Chapter 110. Degrees, Symbols and Rituals of the Craft

Freemasonry describes itself, in a definition its own writers repeat, as “a science of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols” [Gruber, “Freemasonry: Its Origin and History”, printed in Sickels, The General Ahiman Rezon, #66646, quoting Mackey]. The Craft, or “Blue Lodge”, has three degrees: Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason. Most other bodies (the Royal Arch, the Scottish Rite, the Templar orders) present themselves as developments of these three [Wikipedia: Scottish Rite]. This chapter describes that world as the lodge’s own handbooks and commentators present it, sets their readings beside the hostile readings in the library, and uses Emilian M. Dobrescu’s Romanian dictionary as a terminological cross-check.

What the monitors print and what they keep oral

The monitors are lodge handbooks printed with the approval of grand lodges. Z. A. Davis’s The Monitor (Philadelphia, 1853) promises “explanations and plates of all the emblems” from the Entered Apprentice up to the Knights of Malta [Davis, The Monitor, #71706, title page]. Cornelius Moore’s The Craftsman, and Freemason’s Guide (Cincinnati, 1846; eighth edition 1854) was “compiled and arranged from Webb, and other standard authors” and approved for Ohio lodges [Moore, The Craftsman, #73192, preface]. These books print the opening and closing prayers, the charges, the scriptural readings and the “explanations” of the emblems. One example is the Apprentice’s working tools in Davis:

“The twenty-four inch guage … is emblematical of the twenty-four hours of the day, which we are taught to divide into three equal parts; whereby are found eight hours for the service of God, and a distressed worthy brother; eight for our usual vocations; and eight for refreshment and sleep” [Davis, The Monitor, #71706, “Entered Apprentice”].

For the Fellow Craft the monitor prints the praise of “Geometry, the first and noblest of sciences … the basis on which the superstructure of Masonry is erected”. For the Master Mason it prints the trowel, which spreads “the cement of brotherly love”, and emblems such as the beehive, the forty-seventh problem of Euclid and the All-seeing Eye [Davis, The Monitor, #71706, “Fellow Craft”, “Master Mason”]. What the monitors leave out are the modes of recognition, the words and the dramatic content of the obligations. Mackey says the legend of the third degree, apart from two sentences in Anderson’s Constitutions of 1738 and 1756, “has always remained unwritten, and descended, from age to age, through the means of oral tradition” [Mackey, The Symbolism of Freemasonry, #66062, ch. XXVII]. Dobrescu records how this works in the lodge. Apprentices may express themselves “only in writing” (numai în scris): when the Worshipful Master asks for their opinion, a Master reads it aloud. Companions may speak in the work of the lodge, and in some obediences they may vote [Dobrescu, Dicționar de terminologie masonică, #41499, entries on speaking in lodge and “Companion”].

The Hiramic legend and the Lost Word

John Michael Greer gives the outline of the legend. Hiram, the Tyrian brass-worker of 1 Kings 7, became in guild legend the Temple’s master builder; fifteen journeymen plotted to extort the Master’s Word, and twelve repented. “Three went ahead with the plot, lying in wait for him at noon at the three entrances of the unfinished temple. When Hiram refused each of them in turn, each struck him with a tool, and the third blow killed him.” The “three ruffians” buried the body, and “Hiram’s death, the search for his body, and its recovery make up the core of the Master Mason degree” [Greer, The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies, #64911, “Hiram Abiff”].

For Mackey the legend is a drama of death and immortality. The ancient Mysteries, he writes, taught “the consoling doctrine of the immortality of the soul” by scenic representation: Osiris in Egypt, Adonis in Phoenicia, Dionysus in Syria. Through the Tyrian workmen at Solomon’s Temple, the narrative of the Temple builder was “substituted for that of Dionysus”. “Hiram Abif is, in the masonic system, the symbol of human nature, as developed in the life here and the life to come” [Mackey, The Symbolism of Freemasonry, #66062, ch. XXVII]. The Word is “the symbol of Divine Truth; and all its modifications—the loss, the substitution, and the recovery—are but component parts of the mythical symbol which represents a search after truth”. [same, ch. XXXI]. Sickels’ lecture goes further: “OSIRIS and the Tyrian Architect are one and the same—not a mortal individual, but an idea—an IMMORTAL PRINCIPLE!” The twelve Fellow Crafts sent in search “represent the companions of Isis” [Sickels, The General Ahiman Rezon, #66646, “Master Mason”, “The Twelve Messengers”].

Pike offers several readings. In the Master’s degree he says the name is properly KHURUM, “KHUR-OM, the same as Her-ra, Her-mes, and Her-acles … the personification of Light and the Son, the Mediator, Redeemer, and Saviour”. The ritual names of the assassins, Jubelo, Jubela and Jubelum, “embody an utter absurdity” in Hebrew or Arabic [Pike, Morals and Dogma, #378717, Degrees III and XXV]. In the Knight of the Sun he reads the three murderers as “Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas the High-Priest, and Judas Iscariot” [same, Degree XXVIII]. He identifies the Word itself: “This knowledge of God … is the Master Mason’s Word” (index: “God, the Master Mason’s Word is a knowledge of”) [same, Degree XIII]. A. E. Waite (1916) holds that the Master-Builder “signifies a principle and not a person”. He traces the loss and substitution of the Word to the Kabbalistic “Secret Tradition of Israel”. He also notes that in an early philosophical high degree the Master-Builder “rises as Christ” and completes the Divine Name by inserting the letter Shin, producing Yeheshua, “the restoration of the Lost Word in the Christian Degrees” [Waite, Some Deeper Aspects of Masonic Symbolism, #79382].

The lodge and its furniture

Mackey writes that the oblong lodge reproduces the ancient habitable world, with the Pillars of Hercules corresponding to “the two pillars that stood at the porch”. “A masonic lodge is, therefore, a symbol of the world.” Extended in height and depth, it becomes “a symbol of the universe” [Mackey, The Symbolism of Freemasonry, #66062, ch. XIII]. His Encyclopedia derives Boaz from Hebrew b, “in”, and oaz, “strength”, meaning “in strength” [Mackey, An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, #71610, “Boaz”]. Pike begins from the same Hebrew: “Schlomoh the wise King caused to be placed in front of the entrance to the Temple two huge columns of bronze, one of which was called YAKAYIN and the other BAHAZ … The Masonry of the Blue Lodges gives no explanation of these symbolic columns”. His key is Kabbalistic. The columns are Wisdom and Understanding, the active “POWER of generation and the CAPACITY of production”, “contraries like the Man and Woman, like Reason and Faith” [Pike, Morals and Dogma, #378717, Degree XVIII “Knight Rose Croix”]. In the Fellow Craft lecture he lists them among the pairs of the Duad: “Two, or the Duad, is the symbol of Antagonism; of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness. It is Cain and Abel, Eve and Lilith, Jachin and Boaz, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Osiris and Typhon” [same, Degree II].

On the letter G, Pike says that in the East, inside a triangle, the proper sign is the Hebrew YŌD, “the symbol of Unity, of the Supreme Deity, the first letter of the Holy Name”. English and American lodges substitute G, the initial of GOD, “with as little reason as if the letter D., initial of DIEU, were used in French Lodges” [Pike, Morals and Dogma, #378717, Degree I]. Sickels calls G “the Saxon representative of the Hebrew Yod and the Greek Tau”, which unites “GOD and Geometry” [Sickels, The General Ahiman Rezon, #66646, “The Letter G”]. Dobrescu’s Delta, the luminous triangle in the Orient behind the Worshipful Master, carries the divine eye, which “leaves each one free to imagine the God of his own religion” [Dobrescu, Dicționar de terminologie masonică, #41499, “Delta”].

The tesselated pavement shows the clearest disagreement among insiders. Davis gives the standard monitorial meaning: the Mosaic pavement represents the ground floor of Solomon’s Temple and “is emblematic of human life … chequered with a strange contrariety of events” [Davis, The Monitor, #71706, “Entered Apprentice”]. Mackey’s Encyclopedia states: “There is no historical evidence to substantiate this statement” [Mackey, An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, #71610, “Mosaic Pavement”]. Pike agrees: the Temple floor “was covered with planks of fir” [Pike, Morals and Dogma, #378717, Degree I]. In the Kadosh degree he gives his own reading. The Johannite adepts adopted Manes’ “doctrines of the two Principles, the recollection of which is perpetuated by the handle of the dagger and the tesselated pavement or floor of the Lodge, stupidly called ‘the Indented Tessel’ … And wherever, in the higher Degrees, the two colors white and black, are in juxtaposition, the two Principles of Zoroaster and Manes are alluded to” [same, Degree XXX]. Here the floor of the lodge is read directly through the Persian dualism with which this study began (Chapters 11 and 16). Dobrescu’s dictionary gives the neutral modern definition: white and black squares symbolising “positive and negative, light and darkness, active and passive, matter and spirit, life and death” [Dobrescu, #41499, “Pavaj mozaicat”]. On the square and compasses he adds that the square lies under the compasses in the Apprentice degree, the two intersect in the Companion degree, and in the Master’s degree the square is placed above the compasses [Dobrescu, #41499, “Echer”, “Compas”].

Oaths, the Royal Arch and the high degrees

The library holds the text of an obligation in a hostile source. A twentieth-century Canadian reprint of chapter VII of Charles G. Finney’s anti-Masonic book (Finney was an ex-Mason) is headed “If you want to save Canada from Communism never vote for a Freemason or a Jew!”. Its preface, signed “P. M.”, calls Freemasons “oath bound slaves to an International conspiracy” to “build a glorified Judaism”. Finney’s text says that below the Royal Arch a Mason keeps a brother’s secrets “murder and treason excepted”. In the Royal Arch the candidate swears to aid a companion “WHETHER HE BE RIGHT OR WRONG”, and Finney concludes that such a man cannot be trusted as magistrate, sheriff, juror or witness [Finney, Sign of Satan: A Freemason or a Jew!, #70244].

According to Greer, the Royal Arch was “the first of the higher degrees added to Freemasonry in the eighteenth century”. It is attested in England before 1744, its inventor is unknown, and it belonged first to the “Antients”. “In England, the Royal Arch is considered the completion of the Master Mason degree.” Its legend tells of the Word’s recovery from an underground vault, and its emblem is the Triple Tau [Greer, #64911, “Royal Arch”]. Mackey writes that in the Royal Arch “the veils … are withdrawn”. The truth revealed is “synonymous with the knowledge of the nature of God … embraced in the sacred Tetragrammaton” [Mackey, An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, #71610, “Royal Arch”]. The “Scottish” high degrees above it, Greer says, drew on Andrew Michael Ramsay’s oration, which he dates to 1736 (other accounts give 1737). It traced Masonry to the crusading knights, “the first time that claim had been made”, and it “provided crucial backing for the new ‘Scottish’ Masonry” [Greer, #64911, “Ramsay, Andrew Michael”]. Records of a “Scots Master” degree go back to 1733 in London [Wikipedia: Scottish Rite].

Philosophers of the Craft

Roscoe Pound, writing in 1915 as Past Grand Master of Nebraska, counted four systems of Masonic philosophy. Two were “intellectual”: Preston’s, whose keyword is Knowledge, and Krause’s, whose keyword is Morals. Two were “spiritual”: Oliver’s, whose keyword is Tradition, and Pike’s, whose keyword is Symbolism [Pound, Lectures on the Philosophy of Freemasonry, #87767, ch. I]. Waite reads the Craft as Kabbalistic speculation grafted onto a building guild by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Christian Hebraists [Waite, #79382]. Castells, a clergyman and Past Master, reads the lodge as a sevenfold image of Solomon’s Temple and cites Robert Kirk (1691), who connected “the Mason Word” with “a Rabbinical Tradition, ‘by way of comment on Jachin and Boaz'” [Castells, The Apocalypse of Freemasonry, #76251, “Specifications” and historical introduction].

The hostile readings

Cathy Burns (1998) reads the same objects as occult. Quoting the nineteenth-century writer Fellows, she treats the pillars as phallic and solar, with Boaz “Osiris, or the sun” and Jachin “Isis”. She says “the ‘G’ really means generation”, citing Pike on the “generative principle”, and she places the All-seeing Eye beside the logos of the OTO and New Age groups [Burns, Masonic and Occult Symbols Illustrated, #62278, sections on pillars, the letter G and the eye]. Texe Marrs (2008) calls the All-seeing Eye the sign of Osiris, “the One whom all Masons bow to and worship”. He states that Mackey was “Pike’s successor as Grand Sovereign Commander”, which does not match the reference shelf: there Mackey is the man who conferred the 4th to 32nd degrees on Pike in 1853 [Marrs, Mysterious Monuments, #66353; Wikipedia: Scottish Rite]. The Catholic historian Hermann Gruber, whose essay opens the Jazzybee edition of Sickels, says many Masonic authors refer the symbols “to the solar and phallic worship of the ancient mysteries”, and quotes Pike: “It is in the antique symbols and their occult meaning that the true secrets of Freemasonry consist” [Gruber, in Sickels, #66646].

Both camps go back to the same sentence of Pike’s. In the Kadosh degree Pike says the Blue Degrees are “but the outer court or portico of the Temple” and that the Initiate there “is intentionally misled by false interpretations” [Pike, Morals and Dogma, #378717, Degree XXX]. Critics take it as an admission. Defenders such as Pound warn that “texts from Pike … are more than usually deceptive” when they are read in isolation [Pound, #87767, ch. IV]. Chapter 112 examines this passage and its uses.

Key points

• The monitors (Davis 1853, Moore 1846/1854, Sickels) print charges, prayers and the meanings of the emblems and working tools. The words, signs and the drama of the Hiramic legend stay oral, as Mackey states.
• The Hiramic legend has three ruffians, three blows and the loss and substitution of the Master’s Word. Mackey reads it as the drama of immortality and Sickels as the Osiris myth. Pike reads the Word as the knowledge of God, and Waite traces it to the Kabbalah.
• Pike says the Blue Lodges give “no explanation” of Jachin and Boaz. He reads them as a Kabbalistic pair and sets them beside “Ormuzd and Ahriman, Osiris and Typhon”.
• Pike says the letter G should be the Hebrew Yod. He reads the black-and-white pavement, “stupidly called the Indented Tessel”, as the “two Principles of Zoroaster and Manes”, which ties lodge symbolism to Persian dualism.
• In Greer’s account the Royal Arch recovers the lost Word and, in England, counts as the completion of the Master’s degree. Ramsay’s oration (1736 in Greer; 1737 in other accounts) launched the “Scottish” high degrees.
• Pound classes Masonic philosophy into four systems: Preston (Knowledge), Krause (Morals), Oliver (Tradition) and Pike (Symbolism).
• Hostile authors (Finney’s reprint, Burns, Marrs) read the oaths as a danger to the state and the symbols as phallic, solar or Luciferian. They draw partly on Pike’s own words.
• Dobrescu’s dictionary supplies the Romanian terms: lojă, Venerabil, Mare Maestru, ucenic, companion (with calfă as a synonym), maestru, echer, compas, Delta, pavaj mozaicat.