Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

ANTIQUITY
ANTIQUITY 67
lesson of eternal life, taught by a legend which,
whether true or false, is used in Masonry as a
symbol and an allegory .
But whence came this legend? Was it invented
in 1717 at the revival of Freemasonry
in England? We have evidence of the
strongest circumstantial character, derived
from the Sloane Manuscript No . 3,329, recently
exhumed from the shelves of the
British Museum, that this very legend was
known to the Masons of the seventeenth
century at least .
Then, did the Operative Masons of the
Middle Ages have a legend also? The evidence
is that they did. The Compagnons de
la Tour, who were the offshoots of the old
Masters' Guilds, had a legend . We know
what the legend was, and we know that its
character was similar to, although not in all
the details precisely the same as, the Masonic
legend. It was, however, connected with the
Temple of Solomon .
Again : Did the builders of the Middle Ages
invent their legend, or did they obtain it from
some old tradition? The question is interesting,
but its solution either way would scarcely
affect the Antiquity of Freemasonry . It is
not the form of the legend, but its spirit and
symbolic design, with which we have to do .
This legend of the Third Degree as we now
havee it, and as we have had it for a certain
period of two hundred and fifty years, is intended,
by a symbolic representation, to teach
the resurrection from death, and the Divine
dogma of eternal life . All Masons know its
character, and it is neither expedient nor
necessary to dilate upon it .
But can we find such a legend elsewhere?
Certainly we can . Not indeed the same
legend ; not the same personage as its hero ; not
the same details ; but a legend with the same
spirit and design ; a legend funereal in character,
celebrating death and resurrection,
solemnized in lamentation and terminating in
joy. Thus, in the Egyptian Mysteries of
Osiris, the image of a dead man was borne in
an argha, ark or coffin, by a procession of
initiates ; and this enclosure in the coffin or
interment of the body was called the aphanism,
or disappearance, and the lamentation
for him formed the first part of the Mysteries .
On the third day after the interment, the
priests and initiates carried the coffin, in which
was also a golden vessel, down to the river
Nile. Into the vessel they poured water from
the river ; and then with a cry of `Evpfpcaµev
ayaAAc eea, " We have found him, let us
rejoice," they declared that the dead Osiris,
who had descended into Hades, had returned
from thence, and was restored again to life ; and
the rejoicings which ensued constituted the
second part of the Mysteries . The analogy
between this and the legend of Freemasonry
must be at once apparent . Now, just such a
legend, everywhere differing in particulars,
but everywhere coinciding in general character,
is to be found in all the old religionsin
sun worship, in tree worship in animal
worship. It was often perverted, it is true,
from the original design . Sometimes it was
applied to the death of winter and the birth of
spring, sometimes to the setting and the subsequent
rising of the sun, but always indicating
a loss and a recovery .
Especially do we find this legend, and in a
purer form, in the Ancient Mysteries. At
Samothrace, at Eleusis, at Byblos-in all
places where these ancient religions and mystical
rites were celebrated-we find the same
teachings of eternal life inculcated by the
representation of an imaginary death and
apotheosis. And it is this legend, and this
legend alone, that connects Speculative Freemasonry
with the Ancient Mysteries of Greece,
of Syria, and of Egypt .
The theory, then, that I advance on the
subject of the Antiquity of Freemasonry is
this : I maintain that, in its present peculiar
organization, it is the successor, with certainty,
of the Building Corporations of the
Middle Ages, and through them, with less
certainty but with great probability, of the
Roman Colleges of Artificers . Its connection
with the Temple of Solomon, as its birthplace,
may have been accidental-a mere arbitrary
selection by its inventors-and bears, therefore,
only an allegorical meaning ; or it may be
historical, and to be explained by the frequent
communications that at one time took place
between the Jews and the Greeks and the
Romans. This is a point still open for discussion
. On it I express no fixed opinion .
The historical materials upon which to base
an opinion are as yet too scanty . But I am
inclined, I confess, to view the Temple of
Jerusalem and the Masonic traditions connected
with it as a part of the great allegory
of Masonry .
But in the other aspect in which Freemasonry
presents itself to our view, and to which
I have already adverted, the question of its
antiquity is more easily settled . As a
brotherhood, composed of symbolic Masters
and Fellows and Apprentices, derived from an
association of Operative Masters, Fellows,
and Apprentices-those building spiritual
temples as these built material ones-its age
may not exceed five or six hundred years ; but
as a secret association, containing within itself
the symbolic expression of a religious idea, it
connects itself with all the Ancient Mysteries,
which, with similar secrecy, gave the same
symbolic expression to the same religious
idea . These Mysteries were not the cradles
of Freemasonry : they were only its analogues .
But I have no doubt that all the Mysteries
had one common source, perhaps, as it has
been suggested, some ancient body of priests ;
and I have no more doubt that Freemasonry
has derived its legend, its symbolic mode of instruction,
and the lesson for which that instruction
was intended, either directly or indirectly
from the same source. In this view
the Mysteries become interesting to the Mason
as a study, and in this view only . And so,
when I speak of the Antiquity of Masonry, I
must say, if I would respect the axioms of
historical science, that its body came out of