FREEMASONRY AND ITS ANCIENT MYSTERIES
by Albert Mackey
The theory which ascribes the origin of Freemasonry as a secret society to
the Pagan Mysteries of the ancient world, and which derives the most important
part of its ritual and the legend of its Third Degree from the initiation
practiced in these religious organizations, necessarily connects itself with the
Legend of the Temple origin of the Institution, because we can only link the
initiation in the Mysteries with that of Freemasonry by supposing that the one
was in some way engrafted on the other, at the time of the building of the
Temple and the union of the Jewish and Tyrian workmen.
But before we can properly appreciate the theory which associates Freemasonry
with the Pagan Mysteries, we must make ourselves acquainted with the nature and
the design as well as with something of the history of those mystical societies.
Among all the nations of antiquity in which refinement and culture had given
an elevated tone to the religious sentiment, there existed two systerns of
worship, a public and a private one. "Each of the pagan Gods," says Warburton,
"had (besides the public and open) a secret worship paid unto him, to which none
were admitted but those who had been selected by preparatory ceremonies, called
INITIATION. This secret worship was called the MYSTERIES." (1)
The public worship was founded on the superstitious polytheism whose numerous
gods and goddesses were debased in character and vicious in conduct. Incentive
to virtue could not be derived from their example, which furnished rather
excuses for vice. In the Eunuchus of Terenie, when Choerea is meditating the
seduction of the virgin Pamphila, he refers to the similar act of Jupiter, who
in a shower of gold had corrupted Danae, and he exclaims, "If a god, who by his
thunders shakes the whole universe, could commit this crime, shall not I, a mere
mortal, do so also?" (2) Plautus, Euripides and other Greek and Roman dramatists
and poets repeatedly used the same argument in defense of the views of their
heroes, so that it became a settled principle of the ancient religion. The
vicious example of the gods thus became an insuperable obstacle to a life of
purity and holiness. (3) The assurance of a future life of compensation
constituted no part of the popular theology. The poets, it is true, indulged in
romantic descriptions of an Elysium and a Tartarus, but their views were
uncertain and unsatisfactory, as to any specific doctrine of immortality, and
were embodied in the saying of Ovid (4) that of the four elements which
constituted the human organization, "the earth covers the flesh; the shade flits
around the tomb; the spirit seeks the stars."
Thus did the poet express the prevalent idea that the composite man returned
after death to the various primordial elements of which he had been originally
composed. In such a dim and shadowy hypothesis there was no incentive for life,
no consolation in death. And hence Alger, to whom the world has been indebted
for a most exhaustive treatise on the popular beliefs of all nations, ancient
and modern, on the subject of the future life, has after a full and critical
examination of the question, come to the following conclusion:
"To the ancient Greek in general, death was a sad doom. When he lost a
friend, he sighed a melancholy farewell after him to the faded shore of ghosts.
Summoned himself, he departed with a lingering look at the sun and a tearful
adieu to the bright day and the green earth. To the Roman death was a grim
reality. To meet it himself he girded up his loins with artificial firmness. But
at its ravages among his friends, he wailed in anguished abandonment. To his
dying vision there was indeed a future, but shapes of distrust and shadow stood
upon its disconsolate borders; and when the prospect had no horror, he still
shrank from the poppied gloom." (5)
Yet as each nation advanced in refinement and intellectual culture the
priests, the poets, and the philosophers (6) aspired to a higher thought and
cherished the longing for and inculcated the consoling doctrine of an
immortality, not to be spent in shadowy and inert forms of existence, but in
perpetual enjoyment, as a compensation for the ills of life. The necessary
result of the growth of such pure and elevated notions must have been a contempt
and condemnation of the absurditics of polytheism. But as this was the popular
religion it was readily perceived that any open attempt to overthrow it and to
advance, publicly, opinions so antagonistic to it would be highly impolitic and
dangerous. Whenever any religion, whether true or false, becomes the religion of
a people, whoever opposes it, or ridicules it, or seeks to subvert it, is sure
to be denounced by popular fanaticism and to be punished by popular intolerance.
Socrates was doomed to drink the poisoned bowl on the charge that he taught
the Athenian youth not to worship the gods who are worshipped by the state, but
new and unknown deities. Jesus was suspended from
the cross because he inculcated doctrines which, however pure, were novel and
obnoxious to the old religion of his Jewish countrymen. The new religious truths
among the Pagan peoples were therefore concealed from common inspection and
taught only in secret societies, admission to which was obtained only through
the ordeal of a painful initiation, and the doctrines were further concealed
under the veil of symbols whose true meaning the initiated only could
understand. "The truth," says Clemens of Alexandria, "was taught involved in
enigmas, symbols, allegories, metaphors, and tropes and figures." (7) The secret
associations in which the principles of a new and purer theology were taught
have received in history the name of the MYSTERIES.
Each country had its own Mysteries peculiar to itself. In Egypt were those of
Osiris and Isis; in Samothrace those of the Cabiri; in Greece they celebrated at
Eleusis, near Athens, the Mysteries of Demeter; in Syria of Adonis; in Phoenicia
of Dionysus; and in Persia those of Mithras, which were the last to perish after
the advent of Christianity and the overthrow of polytheism.
These Mysteries, although they differed in name and in some of the details of
initiation, were essentially alike in general form and design. "Their end as
well as nature," says Warburton, "was the same in all: to teach the doctrine of
a future state." (8) Alger says: "The implications of the indirect evidence, the
leanings and guidings of all the incidental clews now left us as to the real aim
and purport of the Mysteries, combine to assure us that their chief teaching was
a doctrine of a future life in which there should be rewards and punishments."
(9)
Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, than whom no better modern authority on this
subject could be cited, says that "the initiated were instructed in the doctrine
of a state of future rewards and punishments," (10) and that the greater
Mysteries "obscurely intimated, by mystic and splendid visions, the felicity of
the soul both here and hereafter, when purified from the defilements of a
material nature and constantly elevated to the realities of intellectual
vision." (11)
All the ancient writers who were contemporary with these associations, and
must have been familiar with their character, concur in the opinion that their
design was to teach the doctrine of a future life of compensation.
Pindar says, "Happy the man who descends beneath the hollow earth having
beheld these Mysteries. He knows the end, he knows the divine origin of life."
Sophocles says that "they are thrice happy who descend to the shades below,
after having beheld these rites; for they alone have life in Hades, while all
others suffer there every kind of evil."
And lastly, Isocrates dcclares that "those who have been initiated in the
Mysteries of Ceres entertain better hopes both as to the end of life and the
whole of futurity."
It is then evident from all authorities that the great end and design of the
initiation into these Mysteries was to teach the aspirant the doctrine of a
future life - not that aimless, uncertain, and shadowy one portrayed by the poas
and doubtfully consented to by the people, but that pure and rational state of
immortal existence in which the soul is purified from the dross of the body and
elevated to eternal life. It was, in short, much the same in its spirit as the
Christian and Masonic doctrine of the resurrection.
But this lesson was communicated in the Mysteries in a peculiar form, which
has in fact given rise to the theory we are now considering that they were the
antetype and original source of Speculative Masonry. They were all dramatic in
their ceremonies; each one exhibited in a series of scenic representations the
adventures of some god or hero; the attacks upon him by his enemies; his death
at their hands; his descent into Hades or the grave, and his final resurrection
to renewed life as a mortal, or his apotheosis as a god.
The only important difference between these various Mysteries was, that there
was to each one a diffcrent and peculiar god or hero, whose death and
resurrection or apotheosis constituted the subject of the drama, and gave to its
scenes the changes which were dependent on the adventures of him who was its
main subject. Thus, in Samothrace, where the Mysteries of the Cabiri were
celebrated, it was Atys, the lover of Cybele, who was slain and restored; in
Egypt it was Osiris whose death and resurrection were represented; in Greece it
was Dionysus, and in Persia Mithras.
But in all of these the material points of the plot and the religious design
of the sacred drama were identical. The dramatic form and the scenic
representation of the allegory were everywhere preserved.
This dramatic form of the initiatory rites in the Mysteries - this acted
allegory in which the doctrine of the resurrection was shadowed forth by the
visible representation of some fictitious event - was, as the learned Dr.
Dollinger (12) has justly observed, "eminently calculated to take a powerful
hold on the imagination and the heart, and to excite in the spectators
alternately conflicting sentiments of terror and calmness, of sorrow and fear
and hope."
As the Mysteries were a secret society, whose members were separated from the
rest of the people by a ceremony of initiation, there resulted from this form of
organization, as a necessary means of defense and of isolation, a solemn
obligation of secrecy, with severe penalties for its violation, and certain
modes of recognition known only to those who had been instructed in them.
There was what might be called a progressive order of degrees, for the
neophyte was not at once upon his initiation invested with a knowledge of the
deepest arcana of the religious system.
Thus the Mysteries were divided into two classes called the Lesser and the
Greater Mysteries, and in addition there was a preliminary ceremony, which was
only preparatory to the Mysteries proper. So that there was in the process of
reception a system of three steps, which those who are fond of tracing analogies
between the ancient and the modern initiations are prone to call degrees.
A brief review of these three steps of progress in the Mysteries will give
the reader a very definite idea of the nature of this ancient system in which so
many writers have thought that they had found the incunabulum of modern
Freemasonry, and will enable him to appreciate at their just value the analogies
which these writers have found, as they suppose, between the two systems. The
first step was called the Lusiration, or purification by water. When the
neophyte was ready to be received into any of the ancient Mysteries, he was
carried into the temple or other place appropriated to the ceremony of
initiation, and there underwent a thorough cleansing of the body by water. This
was the preparation for reception into the Lesser Mysteries and was symbolic of
that purification of the heart that was absolutely necessary to prepare the
aspirant for admission to a knowledge of and participation in the sacred lessons
which were to be subsequently communicated to him. It has been sought to find in
this preparatory ceremony an analogy to the first degree of Masonry. Such an
analogy certainly exists, as will here after be shown, but the theory that the
Apprentice's degree was derived from and suggested by the ceremony of Lustration
in the Mysteries is wholly untenable, because this ceremony was not peculiar to
the Mysteries.
An ablution, lustration, or cleansing by water, as a religious rite was
practiced among all the ancient nations. More especially was it observed among
the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. With the Hebrews the lustration was a
preliminary ceremony to every act of expiation or sin-offering. Hence the Jewish
prophets continually refer to the ablution of the body with water as a symbol of
the purification of the heart.
Among the Greeks lustration was always connected with their sacrifices. It
consisted in the sprinkling of water by means of an olive or a laurel branch.
Among the Romans, the ceremony was more common than among the Greeks. It was
used not only to expiate crime, but also to secure the blessing of the Gods.
Thus, fields were lustrated before the corn was put into the ground; colonies
when they were first established, and armies before they proceeded to battle. At
the end of every fifth year, the whole people were thus purified by a general
lustration. Everywhere the rite was connected with the performance of sacrifice
and with the idea of a moral purification.
The next step in the ceremonies of the ancient Mysteries was called the
Initiation. It was here that the dramatic allegory was performed and the myth or
fictitious history on which the peculiar Mystery was founded was developed. The
neophyte personated the supposed events of the life, the sufferings, and the
death of the god or hero to whom the Mystery was dedicated, or he had them
brought in vivid representation before him. These ceremonies constituted a
symbolic instruction in the initia - the beginnings - of the religious system
which it was the object of the Mysteries to teach.
The ceremonies of initiation were performed partly in the Lesser, but more
especially and more fully in the Greater Mysteries, of which they were the first
part, and where only the allegory of death was enacted. The Lesser Mysteries,
which were introductory to the Greater, have been supposed by the theorists who
maintain the connection between the Mysteries and Freemasonry to be analogous to
the Fellow Craft's degree of the latter Institution.
There may be some ground for this comparison in a rather inexact way, for
although the Lesser Mysteries were to some extent public, yet as they were, as
Clemens of Alexandria (13) says, a certain groundwork of instruction and
preparation for the things that were to follow, they might perhaps be considered
as analogous to the Fellow Craft's degree.
The third and last of the progressive steps or grades in the Mysteries was
Perfection. It was the ultimate object of the system. It was also called the
autopsy, from a Greek word which signifies seeing with one's own eyes. It was
the complete and finished communication to the neophyte of the great secret of
the Mysteries; the secret for the preservation of which the system of initiation
had been invented, and which, during the whole course of that initiation, had
been symbolically shadowed forth.
The communication of this secret, which was in fact the explanation of the
secret doctrine, for the inculcation of which the Mysteries in every country had
been instituted, was made in the most sacred and private place of the temple or
place of initiation.
As the autopsy or Perfection of the Mysteries concluded the whole system, the
maintainers of the doctrine that Freemasonry finds its origin in the Mysteries
have compared this last step in the ancient initiation to the Master's degree.
But the analogy between the two as a consummation of the secret doctrine is less
patent in the third degree, as it now exists, than it was before the
disseverance from it of the Royal Arch, accepting, however, the Master's degree
as it was constituted in the earlier part of the 18th century, the analogies
between that and the last stage of the Mysteries are certainly very interesting,
although not sufficient to prove the origin of the modern from the ancient
systems. But of this more hereafter.
This view of the organization of the Pagan Mysteries would not be complete
without some reference to the dramatized allegory which constituted so important
a part of the ceremony of initiation, and in connection with which their
relation to Freemasonry has been most carnestly urged.
It has been already said that the Mysteries were originally invented for the
purpose of teaching two great religious truths, which were unknown to, or at
least not recognized, in the popular faith. These were the unity of God and the
immortality of the soul in a future life. The former,
although illustrated at every point by expressed symbols, such, for instance,
as the all-seeing eye, the eye of the universe, and the image of the Deity, was
not allegorized, but taught as an abstract doctrine at the time of the autopsy
or the close of the grade of Perfection. The other truth, the dogma of a future
life, and of a resurrection from death to immortality, was communicated by an
allegory which was dramatized in much the same way in each of the Mysteries,
although, of course, in each nation the person and the events which made up the
allegory were different. The interpretation was, however, always the same.
As Egypt was the first country of antiquity to receive the germs of
civilization, it is there that the first Mysteries are supposed to have been
invented. (14) And although the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were introduced into
Greece long after the invention of the Osiriac in Egypt, were more popular among
the ancients, yet the Egyptian initiation exhibits more purely and more
expressively the symbolic idea which was to be developed in the interpretation
of its allegory. I shall therefore select the Osiriac, which was the most
important of the Egyptian Mysteries, as the exemplar from which an idea may be
obtained of the character of all the other Mysteries of paganism.
All the writers of antiquity, such as Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, and
Herodotus, state that the Egyptian Mysteries of Osiris, Isis, and Horus were the
model of all the other systems of initiation which were subsequently established
among the different peoples of the Old World. Indeed, the ancients held that the
Demeter of the Greeks was identical with the Isis of the Egyptians, and Dionysus
with Osiris. Their adventures were certainly very similar.
The place of Osiris in Egyptian history is unknown to us. The fragments of
Sanchoniathon speak of Isiris, the brother of Chna or Canaan; in the lists of
Manetho, he is made the fifth king under the dynasty of the demigods, being
conjoined with Isis; but as the four preceding kings are named as Hephoestus,
Helios, Agathodomon and Kronos, the whole is evidently a mere mythological
fable, and we have as far to seek as ever.
Herodotus is not more satisfactory, for he says that Osiris and Isis were two
great deities of the Egyptians. Banier, however, in his Mythology thinks that he
was the same as Mizraim, the son of Clam, and grandson of Noah. Bishop
Cumberland concurs in this and adds that Cham was the first king of Egypt, that
Osiris was a title appropriated by him, signifying Prince, and that Isis was
simply Ishah, his wife. Lastly, Diodorus Siculus says that he was Menes, the
first King of Egypt. Some later writers have sought to identify Osiris and Isis
with the Iswara and Isi of India. There is certainly a great deal of
etymological plausibility in this last conjecture.
The ubiquitous character of Osiris as a personality among the ancients is
best shown in an epigram of Ausonius, wherein it is said that in Greece, at
Eleusis, he was called Bacchus; the Egyptians thought that he was Osiris, the
Mysians of Asia Minor named him Phanceus or Apollo; the Indians supposed that he
was Dionysus; the sacred rites of the Romans called him Liber; and the Arabians,
Adonis. (15)
But the only thing that is of any interest to us in this connection is that
Osiris was the hero of the earliest of the Mysteries, and that his death and
apotheosis - his change from a mortal king to an immortal God - symbolized the
doctrine of a future life.
His historical character was that of a mild and beneficent sovereign, who had
introduced the arts of civilization among his subjects, and had then traveled
for three years for the purpose of extending them into other nations, leaving
the government of his kingdom, during his absence, to his wife Isis. According
to the legend, his brother Typhon had been a rival claimant for the throne, and
his defeat had engendered a feeling of ill-will. During the absence of Osiris,
he, therefore, formed a secret conspiracy with some of his adherents to usurp
the throne.
On the return of Osiris from his travels he was invited by Typhon to a
banquet, ostensibly given in his honor, at which all the conspirators were
present. During the feast Typhon produced a chest, inlaid with gold, and
promised to present it to that person of the company, whose body, upon trial,
would be found most exactly to fit it. Osiris tried the experiment, but as soon
as he had laid himself in the chest, Typhon closed and nailed down the lid.
The chest was then thrown into the river Nile, whence it floated into the
sea, and, after being for some time tossed upon the waves, it was finally cast
ashore at the town of Byblos, in Phoenicia, and left at the foot of a Tamarisk
tree. Isis, the wife of Osiris, over-whelmed with grief for the loss of lher
husband, commenced a search for the body, being accompanied by her son, Anubis,
and his nurse, Nepthe.
After many adventures Isis arrived on the shores of Phoenicia and in the
nethborhood of Byblos, where she at length discovered the body at the foot of
the Tamarisk tree. She returned with it to Egypt. It was received by the people
with great demonstrations of joy, and it was proclaimed that Osiris had risen
from the dead and had become a god.
The sufferings of Osiris, his death, his resurrection, and his subsequent
office as judge of the dead in a future state, constituted the fundamental
principles of the Egyptian religion. They taught the secret doctrine of a future
life, and initiation into the mysteries of Osiris was initiation into the rites
of the religion of Egypt. These rites were conducted by the priests, and into
them many sages from other countries especially from Greece, such as Herodotus,
Plutarch, and Pythagoras, were initiated.
In this way it is supposed that the principles and general form of the
Mysteries were conveyed into other countries, although they everywhere varied in
the details. The most important of the Mysteries besides the Egyptian were those
of Mithras in Persia, of Atys or of the Cabiri in Thrace, of Adonis in Syria,
and of Dionysus in Greece. They extended even beyond the then more civilized
parts of the world into the northern regions of Europe, where were practiced the
Scandinavian rites of the Norsemen and the Druidical Mysteries of Gaul and
Britain, though these were probably derived more directly from a primitive Aryan
source. But wherever they existed we find in them a remarkable unity of design
and a similarity of ceremonies from which we are compelled to deduce a common
origin, while the purity of the doctrines which they taught evidently show that
this common origin was not to be sought in the popular theology.
In all of the Mysteries the ceremonies of initiation were of a funereal
character. They allegorized in a dramatic form the sufferings, the death, and
the resurrection of some god or hero. There was a death, most generally by
violence, (16) to symbolize, as certain interpreters of the Mysteries have
supposed, the strife of certain antagonistic powers in nature, such as life and
death, virtue and vice, light and darkness, or summer and winter.
The person thus slain was represented in the allegorical drama by the
candidate. After the death followed the disappearance of the body, called by the
Greeks the aphanism, and the consequent search for it. This search for the body,
in which all the initiates joined, constituted what Faber calls "the doleful
part," and was succeeded by its discovery, which was known as the heuresis. (17)
This was accompanied by the greatest demonstrations of joy. The candidate was
afterward instructed in the apporheta, or secret dogmas of the Mysteries.
In all of the Pagan Mysteries this dramatic form of an allegory was
preserved, and we may readily see in the groans and lamentations on the death of
the god or hero and the disappearance of the body a symbol of the death of man,
and in the subsequent rejoicings at his discovery and restoration, a symbol of
the restoration of the spirit to eternal life.
In view of the purity of the lessons taught in the Mysteries and their
inculcation of the elevated dogmas of the unity of God and the immortality of
the soul, it is not surprising to read the encomiums passed upon them by the
philosophers of antiquity.
The reader, if he has carefully considercd the allegorical drama which was
represented in the ancient Mysteries, and compared it with the drama which
constitutes the principal portion of the initiation in Freemasonry, will be at
no loss to account for the reasons which have led so many writers to attribute
the origin of the Masonic system to these mystical associations of antiquity.
It has been a favorite theory with several German, French, and British
scholars to trace the origin of Freemasonry to the Mysteries of Paganism, while
others, repudiating the idea that the modern association should have sprung from
them, still find analogies so remarkable between the two systems as to lead them
to suppose that the Mysteries were an offshoot from the pure Freemasonry of the
Patriarchs.
In my opinion there is not the slightest foundation in historical evidence to
support either theory, although I admit the existence of many analogies between
the two systems, which can, however, be easily explained without admitting any
connection in the way of origin and descent between them.
Of the theory that the Mysteries were an offshoot or imitation of the pure
patriarchal Freemasonry, Hutchinson and Oliver are the most distinguished
supporters.
While Hutchinson strongly contends for the direct derivation of Freemasonry
from Adam, through the line of the patriarchs to Moses and Solomon, he does not
deny that it borrowed much from the initiations and symbols of the Pagans.
Thus he unhesitatingly says, that "there is no doubt that our ceremonies and
Mysteries were derived from the rites, ceremonies, and institutions of the
ancients, and some of them from the remotest ages." (18)
But lest the purity of the genuine patriarchal Masonry should be polluted by
borrowing its ceremonies from such an impure source, he subsequently describes,
in that indefinite manner which was the peculiarity of his style, the separation
of a purer class from the debasement of the popular religion, wherein he
evidently alludes to the Mysteries. Thus he says :
"In the corruption and ignorance of after ages, those hallowed places (19)
were polluted with idolatry; the unenlightened mind mistook the type for the
original, and could not discern the light from darkness; the sacred groves and
hills became the objects of enthusiastic bigotry and superstition; the devotees
bowed down to the oaken log and the graven image as being divine. Some preserved
themselves from the corruptions of the times, and we find those sages and select
men to whom were committed, and who retained, the light of understanding and
truth, unpolluted with the sins of the world, under the denomination of Magi
among the Persians; wise men, soothsayers, and astrologers among the Chaldeans;
philosophers among the Greeks and Romans; Brahmins among the Indians; Druids and
bards among the Britons; and with the people of God, Solomon shone forth in the
fullness of human wisdom." (20)
Dr. Oliver expresses almost the same views, but more explicitly. He was, I
think, the first to advance the theory that two systems of Masonry had come down
the course of time, both derived from a common source, which he called the Pure
and the Spurious
Freemasonry of antiquity - the former descending without interruption from
the Patriarchs, and especially from Noah, and which system was the progenitor of
that which is now practiced, and the latter, being a schism, as it were, from
the former, and impure and corrupted in its principles, and preserved in the
Pagan Mysteries. He admits, however, that there were certain analogies between
the two in their symbols and allegories. His own language on this subject, which
is as follows, leaves no doubt of the nature of his views. In a note to his
History of Initiation, an elaborate and learned work on certain of these
Mysteries, he says:
"I have denominated the surreptitious initiations earth-born, in
contradistinction to the purity of Freemasonry, which was certainly derived from
above; and to those who contend that Masonry is nothing more than a miserable
relic of the idolatrous Mysteries (vide. Fab. Pag. Idol., vol. iii., p. 190), I
would reply, in the words of an inspired apostle, 'Doth a fountain send forth at
the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree bear olive berries or a
vine figs? So can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. The wisdom that
is from above is first pure, then peaceable, full of mercy and good fruits'
(James iii. 11, 12, 17). I wish to be distinct and intelligible on this point,
as some misapprehensions are afloat respecting the immediate object of my former
volume of Signs and Symbols; and I have been told that the arguments there used
afford an indirect sanction to the opinion that Masonry is derived from the
Mysteries. In answer to this charge, if it requires one, I only need reply to
the general tenor of that volume, and to declare explicitly my firm opinion,
founded on intense study and abstruse research, that the science which we now
denominate Speculative Masonry, was coeval, at least, with the creation of our
globe, and the far-famed Mysteries of idolatry were a subsequent institution
founded on similar principles, with the design of conveying unity and permanence
to the false worship, which it otherwise could never have acquired." (21)
I do not know of any other prominent Masonic writer who entertains the theory
of the common origin but diverse descent of the Mysteries and Freemasonry,
although there are many who, subscribing with implicit faith to the teachings of
Dr. Oliver as a Masonic historian, necessarily give their assent to his opinion
on this subject.
There is another class of Masonic scholars who have advanced the theory that
the Speculative Freemasonry of the present day is derived directly from and is a
legitimate successor of the Mysteries of antiquity. They found this theory on
the very many and striking analogies that are to be found in the organization,
the design, and the symbols of the two systems, and which they claim can only be
explained on the theory that the one is an offshoot from the other.
The Abbe Robin was, perhaps, the first writer who advanced this idea in a
distinct form. In a work on the Ancient and Modern Initiations, (22) published
in 1780, he traces the origin of the ancient systems of initiation to that early
period when wicked men, urged by the terror of guilt, sought among the virtuous
for intercessors with the Deity. The latter, he says, retired into solitary
places to avoid the contagion of the growing corruption, and devoted themselves
to a life of contemplation and to the cultivation of the arts and sciences. In
order to associate with them in their labors and functions only such as had
sufficient merit and capacity, they appointed strict courses of trial and
examination. This, he thinks, must have been the source of the initiations which
distinguished the celebrated Mysteries of antiquity. The Magi of Chaldea, the
Brahmins and Gymnosophists of India, the Priests of Egypt, and the Druids of
Gaul and Britain thus lived in sequestered places and obtained great reputation
by their discoveries in astronomy, chemistry, and mechanics, by the purity of
their morals, and by their knowledge of the science of legislation.
It was in these schools, says the abbe, that the first sages and legislators
of antiquity were formed, where the doctrines taught were the unity of God and
the immortality of the soul, and it was from these Mysteries that the exuberant
fancy of the Greeks drew much of their mythology. From these ancient initiations
he deduces the orders of Chivalry which sprang into existence in the Middle
Ages, (1) "Recherches sur les Initiations Anciennes et Modernes." and certain
branches of these, he thinks, produced the institution of Freemasonry.
The theory of the Abbe Robin therefore traces the institution of Masonry to
the ancient Mysteries, but in an indirect way, through the orders of Chivalry.
He might therefore more correctly be classed among those who maintain the
doctrine of the Templar origin of Freemasonry. But it is Alexander Lenoir, the
French archaeologist, who has attempted in the most explicit and comprehensive
manner to establish the doctrine of the direct descent of Freemasonry from the
ancient Mysteries, and especially from the Egyptian. In the year 1814 he
published an elaborate work on this subject. (23) In this he begins by affirming
that we cannot expect to find in the Egyptian and Greek initiations those modes
of recognition which are used by the Freemasons of the present day, because
these methods, which are only conventional and had been orally communicated
under the obligation of secrecy, can not be known to us, for they could not have
been transmitted through the lapse of ages. Omitting, therefore, all reference
to these as matters of no real importance, he confines himself to a comparison
of the Masonic with the ancient rites of initiation. In this view he comes to
the conclusion that Freemasonry in all the points that it essentially
comprehends is in direct relation with the Mysteries of the ancient world, and
that hence, abstracting certain particular usages practiced by the modern
Freemasons, it is evident that Freemasonry in no respect differs from the
ancient initiations of the Egyptians and the Greeks.
This theory has been embraced by nearly all the French Masonic writers except
Rebold, who traces Masonry to the Roman Colleges of Artificers. Unfortunately
for the general acceptance of this theory, M. Lenoir has in the first place
drawn his comparisons from the system of ceremonies of initiation which are
practiced in the lodges of France, and especially from the "proofs and trials"
of the Entered Apprentice's degree. But the tedious ceremonies and painful
trials of the candidate as they are practiced in the French Rite constitute no
part of the original English Masonry whence the French Masonry derives its
existence, and were adopted as a pure innovation long after the establishment of
the Order in France by the Grand Lodge of England.
And agan, the Egyptian initiations, with which they have been compared by
Lenoir, were not those which were actually practiced by the priests of Egypt, or
at least we have no authentic proof of that fact, but were most probably
suggested by the imaginative details given by the Abbe Terrasson in his romance
entitled Sethas, in which he pretends to portray the initiation of an Egyptian
prince.
The truth is that Lenoir and those writers who have followed him and adopted
his theopt have not instituted a comparison between the original ceremonies of
Masonic initiation and those of the ancient Mysteries, but merely a comparison
between a recent system of ceremonies, certainly not earlier than the middle of
the last century, and a fictitious system indebted for its birth to the
inventive genius of a French abbe, and first promulgated in a work published by
him in the year 1731.
As well might Mr. Turner or any other writer on Anglo-Saxon history have
cited, as authentic materials for his description of the customs of the
Anglo-Saxon, the romantic incidents given by Sir Walter Scott in his novel of
Ivanhoe.
Hence all the references of the voyages of an Entered Apprentice in a French
Lodge to the similar voyages of an Aspirant in the Mysteries of Osiris or Isis
become nothing more than "the baseless fabric of a vision," which must fade and
dissolve like an "insubstantial pageant" when submitted to the crucial test of
authentic historical investigation. (24)
The Rev. Mr. King, the author of a very interesting treatise on the Gnostics,
(25) has advanced a theory much more plausible than either of those to which I
have adverted. He maintains that some of the Pagan Mysteries, especially those
of Mithras, which had been instituted in Persia, extended beyond the period of
the advent of Christianity, and that their doctrines and usages were adopted by
the secret societies which existed at an early period in Europe and which
finally assumed the form of Freemasonry. I have said that this theory is a
plausible one. It is so because its salient points are sustained by historical
evidence.
It is, for instance, a fact that some of the Mysteries of Paganism were
practiced in Europe long after the commencement of the Christian era. They
afforded a constant topic of denunciation to the fathers of the church, who
feared and attacked what they supposed to be their idolatrous tendencies. It was
not until the middle of the 5th century that they were proscribed by an edict of
the Emperor Theodosius. But an edict of proscription is not necessarily nor
always followed by an immediate abolition of the thing proscribed.
The public celebration of the Mysteries must, of course, have ceased at once
when such celebration had been declared unlawful. But a private and secret
observance of them may have continued, and probably did continue, for an
indefinite time, perhaps even to as late a period as the end of the 5th or the
beginning of the 6th century.
Mosheim tells us that in the 4th century, notwithstanding the zeal and
severity of the Christian emperors, there still remained in several places, and
especially in the remoter provinces, temples and religious rites consecrated to
the Pagan deities; that rites instituted in honor of them were, in the 5th
century, celebrated with the utmost freedom and impunity in the western empire;
and that even in the 6th century remains of the Pagan worship were to be found
among the learned and the officers of state. (26)
During all this time it is known that secret associations, such as the Roman
Colleges of Artificers, existed in Europe, and that from them ultimately sprang
up the organizations of Builders, which, with Como in Lombardy as their center,
spread over Europe in the Middle Ages, and whose members, under the recognized
name of Traveling Freemasons, were the founders of Gothic architecture. There is
no forced or unnatural succession from them to the Guilds of Operative Masons,
who undoubtedly gave rise, about the end of the 17th or the beginning of the
18th century, to the Speculative Order or the Free and Accepted Masons, which is
the organization that exists at the present day.
There is, therefore, nothing absolutely untenable in the theory that the
Mithraic Mysteries which prevailed in Europe until the 5th or perhaps the 6th
century may have impressed some influence on the ritual, form, and character of
the association of early Builders, and that this influence may have extended to
the Traveling Freemasons, the Operative Guilds, and finally to the Free and
Accepted Masons, since it can not be proved that there was not an uninterrupted
chain of succession between these various organizations.
The theory of Mr. King can not, therefore, be summarily rejected. It may not
be altogether true, but it has so many elements of truth about it that it claims
our serious consideration.
But, after all, we may find a sufficient explanation of the analogy which
undoubtedly exists between the rites of the ancient Mysteries and those of the
modern Freemasons in the natural tendency of the human mind to develop its ideas
in the same way when these ideas are suggested by the same or similar
circumstances. The fact that both institutions have taught the same lessons by
the same method of instruction may be attributed not to a direct and
uninterrupted succession of organizations, each one a link of a long chain
leading consequentially to another but rather to a natural and usual coincidence
of human thought.
The believers in the lineal and direct descent of Freemasonry from the
ancient Mysteries have of course discovered, or thought that they had
discovered, the most striking and wonderful analogies between the internal
organizations of the two institutions. Hence the most credulous of these
theorists have not hesitated to compare the Hierophant, or the Explainer of the
sacred rites in the Mysteries, with the Worshipful Master in a Masonic Lodge,
nor to style the Dadouchos, or Torch-Bearer, and the Hieroceryx, or Herald of
the Mysteries, Wardens, nor to assign to the Epibomos, or Altar-Server, the
title and duties of a Deacon.
That there are analogies, and that many of them are very curious can not be
denied, but I shall attempt, before leaving; this subject, to explain the reason
of their existence in a more rational way than by tracing the modern as a
succession from the ancient system.
The analogies existing between the ancient Mysteries and Freemasonry, upon
which the theory of the descent of the one from the other has been based,
consist in the facts that both were secret societies, that both taught the same
doctrine of a future life, and that both made use of symbols and allegories and
a dramatic form of instruction. But these analogies do not necessarily support
the doctrine of descent, but may be otherwise satisfactorily explained.
Whether the belief in a personal immortality was communicated to the first
man by a divine revelation, and subsequently lost as the intellectual state of
future generations declined into a degraded state of religious conceptions; or
whether the prehistoric man, created but little superior to the wild beast with
whom he daily contended for dominion with insufficient weapons, was at first
without any conception of his future, until it had by chance dawned upon some
more elevated intellect and by him been communicated to his fellows as a
consoling doctrine, afterward to be lost, and then in the course of time to be
again recovered, but not to be universally accepted by grosser minds, are
questions into which we need not enter here.
It is sufficient to know that there has been no period in the world's
history, however dark, in which some rays of this doctrine have not been thrown
upon the general gloom. The belief in a future life and an immortal destiny has
always been so inseparably connected with elevated notions of God that the deep
and reverent thinkers in all ages have necessarily subscribed to its truth. It
has inspired the verses of poets and tempered and directed the discussions of
philosophers. As both the Mysteries of the ancients and the Freemasonry of the
moderns were religious institutions, the conceptions of the true nature of God
which they taught to their disciples must of course have involved the ideas of a
future life, for the one doctrine is a necessary consequence of the other. To
seek, therefore, in this analogy the proof of a descent of the modern from the
ancient institution is to advance an utterly fallacious argument.
As to the secret character of the two institutions, the argument is equally
untenable. Under the benighted rule of Pagan idolatry the doctrine of a future
life was not the popular belief. Yet there were also some who aspired to a
higher thought - philosophers like Socrates and Plato, who nourished with
earnest longing the hope of immortality. Now, it was by such men that the
Mysteries were originally organized, and it was for instruction in such a
doctrine that they were instituted. But opposed as this doctrine was to the
general current of popular thought, it became, necessarily and defensively,
esoteric and exclusive. And hence we derive the reason for the secret character
of the Mysteries. "They were kept secret," says Warburton, "from a necessity of
teaching the initiated some things improper to be communicated to all." (27) The
learned bishop assigns another reason, which he sustains with the authority of
ancient writers, for this secrecy. "Nothing," he says, "excites our curiosity
like that which retires from our observation, and seems to forbid our search."
(28)
Synesius, who lived in the 4th century, before the Mysteries were wholly
abolished, says that they owed the veneration in which they were held to a
popular ignorance of their nature. (29)
And Clemens of Alexandria, referring to the secrecy of the Mysteries,
accounts for it, among other reasons, because the truth seen through a veil
appears greater and more venerable. (30)
Freemasonry also teaches the doctrine of a future life. But although there
was no necessity, as in the Pagan Mysteries, to conceal this doctrine from the
populace; yet there is, for the reasons that have just been assigned, a
proneness in the human heart, which has always existed, to clothe the most
sacred subjects with the veil of mystery. It was this spirit that caused Jesus
to speak to the Jewish multitudes in parables whose meaning his disciples, like
initiates, were to comprehend, but which would be unintelligible to the people,
so that "seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand."
The Mysteries and Freemasonry were both secret societies, not necessarily
because the one was the legitimate successor of the other, but because both were
human institutions and because both partook of the same human tendency to
conceal what was sacred from the unhallowed eyes and cars of the profane. In
this way may be explained the andogy between the two institutions which arises
from their secret character and their esoteric method of instruction.
The symbolic form of imparting the doctrines is another analogy, which may be
readily explained. For when once the esoteric or secret system was determined
on, or involuntarily adopted by the force of those tendencies to which I have
referred, it was but natural that the secret instruction should be communicated
by a method of symbolism, because in all ages symbols have been the cipher by
which secret associations of every character have restricted the knowledge which
they imparted to their initiates only.
Again, in the Mysteries, the essential doctrine of a resurrection from death
to eternal life was always taught in a dramatic form. There was a drama in which
the aspirant or candidate for initiation represented, or there was visibly
pictured to him, the death by violence and then the resuscitation or apotheosis
- the resurrection to life and immortality of some god or hero, in whose honor
the peculiar mystery was founded.
Hence in all the Mysteries there were the thanatos, the death or slaying of
the victim; the aphanism, the concealment or burial of the body by the slayers;
and the heuresis, the finding of the body by the initiates. This drama, from the
character of the plot, began with mourning and ended with joy.
The traditional "heureka," sometimes attributed to Pythagoras when he
discovered the forty-seventh problem, and sometimes to Archimedes when he
accidentally learned the principle of specific gravity, was nightly repeated to
the initiates when, at the termination of the drama of the Mysteries, they had
found the hidden body of the Master.
Now, the recognized fact that this mode of inculcating a religious or a
philosophical idea by a dramatic representation was constantly practiced in the
ancient world, for the purpose of more permanently impressing the conception,
would naturally lead to its adoption by all associations wbere the same lesson
was to be taught as that which was the subject of the Mysteries. The tendency to
dramatize an allegory is universal, because the method of dramatization is the
most expedient and has been proved to be the most successful. The drama of the
third or Master's degree of Freemasonry is, as respects the subject and the
development of the plot and the conduct of the scenes, the same as the drama of
the apcient Mysteries. There is the same thanalos, or death; the same aphanism,
or concealment of the body, and the same heuresis, or discovery of it. The drama
of the Master's degree begins in sorrow and ends in joy. Everything is so
similar that we at once recognize an analogy between Freemasonry and the ancient
Mysteries; but it has already been explained that this analogy is the result of
natural causes, and by no means infers a descent of the modern from the ancient
institution.
Another analogy between the Mysteries and Freemasonry is the division of both
into steps, classes, or degrees - call them what you may - which is to be found
in both. The arrangement of the Masonic system into three degrees certainly
bears a resemblance to the distribution of the Mysteries into the three steps of
Preparation, Initiation, and Perfection which have been heretofore described.
But this analogy, remarkable as it may at first view appear, is really an
accidental one, which in no way shows an historical connection between the two
institutions.
In every system of instruction, whether open or secret, there must be a
gradual and not an immediate attainment of that which is intended to be
imparted. The ancient adage that "no one suddenly becomes wicked" might with
equal truth be read that "no one suddenly becomes learned." There must be a
series of gradual approaches to the ultimate point in every pursuit of
knowledge, like the advancing parallels of a besieging army in its efforts to
attain possession of a beleaguered city. Hence the ladder, with its various
steps, has from the earliest times been accepted as a symbol of moral or
intellectual progress from an inferior to a superior sphere.
In this progress from the simplest to the most profound arena of initiation -
from the inception to the full accomplishment of the instruction whereby the
mind was to be gradually purged of many errors, by preparatory steps, before it
could bear the full blaze of truth - both the Mysteries and Freemasonry have
obeyed a common law of intellectual growth, independently of any connection of
the one with the other institution. The fact that there existed in both
institutions secret modes of recognition presents another analogy. It is known
that in the Mysteries, as in Freemasonry, there was a solemn obligation of
secrecy, with penalties for its violation, which referred to certain methods of
recognition known only to the initiates. But this may safely be attributed to
the fact that such peculiarities are and always will be the necessary adjuncts
of any secret organization, whether religious, social, or political.
In every secret society isolated from the rest of mankind, we must find, as a
natural outgrowth of its secrecy and as a necessary means of defense and
isolation, an obligation of secrecy and methods of recognition. On such
analogies it is, therefore, scarcely worth while to dilate.
Thus, then, I have traced the analogies between the ancient Mysteries and
modern Freemasonry in the following points of resemblance.
FOOTNOTES
1. The Preparation, which in the Mysteries was called the Lustration. It was
the first step in the Mysteries, and is the Entered Apprentice's degree in
Freemasonry. In both systems the candidate was purified for the reception of
truth by washing. In one it was a physical abultion; in the other a moral
cleansing; but in both the symbolic idea was the same.
2. The Iniliation, which in the ancient system was partly in the Lesser
Mysteries, but more especially in the Greater. In Masonry it is partly in the
Fellow Craft's, but more especially in the Master's degree.
3. The Perfection, which in the Mysteries was the communication to the
aspirant of the true dogma - the great secret symbolized by the fnitialion. In
Freemasonry it is the same. The dogma communicated in both is, in fact,
identical. This Perfection came in the Mysteries at the end of the Greater
Mysteries. In Masonry it is communicated at the close of the Master's degree. In
the Mysteries the communication was made in the saceeum or holiest place. In
Masonry it is made in the Master's Lodge, which is said to represent the holy of
holies of the Temple.
4. The secret character of both institutions.
5. The use of symbols.
6. The dramatic form of the initiation.
7. The division of both systems into degrees or steps.
8. And the adoption by both of secret methods of recognition. These
analogies, it must be admitted, are very striking, and, if considered merely as
coincidences, must be acknowledged to be very singular.
It is not, therefore, surprising that scholars have found it difficult to
resolve the following problem:
Is modern Freemasonry a lineal and uninterrupted successor of the ancient
Mysteries, the succession being transmitted through the Mithraic initiations
which existed in the 5th and 6th centuries; or is the fact of the analogies
between the two systems to be attributed to the coincidence of a natural process
of human thought, common to all minds and showing its development in symbolic
forms?
For myself, I can only arrive at what I think is a logical conclusion; that
if both the Mysteries and Freemasonry have taught the same lessons by the same
method of instruction, this has arisen not from a succession of organizations,
each one a link of a long chain of historical sequences leading directly to
another, until Hiram is simply substituted for Osiris, but rather from those
usual and natural coincidences of human thought which are to be found in every
age and among all peoples.
It is, however, hardly to be denied that the founders of the Speculative
system of Masonry, in forming their ritual, especially of the third degree,
derived many suggestions as to the form and character of their funereal legend
from the rites of the ancient initiations.
But how long after Freemasonry had an organized existence this funereal
legend was devised, is a question that must hereafter be entitled to mature
consideration.
(1) "Divine Legation of Moses," B.I., sect. iv., p.
193.
(2) At quem Deum, qui templa caeli summa sonitu concutit; Ego homuncio boc non
facerem ? -Act iii, sc. 5
(3) Warburton, "Divine Legation," B. II., sect. iv.
(4) Terra tegit carnem; tumulum circumvolat umbra; orcus habet manes; spiritus
astra petit.
(5) "Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life," p. 196.
(6) Many of the philosophers were, however, skeptics. The Stoics, for instance,
and they were the leading sect, denied the survival of the soul after the death
of the body; or, if any of them conceded its survival, they attributed to it
only a temporary duration before it is dissolved and absorbed into the universe.
Seneca ("Troades," I., 397) says "there is nothing after death, and death itself
is nothing." Post mortem nihil, est ipsague mors nihil.
(7) "Stromat.," lib. v., p. 658.
(8) "Divine Legation," B.I., sect. iv., p. 194.
(9) "Crit. Hist. of the Doctrine of a Future Life," p. 454.
(10) "Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries" apud Pamphleteer,
vol. viii, P. 40.
(11) Ibid., p. 53.
(12) Jew and Gentile," I., p. 136, Darnell's Translation.
(13) "Stromat.," v., p. 424.
(14) The first and original Mysteries of which we have any account were those of
Isis and Osiris in Egypt, from whence they were derived by the Greeks. -
Warburton, "Divine Legation," I., p. 194. Diodorus says the same thing in the
first book of his "History," I., xxxvii.
(15) Ogygia me Bacchum vacat; Osisin Egyptus putat; Mysi Phaiiacem nominant;
Dionuson Indi existimant Romana sacra Liberum Arabica gens Adoneum.-Ausonius,
Ep. 30.
(16) Thus Clemens of Alexandria describes the legend or allegory of the Cabiri
Mysteries as the sacred mystery of a brother slain by his brethren, "frater
trucidatus a fratribus."
(17) "Concerning Adonis, whom some call Osiris, there are two things remarkable:
aphanismos, the death or loss of Adonis; and heuresis, the finding of him
again." - Godevyn in "Moses and Aaron," lib. iV., C. 2.
(18) "Spirit of Masonry," lect. ii., p. 15.
(19) "The highest hills and lowest valleys."
(20) "Spirit of Masonry," lect. iv., p. 59.
(21) "History of Initiation," lect. i., p. 13, notes.
(22) "La Franche-Maconnerie rendue a sa veritable origins," etc. Par M.
Alexander Lenoir. Paris, 1814.
(23) "La Franche-Maconnerie rendue a sa veritable origins," etc. Par M.
Alexander Lenoir. Paris, 1814.
(24) "Many of the explanations given as to the ceremonies used in Egyptian
initiations are modern inventions, abounding in absurdities and purely
imaginary." - Tho. Pryer, "On the study of Masonic Antiquities," in Freemasons'
Quarterly Review, 1847, p. 262. Wilkinson was of the same opinion. See "Manners
and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians," vol. i.
(25) "The Gnostics and their Remains, Ancient and Mediaeval." By C.W. King,
M.A., London, 1865, p. 47 et seq.
(26) Mosheim, "Ecclesiast. History," Maelaine's Translation, vol. i., pp. 251,
332, 401.
(27) "Div. Legat.," I., p. 201.
(28) Ibid., I., P. 200.
(29) "De Providentia."
(30) "Stromat.," v., 419
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