"FREEMASONRY AND THE MESSAGE OF AQUARIA"

  
  
  "If, as Aristole said, it be the mission of tragedy to cleanse and exalt
us, leaving us subdued with a sense of pity and hope and fortified
against ill fortune, it is permitted us to add that in simplicity, in
depth and power, in its grasp of the realities of the life of man, its
portrayal of the stupidi of evil and the splendour of virtue, its
revelation of that in our humanity which leads it to defy itself, rather
than defame, defile or betray its moral  integrity, and in its prophecy
of the victory of light over shadow, there is not another drama known
among man like the Third Degree of Masonry."

Joseph Fort Newton, "THE BUILDERS"

In correspondence with the Temples of the mystic cults of antiquity, the
Lodge of our modern Freemasonry are emblematical representations of the
Universe in miniature, for the real lodge is the Universe itself which
is one Great Temple or place of Initiation into the mysteries of the
soul and of God. Mother-Earth is also the Mother-Lodge of us all, and as
its vast work goes on, souls are ever descending into it and souls are
being called out of it at the knocks of some great unseen Warden of life
and death, who calls them here to labour and summons them hence for
refreshment in the heavenly places. From time immemorial Brother Man has
been required to clothe himself (with a physical form - the body of
mortality, symbolisod by our Masonic Apron) and enter the Lodge of Life,
wherein, silently and without sound of metal tool, is proceeding the
perpetual work of rebuilding that unfinished and invisible Temple, of
which the mystical stones and timber are the souls of men.

Freemasonry, then, is an image of a universal process, a process which
is impersonal and meant for all mankind, but nevertheless we Freemasons
are privileged as we possess, in our graded Ceremonies, a small scale
chart of the stages or Degrees through which all human life must of
necessity pass on Admission into the Craft, however, is not to be
regarded merely as participation in a ceremonial excursion into the
realms of theoretic transformative progress; on the contrary, it is a
solemn sacramental act, and one which commits Candidates to the arduous
task of perfecting themselves in advance of the mass of their fellows in
order to promote the spiritual welfare of the Race by an active
co-operation in the design of the Grand Master of all.  The Craft exists
to serve the cosmic purpose as a means of grace provided by The Great
Architect of the Universe for assisting human redemption, and its
life-sources must therefore be looked for in causes far an terior to its
inception in 1717, while its history can only be properly viewed in
relation to the course of both national and world history.

Students of the Masonic subject will come to know that there is a branch
of arcane science which deals with times and seasons in human affairs;
which reveals the operation of a periodic law governing them, and which
enables us to survey past and present events and prognosticate future
events in much the same way that astronomers follow the courses of the
stars and predict eclipses. With the assistance of this law we are able
to discern that human existence is punctuated by periods of flow and
ebb, in which duality, or the spiritual and the material, is alternately
manifested through the two areas of circular motion designated as
centripetal and centrifugal, or the advance and recessional movements in
the scheme of eternal progress.  As evidence of this statement, take the
twenty-four hour measurement as embracing the day and the night; the
lunar month with its two poriods, that of increase and decrease; the
annual solar revolution wherein summer and winter are the positive and
negative poles of activity; and, greater still, the precession of the
equinoxes, in which the Sun's equatorial passage through one of the
signs of the Zodiac constitutes a sub-cycle of 2,160 years.  The same
truth will also be found to be on record in the Volume of the Sacred Law
- Genesis 8, verse 22 - where, in terms of natural imagery, it is
declared, "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and
heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not ce ase."
Moreover, these cyclic periods will be found evidenced by w ell marked
events and charges of human development and the subject of this Paper is
to consider the Masonic doctrine of Initiation in the light of
forthcoming changes due to incoming of a new cycle, that of Aquarius,
under the Sign of the Man.

A great deal has been written in exposition of the Masonic Initiation,
but notwithstanding a marked forward trend observable within the Order
and a corresponding increase in apprehension, it must be conceded that
the majority of Freemasons still fail to recognise that the key to the
whole Craft system in contained in the Central Legend or Traditional
History of the Third Degree. The Craft legend of H.A., although known as
"Traditional History" would be better described as "historical
tradition", because it is the Hebrew form of a cosmogonical doctrine
expressed in numerous ways and common to all peoples since the beginning
of time. It is a doctrine explaining the genesis, fall, and destiny of
man, and accounting for the mystery of evil, sin and death with which
our world is afflicted, by a catastrophe which occurred out of time and
space and before we and our planet assumed their present physicalised
condition.  Under the allegory of a temporal murder and the loss of
building plans, the Craft Legend perpetua tes the primal doctrince of
Cosmic Tragedy; a tragedy committed before time began, and one by reason
of which all Nature groans and is in travail, and human society exists
in a state of continuous disorder and confusion. The great virtue of the
Craft system, howevers lies in the fact that the Third Degree not only
proclaims the nature of the "heavy calamity" which has befallen
Hnmanity, but it further reveals how "that which is lost" may be
recovered . Thus, although the narrative undoubtedly places emphasis
upon the fact that man has fallen away from a high estate to the
externalised condition in which we now live, its real object is to draw
attention to the truth which has been taught in all subsequent ages,
viz. that the way of return to our former eminence is that by which we
came. The intimation is, in ritual language, that a loss sustained in
the "East" is not to be recovered in the "West," by which we are
intended to understand that human life having originated in the mystical
"East," and descended into this world, must eventually return again to
its source. In the words of verse written by that well known Masonic
authority, W.Bro. A.E.Waite:

"From East to West the soul her journey takes; At many bitter founts her
fever slakes; Halts at strange taverns by the way to feast, Resumes her
load, and painful progress makes Back to the East."


OUr Masonic doctrine therefore emshrines traditional, universal
principles, about the way all Humanity must traverse from this world of
time and transiency (the "West") to the eternal "East." It demonstrates
conclusively that life is a vast Initiation-process, slowly patiently,
and by law and order, leading an intractable world from darkness to
increasing light. But, we also learn from the Volume of the Sacred Law
that "times (cycles, time-periods) and seasons" are allocated for the
accomplishment of cosmic purposes, and that a definite time-limit is set
to the stages of the initiatory process. Hence it is that the benefits
of initiation are not only conferred in the individual and personal
sense, to be achieved by voluntary self-discipline as envisaged by the
Craft system, but there are also occasions when the power is directed to
operate upon the collective consciousness of mankind. Freemasons will do
well to reflect that this is precisly what is happening to-day, when
under the guidance of the Master of Life, humanity as a whole is in the
process of being Passed to the Second Degree in a cosmic and vital
sense; we are all working to-day as "minds," upon the plane of mind, the
region of Humanity's Second Degree. Now, as Freemasonry so clearly
illustrates, such initiation involves at one and the same time, a
renunciation and again, or, in other words, a putting away of that which
has served its purpose and become effete and unessential, with the
corresponding attainment of something superior and esstential. It also
implies the permanent tuning up of consciousness from a lower to a
higher pitch, the result of which is, that awareness (whether visual or
intellectual) becomes intensified, and the immature reactions of the
sense nature give place to enhanced powers of intelligence. These
factors are in evidence today, and despite the fact that at the moment
the majority are unable to interpret correctly their feelings, it is
becoming increasingly obvious that an organic change is being effected
in public consciousness.

Nineteen centuries ago a great spiritual Father and seer wrote to his
disciples "Little children, is the last time" (1st.  Epistle JOHN,
Chapter 2, verse 18): that is, we are living in the closing years, the
last lap, of a world cycle and world-order which is rapidly approaching
its end and destined to give place to another "time" of a new, higher,
and different character. In view of recent events and present
conditions, who does not recognise the force of those words today? Every
thinking mind realises, every sensitive conscience feels, that we are
comings to the end of an age, that the old order of things is fast going
down hill with ever-increasing momentum. It has now become apparent that
we are moving towards a now order of things, and that the present crisis
marks the transition; in biblical language; therefore, it is a
"pass-over" of just such a character as that described in the Book of
Exodus as occurring "when Israel came out of Egypt". What does such a
pass-over imply, and what is the order of things to which the transition
is being made?

To deal with these questions from the Masonic standpoint and under
scriptural guidance, let us remember that, in addition to being our
great spiritual guide, the Volume of the Sacred law is the greatest
textbook of occult science that exists. It is the chart of human
spiritual evolution during the ages for which it was written, and it
clearly indicates, for those who can read it, the position at which we
gain, have at present arrived and the stages of development through
which we have yet racially to pass. In a brief Paper of this nature it
is impossible to attempt to expound the philosophic basis upon which the
Scriptures impliedly rest, and one must ask that certain facts be
assumed as true. One of those facts is that our planet and the system to
which it belongs form but part of a vast clockwork of inter-knitted
forces worlds or modes of being, of which we in our present state see
only the physical aspect to the exclusion of other aspects which are not
physical. We, here, live upon the plane of phenomena and effects, and
until our inner eyes are opended to what is going on invisibly around us
we remain unconscious of the realms of spiritual noumena, causes, and
cosmic creation which make those phenomena possible. The seen and unseen
worlds are in constant interaction, and in the same way that the face of
an ordinary timepiece is divided up into minutes, quarters and hours,
that express the activities of the interior works, so were we to see in
its entirety the clockwork of the Universe we should discern the extent
to which physical events and cataclysms and crises in human history are
the surface records of spiritual energies at work beyond our present
sense observation.  Further, as our clocks record the major and minor
subdivisions of time, so the Great Clock of the Universe strikes its
hours, half-hours and quarters, and the echo of its chimes is heard
among us in the form of great world events and changes that periodically
occur. It is these moments of less or greater crisis which are alluded
to by the biblical term "pass-over", and the Hebrew feast of the
"Passover" was instituted to keep prominently before the human memory
the assurance that such moments would periodically and inf allibly
occur, and be attended by great upheavals, distress and des truction of
existing conditions. For students this subject has always been one of
astronomical science, and it is in the terms of astronomy and the Zodiac
that it can be most conveniently exppessed.  Without going into details
it may be briefly stated that the ZODIAC is a chart of the solar system
and the precession of the equinoxes through itr constitute a guide by
means of which some things concerning human destiny can be explicated.
The solar system, in the course of backward motion through the twelve
Signs of the Zodiac, takes approximately 25,920 years to make a
complete, circle, and the last sub-cycle of 2,160 years - in which the
equinoctial point receded through Pisces, the Sign of the Fishes - was
completed in the year A.D.1881. Dr. Watt's metrical arrangement of the
Zodiacal signs will provide their names and order for convenient
reference:-

"The RAM, the BULL, the HEAVENLY TWINS, And next the CRAB, the LION
shines, The VIRGIN and the SCALES, The SCORPION, ARCHER and THE GOAT,
The man that holds the WATERPOT, And FISH with glittering tails."

A new is therefore entered every 2,160 years, the signs being traversed
in reverse order, and it is traditional that the passage of each sign in
marked by the growth of a new religious conception employing a symbolism
appropriate to the sign.  For example, at the beginning of the Christian
era the solar system was in the sign of PISCES, the FISHES, and we find
Fishermen disciples (the "fishers of men"), the draught of fishes, and
other fish symbolism fromly employed, while the era itself was
foreshadowed in the "sign of the prophet Jonah", who was swallowed by a
great fish. The previous sign was that of ARIES, the RAM, and under this
sign we find the Hebrew dispensation with the "Ram caught in a thicket",
the Ram of the burnt offering, the trumpet of Ram's horns, and other
similar symbolism. Before that came TAURUS the BULL, to which are
assigned the Bulls of Nineveh, and before that GEMINI, the TWINS, in
which period the cult originated which survived in classical times in
the form of the Great Twin Brethren, CASTOR and POLLUX.  Further back
than this it is not necessary to go, although it is of interest to note
that to this day the rising sun and the lion figure together on the
postage stamps of Persia, and are a reminder of the days when LEO the
LION (the sign ruled astrologically by the Sun) was the sign ruling our
solar system.

The changes now taking place in the world-order in consequence of tho
"pass-over" into the sign of AQUARIUS (the Water-bearer or Waterman) are
of greater portent than those of the former two (PISCES and ARIES),
because AQUARIUS is one of the four major or cardinal signs.  These four
cardinl signs, LEO, TAURUS, AQUARIUS and SCORPIO, correspond with the
four arms of the cosmic Cross, and are described in the Volume of the
Sacred Law (Ezekiel, Chapter 1) in the likeness of four living
"creatures", the LION, the OX, the MAN (i.e. the Water-man), and the
EAGLE, facts which are of peculiar significance to Royal Arch
Freemasons. Treating man (individually and collectively) as the symbol
and measure of the Cosmos, the science of Initiation relates the signs
of the Zodiac to his organism, and the Ram is allotted to the head, the
Fishes to the feet, the Water-man to the legs. This will convey nothing
to those who remain unversed in the deep implications of the Ancient
Wisdom teaching, but nevertheless an attempt will be made in this place
to offer an explanation in simple terms. The significance of our race
and planet being brought at the time of the founding of the Abrahamic
family and dispensation within the especial influence of the RAM, and of
the Ram being associated with the head or seat of intelligence, is that
then for the first time the racial consciousness became aware of the
truth that a new factor, a new element, from the spiritual plane, was in
process of becoming introduced into the psychical and phsical fabric of
this fallen planet for the purpose of restoring and redeeming it. It
meant that "the day-spring (or fontal source of life) from on high" was
about to visit us, and this fact is veiled, yet written large for those
who can penetrate the veil, in the incident of the patriach's propsed
immolation of his son, when he beheld near at hand a ram caught in a
thicket. The ram of his vision was none other than the "Lamb of God"
coming down from heaven into the "thicket" of this gross and material
world, and the disordered tangle of human conditions, to purge and
revivify them. During the period recorded in the Volume of the Sacred
Law as from Abraham to Christ the world remained under the astronomic
influence of the Ram, until at length came the next great "pass-over,"
and our system passed out of the influence of the Ram and entered that
of the Fishes. The sign of ther Fishes, as already stated, is referable
to the feet, and by the "pass-over" from the Ram to the Fishes the
"day-spring from on high" passed from the heights to the depths, and was
therefore no longer a prospective possibility as a Redeemer apprehended
by expectant faith and approached only by the higher spiritual
consciousness of seers and prophets; it was a present and actualized
fact, brought down to our very "feet" and normal minds. Herein lies the
significance of the Master washing the disciples' feet and declaring,
"he that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every
whit" (John 13, 10); in our higher part we are already and always clean;
it is only our "feet", our lower minds and personality, that are foul
and need cleansing. And now, after ever two thousand years of the
influence of this spiritual element upon the planet comes another
transition. We are today passing out of Pisces and coming into the
sphere of Aquarius; a sign that in the literature of the old mystics is
associated with the "legs", and it is in reference to the present
incoming cycle that it is written in the Volume of the Sacred Law, "many
shall run to and fro and knowledge (spiritual consciousness) shall be
increased". The last twenty centuries, many will say with the present at
chaotic state of the world in mind, have not wrought much. Perhaps not
to the outward eye, but we must look deeper; despite and amid all the
present evil of the world, all the materialism and destruction, at least
the beginnings have been made for the future; in the language of our
Craft, foundations have been laid in the  intelligence and consciences
of men, upon which a superstructure can be raised when all the rubbish
has been cleared away which the laying of foundations always entails.
The sudden admission of light always creates intense commotion among the
denizens of darkness, and for this reason the entrance of the "Light of
the World" into our planet has culminated in the horrors of today; but
this is only the initial stage, and amid the agonies and sorrows of the
present we must never forget that the change to a new and better order
is becoming possible because of them.

In the Volume of the Sacred Law the "pass-over" from the sign of the
Fishes to the Water-bearer is alluded to in St. Mark, chapter 14, verse
13 - "Go ye into the city and there shall meet you a man bearing a
pitcher of water; follow ye him", The city in question is, of course the
"heavenly city", or, in the words of St. Augustine; the "City of God",
i.e. the spiritial plane of cosmic causation.  These words in the Gospel
according to St. Mark are the link with that large body of Old Testament
prophecy which declares that the time would come when the Holy Spirit
should be poured out upon all the nations of the world, and that the
present "earth" (materialised human consciousness) should become
quickened and spiritualised. The transistion through which the world is
now passing is one betokening an organic change in the spiritual life of
humanity, and this will be the direct result of the liberation from the
plane of spirit of an unprecedented influx of mystical "water" into this
interlinked plane of effects. We Freemasons are not without some
knowledge of the significance of mystical "water", for there is a veiled
reference to it in our "pass-word" leading to the Second Degree which
involves the conception of a similar "Fall of Water".  What, then is
this mystical "water", and who is "the man bearing the pitcher" from
which it is to be poured forth so abundantly? St. Paul teaches us that
"spiritual things must be spiritually discerned", and it is therefore
useless for us to think of them in physical terms.  However, the
explanation lies in the fact that in all mystical systems common water
is in correspondence, and a symbol for, that pure, incorruptible,
eleutheric element, spoken of in the Volume of the Sacred Law as the
"Water of Life". It is this which is referred to in St. John, Chapter 3,
verse 5, where we read, "except a man be born of water and the spirit,
he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God".  There is a definite reason
for this correspondence, because in the same manner that common water is
a large ingredient of our mortal part, so the celestial fluid or element
is an essential constituent of the soul, and from this exhaustless
reservoir every soul that exists can renew, cleanse and replenish itself
perpetually, and being "water of life", it is the vehicle and contains
all the properties of true, as distinct from sensuous life. It is the
original "holy water", the universal solvent for all hardness of heart,
and the baptismal purifier. It brings wisdom and illumination of mind
because it is the universal vehicle and medium through which the Divine
Light and Intelligence are communicated to the human soul.  We can thus
visualise what must follow from the redisposition of the cosmic
spiritual mechanism, which will liberate into the fiery psychic
atmosphere of this frenzied planet an abnormal tide of this Celestial
Life-stream, for that will be the result of the present "pass-over".
Have no results of that outpouring been yet experienced? Assuredly; but
the fullness of those results is to come. These last two thousand years
have been needed in order to pave the way for quickened soul-growth for,
humanity has had to be "properly prepared." The world has had to be
fully opened up; nations, east and west, knitted together into a whole
of mutually interdependent parts; society consolidated; a spirit of
concord and fraternity generated; the dross and rubble of current
civilisation cleared away - processes which, these years past, have been
in the doing, and the completing of which is being accomplished in the
fiery crucible today.  The race cannot march forward, cannot attain a
now grade of spiritual evolution, until its iniquities have been burned
up and put behind it. Let no one therefore lose, but rather take,
courage in the presence of events which are apparently disastrous to all
dreams and hopes of good. If they are the inevitable harvest of our
past, they form the essential prelude to our better future. The ground
must be swept and cleared before it can be built upon afresh.  But the
Hand that devastates also restores:-

I looked and lo! mid the decay The Wastor was the Builder too; And when
the dust-cloud rolled away, And when the dust-cloud rolled away, I saw
the new! (Browning)

The world and its institutions are now being subjected to trial and
testing, and the testing will continue until such conditions are
attained as make a now order of things possible. Years will yet go to
it, but time, as we count it, moves at its own pace when the cosmic
processes of Spirit-action are at work. Meanwhile, amid the break-up of
all external things, an interior constructive work is going on,
preparing upon the mental and psychic planes the conditions that will
characterise the Aquarian age and the evolutionary change in human
consciousness upon the threshold of which we now stand.

Humanity has come at last - in recent years that coming has been
silently, but enormously speeded up to be so closely knit, its units to
be so mutually interdependent, as already to have developed what is
spoken of as a social consciousness. The appropriation of the whole of
the world's surface, the intellectual linking up of its several parts,
rapid universal distribution of thought and ideas, annihilation of time
and distance by scientific ingenuities, have all tended to expedite
racial consolidation, until even the non-mystical "man in the street"
has been forced into a crude and elementary perception of the mystical
truth that humanity is a single organism of which every part is
essential to the well-being of every other part, and that every man is
indeed by the necessity of things, demonstrably his brother's keeper.

Unquestionably this perception is a vast race gain, which has been
brought about, not by deliberate adaptation of conduct to the theory or
ideal of some doctrinaire, whether political or religious, but as a
result of actual life-experience gained by contact with the conditions
and force-currents that control human destiny. The great significance of
this gain, however, lies in the fact that the perception of unity in
respect of the races external, material nature, is only the prelude to a
larger vision; one which will disclose that not only the collective
forms of men, but their aggregated inward being also, constitutes the
Cosmic Temple of the Divine Spirit, the dwelling place of the Shekinah
or Divine Presence. In the meantime it must be acknowledged that after a
period of exhaustive investigation of his material environment, man
finds himself at last flung back upon himself; he has interrogated
nature to the farthest reach of his natural faculties, and the result
has been to bring him to an impasse. There now remains to him but one
more kingdom to exploit - the kingdom which is within himself.

Since we are now standing on the threshold of the Age, it is time that
we considered the position of our Craft and the part that Freemasonry
has to play in the incoming cycle. During the next two thousand years
the human race must penetrate deeply into the mysteries of Aquarius,
which are the mysteries of Man.  Hence, we Freemasons who have been
solemnly exhorted to guide our reflections to "that most interesting of
all human studies", must now take up in earnest that which our lips have
so glibly repeated: "Man; know thyself". And step by step we must prove
and demonstrate to the world the knowledge thus gained. In the fact
that, amidst so much imperfect apprehension of its meaning and
intention, Freemasonry should not only have survived but continues to
make an ever-widening appeal to the imagination, exists the proof that,
inherent in it, however deeply veiled, is a vibrant indestructible vital
principle. That vital principle became implanted in the Masonic system
same three centuries ago, but those wise, farseeing, unknown Founders
who, as we have endeavoured to show (see Paper "Freemasonry; How, Whence
& Whither?"), conceived and inspired the formation of the Order as a
means of ensuring the perpetuation of the ancient Secret Doctrine
through a period of darkness and disruption, and until such time as that
Doctrine and the Mysteries that once taught it, can again be revived in
a larger way .  During the past two centuries the Craft has been
gradually developing from small and crude beginnings into its present
vast and highly elaborated organisation.  Its future development and the
value of the Order as a moral force in society will depend upon the view
that the members take of their system; if they fail to interpret its
veiled purport, to enter into the understanding of its underlying
philosophy, and to translate its symbolism into what is signified
thereby, they will but secularise what was designed as a means of
spiritual instruction and grace. Freemasonry is closely linked with the
message of Aquaria, and with the incoming of the new cycle we may
confidently look forward to the restoration, in a form adapted to modern
conditions, of the ancient Wisdom-teaching and the practice of those
Mysteries of which Freemasonry is the direct and representative
descendant. Indeed the place and office of Freemasonry cannot be
adequately appreciated without acquaintance with the Mysteries of
antiquity, for in the words of the poet:-

"Save by the old road none attain the new, And from the Ancient Hills
alone we catch the view."