the
Christian religion, which has imposed silence on the
lying oracles, and put an end to the prestiges of the
false Gods, itself reveres those Magi who came from the
East, guided by a Star, to adore the Saviour of the
world in His cradle.
Tradition also gives these Magi the title of "Kings;"
because initiation into Magism constitutes a genuine
royalty; and because the grand art of the Magi is
styled by all the Adepts, "The Royal Art," or the Holy
Realm or Empire, Sanctum Regnum.
The Star which guided them is that same Blazing Star,
the image whereof we find in all initiations. To the
Alchemists it is the sign of the Quintessence; to the
Magists, the Grand Arcanum; to the Kabalists, the
Sacred Pentagram. The study of this Pentagram could not
but lead the Magi to the knowledge of the New Name
which was about to raise itself above all names, and
cause all creatures capable of adoration to bend the
knee.
Magic unites in one and the same science, whatsoever
Philosophy can possess that is most certain, and
Religion of the Infallible and the Eternal. It
perfectly and incontestably reconciles these two terms
that at first blush seem so opposed to each other;
faith and reason, science and creed, authority and
liberty.
It supplies the human mind with an instrument of
philosophical and religious certainty, exact as the
mathematics, and accounting for the infallibility of
the mathematics themselves.
Thus there is an Absolute, in the matters of the
Intelligence and of Faith. The Supreme Reason has not
left the gleams of the human understanding to vacillate
at hazard. There is an incontestable verity, there is
an infallible method of knowing this verity, and by the
knowledge of it, those who accept it as a rule may give
their will a sovereign power that will make them the
masters of all inferior things and of all errant
spirits; that is to say, will make them the Arbiters
and Kings of the World.
Science has its nights and its dawns, because it gives
the intellectual world a life which has its regulated
movements and its progressive phases. It is with
Truths, as with the luminous rays: nothing of what is
concealed is lost; but also, nothing of what is
discovered is absolutely new. God has been pleased to
give to Science, which is the reflection of His Glory,
the Seal of His Eternity.
It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the
religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look
for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the
Mysteries of Knowledge. The Priests of Egypt knew,
better than we do, the laws of movement and of life.
They knew how to temper or intensify action by
reaction; and readily foresaw the realization of these
effects, the causes of which they had determined. The
Columns of Seth, Enoch, Solomon, and Hercules have
symbolized in the Magian traditions this universal law
of the Equilibrium; and the Science of the Equilibrium
or balancing of Forces had led the Initiates to that of
the universal gravitation around the centres of Life,
Heat, and Light.
Thales and Pythagoras learned in the Sanctuaries of
Egypt that the Earth revolved around the Sun; but they
did not attempt to make this generally known, because
to do so it would have been necessary to reveal one of
the great Secrets of the Temple, that double law of
attraction and radiation or of sympathy and antipathy,
of fixedness and movement, which is the principle of
Creation, and the perpetual cause of life. This Truth
was ridiculed by the Christian Lactantius, as it was
long after sought to be proven a falsehood by
persecution, by Papal Rome.
So the philosophers reasoned, while the Priests,
without replying to them or even smiling at their
errors, wrote, in those Hieroglyphics that created all
dogmas and all poetry, the Secrets of the Truth.
When Truth comes into the world, the Star of Knowledge
advises the Magi of it, and they hasten to adore the
Infant who creates the Future. It is by means of the
Intelligence of the Hierarchy and the practice of
obedience, that one obtains Initiation. If the Rulers
have the Divine Right to govern, the true Initiate will
cheerfully obey.
The orthodox traditions were carried from Chaldea by
Abraham. They reigned in Egypt in the time of Joseph,
together with the knowledge of the True God. Moses
carried Orthodoxy out of Egypt, and in the Secret
Traditions of the Kabalah we find a Theology entire,
perfect, unique, like that which in Christianity is
most grand and best explained by the Fathers and the
Doctors, the whole with a consistency and a
harmoniousness which it is not as yet given to the
world to comprehend. The Sohar, which is the Key of the
Holy Books, opens also all the depths and lights, all
the obscurities of the Ancient Mythologies and of the
Sciences originally concealed in the Sanctuaries. It is
true that the Secret of this Key must be known, to
enable one to make use of it, and that for even the
most penetrating intellects, not initiated in this
Secret, the Sohar is absolutely incomprehensible and
almost illegible.
The Secret of the Occult Sciences is that of Nature
itself, the Secret of the generation of the Angels and
Worlds, that of the Omnipotence of God.
"Ye shall be like the Elohim, knowing good and evil,"
had the Serpent of Genesis said, and the Tree of
Knowledge became the Tree of Death.
For six thousand years the Martyrs of Knowledge toil
and die at the foot of this tree, that it may again
become the Tree of Life.
The Absolute sought for unsuccessfully by the insensate
and found by the Sages, is the TRUTH, the REALITY, and
the REASON of the universal equilibrium!
Equilibrium is the Harmony that results from the
analogy of Contraries.
Until now, Humanity has been endeavoring to stand on
one foot; sometimes on one, sometimes on the other.
Civilizations have risen and perished, either by the
anarchical insanity of Despotism, or by the despotic
anarchy of Revolt.
To organize Anarchy, is the problem which the
revolutionists have and will eternally have to resolve.
It is the rock of Sisyphus that will always fall back
upon them. To exist a single instant, they are and
always will be by fatality reduced to improvise a
despotism without other reason of existence than
necessity, and which, consequently, is violent and
blind as Necessity. We escape from the harmonious
monarchy of Reason, only to fall under the irregular
dictatorship of Folly.
Sometimes superstitious enthusiasms, sometimes the
miserable calculations of the materialist instinct have
led astray the nations, and God at last urges the world
on toward believing Reason and reasonable Beliefs.
We have had prophets enough without philosophy, and
philosophers without religion; the blind believers and
the sceptics resemble each other, and are as far the
one as the other from the eternal salvation.
In the chaos of universal doubt and of the conflicts of
Reason and Faith, the great men and Seers have been but
infirm and morbid artists, seeking the beau-ideal at
the risk and peril of their reason and life.
Living only in the hope to be crowned, they are the
first to do what Pythagoras in so touching a manner
prohibits in his admirable Symbols; they rend crowns,
and tread them under foot.
Light is the equilibrium of Shadow and Lucidity.
Movement is the equilibrium of Inertia and Activity.
Authority is the equilibrium of Liberty and Power.
Wisdom is equilibrium in the Thoughts, which are the
scintillations and rays of the Intellect.
Virtue is equilibrium in the Affections: Beauty is
harmonious proportion in Forms.
The beautiful lives are the accurate ones, and the
magnificences of Nature are an algebra of graces and
splendors.
Everything just is beautiful; everything beautiful
ought to be just.
There is, in fact, no Nothing, no void Emptiness, in
the Universe. From the upper or outer surface of our
atmosphere to that of the Sun, and to those of the
Planets and remote Stars, in different directions,
Science has for hundreds of centuries imagined that
there was simple, void, empty Space. Comparing finite
knowledge with the Infinite, the Philosophers know
little more than the apes ! In all that "void" space
are the Infinite Forces of God, acting in an infinite
variety of directions, back and forth, and never for an
instant inactive. In all of it, active through the
whole of its Infinity, is the Light that is the Visible
Manifestation of God. The earth and every other planet
and sphere that is not a Centre of Light, carries its
cone of shadow with it as it flies and flashes round in
its orbit; but the darkness has no home in the
Universe. To illuminate the sphere on one side, is to
project a cone of darkness on the other; and Error also
is the Shadow of the Truth with which God illuminates
the Soul.
In all that "Void," also, is the Mysterious and ever
Active Electricity, and Heat, and the Omnipresent
Ether. At the will of God the Invisible becomes
Visible. Two invisible gases, combined by the action of
a Force of God, and compressed, become and remain the
water that fills the great basins of the seas, flows in
the rivers and rivulets, leaps forth from the rocks or
springs, drops upon the earth in rains, or whitens it
with snows, and bridges the Danubes with ice, or
gathers in vast reservoirs in the earth's bosom. God
manifested fills all the extension that we foolishly
call Empty Space and the Void.
And everywhere in the Universe, what we call life and
Movement results from a continual conflict of Forces or
Impulses. Whenever that active antagonism ceases, the
immobility and inertia, which are Death, result.
If, says the Kabalah, the Justice of God, which is
Severity or the Female, alone reigned, creation of
imperfect beings such as man would from the beginning
have been impossible, because Sin being congenital with
Humanity, the Infinite Justice, measuring the Sin by
the Infinity of the God offended against, must have
annihilated Humanity at the instant of its creation;
and not only Humanity but the Angels, since these also,
like all created by God and less than perfect, are
sinful. Nothing imperfect would have been possible. If,
on the other hand, the Mercy or Benignity of God, the
Male, were in no wise counteracted, Sin would go
unpunished, and the Universe fall into a chaos of
corruption.
Let God but repeal a single principle or law of
chemical attraction or sympathy, and the antagonistic
forces equilibrated in matter, released from
constraint, would instantaneously expand all that we
term matter into impalpable and invisible gases, such
as water or steam is, when, confined in a cylinder and
subjected to an immense degree of that mysterious force
of the Deity which we call "heat," it is by its
expansion released.
Incessantly the great currents and rivers of air flow
and rush and roll from the equator to the frozen polar
regions, and back from these to the torrid equatorial
realms. Necessarily incident to these great, immense,
equilibrated and beneficent movements, caused by the
antagonism of equatorial heat and polar cold, are the
typhoons, tornadoes, and cyclones that result from
conflicts between the rushing currents. These and the
benign trade-winds result from the same great law. God
is omnipotent; but effects without causes are
impossible, and these effects cannot but sometimes be
evil. The fire would not warm, if it could not also
burn, the human flesh. The most virulent poisons are
the most sovereign remedies, when given in due
proportion. The Evil is the shadow of the Good, and
inseparable from it.
The Divine Wisdom limits by equipoise the Omnipotence
of the Divine Will or Power, and the result is Beauty
or Harmony. The arch rests not on a single column, but
springs from one on either side. So is it also with the
Divine Justice and Mercy, and with the Human Reason and
Human Faith.
That purely scholastic Theology, issue of the
Categories of Aristotle and of the Sentences of Peter
Lombard, that logic of the syllogism which argues
instead of reasoning, and finds a response to every
thing by subtilizing on terms, wholly ignored the
Kabalastic dogma and wandered off into the drear
vacuity of darkness. It was less a philosophy or a
wisdom than a philosophical automaton, replying by
means of springs, and uncoiling its theses like a
wheeled movement. It was not the human verb but the
monotonous cry of a machine, the inanimate speech of an
Android. It was the fatal precision of mechanism,
instead of a free application of rational necessities.
ST THOMAS AQUINAS crushed with a single blow all this
scaffolding of words built one upon the other, by
proclaiming the eternal Empire of Reason, in that
magnificent sentence, "A thing is not just because GOD
wills it,- but GOD wills it because it is just." The
proximate consequence of this proposition, arguing from
the greater to the less, was this: "A thing is not true
because ARISTOTLE has said it; but ARISTOTLE could not
reasonably say it unless it was true. Seek then, first
of, all, the TRUTH and JUSTICE, and the Science of
ARISTOTLE will be given you in addition."
It is the fine dream of the greatest of the Poets, that
Hell, become useless, is to be closed at length, by the
aggrandizement of Heaven; that the problem of Evil is
to receive its final solution, and Good alone,
necessary and triumphant, is to reign in Eternity. So
the Persian dogma taught that AHRIMAN and his
subordinate ministers of Evil were at last, by means of
a Redeemer and Mediator, to be reconciled with Deity,
and all Evil to end. But unfortunately, the philosopher
forgets all the laws of equilibrium, and seeks to
absorb the Light in a splendor without shadow, and
movement in an absolute repose that would be the
cessation of life. So long as there shall be a visible
light, there will be a shadow proportional to this
Light, and whatever is illuminated will cast its cone
of shadow. Repose will never be happiness, if it is not
balanced by an analogous and contrary movement. This is
the immutable law of Nature, the Eternal Will of the
JUSTICE which is GOD.
The same reason necessitates Evil and Sorrow in
Humanity which renders indispensable the bitterness of
the waters of the seas. Here also, Harmony can result
only from the analogy of contraries, and what is above
exists by reason of what is below. It is the depth that
determines the height; and if the valleys are filled
up, the mountains disappear: so, if the shadows are
effaced, the Light is annulled, which is only visible
by the graduated contrast of gloom and splendor, and
universal obscurity will be produced by an immense
dazzling. Even the colors in the Light only exist by
the presence of the shadow: it is the threefold
alliance of the day and night, the luminous image of
the dogma, the Light made Shadow, as the Saviour is the
Logos made man: and all this reposes on the same law,
the primary law of creation, the single and absolute
law of Nature, that of the distinction and harmonious
ponderation of the contrary forces in the universal
equipoise.
The two great columns of the Temple that symbolizes the
Universe are Necessity, or the omnipotent Will of God,
which nothing can disobey, and Liberty, or the
free-will of His creatures. Apparently and to our human
reason antagonistic, the same Reason is not incapable
of comprehending how they can be in equipoise. The
Infinite Power and Wisdom could so plan the Universe
and the Infinite Succession of things as to leave man
free to act, and, foreseeing what each would at every
instant think and do, to make of the free-will and
free-action of each an instrument to aid in effecting
its general purpose. For even a man, foreseeing that
another will do a certain act, and in nowise
controlling or even influencing him may use that action
as an instrument to effect his own purposes.
The Infinite Wisdom of God foresees what each will do,
and uses it as an instrument, by the exertion of His
Infinite Power, which yet does not control the Human
action so as to annihilate its freedom The result is
Harmony, the third column that upholds the Lodge. The
same Harmony results from the equipoise of Necessity
and Liberty. The will of God is not for an instant
defeated nor thwarted, and this is the Divine Victory;
and yet He does not tempt nor constrain men to do Evil,
and thus His Infinite Glory is unimpaired. The result
is Stability, Cohesion, and Permanence in the Universe,
and undivided Dominion and Autocracy in the Deity. And
these, Victory, Glory, Stability, and Dominion, are the
last four Sephiroth of the Kabalah.
I AM, God said to Moses, that which Is, Was and Shall
forever Be. But the Very God, in His unmanifested
Essence, conceived of as not yet having created and as
Alone, has no Name. Such was the doctrine of all the
ancient Sages, and it is so expressly declared in the
Kabalah. is the Name of the Deity manifested in a
single act, that of Creation, and containing within
Himself, in idea and actuality, the whole Universe, to
be invested with form and be materially developed
during the eternal succession of ages. As God never WAS
NOT, so He never THOUGHT not, and the Universe has no
more had a beginning than the Divine Thought of which
it is the utterance,--no more than the Deity Himself.
The duration of the Universe is but a point halfway
upon the infinite line of eternity; and God was not
inert and uncreative during the eternity that stretches
behind that point. The Archetype of the Universe did
never not exist in the Divine Mind. The Word was in the
BEGINNING with God, and WAS God. And the Ineffable NAME
is that, not of the Very Essence but of the Absolute,
manifested as Being or Existence. For Existence or
Being, said the Philosophers, is limitation; and the
Very Deity is not limited nor defined, but is all that
may possibly be, besides all that is, was, and shall
be.
Reversing the letters of the Ineffable Name, and
dividing it, it becomes bi-sexual, as the word Yud-He
or JAH is, and discloses the meaning of much of the
obscure language of the Kabalah, and is The Highest of
which the Columns Jachin and Boaz are the symbol. "In
the image of Deity," we are told, "God created the Man;
Male and Female created He them:" and the writer,
symbolizing the Divine by the Human, then tells us that
the woman, at first contained in the man, was taken
from his side. So Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, was born,
a woman and in armor, of the brain of Jove; Isis was
the sister before she was the wife of Osiris, and
within BRAHM, the Source of all, the Very God, without
sex or name, was developed MAYA, the Mother of all that
is. The WORD is the First and Only-begotten of the
Father; and the awe with which the Highest Mysteries
were regarded has imposed silence in respect to the
Nature of the Holy Spirit. The Word is Light, and the
Life of Humanity.
It is for the Adepts to understand the meaning of the
Symbols.
Return now, with us, to the Degrees of the Blue
Masonry, and for your last lesson, receive the
explanation of one of their Symbols.
You see upon the altar of those Degrees the SQUARE and
the COMPASS, and you remember how they lay upon the
altar in each Degree.
The SQUARE is an instrument adapted for plane surfaces
only, and therefore appropriate to Geometry, or
measurement of the Earth, which appears to be, and was
by the Ancients supposed to be, a plane. The COMPASS is
an instrument that has relation to spheres and
spherical surfaces, and is adapted to spherical
trigonometry, or that branch of mathematics which deals
with the Heavens and the orbits of the planetary
bodies.
The SQUARE, therefore, is a natural and appropriate
Symbol of this Earth and the things that belong to it,
are of it, or concern it. The Compass is an equally
natural and appropriate Symbol of the Heavens, and of
all celestial things and celestial natures.
You see at the beginning of this reading, an old
Hermetic Symbol, copied from the MATERIA PRIMA of
Valentinus, printed at Frankfurt, in 1613, with a
treatise entitled "AZOTEI." Upon it you see a Triangle
upon a Square, both of these contained in a circle; and
above this, standing upon a dragon, a human body, with
two arms only,but two heads,one male and the other
female. By the side of the male head is the Sun, and by
that of the female head, the Moon, the crescent within
the circle of the full moon. And the hand on the male
side holds a Compass, and that on the female side, a
Square.
The Heavens and the Earth were personified as Deities,
even among the Aryan Ancestors of the European nations
of the Hindus, Zends, Bactrians, and Persians; and the
Rig Veda Sanhita contains hymns addressed to them as
gods. They were deified also among the Phoenicians; and
among the Greeks OURANOS and GEA, Heaven and Earth,
were sung as the most ancient of the Deities, by
Hesiod.
It is the great, fertile, beautiful MOTHER, Earth, that
produces, with limitless profusion of beneficence,
everything that ministers to the needs, to the comfort,
and to the luxury of man. From her teeming and
inexhaustible bosom come the fruits, the grain, the
flowers, in their season. From it comes all that feeds
the animals which serve man as labourers and for food.
She, in the fair Springtime, is green with abundant
grass, and the trees spring from her soil, and from her
teeming vitality take their wealth of green leaves. In
her womb are found the useful and valuable minerals;
hers are the seas the swarm with life; hers the rivers
that furnish food and irrigation, and the mountains
that send down the streams which swell into these
rivers; hers the forests that feed the sacred fires for
the sacrifices, and blaze upon the domestic hearths.
The EARTH, therefore, the great PRODUCER, was always
represented as a female, as the MOTHER,--Great,
Bounteous, Beneficent Mother Earth.
On the other hand, it is the light and heat of the Sun
in the Heavens, and the rains that seem to come from
them, that in the Springtime make fruitful this
bountifully-producing Earth, that restore life and
warmth to her veins, chilled by Winter, set running
free her streams, and beget, as it were, that greenness
and that abundance of which she is so prolific. As the
procreative and generative agents, the Heavens and the
Sun have always been regarded as male; as the
generators that fructify the Earth and cause it to
produce.
The Hermaphroditic figure is the Symbol of the double
nature anciently assigned to the Deity, as Generator
and Producer, as BRAHM and MAYA among the Aryans,
Osiris and Isis among the Egyptians. As the Sun was
male, so the Moon was female; and Isis was both the
sister and the wife of Osiris. The Compass, therefore,
is the Hermetic Symbol of the Creative Deity, and the
Square of the productive Earth or Universe.
From the Heavens come the spiritual and immortal
portion of man; from the Earth his material and mortal
portion. The Hebrew Genesis says that YEHOUAH formed
man of the dust of the Earth, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life. Through the seven
planetary spheres, represented by the Mystic Ladder of
the Mithriac Initiations, and it by that which Jacob
saw in his dream (not with three, but with seven
steps), the Souls, emanating from the Deity, descended,
to be united to their human bodies; and through those
seven spheres they must re-ascend, to return to their
origin and home in the bosom of the Deity.
The COMPASS, therefore, as the Symbol of the Heavens,
represents the spiritual, intellectual, and moral
portion of this double nature of humanity; and the
SQUARE, as the Symbol of the Earth, its material,
sensual, and baser portion. "Truth and Intelligence,"
said one of the Ancient Indian Sects of Philosophers,
"are the Eternal attributes of God, not of the
individual Soul, which is susceptible both of knowledge
and ignorance, of pleasure and pain; therefore God and
the individual Soul are distinct :" and this expression
of the ancient Nyaya Philosophers, in regard to Truth,
has been handed down to us through the long succession
of ages, in the lessons of Freemasonry, wherein we
read, that "Truth is a Divine Attribute, and the
foundation of every virtue."
"While embodied in matter," they said, "the Soul is in
a state of imprisonment, and is under the influence of
evil passions; but having, by intense study, arrived at
the knowledge of the elements and principles of Nature,
it attains unto the place of THE ETERNAL; in which
state of happiness, its individuality does not cease."
The vitality which animates the mortal frame, the
Breath of Life of the Hebrew Genesis, the Hindu
Philosophers in general held, perishes with it; but the
Soul is divine, all emanation of the Spirit of God, but
not a portion of that Spirit. For they compared it to
the heat and light sent forth from the Sun, or to a ray
of that light, which neither lessens nor divides its
own essence.
However created, or invested with separate existence,
the Soul, which is but the creature of the Deity,
cannot know the mode of its creation, nor comprehend
its own individuality. It cannot even comprehend how
the being which it and the body constitute, can feel
pain, or see, or hear. It has pleased the Universal:
Creator to set bounds to the scope of our human and
finite reason, beyond which it cannot reach; and if we
are capable of comprehending the mode and manner of the
creation or generation of the Universe of things, He
has been pleased to conceal it from us by an
impenetrable veil, while the words used to express the
act have no other definite meaning than that He caused
that Universe to commence to exist.
It is enough for us to know, what Masonry teaches, that
we are not all mortal; that the Soul or Spirit, the
intellectual and reasoning portion of ourself, is our
Very Self, is not subject to decay and dissolution, but
is simple and immaterial, survives the death of the
body, and is capable of immortality; that it is also
capable of improvement and advancement, of increase of
knowledge of the things that are divine, of becoming
wiser and better, and more and more worthy of
immortality; and that to become so, and to help to
improve and benefit others and all our race, is the
noblest ambition and highest glory that we can
entertain and attain unto, in this momentary and
imperfect life.
In every human being the Divine and the Human are
intermingled. In every one there are the Reason and the
Moral sense, the passions that prompt to evil, and the
sensual appetites. "If ye live after the flesh, ye
shall die," said Paul, writing to the Christians at
Rome, "but if ye through the spirit do mortify the
deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are
led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."
"The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit
against the flesh," he said, writing to the Christians
of Galatia, "and these are contrary the one to the
other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would."
"That which I do, I do not willingly do," he wrote to
the Romans, "for what I wish to do, that I do not do,
but that which I hate I do. It is no more I that do it,
but sin that dwelleth in me. To will, is present with
me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not.
For, I do not do the good that I desire to do; and the
evil that I do not wish to do, that I do do. I find
then a law, that when I desire to do good, evil is
present with me; for I delight in the law of God after
the inward man, but I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me
into captivity to the law of sin which is in my
members. . . So then, with the mind I myself serve the
law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin."
Life is a battle, and to fight that battle heroically
and well is the great purpose of every man's existence,
who is worthy and fit to live at all. To stem the
strong currents of adversity, to advance in despite of
all obstacles, to snatch victory from the jealous grasp
of fortune, to become a chief and a leader among men,
to rise to rank and power by eloquence, courage,
perseverance, study, energy, activity, discouraged by
no reverses, impatient of no delays, deterred by no
hazards; to win wealth, to subjugate men by our
intellect, the very elements by our audacity, to
succeed, to prosper, to thrive;--thus it is, according
to the general understanding, that one fights well the
battle of life. Even to succeed in business by that
boldness which halts for no risks, that audacity which
stakes all upon hazardous chances; by the shrewdness of
the close dealer, the boldness of the unscrupulous
operator, ever by the knaveries of the stock-board and
the gold-room; to crawl up into place by disreputable
means or the votes of brutal ignorance,--these also are
deemed to be among the great successes of life.
But that which is the greatest battle, and in which the
truest honour and most real success are to be won, is
that which our intellect and reason and moral sense,
our spiritual natures, fight against our sensual
appetites and evil passions, our earthly and material
or animal nature. Therein only are the true glories of
heroism to be won, there only the successes that
entitle us to triumphs.
In every human life that battle is fought; and those
who win elsewhere, often suffer ignominious defeat and
disastrous rout, and discomfiture and shameful downfall
in this encounter.
You have heard more than one definition of Freemasonry.
The truest and the most significant you have yet to
hear. It is taught to the entered Apprentice, the
Fellow-Craft, and the Master, and it is taught in every
Degree through which you have advanced to this. It is a
definition of what Freemasonry is, of what its purposes
and its very essence and spirit are; and it has for
every one of us the force and sanctity of a divine law,
and imposes on every one of us a solemn obligation.
It is symbolized and; taught, to the Apprentice as well
as to you, by the COMPASS and the SQUARE; upon which,
as well as upon the Book of your Religion and the Book
of the law of the Scottish Freemasonry, you have taken
so many obligations. As a Knight, you have been taught
it by the Swords, the symbols of HONOUR and DUTY, on
which you have taken your vows: it was taught you by
the BALANCE, the symbol of all Equilibrium, and by the
CROSS, the symbol of devotedness and self-sacrifice;
but all that these teach and contain is taught and
contained, for Entered Apprentice, Knight, and Prince
alike, by the Compass and the Square.
For the Apprentice, the points of the Compass are
beneath the Square. For the Fellow-Craft, one is above
and one beneath. For the Master, both are dominant, and
have rule, control, and empire over the symbol of the
earthly and the material.
FREEMASONRY is the subjugation of the Human that is in
man by the Divine; the Conquest of the Appetites and
Passions by the Moral Sense and the Reason; a continual
effort, struggle, and warfare of the Spiritual against
the Material and Sensual. That victory, when it has
been achieved and secured, and the conqueror may rest
upon his shield and wear the well-earned laurels, is
the true HOLY EMPIRE.
To achieve it, the Mason must first attain a solid
conviction, founded upon reason, that he hath within
him a spiritual nature, a soul that is not to die when
the body is dissolved, but is to continue to exist and
to advance toward perfection through all the ages of
eternity, and to see more and more clearly, as it draws
nearer unto God, the Light of the Divine Presence. This
the Philosophy of the Ancient and Accepted Rite teaches
him; and it encourages him to persevere by helping him
to believe that his free will is entirely consistent
with God's Omnipotence and Omniscience; that He is not
only infinite in power, and of infinite wisdom, but of
infinite mercy, and an infinitely tender pity and love
for the frail and imperfect creatures that He has made.
Every Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite,
from the first to the thirty-second, teaches by its
ceremonial as well as by its instruction, that the
noblest purpose of life and the highest duty of a man
are to strive incessantly and vigorously to win the
mastery of everything, of that which in him is
spiritual and divine, over that which is material and
sensual; so that in him also, as in the Universe which
God governs, Harmony and Beauty may be the result of a
just equilibrium.
You have been taught this in those Degrees, conferred
in the Lodge of Perfection, which inculcate
particularly the practical morality of Freemasonry. To
be true, under whatever temptation to be false; to be
honest in all your dealings, even if great losses
should be the consequence; to be charitable, when
selfishness would prompt you to close your hand, and
deprivation of luxury or comfort must follow the
charitable act; to judge justly and impartially, even
in your own case, when baser impulses prompt you to do
an injustice in order that you may be benefited or
justified; to be tolerant, when passion prompts to
intolerance and persecution; to do that which is right,
when the wrong seems to promise larger profit; and to
wrong no man of anything that is his, however easy it
may seem so to enrich yourself;--in all these things
and others which you promised in those Degrees, your
spiritual nature is taught and encouraged to assert its
rightful dominion over your appetites and passions.
The philosophical Degrees have taught you the value of
knowledge, the excellence of truth, the superiority of
intellectual labour, the dignity and value of your
soul, the worth of great and noble thoughts; and thus
endeavoured to assist you to rise above the level of
the animal appetites and passions, the pursuits of
greed and the miserable struggles of ambition, and to
find purer pleasure and nobler prizes and rewards in
the acquisition of knowledge, the enlargement of the
intellect, the interpretation of the sacred writing of
God upon the great pages of the Book of Nature.
And the Chivalric Degrees have led you on the same
path, by showing you the excellence of generosity,
clemency, forgiveness of injuries, magnanimity,
contempt of danger, and the paramount obligations of
Duty and Honour. They have taught you to overcome the
fear of death, to devote yourself to the great cause of
civil and religious Liberty, to be the Soldier of all
that is just right, and true; in the midst of
pestilence to deserve your title of Knight Commander of
the Temple, and neither there nor elsewhere to desert
your post and flee dastard-like from the foe. In all
this, you assert the superiority and right to dominion
of that in you which is spiritual and divine. No base
fear of danger or death, no sordid ambitions or pitiful
greeds or base considerations can tempt a true Scottish
Knight to dishonour, and so make his intellect, his
reason, his soul, the bond-slave of his appetites, of
his passions, of that which is material and animal,
selfish and brutish in his nature.
It is not possible to create a true and genuine
Brotherhood upon any theory of the baseness of human
nature: nor by a community of belief in abstract
propositions as to the nature of the Deity, the number
of His persons, or other theorems of religious faith:
nor by the establishment of a system of association
simply for mutual relief, and by which, in
consideration of certain payments regularly made, each
becomes entitled to a certain stipend in case of
sickness, to attention then, and to the ceremonies of
burial after death.
There can be no genuine Brotherhood without mutual
regard good opinion and esteem, mutual charity, and
mutual allowance for faults and failings. It is those
only who learn habitually to think better of each
other, to look habitually for the good that is in each
other, and expect, allow for, and overlook, the evil,
who can be Brethren one of the other, in any truse
sense of the word. Those who gloat over the failings of
one another, who think each other to be naturally base
and low, of a nature in which the Evil predominates and
excellence is not to be looked for, cannot be even
friends, and much less Brethren.
No one can have a right to think meanly of his race,
unless he also thinks meanly of himself. If, from a
single fault or error, he judges of the character of
another, and takes the single act as evidence of the
whole nature of the man and of the whole course of his
life, he ought to consent to be judged by the same
rule, and to admit it to be right that others should
thus uncharitably condemn himself. But such judgments
will become impossible when he incessantly reminds
himself that in every man who lives there is an
immortal Soul endeavouring to do that which is right
and just; a Ray, however small, and almost
inappreciable, from the Great Source of Light and
Intelligence, which ever struggles upward amid all the
impediments of sense and the obstructions of the
passions; and that in every man this ray continually
wages war against his evil passions and his unruly
appetites, or, if it has succumbed, is never wholly
extinguished and annihilated. For he will then see that
it is not victory, but the struggle that deserves
honour; since in this as in all else no man can always
command success. Amid a cloud of errors, of failure,
and shortcomings, he will look for the struggling Soul,
for that which is good in every one amid the evil, and,
believing that each is better than from his acts and
omissions he seems to be, and that God cares for him
still, and pities him and loves him, he will feel that
even the erring sinner is still his brother, still
entitled to his sympathy, and bound to him by the
indissoluble ties of fellowship.
If there be nothing of the divine in man, what is he,
after all, but a more intelligent animal? He hath no
fault nor vice which some beast hath not; and therefore
in his vices he is but a beast of a higher order; and
he hath hardly any moral excellence, perhaps none,
which some animal hath not in as great a degree,-- even
the more excellent of these, such as generosity,
fidelity, and magnanimity.
Bardesan, the Syrian Christian, in his Book of the Laws
of Countries, says, of men, that "in the things
belonging to their bodies, they maintain their nature
like animals, and in the things which belong to their
minds, they do that which they wish, as being free and
with power, and as the likeness of God"- and Meliton,
Bishop of Sardis, in his Oration to Antoninus Caesar,
says, "Let Him, the ever-living God, be always present
in thy, mind; for thy mind itself is His likeness, for
it, too, is invisible and impalpable, and without form.
. . As He exists forever, so thou also, when thou shalt
have put off this which is visible and corruptible,
shalt stand before Him forever, living and endowed with
knowledge."
As a matter far above our comprehension, and in the
Hebrew Genesis the words that are used to express the
origin of things are of uncertain meaning, and with
equal propriety may be translated by the word
"generated," "produced," "made," or "created," we need
not dispute nor debate whether the Soul or Spirit of
man be a ray that has emanated or flowed forth from the
Supreme Intelligence, or whether the Infinite Power
hath called each into existence from nothing, by a mere
exertion of Its will, and endowed it with immortality,
and with intelligence like unto the Divine
Intelligence: for, in either case it may be said that
in man the Divine is united to the Human. Of this union
the equilateral Triangle inscribed within the Square is
a Symbol.
We see the Soul, Plato said, as men see the statue of
Glaucus, recovered from the sea wherein it had lain
many years--which viewing, it was not easy, if
possible, to discern what was its original nature, its
limbs having been partly broken and partly worn and by
defacement changed, by the action of the waves, and
shells, weeds, and pebbles adhering to it, so that it
more resembled some strange monster than that which it
was when it left its Divine Source. Even so, he said,
we see the Soul, deformed by innumerable things that
have done it harm, have mutilated and defaced it. But
the Mason who hath the ROYAL SECRET can also with him
argue, from beholding its love of wisdom, its tendency
toward association with what is divine and immortal,
its larger aspirations, its struggles, though they may
have ended in defeat, with the impediments and
enthralments of the senses and the passions, that when
it shall have been rescued from the material
environments that now prove too strong for it, and be
freed from the deforming and disfiguring accretions
that here adhere to it, it will again be seen in its
true nature, and by degrees ascend by the mystic ladder
of the Spheres, to its first home and place of origin.
The ROYAL SECRET, of which you are Prince, if you are a
true Adept, if knowledge seems to you advisable, and
Philosophy is, for you, radiant with a divine beauty,
is that which the Sohar terms The Mystery of the
BALANCE. It is the Secret of the UNIVERSAL
EQUILIBRIUM:--
--
Of that Equilibrium in the Deity, between the Infinite
Divine WISDOM and the Infinite Divine POWER, from which
result the Stability of the Universe, the
unchangeableness of the Divine Law, and the Principles
of Truth, Justice, and Right which are a part of it;
and the Supreme Obligation of the Divine Law upon all
men, as superior to all other law, and forming a part
of all the laws of men and nations.
--Of that Equilibrium also, between the Infinite Divine
JUSTICE and the Infinite Divine MERCY, the result of
which is the Infinite Divine EQUITY, and the Moral
Harmony or Beauty of the Universe. By it the endurance
of created and imperfect natures in the presence of a
Perfect Deity is made possible; and for Him, also, as
for us, to love is better than to hate, and Forgiveness
is wiser than Revenge or Punishment.
--Of that Equilibrium between NECESSITY and LIBERTY,
between the action of the DIVINE Omnipotence and the
Free-will of man, by which vices and base actions, and
ungenerous thoughts and words are crimes and wrongs,
justly punished by the law of cause and consequence,
though nothing in the Universe can happen or be done
contrary to the will of God; and without which
co-existence of Liberty and Necessity, of Free-will in
the creature and Omnipotence in the Creator, there
could be no religion, nor any law of right and wrong,
or merit and demerit, nor any justice in human
punishments or penal laws.
--Of that Equilibrium between Good and Evil, and Light
and Darkness in the world, which assures us that all is
the work of the Infinite Wisdom and of an Infinite
Love; and that there is no rebellious demon of Evil, or
Principle of Darkness co-existent and in eternal
controversy with God, or the Principle of Light and of
Good: by attaining to the knowledge of which
equilibrium we can, through Faith, see that the
existence of Evil, Sin, Suffering, and Sorrow in the
world, is consistent with the Infinite Goodness as well
as with the Infinite Wisdom of the Almighty.
Sympathy and Antipathy, Attraction and Repulsion, each
a Force of nature, are contraries, in the souls of men
and in the Universe of spheres and worlds; and from the
action and opposition of each against the other, result
Harmony, and that movement which is the Life of the
Universe and the Soul alike. They are not antagonists
of each other. The force that repels a planet from the
Sun is no more an evil force, than that which attracts
the Planet toward the central Luminary; for each is
created and exerted by the Deity, and the result is the
harmonious movement of the obedient Planets in their
elliptic orbits, and the mathematical accuracy and
unvarying regularity of their movements.
--Of that Equilibrium between Authority and Individual
Action which constitutes Free Government, by settling
on immutable foundations Liberty with Obedience to Law,
Equality with Subjection to Authority, and Fraternity
with Subordination to the Wisest and the Best: and of
that Equilibrium between the Active Energy of the Will
of the Present, expressed by the Vote of the People,
and the Passive Stability and Permanence of the Will of
the Past, expressed in constitutions of government,
written or unwritten, and in the laws and customs, gray
with age and sanctified by time, as precedents and
authority; which is represented by the arch resting on
the two columns, Jachin and Boaz, that stand at the
portals of the Temple builded by Wisdom, on one of
which Masonry sets the celestial Globe, symbol of the
spiritual part of our composite nature, and on the
other the terrestrial Globe, symbol of the material
part.
--And, finally, of that Equilibrium, possible in
ourselves, and which Masonry incessantly labours to
accomplish in its Initiates, and demands of its Adepts
and Princes (else unworthy of their titles), between
the Spiritual and Divine and the Material and Human in
man; between the Intellect, Reason, and Moral Sense on
one side, and the Appetites and Passions on the other,
from which result the Harmony and Beauty of a
well-regulated life.
Which possible Equilibrium proves to us that our
Appetites and Senses also are Forces given unto us by
God, for purposes of good, and not the fruits of the
malignancy of a Devil, to be detested, mortified, and,
if possible, rendered inert and dead: that they are
given us to be the means by which we shall be
strengthened and incited to great and good deeds, and
are to be wisely used, and not abused; to be controlled
and kept within due bounds by the Reason and the Moral
Sense; to be made useful instruments and servants, and
not permitted to become the managers and masters, using
our intellect and reason as base instrument for their
gratification.
And this Equilibrium teaches us, above all, to
reverence ourselves as immortal souls, and to have
respect and charity for others, who are even such as we
are, partakers with us of the Divine Nature, lighted by
a ray of the Divine Intelligence, struggling, like us,
toward the light; capable, like us, of progress upward
toward perfection, and deserving to be loved and
pitied, but never to be hated nor despised; to be aided
and encouraged in this life-struggle, and not to be
abandoned nor left to wander in the darkness alone,
still less to be trampled upon in our own efforts to
ascend.
From the mutual action and re-action of each of these
pairs of opposites and contraries results that which
with them forms the Triangle, to all the Ancient Sages
the expressive symbol of the Deity; as from Osiris and
Isis, Har-oeri, the Master of Light and Life, and the
Creative Word. At the angles of one stand,
symbolically, the three columns that support the Lodge,
itself a symbol of the Universe, Wisdom, Power, and
Harmony or Beauty. One of these symbols, found on the
Tracing-Board of the Apprentice's Degree, teaches this
last lesson of Freemasonry. It is the right-angled
Triangle, representing man, as a union of the spiritual
and material, of the divine arid human. The base,
measured by the number 3, the number of the Triangle,
represents the Deity and the Divine; the perpendicular,
measured by the number 4, the number of the Square,
represents the Earth, the Material, and the Human; and
the hypothenuse, measured by 5, represents that nature
which is produced by the union of the Divine and Human,
the Soul and the Body; the squares, 9 and 16, of the
base and perpendicular, added together, producing 25,
the square root whereof is 5, the measure of the
hypothenuse.
And as in each Triangle of Perfection, one is three and
three are one, so man is one, though of a double
nature; and he attains the purposes of his being only
when the two natures that are in him are in just
equilibrium; and his life is a success only when it too
is a harmony, and beautiful, like the great Harmonies
of God and the Universe.
Such, my Brother, is the TRUE WORD of a Master Mason;
such the true ROYAL SECRET, which makes possible, and
shall at length make real, the HOLY EMPIRE of true
Masonic Brotherhood.
GLORIA DEI EST CELARE VERBUM. AMEN.
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"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law". Abrahadabra
Om Bhur Bhuva Suvah
Tat Savithur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dheemahi
Dhiyo Yonah Prachodayat
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The Freemasons, Freemasonry--a Satanic Sect?
curi The Freemasons Mar 16 2006, 05:49 PM
Mar 16 2006, 05:49 PM
