Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Part 56

The word AUM, says the Ramayan, represents "The Being of Beings, One Substance in three forms; without mode, without quality, without pa.s.sion: Immense, Incomprehensible, Infinite, Indivisible, Immutable, Incorporeal, Irresistible."

An old pa.s.sage in the Purana says: "All the rites ordained in the Vedas, the sacrifices to the fire, and all other solemn purifications, shall pa.s.s away; but that which shall never pa.s.s away is the word A-O-O-M for it is the symbol of the Lord of all things."

Herodotus says that the Ancient Pelasgi built no temples and wors.h.i.+pped no idols, and had a sacred name of Deity, which it was not permissible to p.r.o.nounce.

The Clarian Oracle, which was of unknown antiquity, being asked which of the Deities was named IAO, answered in these remarkable words: "The Initiated are bound to conceal the mysterious secrets. Learn, then, that IAO is the Great G.o.d Supreme, that ruleth over all."

The Jews consider the True Name of G.o.d to be irrecoverably lost by disuse, and regard its p.r.o.nunciation as one of the Mysteries that will be revealed at the coming of their Messiah. And they attribute its loss to the illegality of applying the Masoretic points to so sacred a Name, by which a knowledge of the proper vowels is forgotten. It is even said, in the Gemara of Abodah Zara, that G.o.d permitted a celebrated Hebrew Scholar to be burned by a Roman Emperor, because he had been heard to p.r.o.nounce the Sacred Name with points.

The Jews feared that the Heathen would get possession of the Name: and therefore, in their copies of the Scriptures, they wrote it in the Samaritan character, instead of the Hebrew or Chaldaic, that the adversary might not make an improper use of it: for they believed it capable of working miracles; and held that the wonders in Egypt were performed by Moses, in virtue of this name being engraved on his rod: and that any person who knew the true p.r.o.nunciation would be able to do as much as he did.

Josephus says it was unknown until G.o.d communicated it to Moses in the wilderness: and that it was lost through the wickedness of man.

The followers of Mahomet have a tradition that there is a secret name of the Deity which possesses wonderful properties; and that the only method of becoming acquainted with it, is by being initiated into the Mysteries of the _Ism Abla_.

H O M was the first framer of the new religion among the Persians, and His Name was Ineffable.

AMUN, among the Egyptians, was a name p.r.o.nounceable by none save the Priests.

The old Germans adored G.o.d with profund reverence, without daring to name Him, or to wors.h.i.+p Him in Temples. The Druids expressed the name of Deity by the letters O-I-W.

Among all the nations of primitive antiquity, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul was not a mere probable hypothesis, needing laborious researches and diffuse argumentation to produce conviction of its truth. Nor can we hardly give it the name of _Faith_; for it was a lively _certainty_, like the feeling of one's own existence and ident.i.ty, and of what is actually present; exerting its influence on all sublunary affairs, and the motive of mightier deeds and enterprises than any mere earthly interest could inspire.

Even the doctrine of transmigration of souls, universal among the Ancient Hindus and Egyptians, rested on a basis of the old primitive religion, and was connected with a sentiment purely religious. It involved this n.o.ble element of truth: That since man had gone astray, and wandered far from G.o.d, he must needs make many efforts, and undergo a long and painful pilgrimage, before he could rejoin the Source of all Perfection: and the firm conviction and positive certainty, that nothing defective, impure, or defiled with earthy stains, could enter the pure region of perfect spirits, or be eternally united to G.o.d; wherefore the soul had to pa.s.s through long trials and many purifications before it could attain that blissful end. And the end and aim of all these systems of philosophy was the final deliverance of the soul from the old calamity, the dreaded fate and frightful lot of being compelled to wander through the dark regions of nature and the various forms of the brute creation, ever changing its terrestrial shape, and its union with G.o.d, which they held to be the lofty destiny of the wise and virtuous soul.

Pythagoras gave to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls that meaning which the wise Egyptians gave to it in their Mysteries: He never taught the doctrine in that literal sense in which it was understood by the people. Of that literal doctrine not the least vestige is to be found in such of his symbols as remain, nor in his precepts collected by his disciple Lysias. He held that men always remain, in their essence, such as they were created; and can degrade themselves only by vice, and enn.o.ble themselves only by virtue.

Hierocles, one of his most zealous and celebrated disciples, expressly says that he who believes that the soul of man, after his death, will enter the body of a beast, for his vices, or become a plant for his stupidity, is deceived; and is absolutely ignorant of the eternal form of the soul, which can never change; for, always remaining man, it is said to become G.o.d or beast, through virtue or vice, though it can become neither one nor the other by nature, but solely by resemblance of its inclinations to theirs.

And Timaeus of Locria, another disciple, says that to alarm men and prevent them from committing crimes, they menaced them with strange humiliations and punishments; even declaring that their souls would pa.s.s into new bodies,--that of a coward into the body of a deer; that of a ravisher into the body of a wolf; that of a murderer into the body of some still more ferocious animal; and that of an impure sensualist into the body of a hog.

So, too, the doctrine is explained in the Phaedo. And Lysias says, that after the soul, purified of its crimes, has left the body and returned to Heaven, it is no longer subject to change or death, but enjoys an eternal felicity. According to the Indians, it returned to, and became a part of, the universal soul which animates everything.

The Hindus held that Buddha descended on earth to raise all human beings up to the perfect state. He will ultimately succeed, and all, himself included, be merged in Unity.

Vishnu is to judge the world at the last day. It is to be consumed by fire: The Sun and Moon are to lose their light; the Stars to fall; and a New Heaven and Earth to be created.

The legend of the fall of the Spirits, obscured and distorted, is preserved in the Hindu Mythology. And their traditions acknowledged, and they revered, the succession of the first ancestors of mankind, or the Holy Patriarchs of the primitive world, under the name of the Seven Great RIs.h.i.+S, or Sages of h.o.a.ry antiquity; though they invested their history with a cloud of fictions.

The Egyptians held that the soul was immortal; and that Osiris was to judge the world.

And thus reads the Persian legend:

"After Ahriman shall have ruled the world until the end of time, SOSIOSCH, the promised Redeemer, will come and annihilate the power of the DEVS (or Evil Spirits), awaken the dead, and sit in final judgment upon spirits and men. After that the comet _Gurzsher_ will be thrown down, and a general conflagration take place, which will consume the whole world. The remains of the earth will then sink down into _Duzakh_, and become for three periods a place of punishment for the wicked. Then, by degrees all will be pardoned, even _Ahriman_ and the _Devs_, and admitted to the regions of bliss, and thus there will be a new Heaven and a new earth."

In the doctrines of Lamaism also, we find, obscured, and partly concealed in fiction, fragments of the primitive truth. For according to that faith, "There is to be a final judgment before ESLIK KHAN: The good are to be admitted to Paradise, the bad to be banished to h.e.l.l, where there are eight regions burning hot and eight freezing cold."

In the Mysteries, wherever they were practised, was taught that truth of the primitive revelation, the existence of One Great Being, Infinite and pervading the Universe, Who was there wors.h.i.+pped without superst.i.tion; and His marvellous nature, essence, and attributes taught to the Initiates; while the vulgar attributed His works to Secondary G.o.ds, personified, and isolated from Him in fabulous independence.

These truths were covered from the common people as with a veil; and the Mysteries were carried into every country, that, without disturbing the popular beliefs, truth, the arts, and the sciences might be known to those who were capable of understanding them, and maintaining the true doctrine incorrupt; which the people, p.r.o.ne to superst.i.tion and idolatry, have in no age been able to do; nor, as many strange aberrations and superst.i.tions of the present day prove, any more now than heretofore. For we need but point to the doctrines of so many sects that degrade the Creator to the rank, and a.s.sign to Him the pa.s.sions of humanity, to prove that now, as always, the old truths must be committed to a few, or they will be overlaid with fiction and error, and irretrievably lost.

Though Masonry is identical with the Ancient Mysteries, it is so in this qualified sense; that it presents but an imperfect image of their brilliancy; the ruins only of their grandeur, and a system that has experienced progressive alterations, the fruits of social events and political circ.u.mstances. Upon leaving Egypt, the Mysteries were modified by the habits of the different nations among whom they were introduced.

Though originally more moral and political than religious, they soon became the heritage, as it were, of the priests, and essentially religious, though in reality limiting the sacerdotal power, by teaching the intelligent laity the folly and absurdity of the creeds of the populace. They were therefore necessarily changed by the religious systems of the countries into which they were transplanted. In Greece, they were the Mysteries of Ceres; in Rome, of _Bona Dea_, the Good G.o.ddess; in Gaul, the School of Mars; in Sicily, the Academy of the Sciences; among the Hebrews, they partook of the rites and ceremonies of a religion which placed all the powers of government, and all the knowledge, in the hands of the Priests and Levites. The paG.o.das of India, the retreats of the Magi of Persia and Chaldea, and the pyramids of Egypt, were no longer the sources at which men drank in knowledge.

Each people, at all informed, had its Mysteries. After a time the Temples of Greece and the School of Pythagoras lost their reputation, and Freemasonry took their place.

Masonry, when properly expounded, is at once the interpretation of the great book of nature, the recital of physical and astronomical phenomena, the purest philosophy, and the place of deposit, where, as in a Treasury, are kept in safety all the great truths of the primitive revelation, that form the basis of all religions. In the modern Degrees three things are to be recognized: The image of primeval times, the tableau of the efficient causes of the Universe, and the book in which are written the morality of all peoples, and the code by which they must govern themselves if they would be prosperous.

The Kabalistic doctrine was long the religion of the Sage and the Savant; because, like Freemasonry, it incessantly tends toward spiritual perfection, and the fusion of the creeds and Nationalities of Mankind.

In the eyes of the Kabalist, all men are his brothers; and their relative ignorance is, to him, but a reason for instructing them. There were ill.u.s.trious Kabalists among the Egyptians and Greeks, whose doctrines the Orthodox Church has accepted; and among the Arabs were many, whose wisdom was not slighted by the Mediaeval Church.

The Sages proudly wore the name of Kabalists. The Kabalah embodied a n.o.ble philosophy, pure, not mysterious, but symbolic. It taught the doctrine of the Unity of G.o.d, the art of knowing and explaining the essence and operations of the Supreme Being, of spiritual powers and natural forces, and of determining their action by symbolic figures; by the arrangement of the alphabet, the combinations of numbers, the inversion of letters in writing and the concealed meanings which they claimed to discover therein. The Kabalah is the key of the occult sciences; and the Gnostics, were born of the Kabalists.

The science of numbers represented not only arithmetical qualities, but also all grandeur, all proportion. By it we necessarily arrive at the discovery of the Principle or First Cause of things, called at the present day THE ABSOLUTE.

Or UNITY,--that loftiest term to which all philosophy directs itself; that imperious necessity of the human mind, that pivot round which it is compelled to group the aggregate of its ideas: Unity, this source, this centre of all systematic order, this principle of existence, this central point, unknown in its essence, but manifest in its effects; Unity, that sublime centre to which the chain of causes necessarily ascends, was the august Idea toward which all the ideas of Pythagoras converged. He refused the t.i.tle of _Sage_, which means _one who knows_.

He invented, and applied to himself that of _Philosopher_, signifying one who _is fond of_ or _studies things secret and occult_. The astronomy which he mysteriously taught, was _astrology_: his science of numbers was based on Kabalistical principles.

The Ancients, and Pythagoras himself, whose real principles have not been always understood, never meant to ascribe to numbers, that is to say, to abstract signs, any special virtue. But the Sages of Antiquity concurred in recognizing a ONE FIRST CAUSE (material or spiritual) of the existence of the Universe. Thence UNITY became the symbol of the Supreme Deity. It was made to express, to represent G.o.d; but without attributing to _the mere number_ ONE any divine or supernatural virtue.

The Pythagorean ideas as to particular numbers are partially expressed in the following:

LECTURE OF THE KABALISTS.

_Qu_ Why did you seek to be received a Knight of the Kabalah?

_Ans_ To know, by means of numbers, the admirable harmony which there is between nature and religion.

_Qu_ How were you announced?

_Ans_ By twelve raps.

_Qu_ What do they signify?

_Ans_ The twelve bases of our temporal and spiritual happiness.

_Qu_ What is a Kabalist?

_Ans_ A man who has learned, by tradition, the Sacerdotal Art and the Royal Art.

_Qu_ What means the device, _Omnia in numeris sita sunt_?

_Ans_ That everything lies veiled in numbers.

_Qu_ Explain me that.

_Ans_ I will do so, as far as the number 12. Your sagacity will discern the rest.

_Qu_ What signifies the _unit_ in the number 10?