DORMER MASONIC STUDY CIRCLE #4

FREEMASONRY:  HOW, WHENCE & WHITHER?

FREEMASONRY made its first appearance as a Society, i.e. as a distinct organisation,
in the year 1717.  Four Lodges then existing in London combined on St. John's Day of
that year to form a Grand Lodge, "as a centre of concord and harmony", and within a
very few years there had developed from this modest foundation an intellectual and
spiritual movement of an extent that seems almost incredible.

The Grand Lodge of 1717 was certainly not the beginning of speculative Freemasonry,
but nevertheless its inauguration clearly marks a re-beginning on a new foundation. 
When Masonic students learn today that the formation of the first Grand Lodge is
accepted as the real starting-point of the history of the modern Order, they are inclined
to take it for granted that there is nothing more likely to be beyond question than the
circumstances under which Speculative Freemasonry originated. This view, however,
is fallacious.  To delve into so-called Masonic history is like trying to find one's way
through a labyrinth, or, rather, through an innumerable succession of labyrinths; for
although works on the subject are numerous, the theories propounded by some of the
authors are frequently in direct contradiction to those of others.  The reason for this is
easily explained: the origin of Speculative Freemasonry is shrouded in mystery.

We know approximately what happened in 1717.  We know what was then
fundamentally decided, but we know nothing whatever of the men who assembled on
that 24th day of June which has become so significant. Solely from the fact that the
Founders of the first Grand Lodge were corporations or Lodges and not individuals, it
is clear that something more or less in obscurity predeeded the organisation which
made its fact pubic at the date in question.

But, in the course of more than two hundred years of research this "something" has
never been properly determined.

The beginnings of Speculative Freemasonry are lost in obscurity, an obscurity that is
all the greater because the Brethren of 1717 evidently made no attempt to throw even
the faintest ray of light upon it. Quite the contrary is the case.  The author of the first
and fundamental Constitutions of 1723, Dr. James Anderson, who was also the first
Masonic historian, has indeed bequeathed us an extensive history; but what he wrote
can only be regarded as legend, dictated by the desire to make the newly created
Society appear as venerable as possible. In the Book of Constitutions of 1723 Anderson
made very few references to the events which took place in 1717 and the succeeding
years.  The only direct allusion occurs at the end of the historical portion, and is as
follows:-

"And now the Freeborn British Nations, disentangled from foreign and civil Wars, and
enjoying the good Fruits of Peace and Liberty, having of late much indulg'd their happy
Genius for Masonry of every sort, and reviv'd the drooping Lodges of London, this fair
Metropolis flourisheth, as well as other Parts, with several worthy particular Lodges, that
have a quarterly Communication and an annual grand Assemble, wherein the Forms
and Usages of the most ancient and worshipful Fraternity are wisely propagated, and
the Royal Art duly cultivated, and the Cement of Brotherhood preserv'd; so that the
whole Body resembles a well built Arch".

In the light of the foregoing it is quite in order to place on record that modern
Speculative Freemasonry had a beginning in the early years of the eighteenth century,
but this statement is only valid in the sense that in the year 1717 there originated that
which afterwards developed into, and now subsists as, the English Masonic
Constitution.  Masonry itself, however, existed long before that time, and in two distinct
forms:

(1)..EXOTERIC: In the Operative Building Guilds connected with the practical building
trade.

(2)..ESOTERIC: In a variety of secret communities consisting of mystics and occultists,
having no relation to the practical building trade, but using builder's terminology for
symbolical purposes of their own.

The advent of modern Speculative Freemasonry proclaimed to the world that henceforth
both these forms of Masonry were "cemented" in one "grand design", and their affinity
for the purpose contemplated by the now organisation was demonstrated in "a peculiar
system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols", when it became
apparent that the Art and Craft of Masonry which was Operative in an old order of things
had emerged Figurative in a new. How this transformation was effected, and under
whose direction, are two problems which still remain to be solved to the satisfaction
to of the large majority of Masonic students. There seems little doubt, however, that in
the Middle Ages there existed in this country a school of philosophical thought which
practised a form of the Ancient Mysteries suitable to those times and conditions. At the
close of the 15th century a decision appears to have been come to by some of those 
far-seeing men to put forward the old mystical tradition in a simple form and to attempt
to interest a small section of the public in it. Some of the members of this advanced 
school therefore became incorporated with surviving Lodges of the Guild and Fellowship
of Operative Masonry, from whom we probably derive our First and Second Degrees,
with their Operative symbols and moral instruction; thereby combining and preserving 
a form of the ancient moral dramas, of which our system is a mystical descendant and
legitimate exponent. It is admitted that this suggestion is incapable of rigorous proof,
and will not, perhaps, commend itself to the academic mind, but notwithstanding its
rejection on these grounds, we find, about the year 1600 and onwards, the first small
signs of a movement that has eventuated in the vast modern Masonic Craft.

The "Mary's Chapel" Lodge in Edinburgh preserves as its most valued treasure the
oldest existing masonic minute book, the entries in which go back to the year 1598. As
early as the "aucht day of Janij the zeir of 'God 1600 yeirs", the registration of the first
non-operative - John Boswell, Laird of Auchinlook - took place. Operative Lodges were
at that time becoming obsolete and defunct, and by 1620 we find that in London
Operative Masonry had become entirely superseded by Speculative, the members of
the former no longer working in Guilds but striving to keep alive their old form of
fellowship. In the year 1641 Sir Robert Moray, Quartermaster-General of the Scottish
Army, was initiated in Newcastle, i.e, on English soil, by the Edinburgh Lodge, at a
meeting convened specially for his reception almost on the field of battle.  This
distinguished soldier and philosopher was a Founder and the first President of the Royal
Society. Five years later one of the greatest scholars of the seventeenth century, the
Rosicrucian philosopher Elias Ashmole (founder of the Ashmolean museum at Oxford)
was "made a Freemason" at Warrington, on the 16th October, 1646. In 1665 Randle
Holm (to whom we are indebted for a copy of the "Antient Charges", the so-called
Harleian Manuscript), described himself as a Freemason. Accretions to the ranks of the
Craft proceeded to be made, but were at first few and gradual, owing to disturbed
political conditions. In 1717 four Old London Lodges were prompted to combine in
order to constitute a new nucleus. From them the first Grand Lodge was formed and
thus modern Speculative Freemasonry was born, at an inn, The Apple Tree Tavern, in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, In 1721 Dr. Anderson was entrusted by Grand Lodge with the task
of drawing up the Constitutions of the new community, and these were published in
1723 when the Society announced its existence to the popular world.

The purpose of this study so far has been to formulate briefly, for the benefit, for the
benefit of students, certain facts that illustrate that both historical research and other
considerations point to the conclusion that we owe the inception of Speculative
Freemasonry to group of Initiates who devised and projected the general design in the
16th and 17th centuries to keep alive the universal tradition of the Divine Mysteries at
the critical period when the modern mechanical and industrial age was about to set in.
In the words of a leading Masonic authority (W.Bro.A.E.Waite), they "made an
experiment upon the mind of the age" by restoring to the modern world the traditional
mystic wisdom and science formerly taught in the Mysteries, but which during the sway
of the Roman Empire, had been withdrawn from the knowledge of the public, although
it had been perpetuated in secret. It was they who inspired the movement which has
now grown into our vast Masonic system; they grafted the elementary principles of the
secret science upon the organisations of the then decaying Building Guilds and left it
heavily veiled and crypticised, with the sure knowledge that the seed planted therein
would came to fruition in due season. All great movements towards human betterment
- and we must certainly number Freemasonry among them - will be found to have come
to birth in circumstances of obscurity, and to have been Founded by wise men who are
usually unknown as historical personalities.  Such movements also pass through an
evolutionary progress, from a rudimentary, to an ultimately advanced condition, the
extent of the advance being in proportion to the force and vitality of the truth looked up
in them which serves as their motive power.  Of this nature has been the evolutional
history of the Craft hitherto, but its evolution is still far from complete. The dynamic
energies implanted in the Craft by its Founders  have now expanded into a vast
framework. This process of expansion has been essential, because before the true spirit
and inward content of Freemasonry could be appreciated upon a scale sufficiently wide
to constitute the Order a real spiritual power in the social body, it has been necessary
to build up a vigorous physical organisation as a vehicle in which that spirit may
eventually manifest. The growth of an institution is a slow growth, proceeding from
material apparently unpromising, and involving continual selection, before it becomes
finally forged into an efficient instrument. So with the Masonic Order; as a physical
vehicle, a material organisation, it is as complete, as elaborated and as efficiently
controlled, as it can ever be expected to be. It now stands waiting illumination, and that
illumination must come from within itself, even as the Divine Presence is represented
as manifesting within the symbolic Temple of Solomon.  The Order awaits the liberation
and realisation of its own inner consciousness, hitherto dormant, and this fact is amply
demonstrated in that no sooner is the deeper and true nature of the Masonic design
revealed to the Brethren than they leap to the recognition of it and desire to realise it;
and, for such, there can be no going back to the old ways and old outlooks.  In this
manner, then, will the Craft throughout the world become gradually regenerated in its
understanding, so fulfilling the destiny planned for it by those who inspired its formation
three centuries ago.

The coming change must, and will, disclose that the Masonic creed is essentially
spiritual, and that all its articles relate to interior conditions, principle and processes. 
It will be found to be based upon experimental knowledge, not on authority, and its
central figures are to be regarded in the light of attributes, qualities and sacraments
(mysteries), not persons, nor events, however great or remarkable.  For persons and
events belong to time and to the phenomenal, while principles and processes are
eternal and noumenal. Freemasons, therefore, are called upon to reflect that history and
individual entities must ever be regarded as constituting the accidental, and not the
essential element in a system which aims at repairing the errors of the past fifteen
centuries, by reconstructing the Mysteries on a scientific and intelligent basis. Further,
one important reparation must, and will, be made as the direct result of enlightenment.
Today by a tacit and quite unwarranted convention members of the Craft avoid mention
in Lodge of the Christian Master, and confine scriptural readings and references almost 
exclusively to the Old Testament, the motive being to observe the injunction as to 
refraining from religious discussion and to prevent offence on the part of Brethren who
may not be of the Christian faith. This motive is an entirely misguided one and is, of
course, negated by the fact that the "Greater Light" upon which every Candidate is
obligated, and to which his earnest attention is recommended from the moment of his
admission to the Order, is not only the Old Testament, but the Volume of the Sacred
Law in its entirety. Freemasons will come to recognise that the New Testament is as
essential as the Old, not merely on account of its moral teaching, but in virtue of its 
constituting the record of the Mysteries in their supreme form and historic culmination.
It will be perceived that the Gospels, like the Masonic Degrees, are a record of
preparation and illumination, leading up to the ordeal of death, followed by a raising 
from the dead and the attainment of Mastership, and they exhibit the process of
initiation carried to the highest conceivable degree of attainment. Thus the Craft will
learn that the Grand Master and Exemplar of Freemasonry, Hiram Abiff, is but a figure
of the Great Master, and Saviour of the world, the divine Architect by whom all things
were made, and without Whom is nothing that hath been made. Neither the Ancient
Mysteries, nor Modern Freemasonry, their descendant, can be rightly viewed without
reference to their relation to the Christian evangel, into which the pro-Christian schools
became assumed. Hence we find that St. Augustine affirms (Retractationer, 1, 13, 3),
"the identical thing that we now call the Christian religion existed among the ancients,
and has not been lacking from the beginnings of the human race." A study of Patristic
literature makes it quite clear that the primitive method of the Christian Church was not
the one which now obtains, under which the religious offices and teaching are
administered to the whole public alike and in a manner implying a common level of
doctrine for all and uniform power of comprehension by every member of the
congregation.  It was, on the contrary, a graduated method of instruction and identical
with the Masonic system of Degrees conferred by reason of advancing merit and ability. 
Admission to the early Church was by three ceremonial degrees exactly corresponding
with those of Freemasonry, as the following quotation from one of the most instructive
of the early Christian treatises proves conclusively:

"The most holy initiation of the Mystic Rites has as its first Godly purpose the holy
cleansing of the initiated; and as second, the enlightening instruction of the purified; and
finally and as the completion of the former, the perfecting of those instructed in the
science of their appropriate instructions".
(Dionysius: On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy).

Originally, therefore, membership of the Christian Church involved a sequence of three
initiatory rites, and the names give to those who had qualified in those Rites, together
with their modern equivalents in the Craft today, are respectively:-

FIRST DEGREE:        CATECHUMIENS.      ENTERED APPRENTICES.

SECOND DEGREE:             LEITURGOI.   FELLOWCRAFTS.

THIRD DEGREE:        PRESBYTERS.        MASTER MASONS.

Their first degree signified re-birth and purification of the heart; the second was
concerned with the illumination of the intelligence; and the third related to a total death
unto sin (self-centred individuality) and a new birth unto righteousness, in which the
Candidate died with Christ on the Cross, as in our modern Order he is made to imitate
the death of Hiram, and was raised to that higher order of life (organic integration -
resurrection in Christ, the Universal Manhood) which is Mastership. When Christianity
became a state-religion and the Church a world-power, the materialisation of its doctrine
proceeded apace and has only increased with the centuries. For this reason the science
of regeneration has long been, and still is, outside the scope of orthodox religion.  But
despite inhibition on the part of official orthodoxy the wisdom and the traditional
methods of the Mysteries have never been without living witnesses in the world,
and since their suppression in the sixth century the tradition and teaching have been
continued in secret and under various concealments; and to this continuation, our
present Masonic system is due. Like the light of a Master Mason which never becomes
wholly extinguished, so in the world's darkest days the light of the Mysteries never goes
out entirely, and, if, in comparison with other witnesses, Freemasonry is shown to be
but a glimmering ray, it is none the less a true ray from the world's central altar-flame.
Hence, the attention of the modern Craft may be directed to the words of the well
known hymn, "Lead Kindly Light", for indeed it is sufficient to lead us on amid the
encircling gloom, until the now day shall dawn; Light is granted to us in proportion to
the desire of our hearts, and have we not affirmed that, "Light is the predominant wish
of our hearts"?

The Masonic system was devised at a time of general unrest and change when spiritual
life was running extremely low and the modern intellectual, mechanical and industrial
era was about to commence. In such circumstances something had to be done in order
to preserve the universal mystical tradition, and this "something" had to be of such a
nature that it would at the same time provide an introduction to the root principles and
methods of the Secret Doctrine of Initiation for the benefit of any who could discern and
profit by them during the period of spiritual obsouration.  As we have seen, following
upon the decision come to by certain Illuminates calling themselves members of the
"Invisible Society," Speculative Freemasonry emerged in the year 1723 as a system of
morality presented in the form of Ritual. From that time to the present the process of
development has gone steadily forward, and however misunderstood and misapplied
have been the rites and ceremonies, it at last may be affirmed that the soul and
consciousness of every voluntary participant in them, stands imperishably impressed
with the memory of them. The familiar axiom, "Once a Mason always a Mason"
expresses an occult truth not realised by those who are unaware of the subjective value
and persistence of deliberated actions.  Let it therefore be clearly understood that the
incorporation of each Candidate in the "body of Freemasonry" means also an addition
to the aggregate volume of the group Masonic consciousness, and that following this
incorporation reactions and consequences ensue of a nature too abstruse to dilate upon
here. Meanwhile, tinctured and affected by this metaphysical influence from the
subjective world, the work of the Craft proceeds within this bourne of time and place;
beginning, as we have ample evidence to show, with tendencies of the natural order
and following along the line of the law of orderly development as propounded in the
dictum of St.Paul, recorded in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter 15, verse 46,
"Howbeit, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that
which is spiritual".  Operative Masonry preceded and became spiritualised into
Speculative, and the crude beginnings of the latter are now becoming sublimated into
a more subtle conception and tending towards a scientific mysticism, at once theoretic
and practical. We may, then with confidence, look forward to the gradual spiritualisation
of the Craft and to its becoming - when time and circumstances permit - the porchway
or entrance to a still more advanced expression of the Sacred Mysteries.  But, at the
same time we must never forget that the Craft will only become what its individual
members make it, and if they continue to see in it only a ceremonial procedure, at such
it will remain. Let us then strive, each one of us, to realize and make our own the living
spirit and intention which lies behind the outward rites, and enter into the Mystical Quest
for that "which is lost," when we ourselves find we shall be able to communicate to our
fellow seekers, until the Craft is justified of all its Brethren and becomes - 
as it was intended to become - a great light in a dark world.

Finally, the future of the Order cannot be appraised without reference to the general
social life surrounding it; for it is not something apart and detached from that life but
an integral element of it, and between the two there is perpetual interaction and
reaction.  It follows, therefore, that in the fleeting glimpses of the revival of the Masonic
philosophy which are even now discernable as taking place within the Craft, may be
seen at once the token and the agent of the world's deliverance. For, Brethren of the
Craft, it means the supersession of a period of obsouration by one of illumination, in
which men can once more rise from the appreciation of the Form to that of the
Substance, of the Letter to that of the Spirit, and thus discern the meaning of the Divine
Word, whether written or enacted.  This recognition of the ideal will signify the
reconstruction of the religious life upon a scientific basis, and of science upon a
religious basis.  So long as Masonry continues to build upon the mere facts of
phenomena and history, she builds upon a sandbank, on which the still advancing tide
of scientific and academic criticism is ever encroaching, and which sooner or later must
be swept away with all that is founded upon it. But, when She (Masonry - intuitional
understanding) learns the secret of the HIRAMIC, that is the Esoteric interpretation, then,
and then only, does She build upon a Rock or Foundation, which shall never be
shaken.  Such is the import of the name HIRAM (As the Spirit of Understanding, the
name HIRAM or HERMES signifies both ROCK and INTERPRETER) the Foundation of
the Masonic Temple, and it is on this Hermetic Rock of inward illumination and spiritual
life, called the Mount of Regeneration, that the great Mystics of all time have ever taken
their stand. Hereon were founded the Pythagorean and Neoplatonic Schools, the
system of the Alexandrian Gnostics, and the various Lodges of semi-oriental philosophy
of Egypt and Asia Minor in the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era. And
in later days the self same illumination formulated itself by the lips of and pens of the
Initiates of the thirteenth and following centuries - the epoch of St. Bernard, of Eckhart,
Tauler, Ruysbroeck.  In the early eighteenth century Speculative Freemasonry emerged,
heavily veiled and crypticised, but proclaiming itself in the direct line of succession of
the Ancient Wisdom. It is true that in our day, even as the Old Teacher declares,
"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get
understanding" (Proverbs 4, 7), and this counsel may well be commended to the
Masonic Fraternity, which at present so little understands its own system.  But,
understanding depends upon the gift of the Supernal Light, and this gift in turn depends
upon the ardour of our desire for it. If Wisdom today is widowed, lot us not forget that
all Freemasons are actually or potentially the Widow's sons, and she will be justified of
those of her children who labour for her and thus obey the injunction, "Exalt her, and
she shall promote thee" (Proverbs 4, 8). Brethren of the Craft, "now is the time to
perform our allotted task"!

"EST IN MERCURIO QUICQUID QUOERUNT SAPIENTES" 
(All is in the understanding that the wise seek).
Hermetic Motto.


SO NOTE IT BE.