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32°- SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL
SECRET
Master of Royal
Secret
Morals and Dogma
Albert Pike
The Occult Science of the Ancient Magi was concealed under the
shadows of the Ancient Mysteries: it was imperfectly revealed or rather
disfigured by the Gnostics: it is guessed at under the obscurities that cover
the pretended crimes of the Templars; and it is found enveloped in enigmas that
seem impenetrable, in the Rites of the Highest Masonry.
Magism was the Science of Abraham and Orpheus, of Confucius and
Zoroaster. It was the dogmas of this Science that were engraven on the tables of
stone by Hanoch and Trismegistus. Moses purified and re-veiled them, for
that is the meaning of the word reveal. He covered them with a new veil,
when he made of the Holy Kabalah the exclusive heritage of the people of Israel,
and the inviolable Secret of its priests. The Mysteries of Thebes and
Eleusis preserved among the nations some symbols of it, al-ready altered, and
the mysterious key whereof was lost among the instruments of an ever-growing
superstition. Jerusalem, the murderess of her prophets, and so often prostituted
to the false gods of the Syrians and Babylonians, had at length in its turn lost
the Holy Word, when a Prophet announced to the Magi by the consecrated Star of
Initiation, came to rend asunder the worn veil of the old Temple, in order to
give the Church a new tissue of legends and symbols, that still and ever
conceals from the Profane, and ever preserves to the Elect the same truths.
It was the remembrance of this scientific and religious
Absolute, of this doctrine that is summed up in a word, of this Word, in fine,
alternately lost and found again, that was transmitted to the Elect of all the
Ancient Initiations: it was this same remembrance, preserved, or perhaps
profaned in the celebrated Order of the Templars, that became for all the secret
associations, of the Rose-Croix, of the Illuminati, and of the Hermetic
Freemasons, the reason of their strange rites, of their signs more or less
conventional, and, above all, of their mutual devotedness and of their power.
The Gnostics caused the Gnosis to be proscribed by the
Christians, and the official Sanctuary was closed against the high initiation.
Thus the Hierarchy of Knowledge was compromitted by the violences of usurping
ignorance, and the disorders of the Sanctuary are reproduced in the State; for
always, willingly or unwillingly, the King is sustained by the Priest, and it is
from the eternal Sanctuary of the Divine instruction that the Powers of the
Earth, to insure themselves durability, must receive their consecration and
their force.
The Hermetic Science of the early Christian ages, cultivated
also by Geber, Alfarabius, and others of the Arabs, studied by the Chiefs of the
Templars, and embodied in certain symbols of the higher Degrees of Freemasonry,
may be accurately defined as the Kabalah in active realization, or the Magic of
Works. It has three analogous Degrees, religious, philosophical, and physical
realization.
Its religious realization is the durable foundation of the true
Empire and the true Priesthood that rule in the realm of human intellect: its
philosophical realization is the establishment of an absolute Doctrine, known in
all times as the "HOLY Doctrine,"
and of which PLUTARCH, in the Treatise "de Iside et Osiride,"
speaks at large but mysteriously; and of a Hierarchical instruction to secure
the uninterrupted succession of Adepts among the Initiates: its physical
realization is the discovery and application, in the Microcosm, or Little World,
of the creative law that incessantly peoples the great Universe.
Measure a corner of the Creation, and multiply that space in
proportional progression, and the entire Infinite will multiply its circles
filled with universes, which will pass in proportional segments between the
ideal and elongating branches of your Compass. Now suppose that from any point
whatever of the Infinite above you a hand holds another Compass or a Square, the
lines of the Celestial triangle will necessarily meet those of the Compass of
Science, to form the Mysterious Star of Solomon.
All hypotheses scientifically probable are the last gleams of
the twilight of knowledge, or its last shadows. Faith begins where Reason sinks
exhausted. Beyond the human Reason is the Divine Reason, to our feebleness the
great Absurdity, the Infinite Absurd, which confounds us and which we believe.
For the Master, the Compass of Faith is above the Square of Reason; but
both rest upon the Holy Scriptures and combine to form the Blazing Star
of Truth.
All eyes do not see alike. Even the visible creation is not, for
all who look upon it, of one form and one color. Our brain is a book printed
within and without, and the two writings are, with all men, more or less
confused.
The primary tradition of the single revelation has been
preserved under the name of the "Kabalah," by the Priesthood of Israel. The
Kabalistic doctrine, which was also the dogma of the Magi and of Hermes, is
contained in the Sepher Yetsairah, the Sohar, and the Talmud. According to that
doctrine, the Absolute is the Being, in which The Word Is, the Word that is the
utterance and expression of being and life.
Magic is that which it is; it is by itself, like the
mathematics; for it is the exact and absolute science of Nature and its laws.
Magic is the science of the Ancient Magi: and the Christian
religion, which has imposed silence on the lying oracles, and put an end to the
prestiges of the false Gods, itself reveres those Magi who came from the East,
guided by a Star, to adore the Saviour of the world in His cradle.
Tradition also gives these Magi the title of "Kings;"
because initiation into Magism constitutes a genuine royalty; and because the
grand art of the Magi is styled by all the Adepts, "The Royal Art," or
the Holy Realm or Empire, Sanctum Regnum.
The Star which guided them is that same Blazing Star, the image
whereof we find in all initiations. To the Alchemists it is the sign of the
Quintessence; to the Magists, the Grand Arcanum; to the Kabalists, the Sacred
Pentagram. The study of this Pentagram could not but lead the Magi to the
knowledge of the New Name which was about to raise itself above all names, and
cause all creatures capable of adoration to bend the knee.
Magic unites in one and the same science, whatsoever Philosophy
can possess that is most certain, and Religion of the Infallible and the
Eternal. It perfectly and incontestably reconciles these two terms that at first
blush seem so opposed to each other; faith and reason, science and creed,
authority and liberty.
It supplies the human mind with an instrument of philosophical
and religious certainty, exact as the mathematics, and accounting for the
infallibility of the mathematics themselves.
Thus there is an Absolute, in the matters of the Intelligence
and of Faith. The Supreme Reason has not left the gleams of the human
understanding to vacillate at hazard. There is an incontestable verity, there is
an infallible method of knowing this verity, and by the knowledge of it, those
who accept it as a rule may give their will a sovereign power that will make
them the masters of all inferior things and of all errant spirits; that is to
say, will make them the Arbiters and Kings of the World.
Science has its nights and its dawns, because it gives the
intellectual world a life which has its regulated movements and its progressive
phases. It is with Truths, as with the luminous rays: nothing of what is
concealed is lost; but also, nothing of what is discovered is absolutely new.
God has been pleased to give to Science, which is the reflection of His Glory,
the Seal of His Eternity.
It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious
symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and
re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge. The Priests of Egypt knew, better than
we do, the laws of movement and of life. They knew how to temper or intensify
action by re-action; and readily foresaw the realization of these effects, the
causes of which they had determined. The Columns of Seth, Enoch,
Solomon, and Hercules have symbolized in the Magian traditions this universal
law of the Equilibrium; and the Science of the Equilibrium or balancing of
Forces had led the Initiates to that of the universal gravitation around the
centres of Life, Heat, and Light.
Thales and Pythagoras learned in the Sanctuaries of Egypt that
the Earth revolved around the Sun; but they did not attempt to make this
generally known, because to do so it would have been necessary to reveal one of
the great Secrets of the Temple, that double law of attraction and radiation or
of sympathy and antipathy, of fixedness and movement, which is the principle of
Creation, and the perpetual cause of life. This Truth was ridiculed by the
Christian Lactantius, as it was long after sought to be proven a falsehood by
persecution, by Papal Rome.
So the philosophers reasoned, while the Priests, without
replying to them or even smiling at their errors, wrote, in those Hieroglyphics
that created all dogmas and all poetry, the Secrets of the Truth.
When Truth comes into the world, the Star of Knowledge advises
the Magi of it, and they hasten to adore the Infant who creates the Future. It
is by means of the Intelligence of the Hierarchy and the practice of obedience,
that one obtains Initiation. If the Rulers have the Divine Right to govern, the
true Initiate will cheerfully obey.
The orthodox traditions were carried from Chaldea by Abraham.
They reigned in Egypt in the time of Joseph, together with the knowledge of the
True God. Moses carried Orthodoxy out of Egypt, and in the Secret Traditions of
the Kabalah we find a Theology entire, perfect, unique, like that which in
Christianity is most grand and best explained by the Fathers and the Doctors,
the whole with a consistency and a harmoniousness which it is not as yet given
to the world to comprehend. The Sohar, which is the Key of the Holy Books, opens
also all the depths and lights, all the obscurities of the Ancient Mythologies
and of the Sciences originally concealed in the Sanctuaries. It is true that the
Secret of this Key must be known, to enable one to make use of it, and that for
even the most penetrating intellects, not initiated in this Secret, the Sohar is
absolutely incomprehensible and almost illegible.
The Secret of the Occult Sciences is that of Nature itself, the
Secret of the generation of the Angels and Worlds, that of the Omnipotence of
God.
"Ye shall be like the Elohim, knowing good and evil," had
the Serpent of Genesis said, and the Tree of Knowledge became the Tree of Death.
For six thousand years the Martyrs of Knowledge toil and die at
the foot of this tree, that it may again become the Tree of Life.
The Absolute sought for unsuccessfully by the insensate and
found by the Sages, is the TRUTH, the REALITY, and the REASON of the universal
equilibrium!
Equilibrium is the Harmony that results from the analogy of
Contraries.
Until now, Humanity has been endeavoring to stand on one foot;
sometimes on one, sometimes on the other.
Civilizations have risen and perished, either by the anarchical
insanity of Despotism, or by the despotic anarchy of Revolt.
To organize Anarchy, is the problem which the revolutionists
have and will eternally have to resolve. It is the rock of Sisyphus that will
always fall back upon them. To exist a single instant, they are and always will
be by fatality reduced to improvise a despotism without other reason of
existence than necessity, and which, consequently, is violent and blind as
Necessity. We escape from the harmonious monarchy of Reason, only to fall under
the irregular dictatorship of Folly.
Sometimes superstitious enthusiasms, sometimes the miserable
calculations of the materialist instinct have led astray the nations, and God at
last urges the world on toward believing Reason and reasonable Beliefs.
We have had prophets enough without philosophy, and philosophers
without religion; the blind believers and the skeptics resemble each other, and
are as far the one as the other from the eternal salvation.
In the chaos of universal doubt and of the conflicts of Reason
and Faith, the great men and Seers have been but infirm and morbid artists,
seeking the beau-ideal at the risk and peril of their reason and life.
Living only in the hope to be crowned, they are the first to do
what Pythagoras in so touching a manner prohibits in his admirable Symbols; they
rend crowns, and tread them under foot.
Light is the equilibrium of Shadow and Lucidity.
Movement is the equilibrium of Inertia and Activity.
Authority is the equilibrium of Liberty and Power.
Wisdom is equilibrium in the Thoughts, which are the
scintillations and rays of the Intellect.
Virtue is equilibrium in the Affections: Beauty is harmonious
proportion in Forms.
The beautiful lives are the accurate ones, and the magnificences
of Nature are an algebra of graces and splendors.
Everything just is beautiful; everything beautiful ought to be
just.
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There is, in fact, no Nothing, no void Emptiness, in the
Universe. From the upper or outer surface of our atmosphere to that of the Sun,
and to those of the Planets and remote Stars, in different directions, Science
has for hundreds of centuries imagined that there was simple, void, empty Space.
Comparing finite knowledge with the Infinite, the Philosophers know little more
than the apes! In all that "void" space are the Infinite Forces of God, acting
in an infinite variety of directions, back and forth, and never for an instant
inactive. In all of it, active through the whole of its Infinity, is the Light
that is the Visible Manifestation of God. The earth and every other planet and
sphere that is not a Centre of Light, carries its cone of shadow with it as it
flies and flashes round in its orbit; but the darkness has no home in the
Universe. To illuminate the sphere on one side, is to project a cone of darkness
on the other; and Error also is the Shadow of the Truth with which God
illuminates the Soul.
In all that "Void," also, is the Mysterious and ever Active
Electricity, and Heat, and the Omnipresent Ether. At the will of God the
Invisible becomes Visible. Two invisible gases, combined by the action of a
Force of God, and compressed, become and remain the water that fills the great
basins of the seas, flows in the rivers and rivulets, leaps forth from the rocks
or springs, drops upon the earth in rains, or whitens it with snows, and bridges
the Danubes with ice, or gathers in vast reservoirs in the earth's bosom. God
manifested fills all the extension that we foolishly call Empty Space and the
Void.
And everywhere in the Universe, what we call Life and Movement
results from a continual conflict of Forces or Impulses. Whenever that active
antagonism ceases, the immobility and inertia, which are Death, result.
If, says the Kabalah, the Justice of God, which is Severity or
the Female, alone reigned, creation of imperfect beings such as man would from
the beginning have been impossible, because Sin being congenital with Humanity,
the Infinite Justice, measuring the Sin by the Infinity of the God offended
against, must have annihilated Humanity at the instant of its creation; and not
only Humanity but the Angels, since these also, like all created by God and less
than perfect, are sinful. Nothing imperfect would have been possible. If, on the
other hand, the Mercy or Benignity of God, the Male, were in no wise
counteracted, Sin would go unpunished, and the Universe fall into a chaos of
corruption.
Let God but repeal a single principle or law of chemical
attraction or sympathy, and the antagonistic forces equilibrated in matter,
released from constraint, would instantaneously expand all that we term matter
into impalpable and invisible gases, such as water or steam is, when, confined
in a cylinder and subjected to an immense degree of that mysterious force of the
Deity which we call "heat," it is by its expansion released.
Incessantly the great currents and rivers of air flow and rush
and roll from the equator to the frozen polar regions, and back from these to
the torrid equatorial realms. Necessarily incident to these great, immense,
equilibrated and beneficent movements, caused by the antagonism of equatorial
heat and polar cold, are the typhoons, tornadoes, and cyclones that result from
conflicts between the rushing currents. These and the benign trade-winds result
from the same great law. God is omnipotent; but effects without causes are
impossible, and these effects cannot but sometimes be evil. The fire would not
warm, if it could not also burn, the human flesh. The most virulent poisons are
the most sovereign remedies, when given in due proportion. The Evil is the
shadow of the Good, and inseparable from it.
The Divine Wisdom limits by equipoise the Omnipotence of the
Divine Will or Power, and the result is Beauty or Harmony. The arch rests not on
a single column, but springs from one on
either side. So is it also with the Divine Justice and Mercy, and
with the Human Reason and Human Faith.
That purely scholastic Theology, issue of the Categories of
Aristotle and of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, that logic of the syllogism
which argues instead of reasoning, and finds a response to every thing by
subtilizing on terms, wholly ignored the Kabalistic dogma and wandered off into
the drear vacuity of darkness. It was less a philosophy or a wisdom than a
philosophical automaton, replying by means of springs, and uncoiling its theses
like a wheeled movement. It was not the human verb but the monotonous cry of a
machine, the inanimate speech of an Android. It was the fatal precision of
mechanism, instead of a free application of rational necessities. ST. THOMAS
AQUINAS crushed with a single blow all this scaffolding of words built one upon
the other, by proclaiming the eternal Empire of Reason, in that magnificent
sentence, "A thing is not just because GOD wills it; but GOD wills it because
it is just." The proximate consequence of this proposition, arguing from the
greater to the less, was this: "A thing is not true because ARISTOTLE
has said it; but ARISTOTLE could not reasonably say it unless it was
true. Seek then, first of all, the TRUTH and JUSTICE, and the
Science of ARISTOTLE will be given you in addition."
It is the fine dream of the greatest of the Poets, that Hell,
become useless, is to be closed at length, by the aggrandizement of Heaven; that
the problem of Evil is to receive its final solution, and Good alone, necessary
and triumphant, is to reign in Eternity. So the Persian dogma taught that
AHRIMAN and his subordinate ministers of Evil were at last, by means of a
Redeemer and Mediator, to be reconciled with Deity, and all Evil to end. But
unfortunately, the philosopher forgets all the laws of equilibrium, and seeks to
absorb the Light in a splendor without shadow, and movement in an absolute
repose that would be the cessation of life. So long as there shall be a visible
light, there will be a shadow proportional to this Light, and whatever is
illuminated will cast its cone of shadow. Repose will never be happiness, if it
is not balanced by an analogous and contrary movement. This is the immutable law
of Nature, the Eternal Will of the JUSTICE which is GOD.
The same reason necessitates Evil and Sorrow in Humanity, which
renders indispensable the bitterness of the waters of the
seas. Here also, Harmony can result only from the analogy of
contraries, and what is above exists by reason of what is below. It is the depth
that determines the height; and if the valleys are filled up, the mountains
disappear: so, if the shadows are effaced, the Light is annulled, which is only
visible by the graduated contrast of gloom and splendor, and universal obscurity
will be produced by an immense dazzling. Even the colors in the Light only exist
by the presence of the shadow: it is the threefold alliance of the day and
night, the luminous image of the dogma, the Light made Shadow, as the Saviour is
the Logos made man: and all this reposes on the same law, the primary law of
creation, the single and absolute law of Nature, that of the distinction and
harmonious ponderation of the contrary forces in the universal equipoise.
The two great columns of the Temple that symbolizes the Universe
are Necessity, or the omnipotent Will of God, which nothing can disobey, and
Liberty, or the free-will of His creatures. Apparently and to our human reason
antagonistic, the same Reason is not incapable of comprehending how they can be
in equipoise. The Infinite Power and Wisdom could so plan the Universe and the
Infinite Succession of things as to leave man free to act, and, foreseeing what
each would at every instant think and do, to make of the free-will and
free-action of each an instrument to aid in effecting its general purpose. For
even a man, foreseeing that another will do a certain act, and in nowise
controlling or even influencing him may use that action as an instrument to
effect his own purposes.
The Infinite Wisdom of God foresees what each will do, and uses
it as an instrument, by the exertion of His Infinite Power, which yet does not
control the Human action so as to annihilate its freedom. The result is Harmony,
the third column that up-holds the Lodge. The same Harmony results from the
equipoise of Necessity and Liberty. The will of God is not for an instant
defeated nor thwarted, and this is the Divine Victory; and yet He does not tempt
nor constrain men to do Evil, and thus His Infinite Glory is unimpaired. The
result is Stability, Cohesion, and Permanence in the Universe, and undivided
Dominion and Autocracy in the Deity. And these, Victory, Glory, Stability, and
Dominion, are the last four Sephiroth of the Kabalah.
I Am, God said to Moses, that which Is, Was and Shall forever
Be. But the Very God, in His unmanifested Essence, conceived of as not yet
having created and as Alone, has no Name. Such was the doctrine of all the
ancient Sages, and it is so expressly declared in the Kabalah. יהוה is the Name
of the Deity manifested in a single act, that of Creation, and containing within
Himself, in idea and actuality, the whole Universe, to be invested with form and
be materially developed during the eternal succession of ages. As God never WAS
NOT, so He never THOUGHT not, and the Universe has no more had a beginning than
the Divine Thought of which it is the utterance,--no more than the Deity
Himself. The duration of the Universe is but a point halfway upon the infinite
line of eternity; and God was not inert and uncreative during the eternity that
stretches behind that point. The Archetype of the Universe did never not exist
in the Divine Mind. The Word was in the BEGINNING with God, and WAS God. And the
Ineffable NAME is that, not of the Very Essence but of the Absolute, manifested
as Being or Existence. For Existence or Being, said the Philosophers, is
limitation; and the Very Deity is not limited nor defined, but is all that
may possibly be, besides all that is, was, and shall be.
Reversing the letters of the Ineffable Name, and dividing it, it
becomes bi-sexual, as the word יה, Yud-He or JAH is, and discloses the
meaning of much of the obscure language of the Kabalah, and is The Highest of
which the Columns Jachin and Boaz are the symbol. "In the image of Deity," we
are told, "God created the Man; Male and Female created He them:" and the
writer, symbolizing the Divine by the Human, then tells us that the woman, at
first contained in the man, was taken from his side. So Minerva, Goddess of
Wisdom, was born, a woman and in armor, of the brain of Jove; Isis was the
sister before she was the wife of Osiris, and within BRAHM, the Source of all,
the Very God, without sex or name, was developed MAYA, the Mother of all that
is. The WORD is the First and Only-begotten of the Father; and the awe with
which the Highest Mysteries were regarded has imposed silence in respect to the
Nature of the Holy Spirit. The Word is Light, and the Life of Humanity.
It is for the Adepts to understand the meaning of the Symbols.
Return now, with us, to the Degrees of the Blue Masonry, and for
your last lesson, receive the explanation of one of their Symbols.
You see upon the altar of those Degrees the SQUARE and the
COMPASS, and you remember how they lay upon the altar in each Degree.
The SQUARE is an instrument adapted for plane surfaces only, and
therefore appropriate to Geometry, or measurement of the Earth, which appears to
be, and was by the Ancients supposed to be, a plane. The COMPASS is an
instrument that has relation to spheres and spherical surfaces, and is adapted
to spherical trigonometry, or that branch of mathematics which deals with the
Heavens and the orbits of the planetary bodies.
The SQUARE, therefore, is a natural and appropriate Symbol of
this Earth and the things that belong to it, are of it, or concern it. The
Compass is an equally natural and appropriate Symbol of the Heavens, and of all
celestial things and celestial natures.
You see at the beginning of this reading, an old Hermetic
Symbol, copied from the "MATERIA PRIMA" of Valentinus, printed at Franckfurt, in
1613, with a treatise entitled "AZOTH." Upon it you see a Triangle upon a
Square, both of these contained in a circle; and above this, standing upon a
dragon, a human body, with two arms only, but two heads, one male and the other
female. By the side of the male head is the Sun, and by that of the female head,
the Moon, the crescent within the circle of the full moon. And the hand on the
male side holds a Compass, and that on the female side, a
Square.
The Heavens and the Earth were personified as Deities, even
among the Aryan Ancestors of the European nations of the Hindus, Zends,
Bactrians, and Persians; and the Rig Veda Sanhita contains hymns addressed to
them as gods. They were deified also among the Phnicians; and among the Greeks
OURANOS and GEA, Heaven and Earth, were sung as the most ancient of the Deities,
by Hesiod.
It is the great, fertile, beautiful MOTHER, Earth, that
produces, with limitless profusion of beneficence, everything that ministers to
the needs, to the comfort, and to the luxury of man. From her teeming and
inexhaustible bosom come the fruits, the grain, the flowers, in their season.
From it comes all that feeds the animals which serve man as laborers and for
food. She, in the fair Springtime, is green with abundant grass, and the trees
spring from her soil, and from her teeming vitality take their wealth of green
leaves. In her womb are found the useful and valuable minerals; hers are the
seas the swarm with life; hers the rivers that furnish food and irrigation, and
the mountains that send down the streams which swell into these rivers; hers the
forests that feed the sacred fires for the sacrifices, and blaze upon the
domestic hearths. The EARTH, therefore, the great PRODUCER, was always
represented as a female, as the MOTHER,--Great, Bounteous, Beneficent
Mother Earth.
On the other hand, it is the light and heat of the Sun in the
Heavens, and the rains that seem to come from them, that in the Springtime make
fruitful this bountifully-producing Earth, that restore life and warmth to her
veins, chilled by Winter, set running free her streams, and beget, as it
were, that greenness and that abundance of which she is so prolific. As the
procreative and generative agents, the Heavens and the Sun have always been
regarded as male; as the generators that fructify the Earth and cause it
to produce.
The Hermaphroditic figure is the Symbol of the double nature
anciently assigned to the Deity, as Generator and Producer, as BRAHM and MAYA
among the Aryans, Osiris and Isis among the Egyptians. As the Sun was male, so
the Moon was female; and Isis was both the sister and the wife of Osiris. The
Compass, therefore, is the Hermetic Symbol of the Creative Deity, and the Square
of the productive Earth or Universe.
From the Heavens come the spiritual and immortal portion of man;
from the Earth his material and mortal portion. The Hebrew Genesis says that
YEHOUAH formed man of the dust of the Earth, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life. Through the seven planetary spheres, represented by the Mystic
Ladder of the Mithriac Initiations, and it by that which Jacob saw in his dream
(not with three, but with seven steps), the Souls, emanating from
the Deity, descended, to be united to their human bodies; and through those
seven spheres they must re-ascend, to return to their origin and home in the
bosom of the Deity.
The COMPASS, therefore, as the Symbol of the Heavens,
represents the spiritual, intellectual, and moral portion of this double nature
of Humanity; and the SQUARE, as the Symbol of the Earth, its material,
sensual, and baser portion.
"Truth and Intelligence," said one of the Ancient Indian Sects
of Philosophers, "are the Eternal attributes of God, not of the individual Soul,
which is susceptible both of knowledge and ignorance, of pleasure and pain;
therefore God and the individual Soul are distinct:" and this expression of the
ancient Nyaya Philosophers, in regard to Truth, has been handed down to us
through the long succession of ages, in the lessons of Freemasonry, wherein we
read, that "Truth is a Divine Attribute, and the foundation of every virtue."
"While embodied in matter," they said, "the Soul is in a state
of imprisonment, and is under the influence of evil passions; but having, by
intense study, arrived at the knowledge of the elements and principles of
Nature, it attains unto the place of TIE ETERNAL; in which state of happiness,
its individuality does not cease."
The vitality which animates the mortal frame, the Breath of Life
of the Hebrew Genesis, the Hindu Philosophers in general held, perishes with it;
but the Soul is divine, an emanation of the Spirit of God, but not a portion
of that Spirit. For they compared it to the heat and light sent forth from the
Sun, or to a ray of that light, which neither lessens nor divides its own
essence.
However created, or invested with separate existence, the Soul,
which is but the creature of the Deity, cannot know the mode of its creation,
nor comprehend its own individuality. It cannot even comprehend how the being
which it and the body constitute, can feel pain, or see, or hear. It has pleased
the Universal Creator to set bounds to the scope of our human and finite reason,
beyond which it cannot reach; and if we are capable of comprehending the mode
and manner of the creation or generation of the Universe of things, He has been
pleased to conceal it from us by an impenetrable veil, while the words used to
express the act have no other definite meaning than that He caused that Universe
to commence to exist.
It is enough for us to know, what Masonry teaches, that we are
not all mortal; that the Soul or Spirit, the intellectual and reasoning portion
of ourself, is our Very Self, is not subject to decay and dissolution, but is
simple and immaterial, survives the death of the body, and is capable of
immortality; that it is also capable of improvement and advancement, of
increase of knowledge of the
things that are divine, of becoming wiser and better, and more and more worthy
of immortality; and that to become so, and to help to improve and benefit others
and all our race, is the noblest ambition and highest glory that we can
entertain and attain unto, in this momentary and imperfect life.
In every human being the Divine and the Human are intermingled.
In every one there are the Reason and the Moral sense, the passions that prompt
to evil, and the sensual appetites. "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die,"
said Paul, writing to the Christians at Rome, "but if ye through the spirit do
mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the
Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." "The flesh lusteth against the spirit,
and the spirit against the flesh," he said, writing to the Christians of
Galatia, "and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the
things that ye would." "That which I do, I do not willingly do," he wrote to the
Romans, "for what I wish to do, that I do not do, but that which I hate I do. It
is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. To will, is present with
me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not. For, I do not do the good
that I desire to do; and the evil that I do not wish to do, that I do do. I find
then a law, that when I desire to do good, evil is present with me; for I
delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my
members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to
the law of sin which is in my members. . . So then, with the mind I myself serve
the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin."
Life is a battle, and to fight that battle heroically and well
is the great purpose of every man's existence, who is worthy and fit to live at
all. To stem the strong currents of adversity, to advance in despite of all
obstacles, to snatch victory from the jealous grasp of fortune, to become a
chief and a leader among men, to rise to rank and power by eloquence, courage,
perseverance, study, energy, activity, discouraged by no reverses, impatient of
no delays, deterred by no hazards; to win wealth, to subjugate men by our
intellect, the very elements by our audacity, to succeed, to prosper, to
thrive;--thus it is, according to the general understanding, that one fights
well the battle of life. Even to succeed in business by that boldness which
halts for no risks, that audacity which stakes all upon hazardous chances; by
the shrewdness of the close
dealer, the boldness of the unscrupulous operator, even by the knaveries of the
stock-board and the gold-room; to crawl up into place by disreputable means or
the votes of brutal ignorance,--these also are deemed to be among the great
successes of life.
But that which is the greatest battle, and in which the truest
honor and most real success are to be won, is that which our intellect and
reason and moral sense, our spiritual natures, fight against our sensual
appetites and evil passions, our earthly and material or animal nature. Therein
only are the true glories of heroism to be won, there only the successes that
entitle us to triumphs.
In every human life that battle is fought; and those who win
elsewhere, often suffer ignominious defeat and disastrous rout, and discomfiture
and shameful downfall in this encounter.
You have heard more than one definition of freemasonry. The
truest and the most significant you have yet to hear. It is taught to the
entered Apprentice, the Fellow-Craft, and the Master, and it is taught in every
Degree through which you have advanced to this. It is a definition of what
Freemasonry is, of what its purposes and its very essence and spirit are; and it
has for every one of us the force and sanctity of a divine law, and imposes on
every one of us a solemn obligation.
It is symbolized and taught, to the Apprentice as well as to
you, by the COMPASS and the SQUARE; upon which, as well as upon the
Book of your Religion and the Book of the law of the Scottish Freemasonry, you
have taken so many obligations. As a Knight, you have been taught it by the
Swords, the symbols of HONOR and DUTY, on which you have taken your vows: it was
taught you by the BALANCE, the symbol of all Equilibrium, and by the CROSS, the
symbol of devotedness and self-sacrifice; but all that these teach and contain
is taught and contained, for Entered Apprentice, Knight, and Prince alike, by
the Compass and the Square.
For the Apprentice, the points of the Compass are beneath the
Square. For the Fellow-Craft, one is above and one beneath. For the Master, both
are dominant, and have rule, control, and empire over the symbol of the earthly
and the material.
FREEMASONRY is the subjugation of the Human that is in man by
the Divine; the Conquest of the Appetites and Passions by the Moral Sense and
the Reason; a continual effort, struggle, and warfare of the Spiritual against
the Material and Sensual. That victory, when it has been achieved and
secured, and the conqueror may rest upon his shield and wear the well-earned
laurels, is the true HOLY EMPIRE.
To achieve it, the Mason must first attain a solid conviction,
founded upon reason, that he hath within him a spiritual nature, a soul that is
not to die when the body is dissolved, but is to continue to exist and to
advance toward perfection through all the ages of eternity, and to see more and
more clearly, as it draws nearer unto God, the Light of the Divine Presence.
This the Philosophy of the Ancient and Accepted Rite teaches him; and it
encourages him to persevere by helping him to believe that his free will is
entirely consistent with God's Omnipotence and Omniscience; that He is not only
infinite in power, and of infinite wisdom, but of infinite mercy, and an
infinitely tender pity and love for the frail and imperfect creatures that He
has made.
Every Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, from the
first to the thirty-second, teaches by its ceremonial as well as by its
instruction, that the noblest purpose of life and the highest duty of a man are
to strive incessantly and vigorously to win the mastery of everything, of that
which in him is spiritual and divine, over that which is material and sensual;
so that in him also, as in the Universe which God governs, Harmony and Beauty
may be the result of a just equilibrium.
You have been taught this in those Degrees, conferred in the
Lodge of Perfection, which inculcate particularly the practical morality of
Freemasonry. To be true, under whatever temptation to be false; to be honest in
all your dealings, even if great losses should be the consequence; to be
charitable, when selfishness would prompt you to close your hand, and
deprivation of luxury or comfort must follow the charitable act; to judge justly
and impartially, even in your own case, when baser impulses prompt you to do an
injustice in order that you may be benefited or justified; to be tolerant, when
passion prompts to intolerance and persecution; to do that which is right, when
the wrong seems to promise larger profit; and to wrong no man of anything that
is his, however easy it may seem so to enrich yourself;--in all these things and
others which you promised in those Degrees, your spiritual nature is taught and
encouraged to assert its rightful dominion over your appetites and passions.
The philosophical Degrees have taught you the value of
knowledge, the excellence of
truth, the superiority of intellectual labor, the dignity and value of your
soul, the worth of great and noble thoughts; and thus endeavored to assist you
to rise above the level of the animal appetites and passions, the pursuits of
greed and the miserable struggles of ambition, and to find purer pleasure and
nobler prizes and rewards in the acquisition of knowledge, the enlargement of
the intellect, the interpretation of the sacred writing of God upon the great
pages of the Book of Nature.
And the Chivalric Degrees have led you on the same path, by
showing you the excellence of generosity, clemency, forgiveness of injuries,
magnanimity, contempt of danger, and the paramount obligations of Duty and
Honor. They have taught you to over-come the fear of death, to devote yourself
to the great cause of civil and religious Liberty, to be the Soldier of all that
is just, right, and true; in the midst of pestilence to deserve your title of
Knight Commander of the Temple, and neither there nor Elsewhere to desert your
post and flee dastard-like from the foe. In all this, you assert the superiority
and right to dominion of that in you which is spiritual and divine. No base fear
of danger or death, no sordid ambitions or pitiful greeds or base considerations
can tempt a true Scottish Knight to dishonor, and so make his intellect, his
reason, his soul, the bond-slave of his appetites, of his passions, of that
which is material and animal, selfish and brutish in his nature.
It is not possible to create a true and genuine Brotherhood upon
any theory of the baseness of human nature: nor by a community of belief in
abstract propositions as to the nature of the Deity, the number of His persons,
or other theorems of religious faith: nor by the establishment of a system of
association simply for mutual relief, and by which, in consideration of certain
payments regularly made, each becomes entitled to a certain stipend in case of
sickness, to attention then, and to the ceremonies of burial after death.
There can be no genuine Brotherhood without mutual regard, good
opinion and esteem, mutual charity, and mutual allowance for faults and
failings. It is those only who learn habitually to think better of each other,
to look habitually for the good that is in each other, and expect, allow for,
and overlook, the evil, who can be Brethren one of the other, in any true sense
of the word. Those who gloat over the failings of one another, who think each
other to be naturally base and low, of a nature in which the Evil
predominates and excellence is not to be looked for, cannot be even friends, and
much less Brethren.
No one can have a right to think meanly of his race, unless he
also thinks meanly of himself. If, from a single fault or error, he judges of
the character of another, and takes the single act as evidence of the whole
nature of the man and of the whole course of his life, he ought to consent to be
judged by the same rule, and to admit it to be right that others should thus
uncharitably condemn himself. But such judgments will become impossible when he
incessantly reminds himself that in every man who lives there is an immortal
Soul endeavoring to do that which is right and just; a Ray, however small, and
almost inappreciable, from the Great Source of Light and Intelligence, which
ever struggles upward amid all the impediments of sense and the obstructions of
the passions; and that in every man this ray continually wages war against his
evil passions and his unruly appetites, or, if it has succumbed, is never wholly
extinguished and annihilated. For he will then see that it is not victory, but
the struggle that de-serves honor; since in this as in all else no man can
always command success. Amid a cloud of errors, of failure, and short-comings,
he will look for the struggling Soul, for that which is good in every one amid
the evil, and, believing that each is better than from his acts and omissions he
seems to be, and that God cares for him still, and pities him and loves him, he
will feel that even the erring sinner is still his brother, still entitled to
his sympathy, and bound to him by the indissoluble ties of fellowship.
If there be nothing of the divine in man, what is he, after all,
but a more intelligent animal? He hath no fault nor vice which some beast hath
not; and therefore in his vices he is but a beast of a higher order; and he hath
hardly any moral excellence, perhaps none, which some animal hath not in as
great a degree,--even the more excellent of these, such as generosity, fidelity,
and magnanimity.
Bardesan, the Syrian Christian, in his Book of the Laws of
Countries, says, of men, that "in the things belonging to their bodies, they
maintain their nature like animals, and in the things which belong to their
minds, they do that which they wish, as being free and with power, and as the
likeness of God"; and Meliton, Bishop of Sardis, in his Oration to Antoninus
Cęsar, says, "Let Him, the
ever-living God, be always present in thy mind; for thy mind itself is His
likeness, for it, too, is invisible and impalpable, and without form. . . As He
exists forever, so thou also, when thou shalt have put off this which is visible
and corruptible, shalt stand before Him forever, living and endowed with
knowledge."
As a matter far above our comprehension, and in the Hebrew
Genesis the words that are used to express the origin of things are of uncertain
meaning, and with equal propriety may be translated by the word "generated,"
"produced," "made," or "created," we need not dispute nor debate whether the
Soul or Spirit of man be a ray that has emanated or flowed forth from the
Supreme Intelligence, or whether the Infinite Power hath called each into
existence from nothing, by a mere exertion of Its will, and endowed it with
immortality, and with intelligence like unto the Divine Intelligence: for, in
either case it may be said that in man the Divine is united to the Human. Of
this union the equilateral Triangle inscribed within the Square is a Symbol.
We see the Soul, Plato said, as men see the statue of Glaucus,
recovered from the sea wherein it had lain many years--which viewing, it was not
easy, if possible, to discern what was its original nature, its limbs having
been partly broken and partly worn and by defacement changed, by the action of
the waves, and shells, weeds, and pebbles adhering to it, so that it more
resembled some strange monster than that which it was when it left its Divine
Source. Even so, he said, we see the Soul, deformed by innumerable things that
have done it harm, have mutilated and defaced it. But the Mason who hath the
ROYAL SECRET can also with him argue, from beholding its love of wisdom, its
tendency toward association with what is divine and immortal, its larger
aspirations, its struggles, though they may have ended in defeat, with the
impediments and enthralments of the senses and the passions, that when it shall
have been rescued from the material environments that now prove too strong for
it, and be freed from the deforming and disfiguring accretions that here adhere
to it, it will again be seen in its true nature, and by degrees ascend by the
mystic ladder of the Spheres, to its first home and place of origin.
The ROYAL SECRET, of which you are Prince, if you are a true
Adept, if knowledge seems to you advisable, and Philosophy is, for you, radiant
with a divine beauty, is that which the Sohar
terms The Mystery of the BALANCE. It is the Secret of the
UNIVERSAL EQUILIBRIUM:--
--Of that Equilibrium in the Deity, between the Infinite Divine
WISDOM and the Infinite Divine POWER, from which result the Stability of the
Universe, the unchangeableness of the Divine Law, and the Principles of Truth,
Justice, and Right which are a part of it; and the Supreme Obligation of the
Divine Law upon all men, as superior to all other law, and forming a part of all
the laws of men and nations.
--Of that Equilibrium also, between the Infinite Divine JUSTICE
and the Infinite Divine MERCY, the result of which is the Infinite Divine
EQUITY, and the Moral Harmony or Beauty of the Universe. By it the endurance of
created and imperfect natures in the presence of a Perfect Deity is made
possible; and for Him, also, as for us, to love is better than to hate, and
Forgiveness is wiser than Revenge or Punishment.
--Of that Equilibrium between NECESSITY and LIBERTY, between the
action of the DIVINE Omnipotence and the Free-will of man, by which vices and
base actions, and ungenerous thoughts and words are crimes and wrongs, justly
punished by the law of cause and consequence, though nothing in the Universe can
happen or be done contrary to the will of God; and without which co-existence of
Liberty and Necessity, of Free-will in the creature and Omnipotence in the
Creator, there could be no religion, nor any law of right and wrong, or merit
and demerit, nor any justice in human punishments or penal laws.
--Of that Equilibrium between Good and Evil, and Light and
Darkness in the world, which assures us that all is the work of the Infinite
Wisdom and of an Infinite Love; and that there is no rebellious demon of Evil,
or Principle of Darkness co-existent and in eternal controversy with God, or the
Principle of Light and of Good: by attaining to the knowledge of which
equilibrium we can, through Faith, see that the existence of Evil, Sin,
Suffering, and Sorrow in the world, is consistent with the Infinite Goodness as
well as with the Infinite Wisdom of the Almighty.
Sympathy and Antipathy, Attraction and Repulsion, each a Force
of nature, are contraries, in the souls of men and in the Universe of spheres
and worlds; and from the action and opposition of each against the other, result
Harmony, and that movement which is the Life of the Universe and the Soul alike.
They are not antagonists of each other. The force that repels a Planet
from the Sun is no more an evil force, than that which attracts the
Planet toward the central Luminary; for each is created and exerted by the
Deity, and the result is the harmonious movement of the obedient Planets in
their elliptic orbits, and the mathematical accuracy and unvarying regularity of
their movements.
--Of that Equilibrium between Authority and Individual Action
which constitutes Free Government, by settling on immutable foundations Liberty
with Obedience to Law, Equality with Subjection to Authority, and Fraternity
with Subordination to the Wisest and the Best: and of that Equilibrium between
the Active Energy of the Will of the Present, expressed by the Vote of the
People, and the Passive Stability and Permanence of the Will of the Past,
expressed in constitutions of government, written or unwritten, and in the laws
and customs, gray with age and sanctified by time, as precedents and authority;
which is represented by the arch resting on the two columns, Jachin and Boaz,
that stand at the portals of the Temple builded by Wisdom, on one of which
Masonry sets the celestial Globe, symbol of the spiritual part of our composite
nature, and on the other the terrestrial Globe, symbol of the material part.
--And, finally, of that Equilibrium, possible in ourselves, and
which Masonry incessantly labors to accomplish in its Initiates, and demands of
its Adepts and Princes (else unworthy of their titles), between the Spiritual
and Divine and the Material and Human in man; between the Intellect, Reason, and
Moral Sense on one side, and the Appetites and Passions on the other, from which
result the Harmony and Beauty of a well-regulated life.
Which possible Equilibrium proves to us that our Appetites and
Senses also are Forces given unto us by God, for purposes of good, and not the
fruits of the malignancy of a Devil, to be detested, mortified, and, if
possible, rendered inert and dead: that they are given us to be the means by
which we shall be strengthened and incited to great and good deeds, and are to
be wisely used, and not abused; to be controlled and kept within due bounds by
the Reason and the Moral Sense; to be made useful instruments and servants, and
not permitted to become the managers and masters, using our intellect and reason
as base instruments for their gratification.
And this Equilibrium teaches us, above all, to reverence
ourselves as immortal souls, and to have respect and charity for others, who are
even such as we are, partakers with us of the Divine Nature, lighted by a ray of
the Divine Intelligence, struggling, like us, toward the light; capable, like
us, of progress upward toward perfection, and deserving to be loved and pitied,
but never to be hated nor despised; to be aided and encouraged in this
life-struggle, and not to be abandoned nor left to wander in the darkness alone,
still less to be trampled upon in our own efforts to ascend.
From the mutual action and re-action of each of these pairs of
opposites and contraries results that which with them forms the Triangle, to all
the Ancient Sages the expressive symbol of the Deity; as from Osiris and Isis,
Har-oeri, the Master of Light and Life, and the Creative Word. At the angles of
one stand, symbolically, the three columns that support the Lodge, itself a
symbol of the Universe, Wisdom, Power, and Harmony or Beauty. One of these
symbols, found on the Tracing-Board of the Apprentice's Degree, teaches this
last lesson of Freemasonry. It is the right-angled Triangle, representing man,
as a union of the spiritual and material, of the divine and human. The base,
measured by the number 3, the number of the Triangle, represents the Deity and
the Divine; the perpendicular, measured by the number 4, the number of the
Square, represents the Earth, the Material, and the Human; and the hypothenuse,
measured by 5, represents that nature which is produced by the union of the
Divine and Human, the Soul and the Body; the squares, 9 and 16, of the base and
perpendicular, added together, producing 25, the square root whereof is 5, the
measure of the hypothenuse.
And as in each Triangle of Perfection, one is three and three
are one, so man is one, though of a double nature; and he attains the purposes
of his being only when the two natures that are in him are in just equilibrium;
and his life is a success only when it too is a harmony, and beautiful, like the
great Harmonies of God and the Universe.
Such, my Brother, is the TRUE WORD of a Master Mason; such the
true ROYAL SECRET, which makes possible, and shall at length make real, the HOLY
EMPIRE of true Masonic Brotherhood.
GLORIA DEI EST CELARE VERBUM. AMEN.
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