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THE TRUE HISTORY OF SCOTTISH

ESOTERIC MASONRY

by Eric Wynants

Last Modified: March 22, 2014

In 1988 the Scottish historian David Stevenson published his research on the late sixteenth-century Scottish origins and subsequent Scottish development of "modern" Freemasonry, which he placed within a European intellectual context of serious interest in the occult sciences. (1)

Working from the surviving Scottish documents of operative and speculative lodges, Stevenson filled the frustrating gaps between early Stuart culture, its links with Scottish Masonry, and its preservation within the Jacobite diaspora after the expulsion of the last Stuart king, James VII and II.

Stevenson's doctoral student Lisa Kahler carried this research further into the early eighteenth century and documented the inaccuracies and distortions of the "orthodox" English version of Masonic history, which served Hanoverian-Whig political purposes. (2)

More importantly for my own research, this revisionist history enabled me to trace the eighteenth century ramifications of  Ecossais Masonry back to their early roots in Jewish and Scottish architectural history.

Stevenson's illuminating discussions of the role of the Art of Memory a mnemonic technique of architectural visualization-in the training of operative masons in Scotland provided a missing link to the similar art of visualization practiced by heterodox Hebraic mystics in the Jewish diaspora. (3)

It thus became possible to utilize objective scholarly accounts of ancient and medieval Jewish building practices, guild organization, and stone-technology to build a real world base for the imaginative flights of visionary Temple-building which appear in Jewish mystical literature. (4)

Reinforced by Elliot Wolfson's studies of the persistence of "iconic representation and visualization" in officially anti-iconic Judaism, it is possible  to connect the previously perplexing role of Cabalism in Freemasonry to the Whig-Newtonian-Hanoverian culture that allegedly created "modern" Freemasonry. (5)

Pre-modern Scotland provided a uniquely "Judaized" culture for the preservation of architectural and Solomonic traditions that were largely suppressed or ignored in other Western countries especially in Scotland's southern neighbor and traditional enemy, England.

The work of Arthur Williamson on the strange history of the "judeo Scots" sheds light on this peculiarly Hebraic national self-image that made Scotland-a land with no public Jewish community-a major repository of rare Jewish traditions. (6)

Moreover, an accident of geological history the ready availability of "hewable" stone for monumental architecture in ancient Israel and medieval Scotland-provided an unusually technological base for similarities of development in Jewish and Scottish national myths.

According to Stevenson, Masonic history has been generally led astray by the prevailing misconception that the emergence of Freemasonry took place in England - "a belief maintained in the face of the overwhelming preponderance of Scottish documentary evidence relating to the process, evidence which is often simultaneously explained away ... and then used in an English context to make up for the lack of English evidence." (7)

Because the occultist systems of Masonry that survived underground in post-Stuart Britain and that flourished in eighteenth-century Europe developed out of the architectural, scientific, religious, and political policies of the Scottish descended Stuart kings of Britain, it is necessary to examine those elements of early Stuart culture which were preserved within the secret enclaves of  Ecosaisses lodges. The vigorous revisionism currently undertaken by historians of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Scotland and England makes possible a new factual context, which sheds light on the deliberately secret history of Stuart Freemasonry. (8)

With the expulsion of James VII and II from the British throne in 1688, political exiles carried Masonic traditions throughout the 'Jacobite" diaspora, where they attracted a startling variety of monarchs, philosophers, scientists, and artists to their supposedly defeated creed and culture. The Hermetic-Cabalistic masques of the Stuart court, which were often designed and constructed by Masons, disappeared from Britain after the "Glorious Revolution," but they eventually reappeared in the elaborately theatrical ceremonies developed by Jacobite exiles and their local supporters in Ecossaises  lodges. (9)

The revival of the Masonic "masque" in late nineteenth-century Scottish Rite lodges in the United States is revealed in the recently published paintings and photographs of the scenic designs, theatrical techniques, and illusionistic effects which recreated the Solomonic magnificence and mystical radiance of the early Stuart performances. (10)

With the accession of the Elector of Hanover as King George I of England in 1714, Masonic supporters of the Stuarts mounted a decades long, clandestine campaign to regain the British throne.

In 1717 a rival Hanoverian system of Masonry was established, which aimed to suppress and defeat that campaign. When the Hanoverian victors in England-and their descendants among Whig historians wrote the histories of this great cultural and political rivalry, they created their own myth of Protestant progress and toleration, which almost obliterated the Celtic-Catholic-Jewish elements in the opposition's struggle and which ignored the survival of those elements in an international Jacobite culture.

However, the investigations of academic Jacobite studies-. led by Eveline Cruickshanks, Paul Nionod, Frank McLynn, Edward Corp, Bruce Lenman, and Murray Pittock-overturns much of the conventional wisdom about the Whig-Newtonian-Hanoverian culture that allegedly created "modern" Freemasonry."

THE INVENTION OF THE ANCIENTS / PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY

The today untenable idea of an Ancient Wisdom Tradition that Theosophists and Esotericists are referring to,  had its roots in the Renaissance where the Cabalah as "the oral Torah," was considered the Ancient Wisdom Teaching.

Renaissance philosophers (deemed "science") taught the Cabalah contained the secret teachings of Moses, an oral supplement to Scripture, making it possible to accurately interpret the written Word of the Bible. (Pico della Mirandola "On the Dignity of Man" p. 29)

In other words the Renaissance  philosopher/scientists worked within a view of history in which their own tradition was represented as an ancient philosophy, contemporary with Moses, only to have this legend gradually undermined by scholarly studies, the Enlightenment rejected this old order.

Renaissance Neo-Platonist used the "prisca theologia" (ancient wisdom tradition) theory to support their claim that Platonism was reconcilable with Christian doctrines.

The notion of a "perennial philosophy," a wisdom which the ancient sages had once been in possession of but since then had been lost to mankind, is a common theme in Renaissance scholarship. The Calvinist scholar Michel Servet summarized it in this paragraph:  

"This was from the beginning of the world the received doctrine about the Wisdom of God, published in the Holy Scriptures, and taught to the Greeks by the Chaldeans and Egyptians from the tradition of their ancestors ...

Zoroaster and Trismegistus taught it, from whom, chiefly from Trismegistus, all the Greeks learnt it, from Orpheus to Plato." (As quoted and translated in Walker, "The Prisca Theologia in France", p. 249.)

HIGH DEGREE MASONRY AND STUART POLITICS

Scottish Masonry had less to do with “Knights Templar” from the middle ages as is often claimed in frince cottage industry History books, but rather with an  interest in the Cabalah, and later for a period of time, in the restoration of the Stuart Monarchy.

Elias Ashmole and John Evelyn were both suspected by Parliament of maintaining contact with royalists abroad, and they may have facilitated communications with Moray's Scottish Masonic network. When Sir Robert Bruce left the company of Moray and Alexander Bruce in Holland and returned to England, he called on Ashmole and Evelyn. Evelyn also received a Visit from the Marquis of Argyll, Lord Lothian, and "some other Scotch noblemen, all strangers to me. At this time, Moray believed that Argyll would support the royalist cause, which may explain Evelyn's growing intimacy with him. Though Lothian had developed friendly relations with some of Cromwell's officers in Scotland, his motivation was the alleviation of his exiled father's poverty. Despite some royalists' suspicions, Moray maintained his trust in Lothian's essential loyalty.

Evelyn also communicated with Sir John Denham, who had returned to London in late 1653, where his presence was noted by Hartlib, who described him as "a Mighty ingenious man for all manner of waterworks and other ingenuities" and "a great mechanical traveller." (11)

It was perhaps these interests and skills that led to his alleged association with Masonry and to his later friendship with Moray. In 1655 Denham was arrested as a royalist plotter, but two years later he was privy to the plans of Buckingham to return to England, "upon some design, for a rising in the city or against the Protector's person. (J.Denham “Poetical Works” p. 16)

The royalists hoped to 'Win Sir Thomas Fairfax to their cause, and Buckingham succeeded in marrying his daughter. As noted earlier, Buckingham was also named as a Mason, probably initiated during his service in Scotland. Throughout the Interregnum, Evelyn carried on a ciphered correspondence with the exiles, while Ashmole was kept under surveillance. In August 1659 Ashmole recorded that "My Study was broken open by the Soldiers, upon pretence of searching for the King, but I lost nothing out of it. (12)

Moray's other Masonic contact in England was Lauderdale, his "friend at Windsor," who sent word to him about the work of Dr. Brian Walton on the English Polyglot Bible (1654-57), which stimulated a revival of' interest in Villalpando's interpretations of the Temple. (13)

Walton's Polyglot featured an elaborate architectural engraving on the frontispiece, designed by John Webb, as Well as complex depictions of Jewish architecture by N. Venscelas Hollar. That Moray wanted to see this London publication on the restored Temple of Jerusalem points to the cross-channel links established in the late 1650's which laid the Masonic groundwork for the king's restoration. That these links also included a Swedish dimension would become important to the international spread of Stuart-style Freemasonry in the eighteenth-century.

Since Alexander Bruce's arrival in Bremen, Moray had solicited news about the Swedes and Danes, whom the royalists assiduously courted. On 29 April 1658 Moray informed Bruce that he was anxiously awaiting the arrival of Bellenden, whose effort to gain Swedish support now depended on the many Scottish residents in Gothenburg. (14)

He also recalled his earlier friendship with a Swedish military officer, whose name he uncertainly spelled as Col. Owagh Clough or Clook, and who was an expert on fortifications. "Clook" was a fellow prisoner at Ingolstach, at the time of Moray's correspondence with Kircher, and the two spent much time in discussions of their mutual interests. Moray would later maintain contact with Swedish scientists.

Thus, it is possible that he was privy to the clandestine establishment of a Masonic lodge, named "St. Magnus," in Gothenbur , which was chartered from Edinburgh.

The lodge is mentioned in ' Johan Starck, Apologie do Franc-Macons (Philadelphie. 17 79) p. 68: also see Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Lessing's Masonic Dialogues (1778) , trans. A. Cohen 'London. 1927', p.99-100. Both Starck and Lessing attended Swedish Rite lodges in Germany.

From 1656 on, there were rumors that General Monk, who was currently employing the Swedish Freemason Tessin on fortification work at Leith, was leaning towards the royalist cause. (15)

Christina, who had earlier recruited members of the Tessin family to Swedish service, now used her influence with Swedes, Spaniards, Germans, and Jews to build support for Charles. (16)

While this multi-national, Masonic network carried out its clandestine collaboration, an additional secret network was utilized for the restoration effort. Since January 1654 the younger sons of old royalist families in England had organized a resistance movement known as "The Sealed Knot." Collaborating with its agents were the Scottish royalists Lauderdale, from his prison cell, and Elizabeth Murray, daughter of the exiled William Murray. Earl of Dysart. Elizabeth exploited her f'riendship with Cromwell's wife to prevent the execution of' Lauderdale and to arrange his transfer to a less onerous prison in Windsor Castle. (17)

Now granted considerable freedom, Lauderdale added to his great library and continued his investigations of alchemical, architectural, and mathematical lore. Like Moray, Lauderdale studied Druslus, Scaliger, Amama, Kircher, and Alsted, and he acquired Rosicrucian and Fluddian works. (18)

Considered a "master of Hebrew," he gathered rare works on the Jewish traditions, and he apparently developed his "extraordinary memory" through study of his Lullist trcatiscs." In line with Charles II’s policy of bringing together royalists of different religious faiths, Lauderdale established communications with the Puritan Richard Baxter and other advocates of religious pacification.

The king's ecumenical agenda was not shared by his English advisor Edward Hyde, who was distrusted by Scottish Presbyterians and British Catholics. Contemptuous of Balcarres and Dysart and suspicious of Moray, Hyde instigated "false accusations" and "unjust persecution" of their Scottish party. (19)

In 1655 the Scots and Catholics protested to Charles II that Hyde subverted their restorationist efforts. Dr. Alexander Fraser, the king's Scottish physician, joined with Balcarres and "other Scots at court" to draw up a petition to the king that the Scottish Presbyterians could provide valuable advice and services but "were discouraged and hindered" by Hyde, who was "an old known and declared enemy to their party; in whom they could repose no trust." (20)

They urged that Hyde be removed from the council or "at least not be suffered to be privy to anything that should be proposed by them." Fraser had accompanied Charles 11 to Scotland, where he carried out important intelligence and military operations, and he enjoyed the full confidence of the king and the Scottish "Masonic" party. His distrust of Hyde was shared by Dr. Massonet, who accused Hyde of disloyalty and collusion with Cromwell. From now on, the separation of Scottish from English plotting would be reflected in the activities of Scottish Masons and English "Knotters."

Despite the Anglo-Scottish rivalries, the energetic Elizabeth Murray tried to provide a link between the two factions. When William Murray died in December 1655, Elizabeth assumed his title and became the Countess of Dysart. Gilbert Burnet, a later protege of Moray, noted that the beautiful Lady Dysart had "a wonderful quickness of apprehension" and had studied divinity, history, philosophy, and mathematics. (21)

Using the cover of arranging her family's business affairs in Belgium, she often travelled to the Continent with messages from Lauderdale to Moray, her late father's cousin and confidante. Earlier, Dysart had hoped his daughter would marry Moray, but now the two maintained a "true friendship." Learned in the occult sciences and gifted with second sight, she collaborated with Moray on the production of invisible inks and other chemical services to the king's cause Jane Clark argues that the Dysarts were undoubtedly Masons and that Elizabeth utilized Masonic symbols and techniques of communication to transmit her messages to royalists abroad. (22)

With considerable courage and defiant insouciance, she also carried out dangerous missions for the Sealed Knot, while she cultivated friendships with Cromwell's wife and intimates.

In March 1657 Cromwell received reports that Balcarres, from his base in Holland, was holding "a secret intelligence" with Monk; even worse, Balcarres was spreading rumors that Generall Monk is revolted" in order to build support for the royalists' "intended insurrection." (23)

Though Monk defended himself to Cromwell and continued to enforce the military occupation in Scotland, his letters suggest some ambivalence in his position. In September he reported from Dalkeith that the Scottish ministers "begin to pray again for Charles Stuart, so there may be a new project." He then added offhandedly that he had arrested "some straggling fellows come over lately, the most of them from the King of Sweden's army." In May Cromwell's spies reported that Colonel Alexander Hamilton, kinsman of Moray's late comrade, "brought 64 Scottish soldiers from the Swedish army to Ostend. (24)Were these recruits members of the lodge at Gothenburg and ready to Join their brethren in Holland and Scotland?

A rare surviving masonic document, composed at Perth in December 1658, suggests that there was a renewal of royalist commitment among local masons. John Mylne, who had cooperated with Monk in the building of fortifications and served with the Scottish commissioners to Cromwell, subsequently resigned all share in the conduct of public affairs. However, he retained the mastership of the "Ancient Lodge of Scone and Perth" until shortly before his death in late 1657. Though it is unknown whether Mylne was the inspiration for the proud assertions made in the 1658 document, it is clear that the Perth masons were determined to reclaim their ancient independence and royal patronage. Thus, on 24 December they issued a new "Contract by the Master Masons and fellow-craftsmen ... on the decease of John Mylne, Master Mason and Master of the said Lodge":

"That as formerly we and predecessors have and had from the temple of temples building on this earth one uniform community and union throughout the whole world from which temple proceeded one in Kilwinning in this our nation of Scotland and from that of Kilwinning many more within this kingdom of which there proceeded the Abbey and Lodge of Scone, built by men of art and architecture where they placed that lodge as the second lodge within this nation, which is now past memory of many generations, and was upheld by the Kings of Scotland ... the said Masters, Freemen, and Fellow Crafts, inhabitants within the said Burgh of Perth, were always able within themselves to maintain their first liberties, and are yet willing to do the same as the Masters, Freemen, or Fellow Crafts did formerly (whose names we know not)-But to our record and knowledge of our predecessors there came one from the North country named John Mylne, a mason, a man well experted in his calling, who entered himself both Freeman and Burgess of this Burgh, who in process of time by reason of his skill and art was preferred to be the King's Majesty's Master Mason and Master of the said Lodge at Scone, and his son John Mylne being after his father's decease preferred to the said office, and Master of the, said Lodge, in the, reign of His Majesty James the Sixth of blessed memmy, who by the said second-John Mylne was by the King's own desire entered Freeman, Alason, and Fellow Craft, and during all his lifetime he maintained the same as one member of the Lodge of Scone--so that this Lodge is the most famous Lodge (if well ordered) within this kingdom-of which name of Mylne there had continued several generations of Master Masons to his Majesties the Kings of Scotland ." (25)

The rest of the document dealt with the choosing of a new master and warden for the lodge and instructions about the traditional duties (including the gift of gloves) incumbent upon the members. That John Mylne fils was not elected to fill his father's role was probably due to his residence in Edinburgh, where he was employed on various architectural projects (such as erecting a great vertical sundial). Importantly, the younger Mylne also represented the City at the Convention of' Royal Burghs in 1655-59, when he gained the acquaintance of' General Monk.

All the royalist plans were thrown into full gear when news arrived on the Continent of the death of Oliver Cromwell in September 1658. When the inept Richard Cromwell assumed the Protectorship, the royalists increased their overtures to Monk in Scotland. On 30 September a Cromwellian officer in Leith wrote to Thurloe that Scottish preachers were now using mystical language, while they pray for the deliverance of' the exiles and captives to be delivered from the yoke of Pharaoh and out of Egypt: "Thus they speake, but so ambiguously that they can evade, if questioned; yet see plainly that the whole people knowes their meaning." (26)

The use of mystical Hebraic terminology harked back to the days of the first Covenantand its underlying Masonic organization. Moreover, many Scottish masons were currently employed on the fortifications at Leith, which were directed by the Swedish architect Tessin and his commander Monk. Tessin had earlier been initiated in the Edinburgh Lodge, which was directed by John Mylne.

Monk had no respect for Richard Cromwell, and he sensed that the political situation would become increasingly volatile. Thus, he began the systematic reversal of the late Protector's policies in Scotland. While he replaced Englishmen with Scots on the courts of justice and Exchequer, he consolidated his own power and made his rule more acceptable to the subjects of the northern kingdom. (27)

Unlike Oliver Cromwell, who despised the Scots, Monk enjoyed the company of local nobles, soldiers, and craftsmen. During his travels to all parts of' the kingdom, he had developed an intelligence network that kept him abreast of the growing royalist sentiments of all segments of the population. More significantly, he allegedly became a Freemason and thus privy to the communication networks, oaths of secrecy, and bonds of' loyalty between the brethren. According to a report made in 1741 by the exiled Jacobite Mason Andrew -Michael Ramsay, certain royalist Masons knew of Monk's affiliation and sought to attract him to their cause.

A.F. von Busching in “ Beitraege” VI, 329,  Busching noted that when Ramsay lectured in the lodges, he did not mention Monk's Masonic strategy for the Restoration because he did not want to arouse suspicions that the Masons in France where active in affairs of state. See also Andre Kervella, La Maconnerie Ecossaise dans la France de l’Ancient Regime Paris, 1999, 208.

That Ramsay revealed this political secret to Count Carl Gustaf Tessin, a Swedish kinsman of Monk's architect, gives it a certain piquancy.

Though Ramsay's account has been ignored by English historians of' the Restoration, there is enough evidence for Monk's Masonic contacts to give it credibility. Shortly after Cromwell's death, a young Scottish architect-William Bruce of Kinross -approached Monk to solicit his support for a Stuart restoration. Fenwick suggests that Bruce participated in the construction of Monk's citadels at Aire and Leith, which provided him contact with Tessin and Mylne, who directed the masons at those projects. (28)

Bruce would later become Charles II's Surveyor of Works in Edinburgh and, according to Anderson, the Grand Master of Scottish Freemasonry. (29)

During the Interregnum, he reportedly pursued his architectural studies in France and Holland. A friend of Moray and cousin of Alexander Bruce, he provided a link between their Masonic networks in Europe and Scotland .

Moray later collaborated with Sir William Bruce on architectural projects; see Henry M.Paton, "Letters from John, Second Earl of Lauderdale, to John, Second Earl of Tweeddale, and Others," in Miscellany of the Scottish Historical Society, VI 1939, 233.

Another cousin of William Bruce, the Countess of Dysart, provided communication between the exiled Masons and the Sealed Knot, and William visited her in London. From his later friendship with Lauderdale, it seems that William also contacted the latter during his imprisonment at Windsor. Through her contacts with Cromwell's inner circle, Lady Dysart may have learned that parliamentary spies had penetrated the "Sealed Knot" and had suborned its chief, Sir Richard Willis, who continued to correspond with Hyde and Nicholas while receiving Cromwellian bribes.

According to Burnet, who probably received the information from Moray or the Bruces, "Thus Cromwell had all the king's party in a net. He let them dance in it at his pleasure; and upon occasion clapt them up for a short while." (30)

"There is no department of knowledge that gives us more certainty of Christ‘s divinity than magic and cabala," wrote Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the translator of the so called writings of "Hermes" in 1486.

The ritualized unification of the Masters Word drew on Christian Cabalistic lore, in which the unification of the letters of the Tetragrammaton was "predicated on and facilitated by some form of visualization of these letters within the imagination.

Though the seventeenth-century Masons externalized the internal process into ritual gestures and Postures, they still re-enacted the Christian Cabalistic belief that "Whoever has knowledge it as if' the Temple were built in his life," because "such a person knows how to unify the unique name and it is as if he built the palace above.

But during the re-creation of Scottish Masonry at the courts of the exiled Stuart King in France, the search for "the lost word" signified "the royal word" given by Charles II that he would reclaim the throne; the "son of the widow" pointed to Charles II as son of Henrietta Maria. To increase security, these royalist symbols were changed to the "signs of the Rose-Cross Masons."

Initiates of the eighteenth-century Clermont Rite preserved a tradition that David Ramsay was succeeded as head of the order in 1659 by Charles II, with "Eduard Frazer" serving as his "Vikar." (31) Baron von Starck, the German source for these early Scottish-Templar Masons, was often inaccurate or confused about their forenames and spellings, and "Eduard" was probably Dr. Alexander Fraser, who had earlier distanced Scottish Presbyterian plotting from Hyde's English agenda. Since 1655 Fraser had worked as a confidential agent for Lauderdale and Moray. Starck claimed that Fraser's successors included William Bruce (1679-86) and Andrew Michael Ramsav (1708-14). Whether these Rosicrucian-Templar Restoration traditions were developed in the 1650's or after the 1688 fall of the Stuart dynasty remains an historical puzzle. But some pieces of that puzzle can be verified by historical documents.

Sir Robert Moray's letters provide a unique insight into the intellectual and spiritual world of an active Freemason in the 1650's. They also make clear that many "modern" trends of speculative Masonry were already emerging among the royalist exiles on the Continent. Moreover, Moray may have shared his Masonic interests with his "comrade" and fellow-lodger, the French physician Massonet, and the French military officers, with whom he regularly dined and socialized. (Kincardine MS,5049 p.24)

Peter Massenet was created an M.D. by Charles I in 1646, served as writing instructor to the princes Charles and James, and then fought for Charles II in England.

While in exile, he became the confidential friend of Balcarrcs and Moray. (E. Nicholas, Nicholas Paper, III, p.168.)

French historians refer to a murky tradition of Stuart-French Masonic interchange during the Interregnum, and Massonet may have been privy to Moray's Masonic strategies as well as his Hermetic experiments.

Though Moray claimed to live as a hermit in Maastricht, he continued to serve as a political intelligencer and contact person for the international royalist network. Thus, by examining that network in the context of possible Masonic associations, we can evaluate the plausibility of eighteenth-century claims about Masonic contributions to the Stuart restoration.

Unfortunately, there is a dearth of information on Freemasonry in England during the Interregnum, despite speculation about the possible Masonic activities of Ashmole and Thomas Vaughan. Fragments of evidence do suggest, however, that Moray and Lauderdale could have called upon a few royalist Masons in London. Though Ashmole did not record any further Masonic participation until 1682, he became friendly with John Evelyn who was currently investigating operative masonry. Both men travelled through England to inspect the condition of religious and royal architecture. (32)

They also helped William Dugdale's research for his royalist architectural treatise, The History of St. Paul's Cathedral (1658). Evelyn began a manuscript account of "Trades: Secrets and Receipts Mechanical as they come casually to hand," for which he tried to investigate the craft of masonry. (33)

Planning to fill over six hundred pages, Evelyn listed alphabetically the technical subjects he would cover. Among the few he actually recorded was section M on the duties and techniques of "the Free-Mason," which revealed his contact with operative masons who shared a few of their secrets. Evelyn noted the intellectual and manual challenges required in their work, and he included the architectengineer under L for "Liberal Arts," thus giving him gentleman status. However, these were not propitious years for the masons, for their trade suffered from Cromwellian iconoclasm. Evelyn's friend Christopher Wren later recalled that "there were no masons in London when he was a young man" (i.e., during the Interregnum). (34)Though it is unclear whether Wren meant operative masons or speculative Freemasons, Evelyn found the former disappointingly uncooperative. He ultimately confessed that the necessity "of conversing with mechanical capricious persons" proved too unpleasant to him.

After Cromwell's death, his successors were worried by rumors of new link-ups between royalists in Scotland, England, and Holland. Having penetrated the "Knot," they may have suspected a Masonic element in the plotting. A rare surviving Masonic manuscript, dated 1659, suggests that parliamentary intelligencers were investigating Masonry in Britain. The manuscript "Narrative of the Free Masons Word and Signs" was a "copia vera" drafted by Thomas Martin, whose identity is otherwise unknown. (35)

It provided an account, hostile in tone and apparently made by a spy, of contemporary lodge practices. In passages that would have interested suspicious government agents, Martin described in detail the recognition signs used by Masons-i.e., the signs, postures, movement of hat, square paper, crooked pin, etc., used to identify the "free" worker to other operative masons, who were bound by similar oaths. He pointed out that these techniques allowed them to secretly exchange money. Other more amusing signs were blowing the nose in a handkerchief, which is then held straight out and shaken; knocking at any door with two little knocks and then a big one; saying "Star the Guile" when the glass goes around too slowly, etc.

Martin expressed his scorn for the Masons' claim to international brotherhood:

To Discourse a Mason in France, Spain, or Turkey (say they) the sign is to kneel down on his left knee and hold up his right hand to the Sun and the Outlandish Brother will presently take him up, but believe me if' they go on their knees on that account they may remain there or any persons observe their Signs as long as the Jews will remain on their Beliefs, to receive their wish'd for Messiah from the East.

With Charles II currently trying to forge a unified front out of French, Spanish, and Jewish (Jews from Turkish territories?) supporters, Martin's criticism was perhaps relevant to rumors of international Masonic cooperation.

Martin then announced, "Here followeth their private Discourse by Way of Question and Answer," in which the esoteric and essentially Jewish traditions were obliquely expressed. To the catechistical questioner, the initiate answers that a "Just and perfect Lodge is ... two prentices, two fellow-crafts, and one Master on the highest hill or lowest Valley in the World without the crow of a Cock or the bark of a Dog." To the question, "from whence do you derive your principles," the initiate answers "From a greater than you." "Who is he on Earth that is greater than a free Mason" provokes the response, "He that carried to the highest pinnacle of the Temple of Jerusalem." Martin noted that "In some places they Discourse as followeth": "Where did they first call their Lodge? As the Holy Chappel of St. John." This allusion to the Knights of St. John of the Hospital suggests a chivalric theme in certain lodges-a point later reinforced by Swift's reference to "Lodges" of the "Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.  

UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD OR TYRANNY

From the time of Charles II's oral commitments to the Jews at the Restoration, his philo-Semitic policies over the next twenty-five years fueled a secretive tradition of Jewish-Masonic collaboration that emerged dramatically in the next century. Moreover, this tradition would be strongest in the Rosicrucian degrees of Ecossais rites developed by exiled supporters of the Stuart dynasty. Because this linkage of Jews and Freemasons would prove so controversial and volatile, it is important to examine the Stuart context that fueled the rumors and the reality. Though the question of Stuart sympathy for Catholicism was the burning public issue of the latter part of Charles II's reign, it was intrinsically linked with less known but broader issues of tolerancc that would eventually define the "modern" Masonic theme of universal brotherhood. In the Stuart Temple of Wisdom, not only Protestants and Catholics but Jews and Moslems would be welcomed as comrades in chivalric fraternity.

In Tangier, the projected gateway to the Levant, the governors' cooperation with Jewish interpreters was crucial to completion of the great Mole and stone forts, projects of continuing interest to Moray and Wren. To facilitate the Barbados trade in which Davidson, Lauderdale, and other Scots were heavily invested, the king granted full privileges to their Jewish agents. (36)

In january 1663 Charles and his foreign secretary Arlington established a new precedent by allowing a naturalized Jew from Barbados, the diamond merchant Da Vega, to become a Freeman of a Company in London. (37)

Though Charles still could not count on parliamentary support, he communicated to various Portuguese Jews in April that "he was resolved to grant" permission to a large number of Marranos to immigrate to England. (38)

When Jacob Abendana dedicated Halevi's Kuzari to Davidson, the royalist panegyric smoothed the way for his brother Isaac Abendana to bring copies of the work to England and to establish himself as a Hebrew teacher at Cambridge in 1663. (39)

The king's policy also opened the doors for renewed Hebrew studies in Scotland, where it was well-known that Lauderdale was an expert in the language. One Jew travelled to Scotland, where he instructed Patrick Gordon, who became Professor of Hebrew at King's College, Aberdeen. (40)

At St. Andrews the king donated Pound 50 for a Professor of Hebrew, while at Edinburgh a converted Jew was invited to teach Jewish language and history. (41)

Rabbi  Jacob Sasportas wrote from London to a friend in Rotterdam:

We live at a time in which God has seen fit greatly to ameliorate the condition of his people, bringing them forth from the general conchnon of serfdom into freedom ... specifically, in that we are free to practise our own true religion ... a written statement was issued from him [Charles II], duly signed affirming that no untoward measures had been or would be initiated against us., and that they should not look towards any protector other than his Majesty; during the continuance of whose lifetime they need feel no trepidation because of any sect that might oppose them, inasmuch as he himself would be their advocate and assist them with all his power. (42)

Shane observes that it was the king's answer "which established the right of the Jews to re-settle in England rather than the non-committal reply which Cromwell had earlier given to the petition of Menasseh ben Israel." (43)

Arlington, whom Anderson identified as a Freemason, would later be involved with Rabbi Leon's visit to London.

Encouraged by the king's policy, the London Jews began raising funds for the enlargement of their synagogue. They probably learned from their Dutch brothers that Leon's architectural theories received international exposure and critical praise, when Johan Saubert published an expanded Latin version of the rabbi's treatise, De Templo Hierosolymitano (1665).

The translation was printed at the request of Duke Augustus of Brunswick, and Saubert included Leon's Hebrew song of praise for Augustus. When the book first appeared, the latter's brother Duke Frederick of Brunswick visited the Royal Society on 25 February 1665. (44)

Thus, Wren and the Fellows could have learned about the architectural explications and designs that Leon contributed to the edition. Moray, especially, would have been interested in Kircher's letter to Saubert, in which his "epistolar correspondent" praised Leon's treatise. On 31 October 1664 Kircher sent Saubert his critical evaluation, which the latter published in the edition:

I also read with utmost enthusiasm your book about the Temple of Solomon, which your zeal for the public good and your concern for illumination ensured the publication at your own personal expense. It is a quite exceptional work and one which the literary world could not but value for its exposition of the minutiae. (45)

Saubert included a portrait of Leon, placed above his models of the Tabernacle and Temple, and an admiring biography, which recognized his importance as a  Jewish savant. He also noted Leon's disagreement with Villalpando's explications of Jewish architecture, which the large fold-out engravings of Leon's designs demonstrated. Drawing purely on Jewish sources, including the "Kabbalistas," Leon made clear that he hoped for an actual rebuilding of the Temple and thus included practical advice relevant to operative masons involved in synagogue and church construction. He described the columns of Jachin and Boaz, the sculptured Cherubim, and the lapis fondationis-all subjects of interest to Jewish and Christian builders in London.

With Jews in Britain and its colonies, as well as their co-religionists on the Continent, now perceiving Charles II as their protector, the earlier Stuart support for Leon's architectural endeavors possibly provoked a Hebraic Masonic tribute.

In a manuscript entitled "The History of Masonry," written by Thomas Treloar in 1665, there is a striking merger of Scottish Masonic tradition and Hebrew royalist panegyric. An inscription on the manuscript reads: "History and Charges of Masonry, Copied by me Jon Raymond MDCCV." (46)

In the surviving fragment, there are inscriptions in Hebrew lettering which reinforce the stress of Jewish and Solomonic traditions in the restored fraternity. The text begins with the Hebrew inscription, "in the beginning God created the heaven and earth," and then recounts the story of' Hiram the architect.

The text then relates a highly Judaised version of the Old Charges, adding peculiar details and claiming Jewish sources for the discoveries of Euclid and Pythagoras. McLeod observes that in standard English texts of the Old Charges, Solomon's Temple is simply one episode of many and not the most important at that:

Euclid and Edwin both claim considerably more space. But for Jon Raymond [and Treloar] Solomon is at centre stage right from the preliminary verses. He includes an attestation, "All may witness my seal and hand," with the "signature" of "Solomon the King" (in Hebrew letters and in transliterated Hebrew) and "Solomon's Seal," the hexalpha within a circle. He adduces the Tabernacle of Moses as a prototype of the Temple. He describes the artificer of the Temple in these terms: "And Hiram the Tyrian widow's son was sent to King Solomon by Hiram the King of Tyre. And he was a cunning workman in brass and purple and all medals."  (47)

McLeod expresses puzzlement at this "remarkable I early- naming of the architect as Hiram, but Stevenson suggests that the Hiramic legend in Scottish Freemasonry was already present in William Schaw's time. Thus, "the mental lodge" or "memory temple" described in late seventeenth-century catechisms contained the grave of Hiram, "the greatest of all architects." Through certain Cabalistic and necromantic rituals, the initiate could discover and rejuvenate Hiram. The emphasis on his role as the "widow's son" pointed to Charles II's role as Henrietta Maria's son----a Stuart reference that would take on more poignant significance for Jacobite exiles in the next century.  (48)

Even more striking in the Treloar MS. were the unique references to certain sixteenth- and sevcnteenth-century monarchs claimed as rulers of "the whole Craft":

And yet another Henry did rule over ye whole Craft even ye seventh of' that name.

And after many days Charles did reign in ye land and lo his blood was spilled upon ye earth even by ye traitor Cromwell. Behold now ye return of pleasant for doth riot ye Son of ye blessed Martyr rule over ye whole land. Long may he reign in ye land and govern ye Craft. Is it riot written ye shall riot hurt ye Lords anointed.

The elimination of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I from Masonic history should not surprise, for they were considered enemies of ecclesiastical and royalist building projects. But the omission of James VI and I possibly indicates that James was not recognised as "governor" over English Masons, despite his initiation in Scotland. Or perhaps Treloar did not believe that true "Hiramic" Freemasonry really existed in England until the restoration of Charles II.

The Treloar MS. concludes its powerful royalist statement with an inscription in Hebrew, "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?" This quotation from Psalm 2 was often applied to the radical Protestants of the Interregnum, and the rebellious heathen were subsequently admonished to serve the Lord's anointed king. In the year when the manuscript was written, the Jewish community in London must have worried that religious sectarians in Britain were linking their cause to Jewish millenarian developments in the Middle Last. Reports of the messianic claims of Sabbatai Zevi, a Cabalistic prophet in Smyrna, stimulated waves of enthusiasm among many Jews on the Continent.

Queen Christina became so fascinated by Sabbatai's claims that she almost became a disciple. In Hamburg she danced in the streets with her Jewish friends in anticipation of the apocalyptic moment. (49)

In London Oldenburg eagerly sought news about the movement from the alchemist Borri, the chiliast Serrarius, and the philosopher Spinoza, which revived his millenarial hopes-and made him vulnerable to royalist suspicions of sedition. (50)

In November 1665 Robert Boulter published in London a Sabbatian message to serve the agenda of radical dissidents, who opposed Charles II's policy of toleration. He claimed that he received a letter from Aberdeen which dcscribed the arrival on the Scottish coast of a mysterious ship, loaded with Hebrew-speaking Jews who were gathering their brethren from all over the world to return to Jerusalem. (51)

The Sabbatians boldly proclaimed on their satin sails, "THESE ARE THE TEN TRIBES OF ISRAEL," who would give liberty of' conscience to all (except the Turks). It is unclear whether Boulter believed there were actual   Jews living in Scotland, or whether he hoped to insult the Scots and their Stuart king by implying that they where Jewish.

Meanwhile in Amsterdam, some Jewish admirers of Sabbatai Zevi hoped that the English king would assist them, despite the current state of war between England and Holland which had spread to the Mediterranean.

But when Sabbatal Zevi -under threat of death-apostasized to Islam, the royalists in Britain were relieved that the potentially incendiary movement fizzled out. There is little evidence that Jews in London supported the campaign, which threatened to undermine their delicate position under the king's protection.  (52)

Oldenburg, however, continued to correspond about the millenarian implications of the affair, and his indiscrete comments to friends in Holland during the Anglo Dutch war placed him under government suspicion. Letters from the radical Serrarius were impounded, and an order for Oldenburg's arrest was issued in summer 1667. (53)

Evelyn noted that Oldenburg was held a close prisoner in the Tower "for having been suspected to write Intelligence, etc." (54)

Because Evelyn appreciated the secretary's work for the Royal Society, he got permission from Arlington to visit Oldenburg in the Tower, and he came away confident that he was innocent of seditious intent. However, Oldenburg's interest in Sabbatian millenarianism was still considered risky, and he was not released until a month after the signing of the Treaty of Breda. (55)

The perceived linkage between Sabbatians and Protestant subversives possibly spurred Solomon Franco to publish a royalist panegyric, Truth Springing Out of the Earth, which he dedicated to Charles II on 2 July 1668.

As Hebrew instructor of Ashmole, Franco may have learned that Ashmole's friend Evelyn was now undertaking a study of Sabbatai Zevi and similar radical enthusiasts. In his pamphlet, Franco announced his conversion to the Church of England, which he credited to the miraculous nature of Charles II's restoration and to the arguments of Christian friends that the Cabala proved that Jesus was the Messiah. He stressed that the ancient Jews were devoted to monarchy and that rebels against the king were punished with death. Franco was also determined to defend Cabalistic traditions against critics like Samuel Parker, who two years earlier had ridiculed Rosicrucian exponents of Cabala.

Perhaps Franco also hoped to forestall Evelyn's potential criticism of Sabbatai Zevi's Cabalistic pretensions. Thus, he gave detailed expositions of Cabalistic traditions of the male and female Cherubim, the role of the Shekinah in reception of divine influx, the architecture of the Temple, etc. In a passage with Masonic resonance, Franco affirmed: "The Temple, which is the Heart of the World, whose Influence is communicated to all parts of the Body, which now is of Stone, after the coming of the Messias shall be of flesh. (56)

With Cabalistic study reclaimed by Franco as permissable for royalist Christians, Evelyn's expose of the Sabbatian movement was rendered less threatening to Jews (and Marranos) who enjoyed the protection of the king.

Yo Arlington, Evelyn linked Christian partisans of the Sabbatians with Cromwellian radicals, who still posed a threat to the Stuart regime:

But whil'st the Time is not vet accomplish'd, I could wish our modern Enthusiasts, and other prodigious sects amongst us, who Dreame of the like Carnal Expectations, and a Temporal Monarchy, might seriously weigh how nearly their Characters approach the Style and Design of these Deluded Wretchcs [Jewish Sabbatians], least they fall into the same Condemnation, and the Snare of the Devil. (57)

Despite the attacks by militant Protestants, Charles II continued to welcome pacific Rosicrucians and Cabalists to his court. In October 1670, while attending the Newmarket races, he was joined by F.M. van Helmont, who was a longtime friend of Prince Rupert, the king's cousin and partner in chemical and artistic studies. (58)

Moray was familiar with Van Helmont's Alphabetum Naturae, which Oldenburg had reviewed for the Royal Society in January 1668, noting that Van Helmont learned Hebrew so well that he understood the whole Hebrew Bible. The "Judaizing Rosicrucian" then visited Henry More and Anne Conwav, who were currently studying the works of Hendrik Niklaus. founder of the "Family of Iove." Though Conway defended Familist doctrines, More criticized them as similar to Quaker beliefs. Van Helmont's Hebrew studies would soon stimulate Cabalistic interest and controversy in the mystical circles of Conway. More, and George Keith, the Scottish Quaker.  (59)

With the Sabbatian movement and its millenarian supporters now discredited, Charles II expressed his appreciation for the loyalty of the Jews by appointing many of them as "sworn brokers."(61)

In The History of the Three Late Famous Impostors (1669), dedicated Queen Catherine, was also known as a friend and protector of Jews. Orrery worked with Webb to design an elaborate production by the King's Company to be held in January 1672, but a fire destroyed the Theatre Royal. From the script, it is clear that Orrery intended stunning views of the Temple, which would appear mysteriously while singing priests in white robes praise Herod on his sumptuous throne. Amidst the corruption, sensuality, and violence of' the Hebrew court, certain noble Jews were willing to die in order to save a friend. Thus, the themes of elevated conjugal love and mystical friendship were linked with the good Jews who tried to regenerate Jerusalem and the Temple.  (62)

In The Tragedy of King Saul, composed circa 1671 but published posthumously, Orrery further elaborated the theme of fraternal bonding. As David and Jonathan make vows of eternal friendship ("one Soul in both our Bodies be"), they stand in contrast to oath-breakers who lift their hands against the Lord's anointed. (63)

The royalist panegyrics occur amidst scenes of a mystically-shrouded Temple, magician's cave, flying spirits, and prophetic visions.

"JESUIT CONSPIRACY"

As Eveline Cruickshanks describes in her book "The Glorious Revolution" (2000) Charles’s secretary of state Williamson was sent to the Tower because of his effort to employ Irish regiments released from French service. Charles believed that the Duke of Buckingham and Shaftesbury, now allied with the opposition Whigs in Parliament, instigated the actions of Tonge and Oates.

James Butler, who was privy to Buckingham's intrigues, added to the political complications  with his charges of Franco-Scottish-Jewish sedition in Hudibras III, which was reprinted in 1679.

Because Francophilia makes marriage unfashionable (a dig at promiscuous courtiers and the profusion of royal bastards), Hudibras and the Scots now serve the cause of Papist agents: "your Presbyterian wits/Jump punctual with the Jesuits.” (Hubridas, p. 210, 214)

While Hooke and the Rosicrucianized virtuosos work with Napier's Bones, they implicitly support the Scots and Catholics. (p.250)

While they study Kircher's works, they not only support the Jesuits but the Jews:

"But Jesuites have deeper Reaches In all their Politick Far-fetches: And from their Coptick Priest, Kirkerus, Found out this Mystick way to jear us.

They thought, all Governments were best, By Hieroglyphick Rumps, exprest.

The Learned Rabbins of the Jews Write, there's a Bone, which they call Luez, I’ th' Rump of man, of such a Vertue, No force in Nature can do hurt to: And therefore, at the last Great Day, All th' other Members shall, they say, Spring out of this, as from a Seed, All sorts of Vegetals proceed: From whence, the Learned Sons of Art, Os Sacrum, Justly stile that part. (p.280-81)

The Cabalistic theory of the mystical bone Luz was explained in the Kabbalah Denudata, which was currently being discussed by vanious Fellows of the Royal Society. In a letter of 6 June 1679 John Locke, FRS, who had earlier studied under the Rosicrucian Sthael, noted that Robert Boyle informed him of the publication of the Zohar, newly translated into Latin by "un tres habil homme avec des notes qui expliquent Fancien Cabala des Juifs." (64)

Locke was interested in Helmontian theories of medicine, and he subsequently learned of F.M. Van Helmont's contribution to the Kabbalah Denudata, which he then acquired. Rosenroth later sent to Locke interesting Cabalistic commentaries on the philosopher's essays. In his letter to Boyle, Locke also revealed that Isaac Abendana "s'est brouille" with the authorities at Cambridge and thus took his Alishna project to Oxford. Rosenroth later complained of the harsh treatment he received from many clerics in Germany because of his publication of Kabbalah Denudata, and Helmont found the climate in England becoming increasingly intolerant.

With the country reeling from the sensational revelations of the phony "Popish Plot," the Whigs rummaged through Tonge's chaotic papers for more evidence of the Catholic conspiracy. For decades Tonge had collected occultist prophecies which he applied to imagined Jesuitical intrigues and which he now resolved to publish. Writing furiously in late 1679, Tonge prepared ”The Northern Star: The British Monarchy”, dedicated to Charles II and published early in 1680. Drawing on Abbot Joachim, Paracelsus, Agripa, Reuchlin, Postel, Nostradarnus, Napier, Sendivogius, and Maxwell, Tonge assured Charles II of his prophetic role as the northern king who would settle God's Temple in the North Country. In Chapter IV, entitled "The Confession of the Rosie-Cross," he linked Charles with the mythic God-Son C.R. who founded the R.C. society.

He further assured him of scientific support, for the secretary of the Royal Society (Oldenburg) had received similar prophecies in 1668. Ocular proof was currently provided by the German visionary Martin Eyler, who was in London with his agate shew-stone in which spiritual figures revealed political prophecies.

According to Ezerel  Tonge, the only obstacle to Charles's role as Rosicrucian savior of international Protestantism was the nefarious plot of the Jesuits, who had learned from the "Assassins of Phoenecia" how to train adepts for their campaign. Because Tonge's bizarre linkage of Jesuits and Assassins would re-emerge in anti-Masonic propaganda in the eighteenth century, it is worth a brief look at his fevered argument.

In "Jesuits Assassins: or the Popish Plot Further Declared" (1680), he made oblique Masonic-sounding comments. The sect of Assassins lived in the mountains near Tyre, where their Master was, not hereditary but elected." (p.4-6) Called the "Old Man of the Mountain," this prophet was a great builder, who designed wonderful palaces adorned with pictures.

By intoxicating his disciples with a certain drink (hashish), he gave them a glimpse of paradise which inspired them to swear obedience to the Master, loyalty to their brothers, and death to their enemies. Having studied the Assassins, the Jesuits then adopted their methods in order to destroy Protestantism.

Rather than giving their agents hashish, the Jesuits used charms and exorcisms, performed in "Chambers of Meditation and other Recesses of Darkness": they "conjured up gradually to that prodigious fury, as to think that in bloody assassinations of Kings and Princes, and merciless blowing up of Kingdoms, they do acceptable service to God, and merit everlasting Life." Through their magical meditation techniques, the Jesuit agents become angelized and divinized to prepare for their deadly work.

Quoting the Spanish Jesuit Vaninus, Tonge interpreted his description of a brother who was sent to London, where he labored forty-nine days "in cutting stones," as an allusion to the Gun Powder Plot to blow up "the Walls under the Parliament House." Such false stone-cutters then arranged the murder of Charles I and the Great Fire of London.

Through his earlier work on church construction and his collaboration with Moray, Hooke, Harley, and various master masons, Tonge was familiar with operative masonry. Oates too had observed the masons at work in Tangier. However, it is unclear whether their paranoid polemics were consciously aimed at royalist Freemasonry. Nevertheless, the scare engendered by their revelations placed not only Masons but Rosicrucians and Cabalists in a hazardous position. That Buckingham, whom the king believed to be the inventor of the Popish Plot, allegedly served as an "indolent" Grand Master in 1679 gave an ironic twist to Tonge's revelations." (65)Probably pressured by an angry Charles II, Buckingham "demitted" from the office. He was replaced by his rival, the ever loyal Arlington, who however "was too deeply engaged in affairs of State to mind the Lodges."

Nevertheless, Arlington continued to represent the tolerant traditions of Stuart Freemasonry, for he was sympathetic to Catholics and Jews, as well as being a great admirer of Spanish and French architecture--subjects which filled Tonge with iconoclastic disgust. Evelyn considered Arlington a learned and pious man, who devoted his architectural skills to God's service. Two years earlier, Evelyn praised Arlington for rebuilding the church at Euston, making it "for elegance and cheerfulnes ... one of the prettiest country churches in England," and he was moved by Arlington's motives in the project:

My Lord told me his heart smote him that, after he had bestowed so much on his magnificent palace there, he should see God's House in the ruin it lay in. He has also re-built the parsonage- house, all of stone, very neat and ample. (66)

Though Anderson claimed that during Arlington's Grand Mastership, "the Fraternity was considerable still, and many Gentlemen requested to be admitted," there is no surviving evidence of developments in "speculative" Freemasonry in England over the next two decades. Stevenson observes that "English gentlemen non-operatives were not organised into lodges with set memberships of a Scottish or modern kind, but met in fluid occasional lodges" connected with building sites. (67)

However, when Charles sent his embattled brother James to Scotland in November 1679, the duke's intermittent presence over the next thirty months encouraged a revival of royalist Masonry in the north. In this political context lay the roots of the later dcvelopment of Jacobite Freemasonry, when Scottish and Irish Masons loyal to James VII and 11 took their "ancient" traditions into exile with their banished king.

Ouston argues that the king sent the Duke of York to Scotland to keep him out of the way of an English Commons inflamed by the Popish Plot and to enable him to develop an alternative political power base. (68)

During his previous "exile" to the Continent from May to August 1679, James appreciated the generous support of Kincardine, whom he in turn consoled when the earl had problems with Lauderdale. (69)

Kincardine now served as an Extraordinary Lord of Session, and he was instrumental in bringing factions together to welcome James to Edinburgh. From London Lauderdale helped to organize the loyal reception, and the heir apparent was greeted warmly by the aristocratic and professional classes. The latter had become fearful of civil war after the murder of Archbishop Sharp by radical Presbyterians in May, followed by an armed rising of Coverranters in June. Despite James's Catholicism, the ruling establishment viewed him as a beneficent presence, compared to the sadirons opponents of royal government. There was also popular enthusiasm for the first Stuart prince to establish a royal court in Edinburgh since 1603.

James cultivated an image of himself as the heir of his grandfather's Solomonic tradition, for James VI was still a revered figure in Scotland. Though he encouraged the architectural work of William Bruce, Robert Mylne, and James Smith (a Catholic-educated designer), Masonic historians have long assumed that he was the first Stuart king in three reigns who did not become a Freemason. However, that claim was made by Anderson who, though a native Scot, was a staunch supporter of the Protestant revolution which overthrew James 11 in 1688. According to the eighteenth-century Clermont Rite, Sir William Bruce served as chief of the secret Templar-Masonic order from 1679 until 1686, at the time when he was closely associated with James. (70)

Moreover, until the death of Kincardine in July 1680, James was the intimate friend of that loyal and idealistic Mason. As we shall see, James would receive important Masonic support in Scotland when he succeeded to the throne in 1685. Moreover, in 1777 his grandson, "Bonnie Prince Charlie," would reveal to an initiatic of a German Templar lodge that "the secret Grand Mastership of the Masons was hereditary in the house of Stuart." (71)

James was probably introduced to military masonry during the Interregnum, when he frequently worked with Scottish and Irish engineers serving with him in the French army. 172 During his residence in Edinburgh, he took a keen interest in architectural projects, which were often minutely supervised from Whitehall by Lauderdale. In fact, Cruickshanks argues that James "led an artistic renaissance with the rebuilding of Holyrood Palace." (72)

Many private as well as public buildings now included heraldic devices and deliberate reminders of Scotland's historic independence and links with a Wider European scientific and artistic world. (73)Determined to extend Charles's intellectual and virtuoso culture to Scotland, James made Edinburgh an extension of the Stuart court. During his cultural campaign, he received strong support from Sir George Mackenzie, Lord Advocate, who was an old friend of Lauderdale and Moray and who shared the latter's devotion to bonded friendship, stoic philosophy, and scientific heraldry. (74)

Like Moray, Mackenzie hoped that the New Philosophy could overcome religious fanaticism, and he published "Religio Stoici: the Virtuoso or Stoick with a Friendy, Address to the Fanatics of all Sects and Sorts." (1663).

Sharing James's interest in chivalric revival, Mackenzie now prepared a treatise on "The Science of Heraldry" (1680), which paid tribute to the "auld alliance" with France and defined many themes that would later emerge in the knightly degrees of Ecossais Freemasonry. Dedicating the work "to my country-men," Mackenzie lamented that .."We only of all nations have never published anything, to let the world know what marks of honour our predecessors had gained." (75)

He became fascinated by heraldry while studying in France, and he subsequently explored a vast literature on the subject. Drawing on Aldrovandus and Favyn, he cited a Biblical "Jacobite" origin for heraldry: "some think that the giving of arms arose from the example of Jacob blessing his children, in which he gave them marks of distinction." He then traced the contributions made by Godfrey of Bouillon and other crusaders at Jerusalem, as well as the French king who made the Scottish archers his personal bodyguard ("an honour they retain to this day"). Now encouraged by James, Mackenzie's friends revived the Royal Company of Archers, which had traditional links with the Garde Ecossais and which stressed fraternal loyalty, militaristic royalism, and patriotic achievement.

Provoked by Ashmole's claims for the Garter, Mackenzie argued the priority of the Order of the Thistle, which was created in 787 A.D. to honor the alliance between the French king Charlemagne and the Scottish king Achalus, who defeated the English king Athelstan. Robert the Bruce subsequently revived the Thistle and contributed new arms for the citizens of Aberdeen to honor their Victory over the English. After the Reformation the order was suppressed as "a Dreg of Popery," but many Scottish nobles kept its symbols alive in their heraldic arms, architectural decorations, and emblematic coins. (76)

Despite Mackenzie's nationalist fervor, he was careful to praise the current union of Scotland and England under their Stuart king. Determined to build a secure power base in Scotland, James was impressed by Mackenzie's claims, and he would later revive the Thistle as a royalist chivalric order.

In January 1679 Mackenzic was admitted freeman of a craftsman's corporation (which Gould reports in a Masonic context), and he had many Masonic associates. (77)His arguments about heraldry, the Thistle, and the Garter would later influence the development of chivalric high degrees in Scots-Irish and Ecossais Masonry.

Another strong supporter of James's virtuoso campaign was Sir Robert Sibbald, royal geographer, who had earlier been a protege of Moray. Like Gilbert Burnet earlier, Sibbald had visited the Jews' synagogue in Amsterdam and Catholic chapels in Paris, experiences that "disposed me to affect charity for all good men of any persuasion." (78)

Sibbald collected rare works on Cabalism, Lullism, Hermeticism, and Rosicrucianism, and his library became a valuable resource for students of "speculative Freemasonry." (79)

For the Catholic James, the support of the Episcopal Sibbald for toleration was invaluable during his stay in Scotland. In fact, the two men virtually revived Moray's earlier successful policy of religious and political moderation.

James introduced his English physician Sir Charles Scarborough to Sibbald, and the three men developed a plan to construct a Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh in 1681.

Scarborough had been the protege and successor of' Dr. William Harvey, the old friend of Robert Fludd, and he participated in their Hermetic and Cabalistic studies. While in Scotland, he solicited the support of James Drummond, Fourth Earl of Perth for the medical college, and the earl would later play a leading role in Jacobite Freemasonry.

Like Sibbald, Scarborough amassed a great occultist library, which included works by Rabbi Abraham, Trithemius, Postel, Dee, Bruno, Scaliger, Fludd, Kircher, Van Helmont.

John Falconer, a Scottish expert in cryptography, who was entrusted with James’s  private cipher. Falconer argued that cryptography derived from Hebrew roots. Analyzing the methods of Trithemius, Baptista Porta, Bacon, Wilkins, and Kircher, he made important breakthroughs in code-making, which would later be used in Jacobite and French military intelligence. Like Robert Hooke, who argued that John Dee's angelic conversations contained an ingenious diplomatic code, Falconer argued that Trithermus's mystical expressions were "all cryptography."

Because Falconer knew many of the royalist Masons in Scotland, his instructions on "Saemaelogia" and "Dactylogy" (secret communication by signs, gestures, and fingers), as well as "Arthrologia" (discovering by "the joynts or remarkable parts of a Man's Body") may have influenced the complex and often indecipherable codes and body-language used by later Jacobite Masons.

John Falconer. Rules for Explaining and Deciphering All Manner of Secret Writing” London: Dan Brown, 1692), 6, 101-12-160 73. Falconer later deciphered the Duke of' Argyll's correspondence, which led to the exposure of his plot against James’s succession.

ENGLISH ENDINGS

In 1679 when Alexander Dickson, professor of Hebrew at Edinburgh University, was removed for refusing to sign the oath of allegiance, James approved the appointment of Alexander Amedeus, a Florentine Jew, to the post. (80)

The royal brother's actions did not go unnoticed south of the border, where radical opponents linked toleration for Jews to Rosicrucian intrigue and Francophilia. In 1680 an English translation of ne Count of Cabalis appeared in London, claiming to be published by "the Cabalistical Society of the Sages, at the Sign of the Rosicrucian." The author worried that many of his friends "do seriously study" these "Mysteries of Cabalism," and therefore he must refute them "by the strength of solid arguments." (81)

The latter consisted of railing against the Frenchified nature of the eroticized spirituality of "the Cabalistic sciences." The Cabalist, both Jewish and Christian, is "a great hater of women; yet much addicted to Venery, in a philosophical way"; thus, "only a Frenchman would give credit to Cabalistic whimsies."

In the northern kingdom, James may have learned of Quaker interest in the Cabalistic system of Van Helmont, who was widely believed to be a 'Judaized" Rosicrucian. The duke was a close friend of William Penn, the Quaker leader and a supporter of the Stuarts' toleration policy. Van Helmont had won over Penn's Scottish friend George Keith to his Cabalistic beliefs, and Keith in turn recruited Helmont to Quakerism. Keith was convinced of similarities between the Quaker doctrine of inner light and the Christian-Cabalistic notion of the "Christ within." (82)

He and Helmont further believed that a synthesis of Cabala and Christianity could provide a "a nucleus for Thomas Bruce, Memoirs of Thomas, Farl, of Aiksbug. Roxburghe Club.

A religious movement uniting Catholics, Protestants, Pagans, and Jews. Encouraged by James's sympathy for Quakers, Penn's movement attracted many new followers in Scotland. Given this eclectic and tolerant environment, it is not surprising that lodge records in Aberdeen, written circa 1679-80, indicate the presence of Quakers, as well as "landowners, merchants and craftsmen," among the Freemasons. (83)

One royalist Mason who supported the Quakers was the Earl of Perth, who was Penn's partner in the settlement of East New Jersey in 1681. (84)

In the portraits of two members of the Aberdeen lodge there appear in the background the pillars of Jachim and Boaz, suggesting their Masonic initiation into Solomon's Temple. (85)

James's revival of his grandfather's Solomonic policies was effective and popular in Scotland, and his support of religious toleration was widely believed to be sincere. When he returned to London in March 1682, he left behind in Edinburgh a reservoir of good will and patriotic support, especially among the royalist Masons who would later defend his threatened throne.

In 1680 Christopher Wren was persuaded to accept the presidency of the Royal Society in what was an urgently needed salvage operation. At the same time, he continued his role as Surveyor of the King's Works, while he and Hooke carried on the massive task of rebuilding more than fifty churches in London. However, the Whigs' campaign to exclude James from the succession polarized England, while increasingly radical attacks were made on the royalist institutions which supported Stuart claims. Wren was dismayed when parliament withdrew its support and cut off the funds for many of his projects. (86)

Fighting back against the Exclusionists, the poet laureate Dryden published Absalom and Achitophel (1681) to counter critics who threatened to destroy hereditary monarchy. Portraying Buckingham as "Zimri," Dryden mocked the inconstancy and opportunism of the duke and his Whig opposition party. Zimri's enthusiasms shifted from

Despite James's political and architectural success in Scotland, Charles II found his policies under increasing attack by his religious opponents in England. The radicals' iconoclastic fury soon ramified to Tangier, where the fate of the greatest engineering project of the century was now in the hands of the parliamentary Whigs. What alarmed them most were reports of the successful progress of the fortification and military enterprises. In 1669 the king had sent the First Earl of Middleton, Moray's former colleague, to govern Tangier, where he drew on his experience as liaison with the Dutch Jews to continue the policy of toleration. (87)Because the stone for constructing the Mole and fortifications had to be quarried from outside the existing lines, it was crucial that he maintain good relations with the Jewish and Moslem inhabitants. Given his Scottish background and duties in Tangier, it seems likely that Middleton was a Mason; his grandson, the Third Earl, would later participate in the Jacobite lodge in Paris. (88)

Despite the heavy drinking that earlier led to his dismissal from Scottish office, Middleton was an effective governor until his death in 1674. (89)

His successor, the Irish governor Inchiquin, continued to rely on Simon Pariente, their trusted Jewish interpreter, and positive reports on Hebrew beliefs and customs were sent to London. Lancelot Addison, who spent several years in Tangier, drew on his conversations with local Jews to write The Present State of the Jews, Particularly Relating to Rose in Barbag (1675), a respectful and straightforward account. Addison dedicated the work to Joseph Williamson, secretary of state, who recommended it to his friend Hooke, who subsequently read and discussed it. In 1675, during a food shortage, Inchiquin utilized crypto-Sabbatians willing to break Jewish ritual law to import salted pork for the British garrison. (90)

Their heretical actions provoked the Beth Din of Tetuan to excommunicate the European Jews of Tangier, but Inchiquin insisted that the herein be lifted. When Morrocan authorities expelled all Jews as "suspected nationals" in 1677, he helped win their readmission as valuable traders in 1680.

During the 1670's, increasing numbers of masons and soldiers were shipped out from Scotland and Ireland, and they soon won popular fame for their courageous stands against Moorish attacks. However, in 1679 when the Whigs tried to force Charles II to accept the "Exclusion Bill," they linked his willingness to deny the succession to his Catholic brother with their willingness to provide funds for Tangier. Lurid charges of Papist conspiracy among the colony's governors, troops, and masons were flung during parliamentary debates. (91)

But Charles would not sacrifice his brother to save Tangier; instead, lie prorogued Parliament in March 1681 and governed without it until the end of his reign.

Despite Parliament's hostility, there was support for the colony ill the Royal Society, which had long followed the masonic work. Henry Sheeres, FRS, was chief engineer of construction, and he sent optimistic reports to the Fellows. In 1682 the Moroccan ambassador Hamet travelled to London to urge the king to preserve the colony, and he was welcomed by Evelyn, Ashmole, and interested virtuosos to the society, where he was elected a Fellow. (92)

Pressure also came from the Knights of Malta, who counted on the colonists' assistance in their struggle to liberate Christian slaves from their Moorish captors. In June 1683 the Grand Master of Malta arrived in London, where he pleaded the colony's cause and was entertained with Evelyn and Dryden.

Though Charles had proclaimed that Tangier was "the brightest jewel of his Crown," he succumbed to Parliament in 1683 and announced his decision to level the fortifications, destroy the Mole, ruin the harbour, and recall the garrison and colonists to England. It was a sad day in masonic history when the commission met in Tangier to plan the destruction of' the great Mole which, as Riley notes, was an engineering feat "comparable with the construction of the Channel tunnel today. (93)The Swedish architects Tessin and Beckman, as well as Sheeres, reluctantly agreed to undo their labor of two decades. (94)It would take two thousand men working round the-clock for three months to finally destroy the massive stone-works. When the evacuated "Tangerines" arrived in England in April 1684, they were welcomed by the royalists as returning heroes.

The question of' placing the returning troops greatly agitated Parliament, who feared that they formed a ready army to defend the Stuart cause. A Royal Warrant suggested the stationing of Lord Dumbarton's Scots regiment-which included veterans of the Garde Ecossaise at the strategic port of Portsmouth. Perhaps with an eye to that Franco-Scottish tradition, the king proposed to make the Scotch-Irish Grenadiers his personal bodygard. The Whigs protested these measures, and the troops were eventually dispersed throughout the country, where they were considered "eyesores." Colonel John Fitzgerald, who earlier served as Lieutenant Governor of Tangier, had labored to abolish "that national distinction between English, Irish, and Scotch" and to maintain the "remarkable" policy of toleration. (95)

Blocked from promotion by anti-Irish M.P.s, Fitzgerald was falsely accused of complicity in the Popish Plot. He and his Tangerine regiment would loyally serve the Stuarts through revolution and exile.

For many royalists, the destruction of Tangier was a betrayal of the great architectural and masonic traditions of the Stuart dynasty. An anti-Whig ballad, "Tangiers Lamentation on the Demolishing and Blowing up of the Town, Castle, and Citadel," lambasted the politicians whose political factionalism, xenophobic provincialism, and technological ignorance led to the destruction of architectural work worthy of Solomon, Hiram, and the ancient Jewish masons.

The seeds of future Masonic rivalries were planted on 6 February 1685 when Charles II, a "Mason King," died after a four-day illness. On his deathbed, he secretly converted to Catholicism and received the last rites of the Roman church." (96)

As far as the public knew, Charles had died as a tolerant Anglican, who hoped that Englishmen would now accept his brother, a tolerant Catholic, as King James II. However, the radical exclusionists now stepped up their campaign against the legitimacy of his brother's succession. In order to remind Britons of the earlier storms of civil war which disrupted the natural order and to bolster the claims of James, Thomas Otway composed "Windsor Castle" in March 1685.

In his poetic "monument" to the late king, Otway strolled through Windsor Castle, seeing in its massive stone architecture a revelation of the mind and heritage of Charles II. (97)He further praised the "wonders of Fraternal love," as exemplified by James's behavior at Charles's deathbed. That scene reminded him of the chivalric ideals of the Knights of' the Garter, so brilliantly expressed in the intricate stone carvings of the Gothic chapel at Windsor. As James II's cause came under fire from "The meeting of a numerous Senate," who provoked "bold Tumults and Disorders" throughout England, Otway's poem provided potent royalist propaganda.

With Britain headed into another revolution and possible civil war, the question of what "toleration" really meant took on urgent significance. Did it consist of liberty of conscience and universal brotherhood or protection of Protestantism and suppression of Catholicism? The contradictory answers would shatter the Stuarts' attempt to build a Temple of Concord. While one man's tolerance was defined as another's tyranny, the struggle would ramify into the emerging "modernist" development of Freemasonry.  

THE EUROPEAN DIASPORA OF SCOTTISH-ESOTERIC MASONRY

The fate of Stuart Freemasonry during the early Williamite regime is difficult to piece together, because of destruction of documents and increasing secrecy maintained by Jacobite resisters and exiles. Anderson noted that "many of the Fraternity's records" from Charles II's reign were lost during James II's reign and "at the Revolution." (98)

William Bruce continued to secretly work for James's cause, and he was indirectly instrumental in the Jacobite outreach to Sweden-where many Scots fled after William's victories. Despite government surveillance, Bruce and his Jacobite-Masonic allies sought contacts with sympathizers in northern England, such as the steel-manufacturer Ambrose Crowley, who maintained important trade with Sweden and Scotland. Around 1688 -90 Crowley established a masonic lodge at Sunderland, close to Newcastle, which served the operative masons involved in constructing the large stone buildings for the steel works. (99)

The lodge probably also served as a means of bonding his religiously and ethnically diverse workforce. As a Quaker, Crowley was grateful to James II for his policy of' religious toleration and for the royal protection given to the steel-maker's foreign workmen, who included Catholics and Lutherans. (100)

Several Quakers had joined lodges in Scotland during James's residence in the north and, following their leader William Penn, they retained their sympathy for the Jacobite cause. Like Crowley's employees, they agreed with James that "liberty of conscience" would benefit industry and trade.

Crowley provides an early preview of Jacobite-Masonic links between Edinburgh, Newcastle, and Gothenburg that would endure for the next seven decades. By 1691 Sir James Montgomerie, radical Covenanter turned Jacobite plotter, gained Swedish support for James II's cause, and two years later the Swedish ambassador in London would hide Jacobite agents." (101)

The Swedish king Carl XI allowed a Scottish-affiliated lodge to continue meeting in Gothenburg. His son Carl XII would become a staunch supporter of James II's son, the "Old Pretender," and allegedly a protector of Ecossais Freemasonry in Sweden. (102)

The Tessin family would provide important support for Jacobite exiles and Masons in Sweden and on the Continent. By 1788 the Swedish king Gustaf III would inherit the Grand Mastership of the Masonic Knights Templar directly from James II's grandson, the "Young Pretender," Charles Edward Stuart. (103)

In the meantime in England, William III was preoccupied with European war plans and paid little attention to architecture in his new kingdom. After a hiatus in 1689, Wren managed to resume his position as Surveyor of Works, and he attempted to complete his rebuilding projects. However, as Summerson notes, during the next decade--"this vacant interval"---few churches were built in England. (104)

French and Continental historians argue that Wren maintained his private Jacobite sympathies, while he worked discretely and cautiously under the new regime." (105)Jeffery suggests that the lack of written documents about Wren's work during these years was deliberate:

... his tracks are usually well-hidden. His early brushes with authority had taught him to be wary of committing himself to paper and of exposing his ideas to public criticism and debate ... he may just have carried on, unwilling to record decisions on paper." (106)

Wren still maintained contact with Freemasons in Scotland, and the Hamiltons often consulted him and Bruce about the progress of their grandiose palace. (107)

After the Williamite repressions of December 1691, the exiled Scots were joined by thousands of Irish refugees, who fled to France, Italy, and Spain. These "Wild Geese" included nobles and soldiers who carried their "Masonic traditions into the armies of friendly Catholic sovereigns, who still maintained chivalric orders of military and religious knights." (108)

The Irish Masonic historian Lepper observes that the army "was a great disseminator of the true light," for "our militant forefathers" found that "the secrets of a mason were very useful pieces of equipment to carry with them to a campaign." (109)

He further argues that "masonic degrees were in full vogue long prior to the creation of the [modern English] Grand Lodge in 1717" and that "the lodges of St. John maintained their association with the operative lodges." He implies that the Jacobite lodges developed degrees beyond the basic operative ones.

The many French, German, Italian, Swedish, and Russian publications, issued from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries, which reveal oral traditions about the export of Jacobite Masonry to the Continent will be discussed in my projected books on eighteenth century, high-degree Freemasonry. However, it is worth mentioning now the version of that history learned by a Scottish Mason, Professor John Robison, in the 1770's, when he participated in lodges established by Jacobite exiles and their supporters in France, Belgium, Germany, and Russia. Robison lamented "the heap of rubbish with which Anderson disgraced his Constitutions of Free Masony," which had unfortunately become "the basis of masonic history.

Recounting the different historical instruction he received in Ecossais lodges, John Robison asserted:

"We also know that Charles II was made a Mason, and frequented the Lodges ... His brother and successor James II was of a more serious and manly cast of mind, and had little pleasure in the frivolous ceremonies of Masonry. He did not frequent the Lodges.”

Rather than repeating Anderson's claim that James was not a "Brother Mason," Robison implied that he did not attend often or enjoy lodge meetings. Moreover, Robison added that the lodges had become the rendezvous of "accepted" Masons who had no association with actual building projects--which suggests that James "did not frequent" English lodges. In Scotland and Ireland, the lodges continued to be closely associated with practical architecture. After the Williamite revolution, James and "his most zealous adherents" took refuge in France:

“They took Free Masonry with them to the continent, where it was immediately received by the French, and was cultivated with great zeal in a manner suited to the taste and habits of that highly cultivated people. The Lodges in France naturally became the rendezvous of the adherents to their banished King, and the means of a carrying on a correspondence with their friends in England." (p.27)

From France the exiles scattered across Europe and established clandestine Masonic networks. Robison notes that "All the Brethren on the Continent agree in saying, that Freemasonry was imported from Great Britain about the beginning of this century [ca. 1690-1700] and this in the form of a mystical society." (p.541)

Robison then described a special chivalric degree created by the Jacobitcs:

It was in the Lodges held at St. Germain's that the degree of Chevalier Alafon Ecossais was added to the three SYMBOLICAL degrees of English Masonry . . . this rank of Scotch Knight was called the first degree of the Maton Parfait. There is a device belonging to this Lodge which deserves notice. A lion, wounded by an arrow, and escaped from the stake to which he had been bound, with the broken rope still about his neck, is represented lying at the mouth of a cave, and occupied with mathematical instruments which are lying near him. A broken crown lies at the foot of the stake. There can be little doubt but that this emblem alludes to the dethronement, the captivity, the escape and asylum of James II and his hopes of re-establishment by the help of the loyal Brethren. This emblem is worn as the gorget of the Scotch Knight. It is not very certain, however, when this degree was added, whether immediately after King James's Abdication, or about the time of the attempt to set his son on the British Throne. But it is certain, that in 1716, this and still higher degrees of Masonry were much in vogue in the court of France." (p.28)

These claims of chivalric developments within Jacobite Masonry continue to provoke arguments among historians, because of the dearth of contemporary documentation until the 1720's. However, an oblique reinforcement comes from Swift, who drew upon his experiences in Dublin in 1688 and Ulster in 1695 to later describe the chivalric (as well as Cabalistic, Lullist, and Rosicrucian) associations of Scots-Irish Freemasonry. Swift's comical summary of "Celtic" traditions in "a Lodge of Free-Masons at 0 ---- h in U ---- r" (Omagh in Ulster) throws a retrospective light on developments in the fraternity in the 1690's.(110)

In 1689 Swift fled the political turmoil in Dublin and moved to England, where he became amanuensis to the retired diplomat Sir William Temple at Moor Park. Temple shared Swift's sceptical curiosity about Rosicrucianism, which he had encountered in its radical form in Ireland during the 1650's. (111)

He also dealt with operative masons there, who drew on Scots-Irish traditions. After the Restoration, Temple was employed on delicate secret missions by Charles II and Lord Arlington, both Masons, and he was kept abreast of Scottish affairs while serving at The Hague. In 1668 Arlington sent Temple a paper written by Moray and praised the Scot's expertise in chemistry. (112)

Two years later Temple met Moray, who sought his assistance for the export to Holland of Kincardine's building stone, an enterprise which involved William Bruce and William Davidson. (113)

Thus, when Temple discussed with Swift the secret diplomacy of Charles II, he may have revealed the role of Freemasonry in Stuart politics.

In "Prose" vol. V, p. 328-29 we see J. Swift writing:

"The Branch of the Lodge of Solomon's Temple, afterwards call'd the Lodge of St John of Jerusalem ... is ... the Antientest and Purest now on Earth. The famous old Scottish Lodge of Kilwinning of which all the Kings of Scotland have been from Time to Time Grand Masters without Interruption down from the days of Fergus, who Reign'd there more than 2000 Years ago, long before the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem or the Knights of Maltha, to which two Lodges I must nevertheless allow the Honour of having adorn'd the Anticin Jewish and Pagan Masonry with many Religious and Christian Rules.

Fergus being eldest Son to the chief King of Ireland, was carefully instructed in all the Arts and Sciences, especially the natural Magick, and the Caballistical Philosophy (afterwards called the Rosecrution) by the pagan Druids of i'vlona, the only true Cabalists then Extant in the Western World ...

Fergus before his Descent upon the Picts in Scotland rais'd that famous Structure, call'd to this Day Carrick-Fergus, the most misterious Piece of Architecture now on Earth, (not excepting the Pyramids of the Egyptian Masons, and their Hieroglyphicks or Free Masons signs) ... he built it as a Lodge for a College of Free Masons in those days call'd Druids."

An exiled Scot and convert to "universalist" Catholicism, Ramsay wrote Swift to thank him for supporting The Travels of Cyrus (17 2 7), Ramsay's allegorical novel, which was suffused with Jacobite and Masonic themes. (114)

A decade later, Ramsay revealed to the Ecossais lodge in Paris a Jacobite version of Masonic history that echoed and colaborated many of Swift's revelations in A Letter from the Crand Mistress.

Swift stressed the Jewish roots of Masonry, noting that it was originally called Cabala, and he revealed the initiates' preoccupation with Cabalistic gematria and notarikon. (115)

For their Masonic relationship, see M.K. Schuchard, "Ramsay, Swift, and the Jacobite-Masonic Version of the Stuart Restoration," in Esoterisme, Gnosis et Imaginaire Symbolique (2001), 491-50.

Ramsay similarly stressed the Jewish origins and Cabalistic descent, noting that "The secret Science can be preserved pure only amongst God's people," the Jews, because the Masons' traditions... are founded on the annals of the most ancient race in the, world, the only one, still in existence with the same name as of old and not intermingled with other nations although so widely dispersed and also the only one that has preserved its ancient books, whereas those of almost all other races are lost." (116)

While Swift referred to the preservation of Jewish secrets in lodges of "the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem or the Knights of Maltha," Ramsay described the concealment of Solomon's hieroglyphic writing ("the original Code of our Order") in the foundations of the Second Temple and its subsequent discovery by the crusading knights who liberated Jerusalem.

According to Swift and Ramsay, when the crusaders returned to Europe, they infused the Solomonic secrets of Cabalism and Temple building into their lodges. More explicitly than Swift, Ramsay named "James, Lord Steward of Scotland" as "Grand Master of a Lodge established at Kilwinning" in 1286, when he also initiated the English Earl of Gloucester and the Irish Earl of Ulster. Obliquely identifying early Masonry with the Templars, Ramsay noted that "an intimate union" was formed with the Knights of St. John of jerusalerd (the Hospitallers'). Unlike Swift, he did not mention the Knights of Malta, who subsequently absorbed Templar and Hospitaller traditions and who underwent a short-lived revival in Ireland during James II's residence there in 1690. Since the merging of the chivalric orders into Masonry, the brothers continued to imitate their Jewish forefathers: "The union was made after the manner of the Israelites when they built the Second Temple, whilst some handled the trowel and the compasses, others defended them with sword and buckler."

Though little documentation survives concerning Freemasonry at the turn of the seventeenth century, the seeds were already planted for the almost startling growth of the fraternity in the eighteenth century. After the accession of the Elector of Hanover to the British throne in 1714, the suppression of the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, and the exposure of the Jacobite- Swedish plot of 1716, a rival system of "modern" Hanoverian Freemasonry was established in 1717, and it struggled in bitter competition with the "ancient" Stuart system until 1813.

Outside of Britain, the "ancients" recruited many more followers and became associated with nationalist movements in Eastern Europe and North and South America. For these liberationists, the Scottish traditions of resistance to foreign domination and mystical elevation of ordinary men to brotherhood with kings seemed fraught with contemporary relevance.

Throughout the eighteenth century, the "ancient" Stuart traditions were maintained in clandestine Jacobite lodges in Britain and in the lodges of the Stuart diaspora. The Jewish associations were carried on by Francis Francia (the 'Jacobite Jew"), Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk (the "Baal Shem of London"), Martines de Pasqually (the "Elu Cohen"); the Swedish-Stuart loyalties were preserved by Carl XIL Carl Gustaf Tessin, Carl Gyllenborg, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Gustaf III.  

FOOTNOTES

1 David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasong: Scotland's Century (1590 -1710) Cambridge, 1988), and The First Freemasons: Scotland's Early Lodges and Their Members Aberdeen, 1988).

2 Lisa Kahler, "Freemasonry in Edinburgh, 1721-1746: Institutions and Context" Ph.D. Thesis, St. Andrews University, 1998).

3 Stevenson draws on Frances Yates's Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition London, 1964), and The Art of Alemog (London, 1966).

4 Salo Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Yews, 2nd rev. ed. (1937; New York, 1966); Erwin Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (New York, 1953'~,; George Sarton, A Histog of Science (Cambridge, 1959); Mark Wischnitzer, A Histog oJ Jewish Crafts and Guilds (New York, 1965)

5 Elliot Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, 1994).

6 Arthur Williamson, "A Pil for Pork-Eaters': Ethnic Identity, Apocalyptic Premises, and the Strange Creation of the Judeo-Scots," in The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and After, ed. R.B. Waddington and A.H. Williamson (New York, 1994), 237 58.

7 D. Stevenson, First Freemasons, 3.

8 For clear summaries of the revisionists' works, see Maurice Lce, Great Britain's Solomon: James III and I in His Three Kingdoms (Urbana, 1990); Roger Lockyer, James VI and I (1998); Julian Goodare and -Michael Lynch, eds., The Reign of James VI (Phantassie, 2000) ; Eveline Cruickshanks, The Glorious Revolution (New York, 2000).

9 For the architectural-masque culture, see especially Vaughan Hart, Art and Magic in the  Court of the Stuarts (London, 1994). For illustrations of its revival in eighteenth-century Swedish Ecossais lodges, see Cold and Himmelblau. Die Zeitloses Ideal (Abo, 1993). An attempted revival of this Culture occurred in Britain in the clandestine Jacobite "Rite of Heredom of Kilwinning"  (1741 -1800)

10 C. Lance Brockman, ed., Theatre of the Fraternity: Staging the Ritual Space of the Scottish Rite of Freemasons, 1896-1929 (Minneapolis, 1996).

11 Hartlib Papers: 28/2/81A. Ephermerides: part IV.

12 C. Josten, Ashmole, 11, 761.

13 Kincardine MS.5050.f.28 (18 April 1658). Amhmole spent much time at Windsor, while he worked on his history of the Order of' the Garter, and Lauderdale spent man), years in prison there. The two men became friends.

14 Kincardine MS.5050.ff.44; see also  Goran Behre, "Gothenburg in Stuart War Strategy, 1649-1760," in G. Simpson, Scotland and Scandinavia, 90-99.

15 L. Nicholas, Nicholas Papers, III, 259.

16 D. Crips, Elizabeth. 39-50.

17 Lauderdale, Bibliolheca 168T. G. Burnet, History, 1, 184.

18 G. Burnet, History 1, 184.

19 F Routtedge, Calendar ... Clarendon, 111, 35, 259, 279.

20 Clarendon, Henry Hyde, Earl of, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, ed. W.D. Macray (Oxford: Clarendon, 1888), V, 170-71, 316, 324-29.

21 G. Burnet, History, 1, 437-39.

22 J. Clark, "Lord Burlington," 289-93, 304.

23 T Thurloe, Collection, IV, 50, 156, 183.

24 F. Routledge, Calendar ... Clarendon, 111, 283. General Alexander Hamilton, the Newcastle initiate, died in December 1649.

25 R. Xlylne, Master Masons, 128-29. Spelling modernized.

26 J. Thurloc, Collection, VII, 416.

27 Ted Jamieson, General Monck and the Revolution (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1975 , 11-12.

28  Hubert Fenwick, Architect Royal: The Life and Works of Sir William Bruce, 100 1710 (Kineton: Roundwood. 1970), xiii, xvi, 4-9.

29 J, Anderson, Constitutions (1738), 104.

30 G. Burnet, Hisloil', 1, 117-18

31 W. Zimmerman,Von den alten zur Neuen Freimaurerei.

32 C.H. Josten, Elias Ashmole, p.11 (1966)

33 British Library: Evelyn MS.65.

34 Wren's comment in August 1716; see Thomas Hearne, Reliquiae Heamianae, 2nd ed., ed. Philip Bliss (London, 1869), 11, 39.

35 Manuscript presently in Royal Society, London: TNIS. Register Book (C), IX, F.240 52. It was copied into the Register Book circa 1708.

36 W. Sanniel, "Reviex% of'... Barbados." 25-27, -14.

37 N. Roth. "Social and Intellectual Currents," 182-83.

38 L. Wolf', 'Jewry," 157.

39 D. Katz, "Abendana Brothers," 37-38.

40 G. Black, "Beginnings," 473.

41 A. Levy, "The Origins of Scottish Jewry. TJHSE, 20 1959-6F, 134--3,5.

42 D. Katz Jews in History, 143.

43 A. Sharie, "Leon," 158.

44 T. Birch. History, 11, 9.

45 Jacobi Jehuda Leonis de Templo Hierosolymitano( Helmstadt: Jacob Mullerus,1665), Libri IV, (d.2)

46 Reproduced by John Thorpe in "Old Masonic Manuscript. A Fragment," Lodge of Research, N. 2429 Leicester Transactions for the Year 1926-27, 40-48.

47 Wallace McLeod, "Additions to the List of' Old Charges," AQC. 96 1983. M 99.

48  D. Stevenson, Origins, 163.

49 S. Akerman, Christina, 188-91.

50 H. Oldenburg, Correspondence, 11, 481, 637-111, 447.

51 Reprinted in R.B. [Nathaniel Cronch], Memorable Remark) Upon the Ancient and Modern State of the Jewish  Nation (Bolton: B. Jackson, 1786), 48, 125-63

52 Zvi Loker, “Juan de Yllan, Merchant Adventurer and Colonial Promoter. Studia Rosenthaliana. 17 (1983), 23.

53 H. Oldenburg, Correspondence, 111, xxvi-vii, 447,

54 J. Evelyn. Diary, 11, 278; 111, 491.

55 Charles Webster, From Paracelsus to Newton (Cambridge UP, 1982),28.

56  S. Franco. Truth, 58.

57 John Evelyn Imposters (1669) p.131 (ClarkMemorial Library, 1968)

58 John Evelyn. The History of the 'Three Late Famouss Impostors (1669),  Augustan Reprint Society, 131. (Los Angeles: Clark Memorial Library, 1968)

59 A. Coudert, Impact, 155-56, 180- 8 1.

60 Philosophical Transactions, 11, no. 31, pp. 602-04.

61 Dudley Abrahams, “Jew Brokers of the City of London," MJHSE, III (1937) 87-88.

62 R. Loeber, Bioq Dict., 25-27.

63  Roger Boyle, 'The Dramatic Works o Roger Boyle, Earl Orreg, ed. W.S. Clark Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1937'1, 1. W 11, 601-13.

64 Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E.S. dc Beer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), 11, 30: 11, 399-404.

65 J. Anderson, Constitutions (1738), 105.

66 J. Evelyn, Diag, IV. 114.

67 D. Stevcnson, Orpns, 226 230.

68 H. Ouston, "York in Edinburgh," 133.

69 Paul Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688 1788 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989). 303.

70 F.M.G. Higham, King  James the Second. (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1934), 44.

71 E. Cruickshanks, Glorious Revolution, 47.

72  M. Glendinning, Histog, 71-84.

73 Kincardine NIS-5050 f. 95; Stevenson, Origins.

74  Sir George Mackenzie, The Science of Heraldry (Edinburgh: printed by the heir of' Andrew Anderson, 1680), preface, 2.

75 Alexander Nisbet, A System of Heraldry, Speculative and Practical (Edinburgh: J. Mackuen, 1722),. 114; he utilized Mackenzie's manuscript collections on heraldry.

76 R. Gould, History, If, 60.

77  Robert Sibbald, 'The Rernains of Sir Robert Sibbald, Knight, ALD. (Edinburg  1833), 15 17, 30.

78 See Catalogus Bibliothecae Sibbaldiane ( Edinburgh, 1707), and Bibliotheca Sibbaldiana (Edinburgh, 1722).

79 W.S. Craig, History of the Royal College of Physicians, (1976) 61-62.

80 A. Levy, "Origins," 134-35. Amedeus may have converted to Christianity by this time.

81 The Count of Gabalis: trans. P. Ayres (London, 1680), Dedication, 1-2.

82 Allison Coudert, "A Quaker-Kabbalist Controversy: George Fox's Reaction to Francis Mercury van Helmont," JWCI, 39 (1976), 170-89.

83 D. Stevenson, First Freermasons, 136 39, 142.

84 James Drummond, Fourth Earl and First Duke of Perth," DVB. For his Masonic affiliation, see John Yarker, "Drummond-Earls of Perth," AQC, 14 1901" 138.

85 Stevenson, Origins, 147.

86 B. Little, Wren, 109.

87 George Hilton Jones, Charles Aliddleton: 'The Iife and Times of a Restoration Politician. (Chicago UP, 1967), 10 -17.

88 Edward Corp, Lord Burlington  “The Man and His Politics "Lewiston: Edwin Nellen, 1998, 20.

89 The Diary of Samuel Pepys: 1662 by Samuel Pepys, Robert Latham, William Matthews.

90 T. Benady, "Role of Jews," 47.

91 J.C. Riley. "Catholicism and the Late Stuart Army: the Tangier Episode." Royal Stuart Papers XIIII Huntingdon: Royal Stuart Society (1993), 1 28.

92 J. Evelyn Diarry III, 75, 77, 84.

93 J. Riley, "Catholicism," 67.

94 Ensign Bernard Tessin, member of The Tangier Regiment in 1683, was probably Hans Ewald's son. Martin Beckman evidently, became a Freemason in Scotland: see Howard Tomlinson, "The Ordnance Office and the King's Forts (1610) 1711- 1716 (1973), 17.

95 J. Riley, "Catholicism," 11 12.

96 For a critical examination of the false accounts given of' Charles's conversion, see R. Hutton, Charles 11, 443 45.

97 T. Otway, Works, 11, 457-65.

98 J. Anderson, Constilutiom (1738). 105-06.

99 Leo Gooch, The Desperate Faction? The Jacobites of North-East England (Hull UP, 1995), 202n.14; also 39, 111.

100 M.W. Flinn, Alen ()f Iron: 'The Crowlg,s in the Eadv Iron Indusiq (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1962), 16, 39-40.

101 P.A. Hopkins, "Sir Jarnes Montgomeric of Skelmorlie," in E. Corp, Stuart Court, 51 56; Mark Goldie, "The Roots of True Whiggism," History of Political Thought, (1980), 228-29.

102 M.Schusshard "Swedenborg, Jacobitisin, and Freemasonry." in Erland Brock, ed., Swedenborg and His Influence (1988), 359 - 79.

103 Claude Nordmann, Gustave III.- un democrate couronne (Lille: Presses Universitaire, 1986), 214 M Frank 1\1cLynn, Charles Edward Stuart "1988; Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991 ~, 532- 36.5)

104 J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530 1830 (London: Pelican, 19351), 184.

105 G. Bord, Franc-Alafonnerie, 55-5 7 -, Margaret Jacob, Liring the Enlightenment: Freemasong and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford UP. 1991), 92.

106 Paul Jefferv, 'The Cio Churche,s of Christopher Wren ( 1996), 28-29.

107 Charles Trench, Gace's Card.- Irish Catholic Landlords, 1690 1800 (Dublin: Mercier, 1997), 34; S. Murphy, "Irish Jacobitism," 74 82.

108 John Heron Lepper, The Pifferences Between English and Irish Alasonic Rituals Treated Historicall, (Dublin: George Healy. 1920), 17, 23, 39.

109 John Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy, (1798), 17. Though most historians rightfully scoff at Robison's  charges of  a Masonic conspiracy in the 1790's, they have not examined his accounts of his personal experiences in Ecossais lodges in  the 1770's. The latter material is important for its  insight into the Scottish-Jacobite traditions that were preserved in various European Masonic rites. These latter descriptions are corroborated by the Continental Masonic documents published in Charles Porset , Les Philadelphes el les Convent de Paris (1998).

110 J. Swift, Prase, V, 324.

111 William Temple, Five Miscellaneous Essays, ed. Samuel Holt (Ann Arbor: Michigan UP. 1963), 200-01; "Sir William Temple," DNB.

112 Arlington, letters, 450.

113 H. Paton. "Letters from ... Lauderdale," 173, 181, 190, 234-3,).

114 See The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift. ed. Harold Williams (1963), 111, 223, 331: Albert Cherel, In Advenurier Religieux an XVII e Siecle, A.M. Rainvil (1926)

115 J.Swift, Prose. V. 325 30.

REVIEW - THE HIDDEN CHURCH OF THE HOLY GRAAL

The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal. By A. E. Waite. London: Rebman, Ltd.

by W. L. Wilmshurst

What was, and is, the Holy Graal? Not to waste space in considering fatuous imaginings concerning any material reliquary that may once have served at a certain sacred feast and was supposed subsequently to have been concealed at Glastonbury or elsewhere, be it remembered that there has obtained no extensive or important system of religious expression, whether ethnic or Christian, but has instinctively formulated the conception of a feeding-dish communicating supernatural food; a cauldron brimming with some celestial brew; a cornucopia, bowl, or horn of plenty, exuberant with luscious fruits; each the symbol of that mystical, invisible, but unfailing cup or platter from which the inward life of man is, by all save those unconscious of an inward life, felt to be sustained. The Holy Graal is the gracious Christianized form of this catholic symbol. Besides the cup itself, it involves also the content of the cup; the Sangreal, or sacred vessel, as if language itself refused to dissociate the inward content from the outward vehicle, is also the Sang Real, the Royal Blood, or life-giving Spirit, imparted therefrom.

In its chief sacrament the official Christian Church perpetuates, after one manner or another, a rite or office whereby, it is taught, supernatural sustenance is communicated to the human soul. But if the doctrine affirmed in most schools of religious philosophy be correct — namely, that that which is below is in correspondence with that which is above, and that visible things are patterns of invisible, it follows that the terrestrial office is a shadow of a celestial one; that the Church militant upon earth is the reflection of a Church triumphant beyond this earth, and that the sacramental bread and wine of the former have their appropriate, exalted, and sublimated counterparts in the latter.

Suppose it, then, possible for human consciousness to transcend terrestrial shadow-shapes, however sacred; to soar beyond the sacramental symbols inevitable to the perishable plane of existence, and to participate in the imperishable reality which, out of normal ken, stands behind the symbol and renders that symbol both possible and valid ! Well, so to do would be to gain access to an interior Church hidden from this world and to partake of the arch-natural Eucharist therein celebrated. In other words, it would be to achieve that quest of the Holy Graal, to which, as its goal and summum bonum, the knighthood of religio-romance literature was self-dedicated. That knighthood no wise abjured or neglected the instituted temporal rite of which we all know something. Rather did it strive to penetrate beyond the sacramental symbol and to find that symbol's legitimate and natural, or rather arch-natural, extension upon the spiritual plane. The symbol held good pro tanto; it was the conduit, the promise, and the substitution in time and space of a vital reality existent beyond those limitations; it was the base from which the questing knights operated and advanced. They dared not neglect the formal rite, but they ever realized that — "A substitute shines brightly as a king. Until the king be by and then his state empties itself, as doth an inland brook into the main of waters "; and the objective of their quest was the transcending of symbol and substitute by attaining conscious cognition of the King — of kings — Himself.

Listen to the simple, stately prose of Malory describing Galahad's achievement of the Graal in Castle Corbenic:—

"It seemed them that there came a man and four angels from heaven, clothed in the likeness of bishops, and had a cross in his hand; and the four angels bear him up in a chair, and set him down before the table of silver where the Sandgreal was ; and it seemed that he had in the midst of his forehead letters that said, "See ye here, Joseph, the first bishop of Christendom, the same which our Lord succoured in Sarras, in the spiritual place" . . . And then the bishop made semblance as though he would have gone to the consecrating of the mass, and then he took a wafer, which was made in the likeness of bread; and at the lifting up there came a figure in the likeness of a child, and the visage was as red and as bright as any fire, and smote himself into that bread, so that they all saw the bread was formed of a fleshy man. And then he put it into the holy vessel again and then he did that belonged unto a priest to do at mass. . . . Then looked they and saw a man come out of the holy vessel, that had all the signs of the passion of Jesus Christ, bleeding all openly, and said, "My knights, and my servants, and my true children, which be come out of deadly life, I will now no longer hide me from you, but ye shall see now a part of my secret and of my hidings. Now hold and receive the high meat which ye have so much desired.

It seems a far cry from these high mysteries to the body ecclesiastic we know; to its record of heresies and schisms; its conflicts concerning Transubstantiation and the Real Presence. But to recognize this fact is essential to the point to which I am leading up. Centuries ago Galahad achieved the quest, but, it is recorded, "since then was there never no man so hardy for to say that he had seen the Sancgreal." It, and what it connotes, owing to human imperfection, was withdrawn into concealment. The inner Church passed out of men's thought and consciousness, leaving the terrestrial Church desolate and in widowhood, practising maimed and impoverished rites; a cloud, as it were, resting upon the sanctuary. Yet, the legends run, there was given large promise of the restoration of the Graal; and of the remanifesting upon a larger scale than aforetime of all that was removed into hiddenness. And through the long years of inhibition and withdrawal the hidden Church has continued its work in silence but in real activity, whereof abundant tokens exist for those who have an eye for them. Finding no response in its external counterpart it has made its voice heard unmistakably elsewhere, not in its old-time tones, but in varying and feigned terms, if haply some few, hearing, might discern or be brought to the understanding of the withdrawn mysteries; terms of "subterfuge and allegory; terms of Alchemy, of Kabalism, of Rosicrucianism, of Masonry, of Templarism, of sundry secret schools; yet terms proclaiming, beneath whatsoever veils, always the same message, urging ever the same doctrine; the doctrine, that of the possibility of human regeneration; the message, that in due time the King will return to that Kingdom within us which we affirm in every Paternoster to be His.

So much may be premised by way of introduction to what is perhaps the most important and effective treatise upon Christian mysticism as yet published. Hitherto the Graal legends and romances have been the province, well nigh exclusively, of students of folklore and mediaeval letters, who have found in them only such worth as their special equipment enabled them to perceive. Even for them, when all has been said, there has remained over (as in the faint recognition of the idea of a Graal Church existing concurrently with but interiorly to the official Church of the day) a certain surplusage of refractory material, irresolvable because out of affinity with that which canons of folklore and scholarship are adapted to treat. But it is just this excess which, as Mr. Waite points out, belongs to, and is explicable only by, the mystic. And it is this which gives students of the varieties of mystical religious expression the clue to the facts that the Graal literature is one of concealed intention; that it is the ashes, as it were, of a great fire; the records of a great religious experience; the reminiscences of a school of initiation into those mysteries the existence of which in Christian times has been, and still is, as veritable a fact as the old-time mysteries of Egypt, of Chaldea, and of Greece. "It is only in its mystic sense that the Graal literature can repay study," Mr. Waite asserts. His book, accordingly is addressed exclusively to, and is intelligible only by, readers of mystical tendencies. From the standpoint of mysticism alone, therefore, it is best to speak of it here, though, to the credit of its author's own abundant erudition, it must be recorded that, to justify his conclusions, he has skilfully collated and co-ordinated that literature, and at one stride has both met official scholarship upon its own ground and altogether surpassed its achievements by virtue of having applied to the subject his own special gifts and appropriate equipment.

Quite probably the customary reproach will be urged at him that the mystic has read into his subject more than was ever there or intended to be there. One might as ineptly complain at Ruskin for deducing ethics from the dust of the earth; or at Wordsworth for seeing more in a primrose than did Peter Bell. The most commercially minded may recall that even upon the material plane fortunes have been made by discerning eyes that have seen the potential value of waste products or that have detected diamonds or gold nuggets where others saw but clay-mire or river-gravel. Is the exercise of the like faculty to be denied the religious mystic who, recognizing the marks and signs-manual of fellow-mystics who have trodden the path that leads from natural to supernatural life before him, is able out of his own knowledge to interpret them, and out of his own experience to vouch for their veracity? The objection referred to notwithstanding, henceforth all consideration of the Graal literature, whether of that known or of that yet untraced, is destined to be subjected to the criterion of Mr. Waite's interpretation; and, to dismiss the merely academic aspect of the subject, it may be asserted confidently that future scholarship will confirm rather than discredit the deductions he has reached. If the large and often conflicting Graal literature be, as Mr. Waite suggests, a progress from chaos towards order; a series, that is, of graduated efforts on the part of an old-world age to express, in terms of chivalry, the perennial problem, and to disclose the perpetual secret, of individual reintegration into that primal sanity humanity enjoyed before the Fall into matter, — efforts culminating in the record of the attainment of the Graal by Galahad, the perfected spiritual aspirant, — so, after a like manner, the extensive, but inconclusive, modern interrogation of that literature may be said to culminate here in this exhaustive and convincing volume by the most appropriately equipped of literary knights.

Mr Waite has given us, however, not merely an exposition of the meaning and purpose of the Graal literature. His work is a guidebook to a variety of other mystical systems that since the outward Church became desolated have sprung up, have perpetuated in other forms a cognate doctrine, and have left behind them traces of their affiliation to that unmanifested centre which is none other than the Hidden Church of the Holy Graal. Casual inquirers into the perplexing literature of Alchemy have long desired some simple statement of what all that strange commixture of religion and chemistry really means. The equally monstrous unintelligibilities of Hermeticism and Kabalism; the doubtful value, historical and otherwise, of semi-secret schools of symbolic doctrine such as Masonry — all systems apparently foreign to, and yet not subversive of, orthodox doctrine and official religious institutions — have long needed justifying, interpreting, and co-ordinating. Mr Waite has supplied this need, and has furnished us with a common denominator to them all. He establishes beyond controversy the fact that they are all voices crying in the wilderness, in different tones, but expressive all of one truth, and testifying all to a common but concealed source of inspiration.

Is there now for the plain wayfaring man who is unable or unwilling to tread these devious paths of apparent heterodoxy any instructional method ready to hand whereby he may enter upon the heritage promised by them all? Can he, not being a knight-errant, behold the Graal to-day Can he, no alchemist, transmute base metals into gold; or, no builder of temples, discover a certain lost secret, by which he may rear one? Well, in each of these cases the goal is the same, and all the various methods of attainment are reducible to one; that one, as Mr. Waite succeeds in demonstrating, being involved in the true perception of the Catholic office of the Mass; an office which, in whatever other respects the Latin Church may have deflected from its purpose, it yet, by an unerring instinct, has perpetuated and preserved from desecration as a channel of supernatural grace and a criterion for universal guidance. It is perhaps a strange claim to be made by one outside that Church and to readers many of whom will be prejudiced against its communion. But Mr. Waiters claim is not used at all as an argument for enlistment in the Roman Church. He knows too well that the offices of grace are administered upon all hands and are not restricted to any one ecclesiastical penfold. As an expert, if the term be permitted, in mysticism and symbolism, he merely records and emphasizes, with equal sincerity and impartiality, the fact that, despite all withdrawals of the hallows, despite all spiritual blindness in official places, one eloquent witness to a supernal sacrament has always survived, and that all other symbolic and mystical systems find their simplest and readiest expression in the Roman Office of the Mass. As in a great cathedral are found lesser shrines devoted to special purposes, and chapels subsidiary to the main sanctuary, so Mr Waite's thesis is designed to show that all mystical schools and systems outside the main current of historic orthodoxy have in reality been but accessory to it; specialized forms appropriate at certain eras and to certain minds; yet all over-spanned by one common, embracing roof, and all capable of finding their diversified methods of expression unified at one central high altar. The alchemic mystery, for example, as Mr Waite proves, is put with almost naked simplicity in Eucharistic doctrine. To understand the Mass is to hold the key to all other mystical systems.

I have left small space for reference to Mr. Waite's most important and instructive pronouncement upon the nature of that Hidden Church, which, never slumbering nor sleeping, has through the centuries of inhibition, watched over all the external churches and schools. Something of this unmanifested communion of saints we have learned before from those enlightening letters of Eckhartshausen's in The Cloud upon the Sanctuary, and from other less well-known sources. Henceforth all such voices will find fuller and co-ordinated expression in Mr. Waite's earnest and impressive closing pages. He defines it variously as the integration of sanctified souls in the higher consciousness; the cohort of just men made perfect; the lower mind of the official Churches raised to a higher plane of self-realization and rendered conscious of the unmanifested life involved within itself. It is not an organized community in time and space, and yet life within physical limitations need be no disqualification for admission there into. It is briefly that hidden House into which, in the passage quoted above, the purified spirit of man, typified by Galahad, is described as entering and participating in the celebration of the supreme mysteries of being; that House into which, as the Graal romances tell, and as our experience attests, the hallows have for a season been withdrawn, leaving a widowed Church with but their substitution, though not without promise of their restoration.

By W. L. WILMSHURST 1922, LONDON

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let me conclude with an apologue and an aspiration.

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

Chapter IV

THE HOLY ROYAL ARCH OF JERUSALEM.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE CEREMONY OF EXALTATION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The constitution of the Chapter as first revealed to the candidate is, therefore, a symbol of his perfected organism. He sees that it is polarized East and West; the East occupied by the three Principals, signifying his spiritual pole; the West, occupied by the three Sojourners, his psychic and materialized pole; each triad being the reflex of the other, yet each triad being an organic unity in itself. St. John testifies to this (and the ceremonial rite is made conformable to the teaching of that great Initiate) when he writes : " There are three that bear record in heaven, and these three are one.

And there are three that bear witness in earth, and these three agree in one. The meaning of this metaphysical assertion is that, just as a ray of white light splits up (as in the rainbow) into three primary colours which still remain organically united, so both the self-knowing Spirit in man and his psychical nature, although monadic essentially, are prismatically dissociable into a trinity. The Spirit in man in its triple aspects is, therefore, appropriately typified by the three Principals. They represent the three high attributes of the Spirit - Holiness, Royal Supremacy, Functional Power - referred to in the title of the Order; Holy-Royal-Arch. The middle and neutral term of these three must be considered as differentiating itself into a passive and an active, or a negative and a positive aspect; although all three act conjointly and as one (as is in fact the case with the three Principals of a Chapter). These three aspects of monadic Spirit are personified as Haggai (passive), Joshua (active), with Zerubabel as the middle term from which the other two issue and into which they merge. For the central Majesty is in one of its aspects silent and withdrawn and in the other functionally active and compulsive.

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

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

Heavily veiled beneath the sacramentalism of a council of the Jewish Sanhedrim, the Royal Arch Ceremony therefore exhibits in a most graphic manner the psychologic rationale of the final stage of regeneration. To the literalist, unacquainted with the fact that, in both Sacred Writ and the teaching of the Mysteries, surface appearances are always intended to be transposed into spiritual values and that quasi-historic characters are meant to be impersonations of philosophic facts or princi­ples, some difficulty may be felt on being asked to translate the quasi-historicity of the ceremonial text into the spiritualized interpretation here offered. The education and enlightenment of the under­standing is, however, one of the deliberate intentions of Initiatory Rites, and until the mind is able to rise above merely material facts and habituate itself to functioning in the truer realm of ideas which materialize into facts and make facts possible, there is small chance of its profiting from Rites like those of Masonry, which are of wholly negligible value but for the spiritual force and vitalizing energy of their inherent ideas. It may, therefore, be both helpful and a corroboration of what has been said if we scrutinize the Hebrew names of a Chapter's officers; what they yield upon analysis will demon­strate that those officers impersonate ideas rather than represent persons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was glad when they said unto me, let us go up into the house of the Lord ;

Our feet shall stand within thy gates, 0 Jerusalem. Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together; Thither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord. .. .

For there are set thrones of judgment, the thrones of

the house of David.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem ! they shall prosper that love it.

Peace is within her walls and plenteousness within her

palaces.

For my brethren and companions' sake I will say,

Peace be within thee. (Psalm CXXIL)

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

Chapter V.

FREEMASONRY IN RELATION TO THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES.

Every Mason is naturally desirous to know something of the origin and history of the Craft. The available literature on the subject is diffuse and unsatisfying. It offers a mass of disconnected details of 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.

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

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

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

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

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

In the time that the Mysteries flourished, every educated man entered them in the same way that men enter a University in modern times. They were the recognized source of instruction in the only things that really matter, those affecting the culture of the human soul and its education in the science of itself and its divine nature. Candidates were graded according to their moral efficiency and their intellectual or spiritual stature. For years they underwent disciplinary intellectual exercises and bodily asceticism, punctuated at intervals by appropriate tests and ordeals to determine their fitness to proceed to the more serious, solemn and awful processes of actual initiation, administered only to the duly qualified, and which were of a secret and closely guarded character. Their education, differing greatly from the scholastic methods of a utilitarian age like our own, was directed solely to the cultivation of the "four cardinal virtues" and the "seven liberal arts and sciences" as qualifica­tions prerequisite to participation in the higher order of life to which initiation would eventually admit the worthy and properly prepared candidate. The construction put upon these virtues. and sciences was a much more advanced one than the modern mind considers adequate. Virtues with them were more than abstractions and ethical sentiments; as the word itself implies they involved positive valours and virility of soul. Temperance involved complete control of the passional nature under every circum­stance; Fortitude, the courage that no adversity will dismay or deflect from the goal in view; Prudence, the deep insight that begets the prophetic or forward-seeing faculty of seer-ship (providentia);Justice, unswerving righteousness of thought and action.* (* The four cardinal virtues are referred to in both Plato's Phcedo and the Book of Wisdom, ch. viii, 5-'7, indicating com­munity of teaching between the Greek and Hebrew schools.) The "arts and sciences" were called "liberal" because they tended to liberate the soul from defects and illusions normally enslaving it, thus totally differing from science in the modern sense, the tendency of which is, as we know, materialistic and soul-benumbing. Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric with the Ancients were disciplines of the moral nature, by which the irrational tendencies of a human being were purged away and he was trained to become a living witness of the universal Logos and a living mouth-piece of the Divine Word. Geometry and Arithmetic were sciences of trans­cendental space and numeration (seeing that, as in the words of our own Scriptures, God has "made everything by measure, number and weight"), the comprehension of which provides the key, not only to the problems of one's being, but to those physical ones which are found so baffling by the inductive methods of to-day. Astronomy for them required no telescopes; it dealt not with the stars of the sky, but was the science of metaphysics and the understanding of the distribution of the forces latent in, and determining the destiny of, individuals, nations and the race. Finally Music (or Harmony) was for them not of the vocal or instrumental kind; it meant the living practice of philosophy, the adjustment of human life into harmony with God, until the personal soul became unified with Him and consciously heard, because it now participated in, the music of the spheres. As Milton puts it :­

" How lovely is Divine Philosophy,

Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute

And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets

Where no crude surfeit reigns."

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

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

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

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

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

By this great myth, therefore, instruction was imparted as to the history of the soul, its destiny and prospects, and the doctrine of reincarnation* was emphasized. [* As this doctrine is not popularly inculcated in the West as it is in the East, and will be novel and probably unacceptable to some readers, its acceptance is not pressed here. We are merely recording what the secret doctrine teaches.]

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

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

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

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

A further word is necessary as to the concealed significance of Solomon and the two Hirams. Solomon personifies the primordial Life-Essence or substantialized Divine Wisdom which is the basis of our being. It is defined in the Book of Wisdom (chap. vii., 25-27), as "a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty; the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God and the image of His goodness". It is described as a "king" because it must needs transcend and over-rule whatever is inferior to itself, and as "king of Israel" because "Israel" itself means "co-operating or ruling with God" as distinct from being associated with beings or affairs of a sub-divine order. To conjoin this transcendental Life-Essence to a vehicle which should give it fixity and form required the assistance of another dominant or "kingly" principle, personi­fied as Hiram, King of Tyre, who supplied the "building material". Now inasmuch as we are dealing with purely metaphysical ideas, it will be obvious that the Tyre in question has no relation to the Levantine sea-port of that name. The name Tyre in Hebrew means "rock" and the strength, compactness and durability which we associate with rock, whilst the same word recurs in Greek as Turos and in Latin as Terra, earth, and as Durus, implying form, hardness, consistency and durability. "King of Tyre", therefore, is interpretable as the cosmic principle which gives solidity and form to the spiritual fluidic and formless Life-Essence, and which is comparable to a cup intended to hold liquid. Solomon and Hiram of Tyre therefore contribute their respective properties of Life-Essence and durable form and "building material" as the groundwork of the soul, which then is made functionally effective by the addition of the third principle described as Hiram Abiff, the widow's son, and personifying the active intellectual principle or Logos. In a word, Hiram Abiff is the Christ­ principle immanent in every soul; crucified, dead and buried in all who are not alive to its presence, but resident in all as a saving force - "Christ in you, the hope of glory." Consistently with Christ­like humility, Hiram Abiff (literally, "the teacher from the Father") is not described as a "king" as are Solomon and Hiram of Tyre, but as one "of no reputation", a " widow's son "; a beautiful touch of Gnostic symbolism referable to the derelict or widowed nature of the Divine Motherhood or Sophia owing to the errancy and defection from wisdom of her frail children. Such of those children as have rejoined, or are striving to rejoin, their mother are alone worthy to be called the “widow's sons," and it is to the cry to those who have rejoined her from those still labouring at that task in the flesh, and perhaps wiping from their brow the bloody sweat of their Gethsemane anguish in the struggle, that the traditional petition applies, “ Come to my help, ye sons of the Widow, for I am the Widow's son!"

The temple of the human soul,primordially constituted of the three principles just spoken of in due balance and proportion and divinely pro­nounced to be " very good," has deflected from that state. Its fall has been effected by the dispro­portioned, unbalanced and, therefore, disorderly abuse of its inherent powers. Just as a man in a temper becomes temporarily unbalanced and liable to do what he would not in serene moments, so the soul has disorganized its own nature utterly. Of the three pillars that should support it, Wisdom (Gnosis) has fallen and become replaced by a flexible and shifting prop of speculative opinion : Strength (divine dynamic energy) has become exchanged for the frailty of the perishing flesh : Beauty, the god-like radiant form that should adorn and liken man to his Divine Creator, has become superseded by every ugliness of imperfection. Man is now a ruined temple, over which is written "Ichabod! Ichabod! the glory is departed !" Severed from conscious intercourse with his Vital and Immortal Principle, he is a prisoner in captivity to himself and his lower temporal nature. It remains for him to retrace his steps and rebuild his temple; to continue no longer a bondslave to his self-made illusions and the attractions of "worldly posses­sions", but become a free man and mason, engaged in shaping himself into a living and precious stone for the cosmic temple of a regenerate Humanity unto which, when completed and dedicated, Deity will again enter and abide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hiram the architect

Did all the Craft direct

How they should build,"

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter II

MASONRY AS A PHILOSOPHY

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

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

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

Now all these things belong to what may be called the very rough-ashlar stage of the Masonic conception. I am not, of course, alluding to any individual Mason. I confess frankly to having come within this category myself, and I think we may agree that we have all passed through the phase I have described, for the simple reason that we knew nothing better and had no one able to teach us something better. Let us not complain. If we look back upon the progress of the Craft during the last 150 years we cannot but congratulate ourselves upon the enormous, if gradual, strides made in Masonic progress and decorum even in the rough-ashlar stage of our conception of it. Any­one familiar with the records of old Lodges will have been brought into close touch with times when almost every element of reverence and dignity seems to have been lacking. Lodges were held in the public rooms of taverns. Whatever official furniture decorated these primitive temples, quart-pots and "churchwardens" figured largely among the unauthorized equipment. In one of the great London galleries there hangs a famous picture called "Night" by the great artist and moralist of his age, Hogarth. His purpose was to depict a charac­teristic night-scene in the streets of London as they appeared in his time. Among the typical specimens of depravity haunting those ill-lit streets, the great artist has held up to the derision of all time the figure of a Freemason staggering home drunk, still wearing his apron and being assisted by the tyler of the Lodge. No true Mason can regard this picture without a burning sense of shame, and without registering a resolution to redeem the Craft from this stigma. We have, I hope, got past such things as these. We have awakened to some sense of dignity and self-reverence. The Craft is well governed by its higher authorities, and individual Lodges take a pride in providing proper temples and in conducting their assemblies with due regard to the solemnity of Masonic doctrine. May the Order never relapse into the primitive and chaotic condition from which it has emerged.

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

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

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

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

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

Brethren, it is just this elusiveness, these inten­tional enigmas, this purposed puzzle-language, that are intended to put us on the scent of something deeper than the words themselves convey, and if we fail to find, to realize and to act upon, the inten­tion of what is veiled behind the letter of the rituals, we can scarcely claim to understand our own doctrine; we can scarcely claim to have been regularly initiated, passed and raised in the higher sense of those expressions, whatever ceremonies we have formally passed through. " The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life." Let us enquire what the spirit of this puzzle-language is.

The method of all great religious and initiatory systems has been to teach their doctrine in the form of myth, legend or allegory. As our first tracing-board lecture says, "The philosophers, unwilling to expose their mysteries to vulgar eyes, concealed their tenets and principles of philosophy under hieroglyphical figures", and our traditional history is one of these hieroglyphical figures. Now the literally-minded never see behind the letter of the allegory. The truly initiated mind discerns the allegory's spiritual value. In fact, part of the purpose of all initiation was, and still is, to educate the mind in penetrating the outward shell of all phenomena, and the value of initiation depends upon the way in which the inward truths are allowed to influence our thought and lives and to awaken in us still deeper powers of consciousness.

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

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

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

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

"An ever-moaning battle in the mist,

Death in all life and lying in all love ;

The meanest having power upon the highest,

And the high purpose broken by the worm."

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

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

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

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

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

" Truth is within ourselves. It takes no rise

From outward things, whate'er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in ourselves Where truth abides in fullness; and to know

Rather consists in finding out a way

Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape Than by effecting entrance for a light Supposed to be without."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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