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The Primitive
Freemasonry of Antiquity
CHAPTER III
the symbolism of freemasonry
albert gallatin mackey
The next important historical epoch which demands our attention is that
connected with what, in sacred history, is known as the dispersion at
Babel. The brightness of truth, as it had been communicated by Noah,
became covered, as it were, with a cloud. The dogmas of the unity of God
and the immortality of the soul were lost sight of, and the first
deviation from the true worship occurred in the establishment of
Sabianism, or the worship of the sun, moon, and stars, among some peoples,
and the deification of men among others. Of these two deviations,
Sabianism, or sun-worship, was both the earlier and the more generally
diffused.5 "It seems," says the learned Owen, "to have had its rise from some broken
traditions conveyed by the patriarchs touching the dominion of the sun by
day and of the moon by night." The mode in which this old system has been
modified and spiritually symbolized by Freemasonry will be the subject of
future consideration.
But Sabianism, while it was the most ancient of the religious
corruptions, was, I have said, also the most generally diffused; and
hence, even among nations which afterwards adopted the polytheistic creed
of deified men and factitious gods, this ancient sun-worship is seen to be
continually exerting its influences. Thus, among the Greeks, the most
refined people that cultivated hero-worship, Hercules was the sun, and the
mythologic fable of his destroying with his arrows the many-headed hydra
of the Lernaean marshes was but an allegory to denote the dissipation of
paludal malaria by the purifying rays of the orb of day. Among the
Egyptians, too, the chief deity, Osiris, was but another name for the sun,
while his arch-enemy and destroyer, Typhon, was the typification of night,
or darkness. And lastly, among the Hindus, the three manifestations of
their supreme deity, Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, were symbols of the rising,
meridian, and setting sun.
This early and very general prevalence of the sentiment of sun-worship
is worthy of especial attention on account of the influence that it
exercised over the spurious Freemasonry of antiquity, of which I am soon
to speak, and which is still felt, although modified and Christianized in
our modern system. Many, indeed nearly all, of the masonic symbols of the
present day can only be thoroughly comprehended and properly appreciated
by this reference to sun-worship.
This divine truth, then, of the existence of one Supreme God, the Grand
Architect of the Universe, symbolized in Freemasonry as the TRUE WORD, was
lost to the Sabians and to the polytheists who arose after the dispersion
at Babel, and with it also disappeared the doctrine of a future life; and
hence, in one portion of the masonic ritual, in allusion to this historic
fact, we speak of "the lofty tower of Babel, where language was confounded
and Masonry lost."
There were, however, some of the builders on the plain of Shinar who
preserved these great religious and masonic doctrines of the unity of God
and the immortality of the soul in their pristine purity. These were the
patriarchs, in whose venerable line they continued to be taught. Hence,
years after the dispersion of the nations at Babel, the world presented
two great religious sects, passing onward down the stream of time, side by
side, yet as diverse from each other as light from darkness, and truth
from falsehood.
One of these lines of religious thought and sentiment was the
idolatrous and pagan world. With it all masonic doctrine, at least in its
purity, was extinct, although there mingled with it, and at times to some
extent influenced it, an offshoot from the other line, to which attention
will be soon directed.
The second of these lines consisted, as has already been said, of the
patriarchs and priests, who preserved in all their purity the two great
masonic doctrines of the unity of God and the immortality of the soul.
This line embraced, then, what, in the language of recent masonic
writers, has been designated as the Primitive Freemasonry of
Antiquity.
Now, it is by no means intended to advance any such gratuitous and
untenable theory as that proposed by some imaginative writers, that the
Freemasonry of the patriarchs was in its organization, its ritual, or its
symbolism, like the system which now exists. We know not indeed, that it
had a ritual, or even a symbolism. I am inclined to think that it was made
up of abstract propositions, derived from antediluvian traditions. Dr.
Oliver thinks it probable that there were a few symbols among these
Primitive and Pure Freemasons, and he enumerates among them the serpent,
the triangle, and the point within a circle; but I can find no authority
for the supposition, nor do I think it fair to claim for the order more
than it is fairly entitled to, nor more than it can be fairly proved to
possess. When Anderson calls Moses a Grand Master, Joshua his Deputy, and
Aholiab and Bezaleel Grand Wardens, the expression is to be looked upon
simply as a façon de parler, a mode of speech entirely figurative
in its character, and by no means intended to convey the idea which is
entertained in respect to officers of that character in the present
system. It would, undoubtedly, however, have been better that such
language should not have been used.
All that can be claimed for the system of Primitive Freemasonry, as
practised by the patriarchs, is, that it embraced and taught the two great
dogmas of Freemasonry, namely, the unity of God, and the immortality of
the soul. It may be, and indeed it is highly probable, that there was a
secret doctrine, and that this doctrine was not indiscriminately
communicated. We know that Moses, who was necessarily the recipient of the
knowledge of his predecessors, did not publicly teach the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul. But there was among the Jews an oral or secret
law which was never committed to writing until after the captivity; and
this law, I suppose, may have contained the recognition of those dogmas of
the Primitive Freemasonry.
Briefly, then, this system of Primitive Freemasonry,—without ritual or
symbolism, that has come down to us, at least,—consisting solely of
traditionary legends, teaching only the two great truths already alluded
to, and being wholly speculative in its character, without the slightest
infusion of an operative element, was regularly transmitted through the
Jewish line of patriarchs, priests, and kings, without alteration,
increase, or diminution, to the time of Solomon, and the building of the
temple at Jerusalem.
Leaving it, then, to pursue this even course of descent, let us refer
once more to that other line of religious history, the one passing through
the idolatrous and polytheistic nations of antiquity, and trace from it
the regular rise and progress of another division of the masonic
institution, which, by way of distinction, has been called the Spurious
Freemasonry of Antiquity.
FOOTNOTES
5. A recent writer thus eloquently refers to the universality, in
ancient times, of sun-worship: "Sabaism, the worship of light, prevailed
amongst all the leading nations of the early world. By the rivers of
India, on the mountains of Persia, in the plains of Assyria, early mankind
thus adored, the higher spirits in each country rising in spiritual
thought from the solar orb up to Him whose vicegerent it seems—to the Sun
of all being, whose divine light irradiates and purifies the world of
soul, as the solar radiance does the world of sense. Egypt, too, though
its faith be but dimly known to us, joined in this worship; Syria raised
her grand temples to the sun; the joyous Greeks sported with the thought
while feeling it, almost hiding it under the mythic individuality which
their lively fancy superimposed upon it. Even prosaic China makes
offerings to the yellow orb of day; the wandering Celts and Teutons held
feasts to it, amidst the primeval forests of Northern Europe; and, with a
savagery characteristic of the American aborigines, the sun temples of
Mexico streamed with human blood in honor of the beneficent orb."—The
Castes and Creeds of India, Blackw. Mag., vol. lxxxi. p. 317.—"There
is no people whose religion is known to us," says the Abbé Banier,
"neither in our own continent nor in that of America, that has not paid
the sun a religious worship, if we except some inhabitants of the torrid
zone, who are continually cursing the sun for scorching them with his
beams."—Mythology, lib. iii. ch. iii.—Macrobius, in his
Saturnalia, undertakes to prove that all the gods of Paganism may
be reduced to the sun.
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