"THE MEANING AND PURPOSE OF FREEMASONRY"

"We must, then, demonstrate that ours is a Hierarchy of inspired, divine
and deifying science, of efficacy and of consecration for those
initiated with the initiation of the revelation derived from the
hierarchical mysteries".

Dionysius Aeropagiticus, De Eccles. Hierarch, 1, 1-3,

Although Freemasonry is in its essence a ceremonial method of approach
to Truth, the meaning and purpose of its Ritual is now but little
understood by the majority of our Brethren.  The Ceremonies of the
different Degrees are too often regarded as nothing more than beautiful
and interesting survivals of an earlier age, to be carried out
efficiently, of course, for the honour of the Lodge, but as having no
great significance in themselves save as the vehicle for a few
elementary moral precepts, taught openly by every great Religion of the
World.  So many of our Brethren treat the Lodge as a mere social club,
in which they can meet their friends and enjoy themselves, rather than
as an hallowed Shrine of Wisdom in which the deeper Mysteries of Nature
and of Life are unveiled to the earnest seeker.  The, ancient wisdom,
the Gnosis, once the heart of Freemasonry, has almost departed from our
midst; and in the practice of Brotherly Love and Relief we are ap t
today to forget the Third Grand Principle upon which our Order is
founded - the study and knowledge of the Truth.  For while Freemasonry
in this Age is perhaps the only true and living Brotherhood known in the
outer world, and while its Charities are renowned, it must be confessed
that, as far as a knowledge of the inner meaning of Life is concerned,
most of our Brethren are in a lamentable state of darkness.

Now Freemasonry, although it has undoubtedly been transmitted to us
through the Operative Guilds of the Middle Ages, has a spiritual lineage
that can be traced back to the Ancient Mysteries, which once formed the
heart of every great religion of the world, including Christianity. The
goal of the Mysteries was nothing less then Deification - a startling
term to our moderm ears - whereby man was led step by step from the
ordinary life of the world until finally he became raised into conscious
union with the A uthor and Giver of Life Himself.  Plotinus, the great
Initiate of Alexandria, states, this unequivocally in hit first Ennoad:

"Therefore we must ascend again towards the Good, the desired of every
Soul. Anyone that has seen this knows what I intend when I say that it
is beautiful. Even the desire of it is to be desired as a Good.  To
attain it is for those that will take the upward path, who will set all
their forces towards it, who will divest themselves of all that we have
put on in our descent:- so, to those that approach the Holy Celebrations
of the Mysteries, there are appointed purifications and the laying aside
of the garme nts worn before, and the entry in nakedness - until,
passing, on the upward Way, all that is other than God, each in the
solitude of himself shall behold that solitary - dwelling Existance, the
Apart, the Unmingled, the Pure, That from, Which all things depend, for
Which all look and live and act and know, the Source of life and of
Intellectation, and of Being."

(Ennoad 1, 6, 7; translation, Stephen McKenna) .

The parallel to Masonic Initiation Rites which is disclosed in this
statement of Plotinas will be appreciatod by all serious students of our
Craft, while a fresh light is here thrown upon the Preparation of the
Candidate.  It is clearly indicated that the true Candidate for our
Mysteries must indeed needs be, as the word "candidus" implies; a "white
man", white within as symbolically he is white-vesturad without, so that
no inward stain or soilure may obstruct the dawn within his soul of that
Light which he professes to be the predominant wish of his heart;
whilst, if really desirous of learning the secrets and mysteries of his
own being, he must be prepared to divest himself of all past
preconceptions and thought-habits and, with childlike meekness and
docility, surrender his mind to the reception of some perhaps novel and
unexpected truths which Initiation promises to impart and which will
more and more unfold and justify themselves within those, and those
only, who are, and continue to keep themselves, properly prepa red for
them.  "Know thyself!" was the in junction inscribed over the portals of
ancient temples of Initiation, for with that knowledge was promised the
knowledge of all secrets and all mysterips.  And Freemasonry was
designed to teach self-knowledge.  But selfknowledge involves a
knowledge much deeper, vaster and more difficult than is popularly
conceived.  It is not to be acquired by the formal passage through three
or four degrees in as many months; it is a knowledge impossible of full
achievement until knowledge of every other kind has been lai d aside and
a difficult path of life long and strenuously pursued that alone fits
and leads its followers to its attainnent.  So high, so ideal an
attainment, it may be urged, is beyond our reach; we are but ordirary
men of the world sufficiently occupied already with our primary civic,
social and family obligations and following the obvious normal path of
natural life.  Granted.  Nevertheless to point to that attainment as
possible to us and as our destiny, to indicate that path of
self-perfecting to those who care and dare to follow it, modern
Speculative Freemasonry was instituted.  For Freemasonry means this or
it means nothing worth the serious pursuit of thoughtful men; nothing
that cannot be pursued as well outside the Craft as within it.  It
proclaims the fact that there exists a higher and more secret path of
life than that which we normally tread, and that when the outer world
and its pursuits and rewards lose their attractiveness for us and prove
insufficient to our deeper needs, as sooner or later they will, we are
compelled to turn back upon ourselves, to seek and knock at the door of
a world within; and it is upon this inner world, and the path to and
through it, that Freemasonry promises light, charts the way, and
indicates the qualifications and conditions of progress. This is the
sole aim and intention of Freemasonry. Behind its more elemantary and
obvious symbolism, its counsels to virtue and conventional morality,
there exists the framework of a scheme of initiation into that higher
path of life where alone the secrets and mysteries of our being are to
be learned; a scheme moreover that produces for the modern world the
main features of the Ancient Mysteries, for the Mysteries were based
upon the knowledge that man is a Spark of the Divine Fire, evolving from
latency to potency, and that by long-continued training and discipline
that evolution might be quickened, the Spark more swiftly famed to flame
and thus the Divine be made manifest through the waking consciousness of
man. That this ideal of the Ancient Mysteries was no empty dream is
demonstrated by the conclusions of the most advanced exponents of modern
Psychology. Twentieth centuty Psychologists - basing their inductions
upon the demonstrable facts of science - describe how the Individual
Soul, the Self in man, which is itself an individualised porti on of the
Uni versal Life, evolves from Unconsciousness to Consciousness through a
series of successive incarnations.  They lay stress upon the abnormal
psychic powers which have been scientifically studied - lucidity,
transcendental knowledge and perception, which apparently function
outside the limitations of Time and Space as we know them, - as well as
upon the marvelous faculties of Creative Genius, and show that although
in the majority of men in our present race these powers are subconscious
and outside the control of the Will, in time they will become the
inheritance of every human being.  Dr. Gustave Geley, in his valuable
work, "From the Unconscious to the Conscious," shows that the so-called
supranormal powers belong to the Self in man, and are limited in their
expression partly by the early stage of evolution reached by the
majority of mankind today, and partly by the physical brain of man,
which can express only a very small fragment of the total Consciousness.
Our progress, therefore, consists in unfolding more and more of the
latent powers of our being, andf bringing those powers down into waking
consciousness, until, in due time, we shall have realised directly the
Source from which we spring.  All this is clearly expressed in the
Symbolism of the Craft.  In the First Degree the Apprentice is concerned
with the shaping of the rough stone, which has been hewn out of the
living rock, has become an individualised portion of the Universal Life.
In the din and turmoil of the stone-yard, he has to knock off all
superfluous knobs and excrescences from his own rude nature until he is
fit for the more delicate work of the Second Degree. The Apprentice in
the workshops of the world has now become the cultured Fellow-Craftsman,
polishing and adorning, with the refinements of Philosophy, Science and
Art, the stone that he has rough-hewn in the preceeding grade, until it
is squared to fit in with other and similar stones for the building of
the great Temple of Perfected Humanity.  No longer isolated and proudly
separate, but now realising his essential unity with all that lives,
understanding the inner meanipg of Brotherhood, he will "when time and
circumstances permit" attain to the Sublime Degree of a Master Mason,
and become a Designer and a Builder of the Temple in his turn, a
conscious Worker under the Will of T.G.A.O.T.U., in the great Plan of
rebuilding the Temple of "fallen" Humanity.  And finally, as a Companion
of the Holy Royal Arch he will find within his own heart the blazing
glory of the Divine Life, and will be caught up into ineffable and
conscious Union with the Heart of God. Thus he attains to the
Deification of the Ancient Mysteries, to the Exaltation of Modern
Speculative Freemasonry, to the Sovereign Consciousness of present day
Psychology, to a Love and a Power and a Knowledge that pass man's
understanding to fathom.
 

In a brief Paper like this it is hopless to attempt to deal at all
adequately with what obviously are deficiencies in our knowledge of the
system we belong to. The most one can hope to do is to offer a few hints
or clues, which those who so desire may develop for themselves in the
privacy of their own thought. For in the last resource no one can
communicate the deeper things of Freemasonry to another. Every man must
discover and learn them for himself, although a friend or brother may be
able to conduct him acertain distance on the path of understanding. We
know that even the elementary and superficial secrets of the Order must
not must not be commmunicated to unqualified persons, and the reason,
for this injunction is not because those secrets of themselves have any
special value, but because such silence is intended to be typical of
that which applies to the greater, deeper secrets, some of which, for
appropriate reasons, must not be communicated, and some of which indeed
are not communicable at all, becaus e they transcend the power of
communication.  It is well, then, to emphasise the fact that Freemasonry
is a sacramental system, possessing, like all sacraments, an outward and
visible side consisting of its ceremonial, its doctrine and its symbols
which we can see and hear, and an inward, intellectucl and spiritual
side, which is concealed behind the ceremonial, the doctrine and the
symbols, and which is available only to the Freemason who has learned to
use his spiritual imagination and who can appreciate the reality that
lies behind the veil of outward symbol.  Anyone, of course, can
understand the simpler meaning of our symbols, especially with the help
of the explanatory lectures; but he may still miss the meaning of the
scheme as a vital whole. The Ceremonies of Freemasonry are, as it were,
shadows of mighty Realities which belong to the invisible worlds of the
Soul and the Spirit; for they reflect, as far as it is possible to
reflect in physical drama, the central features of those worlds that
form man's true dwelling-place. Freemasonry is like a map of an
undiscovered country, conventional in its outlines, yet offering a sure
and certain guide to the ignorant explorer. The Masonic Initiate is thus
taught first in glyph and symbol the main outlines of the task that lies
before him; and later on, in the Greater Mysteries, he learns to enter
those invisible realms for himself, to lift the Veil of Isis, and to
behold the dazzling beauty of the Truth face to face.  That Truth is
infinite; and as the Freemason ascends the Winding Staircase of
evolution, he will realise ever new and higher meanings in the familiar
symbols, until his knowledge of the Mysteries of Freemasonry widens out
into a knowledge of the Mysteries of the Universe itself.  Thus, there
is literally no end to the Knowledge hidden in our Craft; only
T.G.A.O.T.U., Himself can know the full splendour of His Divine Pla n;
and as His Craftsmen progress in their studies, as slowly but surely
they grow in to His Likeness, He will throw open before their eyes mine
after mine, treasure-chamber after treasure-chamber, richly strewn with
the gold and gems of the many-coloured Wisdom of the True and Living God
Most High.

From time immemorial methods have existed whereby the process of the
development and exteriorisation of the subconscious powers belonging to
the Soul and the Spirit within man might be quickened; and through which
he might be enabled to contact in full waking consciousness those worlds
invisible wherein lie the keys of the problems of Life and of Death. For
the invisible worlds, which are the true home of man, are round about us
here and now, although composed of matter in a subtler and more rarified
state than can be cognised by the physical senses; and they may be
perceived and studied by those who have awakened and trained the
supranormal faculties that are dormant in every man. Such methods, which
consist in the living of a controlled and ascetic life, illuminated and
directed by the practice of certain forms of Meditation, formed part of
the discipline of the Mysteries, and were taught to candidates under
solemn pledges of secrecy. It was to preserve inviolate these genuine
secrets of Initiation that the tremendous oaths perpetuated in
Freemasonry were institued, and not just to guard a few s..s and w..s
from public curiosity. Knowledge confers power, power over the forces of
Nature, power to destroy as well as to build and to bless; and therefore
the Sacred Veil which ever covers the Portal of the Holy of Holies was
only raised when the Neophyte had satisfied the Hierophant of the
Mysteries that the power acquited would be used solely for the service
of Humanity, and not for selfish ends, and had pledged himself
irrevocably to secrecy, fidelity, and obedience to his Superiors in the
Royal Art. In all periods of the world's history, and in every part of
the globe, secret orders and societies have existed outside the limits
of the official churches for the purpose of teaching what we have
referred to as "the Mysteries": for imparting to suitable and prepared
minds certain truths of human life, certain instructions about divine
things, about human nature and human destiny, which it was undesirable
to publish to the multitude who would but profane those teachings and
apply the esoteric knowledge that was communicated to perverse and
perhaps to disastrous ends.  These Mysteries were formerly taught, we
are told, "on the highest tills and in the lowest valleys", which is
merely a figure of speech for saying, first, that they have been taught
in circumstances of the greatest seclusion and secrecy and secondly that
they have been taught in both advanced and simple forms according to the
understnnding of their disciples.  It is, of course, common knowledge
that the great secret systems of the Mysteries (referred to in our Craft
Lectures as "noble orders of architectures, i.e., of soul building)
existed in the East, in Chaldea, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Italy, amongst
the Hebrews, amongst Mahommedans and amongst Christians. All the great
teachers of Humanity - Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Moses, Aristotle,
Virgil (author of the Homeric poems), and the great Greek tragedians,
along with St. John, St. Paul and innumerable other great names - were
initiates of the Sacred Mysteries. The form of the teaching communicated
has varied considerably from age to age; it has been expressed under
different veils; but  since the ultimate truth the Mysteries aim at
teaching is always one and the same, there has always been taught, and
can only be taught, one and the same doctrine.  Behind all the official
religious system of the world, and behind all the great moral movements
and developments in the history of humanity, have stood what St. Paul
called the keepers or "stewards of the Mysteries." From that source
Christianity itself came into the would.  From them originated the great
school of Kabalism, that marvellous system of secret, oral tradition of
the Hebrews, a strong element of which has been introduced into our
Masonic system. From them, too, also issued many fraternities, such as,
for instance, the great orders of Chivalry and of the Rosicrucians, and
the school of spiritual alchemy.  Lastly, from them issued, in the
seventeenth century, modern Speculative Freemasonry. At this stage it is
advisable to stress the fact that our present Masonic system is not one
that comes to as from remote antiquity: that there is no direct
continuity between us and the Egyptians, or even those ancient Hebrews
who built, in the reign of King Solomon, a certain Temple at Jerusalem.
What is extremely ancient in Freemasonry is the spiritual doctrine
concealed within the architecture of phraseology; for this doctrine is
an elementary form of the doctrine that has been taught in all ages, no
matter in what garb it his been expressed.  The ancient Knowledge of the
invisible worlds still remains hidden as a priceless heritage in the
Masonic Craft, and is therefore available for the study of every true
and lawful Brother among us; although but few indeed today avail
themselves of the privileges of their degree; the genuine secrets of
Freemasonry have never been lost; they are locked up with in the very
ritual and symbolism itself, which has been carefully handed down
unchaged throughout the ages. It only needs the right method of
interpretation to reveal to the gaze of the Initiate the Hidden Wisdom
that was once the secret of Egypt and Greece, the knowledge and
understanding of the true mysteries of life - "Nil nisi clavis deest"
(Nothing is wanting but the key).

It is our purpose in the present Paper to give only a general survey of
the ground, and to discuss the whole matter in greater detail in a
series of later Essays.  We may, however, briefly touch upon the
threefold method of interpretation which was applied in the early Church
by Origen, himself an initiate of the Mysteries, to the Volume of the
sacred Law.  This threefold interpretation belongs to the threefold
nature of Man - Body, Soul and Spirit; it is threefold Medicine of the
Brothers of the Rosy Cross , and the whole method is one that has ever
been applied to the mystic teachings.  The grades of interpretation may
be respectively termed literal, allegorical and mystical.  Freemasonry,
it must be realised, is intended to help men in all stages of evolution,
and for this reason the symbolism of the ceremonies of all Degrees bears
the same three-fold interpretation, and the system forms a wonderfully
connected Whole, containing a vast amount of knowledge upon the inner
constitution of man and the Universe. We have first, then, the BODILY or
CORPOREAL teaching, which belongs to the Outer Court of the Temple of
Wisdom, to the Entered Apprentice of the Grand lodge of Humanity.  The
average man of the world, still engaged in the work of the First Degree,
does not need an abstruse and detailed Philosophy of life.  He requires
a few concrete principles by which to live, simple ethical precepts upon
which he can mould his life, and direct his Working Tools - his Will,
his imagination, his dawning Intellect.  Here he is taught a few simple
facts about the Nature of God, learns that He is a loving Father, Who is
seeking to evolve His children into His own Divine Likeness, and that by
living up to the highest that he knows at this early stage, he will be
fulfilling the Plan of T.G.A.O.T.U. The ideal set before him in the
Outer Court is but elementary. Fair dealing, uprightness of life, honour
and integrity must be cultivated to some extent; a purifying and a
regulation of feeling and thought are necessary, if the Apprentice is to
progress into the Holy Place; those are the subjects for instruction in
the First and Second Degrees.  In the Third Degree he learns that he
need have no fear of death, that it is but the portal into a higher and
happier life, and that by living on the square with all mankind during
his earthly days, he will ensure happiness and peace in that state which
he must enter after laying aside the physical body.  Thus, in the Outer
Court, the lessons are those of right conduct in the physical world, and
the fact of man's immortality.  To this grade of interpretation the
ordinary teaching of our Modern Craft belongs, the moral and literal
view of Freemasonry that is stressed so strongly in the eighteenth
Century Charges, still delivered to every Brother of the Craft. Many of
our Brethren think that this is all that Freemasonry contains; but in
truth such teachings belong only to the Outer Court, and there is more,
far more, within the Temple itself.

The second great layer of interpretation, intended for the cultered
Fellow-Craftsman, for him who is engaged in polishing and refining the
rough stone, is what we may term PHILOSOPHIC, which is taught in the
Holy Place of the Temple of Wisdom.  The interests of the Craftsman are
no longer centred upon selfish pleasures, the crude delights of the
outer world, but rather upon Art, Philosophy, or science; and because of
his general intellectual and moral advance in evolution, very much more
knowledge concernin g the inner worlds and the Divine Plan can
profitably be given to him. Indeed, the Craftsman has ascended to a
higher level of the Winding Staircase, and will now find that in the
Holy Place the symbols of Freemasonry can be applied to the nature of
the Universe and the constitution and development of man. The student in
this Second Degree learns that the Lodge is built upon the exact
proportions and plan of the Universe itself, and that each of the
Officers and symbols bears a definite relation to a living Reality
behind; so that in contemplating a Lodge he is, in truth, contemplating
the Universe of which it is the reflection.  He learns that
T.G.A.O.T.U., although One in essence, is yet Three in function, and
that He descends for the purposes of evolution into the Sq...e of
Matter, vivifying it and making it to glow with His Hidden Life, until
it expresses to the highest possible degree a fragment of His Divine
beauty.  The detailed method of His unfoldment, the sequence of events
in that mighty Ceremonial of the Universe, the passing from Labour to
Refreshment, and from Refreshment to Labour again, the systole and
diastole of the great Heart of the World, all is reflected with amazing
accuracy in the ritual enacted in the Masonic Lodge.  And the initiate
will find, too, that a complete picture of the constitution of man, the
microcosm, is also hilden in the Ritual, the Three Chief Officers
representing the reflection of the Holy Trinity within his hoart, the
WIIL, the WISDOM (or Intuition), the CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE, which form
the Soul of man, and are made in the image and Likeness of God.  And
behind this manifestation of the Divine Life within himself, he will
grasp the Nature of the Spirit, of which the soul is likewise the
reflection, the Divine Spark, the Son in Bosom of His Father, entirely
Unconscious as far as waking life is concerned in our present stage of
evolution and represented in our Lodges by the I.P.M., who silently
watches the progress of the Work.  He sees that the sacred Triangle
within himself also manifests through a material sq...e, the INTELLECT,
the EMOTIONS, the BODILY VITALITY, and the PHYSICAL FORM that he wears
in the outer world, symbolised by the S.D., the J.D., the I.G. and the
O.G., or T., through whom all communications within the outer world are
given and received. In the Outer Court the last lesson taught to the
Apprentice was that death is but the entrance into a higher life, and
not a thing of terror, to be feared and shunned. Now in the Holy Place
the Craftsman must learn further details about the life that awaits him
beyond the grave, in this Philosophic interpretation, the very doorway
of the Temple represants the gateway of death, and the First Deg ree is
a picture of the INTERMEDIATE WORLD into which the Soul passes after
leaving the physical body, whether in sleep or in death, in that vehicle
through which emotions and feelings are expressed it the waking
consciousnoss of the ordinary man.  Its true powers may by long training
be awakened and exteriorised, and then the Intermediate World is
perceived and known, as we perceive the physical world in which we live.
A clear and definite account of this stage is contained in the
progressive events of the Initiation Ceremony, and the Craftsman is thus
taught what lies on the other side of death.  In the Second Degree the
Craftsman will find a picture of that state which all Religions have
termed HEAVEN, that Middle Chamber into which all must pass to receive,
without scruple and wittout diffidence, their wages for the deads and
aspirations accomplished while on earth.  And then, by entering the deep
but dazzling darkness of the Third Degree, he learns to rise above the
transitory personality, the sq...e of the one incarnation; until he
blends with that permanent part of his being, the Triangle or Soul
within him, which passes from personality to personality, from life to
life, assimilating the lessons of the lower worlds, and building them
into character and faculty.  Thus the Initiate in the Holy Place is
taught the details of his life upon the other side of death, learns that
he is not the physical body, nor the emotions, nor yet the intellect;
for oven those which are his instruments can obscure the Divine light
which burns wit hin him.  But he is taught to know himself as the soul
which never dies, but lives immortal throughout the ages.  Finally, in
the Degree of the Holy Royal Arch, he learns that the Life within him is
the Life of God, that His flaming Splendour dwells within the vault in
all its loveliness, and that only by plunging into the mysteriuos and
glorious depths of his own inmost being, will he find the Reality he
seeks.
 

Thirdly, the Spiritual Teaching, which is given only in the Holy of
Holies, hidden behind the Veil that the God within man alone can pierce,
reveals, as it were, at a higher level, the glory that was but barely
hinted at in the holy Place.  It belongs only to the true
Master-Builder, to him who has united his will with the Great Will, and
who seeks to attain to conscious Union with the SUPREME. He has ascended
to a yet higher spiral of the Winging Staircase, and will begin again as
an E.A., of those True Mysteries of which Freemasonry is but the shadow.
Now he must do in fact what heretofore he has but done in symbol, and
must live out in the world the mysterious Life of the Initiate.  Before
him lie the Four Great Stages, which every Disciple must pass through on
his way to the Light - PURGATION, ILLUMINATION, PERFECTION, and
DEIFICATION; - and these are like wise symbolised by the Three Degrees
of Blue Masonry and the Holy Royal Arch.  He will now experience that
state of consciousness which has ever been termed the New Birth, will
mystically receive the Light, symbolised in the Christian Mysteries by
the Birth of the Christ in the cave of the Heart.  He must pass onwards
to Illumination, being baptised in the river of the world's sorrows with
the Holy Ghost and with Fire; and be transfigured by the Light of the
Awakened Spirit within him, till he glows with a glory that is not of
earth.  He now goes forth into the world as a leader and a teacher of
mankind, working under the personal direction of the Masters of the
Wisdom, in Whose strong hands lie the ruling and guiding of the
destinies of earth.  And eventually, after these preliminary
disciplines, the Initiate must suffer that "last and greatest trial", by
which means alone he can be admitted to a participation in the secrets
of the Sublime Degree to which he aspires.  He has to learn the great
truth embodied in the Third Degree; that he who would be raised to
perfection and regain what he has long realised has been lost to
himself, may do so only by utter self-abnegation, by a dying to all that
to the eyes and the reason of the uninitiated outer world is precious
and desirable. Hence the Third Degree is that of mystical death, of
which bodily death is taken as figurative, just as bodily birth is taken
in the First Degree as figurative of entrance upon the path of
regeneration. In all the Mystery-systems of the past will be found this
degree of mystical death as an outstanding and essential feature prior
to the final stage of perfection or regeneration. The title of admission
communicated to the candidate for the Third Degree is noteworthy, and as
the Craftsman fits himself for the teachings of this higher, spiritual
grade he clearly perceives the reason for it.  It is a Hebrew name, said
to be that of the first Artificer in metals and to mean "worldly
possessions".  Now it is obvious that the name of the first man who
worked at metal-making in the ordinary sense has no bearing upon the
subject of human regeneration.  It is obviously a veil of allegory
concealing some relevant truth.  Such it is found to be upon recognising
that Hebrew Biblical names represent not persons, but personifications
of spiritual principles, and that Biblical history is not the history of
temporal events but a record of eternally true spiritual facts.  In
order to interpret the allegory we must clearly understand from the
teaching of the Entered Apprentice Degree what "money and metals" are in
the Masonic sense, and realise that they represent the attractive power
of temporal possessions, and earthly belongings and affections of
whatever description.  We must appreciate too that from the attraction
and seductiveness of these things, and even from the desire for them, it
is essential to be absolutely free if one desires to attain that Light
and those riches of Wisdom for which the candidate professes to long.
Not that it is necessary for him to become literally and physically
dispossessed of his worldly possessions, but it is essential that he
should be so utterly detached from them th at he cares not whether he
owns any or not and is content, if need be, to be divested of them
entirely if they stand in the way of his finding "treasure in heaven;"
for so long as he clings to them or they exercise control over him, so
long will his initiation into anything better be deferred. It follows
then that it is the personal soul of the candidate himself which is the
artificer in metals" referred to by the Pass-Word, and which during the
whole of its physical existence has been engaged in trafficking with
"metals".  Desire for worldly possessions, for sensation and experience
in this outward world of good and evil, brought the soul into this
world. There it has woven around itself its present body of flesh, every
desire and thought being an "artificer" adding something to or modifying
its natural encasement. If, then, desire for physical experience and
material things brought the soul into material conditions, the
relinguishing of that desire is the first necessary step to ensure its
return to the con dition whence it first emanated.  The First and Second
Degrees of Freemasonry, therefore, imply that the candidate has
undergone lengthy discipline in the renunciation of external things and
the cultivation of desire for those that are within. But,
notwithstanding that he has passed through all the discipline of those
Degrees, he is represented at the end of them as being still not
entirely purified and to be still in "worldly possessions" in the sense
that a residue of attraction by them lingers in his heart; and it is
these subtle elements of "base metal" in him that need to be eradicated
if perfection is to be attained.  The ingrained defects and tendencies
of the soul, which are the result of all its past habits and
experiences, are not suddenly eliminated or easily subdued; self-will
and pride, for instance are very subtle in their nature, and may
continue to deceive their victim long after he has purged himself of
grosser faults, However , all must be renounced, died to, and transmuted
in the crucial process of the Third Degree.  In view of the fact that
much has been said about the Ceremony of the Third Degree in other
Papers issued by the Circle, it is not necessary to give a further
exposition here, but it is advisable to emphasise once more that the
Third Degree alone constitutes the Masonic Initiation. The First and
Second Degrees are, strictly, but preparatory stages leading up to
Initiation; they are not the initiation itself, and only prescribe the
purification of the of bodily and mental nature necessary to qualify the
candidate for the end which crowns the whole work. Only one more stage
remains, that which is typified in our symbolism by the Exaltation to
the Supreme Degree of the Holy Royal Arch, for Freemasonry, under the
English Constitution, reaches its climix and conclusion in the Ordor of
the Holy Royal Arch of J erusalam.  There exists a variety of other
degrees ramifying from the main stem of the Masonic teaching, which
either elaborate side-points of its doctrine or re-express its theme in
alternative symbolism, but these, while of greater or less merit and
interest, are beyond our present consideration. It is a fallacy to
suppose that the multiplying of degrees will result in the discovery of
important arcane secrets which one has failed to find in the rites of
the Craft and the Royal Arch. The Royal Arch is the natural conclusion
and fulfilment of the Third Degree. The latter inculcates the necessity
of mystical death and dramatises the process of such death and the
revival there-from into newness of life.  The Royal Arch carries the
process a stage farther, by showing its fulfilment in the "exaltation"
or apotheosis of him who has undergone it. The Master Mason's Degree
might be said to be represented in the terms of Christian theology by
the formula; "He suffered and was buried and rose again", whilst the
equivalent of the exaltation ceremony is, "He ascended into heaven". The
Royal Arch Degree seeks to express that new and intensified life to
which the candidate can be raisad and the exalted degree of
consciousness that comes with it. From being conscious merely as a
natural man and in the natural restricted way common to every one born
into this world, he becomes exalted (whilst still in his natural flesh)
to consciousness in a supernatural and illimitable way. As we have
endeavoured to portray in previous papers, the purpose of all initiation
is to lift human consciousness from lower to higher levels by quickening
the latent spiritual potentialities in man to their full extent through
appropriate discipline.  No higher level of attainment is possible than
that in which the human merges with the Divine consciousness and knows
as God knows. And that being the level of which the Order of the Royal
Arch treats ceremonially, it follows that Freemasonry as a sacramental
system reaches its climax and conclusion in that Order.  But, as the
Third Degree ceremony so dramatically illustrates, to attain that level
involves as its essential prerequisite the total abnegation,
renouncement and renovation of one's original nature, the surrender of
one's natural desires, tendencies and preconceptions, and the
abandonment and nullifying of one's natural self-will, by such a
habitual discipline and self-denial and gradual but vigorous opposition
to all these as will cause them gradually to atrophise and die down. In
words familiar to us all it is elsewhere declared, "Except a corn of
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it
bringeth forth much fruit".  As with a seed of wheat, so with man.  If
he persists in clinging to the present natural life he knows, if he
refuses to recognise that a higher quality of life is here and now
possible to him, or is unwilling to make the necessary effort to attain
it, he "abideth alone", gets nowhere, and only frustrates his own
spiritual evolution.  But if he is willing to "die" in the sense
indicated, if he will so re-oriontate his will and silence his natural
energies and desires as to give the Vital and Immortal Principle within
him the chance to assert itself and supersede them, then from the
disintegrated material of his old nature that germ of true life will
spring into growth in him and bear much fruit, and by the
stepping-stones of initiation will rise from his dead self to higher
things than he can otherwise experience.  Since, however, this is a
process involving a "most serious trial of fortitude and fidelity" and a
grapple with oneself from which the timorous and self-diffident may well
shrink, the Mystery-systems have always exhibited an example for the
instruction, encouragement and emulation of those prepared to make the
attempt and the necessary sacrifice. To hearten them to the task the
Initiatory Colleges have held up a prototype in the person of some great
soul who has already trodden the same path and emerged triumphant
therefrom.  It matters nothing wheither the prototype be one whose
historic actuality and identity can be demonstrated, or whether he can
be regardad only as legendary or mythical; the point being not to teach
a merely historical fact, but to enforce a spiritual principle. In Egypt
the prototype was Osiris, who was slain by his malignant brother Typhon,
but who se mangled limbs were collected in a coffer from which he
emerged reintegrated and divinised.  In Greece the prototype was
Bacchus, who was torn to pieces by the Titans. Baldur in Scandinavia and
Mithra in Graeco-Roman Europe were similar prototypes.  In Freemasonry
the prototype is Hiram Abiff, who met his death as the result of a
conspiracy by a crowd of workmen of whom there were three principal
ruffians.  In the Christian and chief of all systems, since it
comprehends all the others, the greatest of the Exemplars died at the
hands of the mob, headed also by three chief ruffians, Judas, Caiaphas
and Pilate.  If in Freemasonry the mystical death is dramatised more
realistically than the resurrection that follows upon it, that
resurrection is nevertheless shown in the "raising" of the candidate to
the rank of Master Mason and his "reunion with the companions of his
former toils", implying the reintegration and resumption of all his old
faculties and powers in a sublimated state, just as the limbs of the
risen Osiris were said to reu nite into a new whole, and as the
Christian Master withdrew his mutilated body from the tomb and reassumed
it, transmuted into one of supernatural substance and splendour.

Here we must bring to an end our brief survey of the true meaning and
purpose of Freemasonry. It will, we trust, now be evident to the student
that our Masonic teaching is purposely veiled in allegory and symbol,
and that its deeper import does not appear upon the surface of the
ritual itself.

This is partly in correspondence with human life and the world we live
in, which are themselves but allegories and symbols of another life and
the veils of another world; and partly intentional also, to ensure that
only those who have reverent and understanding minds may penetrate into
the more hidden meaning of the doctrine of the Craft. The deeper secrets
of Freemasonry, like the deeper secrets of life, are heavily veiled and
closely hidden. They exist concealed beneath a great reservation; but
those of our Brethren who know anything of them, know also that they are
in truth "many and valuable", and that they are only disclosed to
members of the Craft who act upon the hint given them in the Instruction
Lectures, "Seek and ye shall find; ask and it shall be given; knock and
it shall be opened unto you".  The search may be long and difficult, but
nevertheless it may be affirmed that to the candidate who is, in the
real sense, "properly prepared", there are doors leading from the Craft
that, when knocked, will assuredly opeon and admit him to places and to
knowledge that at present he little dreams of. Finally, it rests with
ourselves whether Freemasonry remains for us what upon its outward and
superficial side appears to be merely a series of symbolic rites, or
whether we allow those symbols to pass into our lives and become
realities therein.  Whatever formalities we may have gone through in
connection with our admission into the Order, we certainly cannot claim
to have been "regularly initiated" into the "mysteries and privileges"
of Freemasonry, so long as we are content to regard the Craft as merely
an incident of social life, and to treat its ceremonies as but rites of
an archaic and perfunctory nature.  As we have suggested in an earlier
Paper, the Craft was given out to the world from more secret sources
still, as a great experiment and means of grace. It was intended to
provide an epitome or synopsis, in dramatic form, of the spiritual
regeneration of man; and to throw out hints and suggestions that might
lead those capable of discerning its deeper purpose and symbolism into
still deeper initiations than those of a ceremonial order enacted within
the Lodge. For, in the same manner that on the external side of Masonic
organisation we may be called to occupy positions of honour and office
in the Grand Lodge, so also upon its internal side there are eminences
to which we may be called that, whilst offering us no social distinction
and no visible advancement, are yet really  the true rewards, and the
most valuable attainments of Masonic desire. To this latter goal all may
attain who truly seek to do so, and who prepare the way for themselves
by appropriating the truths lying beneath the superficial allegory and
the symbolic veils of the Craft teaching. And since there seems today a
genuine ard widespread desire on the part of many Brethren to enter into
a fuller understanding of what the Order conceals rather than reveals,
this Paper, for what it may bo worth, is offered as a contribution
towards the, advancement of Masonic knowledge. Upon us Freemasons, who
have the advantage of a regular and organised system which provides and
inculcates for us an outline of the great truths that we hav e been
considering, there rests the responsibility attaching to our privileges
and it must be our aim to endeavour to enter into the full heritace of
understanding and practising the system to which we belong.

AMEN:  SO MOTE IT BE.