Masonic Initiation

In­tro­duc­tion

Ma­son­ry and Re­li­gion

This book is meant to be a se­quel to, and an am­pli­fi­ca­tion of my pre­vi­ous vol­ume, The Mean­ing of Ma­son­ry, first pub­lished in 1922. That work is a col­lec­tion of pa­pers of­fered with the hope that it might in­ter­est some mem­bers of the Craft in the deep­er and philo­soph­ic as­pect of Freema­son­ry. It was quick­ly met with a sur­pris­ing­ly warm wel­come from all parts of the world. My per­son­al plea­sure at its re­cep­tion is now eclipsed by a greater grat­i­fi­ca­tion and thank­ful­ness. It is now a demon­strat­ed fact that the present grow­ing and rapid in­crease in the num­ber of the Fra­ter­ni­ty is be­ing ac­com­pa­nied by a cor­re­spond­ing­ly wide de­sire to re­al­ize the sig­nif­i­cance and true pur­pose of the Ma­son­ic sys­tem. The Ma­son­ic Or­der seems to be grad­u­al­ly re­gen­er­at­ing it­self, and, as I have else­where in­di­cat­ed, such a re­gen­er­a­tion must be made not on­ly for the moral ben­e­fit and en­light­en­ment of in­di­vid­u­als and lodges, but ul­ti­mate­ly it must re­act fa­vor­ably up­on the frame­work in which it ex­ists —that is, the whole of so­ci­ety.

In these cir­cum­stances it be­comes pos­si­ble to speak more ful­ly and open­ly on a sub­ject which is en­gag­ing the earnest in­ter­est of large num­bers of brethren. So, I of­fer these fur­ther pa­pers, pre­sent­ing the same theme, but in a more com­plete and de­tailed form than pre­vi­ous­ly.

By the Ma­son­ic Ini­ti­a­tion I mean, of course, not mere­ly the act and rite of re­cep­tion in­to the Or­der, but in Spec­u­la­tive Freema­son­ry with­in the lim­its of the Craft and Arch De­grees re­gard­ed as a sys­tem. Freema­son­ry is a spe­cial­ized method of in­tel­lec­tu­al guid­ance and spir­i­tu­al in­struc­tion. It is a method which to its will­ing and at­ten­tive devo­tees of­fers at once an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of life, a rule of liv­ing, a means of grace, and even in­tro­duc­tion to life and light of a mys­ti­cal or­der. Ma­son­ry be­ing es­sen­tial­ly and ex­press­ly a quest af­ter Uni­ver­sal Light. The present pa­pers are schemat­i­cal­ly ar­ranged in cor­re­spon­dence with the stages of that quest. The pa­pers deal first with the tran­si­tion from dark­ness to light; next with the path­way it­self and the light to be found there­on; and, last­ly, with light in its full­ness of at­tain­ment as the re­sult of faith­ful­ly pur­su­ing that path to the end. In a fi­nal pa­per I have re-sur­veyed the Or­der's past and in­di­cat­ed its present ten­den­cies and fu­ture pos­si­bil­i­ties.

In their zeal to ap­pre­ci­ate and make the best of their con­nec­tion with the Or­der, some mem­bers have trou­ble in defin­ing and, even, as­sign­ing Freema­son­ry to its prop­er place. Is it a Re­li­gion, a Phi­los­o­phy, a sys­tem of morals, or what? In view of the deep­en­ing in­ter­est in the sub­ject, it may be well at the be­gin­ning to clear up this point. Ma­son­ry is not a Re­li­gion, though it con­tains marked re­li­gious el­e­ments and many re­li­gious ref­er­ences. A broth­er may le­git­i­mate­ly say, if he wish­es, — and many do say — Ma­son­ry is my re­li­gion, but he is not jus­ti­fied in clas­si­fy­ing and hold­ing it out to oth­er peo­ple as a Re­li­gion. Ref­er­ence to the Con­sti­tu­tions makes it quite clear that the sys­tem is one meant to ex­ist out­side and in­de­pen­dent­ly of Re­li­gion. All that the Or­der re­quires of its mem­bers is a be­lief in De­ity and per­son­al con­for­ma­tion to the Moral Law. Ev­ery broth­er is free to fol­low what­ev­er re­li­gion and mode of wor­ship he pleas­es.

Nei­ther is Ma­son­ry a sin­gu­lar Phi­los­o­phy; al­beit be­hind it lies a com­plex philo­soph­i­cal back­ground not ap­pear­ing on its sur­face, rit­u­als and doc­trine, but left for dis­cov­ery to the re­search and ef­fort of the brethren. That philo­soph­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence is a Gno­sis or Wis­dom-teach­ing as old as the world, one which has been shared alike by the Egyp­tian, Chaldean, and Or­phic Ini­ti­a­tion sys­tems, as well as the Pythagore­an and Pla­ton­ist schools and all the Mys­tery Tem­ples of both the past and the present, Chris­tian or oth­er­wise. The present re­nais­sance in the Ma­son­ic Or­der is cal­cu­lat­ed to cause a marked, if grad­u­al, re­vival of in­ter­est in that phi­los­o­phy. The prob­a­ble even­tu­al re­sult will be that there will come about a gen­er­al restora­tion of the Mys­ter­ies, in­hib­it­ed dur­ing the last six­teen cen­turies. But of this more will be said in the fi­nal sec­tion of this book.

The of­fi­cial de­scrip­tion of Ma­son­ry is that it is a Sys­tem of Moral­i­ty. This is true, but in two sens­es, one on­ly of which is usu­al­ly thought of. The term is usu­al­ly in­ter­pret­ed as mean­ing a sys­tem of morals. But men need not en­ter a se­cre­tive or­der to learn morals and study ethics; nor is an elab­o­rate­ly sym­bol­ic cer­e­mo­ni­al or­ga­ni­za­tion need­ed to teach them. El­e­men­tary morals can be, and are, learned in the out­side world; and must be learned there if one is to be mere­ly a de­cent mem­ber of so­ci­ety. The pos­ses­sion of strict morals, as ev­ery Ma­son knows, is a pre­lim­i­nary qual­i­fi­ca­tion for en­ter­ing the Or­der; a man does not en­ter it to ac­quire them af­ter he has en­tered. It is true he finds the Or­der in­sis­tent on obe­di­ence to the Moral Law and em­pha­siz­ing clos­er cul­ti­va­tion of cer­tain eth­i­cal virtues, as is es­sen­tial to those who pro­pose to en­ter up­on a course of spir­i­tu­al sci­ence; and this is the pri­ma­ry, more ob­vi­ous sense in which the term sys­tem of moral­i­ty is used.

But the word moral­i­ty, in its orig­i­nal, and al­so in its Ma­son­ic con­no­ta­tion, has a fur­ther mean­ing; one car­ry­ing the same sense as it does when we speak of a moral­i­ty-play. A moral­i­ty is a lit­er­ary or dra­mat­ic way of ex­press­ing spir­i­tu­al truth, putting it for­ward al­le­gor­i­cal­ly and in ac­cor­dance with cer­tain well-set­tled prin­ci­ples and meth­ods (mores); it is the equiv­a­lent of a us­age or use, as ec­cle­si­as­tics speak of the Sarum use or litur­gy. In the same sense Plutarch's Moralia is large­ly a se­ries of es­says up­on the tra­di­tions of the an­cient re­li­gious Mys­tery-schools.

A sys­tem of moral­i­ty, there­fore, means sec­on­dar­i­ly a sys­tem­atized and dra­ma­tized method of moral dis­ci­pline and philo­soph­ic in­struc­tion, based on an­cient us­age and long-es­tab­lished prac­tice. The method in ques­tion is that of Ini­ti­a­tion; the us­age and prac­tice is that of al­le­go­ry and sym­bol. This us­age and prac­tice are the Freema­son's du­ty, if he wish­es to un­der­stand his Or­der. He must la­bor to in­ter­pret and put the teach­ings to per­son­al ap­pli­ca­tion. If he fails to do so, he re­mains (and the sys­tem de­lib­er­ate­ly in­tends that he should re­main) in the dark about the Or­der's re­al mean­ing and se­crets, al­though for­mal­ly a mem­ber of it. The Or­der, the moral­i­ty-sys­tem, mere­ly guar­an­tees its own pos­ses­sion of Truth; it does not un­der­take to im­part it ex­cept to those who la­bor for it. For Truth and its re­al ar­cana can nev­er be com­mu­ni­cat­ed di­rect­ly. It is on­ly prop­er­ly un­der­stood through al­le­go­ry and sym­bols, myth and sacra­ment. The bur­den of trans­lat­ing these must ev­er rest with the re­cip­i­ent as a part of his life­work. He must make the truth his own or he can nev­er know it to be truth. He must do the work be­fore he can know the doc­trine. I know not how it is (said St. Bernard of Clair­vaux of al­le­go­ry and sym­bol) but the more that spir­i­tu­al re­al­i­ties are clothed with ob­scur­ing veils, the more they de­light and at­tract; and noth­ing so much height­ens long­ing for them as such ten­der re­fusal.

Ma­son­ry, as a sys­tem of moral­i­ty, is thus de­fined as nei­ther a Re­li­gion nor a Phi­los­o­phy, but at once a Sci­ence and an Art, a The­o­ry and a Prac­tice; and this was al­ways the way in which the Schools of the An­cient Wis­dom and Mys­ter­ies were un­der­stood. They first ex­hib­it­ed to the in­tend­ing dis­ci­ple a pic­ture of the Life-process; they taught him the sto­ry of the soul's gen­e­sis and de­scent in­to this world. They showed him its present im­per­fect, re­strict­ed state and its un­for­tu­nate po­si­tion. They in­di­cat­ed that there was a sci­en­tif­ic method by which it might be per­fect­ed and re­gain its orig­i­nal con­di­tion. This was the Sci­ence-half of their sys­tems. It was the pro­gram or the­o­ry placed be­fore its dis­ci­ples. This was done so that they might have a thor­ough in­tel­lec­tu­al grasp of the pur­pose of the Mys­ter­ies and what ad­mis­sion to them in­volved. Then fol­lowed the oth­er half; the prac­ti­cal work to be done by the dis­ci­ple up­on him­self. In pu­ri­fy­ing him­self; con­trol­ling his sense-na­ture; cor­rect­ing nat­u­ral undis­ci­plined ten­den­cies; mas­ter­ing his thought, his men­tal pro­cess­es and will, by a rig­or­ous rule of life and art of liv­ing he be­gan to see the deep­er goals and his self-im­prove­ment. When he showed pro­fi­cien­cy in both the the­o­ry and the prac­tice, and could with­stand cer­tain tests, then (but not be­fore) he was al­lowed the priv­i­lege of Ini­ti­a­tion, a se­cret process, con­ferred by al­ready ini­ti­at­ed Mas­ters or ex­perts, the de­tails of which were nev­er dis­closed out­side the process it­self.

Such, in a few words, was the age-old sci­ence of the Mys­ter­ies, whether in Egypt, Greece or else­where, and it is that sci­ence which, in very com­pressed, di­lut­ed form, is per­pet­u­at­ed and re­pro­duced in mod­ern Freema­son­ry. To em­pha­size and demon­strate this fact, both the present and my for­mer vol­ume are de­vot­ed. Their pur­pose be­ing cou­pled with a hope that, when the true in­ten­tion of the Or­der is per­ceived, the Craft may be­gin to ful­fill its orig­i­nal de­sign and be­come an in­stru­ment of true ini­ti­at­ing adept­ness in­stead of, as hith­er­to, a mere­ly so­cial and char­i­ta­ble in­sti­tu­tion. In­deed, the place and of­fice of Ma­son­ry can­not be ad­e­quate­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed with­out ac­quain­tance with the Mys­ter­ies Schools and Freema­son­ry of an­tiq­ui­ty. As a po­et (Pat­more) wrote per­fect­ly,

Save by the Old Road none at­tain the new,

And from the An­cient Hills alone we catch the view!

Ma­son­ry hav­ing the above pur­pose, whilst not a re­li­gion, is con­sis­tent with and adapt­able to any and ev­ery re­li­gion. But it can go fur­ther. For an Or­der of Ini­ti­a­tion (like the monas­tic Or­ders with­in the old­er Church­es) is in­tend­ed to pro­vide a high­er stan­dard of in­struc­tion, a larg­er trans­fer of truth and wis­dom, than the el­e­men­tary ones of­fered by pub­lic pop­u­lar re­li­gion. At the same time, it re­quires more rig­or­ous per­son­al dis­ci­pline and im­pos­es much more ex­act­ing claims up­on the mind and will of its ad­her­ents. The pop­u­lar re­li­gious teach­ing of any peo­ple, Chris­tian or not, is as it were for the mass­es yet in­ca­pable of stronger food and un­pre­pared for rig­or­ous dis­ci­pline. It is ac­com­mo­dat­ed to the sim­ple un­der­stand­ing of the man on the street, strolling along the road of life. Ini­ti­a­tion is meant for the ex­pert, the de­ter­mined spir­i­tu­al ath­lete, ready to face the deep­er mys­ter­ies of be­ing, and res­o­lute to at­tain, as soon as prac­ti­ca­ble, the heights to which he knows his own spir­it, when awak­ened, can take him.

To­day, con­ven­tion­al re­li­gious pre­sen­ta­tion does not al­ways sat­is­fy the ra­tio­nal and spir­i­tu­al needs of the pub­lic. This fail­ure to meet the re­quire­ments of a grow­ing num­ber of the re­li­gious­ly-in­clined re­sult­ed in a de­cline of in­ter­est in pop­u­lar re­li­gions and pub­lic wor­ship. The de­sire is, and al­ways has been, for the clear philo­soph­i­cal ex­pla­na­tion of life and the Uni­verse as was pro­vid­ed in the Mys­ter­ies Schools of the dis­tant past.

Noth­ing is fur­ther from my wish or in­ten­tion in these pages than to praise Ma­son­ry at the ex­pense of any ex­ist­ing Re­li­gion or Church. Nor do I sug­gest com­pe­ti­tion be­tween in­sti­tu­tions which are not and can nev­er be com­peti­tors. I am mere­ly as­sert­ing the sim­ple ob­vi­ous facts that pop­u­lar fa­vor has turned, and will more and more turn, to that mar­ket which best sup­plies its needs, and that for many nowa­days the Church­es fail to sup­ply those needs, or form at best an in­fe­ri­or or in­ad­e­quate source of sup­ply. The ex­pand­ing hu­man in­tel­li­gence has not out­grown re­li­gious truth but pre­sen­ta­tions of it that de­liv­er less than sus­tain­ing nu­tri­ment.

It may be use­ful to re­call how the po­si­tion was viewed not long ago by an ad­vanced mind de­tached from the re­li­gion and ways of the West­ern world. A Hin­du re­li­gious Mas­ter who at­tend­ed the World's Con­gress of Re­li­gions at Chica­go as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Vedan­tist made an ob­ser­va­tion­al tour of Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope with a de­sire to un­der­stand and ap­praise their re­li­gious or­ga­ni­za­tions and meth­ods. His con­clu­sions may be sum­ma­rized thus: The West­ern ide­al is to be do­ing (to be ac­tive); the East­ern, to be suf­fer­ing (to be pas­sive). The per­fect life would be a won­der­ful har­mo­ny of the two. West­ern re­li­gious or­ga­ni­za­tions (Church­es and sects) in­volve grave dis­ad­van­tages; for they are al­ways breed­ing new evils, which are not known to the East with its ab­sence of or­ga­ni­za­tion. The per­fect con­di­tion would come from a true blend­ing of these op­po­site meth­ods. For the West­ern soul, it is well for a man to be born in a Church, but ter­ri­ble for him to die in one; for in re­li­gion there must be growth. A young man is to be cen­sured who fails to at­tend and learn from the Church of his na­tion; the el­der­ly man is equal­ly to be cen­sured if he does at­tend; he ought to have out­grown what that Church of­fers and to have at­tained a high­er or­der of re­li­gious life and un­der­stand­ing.

The same con­clu­sion was ex­pressed by an em­i­nent and ar­dent man of the cloth from our own coun­try: The work of the Church in the world is not to teach the mys­ter­ies of life, so much as to per­suade the soul to that ar­du­ous de­gree of pu­ri­ty at which De­ity Him­self be­comes her teach­er. The work of the Church ends when the knowl­edge of God be­gins. In oth­er words, Ini­ti­a­tion sci­ence (in a re­al and not mere­ly in the cer­e­mo­ni­al sense) is need­ed and com­mences to be ap­pli­ca­ble on­ly when el­e­men­tary spir­i­tu­al tu­ition has been as­sim­i­lat­ed and rich­er nour­ish­ment is called for. The same writ­er, though a zeal­ous mem­ber of the Ro­man Church, af­firms frankly and tru­ly that in any age of the world, the re­al Ini­ti­ate of the Mys­ter­ies, what­ev­er his race or na­tion­al re­li­gion, al­ways stands high­er in spir­i­tu­al wis­dom and stature than the non-ini­ti­ate of the Chris­tian or any oth­er faith.

Such tes­ti­monies as these, point to what many oth­ers will feel to be a ne­ces­si­ty — the need of some com­ple­men­tary, sup­ple­men­tal aid to pop­u­lar Re­li­gion. The gen­er­al aware­ness was that some High­er-Grade School, in the greater seclu­sion and pri­va­cy of which can be both stud­ied and prac­ticed lessons in the se­crets and mys­ter­ies of our be­ing which can­not be ex­hib­it­ed coram pop­u­lo was need­ed. Such an aid is pro­vid­ed by a Se­cret Or­der, an Ini­ti­a­tion sys­tem, and is avail­able in Freema­son­ry. It re­mains to be seen whether the Ma­son­ic Or­der, in both its own and the larg­er as­so­ci­at­ed in­ter­est of so­ci­ety, will avail it­self of the op­por­tu­ni­ty in its hands. There be­ing a ten­den­cy in that di­rec­tion in the Craft to­day, the pages of this and of my for­mer book are of­fered to en­cour­age that move­ment to the fruition of this no­ble goal for the gen­er­al good.

But let those of us who are de­sirous to cham­pi­on that ten­den­cy to­wards an ad­vanced sys­tem of spir­i­tu­al in­struc­tion, nev­er en­ter­tain a no­tion of com­pet­ing with any oth­er com­mu­ni­ty, nor per­mit our­selves a sin­gle thought of dis­par­age­ment or con­tempt to­wards ei­ther those who learn or those who teach in oth­er places. Life in­volves growth. The hy­acinth-bulb in the pot be­fore me will not re­main a bulb, whose life and stature are to be re­strict­ed to the lev­el of the pot it has been placed in. It will shoot up a foot high­er and there burst in flow­er and fra­grance, al­beit that its roots re­main in the soil. Sim­i­lar­ly, each hu­man life is as a bulb ben­e­fi­cial­ly plant­ed in some pot, in some Re­li­gion, some Church. If it tru­ly ful­fils the law and cen­tral in­stincts of its na­ture it will out­grow that pot, rise high above the pot's sur­face-lev­el, and ul­ti­mate­ly blos­som in a con­scious­ness tran­scend­ing any­thing it knew whilst in the bulb stage. That con­scious­ness will be one not of the be­gin­ner, the stu­dent, the neo­phyte in the Mys­ter­ies; it will be that of the full Ini­ti­ate.

But that per­fect­ed life will still be root­ed in the soil, and, far from de­spis­ing it, will be for­ev­er grate­ful for the pot in which its growth be­came pos­si­ble. Ma­son­ry will, there­fore, nev­er dis­par­age sim­pler or less ad­vanced forms of in­tel­lec­tu­al or spir­i­tu­al in­struc­tion. The Ma­son, above all men and in a much fuller, deep­er sense, will re­spond to the old or­di­nance Hon­or thy fa­ther and moth­er. In what­ev­er form, un­der which­so­ev­er of the many names the God-idea presents it­self to him­self or his fel­low-men, he will hon­or the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; and in what­so­ev­er soil of Moth­er-Earth, or which­so­ev­er sec­tion of Moth­er-Church, he or they have re­ceived their in­fant nur­ture, he will hon­or that Moth­er, even as he is bound al­so to hon­or his own Moth­er Lodge; see­ing in each of these the tem­po­ral re­flec­tion of still an­oth­er Moth­er, the su­per­nal par­ent de­scribed as the Moth­er of us all.

Up­on one oth­er point I must add a word. A writ­er wish­ing to help in the un­der­stand­ing of Ma­son­ry, is put to gen­uine anx­i­ety to find a way of writ­ing that he both dis­charges the com­bined du­ty of ex­tend­ing that help and of ob­serv­ing his own obli­ga­tions as to si­lence. In my The Mean­ing of Ma­son­ry I ex­plained that, in re­spect to nec­es­sary safe­guards, all due se­cre­cy should be ob­served; and the as­sur­ance is now re­peat­ed in re­spect to this present vol­ume. No non-Ma­son need look to find in these pages any of the dis­tinc­tive se­crets of the Craft. No Ma­son, I be­lieve, will trace in them any dis­loy­al word or mo­tive, or rec­og­nize in them any­thing but earnest anx­ious­ness to pro­mote the Craft's in­ter­ests to the ut­ter­most. More­over, the things I per­mit my­self to say are, I con­ceive, ex­empt from si­lence as re­gards the Craft, for they are things which just­ly and law­ful­ly be­long to it and prop­er­ly con­cern it. Since its mem­bers, near and far, in full mea­sure and in many ways have proved them­selves wor­thy of such con­fi­dence as I can show them, I feel my­self jus­ti­fied in ad­dress­ing them more in­ti­mate­ly than be­fore. As it re­gards those out­side the Craft, in­to whose hands a pub­lished book can­not be pre­vent­ed from fall­ing, what I have writ­ten con­sists of things al­ready spo­ken about at large in oth­er forms of ex­pres­sion in these days of keen search for guid­ance in hu­man life. Let me clear­ly