Читать книгу The Shadow of Solomon: The Lost Secret of the Freemasons Revealed - Laurence Gardner - Страница 11

The much publicized Orange Order was founded in 1795 in the wake of the Williamite revolution and the continuing aggression between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The Order is often portrayed as being a masonic lodge in Ulster, but it is not. Indeed, the very nature of its constitution provides us with a good example as to the contrasting religious stance taken by authentic Freemasonry.

The Orange Order is pseudo-masonic in its presentation, but stipulates that its members must be Protestant Christians. There is no such requirement, nor indeed any religious stipulation in legitimate Freemasonry. Those of any religion (or none) are welcomed into the ranks, and the godhead of Creation is defined not in religious denominational terms, but as the Great Architect of the Universe. The Three Great Lights of Freemasonry (the so-called ‘furniture’, without which no lodge can be convened) include a volume of the Sacred Law. This might be the Judaeo-Christian Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Vedas or the Zend-Avesta, depending on the predominant culture of the lodge concerned. Each and all are acceptable to attendant or visiting masons since the volume is representative of an essential belief in some form of supreme authority, by whatever definition. Outside that, discussion of religious matters is not permitted within the lodge environment.

The other Great Lights of Freemasonry are the square and compasses, representing the psyche and spirit respectively. The configuration in which these physical items are displayed within an active lodge (for instance, with one, two or neither of the compass points revealed in front of the square) denotes the degree in which the prevalent meeting is being conducted. The Three Great Lights in unison denote the extent of a mason’s qualifying achievement within an overall environment of divine consciousness, while the lodge itself is perceived as a bridge between the material and spiritual worlds.

This aspect of lodge working demonstrates that there is something more to Freemasonry than is immediately apparent from its superficial image. The masonic hierarchy is always quick to assert that Freemasonry is not a religion—and indeed it is not—but something else is indicated here: divine consciousness and a recognition of different material and spiritual worlds. If not religious, then there is clearly a spiritual aspect to consider, and the concept of ‘worlds’ is somewhat kabbalistic in nature. In fact, the levels of masonic spiritual attainment between the mundane environment and the higher levels of enlightenment are represented by Jacob’s Ladder from the Genesis story of Jacob’s dream.⁹ This was depicted in Georgian times by the Rosicrucian poet and artist, William Blake (b. 1757), in the masonic tradition of a winding staircase (see plate 2). His is also probably the best-known representation of the masonic Great Architect of the Universe—the Ancient of Days with his compasses (see plate 1). The staircase, in its final interpretation, defines seven levels of consciousness, and can be assigned to each of the seven officers of a lodge (see page 148).¹⁰

While the spiritual path in modern Freemasonry is a journey of allegory and symbolism in pursuit of self-improvement, that of the Stuart era was about the acquisition of scientific knowledge with a much bigger scale of practical involvement. Hence, current masonic teachings point members to a wealth of Renaissance literature, recommending that it should be studied, although those making the suggestions have rarely perused the material themselves. Instead, they are generally in pursuit of social recognition and personal fulfilment, not scientific accomplishment.

The fact remains that any amount of Renaissance literature in the public domain might be studied without revealing the secrets that were lost to the English masonic stage in 1688. Even though all the relevant documentation was not carried to France by King James’s supporters, a good deal was burnt and destroyed as described in the Anderson Constitutions (see page 5).

Intellectuals of the era, such as Sir Christopher Wren (b. 1632) and Sir Isaac Newton (b. 1642), did their best to work with the information to hand. They knew that masonic lore was connected with Kabbalah wisdom philosophy (an ancient tradition of enlightenment based on material and spiritual realms of consciousness). They also knew that it was related to the culture of the biblical kings, and were aware of a scholarly existence before the days of the Roman Empire. They researched the technology of the ancient Babylonians, the philosophies of Pythagoras and Plato, and the mystery traditions of old Egypt, becoming thoroughly absorbed in history beyond the bounds of biblical scripture. But for all that, and despite their own considerable scientific achievements, they also knew that they lived only in the shadow of King Solomon, whom Newton called ‘the greatest philoso pher in the world’.¹¹ Newton viewed the design of Solomon’s Temple as a paradigm for the entire future of mankind and, in referring to the great masters of old, he wrote in a letter to his Royal Society colleague, Robert Boyle, ‘There are things which only they understand.’

Newton believed that the dimensions and geometry of the Jerusalem Temple floor-plan contained clues to timescales,¹² and he used these mathematics in his calculations when developing his theory of gravitation.¹³ The Temple, he said, was the perfect microcosm of existence, and his diagrammatic Description of the Temple of Solomon is held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. At the centre of the Temple, in the Sanctum Santorum (Holy of Holies) was kept the Ark of the Covenant, and Newton likened this heart of the Temple to a perpetual fire, with light radiating outwards in circles, while also being constantly attracted back to the centre. In line with this thinking, a point within a circle was indeed a symbol for Light in ancient Egypt and, in the lodge ritual of Freemasonry, there is a related conversation which takes place between the Worshipful Master and his Wardens concerning the lost secrets. The Master asks the Question: ‘How do you hope to find them?’ Answer: ‘By the centre’. Question: ‘What is a centre?’ Answer: ‘That point within a circle from which every part of its circumference is equidistant’. In due course we shall discover that a point within a circle is the most important of all masonic devices.

Although the Temple of Solomon commands primary attention in modern Freemasonry, far older masonic documents than Anderson’s Constitutions suggest that, for all his great wisdom, Solomon (c. 950 BC) was the inheritor of a much more ancient tradition. From this point, we shall travel back in time to trace the history of Freemasonry as it developed through the ages. What we know at this stage, however, is that the majority of what existed in English masonic circles prior to the 1688 Revolution disappeared from Britain’s shores with the deposition and exile of the House of Stuart. This was explained in 1723 by James Anderson, whose Constitutions formed a base for the development of Freemasonry thereafter. Indeed, it follows that the immediate answer to the question ‘What is Freemasonry?’ can be summed up by saying that it is not the same thing today as it once was.