MUMMIES
Three thousand years ago King Tutank-Amen was gathered to his fathers, and
hidden from sight - and, as it proved, from memory for one hundred and twenty
generations.
Now his rocky tomb is opened, and his mummy is brought forth for
investigation; to be x-rayed, to tell its extraordinary story to a race of
people of which he and his court never dreamed. The gold ornaments of his
elaborate sarcophagi are still bright and shining; the wonderful carvings of the
decorations of his rocky sepulcher are still as graceful as when made; the
multitude of objects with which the Royal body was surrounded to help it on its
travels through the realms of the shades to the Egyptian heaven are, most of
them, apparently in as perfect a condition as when they put aside.
But just what they mean, why they were placed there, what message they
carried from the living to the dead, we have yet to discover. We will discover
them. Patient scholars have untangled the meanings concealed in the ancient
Egyptian hieroglyphics; deductive reasoning will eliminate the impossible and
then the improbable from the various theories advanced to account for all that
seems strange and reasonless in this most elaborate laying away of the earthy
tabernacle of him who once was Pharaoh in Egypt, and, as much without his intent
as without his knowledge, we will turn one more page, read one more chapter in
the wonderful and vivid story of a civilization which has vanished, a people
which is no more.
It is not only curiosity which makes us try to read the riddle of the past,
decipher the inscription on the mummy's case, understand the religion, the
philosophy, the political faith and the daily life of men who lived and loved
and died three thousand years ago. It is to help us understand the riddle of
humanity as it is spread before our eyes today; it is to give us some added
measure of comprehension of the great "why" of all life, that we try to learn
what other men of other times have thought of the great problems of existence;
the mystery of life; the mystery of the universe, the mystery of God.
The world has other mummies than those prepared by the hands of the Egyptian
undertakers. Freemasonry has her mummies; the dead bodies of her philosophies
and her teachings, embalmed in symbol and preserved in cryptic sign., For many
years - years numbering perhaps in hundreds as many as have passed over the tomb
of King Tut-amen - symbols and mysteries which Freemasonry has preserved, have
kept inviolate the secrets which our ancient brethren discovered. Our
Freemasonry, in its organization, its political system and its ritual claims no
such antiquity, but the essentials of this our Fraternity, do go back into
ancient times as truths, as much without a beginning, as far as we know, as they
seem to us necessary to be without an ending.
It is our business to read these ancient doctrines; to unwrap the mummies of
Freemasonry, to decipher the cuneiform inscriptions which conceal the old, old
truths, as new today as when they were first formulated by the Great Teller of
All Truth.
Freemasonry today lays before our eyes mummies of an ancient religion, in
every degree she sees conferred upon an initiate. In all our ceremonies of
initiation we perform the Rite of Circumambulation. Most of us perform it as
solemnly as we perform it ignorantly, knowing little , and too often, caring
less, of its significance. It is truly a Masonic mummy. When loving hands unwind
the wrappings, we find within this simple ceremony our kinship with the earliest
men who worshipped a Higher Power, and learn that we have a direct kinship with
the first of all religions Circumambulation; a walking around an Altar or Holy
Spot; is an imitation. Early man worshipped the sun, which kept him warm, which
defended him from wild beasts, which made his grain to grow and smiled benignly
upon his life. When his God was angry, he hid his face; when he was grieved, he
wept tears which were rain; when he was contented with his people, he shown full
upon them, and traveled slowly, majestically from the east to the west by way of
the south. His bit of fire on a rude altar of stones was early man's first
attempt to bring his God close to him. His slow walk about that Altar, from east
to west by way of the south, was his imitation of the course of his God through
the heavens. All people, of all lands, in all religions, have walked about their
place of Divine habitation, and always they, as did the first worshippers,
travel from east to west by way of the south. Truly is circumambulation a mummy,
concealing in its prosaic footsteps a truth of the heart which well repays
study.
In the Fellowcraft Degree we pass between the Pillars which are emblematic of
those which stood upon the porch of King Solomon's Temple. Modern scholars find
this mummy which not all their skill has succeeded completely in unwrapping. But
enough of the ancient body of truth has been discovered to make us marvel at the
gentle wisdom which made this a part of Freemasonry. From Holy Writ we learn
that the significance of the pillars was an establishment of strength; learned
translators approve our belief that "porch" probably meant "arch" rather than
place of refreshment. But the "arch" itself is significant; it is the mummy of
that ancient belief that heaven was an arch, or curved structure above the
earth. Our symbolism, then, supports heaven, a place of happiness, only by
established strength, and "establish" is but another name for "control."
"Strength" or power, which is "established" or controlled, is illustrative of
the principle of balance, which in turn, is the underlying fundamental law of
all we know of the universe, of all we learn in scientific investigation, of all
we have discovered of the "why" of things. The earth is balanced in its orbit
about the sun by the pull of gravity on one side, the force we call centrifugal
upon the other. The explosive force which is the incomprehensible speed of the
electron about the nucleus, the whole making what we call an atom of matter, is
balanced by that other strange force we term cohesion, which keeps the atoms
together and makes them form an apparently indestructible and inert matter. Love
of life and selfishness are balance against love of our fellowmen and altruism;
wherever the balance is upset, some sort of chaos follows; wherever it is
preserved, peace and order result. Our pillars, then, as the mummy of the dead
body of the ancient belief in the efficacy of balance, as the controlling and
dominating power which rules all life, all things, all idea, is one well worth
attention within tiled doors He who takes off the wrappings of time, and
discovers through wall after wall laid about it by the years, the inner meaning
of this carefully preserved truth, is one with the wise scientist who reads
painstakingly and lovingly whatever he may of the riddle which is in the coffin
of the long, long dead Egyptian Pharaoh.
Among the many mummies of truth in Freemasonry is that of the body of ethics;
standards of conduct. Freemasonry teaches in words that a Freemason must square
his actions by the square of virtue, that he stand erect as invoked by the
plumb. But for all the apparently plain instruction, here is a dead body of
truth awaiting the reviving touch of understanding.
Level and plumb are matters of longitude and latitude. What is level in New
York is angular in London. The earth is a sphere, not a plane. What is level is
coincident with a tangent to the face of the sphere at the place where the level
is. The Woolworth Tower in New York and the Eiffel Tower in Paris are both plumb
to the surface in their respective localities, but they are not parallel to each
other. So a square made by a level and a plumb in one place, under one set of
circumstances, may not be a square in some other place and under some other
circumstances. The Parisian has no moral right to condemn the Woolworth Tower
because it is not parallel to the Eiffel Tower. The New Yorker cannot truthfully
contend that the base of the Nelson Statue in Trafalger Square is not level
because a line drawn parallel with it would not coincide with the base of
Grant's Tomb on Riverside Drive. Each is level for its location, as each tower
is plumb in its place of erection.
We must square our actions with the square of virtue which is of our own
time, our own place, our own ideas; not by those of others. To contend that
there is but one square of virtue, one level, one plumb for all people of all
times is at once to arrogate to ourselves the only real possession of the truth,
and to miss completely the hidden meaning in the mummy which is the symbol. But
if we erect our buildings and our characters, square our foundations and our
actions, stand our towers and our virtues by the measure of our own tools, our
own consciences, then, indeed, do we begin to see the ancient mummy fill out to
life-like proportions and the hue of life tinge the long dried flesh of a symbol
which was old when Tut-amen was not yet born.
We are taught in Freemasonry that Logic, one of the seven liberal arts and
sciences, is highly important. We are also taught Mathematics and Geometry, or
Masonry; and that the study thereof makes a wise Freemason. Yet, mathematics can
be used to demonstrate as a truth, that which is false; and logic can be twisted
to prove as fact, that which is fancy.
Let him who doubts this consider this argument. Take as premises the
statements that space is infinite, without limits, and that the earth moves
about the sun. The first we believe, the second we prove with a telescope as
well as common experience. It follows, logically, that the earth moves in space.
If the earth moves in space, it must proceed from some point or location to some
other point or location. So much seems perfectly demonstrable.
Yet, if space is infinite, we cannot conceive motion in it with respect to
it, because anything that exists in limitless space must be considered as
without relation to limits which do not exist. To move in limitless space is to
become "nearer" to something and "farther" from something else. If there is no
"something else," obviously there can be no motion in relation to space.
The same argument is applicable to time. We consider ourselves, our race, our
earth, as moving through time, from something we call "the beginning" towards we
know not what. But we cannot move in time without getting farther from that
"beginning" and at the same time approaching what is connoted by a "beginning;"
that is, an "ending." Yet if time had a "beginning" what was before it? And if
it has an "ending," what comes after? According to logic we can move in neither
space or time, if both are infinite. We cannot conceive of either as other than
infinite, we cannot conceive of them as finite, yet our common experience and
our scientific measurements tell us that we do move in both space and time!
Here both logic and mathematics fail us. There are truths which neither the
mind, nor any tool of mind, can appreciate. Logic, Mathematics and Geometry
become to us, as Freemasons, less realities than symbols. They ,too, are mummies
yet to be unwrapped, yet to bring to us the meanings concealed within them.
It is no argument to say that what is concealed in a symbol must have been
known to him who first concealed it. Those who wrapped the body of the dead
Egyptian King in his vestments and preserved it with injections of bitumen and
sweet spices of the East, knew nothing of what they did, save objective reality.
Not for them was this preservation to be a great book to be read by the
civilization yet to come. Not for them was his tomb to be a museum, his objects
of gold to speak to us of today, of their lives, their times, their loves and
deaths. They did but preserve their dead. It is we who have made of that simple
preservation a tool with which to learn.
He who first put mathematics, geometry and logic into the body of Freemasonry
may have had no knowledge that he was inspired to place there symbols which are
mummies for us to unwrap; he did but add to the ritual of the degrees a
suggestion of knowledge which seemed to him all thinking men should have. Those
who embalmed King Tut-ank- amen, and William Preston and his contemporaries who
wrote our Fellowcraft Degree, builded better than they knew, and gave to us more
than they suspected.
What we do with these our mummies depends upon our wit, our skill, and our
willingness to study. But even as King Tut-ank-amen; long, long dead; cometh
back from the Halls of Amenti to teach us today what ancient Egypt knew of life
and death, so come back to us the gentle shades which are the spirits of
mathematics, logic and geometry; as considered in Freemasonry, to teach us if we
will but learn. Wisdom is not of any one age or clime, but universal; only by
patient thought and study can we hope to understand what Freemasonry really
means. Even as the Egyptologist with reverent hands reads the riddle of long
gone years in what those years have not destroyed, so may we, as Freemasons,
read the riddle of long preserved truths in the mummies of Freemasonry as we
unwrap them today.
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