"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 apt 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 Author 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 garments
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 Ritos 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 prepared for them.  "Know
thyself!" was the injunction 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 laid 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 portion of the Universal 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-callad 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 heort 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, because
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 Plan; 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, illumined 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 marvallous
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
architectural 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 within 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. 
Freemasonny, 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
tho 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 concerning 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 Degree 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 within 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 that 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 condition 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 Jerusalam.  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
dramatisas the process of such death and the revival there-from
into nowness 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 atrophor 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 whose
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 reunite 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 ceromonial 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 have 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.