Lecture 8:
THE ESSENCE
AND TASK OF FREEMASONRY FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF SPIRITUAL SCIENCE
(Second lecture)
Berlin, 9th December 1904
[See the
Notes for this Lecture]
Last time
I spoke about Freemasonry, and today I wish to add something to that.
I should like you to consider that I am in a different position with
regard to Freemasonry than to the other subjects we have spoken
about, or which we still intend to discuss, as I usually only speak
about things of which I have personal experience. In the present
instance I should stress to you that I am speaking to you as a non-mason
(Note 1)
and only from a theosophical point of view, whereas to
do full justice to the subject of what Freemasonry really is, it
should be treated by one who is himself a Freemason. He would not do
this, but this is for other reasons which it is best not to discuss.
At the same time I would request that you treat what I have to say
with reserve.
When I
said to you that only a Freemason himself could speak about what it
really represents in its innermost core, so I would beg you to take
into account that, in spite of that, there is probably no such
Freemason in existence in the whole of Europe. This may strike you as
odd, but it is so. Since the eighteenth century Freemasonry has been
in a very peculiar stage of its development, and I would ask you to
regard everything I told you about it last time as being applicable
to what it probably would have been like if it had remained as it was
in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. As this is not the case,
Freemasonry is, so to speak, only a kind of husk devoid of its true
content. It can be compared to a petrified plant which is no longer
the same as what the plant formed, but is a crust or shell made up by
something else.
The ordinary craft masonry does not come into
consideration where the things we are going to discuss are concerned,
for this craft masonry, with its three degrees of apprentice,
journeyman and master, took its start from the Charter of Cologne in
1535.
(Note 2)
Today it is not really anything more than a union for mutual stimulation
with regard to higher education and schooling, a union for the purpose of
mutual support andstimulation among its members. It is true that these
first three degrees are, as it were, only the last remaining vestiges of
the original Three Degrees of Freemasonry, and if the ceremonies were to
take place as in former times — which they do not — then
apprentice, journeyman and master would be initiated in the way I described
last time. The regulations are certainly that they should take place in
this way, but only a few people know that these regulations exist,
and still fewer know the meaning of these things. Everything I have
told you about the effect of these ceremonies on the astral plane is
something of which craft masonry has no clear
understanding.
Now both
the British and also the St. John Lodges in Germany possess these
three degrees which I have named. And they are actually all in the
same state as I have just described. But the possibility is there,
within these three degrees, through the very fact that the symbols
exist, of penetrating through them to the deeper wisdom which
underlies them. A proof of this is provided by the fact that a mason
whom you all know well by name has addressed his brother masons in
such a way that the germ of his theosophical awareness is thereby
revealed; that he was able, in a certain sense, to speak in
theosophical terms to an audience of masons. The Freemason of whom I
speak is Goethe.
(Note 3)
As
theosophists you will immediately find something very familiar when I
read to you two verses of his Freemasonry poem
(Note 4)
which he intended for his brethren of the Lodge.
Yet
call from beyond
The voices of spirits,
The voices of masters:
Omit not to practise
The powers of the good.
Crowns here are woven
In quiet eternal
Rewarding with plenty
Those who are active!
We beg you, have hope.
Goethe speaks here of the masters and he speaks of them within
the precincts of the Lodge — in spite of the fact that he knows that
those sitting around him have no inkling of the profundity of his
words — because he is also aware of the fact that through the
atmosphere which surrounds a Freemasonry Lodge, through the presence
of symbols, vibrations are set in motion which influence the astral
body and thereby bring about a certain result. That is something
which scarcely enters into the consciousness of Freemasons but upon
which those who know can still build today.
Those who are
led beyond the first three degrees to the higher degrees possess rather more
consciousness. The first of these higher degrees is the Royal Arch degree
(Note 5),
the degree of royal art. This
degree is distinguished by the fact that its ‘chapter’ or
‘union’ has a special organisation, which is filled with
deeper meaning. In their gatherings — especially in those in which a
new member is to be initiated into the secrets — never more than
twelve fellow members are allowed to be present, so that — after the
manner of occult brotherhoods — they really represent something other
than themselves, something which lives among them in a mysterious
fashion. They are not regarded just as persons, but as the
personification of particular qualities.
The first, who represents the most important in
the circle of twelve, is called Zerubbabel.
(Note 6)
He is a leader, the sun from whom radiates the light which is to
illuminate the others. He must needs be the cleverest and has to have
a certain knowledge of the essence and meaning of the secret
sciences. That is seldom the case with present fashions in the Royal
Arch degree. I am talking about an ideal situation, in fact, which
only very rarely arises when suitable people happen to be present.
(Note 7)
The next
officer is Jeshua, the high priest;
(Note 8)
the third, Haggai the
prophet. Together with Zerubbabel these three compose the Grand
Council. The first and second Principals come next, then the two
scribes, Esra and Nehemia and the Janitor or Tyler without the Door.
After that come the so-called lesser companions. Not more than twelve
people may be present at any time. These twelve represent the twelve
signs of the zodiac. The whole is a portrayal of the sun's passage
through the twelve signs of the zodiac. That reminds us of what I
have told you about the masons having taken their start in
reproducing astronomical laws in particular buildings, in churches,
cathedrals, etc.
The arrangement
of the Lodge — though this is not always the case — is a large
square hall with a vaulted ceiling,
(Note 9)
painted blue and
covered with golden stars to represent the heavens. The positions
taken up by the participants is closely prescribed by ceremony. The
novices, who are last to enter, take their places in the North, as
they are not yet able to endure warmth. In the East stands
Zerubbabel. In the West is the High Priest Jeshua, and the Prophet
Haggai. And those who take their places in the South are roped
together. Each of them has the rope wound around him three times,
uniting him with his fellows at a distance of three or four
decimeters.
(Note 10)
He who is
initiated into this Fourth Degree, the first of the higher degrees,
which in certain regions still provides an inkling of the
significance of the Temple Legend, has to pass three veils.
(Note 11)
At each passing of a veil one of the secrets is imparted to him. He is
told the secret meaning of a particular verse from the Pentateuch.
After this the secret of the Tau sign is explained, and the Holy
Word, the Master Word, is given him, which is the word by which
masons of the Fourth Degree recognise one another. And then, before
all else, it is made clear to him in his first instruction how
ancient Freemasonry is. The craft masons do not usually get to know
that, or if they do hear it, they have not the slightest
understanding of these matters. The history of Freemasonry is related
to them in the following way: The first true mason was Adam,
(Note 12)
the first man, who had an extraordinary knowledge of geometry at the time
of his expulsion from Paradise. He was recognised as the first mason
because, being the first man, he was a direct descendant of the
Light. The true, deeper origin of Freemasonry, however, pre-dates
humanity entirely. It resides in Light itself which existed before
mankind.
That is
most profound and reveals, for those who can understand it, what
theosophical wisdom has again made public through its description of
the formation of the earth through the first two Root Races and into
the third (the time of Lemuria). Whoever can apprehend this through
Freemasonry has received into himself something of tremendous
importance. But that takes place in only the rarest cases because
Freemasonry is, as it were, degenerate today. This has come about
because, since the sixteenth century, man has had little
understanding of the true meaning of Freemasonry, namely that a
temple has to be built in such a way that its proportions are a
reflection of the great cosmic proportions, that a cathedral has to
be built in such a way that its acoustics reproduce something of the
harmony of the spheres, which is the source of all acoustics in the
outer world.
A
knowledge of this original insight was gradually lost. Thus it came
about that when Desaguliers
(Note 13)
reunited Freemasonry in England
during the first half of the eighteenth century, no one had any
proper understanding of the fact that the word Freemasonry had to be
taken literally; that it really did concern the work of the
practising mason and that the mason was one who built churches and
temples and other great buildings according to cosmic laws and
incorporated into them heavenly and not earthly
proportions.
This
original insight and its reflection in Freemasonry was lost; there
was no longer any conscious appreciation of the transformation
wrought by a proper use of acoustics in a building where the
speaker's words are thrown back and are thereby changed in their
effect. Those who built the great cathedrals of medieval times were
the great Freemasons. They were aware of the importance of the fact
that what was spoken by the priest should be reflected back from the
individual walls and the whole congregation immersed in a sea of
sound, breathing and fluctuating in significant vibration which would
exercise still greater effect on the astral body than on the physical
ear. That has all been lost and it was inevitable that this should be
so in the new age. That is what I meant when I told you that what is
left of Freemasonry is only the husk of what it was in former
times.
Apart
from these three degrees there are also the higher degrees. And those
are possessed in a fairly complete form by the larger communities of
Great Britain, America, Italy, Egypt, and also by eastern Freemasonry
— especially that known as Oriental or Memphis Masonry.
(Note 14)
In Germany, where there is a branch of the Memphis-Misraim Freemasonry
with world-wide masonic connections,
(Note 15)
the higher degrees are also functioning. But in Germany, within the St. John
Freemasonry, there is so little understanding of the real significance of
the higher degrees that the St. John masons there generally look upon the
higher degrees as nonsense. The Grand Orient of Germany is obliged, for this
reason, merely to let the St. John masons in general pass properly as
masons.
In this
respect there are great differences between the masonry practised in
Germany and that of England or Great Britain. In British masonry a
kind of reconciliation has been achieved through the Articles of
Union of 1813 between craft masonry with its three degrees and those
branches of masonry which recognise the higher degrees.
(Note 16)
Thus, as an apprentice in craft masonry one is allowed to enter and also
graduate into the fourth, fifth and sixth degrees, that is, into the
higher degrees. The degrees pertaining to craft masonry are credited
to one in England; that is not the case in Germany. The German Grand
Orient of the Memphis and Misraim Order undertakes the working of the
three lowest degrees itself. The Orient Freemason must therefore have
passed the first three degrees at the outset. He must furthermore
commit himself to rising at least to the eighteenth degree. He may
not rest until he has done so. A German mason of the St. John's Order
is therefore never admitted to the higher degrees of Orient masonry
[without having attained the three lesser degrees]. The Orient
masonry consists of a graded instruction in occultism. As I said last
time, it gives a picture of the teaching given in the higher degrees,
those which succeed the Royal Arch degree: these provide a kind of
astral training which leads up to the eighteenth or twentieth
degrees. Then comes that which provides a kind of mental training, a
training which leads to a kind of life on the mental plane, and
advances to the sixtieth or seventieth degree. Lastly comes the
highest training of all, the most profound occult instruction, which
can be undertaken in the Grand Orient up to the ninety-sixth
degree.
There are
only very few in Germany who have advanced to the ninety-sixth
degree. But in spite of everything there is something in all this
which will presently prove to you how little is left in present-day
masonry of what it formerly encompassed. The most interesting point
is that those who have progressed to the ninety-sixth degree have not
always been through a masonic training, and that there is scarcely
anyone at all who has completed the whole gamut of the training.
There are indeed a few who have higher degrees. They have been
invested with the third or the thirty-third or the ninety-sixth
degree, but those who possess these distinctions have not gained them
through masonic training but through other occult institutions, and
they have allowed their knowledge to be used to bring about the
redemption of Freemasonry. If someone has attained to the
ninety-sixth degree, it has not been achieved through masonic
training. Bluntly, it is considered that in this respect Freemasonry
is indebted to the occult training of other schools.
In this
sense we have to interpret the manifesto which has been given by the
Grand Orient of the Memphis and Misraim rite
(Note 17)
as a kind of ideal
document. I will read it to you with one or two explanations. What is
given here must not be construed as though it could be put into practice
in the present day. It must be pointed out today that no Freemason
— not even one who has the ninety-sixth degree — would take
responsibility for taking another Freemason through these
prescriptions, since he himself has not undergone them.
‘Concerning the Secrets of the Higher Occult
Degrees of our Order. A Manifesto of the Grand Orient.
‘One of the secrets belonging to the highest
degree of our Order consists in providing the appropriately
conditioned Brother with the practical means of erecting the true
Temple of Solomon within Man; of restoring the ‘Lost
Word’, that is, our Order provides the initiated and selected
Brother with practical means enabling him to gain proof of pure
immortality during his present earthly life.’
That is one of the points which are of utmost
importance. The next point is one which exists in all centres of
occult training: no calling-up of spirits or spiritualistic
activities. Anyone who practises spiritualism is strictly
excluded.
‘This secret is one of the true masonic secrets
and rests solely in the possession of the higher occult degrees of
our Order. It has been handed down by word of mouth in our Order from
the ancestors of all true Freemasons, “the Wise Men of the
East”, and will only be transmitted by us in like
manner.’
That is the practice in occult societies.
‘Naturally, however, the success of this
practical instruction for the attainment of this secret again depends
entirely on the candidate himself.
‘For of what use are the best and most tested
and detailed instructions given to a candidate wishing to learn to
swim if he is not himself prepared to move hands and feet when he
comes into contact with the water? Or of what use is the most
comprehensive guidance in learning to paint, or the exposition of the
most vivid colours by way of example, if the candidate to whom
painting is being taught will not take the paintbrush into his own
hand and seek to mix the colours himself? He will never become an
artist unless he does so.
‘Those brothers, the discoverers
of this secret, guarded it as a rare,self-acquired possession and, in order not to be misjudged or
even derided by the man in the street, they concealed it by means of
symbols, as we do to this day.’
These symbols are no longer decipherable for the
Freemason of the present day. Such symbols are not arbitrarily
chosen. These are not things by means of which someone can portray
something, like a professor who says: I will illustrate this
graphically. These symbols have been taken from the objects
themselves, which have been engraved by Nature. He who recognises
them for what they are, who can really read what they contain, comes
into contact with their innermost being, he is led by them into their
inner nature. These symbols portray the thing itself and do not have
a merely symbolical meaning. Within Freemasonry there is
noone who is able to give guidance which would
enable a person to arrive at the object itself.
‘These symbols are, however, no arbitrarily
chosen pictures and they do not rest upon any chance occurrence, but
are founded on the attributes of God and of man, and must be regarded
as archetypal. But we will never take the form, the vessel, the
ritual, the symbols for their content, but will seek the spiritual
content within the form’
These words show [Gap] for the symbol itself portrays
the object.
‘and when we have found this the spiritual
content — and have absorbed it into ourselves, we shall recognise
through this spiritual content the absolute necessity of the form,
the ritual, the symbolism.
‘Our higher degrees themselves provide the
brother with certain proof of the immortality of
man.’
This they would do if they were worked.
‘That is and has been the great longing of
mankind ever since human beings who could reason existed. Mankind
needs to have this assurance of a life after death in order to be
truly happy in this present life. Therefore all the mysteries
contained in the religions and centres of hidden wisdom have occupied
themselves with this question as their highest and principal task.
The Church has naturally also occupied itself with this question of
the “Lost Word”; the “Lost Immortality”, but
it directs the candidate along the path of grace and portrays it as a
gift from above and not as something to be achieved by personal
effort. Our Order, however, places it within the power of each
individual seeker, by practical means, to unite himself consciously
and voluntarily with the World Consciousness, with the ultimate
forces of Creation.’
That
means, therefore, to provide insight into and union with that world
which otherwise is only accessible through the portal of
death.
From all
this you may draw the conclusion that what belongs to the world's
profundities was once found in Freemasonry, but is no longer there in
the empty husk which it presents today. You must ask yourselves why.
Now, the meaning of the Temple Legend, the meaning of operative
masonry, like all intuitive knowledge, had to be lost to humanity,
because the fifth cultural epoch is actually the epoch of
understanding. Intuition had for a time to lie dormant in the world
and Freemasonry is intuitive in its whole attitude and manner. I
would like to draw your attention to Vitruvius
(Note 18)
and to the true symbolical building instructions which he gave. Only those,
however, who have the right intuition for it can follow these instructions.
Today these symbolical instructions have been replaced by
intellectual, rational ones. Reason had to become the keynote of
man's development for a while, because everything which has meanwhile
come to us through great conquests of nature must be incorporated in
the whole organism of human activity.
Understand what it means: the whole of the mineral kingdom will
be included in the progress of the world during the present Round of
evolution. It will be included in such a way that man will gradually
transform the whole of nature through his own spirituality. That is
the meaning of the Molten Sea, that the whole of mineral nature will
effectively be transformed.
Man works
in industry, so as to weave Organisation [his own spirituality?] into
mineral nature. If you consider a machine ... [Gap]
In this
way man thus works the whole mineral kingdom back and forth with his
own spirit. This re-casting of Nature, this re-casting of what is
mineral, will be perfected when our present Round of evolution has
come to an end. The whole of mineral nature will then have been
changed. Man will have put his stamp on it, just as he imprints his
stamp on a quantity of metal when, for example, he fashions a watch.
Thus, when a new Round of evolution begins, the mineral kingdom can
be sucked in, absorbed.
In order completely to finish the development in
this sphere, the whole way of thinking which has gripped man since
the sixteenth century, must be carried right into the atom. Thus,
only when reasoned thinking can grasp the atom can Freemasonry again
revive. In the first stage, the outer form will be grasped. The next
step will be when man has learned to think right into the mineral
atom, when he has an understanding of how to make use of what lives
in the atom and place it in the service of the whole. It is true that
only now — and perhaps only during the last five years — human
thinking has turned to tracing natural forces as far as the
atom, and indeed, he who would understand this
precisely must follow the latest phase of the various developments in
electricity. The speech which the English Prime Minister Balfour has
made
(Note 19)
on the subject of our contemporary world outlook is
interesting in this connection, albeit only in its outward
implications. What he said there [about new electrical theory] is
something of enormous importance. He hints at the critical turning
point in the development of man's thinking. He is to a certain extent
conscious of this and mentions it in one part of his speech. Thus we
see how something is dawning in the consciousness of natural science
which plays into the future. This has been known to occultists since
1879. I emphasise this,
although I cannot prove it.
(Note 20)
The occultist knows
that this will come about: a new point of departure from the atom
into the mineral-physical world. That will be what will enter into
the world in the sixth cultural epoch, and through this Freemasonry
will also be regenerated. In Freemasonry the occultist has something
very remarkable, something unprecedented, for it has something
primeval in its foundation. It belongs to the most ancient of
traditions, which has preserved almost a hundred
degrees,in a
precisely specialised structure, in spite of the fact that it has
lost nearly all of its content, and that none of those belonging to
it in Europe are able to form an adequate conception of it. But
still: the thing is there and one will only need to fill the whole
outer husk with new content. The thing is there, waiting to be
brought to life again.
Points
from the subsequent discussion.
Rites of
Memphis, Oriental Rites and Grand Orient Rites. A conference of
occultists discussed whether the occult doctrine could be made public
or not. From that it became clear that there are two tendencies, a
left and a right tendency,
(Note 21)
one which is free-thinking and one which is conservative.
|