A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonr

A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry

by Arthur Edward Waite

Weathervane Books,1970.,

CHRISTIAN MYSTERIES p.107

That New Birth which conferred... upon the Eleusinian mystae the title of Regenerated Children of the Moon—so that each of them was henceforth symbolically a Son of the Queen of Heaven--born as a man originally and reborn in a divine manner—has its correspondence on a much higher plane of symbolism with the Divine Birth in Bethlehem according to which a Child was “born” and a Son “given,” Who was saluted as Son of God and Son also of Mary, one of whose titles according to Latin theology is Queen of Heaven." (pp 107-108)

The hidden life in Egypt and Nazareth corresponds with the life of seclusion led by the mystae during their period of probation between the Lesser and Greater Mysteries. The three years of ministry are in analogy with the Temple-functions of the mystagogues. But lastly, in Egypt and elsewhere, there is said to have been a mystical experience of the Pastos, in which the initiate is held to have died symbolically. There is no literal correspondence between this and the physical death on the Cross of the Divine Master in Palestine, but there is one on the mystical side. The Christian Symbolum says: Descendit ad inferos; and in the entranced condition of the Pastos the soul of the initiate was held or was caused to pass into spiritual realms.... In fine, it is said of Christ: Terlia die resurrexit, and the adept of the Greater Mysteries rose from the Pastos in the imputed glory of an inward illumination....(p.108)

Death and Resurrection.—In several mythological legends the emblematic period between divine death and resurrection is triadic and is spoken of roughly as three days, though there is an exception in the case of Osiris, whose dismemberment necessitated a far longer quest before the most vital of his organs was left out as finally lost..(p.109)

The three days are foreshortened usually at both ends, for the first of them is an evening only, because of that which is implied spiritually by occasum solis; the second is a complete day, because the sun shines at the zenith on the other side of the woild of life ; while the third ends at sunrise, and this is the morning of Easter..." (p.109)

Christ Mystical.—In conclusion for the time being on these most Christian Mysteries I have dealt with them under this title because Christ Mystical is the apex and ne plus ultra of all the secret as of all the open Sanctuaries. The Christ-Life is the life of the Mysteries raised into a great transcendence. His story is the story of the soul on its way of attainment. He is the Spirit of the house and the house is she. The old Mysteries at their best put forth stories of the soul, which are shadows of the light which is in Him....Whose workings we hear also at however far a distance in the MASTER GRADE... till it is almost His own voice which speaks in that of Rose Croix.

Beyond these things there are those more secret Orders to which I have once adverted, in which the voice is heard more clearly and the scheme of the Great Catholic Mystery is unfolded more fully. Though not without breaks and omissions, they are descendants of anterior societies which may in turn have derived from Imperatores of the Rosy Cross or other dispensers of initiation, even as these—also in their turn—may have drawn from groups of antiquity. They are Wardens of Gates opening to the heights of symbolism and direct those in their charge towards that great experience which is granted to man alone in the contemplation of the Highest Unity. (p.111)

148
The Christian Aspects. ...Operative Masonry was a Christian Order and Mystery, stipulating on the part of its members that they should be” true to God and the Holy Church.” The great bulk of the Invocations which occur at the opening of the texts are in the Name of the Blessed Trinity. The Church in question was of course Catholic and Roman up to the period of the Reformation: thereafter it was Catholic by the hypothesis, but not Roman.

(See also 176) 178
The Old First Lecture. ...There is a conveniently forgotten work of G. Claret, entitled THE WHOLE OF CRAFT MASONRY, of which a second edition was published in 1841. At the end of the Fifth Section of the Lecture attached to the First Degree he places certain questions and answers by way of postscript. ... The omitted Catechism is as follows:
Q.—King Solomon being an Hebrew and living long before the Christian era, to whom were they [i.e. Masonic Lodges] next dedicated?
A .—St. John the Baptist.
Q._Why to St. John the Baptist?
A .—He being the forerunner of our Saviour, preached repentance in the wilderness, and drew the first line of the Gospel.
Q.__Had St. John the Baptist an equal?
A.—He had St. John the Evangelist.
Q._Whereis the Evangelist equal to the Baptist?
A ..—He coming after the forerunner, finished by his learning what the other had begun by his zeal—[an allusion preserved to this day
in the Grade of Masonic Knight Templar....
Q.—The next Brother will favour us with the historical account of.the two Grand Parallels in Masonry.
A .—From the building of the First ‘Temple at Jerusalem to the Babylonish Captivity, Freemasons’ Lodges were regularly dedicated to King Solomon; from thence to the coming of the Messiah they were dedicated to Zerubbabel and from that time to the final destruction of the Second Temple (sic) by Titus—son to the then reigning Emperor Vespasian...

217
...... our Masonic forefathers fell into dreams and sometimes they saw visions. After what in a manner they knew not; and how it came about they knew not, but the only terms in which they could think of it, and the one way in which it loomed before them, was as a Mystery of the Soul in God..... But two or three spoke to one another apart, thinking of a Great Instituted Mystery of Divine Life in Palestine; and together they looked back at Masonry, and these said: It is Christ; the Third Degree is Christian. It was of Christ indeed at the beginning, and the Craft shone in those days in the light of a Johannite parable.

282 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FREEMASONRY

",...to a few—it is but few at best—who have drunk at deep fountains of wisdom, who have seen another light than shines in Greek philosophy, it is given to understand the Mystery of the Craft Degrees and the personal experience therein according to the Ineffable Measures of the Mystery which is in Christ and of the experience which is reserved for those who can follow Him in the abiding inward presence of the Christ Mystical.

A Sum of Christian Theosophy.—... he who follows this light and attains the end therein realises in his own person, within his own measures, the Birth, Life, Death and Resurrection ol Christ, after the same manner’ that the story of the MasterBuilder is realised personally by every Master Mason. ...

Mystical Death.—In common with some others, but not for the...

314 The First House of God erected by Solomon typifies a state of perfection, of integration in the Eternal Law, of love to God and man. That was the kind of Masonry, and it is this which was built in the heart and soul of the Brotherhood. But the Legend of the THIRD DEGREE indicates that even then there were evil forces at work.... As time went on the keepers of the Secret Tradition and the Wardens of the Sacred Law betrayed their trust; the House of God was destroyed; the city and the nation fell. It is said that “the wages of sin is death,” and of such was the captivity in Babylon, till the day came when Masonry remembered Zion and wept beside the bitter waters. It was given to the elect people that they should rebuild the House of God, and the Temple of Zerubbabel represents the Israel of Masonry renouncing its false idols, the yoke of the evil law, and a return by the path of conduct to the freedom of the sons of God. ...

Hiram and Chrlst.—That which is shewn to him in the Ceremony is therefore the Resurrection of Hiram, issuing gloriously— as it is said—from the tomb and “reborn to a new life.” In a word, the Master-Builder arises as Christ. The Temple of Masonry is henceforward the House of Christ, at once of earth and of Heaven, of earth in so far as it is realised here in the heart and life of the Brotherhood, of Heaven as it is built in Christ, world without end. So in the Apocalyptic Vision is the New Jerusalem represented descending foursquare out of Heaven—perfect in its parts and honourable to the builder—that it may be manifested here below....

It is said to him also that “ the Temple of the Old Law has given place to the mystical Zion, on the summit of which is shewn the Lamb of God, bearing the standard of omnipotence acquired by His atoning immolation.” And lastly: “the time has come, my Brother, to announce that our Order is Christian, though in the largest and highest sense of the term.”

382
ledge communicated in Eden before the Fall; (b) under the Mosaic Law; and (c) in the Christian revelation—which the Jews rejected. The Lights are also significant of the Holy Trinity, which is a rock of offence in Israel.... The Master Mason represents a man under the influence of Christian revelation, “saved from the grave of iniquity and raised to the faith of salvation.” This view and its literal wording ... bear the emblem of the Trinity; but the reference of Hutchinson is apparently to the Pentagram, having the letter G in its centre, while Ashe is alluding to the rosettes worn on the apron. (5)

Hutchinson says that Masonry is founded on the Mysteries of Religion, that the four cardinal virtues are the furniture of the Lodge, and that Prudence—in its union apparently with Fortitude, Temperance and Justice—is comparable to that Star which led the Wise Men to Bethlehem, proclaiming the nativity of the Son of God. Ashe reproduces the same idea when he affirms that the forms of worship in the various and remote ages of the world “ are all resolved into the present system of Masonry, which is made perfect by means of Christianity.”

390
....which itself was reflected from experience. It was the tradition and experience—cited so often in these pages—of a new birth, new life, figurative or mystical death, and in fine a resurrection, rendition or return. There are times and places when it seems to have represented only a procession of events in Nature, the astronomy of the outer world. But in Greece—as our great exemplar—the philosophers took over this subject and exalted it into the soul’s legend, which is “a story written for one of the truest and holiest that are in this world,” because it is a true story and because those who wrote had lived it.

In the light of Christ it is summarised by a single sentence: el verbum caro facium est a habitavit in nobis. The wisdom of that Word is formulated in the Craft- DEGREES as if from very far away, as something in the hiddenness, and hence lost for the time being to the Royal Art of life in Masonry. But it is found with the centre in the Christian Grades, and that centre is like a rock-hewn sepulchre, in which the Word is hidden indeed, but from which it is manifested gloriously, on a certain morning of Easter. So are our altars renewed, the Blazing Star is manifested in all its splendour, the Sacred Word is found: et Jiabitavit in nobis, to the glory of God in the highest, world without end.

IMMORTALITY
So far as procedure is concerned under all existing obediences, it may seem to be technically an open question whether a man who does not believe in the immortality of the soul is qualified to be made a Mason. We know of course that the doctrine of resurrection to a future life has been taught ab origine in the Order and that the THIRD DEGREE is without meaning apart from it. But between notions of spurious liberality in matters of religion, Presbyterianism and Hugenot influence, under the legis of the first GRAND LODGE, the nature of the doctrine was confused amidst a cloud of ill-starred similitudes and contradictory symbolism.

391
Message of Christian Grades,—It is written: “He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches”—to the Lodges, Chapters and Preceptories, the places of Sacred Mysteries, wherein is the light of Christ, The Mysteries of Christian Masonry bring life and immortality to light. I include among these the beautiful intimations of the MARK, in which we hear of the New Name written in the Mystic Stone and other gospel tidings from the great APOCALYPSE. But they are declared further and more fully in the Military and Religious ORDER OF THE TEMPLE, which signifies the soul’s pilgrimage through life and time to the blessed and eternal shores. In a more perfect form of symbolism, and raising greater issues, the same quest or pilgrimage is signified by the Grade of ROSE-CROIX, in which the science of the Christhood is written within and without....

419
According to the Secret Tradition in Israel, the whole creation was established for the manifestation of this life, which unfolded actually in its dual aspects when the spiritual Eve was drawn from the side of the spiritual Adam and was placed over against him, in the condition of face to face. The intent of creation was made void in that event which is termed the Fall of Man, though this particular expression is unknown in Scripture.

By the hypothesis, those “fatal consequences “which followed would have reached their term on Mount Sinai; but the Israelites. when left to themselves in the wilderness, “sat down to cat and rose up to play.” That which is concealed by the evasion of these last words corresponds to the state of Eve in Paradise, when she had become infected by the Serpent.

The Greater Exile.—The Fall of Man is of course a story of Israel from the standpoint of Zoharic Kabalism, and that exile of the ages which followed the expulsion from Eden is like the exile of Jewry

p.420 from Zion through the Christian centuries. When, according to the traditional dream, the elect shall come into their own it will be as if Adam went back into Paradise under the folded wings of the Cherubim, or as if the High Priest passed into the Holy of Holies....

Christian Grades.—There remain, however, the Christian Grades of Masonry—as, for example, that of ROSE-CROIX, understood as a typical instance. They know nothing of Israel and its tradition of secret theosophy, but only that the quest of the Craft Grades is left in fine unfinished. ...

Herein lies the office of the Holy and Christian Grades, and the work is done by taking the letter SHIN—which ~S called the letter of the Spirit—and inserting it in the Name mr~, the result of which is rnt~’r~, being the Name of Jesus and the Word of the New Law. It will be seen therefore that the Grand Master did not come to set aside or destroy but to fulfil the Sacred Name of old, which stands about His own symbol as the hills stand about Jerusalem.

He came also to fulfil the Law by the work of its transmutation from that of bondage to the Law of Grace. But the corner-stone of the New Temple was rejected by Jewry and the walls of Zion fell down. There was no Temple henceforth in Israel
and no place for the chosen people. ... For the Christian Grades of Masonry it was obvious therefore that the experiment of the Symbolical Degrees could be finished only in the Light and Law of Christ. In Him also the Master-Builder—whom the Craft had mourned so long—must arise if he is to restore all things.

421
Christian Kabalism. If the sources of Craft Masonry... are thus found in Kabalism, what manner of people were those who grafted so strange a speculation and symbolism on the Operative Procedure of a Building-Guild? The answer is that all about the period which represents what is called the “transition “—and indeed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

...in Germany, Italy, France and England the zeal for Kabalistic literature had more than a scholastic basis. It was believed that the texts of the Secret Tradition shewed plainly---out of the mouth of Israel itself that the Messiah had come. This is the first fact.

The second is in Ceremonial Masonry itself and namely, that although the central event of the Third Degree is the Candidate's Raising, it is not said in the Legend that the Master Builder rose, thus suggesting that something remains to come after which might at once complete the Legend and conclude the Quest.

The third fact is that in an important High Grade of a philosophical kind, now almost unknown, the Master-Builder of the THIRD DEGREE does actually rise as Christ—as we have found in its proper place. It follows that although the Opening and Closing of the THIRD DEGREE and the Legend of the Master-Builder...are not so remote that we cannot trace them to their source.

108 MASONIC SYMBOLS
The grand and universal symbols which are characteristic of Emblematic Freemasonry are the Pentalpha or Pentagram, the Hexangular Seal of Solomon—called otherwise Shield of David—the All-Seeing Eye, the Point within a Circle, the Cubic Stone, the Sun and Moon. The particular symbols, being those drawn from the Operative Art of Masonry, are the Rough and Perfect Ashlar, and of course the Working Tools. There is finally the Blazing Star.

Blazing Star.—There has been considerable and not unnatural confusion between the Blazing Star and Pentalpha, because the first is distinguished by five wavering rays and the second by five points.
One result has been the attribution to the first of an antiquity and importance which belong properly to the second. The Blazing Star is a Masonic variant of the Pentagram, which—to all intents and purposes—was regarded as a star by the ancients. The voice of Masonry offers several explanations of the emblem adopted by the Order, circa 1735. It is

(i) the Star of the Magi,

(2) the Glory of Divine Presence,

(3) Divine Providence,

(4) a symbol of Beauty,

(5) a Light from God directing in the Way of Truth,

(6) the Sign of a True Mason,

(7) an emblem of the Sacred Name of God, and thus of God Himself,

(8) the Sun as the Grand Luminary of Nature,

p.109

(9) the Dog-Star, or Star of Anubis, and in fine (io) it is Nature regarded as a volatile spirit animated by the Universal Spirit. The last explanation belongs to Hermetic Masonry. The letter G is placed in the centre of the emblem, and there is no doubt that it stood originally for GOD. Under the variant GOTT, I believe that this explanation was adopted by the Brotherhood in Germany, As will be seen, it was not altogether intelligible to French Masonry, for which it came to signify Geometry but more especially as illustrating that it is God Who measures all things.

This change originating in a point of language—the French Name of God being DIEU—Was no doubt justified further by the familiar Masonic description of the Divine Being as “the Grand Geometrician of the universe.” I should add that the wavering rays have been generally abandoned in modern figurations of the Blazing Star and that it appears now as a Pentagram.

The Pentalpha.—This great and antique symbol has been described variously as follows in Masonic handbooks:

(i) As “a geometrical figure formed by five lines crossing each other, terminating in five points at equal distances ~from the centre, and equally distant one from the other all round the centre; “

(2) as a triple triangle... While it answers to all these definitions, it will be found further that this figure of five points contains a pentagram within it, and many mysteries are ascribed thereto....

Eliphas Levi—who took all occult science and philosophy as his province—affirms

(i) that the Pentagram is the Sign of the Microcosm ;

(2) that it represents what the Kabalists of the ZOHAR term Microprosopus;

(3) that its complete comprehension is the key of the two worlds;

(4) that it is absolute natural philosophy and natural science ;

(5) that it expresses the mind’s domination over the elements ;

(6) that it is the Star of the Magi the Blazing Star of the Gnostic Schools, the sign of intellectual omnipotence and autocracy. In another and higher academy than that of philosophia occulta, the Pentagram is a symbol of the Christhood, the Spirit of God ruling over the four parts of our natural personality. It is not therefore “intellectual omnipotence” but the ruling and over-ruling power of the Grace of God in the soul : now this is theocratic rule and therefore the antithesis of autocracy.

Hexagram.—The double triangle of Solomon is the Sign of the / 110
Macrocosmos, which is the great world: it has many meanings in the lesser and Greater Mysteries. It is the Three who bear record in heaven and the three who give testimony on earth; it is the sign of the Eternal Creator, the Grand Architect; it is that also of the triune man, perfect in the archetyped world as a prototypical image in the Divine Mind and reflected into manifestation here below as will, desire and mind. It signifies further the Hermetic doctrine of correspondencses, popularised long afterwards by Swedenborg but a recurring doctrine of the ZOHAR.

According to the philosophical Magus Eliphas Levi, “the conception of the infinite and the absolute” is expressed by this sign, which he terms the Grand Pantacle: “that is to say, it is the most simple and complete abridgment of universal science.” ... In the opinion of Ragon the Hexagrarn was (i) the sign of generation, (2) of divine fruitfulness and (3) of creative potency, the reason being that (~) the number six was consecrated of old to Venus. Levi says also that in alchemy the six-pointed star represented the intermingling of the three philosophical fires and the three philosophical waters which accomplished the procreation of all elementary substances. But in true alchemy there is only one fire, as there is one only water, and I do not know the Frenchman’s authority for this double triplicity. In the palmary sense of its symbolism the Hexagram—or Star and Seal of Solomon—is macrocosmic, while the Pentagram is the Sign of the Microcosm; but the greater and lesser worlds are not apart from one e another: they form indeed together the Mysterium Magnum and are Magnalia Dei d Nature.

Sun and Moon.—This spiritual consanguinity between symbols is illustrated also by the emblems of the Sun and Moon, which have a far deeper significance than appears on the surface of Masonry. The Sun in our monitorial handbooks typifies the call to labour, which is balanced by the complementary conception of repose, the two notions being ng united in the idea of refreshment. It represents also the progress ss of human life from infancy, through manhood, to old age, and the coming of the better day. Under the ethical dissolvent of Masonry corresponding symbol of the Moon enforces the ordinary theological doctrine that “the highest saints of earth and heaven, and the most glorious angels, only reflect the light of the Sun of Righteousness.”

111
to other schools of the Secret Tradition, we find that the Sun and Moon are lighted with spiritual meanings. They are symbols of God and His Shekinah, Pneuma and Psyche, the higher understanding and the logical mind. The solar emblem signifies also the light of God in the soul, while the Moon—which is in analogy with the feminine side of our nature, the soul-principle-----denotes the love-aspect in Deity.

There is no doubt that this is represented in Christian doctrine by the Holy Spirit, but this Spirit does not signify a feminine side of the Godhead in Trinitarian theology. In Kabalistic theosophy Shekinah is Divine womanhood, and it is said in a pregnant sentence that “God and His Shekinah are One.” The doctrinal position of this exalted concept is entirely distinct from any goddess whatsoever in the old pantheons—whether Isis, Urania or Pallas. Medieval occult philosophy recognised a solar and lunar principle in every natural compound, and it was held that this metaphysical Sun and Moon were joined in a solemn and sacramental union.

In classical legends the Moon is sometimes represented as a receptacle and sometimes as the source of souls; and we have seen already that the initiates of Eleusis were called Regenerated Children of the Moon. So also in the Mysteries of Ceres the souls which were said to be born out of the grotto of initiation were regarded as regenerated from a door in the side of the Moon, or born in the Lunar Ship, which was one of the titles of the Moon, floating in the cerulean sea of heaven. But these allegories are referable to the physical luminary only in virtue of the material type as a shadow of the spiritual antitype. Their true attribution is to the complement of that Sun which Apuleius beheld shining at the dead of night with luminous splendour. ...

In one of his inspired moments Eliphas Levi said that “Heaven is a mirror of the human soul, and when we think that we are reading in the stars it is in ourselves we read.” But beyond the gate which I have mentioned lies that which, according to the mystics, is itinerarium mentis in Deum—the journey of the mind in God.

Point and Circle.—... the rank and file of Blue Masonry it may continue—so long as Blue Masonry pleases—to typify the “individual brother” by means of the point and the limits of his duty to God and man by means of the circumference. They may tamper with the great antique (seep. 112)

Part II: 332
Symbolism of Rebirth....It follows also from St. Paul that we sow what is dead, but that we look for something which is alive, and will live indeed for ever. Now, certain Schools of Symbolism and several Secret Orders teach, and have long taught, that a sacred and highly symbolic object—which varies in each Confraternity—once entered into the region of death, with sacramental accessories in the Legends of certain Rites, whereby the conditions of death and even of corruption are made indubitable; but that something issued forth sub-

RESURRECTION AND REBIRTH 338
Death and Resurrection.__The death on the Cross was mystical in the sense that He of Whom it is said, in the Apostolic Symbolum, ~aSSUS et Se~ultus est, was by the same great hypothesis the Lord of Life. The Candidate passes also through a figurative death, and the only kind of resurrection which is possible to him at the epoch ensues thereafter. It is sometimes understood as a crude dramatic presentation of natural decease, followed by physical resurrection as this is expected to take place at the last day and for the purposes of a general judgment. ... It is all far from the real purpose of the Mysteries, and especially of that Mystery which is in Christ. We have heard that He is the firstfruits of them that have risen—a reference not to something postulated as taking place near or far in the future—at a hypothetical end of the world—but to something actual and present, and this is therefore not material but spiritual.

Christ is the firstfruits because man can be born again. The resurrection is like another rebirth, and the risen life which follows it in the order of human attainment is symbolised by that mystical period of forty days which intervened between Easter and Ascension Thursday.