THE HIRAMIC LEGEND
George S. Draffen, of Fife, served in 1975 as Deputy Grand Master of the
Grand Lodge of Scotland he is a Past Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076,
London, and Past Grand Deacon of the United Grand Lodge of England.
During the ceremony of the Third Degree, which is so well named the Sublime
Degree, you can hardly fail to have been deeply impressed by the tragedy of
Hiram Abiff. To understand it, and to appreciate to the full its profound
richness of meaning, is something that will remain with you as long as you live.
It is first of all important to understand that the drama of Hiram Abiff is a
ritualistic drama. We all know what a drama is. It is a conflict between a man
and other men or between a man and other forces, resulting in a crisis in which
his fate or fortune lies at stake. The crisis, or problem, is followed by a
solution or resolution. If it turns out in favor of the man the drama is a
comedy, in the true and original meaning of that word as a happy ending. If it
turns against him, and as a result he becomes a victim or a sufferer, it means
that the drama is a tragedy.
By drama in either sense I do not refer to plays as they are acted on the
stage, which are not dramas at all, but representations of dramas. I refer to
drama as it occurs in our own lives, to everyone of us, and in our daily
experience. The only reason for our interest in reading or seeing stage plays is
because they mirror the drama in which in real life we ourselves are the actors.
But the ceremony of Hiram Abiff is not only a drama, it is a ritualistic
drama, and the major emphasis should be placed on the world "ritualistic."
What is a ritual? It is a set of fixed ceremonies which address themselves to
the human spirit solely through the imagination. A play in the theatre may be
built round some historical figure or some historical event, as in the case of
Shakespeare's plays about the English kings and about Macbeth or Hamlet. And if
the figures and events are not actually historical, they are supposed to be, so
that the facts of time, place and individual identity are of some importance to
it.
A ritualistic drama, on the other hand, does not pay any heed to historical
individuals, times or places. It moves wholly in the realms of the spirit, where
time, space and particular individuals are ignored. The clash of forces, and
crises and fates of the human spirit alone enter into it, and they hold true of
all men, everywhere, regardless of who they are, or where and when they are.
Since the drama of Hiram Abiff is ritualistic, it is a mistake to accept it
as history. There was a Hiram Abiff in history, but our Third Degree is not
interested in him. Its sole concern is with a Hiram Abiff who is a symbol of the
human soul, that is, its own Hiram Abiff. If, therefore, you have been troubled
with the thought that some of the events of this drama could not possibly have
ever happened you can cease to be troubled. It is not meant that they ever
happened in ancient history, but that they are symbols of what is happening in
the life of every man.
For the same reason it is an inexcusable blunder to treat it as a mere mock
tragedy. Savage peoples employ initiation ceremonies as an ordeal to test the
nerve and courage of their young men, but Freemasonry is not savage. Boys in
school often employ ragging, which is horseplay caricature of the savage
ceremonial ordeals, but Freemasonry is not juvenile. The exemplification of our
ritualistic drama is sincere, solemn, and earnest. He who takes it trivially
betrays a shallowness of soul which makes him unfit ever to become a Mason.
Hiram Abiff is the acted symbol of the human soul, yours, mine, any man's.
The work he was engaged to supervise is the symbol of the work you and I have in
the supervision, organization, and direction of our lives from birth to death.
The enemies he met are none other than the symbols of those lusts and
passions which in our own breasts, or in the breasts of others, make war on our
characters and our lives.
His fate is the same fate that befalls every man who becomes a victim to
those enemies, to be interrupted in one's work, to be made outcast from the
lordship (or mastership) over one's own self, and, at the end, to become buried
under all manner of rubbish--which means defeat, disgrace, misery and scorn.
The manner in which he was raised from that dead level to that living
perpendicular again is the same manner by which any man, if it happens at all,
rises from self-defeat to self-mastery. And the Sovereign Great Architect, by
the power of whose word Hiram Abiff was raised, is that same God in whose arms
we ourselves forever lie, and whose mighty help we also need to raise us out of
the graves of defeat, or evil, and death itself.
Did you wonder, while taking part in that drama, why you were personally made
to participate in it? Why you were not permitted to sit as a spectator?
You were made to participate in order to impress upon you that it was your
drama, not another's, there being exemplified. No man can be a mere spectator of
that drama, because it takes place in his own soul. Likewise because it was
intended that your participation should itself be an experience to prepare you
for becoming a Master Mason, by teaching you the secret of a Master Mason, which
is, that the soul must rise above its own internal enemies if ever a man is to
be a Mason in reality as well as in name. The reality of being a Master mason is
nothing other than to be the Master of one's self.
Did you wonder why it was that the three enemies of Hiram Abiff came from his
own circle and not from outside? It is because the enemies to be feared by the
soul are always from within, and are nothing other than its own ignorance, lust,
passions, and sins. As the Volume of Sacred Law reminds us, it is not that which
has power to kill the body that we need most to shun, but that which has power
to destroy the spirit.
Did you wonder why it was that, after Hiram Abiff was slain, there was so
much confusion in the Temple? It was because the Temple is the symbol of a man's
character, and therefore breaks and falls when the soul, its architect, is
rendered helpless. Because the Craftsmen are symbols of our powers and faculties
and they fall into anarchy when not directed and commanded by the will at the
centre of our being.
And did you wonder why the lodge appeared to neglect to explain this
ritualistic drama to you at the end of the degree? It was because it is
impossible for one man to explain the tragedy of Hiram Abiff to another. Each
must learn it for himself; and the most we can obtain from others is just such
hints and scattered suggestions as these I have given you. Print the story of
Hiram Abiff indelibly upon your mind; ponder upon it; when you yourself are at
grips with your enemies recall it and act accordingly to the light you find in
it. By so doing you will find that your inner self will give in the form of
first-hand experience that which the drama gave you in the form of ritual. You
will be wiser and stronger for having the guidance and the light the drama can
give you.
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