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

82 ASIA
ASSASSINS
to a vast variety of adventures, according to
the different fate of parties and other alterations
in government . By the way, I shall
note that the Masons were always loyal, which
exposed them to great severities when power
wore the trappings of justice, and those who
committed treason punished true men as
traitors . Thus, in the third year of the reign
of Henry VI ., an act of Parliament was
passed to abolish the society of Masons, and
to hinder, under grievous penalties, the holding
Chapters, Lodges, or other regular assemblies .
Yet this act was afterwards repealed, and even
before that, King Henry VI., and several of
the principal lords of his court, became fellows
of the Craft ."
Asia. In the French Rite of Adoption, the
East end of the Lodge is called Asia .
Asia, Initiated Knights and Brothers
of. This Order was introduced in Berlin, or,
as some say, in Vienna, in the year 1780, by a
schism of several members of the German
Rose Croix . They adopted a mixture of
Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan ceremonies,
to indicate, as Ragon supposes, their
entire religious tolerance . Their object was
the study of the natural sciences and the
search for the universal panacea to prolong
life. Thory charges them with this ; but may
it not have been, as with the Alchemists,
merely a symbol of immortality? They forbade
all inquiries into the art of transmutation
of metals . The Grand Synedrion, properly
the Grand Sanhedrim, which consisted of
seventy-two members and was the head of the
Order, had its seat at Vienna . The Order was
founded on the three symbolic degrees, and
attached to them nine others, as follows : 4.
Seekers ; 5 . Sufferers ; 6 . Initiated Knights
and Brothers of Asia in Europe ; 7. Masters
and Sages ; 8 . Royal Priests, or True Brothers
of Rose Croix ; 9 . Melchizedek. The Order no
longer exists . Many details of it will be
found in Luehet'sEssai sur les Illumines .
Asia, Perfect Initiates of. A rite of very
little importance, consisting of seven degrees,
and said to have been invented at Lyons . A
vervoluminous manuscript, translated from
the - German, was sold at Paris, in 1821, to M .
Bailleul, and came into the possession of
Ragon, who reduced its size, and, with the
assistance of Des Etangs, modified it. I
have no knowledge that it was ever worked .
Ask, Seek, Knock . In referring to the
passage of Matthew vii . 7, "Ask, and it shall
be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock,
and it shall be opened unto you," Dr . Clarke
says : "These three words-ask, seek, knockinclude
the ideas of want, loss and earnestness."
The application made to the passage theologically
is equally appropriate to it in a Masonic
Lodge . You ask for acceptance, you seek
for light, you knock for initiation, which includes
the other two .
Aspirant . One who eagerly seeks to know
or to attain something . Thus, Warburton
speaks of "the aspirant to the Mysteries ."
It is applied also to one about to be initiated
into Masonry. There seems, however, to be
a shade of difference in meaning between the
words candidate and aspirant. The candidate
is one who asks for admission ; so called from
the Lat . candidatus "clothed in white," because
candidates for office at Rome wore a
white dress . The aspirant is one already
elected and in process of initiation, and coming
from aspiro, to seek eagerly, refers to the
earnestness with which he prosecutes his
search for light and truth .
Assassins. The Ishmaelites, or Assassins,
constituted a sect or confraternity, which was
founded by Hassan Sabah, about the year
1090, in Persia . The name is derived, it is
supposed, from their immoderate use of the
plant haschish, or henbane, which produced
a delirious frenzy . The title given to the chief
of the Order was Sheikh-el-.Jebel, which has
been translated the "Old Man of the Mountain,"
but which Higgins has shown (Anacal .,
i ., 700) to mean literally "The Sage of the
Kabbala or Traditions ." Von Hammer has
written a History of the Assassins, but his
opposition to secret societies has led him to
speak with so much prejudice that, although
his historical statements are interesting, his
philosophical deductions have to be taken
with many grains of allowance . Godfrey
Higgins has probably erred on the other side,
and by a too ready adherence to a preconceived
theory has, in his Anacalypsis, confounded
them with the Templars, whom he
considers as the precursors of the Freemasons .
In this, as in most things, the middle course
appears to be the most truthful .
The Assassins were a secret society that is
to say, they had a secret esoteric doctrine,
which was imparted only to the initiated .
Hammer says that they had a graduated
series of initiations, the names of which he
gives as Apprentices, Fellows, and Masters ;
they had, too, an oath of passive obedience,
and resembled, he asserts, in many respects,
the secret societies that subsequently existed
in Europe. They were governed by a Grand
Master and Priors, and had regulations and
a special religious code, in all of which Von
Hammer finds a close resemblance to the Templars,
the Hospitalers, and the Teutonic
Knights . Between the Assassins and the
Templars history records that there were
several amicable transactions not at all consistent
with the religious vows of the latter
and the supposed religious faith of the former,
and striking coincidences of feeling, of which
Higgins has not been slow to avail himself in
his attempt to prove the close connection, if
not absolute identity, of the two Orders . It is
most probable, as Sir John Malcolm contends,
that they were a race of Sofis, the teachers
of the secret doctrine of Mohammed . Von
Hammer admits that they produced a great
number of treatises on mathematics and
jurisprudence ; and, forgetting for a time his
bigotry and his prejudice, he attributes to
Hassan, their founder, a profound knowledge
of philosophy and mathematical and metaphysical
sciences, and an enlightened spirit
under whose influence the civilization of