The Lost Keys of Freemasonry - RoseCroix.org.au

In the work we are taking up it is not the intention to dwell upon the modernconcepts of the Craft but to consider Freemasonry as it really is to those who know,a great cosmic organism whose true brothers and children are tied together not byspoken oaths but by lives so lived that they are capable of seeing through the blankwall and opening the window which is now concealed by the rubbish of materiality.When this is done and the mysteries of the universe unfold before the aspiringcandidate, then in truth he discovers what Freemasonry really is. Its material aspectsinterest him no longer for he has unmasked the Mystery School which he is capableof recognizing only when he himself has spiritually become a member of it.Those who have examined and studied its ancient lore have no doubt thatFreemasonry, like the universe itself, which is the greatest of all schools, deals withthe unfolding of a three-fold principle; for all the universe is governed by the samethree kings who are called the builders of the Masonic temple. They are notpersonalities but principles, great intelligent energies and powers which in God, man,and the universe have charge of the molding of cosmic substance into the habitationof the living king, the temple built through the ages first of unconscious and thenconscious effort on the part of every individual who is expressing in his daily life thecreative principles of these three kings.The true brother of the ancient Craft realized that the completion of the temple hewas building to the King of the Universe was a duty or rather a privilege which heowed to his God, to his brother, and to himself. He knew that certain steps must betaken and that his temple must be built according to the plan. Today it seems thatthe plan is lost, however, for in the majority of cases Freemasonry is no longer anoperative art but is merely a speculative idea until each brother, reading the mysteryof hi s symbols and pondering over the beautiful allegories unfolded in his ritual,realizes that he himself contains the keys and the plans so long lost to his Craft andthat if he would ever learn Freemasonry he must unlock its doors with the keywrought from the base metals of his own being.True Freemasonry is esoteric; it is not a thing of this world. All that we have here isa link, a doorway, through which the student may pass into the unknown.Freemasonry has nothing to do with things of form save that it realizes form ismolded by and manifests the life it contains. Consequently the student is seeking soto mold his life that the form will glorify the God whose temple he is slowly buildingas he awakens one by one the workmen within himself and directs them to carry outthe plan that h as been given him out of heaven.So far as it is possible to discover, ancient Freemasonry and the beautiful cosmicallegories that it teaches, perpetuated through hundreds of lodges and ancientmysteries, forms the oldest of the Mystery Schools; 3 and its preservation through theages has not depended upon itself as an exoteric body of partly evolved individualsbut upon a concealed brotherhood, the exoteric side of Freemasonry. All the greatmystery, Schools have hierarchies upon the spiritual planes of Nature which areexpressing themselves in this world through creeds and organizations. The truestudent seeks to lift himself from the exoteric body upward spiritually until he joinsthe esoteric group which, without a lodge on the physical plane of Nature, is fargreater than all the lodges of which it is the central fire. The spiritual instructors ofhumanity are forced to labor in the concrete world with things comprehensible to theconcrete mind, and there man begins to comprehend the meaning of the allegoriesand symbols which surround his exoteric work as soon as he prepares himself to