Freemasonry: A Very Short Introduction - Andreas Önnerfors 2017
The craft degrees of freemasonry
From darkness to light
In 1730, the first full exposure of all three craft degrees in freemasonry was published: Masonry Dissected. The thirty-odd paged brochure eventually appeared in more than thirty editions and was disseminated in translations and in periodicals across Europe. Despite the negative view of modern freemasonry given in the preface by its author Samuel Prichard, research suggests that Masonry Dissected was used as an aide memoire by existing lodges. Our knowledge about the degrees practised in masonic rituals before 1730 is light. Just like Masonry Dissected, the texts are catechisms, preserved as manuscripts or even items printed in the periodical press. Masonic catechisms are presented as questions and answers between the master of the lodge (or any other designated officer) and an initiated member. These questions test the member’s knowledge of the symbolism and basic concepts of freemasonry, the practical course of initiation (or other rituals performed), and the content of the masonic oath. Therefore, it is only indirectly possible to reconstruct the script according to which masonic ritual unfolded in terms of when and where. From 1737 onward, exposures of masonic rituals are more descriptive in nature. The first full publication that included ’stage directions’ was a work entitled L’Ordre des Franc-Maçons trahi et le secret des Mopses revelée, which appeared in 1745 in Amsterdam and was immediately translated into other European languages. During the same year, the first comprehensive visual exposure also appeared: a series of seven engravings providing detailed insights into the staging of the ritual.
According to Masonry Dissected, the Entered Apprentice degree introduces members to symbols of masonry and their interpretation, to a true understanding of the ritual, and to the oath that is taken. A specific part of the degree outlines the design and meaning of the lodge as a symbolic place in space and time. It is apparent that the lodge is taught as being originally located in Jerusalem (’in the Vale of Josaphat’). Initiation into the first degree is thus mainly about entering a new community of knowledge, and achieving familiarity with a specific set of symbols and the symbolic settings of the lodge itself.
The degree of Fellow Craft states that the candidate is familiar with the letter ’G’, standing for geometry as the ’fifth science’ (in the medieval canon of liberal arts). The candidate is now a builder in the Temple of Solomon, and the catechism makes explicit references to 1 Kings 7:1—51. As a fellow, the candidate is admitted to the middle chamber of the temple (suggesting a hierarchy of location); here, a second and divine meaning of the letter ’G’ is revealed, referring to ’the Grand Architect or Contriver of the Universe’. This letter and its symbolic meaning are spelled out. Compared to expectations for the Entered Apprentice degree, the fellow is now expected to handle more advanced knowledge, as the science of geometry leads him closer to divinity.
In the first degree, the candidate is asked ’From whence come you?’, whereupon he replies ’From the Holy Lodge of St John’s’. This explicitly Christian reference is explained in a commentary to the second degree that deserves to be quoted here in full:
The reason why they denominate themselves of the Holy Lodge of St. John’s, is, because he was the Fore-runner of our Saviour, and laid the first Parallel Line to the Gospel.
Whatever is specifically intended by this formulation, it clearly states that the Old Testament setting of the two first degrees points forward to the New Testament. Moreover, Prichard goes on to state (and ridicule) that some do assert that ’our Saviour himself was accepted as a Free-Mason whilst he was in the Flesh’.
The Master’s degree introduces a completely new motif: the master’s task is ’to seek for that which was lost and is now found’, which is ’the Master-Mason’s Word’. This word, the catechism goes on, was lost with the death of the Temple architect (in French ritual families, the Temple architect is called Adoniram). Now follows the first version of the so-called ’Hiramic legend’, which has been called the most important myth in freemasonry and which is not only the pinnacle of the first three degrees, but the starting point of a number of subsequent higher degrees. The Hiramic legend is an apocryphal continuation of the account of the construction of Solomon’s Temple in the Bible.
In Prichard’s version, Hiram inspects the Temple in the middle of the day. Three Fellow Craft masons place themselves at the three entrances to the Temple in order to demand the Master’s Word from the architect. When he denies them the Word, each of them strikes Hiram with a tool until he finally dies. The murderers temporarily hide the body in the Temple. In the middle of the night, they carry Hiram out of the Temple and bury him on a hill. Fifteen days later, fifteen freemasons sent out by Solomon on a search mission find the decayed body of the architect. Since they fail to find the Master’s Word with or on him, they agree to adopt the first word spoken at the discovery of the corpse, which is eventually given as ’Macbenah’. The discovery of the body is announced to Solomon, who orders Hiram’s body to be carried back to the Temple. When exhuming the corpse, Hiram is raised by the ’five points of fellowship’: hand to hand, foot to foot, cheek to cheek, knee to knee, and hand in back. Finally, Hiram is buried in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Temple.
Ritual scholar Jan Snoek has identified no fewer than fifty varieties of the Hiramic legend; a more influential version than Prichard’s was the version published in L’Ordre des Franc-Maçons trahi. Prichard’s exposure provides no clue as to whether or how the Hiramic legend was staged as a ritual. However, L’Ordre (and its visualization) describes the ceremony extensively. On a rectangular carpet (called a ’tracing board’ in freemasonry) placed on the floor of the lodge room, are the following images: a coffin surrounded by tears and framed by the image of a skull and crossed bones. In front of the coffin lies an opened ruler, and behind the coffin is a square; to the right, a hill with a twig of acacia is displayed. The tracing board is marked on each side with the four symbolic points of the compass and lit by nine candles: three in the east, three in the south, and three in the west. The initiate is brought brusquely into the lodge room and, after a short walk, placed in front of the tracing board. He is made to walk over the symbolic coffin with three big steps, during which he is hit with a soft item to imitate the strikes Hiram received. With his gavel, the master of the lodge symbolically knocks the candidate’s forehead, after which the candidate is laid down upon the shape of the coffin. A bloodstained shroud is placed over the face of the candidate. The attending freemasons form a circle around the candidate and point towards him with their swords. The master of the lodge raises the candidate as Hiram is described to have been raised, and words of fright are exclaimed. The bloodstained shroud is removed and the ritual finished.
The initiate thus takes the position of Hiram and is ritualistically killed in the same manner. Covered in the shroud, a provisional grave, he awaits discovery by his fellow masters. The corpse is found and eventually raised, which is why freemasonry refers to the third-degree ceremony as being ’raised as a Master’. Obviously, the ritual identifies the candidate with the Temple architect, as the unselfish hero of the narrative who is willing to sacrifice himself, but there is yet another dimension. The hero turns out to be a deity, and the candidate is mysteriously united with him (through ’unio mystica’, which also refers to a tradition of strong emotional identification with Christ).
In what sense does Hiram represent a deity? Firstly, he is obviously in possession of the blueprint of the Temple (which is the design of God, according to 1 Chronicles 28:19) and of the knowledge of how to pronounce the Master’s Word. Secondly, he is buried in the Sanctum Sanctorum, the ’Holy of Holies’. In Jewish tradition, the Sanctum Sanctorum is the innermost part of the Temple where the presence of God reveals itself and where nobody but the High Priest is allowed to enter—and only on one day of the year, Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). It was during this ceremony that the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) was pronounced. However, according to one interpretation, the proper way of spelling out the name of God by inserting vowels into the Tetragrammaton fell into oblivion during the Babylonian Captivity, which of course can be likened to the loss of (the skill to pronounce) the Master’s Word after the killing of Hiram. ’To seek for that which was lost and is now found’ thus potentially assumes a religious meaning. Another reading is that the correct pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton has been retained, but that it cannot be used since there is no Temple left where it can be spelled out.
If, according to the entirely apocryphal masonic legend, Hiram is buried in the old Temple that was eventually destroyed, it furthermore brings up the question of if and when he could potentially be rediscovered at an unspecified point in the future. For any freemason who was familiar with the Christian tradition, Christ was seen as the new temple that eventually will be erected for humankind. Reading the Hiramic legend together with the explanation given in Prichard about St John, who lays the first parallel line to the Gospel, leaves little doubt that Hiram and Christ are intended to be identical from the outset. However, with growing secularization, this obviously Christian link to the third-degree ritual was toned down. As with most elements in masonic ritual, the personification of the Temple architect is open to multiple readings, and an explicitly Judeo-Christian interpretation is not an absolute necessity.
In evolved versions of the ritual, the candidate is initially suspected of being one of the Fellow Craft masons who killed Hiram, opening up an intriguing double identification. Thus, the candidate is first associated with the perpetrator of meaningless violence and then with its victim. In the French versions of the ritual, Hiram is buried with the Tetragrammaton engraved upon a gold (or silver) triangle on his tomb, which reinforces his identification with God. Religious historian Henrik Bogdan suggests that the search for the lost vowels of the Tetragrammaton can clearly be related to Jewish cabalistic traditions (the Zohar), which also aim at an individual experience of the Godhead via a ’unio mystica’. For Renaissance practitioners of Kabbalah, this implied a search for and identification with Christ. YHWH conceals the name of Jesus, which can be found by the insertion of the Hebrew letter ’Shin’. Seen from this perspective, the third-degree ritual in freemasonry has apparent traces of cabalistic influence.
In the middle of the 19th century, a considerably darker and more esoteric version of the Hiramic legend was disseminated in theosophical circles. In his Le Voyage en orient (1851) the French proto-surrealist writer Gérard de Nerval recounts the Temple legend by introducing the Queen of Sheba or Balkis (known in all Abrahamic religions), who visited Solomon in Jerusalem, according to the Bible. Following Le Voyage en orient, Sheba falls in love with Solomon for his wisdom, particularly because of their elaborate exchange of riddles (which, with their extremely allegorical language, strongly resemble masonic catechisms). But then she meets Hiram, the Temple architect, and adores his skills as a craftsman and his position as leader of an immense workforce. She turns her love towards Hiram, while Solomon is gripped by morbid jealousy and plots to kill the architect. Before this is effected, Hiram and Balkis confess their love to each other and, in an evolved version of the legend, Hiram entrusts the secret Master’s Word to her (this might also refer to her pregnancy). In one scene of the legend, Hiram descends to the underworld, where he learns in the sanctuary of fire that he is related to Tubal-Cain, the father of ingenuity and industriousness. The freedom-loving Cainites (represented by Hiram) are thus positioned against the descendants of Abel (represented by Solomon), who impose a tyranny of cold and calculating imagination and ideas upon humankind.
Nerval’s version of the Hiramic legend was picked up by the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner, who assigns to it a pivotal significance in his lecture cycle, ’The Temple legend’ (1904—6). Other traditions claim that Balkis actually gave birth to a child of Solomon, named Menelik. This royal descent was a constitutive part of the Ethiopian national mythology up to Haile Selassie, and has in turn influenced Rastafarian religion. Given the prominence of the encounter between Balkis and Solomon in Renaissance art and literature, its virtual absence in masonic traditions (apart from some references in ’Antients’ sources) begs further explanation.