THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

_The Collegia_
So far in our study we have found that from earliest time architecture
was related to religion; that the working tools of the builder were
emblems of moral truth; that there were great secret orders using the
Drama of Faith as a rite of initiation; and that a hidden doctrine was
kept for those accounted worthy, after trial, to be entrusted with it.
Secret societies, born of the nature and need of man, there have been
almost since recorded history began;[54] but as yet we have come upon
no separate and distinct order of builders. For aught we know there
may have been such in plenty, but we have no intimation, much less a
record, of the fact. That is to say, history has a vague story to tell
us of the earliest orders of the builders.
However, it is more than a mere plausible inference that from the
beginning architects were members of secret orders; for, as we have
seen, not only the truths of religion and philosophy, but also the
facts of science and the laws of art, were held as secrets to be known
only to the few. This was so, apparently without exception, among all
ancient peoples; so much so, indeed, that we may take it as certain
that the builders of old time were initiates. Of necessity, then, the
arts of the craft were secrets jealously guarded, and the architects
themselves, while they may have employed and trained ordinary workmen,
were men of learning and influence. Such glimpses of early architects
as we have confirm this inference, as, for example, the noble hymn to
the Sun-god written by Suti and Hor, two architects employed by
Amenhotep III, of Egypt.[55] Just when the builders began to form
orders of their own no one knows, but it was perhaps when the
Mystery-cults began to journey abroad into other lands. What we have
to keep in mind is that all the arts had their home in the temple,
from which, as time passed, they spread out fan-wise along all the
paths of culture.
Keeping in mind the secrecy of the laws of building, and the sanctity
with which all science and art were regarded, we have a key whereby to
interpret the legends woven about the building of the temple of
Solomon. Few realize how high that temple on Mount Moriah towered in
the history of the olden world, and how the story of its building
haunted the legends and traditions of the times following. Of these
legends there were many, some of them wildly improbable, but the
persistence of the tradition, and its consistency withal, despite many
variations, is a _fact of no small moment_. Nor is this tradition to
be wondered at, since time has shown that the building of the temple
at Jerusalem was an event of world-importance, not only to the
Hebrews, but to other nations, more especially the Phoenicians. The
histories of both peoples make much of the building of the Hebrew
temple, of the friendship of Solomon and Hiram I, of Tyre, and of the
harmony between the two peoples; and Phoenician tradition has it that
Solomon presented Hiram with a duplicate of the temple, which was
erected in Tyre.[56]
Clearly, the two nations were drawn closely together, and this fact
carried with it a mingling of religious influences and ideas, as was
true between the Hebrews and other nations, especially Egypt and
Phoenicia, during the reign of Solomon. Now the religion of the