The Meaning of Masonry
by W.L. Wilmshurst
[1922]
Contents |
Introduction |
Chapter
1 | Chapter
2 | Chapter
3 | Chapter
4 | Chapter
5
Introduction
THE POSITION AND POSSIBILITIES OF THE MASONIC ORDER
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
spiritual life, and the understanding of it calls for special and informed
guidance on the one hand, and on the other a genuine and earnest desire
for knowledge and no small capacity for spiritual perception on the part
of those seeking to be instructed; and not infrequently one finds Brethren
discontinuing their interest or their membership because they find that
Masonry means nothing to them and that no 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—by 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 be 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 its implications
into personal experience rather than the perfunctory conferment of its
rites, are the desiderata of the Craft to-day.
As a contribution to repairing the absence of explanation referred to
these papers have been 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 untechnical
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 archæological 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 mœnia, 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 Giver of Life and able to mediate and impart that 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 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 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.
So—if we will have it so—may it be with the temple of the
Masonic Order. Since the inception of Speculative Masonry it has been a-building
and expanding now these last three hundred years. Fashioned of living stones
into a far-reaching organic structure; brought gradually, under the good
guidance of its rulers, to high perfection on its temporal side and in
respect of its external observances, and made available for high purposes
and giving godly witness in a dark and troubled world; upon these preliminary
efforts let there now be invoked this crowning and completing blessing—that
the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding may descend upon the work of our
hands in abundant measure, prospering it still farther, and filling and
transfiguring our whole Masonic house.
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