The Symbolism Of Freemasonry Part 28

"The groves were G.o.d's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them-ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll back The sound of anthems-in the darkling wood, Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication."-BRYANT.

55. Theologians have always given a spiritual application to the temple of Solomon, referring it to the mysteries of the Christian dispensation. For this, consult all the biblical commentators. But I may particularly mention, on this subject, Bunyan's "Solomon's Temple Spiritualized," and a rare work in folio, by Samuel Lee, Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, published at London in 1659, and ent.i.tled "Orbis Miraculum, or the Temple of Solomon portrayed by Scripture Light." A copy of this scarce work, which treats very learnedly of "the spiritual mysteries of the gospel veiled under the temple," I have lately been, by good fortune, enabled to add to my library.

56. Veluti pecora, quae natura finxit p.r.o.na et obedientia ventri.-SALl.u.s.t, Bell. Catil. i.

57. I Kings vi. 7.

58. In further ill.u.s.tration of the wisdom of these temple contrivances, it may be mentioned that, by marks placed upon the materials which had been thus prepared at a distance, the individual production of every craftsman was easily ascertained, and the means were provided of rewarding merit and punis.h.i.+ng indolence.

59. "Each of the pagan G.o.ds had (besides the public and open) a secret wors.h.i.+p paid unto him; to which none were admitted but those who had been selected by preparatory ceremonies, called Initiation. This secret-wors.h.i.+p was termed the Mysteries."-WARBURTON, Div. Leg. I. i. p. 189.

60. It must be remarked, however, that many of the Fellow Crafts were also stone-cutters in the mountains, chotzeb bahor, and, with their nicer implements, more accurately adjusted the stones which had been imperfectly prepared by the apprentices. This fact does not at all affect the character of the symbolism we are describing. The due preparation of the materials, the symbol of purification, was necessarily continued in all the degrees. The task of purification never ceases.

61. The cla.s.sical reader will here be reminded of that beautiful pa.s.sage of Horace, commencing with "Justum et tenacem propositi virum."-Lib. iii. od. 3.

62. "Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque turres."-HOR. lib. i. od. 4.

63. It is worth noticing that the verb natzach, from which the t.i.tle of the menatzchim (the overseers or Master Masons in the ancient temple), is derived, signifies also in Hebrew to be perfected, to be completed. The third degree is the perfection of the symbolism of the temple, and its lessons lead us to the completion of life. In like manner the Mysteries, says Christie, "were termed te?eta?, perfections, because they were supposed to induce a perfectness of life. Those who were purified by them were styled te???????, and tete?es????, that is, brought to perfection."-Observations on Ouvaroff's Essay on the Eleusinian Mysteries, p. 183.

64. Dr. Oliver, in the first or preliminary lecture of his "Historical Landmarks," very accurately describes the difference between the pure or primitive Freemasonry of the Noachites, and the spurious Freemasonry of the heathens.

65. The idea of the world, as symbolically representing G.o.d's temple, has been thus beautifully developed in a hymn by N.P. Willis, written for the dedication of a church:-

"The perfect world by Adam trod Was the first temple built by G.o.d; His fiat laid the corner stone, And heaved its pillars, one by one.

"He hung its starry roof on high- The broad, illimitable sky; He spread its pavement, green and bright, And curtained it with morning light.

"The mountains in their places stood, The sea, the sky, and 'all was good;'

And when its first pure praises rang, The 'morning stars together sang.'

"Lord, 'tis not ours to make the sea, And earth, and sky, a house for thee; But in thy sight our offering stands, A humbler temple, made with hands."

66. "The idea," says Dudley, "that the earth is a level surface, and of a square form, is so likely to have been entertained by persons of little experience and limited observation, that it may be justly supposed to have prevailed generally in the early ages of the world."-Naology, p. 7.

67. The quadrangular form of the earth is preserved in almost all the scriptural allusions that are made to it. Thus Isaiah (xi. 12) says, "The Lord shall gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth;" and we find in the Apocalypse (xx. 9) the prophetic version of "four angels standing on the four corners of the earth."

68. "The form of the lodge ought to be a double cube, as an expressive emblem of the powers of darkness and light in the creation."-OLIVER, Landmarks, i. p. 135, note 37.

69. Not that whole visible universe, in its modern signification, as including solar systems upon solar systems, rolling in illimitable s.p.a.ce, but in the more contracted view of the ancients, where the earth formed the floor, and the sky the ceiling. "To the vulgar and untaught eye," says Dudley, "the heaven or sky above the earth appears to be co-extensive with the earth, and to take the same form, enclosing a cubical s.p.a.ce, of which the earth was the base, the heaven or sky the upper surface."-Naology, 7.-And it is to this notion of the universe that the masonic symbol of the lodge refers.

70. "These rocky shrines, the formation of which Mr. Grose supposes to have been a labor equal to that of erecting the Pyramids of Egypt, are of various height, extent, and depth. They are part.i.tioned out, by the labor of the hammer and the chisel, into many separate chambers, and the roof, which in the paG.o.da of Elephanta is flat, but in that of Salsette is arched, is supported by rows of pillars of great thickness, and arranged with much regularity. The walls are crowded with gigantic figures of men and women, engaged in various actions, and portrayed in various whimsical att.i.tudes; and they are adorned with several evident symbols of the religion now prevailing in India. Above, as in a sky, once probably adorned with gold and azure, in the same manner as Mr. Savary lately observed in the ruinous remains of some ancient Egyptian temples, are seen floating the children of imagination, genii and dewtahs, in mult.i.tudes, and along the cornice, in high relief, are the figures of elephants, horses, and lions, executed with great accuracy. Two of the princ.i.p.al figures at Salsette are twenty-seven feet in height, and of proportionate magnitude; the very bust only of the triple-headed deity in the grand paG.o.da of Elephanta measures fifteen feet from the base to the top of the cap, while the face of another, if Mr. Grose, who measured it, may be credited, is above five feet in length, and of corresponding breadth."-MAURICE, Ind. Ant. vol. ii. p. 135.

71. According to Faber, the egg was a symbol of the world or megacosm, and also of the ark, or microcosm, as the lunette or crescent was a symbol of the Great Father, the egg and lunette-which was the hieroglyphic of the G.o.d Lunus, at Heliopolis-was a symbol of the world proceeding from the Great Father.-Pagan Idolatry, vol. i. b. i. ch. iv.

72. Zoroaster taught that the sun was the most perfect fire of G.o.d, the throne of his glory, and the residence of his divine presence, and he therefore instructed his disciples "to direct all their wors.h.i.+p to G.o.d first towards the sun (which they called Mithras), and next towards their sacred fires, as being the things in which G.o.d chiefly dwelt; and their ordinary way of wors.h.i.+p was to do so towards both. For when they came before these fires to wors.h.i.+p, they always approached them on the west side, that, having their faces towards them and also towards the rising sun at the same time, they might direct their wors.h.i.+p to both. And in this posture they always performed every act of their wors.h.i.+p."-PRIDEAUX. Connection. i. 216.

73. "The mysteries of Ceres (or Eleusis) are princ.i.p.ally distinguished from all others as having been the depositories of certain traditions coeval with the world."-OUVAROFF, Essay on the Mysteries of Eleusis, p. 6.

74. The dadouchus, or torch-bearer, carried a symbol of the sun.

75. "Indeed, the most ancient superst.i.tion of all nations," says Maurice, "has been the wors.h.i.+p of the sun, as the lord of heaven and the governor of the world; and in particular it prevailed in Phoenicia, Chaldaea, Egypt, and from later information we may add, Peru and Mexico, represented in a variety of ways, and concealed under a mult.i.tude of fanciful names. Through all the revolutions of time the great luminary of heaven hath exacted from the generations of men the tribute of devotion."-Indian Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 91.

76. Facciolatus thus defines the Phallus: "p.e.n.i.s ligneus, vel vitreus, vel coriaceus, quem in Bacchi festis plaustro impositum per rura et urbes magno honore circ.u.mferebant."-Lex. in voc.

77. The exhibition of these images in a colossal form, before the gates of ancient temples, was common. Lucian tells us of two colossal Phalli, each one hundred and eighty feet high, which stood in the fore court of the temple at Hierapolis. Mailer, in his "Ancient Art and its Remains," mentions, on the authority of Leake, the fact that a colossal Phallus, which once stood on the top of the tomb of the Lydian king Halyattes, is now lying near the same spot; it is not an entire Phallus, but only the head of one; it is twelve feet in diameter below and nine feet over the glands. The Phallus has even been found, so universal was this wors.h.i.+p, among the savages of America. Dr. Arthaut discovered, in the year 1790, a marble Phallic image in a cave of the island of St. Domingo.-CLAVEL, Hist. Pittoresq. des Religions, p. 9.

78. Sonnerat (Voyage aux Indes Orient, i. p. 118) observes, that the professors of this wors.h.i.+p were of the purest principles and most unblemished conduct, and it seems never to have entered into the heads of the Indian legislator and people that anything natural could be grossly obscene.-Sir William Jones remarks (Asiatic Researches, i. 254), that from the earliest periods the women of Asia, Greece, and Italy wore this symbol as a jewel, and Clavel tells us that a similar usage prevails at this day among the women in some of the villages of Brittany. Seely tells us that the Lingam, or Indian Phallus, is an emblem as frequently met with in Hindostan as the cross is in Catholic countries.-Wonders of Elora. p. 278.

79. Num. xxv. 1-3. See also Psalm cvi. 28: "They joined themselves also unto Baal-peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead." This last expression, according to Russel, has a distinct reference to the physical qualities of matter, and to the time when death, by the winter absence of the solar heat, gets, as it were, possession of the earth. Baal-peor was, he says, the sun exercising his powers of fecundity.-Connection of Sacred and Profane History

80. Is there not a seeming reference to this thought of divine hermaphrodism in the well-known pa.s.sage of Genesis? "So G.o.d created man in his own image, in the image of G.o.d created he him: male and female created he them." And so being created "male and female," they were "in the image of G.o.d."

81. The world being animated by man, says Creuzer, in his learned work on Symbolism, received from him the two s.e.xes, represented by heaven and the earth. Heaven, as the fecundating principle, was male, and the source of fire; the earth, as the fecundated, was female, and the source of humidity. All things issued from the alliance of these two principles. The vivifying powers of the heavens are concentrated in the sun, and the earth, eternally fixed in the place which it occupies, receives the emanations from the sun, through the medium of the moon, which sheds upon the earth the germs which the sun had deposited in its fertile bosom. The Lingam is at once the symbol and the mystery of this religious idea.

82. Such was the opinion of some of the ancient sun-wors.h.i.+ppers, whose adorations were always performed in the open air, because they thought no temple was s.p.a.cious enough to contain the sun; and hence the saying, "Mundus universus est templum solis"-the universe is the temple of the sun. Like our ancient brethren, they wors.h.i.+pped only on the highest hills. Another a.n.a.logy.

83. Asgard, the abode of the G.o.ds, is shaded by the ash tree, Ydrasil, where the G.o.ds a.s.semble every day to do justice. The branches of this tree extend themselves over the whole world, and reach above the heavens. It hath three roots, extremely distant from each other: one of them is among the G.o.ds; the second is among the giants, where the abyss formerly was; the third covers Niflheim, or h.e.l.l, and under this root is the fountain Vergelmer, whence flow the infernal rivers.-Edda, Fab. 8.

84. Exod. iii. 5.

85. Commentaries in loco.

86. Commentary on Exod. iii. 5.

87. Iamblichi Vita Pythag. c. 105. In another place he says, "T?e?? ??? ???p?det??, ?a? p??? ta ?e?? p??st???a?,"-We must sacrifice and enter temples with the shoes off. Ibid. c. 85.

88. "Quod etiam nunc apud plerasque Orientis nationes piaculum sit, calceato pede templorum pavimenta calca.s.se."

89. Beth Habbechirah, cap. vii.

90. Histor. Landm. vol. ii. p. 481.

91. "Non datur n.o.bis potestas adeundi templum nisi nudibus pedibus."

92. Commentaries, ut supra.

93. See a paper "on the religious ceremonies of the Hindus," by H.T. Colebrooke, Esq. in the Asiatic Researches, vol. vi. p. 357.

94. A Specimen of the Critical History of the Celtic Religion and Learning. Letter ii. -- xvii.

95. Dr. Oliver, referring to the "twelve grand points in Masonry," which formed a part of the old English lectures, says, "When the candidate was intrusted, he represented Asher, for he was then presented with the glorious fruit of masonic knowledge, as Asher was represented by fatness and royal dainties."-Hist. Landm., vol. i. lect. xi. p. 313.

96. From the Greek a?t???a, signifying a seeing with ones own eyes. The candidate, who had previously been called a mystes, or a blind man, from ??, to shut the eyes, began at this point to change his t.i.tle to that of an epopt, or an eye-witness.

97. ??? ??? ???? ??? Yehi aur va yehi aur.

98. Robert William Mackay, Progress of the Intellect, vol. i. p. 93.

99. "And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim."-Exod. xxviii. 30.-The Egyptian judges also wore breastplates, on which was represented the figure of Ra, the sun, and Thme, the G.o.ddess of Truth, representing, says Gliddon, "Ra, or the sun, in a double capacity-physical and intellectual light; and Thme, in a double capacity-justice and truth."-Ancient Egypt, p. 33.