FREEMASONRY AND THE GNOSTICS
by Albert Mackey
The hypothesis which seeks to trace a connection between Gnosticism and
Freemasonry, and perhaps even an origin of the latter from the former, has been
repeatedly advanced, and is therefore worthy of consideration.
The latest instance is in a work of Mr. C. W. King, published in 1864 under
the title The Gnostics and their.Remains, Ancient and Medieval.
Mr. King is not a Freemason, and, like all the writers non-Masonic, such as
Barnell, Robison, De Quincey, and a host of others, who have attempted to
discuss the history and character of Freemasonry, he has shown a vast amount of
ignorance. In fact, these self-constituted critics, when treating of subjects
with which they are not and can not be familiar, remind one of the busybodies of
Plautus, of whom he has said that, while pretending to know everything, they in
fact know nothing-" Qui omnia se simulant scise nec quicquam sciunt. "
Very justly has Mr. Hughan called this work of King's, so far as its Masonic
theories are concerned, one of an " unmasonic and unhistoric character." But
King, it must be admitted, was not the first writer who sought to trace
Freemasonry to a Gnostic origin. In a pamphlet published in 1725, a copy of
which has been preserved in the Bodleian Library, among the manuscripts of Dn
Rawlinson, and which bears the title of Two Letters to a Friend. The First
concerning the Society of Free-masons. The second giving an Account of the Most
Ancient Order of Gormogons, etc., we find, in the first letter, on the
Freemasons, the following passage:
" But now, Sir, to draw towards a conclusion; and to give my opinion
seriously, concerning these prodigious Virtuosi ;-My belief is, that if they
fall under any denomination at all, or belong to any sect of men, which has
hitherto appeared in the world, they may be ranked among the Gnostics, who took
their original from Simon Magus; these were a set of men, which ridiculed not
only Christianity, but even rational morality; teaching that they should be
saved by their capacious knowledge and understanding of no mortal man could tell
what. They babbled of an amazing intelligence they had, from nobody knows
whence. They amused and puzzled the hair-brained, unwary crowd with
superstitious interpretations of extravagant talismanic characters and abstruse
significations of uncommon Cabalistic words; which exactly agrees with the
proceedings of our modern Freemasons."
Although the intrinsic value of this pamphlet was not such as to have
preserved it from the literary tomb which would have consigned it to oblivion,
had not the zeal of an antiquary preserved a single copy as a relic, yet the
notion of some relation of Freemasonry to Gnosticism was not in later years
altogether abandoned.
Hutchinson says that "under our present profession of Masonry, we allege our
morality was originally deduced from the school of Pythagoras, and that the
Basilidian system of religion furnished us with some tenets, principles, and
hieroglyphics." Basilides, the founder of the sect which bears his name, was the
most eminent of the Egyptian Gnostics.
About the time of the fabrication of the High Degrees on the continent of
Europe, a variety of opinions of the origin of Masonry -many of them
absurd-sprang up among Masonic scholars. Among these theorists, there were not a
few who traced the Order to the early Christians, because they found it, as they
supposed, among the Gnostics, and especially its most important sect, the
Basilidians. Some German and French writers have also maintained the hypothesis
of a connection, more or less intimate, between the Gnostics and the Masons.
I do not know that any German writer has positively asserted the existence of
this connection. But the doctrine has, at times, been alluded to without any
absolute disclaimer of a belief in its truth.
Thus Carl Michaeler, the author of a Treatise on the Pheonician Mysteries,
has written some observations on the subject in an article published by him in
1784, in the Vienna Journale fur Freimaurer, on the analogy between the
Christianity of the early times and Freemasonry. In this essay he adverts to the
theory of the Gnostic origin of Freemasonry. He is, however, very guarded in his
deductions, and says conditionally that, if there is any connection between the
two, it must be traced to the Gnosticism of Clement of Alexandria, and on which
simply as a school of philosophy and history it may have been founded, while the
differences between the two now existing must be attributed to changes of human
conception in the intervening centuries.
But, in fact, the Gnosticism of Clement was something entirely different from
that of Basilides, to whom Hutchinson and King attribute the origin of our
symbols, and whom Clement vigorously opposed in his works. It was what he
himself calls it, "a true Gnostic or Christian philosophy on the bads of faith."
It was that higher knowledge, or more perfect state of Christian faith, to which
St. Paul is supposed to allude when he says, in his First Epistle to the
Corinthians, that he made known to those who were perfect a higher wisdom.
Reghellini speaks more positively, and says that the symbols and doctrines of
the Ophites, who were a Gnostic sect, passed over into Europe, having been
adapted by the Crusaders, the Rosicrucians, and the Templars, and finally
reached the Masons.'
Finally, I may refer to the Leland MS., the author of which distinctly
brought this doctrine to the public view, by asserting that the Masons were
acquainted with the " facultys of Abrac," by which expression he alludes to the
most prominent and distinctive of the Gnostic symbols. That the fabricator of
this spurious document should thus have intimated the existence of a connection
between Gnosticism and Freemasonry would lead us to infer that the idea of such
a connection was not wholly unfamiliar to the Masonic mind at that period-an
inference which will be strengthened by the passage already quoted from the
pamphlet in the Rawlinson collection, which was published about a quarter of a
century before.
But before we can enter into a proper discussion of this important question,
it will be expedient for the sake of the general reader that something should be
said of the Gnostics and of the philosophical and religious system which they
professed.
I propose, therefore, very briefly to reply to the questions, What is
Gnosticism, and Who were the Gnostics ?
Scarcely had the light of Christianity dawned upon the world before a
multitude of heresies sprang up to disturb the new religion. Among these
Gnosticism holds the most important position. the title of the sect is derived
from the Greek word gnosis, "wisdom or knowledge," and -was adopted in a spirit
of ostentation, to intimate that the disciples of the sect were in possession of
a higher degree of spiritual wisdom than was attainable by those who had not
been initiated into their mysteries.
At so early a period did the heresy of Gnosticism arise in the Christian
Church, that we find the Apostle Paul warning the converts to the new faith of
the innovations on the pure doctrine of Christ, and telling his disciple Timothy
to avoid "profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so
called." The translators of the authorized version have so rendered the passage.
But, in view of the greater light that has since their day been thrown upon the
religious history and spirit of the apostolic age, and the real nature of the
Gnostic element which disturbed it, we may better preserve the true sense of the
original Greek by rendering it "oppositions of the false gnosis."
There were then two kinds of Gnosis, or Gnosticism-the true and the false, a
distinction which St. Paul himself makes in a passage in his Epistle to the
Corinthians, in which he speaks of the wisdom which he communicated to the
perfect, in contradistinction to the wisdom of the world.
Of this true Gnosticism, Clement declared himself to be a follower. With it
and Freemasonry there can be no connection, except that rnodified one admitted
by Michaeler, which relates only to the investigation of philosophical and
historical truth. The false Gnosis to which the Apostle refers is the Gnosticism
which is the subject of our present inquiry.
When John the Baptist was preaching in the Wilderness, and for some time
before, there were many old philosophical and religious systems which, emanating
from the East, all partook of the mystical character peculiar to the Oriental
mind. These various systems were, then, in consequence of the increased
communication of different nations which followed the conquests of Alexander of
Macedon, beginning to approximate each other. The disciples of Plato were
acquiring some of the doctrines of the Eastern Magi, and these in turn were
becoming more or less imbued with the philosophy of Greece. The traditions of
India, Persia, Egypt, Chaldea, Judea, Greece, and Rome were commingling in one
mass, and forming out of the conglomeration a mystical philosophy and religion
which partook of the elements of all the ingredients out of which it was
composed and yet contained within its bosom a mysticism which was peculiar to
itself.
This new system was Gnosticism, which derived its leading doctrines from
Plato, from the Zend-Avesta, the Cabala, the Vedas, and the hieroglyphs of
Egypt. It taught as articles of fakth the existence of a Supreme Being,
invisible, inaccessible, and incomprehensible, who was the creator of a
spiritual world consisting of divine intelligences called aeons, emanating from
him, and of matter which was eternal, the source of evil and the antagonist of
the Supreme Being.
One of these aeons, the lowest of all called the Demiurge, created the world
out of matter, which, though eternal, was inert and formless.
The Supreme Father, or First Principle of all things, had dwelt from all
eternity in a pleroma or fullness of inaccessible light, and hence he was called
Bythos, or the Abyss, to denote the unfathomable nature of his perfections.
"This Being," says Dr. Burton, in his able exposition of the Gnostic system, in
the Bam o Lectures ures, by an operation purely mental, or by acting upon
himself, produced two other beings of different sexes, from whom by a series of
descents, more or less numerous according to different schemes, several pairs of
beings were formed, who were called aeons, from the periods of their existance
before time was, or emanations from the mode of their production. These
successive aeons or emanations appear to have been inferior each to the
preceding; and their existence was indispensable to the Gnostic scheme, that
they might account for the creation of the world, without making God the author
of evil. These aeons lived through countless ages with their first Father. But
the system of emanations seems to have resembled that of concentric circles, and
they gradually deteriorated as they approached nearer and nearer to the
extremity of the pleroma. Beyond this pleroma was matter, inert and powerless,
though co-eternal with the Supreme God, and like him without beginning. At
length one of the aeons (the Demiurge) passed the limits of the pleroma, and,
meeting with matter, created the world after the form and model of an ideal
world, which existed in the plemora or the mind of the Supreme God."
It is not necessary to enter into a minute recapitulation of the other points
of doctrine which were evolved out of these three. It is sufficient to say that
the old Gnosticism was not an original system, but was really a cosmogony, a
religion and a philosophy which was made up of portions of the older Grecian and
Oriental systems, including the Platonism of the Greeks, the Parsism of the
Persians, and the Cabala of the Jews.
The advent of Christianity found this old Gnosticism prevailing in Asia and
in Egypt. Some of its disciples became converts to the new religion, but brought
with them into its fold many of the mystical views of their Gnostic philosophy
and sought to apply them to the pure and simple doctrines of the Gospel.
Thus it happened that the name of Gnosticism was applied to a great variety
of schools, differing from each other in their interpretations of the Christian
faith, and yet having one common principle of unity-that they placed themselves
in opposition to the conceptions of Christianity as it was generally received by
its disciples. And this was because they deemed it insufficient to afford any
germs of absolute truth, and therefore they claimed for themselves the
possession of an amount of knowledge higher than that of ordinary believers.
"They seldom pretended," says the Rev. Dr. Wing, "to demonstrate the
principles on which their systems were founded by historical evidence or logical
reasonings, since they rather boasted that these were discovered by the
intuitional powers of more highly endowed minds, and that the materials thus
obtained, whether through faith or divine revelation, were then worked up into a
scientific form, according to each one's natural power and culture. Their aim
was to construct, not merely a theory of redemption, but of the universe-a
cosmogony. No subject was beyond their investigations. Whatever God could reveal
to the finite intellect they looked upon as within their range. What to others
seemed only speculative ideas, were by. them hypostatized or personified into
real beings or historical facts. It was in this way that they constructed
systems of speculation on subjects entirely beyond the range of human knowledge,
which startle us by their boldness and their apparent consciousness of reality."
Such was the Gnosticism whose various sects intruded with their mystical
notions and their allegorical interpretations into the Church, before
Christianity had been well established. Although denounced by St. Paul as " vain
babblers," they increased in strength and gave rise to many heresies which
lasted until the 4th century.
The most important of these sects, and the one from which the moderns have
derived most of their views of what Christian Gnosticism is, was established in
the 2d century by Basilides, the chief of the Egyptian Gnostics.
The doctrine of Basilides and the Basilidians was a further development of
the original Gnostic system. It was more particularly distinguished by its
adoption from Pythagoras of the doctrine of numbers and its use and
interpretation of the word Abraxas-that word the meaning of which, according to
the Leland MS., so greatly puzzled the learned Mr. Locke.
In the system of Basilides the Supreme God was incomprehensible,
non-existent, and ineffable. Unfolded from his perfection were seven attributes
or personified powers, namely, Mind, Reason, Thought, Wisdom, Power, Holiness,
and Peace. Seven was a sacred number, and these seven powers referred to the
seven days of the week. Basilides also supposed that there were seven similar
beings in every stage or region of the spiritual world, and that these regions
were three hundred and sixty-five in number, thus corresponding to the days in
the solar year. These three hundred and sixty-five regions were so many heavenly
mansions between the earth and the empyrean, and be supposed the existence of an
equal number of angels. The number three hundred and sixty-five was in the
Basilidian system one of sacred import. Hence he fabricated the word A B R A X A
S, because the Greek letters of which it is composed have the numerical value,
when added together, of exactly three hundred and sixty-five. The learned German
theologian, Bellerman thinks that he has found the derivation in the Captu, or
old Egyptian language, where the words abrah, signifying "word," and sadsch,
signifying "blessed," "holy," or "adorable," and therefore abrahsadsch
Hellenized into Abraxas, would denote "the holy, blessed, or adorable Word,"
thus approximating to the spirit of the Jewish Cabalists in their similar use of
a Holy Name.
Whether the word was thus derived or was invented by Basilides on account of
the numerical value of its letters, is uncertain. lie, however, applied it in
his system as the name of the Supreme God. This word Abraxas, like the
Tetragrammaton of the Jews, became one of great importance to the sect of
Basilidians. Their reverence for it gave origin to what are called "abraxas
gems."
These are gems, plates, or tablets of metal, which have been discovered
principally in Egypt, but have also been found in France and Spain. They are
inscribed with the word Abraxas and an image supposed to designate the
Basilidian god. Some of them have on them Jewish words, such as Jehovah or
Adonai, and others contain Persian, Egyptian, or Grecian symbols.
Montfaucon, who has treated the subject of " abraxas gems " elaborately,
divides them into seven classes. 1. Those inscribed with the head of a cock as a
symbol of the sun. 2. Those having the head of a lion, to denote the heat of the
sun, and the word Mithras. 3. Those having the image of the Egyptian god Sera
is. 4. Those having the images of sphinxes, apes, and other animals. 5. Those
having human figures with the words Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, etc. 6. Those having
inscriptions without figures. 7. Those having monstrous forms.
From these gems we have derived our knowledge of the Gnostic or Basilidian
symbols, which are said to have furnished ideas to the builders of the Middle
Ages in their decorative art, and which Mr. King and some other writers have
supposed to have been transmitted to the Freemasons.
The principal of these Gnostic symbols is that of the Supreme God, Abraxas.
This is represented as a human figure with the head of a cock, the legs being
two serpents. He brandishes a sword in one hand (sometimes a whip) and a shield
in the other.
The serpent is also a very common symbol, having sometimes the head of a cock
and sometimes that of a lion or of a hawk.
Other symbols, known to be of a purely Gnostic or rather Basilidian origin,
from the accompanying inscription, Abraxas, or Iao, or both, are Horus, or the
Sun, seated on a lotus flower, which is supported by a double lamp, composed of
two phallic images conjoined at their bases; the dog ; the raven ; the tancross
surmounted by a human head; the Egyptian god, Anubis, and Father Nilus, in a
bending posture and holding in his hand the double, phallic lamp of Horus. This
last symbol is curious because the word Heilos, like Mithras, which is also a
Gnostic symbol, and Abraxas, expresses, in the value of the Greek letters of
which it is composed, the number three hundred and sixty-five.
All these symbols, it will be seen, make some reference to the sun, ether as
the representative of the Supreme God or as the source of light, and it might
lead to the supposition that in the later Gnosticism, as in the Mithraic
Mysteries, there was an allusion to sunworship, which was one of the earliest
and most extensively dill used of the primitive religions. Evidently in both the
Gnostic and the Mithraic symbolism the sun plays a very important part.
While the architects or builders of the Middle Ages may have borrowed and
probably did borrow, some suggestions from the Gnostics in carrying out the
symbolism of their art, it is not probable, from their ecclesiastical
organization and their religious character, that they would be more than mere
suggestions. Certainly they would not have been accepted by these orthodox
Christians with anything of their real Gnostic interpretation.
We may apply to the use of Gnostic symbols by the mediaeval architects the
remarks made by Mr. Paley on the subject of the adoption of certain Pagan
symbols by the same builders. Their Gnostic origin was a mere accident. They
were employed not as the symbolism of any Gnostic doctrine, but in the spirit of
Christianity, and " the Church, in perfecting their development, stamped them
with a purer and sublimer character." On a comparison of these Gnostic symbols
with those of Ancient Craft or Speculative Masonry, I fail to find any reason to
subscribe to the opinion of Hutchinson, that " the Basilidian system of religion
furnished Freemasonry with some tenets, principles, and hieroglyphics." As
Freemasons we will have to repudiate the tenets and principles" of the sect
which was condemned by Clement and by Irenaeus; and as to its " hieroglyphics,"
by which is meant its symbols, we will look in vain for their counterpart or any
approximation to them in the system of Speculative Masonry.
That the Masons at a very early period exhibited a tendency to the doctrine
of sacred numbers, which has since been largely developed in the Masonry of the
modern High Degrees, is true, but this symbolism was derived directly from the
teachings of Pythagoras, with which the founders of the primitive rituals were
familiar.
That the sun and the moon are briefly referred to in our rituals and may be
deemed in some sort Masonic symbols, is also true, but the use made of this
symbolism, and the interpretation of it, very clearly prove that it has not been
derived from a Gnostic source.
The doctrine of the metempsychosis, which was. taught by the Basilidians, is
another marked point which would widely separate Freemasonry from Gnosticism,
the dogma of the resurrection being almost the foundation-stone on which the
whole religious philosophy of the former is erected.
Mr. King, in his work on the Gnostics, to which allusion has already been
made, seeks to trace the connection between Freemasonry and Gnosticism through a
line of argument which only goes to prove his absolute and perhaps his
pardonable ignorance of Masonic history. It requires a careful research, which
must be stimulated by a connection with the Order, to enable a scholar to avoid
the errors into which he has fallen.
"The foregoing considerations," he says, " seem to afford a rational
explanation of the manner in which the genuine Gnostic symbols (whether still
retaining any mystic meaning or kept as mere lifeless forms, let the Order
declare) have come down to these times, still paraded as things holy and of deep
significance. Treasured up amongst the dark sectaries of the Lebanon and the
Sofis of Persia, communicated to the Templars, and transmitted to their heirs,
the Brethren of the Rosy Cross, they have kept up an unbroken existence."
In the line of history which Mr. King has here pursued, he has presented a
mere jumble of non-consecutive events which it would be impossible to
disentangle. He has evidently confounded the old Rosicrucians with the more
modern Rose Croix, while the only connection between the two is to be found in
the apparent similarity of name. If he meant the former, he has failed to show a
relation between them and the Freemasons; if the latter, he was wholly ignorant
that there is not a Gnostic symbol in their system, which is .wholly constructed
out of an ecclesiastical symbolism. Such inconsequential assertions need no
refutation.
Finally he says that " Thus those symbols, in their origin, embodying the
highest mysteries of Indian theosophy, afterward eagerly embraced by the subtle
genius of the Alexandrian Greeks, and combined by them with the hidden wisdom of
Egypt, in whose captivating and profound doctrines the few bright spirits of the
Middle Ages sought a refuge from the childish fables then constituting
orthodoxy, engendered by monkery upon the primal Buddhistic stock; these sacred
symbols exist even now, but serve merely for the insignia of what at best is but
a charitable, probably nothing more in its present form than a convivial
institution."
These last lines indicate the precise amount of knowledge that he possesses
of the character and the design of Freemasonry. It is to be regretted that he
had not sought to explain the singular anomaly that "what at best is but a
charitable, and probably nothing more than a convivial institution " has been
made the depository of the symbols of an abstruse theosophy. Benevolent
societies and convivial clubs do not, as a rule, meddle with matters of such
high import.
But to this uncritical essay there need be no reply. When anyone shall
distinctly point out and enumerate the Gnostic symbols that made a part of the
pure and simple symbolism of the primitive Speculative Masons, it will be time
enough to seek the way in which they came there.
For the present we need not undergo the needless labor of searching for that
which we are sure can not be found.
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