Table Of ContentMasonic Initiation
W .L . Wilmshurst
TO ALL BUILDERS IN THE SPIRIT
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION- PAGE
Masonry and Religion . . . . . . I
CHAPTER I.
FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT . . . . . . 15
Initiation, Real and Ceremonial . . . .
17
The Purpose of the Mysteries . . . . 22
The Ideal Lodge . . . . ' . . . . 36
CHAPTER II.
LIGHT ON THE WAY . . . . • •
43
"The Knowledge of Yourself" . . . . 47
The "G" . . . . . . . . . . 54
The Ladder . . . . . . . . . .
6 1
The Superstructure . . . . . . . . 70
The Cable-Tow . . . . . . . . 79
The Apron . . . . . . . . . , 88
The Wind . . . . . .
• • • • 93
Seeking a Master . . . . ,
• • • 97
Wages . . . . . . . . . . 105
The Law of the Mount . . . . I Io
"From Labour to Refreshment" . . . .
117
The Grand Lodge Above . . . . 125
iv.
CONTENTS continued
CHAPTER III. PAGE
FULNESS OF LIGHT 132
Observations and Examples . . . , . . 132
Apocalypsis . . . . . . , . . , 146
CHAPTER IV.
THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE MASONIC ORDER 183
The Past . . . , , . , , , 183
The Future . . . . . , , , ,
199
POSTSCRIPT , . . , . . . . 221
"
ISDOM alone is the right coin with which
Wto deal, and with it everything of real worth
is bought and sold. And for it, Temperance and
justice, Fortitude and Prudence, are a kind of
preliminary purification.
And those who instituted the Mysteries for us appear
to have been by no means contemptible persons, and
to have intimated in a veiled manner that whoever
descends into Hades uninitiated, and without being
a partaker in the Mysteries, shall lie in the mire ;
but that whoever arrived there purified and initiated,
shall dwell with the Gods. Yet, as said those who
preside over the Mysteries :-
'Many are the candidates seeking Initiation,
But few are _the perfected Initiates.'
But these few are, in my judgment, true wisdom-
lovers ; and that I may be of their number I shall
leave nothing unattempted, but shall exert myself .
in all possible ways."
SOCRATES in PLATO'S Phcedo.
vi.
Introduction
MASONRY AND RELIGION
T
HIS book is meant to be a sequel to, and an
amplification of, my previous volume, The
Meaning of Masonry, first published in
1922--a collection of papers issued diffidently and
tentatively on the chance that they might interest
some few members of the Craft in the deeper and
philosophic aspect of Freemasonry. It at once met,
however, with a surprisingly warm welcome from all
parts of the world, and already has had to be thrice
reprinted. Any personal pleasure at its reception is
eclipsed by a greater gratification and thankfulness
at the now demonstrated fact that the present large
and rapid increase in the number of the Fraternity is
being accompanied by a correspondingly wide
desire to realise the significance and purpose of the
Masonic system to a much fuller degree than till now
has been the case. The Masonic Craft seems to be
gradually regenerating itself, and, as I previously
indicated, such a regeneration must needs make not
only for the moral benefit and enlightenment of
individuals and Lodges, but ultimately must react
favourably upon the framework in which they exist
-the whole body of society .
In these circumstances it becomes possible to
speak more fully, perhaps also more feelingly, upon
a subject which, as a large volume of public and
private testimony has revealed to me, is engaging the
earnest interest of large numbers of Brethren of the
Craft. So I offer them these further papers,
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Intro- presenting the same subject-matter as before, but in
duction different form and expounding more fully matters
previously treated but superficially and cursorily.
By "the Masonic Initiation" I mean, of course,
not merely the act and rite of reception into the
Order, but Speculative Freemasonry-within the
limits of the Craft and Arch Degrees-regarded as a
system, a specialised method of intellectual guidance
and spiritual instruction ; a method which to its
willing and attentive devotees offers at once an in-
terpretation of life, a rule of living, and a means of
grace, introduction, and even intromission, to life
and light of a supra-natural order. Masonry being
essentially and expressedly a quest after supra-
natural Light, the present papers are schematically
arranged in correspondence with the stages of that
quest ; they deal first with the transition from
darkness to light ; next with the pathway itself and
the light to be found thereon ; and, lastly, with light
in its fulness of.attainment as the result of faithfully
pursuing that path to the end. - In a final paper I have
re-surveyed the Order's past and indicated its
present tendencies and future possibilities .
In their zeal to appreciate and make the best of
their connection with the Order, some members,
one finds, experience difficulty in defining and
"placing" Freemasonry. Is it Religion, Philosophy,
a system of morals, or what ? In view of the deepen-
ing interest in the subject, it may be well at the outset
to clear up this point.
Masonry is not a Religion, though it contains
marked religious elements and many religious
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references. A Brother may legitimately say, if he
Masonry
wishes,-and many do say-"Masonry is my and
religion," but he is not justified in classifying and Religion
holding it out to other people as a Religion.
Reference to the Constitutions makes it quite clear
that the system is one meant to exist outside and
independently of Religion ; that all the Order
requires of its members is a belief in Deity and
personal conformation to the Moral Law, every
Brother being free to follow whatsoever form of
religion and mode of worship he pleases .
Neither is Masonry a Philosophy ; albeit behind
it lies a large philosophical background not appearing
in its surface-rituals and doctrine, but left for
discovery to the research and effort of the Brethren .
That philosophical background is a Gnosis or
Wisdom-teaching as old as the world, one which has
been shared alike by the Vedists of the East, the
Egyptian, Chaldean and Orphic Initiation systems,
the Pythagorean and Platonist schools, and all the
Mystery Temples of both the past and the present,
Christian or otherwise. The present renaissance in
the Masonic Order is calculated to cause a marked,
if gradual, revival of interest in that philosophy, with
the probable eventual result that there will come
about a general restoration of the Mysteries, in-
hibited during the last sixteen centuries. But of this
more will be said in the final section of this book.
The official description of Masonry is that it is a
"System of Morality." This is true, but in two
senses, one only of which is usually thought of . The
term is usually interpreted as meaning a "system of
morals." But men need not enter a secret order to
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Intro- learn morals and study ethics ; nor is an elaborate
duction ceremonial organisation needed to teach them.
Elementary morals can be, and are, learned in the
outside world ; and must be learned there if one is
to be merely a decent member of society . The
possession of "strict morals," as every Mason knows,
is a preliminary qualification for entering the Order ;
a man does not enter it to acquire them after he has
entered. It is true he finds the Order insistent on
obedience to the Moral Law and emphasising closer
cultivation of certain ethical virtues, as is essential to
those who propose to enter upon a course of spiritual
science ; and this is the primary, more obvious sense
in which the term "system of morality" is used .
But the word "morality," in its original, and also
in its Masonic, connotation, has a further meaning ;
one carrying the same sense as it does when we
speak of a "morality-play." A "morality" is a literary
or dramatic way of expressing spiritual truth,
putting it forward allegorically and in accordance
with certain well-settled principles and methods
(mores) ; it is the equivalent of a usage or "use," as
ecclesiastics speak of "the Sarum use" or liturgy.
In the same sense Plutarch's Moralia is largely a
series of disquisitions upon the mores of the ancient
religious Mystery-schools .
A "system of morality," therefore, means second-
arily "a systematised and dramatised method of
moral discipline and philosophic instruction, based
on ancient usage and long established practice ." The
method in question is that of Initiation ; the usage
and practice is that of allegory and symbol, which
it is the Freemason's duty, if he wishes to understand
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his system, to labour to interpret and put to personal
Masonry
application. If he fails to do so, he still remains- and
and the system deliberately intends that he should Religion
in the dark about the Order's real meaning and
secrets, although formally a member of it . The
Order, the morality-system, merely guarantees its
own possession of Truth ; it does not undertake to
impart it save to those who labour for it . For Truth
and its real arcana can never be communicated
directly, or save through allegory and symbol,
myth and sacrament. The onus of translating these
must ever rest with the recipient as part .-of his life-
work ; until he makes the truth his own he can never
know it to be truth ; he must do the will before he
can know the doctrine. "I know not how it is"
(said St. Bernard of Clairvaux of allegory and symbol)
"but the more that spiritual realities are clothed with
obscuring veils, the more they delight and attract ;
and nothing so much heightens longing for them as
such tender refusal."
Masonry, then,-as _ a "system of morality"
as thus defined-is neither a Religion nor a
Philosophy, but at once a Science and an Art, a
Theory and a Practice ; and this was ever the way
in which the Schools of the Ancient Wisdom and
Mysteries proceeded. They first exhibited to the
intending disciple a picture of the Life-process ;
they taught him the story of the soul's genesis and
descent into this world ; they showed him its present
imperfect, restricted state and its unfortunate
position ; they indicated that there was a scientific
method by which it might be perfected and regain
its original condition. This was the Science-half of
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