Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Part 24

Whatever they said, was firmer than an oath; but they avoided swearing, and esteemed it worse than perjury. They were simple in their diet and mode of living, bore torture with fort.i.tude, and despised death. They cultivated the science of medicine and were very skillful. They deemed it a good omen to dress in white robes. They had their own courts, and pa.s.sed righteous judgments. They kept the Sabbath more rigorously than the Jews.

Their chief towns were Engaddi, near the Dead Sea, and Hebron. Engaddi was about 30 miles southeast from Jerusalem, and Hebron about 20 miles south of that city. Josephus and Eusebius speak of them as an ancient sect; and they were no doubt the first among the Jews to embrace Christianity: with whose faith and doctrine their own tenets had so many points of resemblance, and were indeed in a great measure the same.

Pliny regarded them as a very ancient people.

In their devotions they turned toward the rising sun; as the Jews generally did toward the Temple. But they were no idolaters; for they observed the law of Moses with scrupulous fidelity. They held all things in common, and despised riches, their wants being supplied by the administration of Curators or Stewards. The Tetractys, composed of round dots instead of jods, was revered among them. This being a Pythagorean symbol, evidently shows their connection with the school of Pythagoras; but their peculiar tenets more resemble those of Confucius and Zoroaster; and probably were adopted while they were prisoners in Persia; which explains their turning toward the Sun in prayer.

Their demeanor was sober and chaste. They submitted to the superintendence of governors whom they appointed over themselves. The whole of their time was spent in labor, meditation, and prayer; and they were most sedulously attentive to every call of justice and humanity, and every moral duty. They believed in the unity of G.o.d. They supposed the souls of men to have fallen, by a disastrous fate, from the regions of purity and light, into the bodies which they occupy; during their continuance in which they considered them confined as in a prison.

Therefore they did not believe in the resurrection of the body; but in that of the soul only. They believed in a future state of rewards and punishments; and they disregarded the ceremonies or external forms enjoined in the law of Moses to be observed in the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d; holding that the words of that lawgiver were to be understood in a mysterious and recondite sense, and not according to their literal meaning. They offered no sacrifices, except at home; and by meditation they endeavored, as far as possible, to isolate the soul from the body, and carry it back to G.o.d.

Eusebius broadly admits "that the ancient Therapeutae were Christians; and that their ancient writings were our Gospels and Epistles."

The ESSENES were of the Eclectic Sect of Philosophers, and held PLATO in the highest esteem; they believed that true philosophy, the greatest and most salutary gift of G.o.d to mortals, was scattered, in various portions, through all the different Sects; and that it was, consequently, the duty of every wise man to gather it from the several quarters where it lay dispersed, and to employ it, thus reunited, in destroying the dominion of impiety and vice.

The great festivals of the Solstices were observed in a distinguished manner by the Essenes; as would naturally be supposed, from the fact that they reverenced the Sun, not as a G.o.d, but as a symbol of light and fire; the fountain of which, the Orientals supposed G.o.d to be. They lived in continence and abstinence, and had establishments similar to the monasteries of the early Christians.

The writings of the Essenes were full of mysticism, parables, enigmas, and allegories. They believed in the esoteric and exoteric meanings of the Scriptures; and, as we have already said, they had a warrant for that in the Scriptures themselves. They found it in the Old Testament, as the Gnostics found it in the New. The Christian writers, and even Christ himself, recognized it as a truth, that all Scripture had an inner and an outer meaning. Thus we find it said as follows, in one of the Gospels:

"Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of G.o.d; but unto men _that are without_, all these things are done in parables; that seeing, they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand.... And the disciples came and said unto him, 'Why speakest Thou the truth in parables?'--He answered and said unto them, 'Because it is given unto _you_ to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to _them_ it is not given.'"

Paul, in the 4th chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians, speaking of the simplest facts of the Old Testament, a.s.serts that they are _an allegory_. In the 3d chapter of the second letter to the Corinthians, he declares himself a minister of the New Testament, appointed by G.o.d; "Not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth." Origen and St. Gregory held that the Gospels were not to be taken in their literal sense; and Athanasius admonishes us that "Should we understand sacred writ according to the letter, we should fall into the most enormous blasphemies."

Eusebius said, "Those who preside over the Holy Scriptures, philosophize over them, and expound their literal sense by allegory."

The sources of our knowledge of the Kabalistic doctrines, are the books of Jezirah and Sohar, the former drawn up in the second century, and the latter a little later; but containing materials much older than themselves. In their most characteristic elements, they go back to the time of the exile. In them, as in the teachings of Zoroaster, everything that exists emanated from a source of infinite LIGHT. Before everything, existed THE ANCIENT OF DAYS, the KING OF LIGHT; a t.i.tle often given to the Creator in the _Zend-Avesta_ and the code of the _Sabaaens_. With the idea so expressed is connected the pantheism of India. THE KING OF LIGHT, THE ANCIENT, is ALL THAT IS. He is not only the real cause of all Existences; he is Infinite [AINSOPH]. He is HIMSELF: there is nothing in Him that We can call _Thou_.

In the Indian doctrine, not only is the Supreme Being the real cause of all, but he is the only real Existence: all the rest is illusion. In the Kabalah, as in the Persian and Gnostic doctrines, He is the Supreme Being unknown to all, the "Unknown Father." The world is his revelation, and subsists only in Him. His attributes are reproduced there, with different modifications, and in different degrees, so that the Universe is His Holy Splendor: it is but His Mantle; but it must be revered in silence. All beings have emanated from the Supreme Being: The nearer a being is to Him, the more perfect it is; the more remote in the scale, the less its purity.

A ray of Light, shot from the Deity, is the cause and principle of all that exists. It is at once Father and Mother of All, in the sublimest sense. It penetrates everything; and without it nothing can exist an instant. From this double FORCE, designated by the two parts of the word I. H. U. H. emanated the FIRST-BORN of G.o.d, the Universal FORM, in which are contained all beings; the Persian and Platonic Archetype of things, united with the Infinite by the primitive ray of Light.

This First-Born is the Creative Agent, Conservator, and animating Principle of the Universe. It is THE LIGHT OF LIGHT. It possesses the three Primitive Forces of the Divinity, LIGHT, SPIRIT, and LIFE F??, ??e??, and ???. As it has received what it gives, Light and Life, it is equally considered as the generative and conceptive Principle, the Primitive Man, ADAM KADMON. As such, it has revealed itself in ten emanations or _Sephiroth_, which are not ten different beings, nor even beings at all; but sources of life, vessels of Omnipotence, and types of Creation. They are _Sovereignty_ or _Will, Wisdom, Intelligence, Benignity, Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory, Permanency_, and _Empire_.

These are attributes of G.o.d; and this idea, that G.o.d reveals Himself by His attributes, and that the human mind cannot perceive or discern G.o.d Himself, in his works, but only his mode of manifesting Himself, is a profound Truth. We know of the Invisible only what the Visible reveals.

_Wisdom_ was called NOUS and LOGOS [and ???~? ?????], INTELLECT or the WORD. _Intelligence_, source of the oil of anointing, responds to the Holy Ghost of the Christian Faith.

_Beauty_ is represented by green and yellow. _Victory_ is YAHOVAH-TSABAOTH, the column on the right hand, the column _Jachin: Glory_ is the column _Boaz_, on the left hand. And thus our symbols appear again in the Kabalah. And again the LIGHT, the object of our labors, appears as the creative power of Deity. The circle, also, was the special symbol of the first Sephirah, Kether, or the Crown.

We do not further follow the Kabalah in its four Worlds of Spirits, _Aziluth, Briah, Yezirah_, and _Asiah_, or of _emanation, creation, formation_, and _fabrication_, one inferior to and one emerging from the other, the superior always enveloping the inferior; its doctrine that, in all that exists, there is nothing purely material; that all comes from G.o.d, and in all He proceeds by irradiation; that everything subsists by the Divine ray that penetrates creation; and all is united by the Spirit of G.o.d, which is the life of life; so that all is G.o.d; the Existences that inhabit the four worlds, inferior to each other in proportion to their distance from the Great King of Light: the contest between the good and evil Angels and Principles, to endure until the Eternal Himself comes to end it and re-establish the primitive harmony; the four distinct parts of the Soul of Man; and the migrations of impure souls, until they are sufficiently purified to share with the Spirits of Light the contemplation of the Supreme Being whose Splendor fills the Universe.

The WORD was also found in the Phnician Creed. As in all those of Asia, a WORD of G.o.d, written in starry characters, by the planetary Divinities, and communicated by the Demi-G.o.ds, as a profound mystery, to the higher cla.s.ses of the human race, to be communicated by them to mankind, created the world. The faith of the Phnicians was an emanation from that ancient wors.h.i.+p of the Stars, which in the creed of Zoroaster alone, is connected with a faith in one G.o.d. Light and Fire are the most important agents in the Phoenician faith. There is a race of children of the Light. They adored the Heaven with its Lights, deeming it the Supreme G.o.d.

Everything emanates from a Single Principle, and a Primitive Love, which is the Moving Power of All and governs all. Light, by its union with Spirit, whereof it is but the vehicle or symbol, is the Life of everything, and penetrates everything. It should therefore be respected and honored everywhere; for everywhere it governs and controls.

The Chaldaic and Jerusalem Paraphrasts endeavored to render the phrase, DEBAR-YAHOVAH ??? ????, the Word of G.o.d, a personalty, wherever they met with it. The phrase, "And G.o.d created man," is, in the Jerusalem Targum, "And the Word of IHUH created man."

So, in xxviii. Gen. 20,21, where Jacob says: "If G.o.d [???? ???? IHIH ALHIM] will be with me..." then shall IHUH be my ALHIM [Hebrew ]; UHIH IHUH Li LALHIM; and this stone shall be G.o.d's House [[Hebrew].. IHIH BITH ALHIM]: Onkelos paraphrases it, "If the word of IHUH will be my help ... then the word of IHUH shall be my G.o.d".

So, in iii. Gen. 8, for "The Voice of the Lord G.o.d" [[Hebrew], IHUH ALHIM], we have, "The Voice of the Word of IHUH."

In ix. Wisdom, 1, "O G.o.d of my Fathers and Lord of Mercy! who has made all things with thy word.. [Greek: ?? ????? s??.]"

And in xviii. Wisdom, 15, "Thine Almighty Word [Greek: ?????] leaped down from Heaven."

Philo speaks of the Word as being the same with G.o.d. So in several places he calls it "[Greek: de?te??? Te??? ?o???]," the Second Divinity; "[Greek: e???t??Te??]," the Image of G.o.d: the Divine Word that made all things: "the [Greek: ?pa????]," subst.i.tute, of G.o.d; and the like.

Thus, when John commenced to preach, had been for ages agitated, by the Priests and Philosophers of the East and West, the great questions concerning the eternity or creation of matter: immediate or intermediate creation of the Universe by the Supreme G.o.d; the origin, object, and filial extinction of evil; the relations between the intellectual and material worlds, and between G.o.d and man; and the creation, fall, redemption, and restoration to his first estate, of man.

The Jewish doctrine, differing in this from all the other Oriental creeds, and even from the Alohayistic legend with which the book of Genesis commences, attributed the creation to the immediate action of the Supreme Being. The Theosophists of the other Eastern Peoples interposed more than one intermediary between G.o.d and the world. To place between them but a single Being, to suppose for the production of the world but a single intermediary, was, in their eyes, to lower the Supreme Majesty. The interval between G.o.d, who is perfect Purity, and matter, which is base and foul, was too great for them to clear it at a single step. Even in the Occident, neither Plato nor Philo could thus impoverish the Intellectual World.

Thus, Cerinthus of Ephesus, with most of the Gnostics, Philo, the Kabalah, the Zend-Avesta, the Puranas, and all the Orient, deemed the distance and antipathy between the Supreme Being and the material world too great, to attribute to the former the Creation of the latter. Below, and emanating from, or created by, the Ancient of Days, the Central Light, the Beginning, or First Principle [[Greek: ????]], one, two, or more Principles, Existences or Intellectual Beings were imagined, to some one or more of whom [without any immediate creative act on the part of the Great Immovable, Silent Deity], the immediate creation of the material and mental universe was due.

We have already spoken of many of the speculations on this point. To some, the world was created by the LOGOS or WORD, first manifestation of, or emanation from, the Deity. To others, the beginning of creation was by the emanation of a ray of LIGHT, creating the principle of _Light_ and _Life_. The Primitive THOUGHT, creating the inferior Deities, a succession of INTELLIGENCES, the Iynges of Zoroaster, his _Amshaspands_, _Izeds_, and _Ferouers_, the _Ideas_ of Plato, the _Aions_ of the Gnostics, the _Angels_ of the Jews, the _Nous_, the _Demiourgos_, the DIVINE REASON, the _Powers_ or _Forces_ of Philo, and the Alohayim, Forces or Superior G.o.ds of the ancient legend with which Genesis begins,--to these and other intermediaries the creation was owing. No restraints were laid on the Fancy and the Imagination. The veriest Abstractions became Existences and Realities. The attributes of G.o.d, personified, became Powers, Spirits, Intelligences.

G.o.d was the _Light of Light_, _Divine Fire_, the _Abstract Intellectuality_, the _Root_ or _Germ_ of the Universe. _Simon Magus_, founder of the Gnostic faith, and many of the early Judaizing Christians, admitted that the manifestations of the Supreme Being, as FATHER, or JEHOVAH, SON or CHRIST, and HOLY SPIRIT, were only so many different _modes_ of Existence, or _Forces_ [[Greek: d??ae??]] of the same G.o.d. To others they were, as were the mult.i.tude of Subordinate Intelligences, real and distinct beings.

The Oriental imagination revelled in the creation of these Inferior Intelligences, Powers of Good and Evil, and Angels. We have spoken of those imagined by the Persians and the Kabalists. In the Talmud, every star, every country, every town, and almost every tongue has a Prince of Heaven as its Protector. JEHUEL is the guardian of fire, and MICHAEL, of water. Seven spirits a.s.sist each; those of fire being _Seraphiel_, _Gabriel_, _Nitriel_, _Tammael_, _Tchimschiel_, _Hadarniel_, and _Sarniel_. These seven are represented by the square columns of this Degree, while the columns JACHIN and BOAZ represent the angels of fire and water. But the columns are not representatives of these alone.

To Basilides, G.o.d was without name, uncreated, at first containing and concealing in Himself the Plenitude of His Perfections; and when these are by Him displayed and manifested, there result as many particular Existences, all a.n.a.logous to Him, and still and always Him. To the Essenes and the Gnostics, the East and the West both devised this faith; that the Ideas, Conceptions, or Manifestations of the Deity were so many Creations, so many Beings, all G.o.d, nothing without Him, but more than what we now understand by the word _ideas_. They emanated from and were again merged in G.o.d. They had a kind of middle existence between our modern ideas, and the intelligences or ideas, elevated to the rank of genii, of the Oriental mythology.

These personified attributes of Deity, in the theory of Basilides, were the [Greek: ???t??????] or _First-born_, [Greek: ???~?][_Nous_ or _Mind_]: from it emanates [Greek: ?????] [_Logos_, or THE WORD] from it [Greek: F????s??]: [_Phronesis, Intellect_]: from it [Greek: S?f?a]

[_Sophia, Wisdom_]: from it [Greek: ??'?a??] [_Dunamis, Power_]: and from it [Greek: ???a??s?'??] [_Dikaiosune, Righteousness_]: to which latter the Jews gave the name of [Greek: ??????] [_Eirene, Peace_, or _Calm_], the essential characteristics of Divinity, and harmonious effect of all His perfections. The whole number of successive emanations was 365, expressed by the Gnostics, in Greek letters, by the mystic word [Greek: ??????S] [_Abraxas_]; designating G.o.d as manifested, or the aggregate of his manifestations; but not the Supreme and Secret G.o.d Himself. These three hundred and sixty-five Intelligences compose altogether the Fullness or _Plenitude_ [[Greek: ?????a]] of the Divine Emanations.

With the Ophites, a sect of the Gnostics, there were seven inferior spirits [inferior to Ialdabaoth, the Demiourgos or Actual Creator]: _Michael, Suriel, Raphael, Gabriel, Thauthabaoth, Erataoth_, and _Athaniel_, the genii of the stars called the Bull, the Dog, the Lion, the Bear, the Serpent, the Eagle, and the a.s.s that formerly figured in the constellation Cancer, and symbolized respectively by those animals; as _Ialdabaoth, Iao, Adona, Elo, Ora_, and _Astapha_ were the genii of Saturn, the Moon, the Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury.

The WORD appears in all these creeds. It is the _Ormuzd_ of Zoroaster, the _Ainsoph_ of the Kabalah, the _Nous_ of Platonism and Philonism, and the _Sophia_ or _Demiourgos_ of the Gnostics.

And all these creeds, while admitting these different manifestations of the Supreme Being, held that His ident.i.ty was immutable and permanent.

That was Plato's distinction between the Being always the same [Greek: t? ??] and the perpetual flow of things incessantly changing, the Genesis.

The belief in dualism in some shape, was universal. Those who held that everything emanated from G.o.d, aspired to G.o.d, and re-entered into G.o.d, believed that, among those emanations were two adverse Principles, of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil. This prevailed in Central Asia and in Syria; while in Egypt it a.s.sumed the form of Greek speculation. In the former, a second Intellectual Principle was admitted, active in its Empire of Darkness, audacious against the Empire of Light. So the Persians and Sabeans understood it. In Egypt, this second Principle was Matter, as the word was used by the Platonic School, with its sad attributes, Vacuity, Darkness, and Death. In their theory, matter could be animated only by the low communication of a principle of divine life.

It resists the influences that would spiritualize it. That resisting Power is Satan, the rebellious Matter, Matter that does not partake of G.o.d.

To many there were two Principles; the Unknown Father, or Supreme and Eternal G.o.d, living in the centre of the Light, happy in the perfect purity of His being; the other, eternal Matter, that inert, shapeless, darksome ma.s.s, which they considered as the source of all evils, the mother and dwelling-place of Satan.

To Philo and the Platonists, there was a Soul of the world, creating visible things, and active in them, as agent of the Supreme Intelligence; realizing therein the ideas communicated to Him by that Intelligence, and which sometimes excel His conceptions, but which He executes without comprehending them.

The Apocalypse or Revelations, by whomever written, belongs to the Orient and to extreme antiquity. It reproduces what is far older than itself. It paints, with the strongest colors that the Oriental genius ever employed, the closing scenes of the great struggle of Light, and Truth, and Good, against Darkness, Error, and Evil; personified in that between the New Religion on one side, and Paganism and Judaism on the other. It is a particular application of the ancient myth of Ormuzd and his Genii against Ahriman and his Devs; and it celebrates the final triumph of Truth against the combined powers of men and demons. The ideas and imagery are borrowed from every quarter; and allusions are found in it to the doctrines of all ages. We are continually reminded of the Zend-Avesta, the Jewish Codes, Philo, and the Gnosis. The Seven Spirits surrounding the Throne of the Eternal, at the opening of the Grand Drama, and acting so important a part throughout, everywhere the first instruments of the Divine Will and Vengeance, are the Seven Amshaspands of Parsism; as the Twenty-four Ancients, offering to the Supreme Being the first supplications and the first homage, remind us of the Mysterious Chiefs of Judaism, foreshadow the Eons of Gnosticism, and reproduce the twenty-four Good Spirits created by Ormuzd and inclosed in an egg.

The Christ of the Apocalypse, First-born of Creation and of the Resurrection, is invested with the characteristics of the Ormuzd and Sosiosch of the Zend-Avesta, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah and the Carpistes [Greek: ?a?p?st??] of the Gnostics. The idea that the true Initiates and Faithful become Kings and Priests, is at once Persian, Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic. And the definition of the Supreme Being, that He is at once Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end--He that was, and is, and is to come, _i.e._, Time illimitable, is Zoroaster's definition of Zerouane-Akherene.

The depths of Satan which no man can measure; his triumph for a time by fraud and violence; his being chained by an angel; his reprobation and his precipitation into a sea of metal; his names of the Serpent and the Dragon; the whole conflict of the Good Spirits or celestial armies against the bad; are so many ideas and designations found alike in the Zend-Avesta, the Kabalah, and the Gnosis.

We even find in the Apocalypse that singular Persian idea, which regards some of the lower animals as so many Devs or vehicles of Devs.

The guardians.h.i.+p of the earth by a good angel, the renewing of the earth and heavens, and the final triumph of pure and holy men, are the same victory of Good over Evil, for which the whole Orient looked.

The gold, and white raiments of the twenty-four Elders are, as in the Persian faith, the signs of a lofty perfection and divine purity.

Thus the Human mind labored and struggled and tortured itself for ages, to explain to itself what it felt, without confessing it, to be explicable. A vast crowd of indistinct abstractions, hovering in the imagination, a train of words embodying no tangible meaning, an inextricable labyrinth of subtleties, was the result.