Secrets and Practices of the Freemasons: Sacred Mysteries, Rituals and Symbols Revealed - Jean-Louis de Biasi 2011

Introduction

Why Freemasonry?

Is it possible to say something new about “Ancient and Accepted” Freemasonry today? Freemason or not, are there any individual practices you can use immediately for personal benefit? Are these Masonic ideas fundamentally useful in meeting the challenges and problems of everyday life?

The answer to these three questions is YES!

The book you have just opened is going to help you understand the true inheritance this Masonic initiatic tradition gives to all of us. It will lead you from the birth of the ancient Egyptian and Greek mysteries to the discovery of the essential role of this initiatic brotherhood in the world today, and especially in the United States of America.

As mentioned in Dan Brown’s novel, The Lost Symbol, there are few countries in the world where Masonic ideals have had such a fundamental role as during the founding of the United States. Freemasonry was present and rooted in the founding texts, the symbols, and the very architecture of the new republic to give it all its power.

The Lost Symbol reveals to us a secret history and geography that marks Washington DC with its footprint, giving to this city an aura and an egregore shining worldwide. The city of Washington was laid out according to Freemason ideals and beliefs. The symbolic center of this city, the National Mall, is known in all countries. It runs from the dramatic obelisk of the Washington Monument on the west to the United States Capitol Building on the east, with national museums and memorials on both sides. The White House is directly north of the monument, and the Lincoln Memorial and the reflecting pools to the west just behind the monument. The Jefferson Memorial is to the south.

Built to commemorate George Washington, the first president and “father of his country” and a Freemason, the Washington Monument is the world’s tallest stone structure and the world’s tallest obelisk, standing 555 feet 51⁄8 inches high. The cornerstone was laid in an elaborate Masonic ceremony on July 4, 1848, the aluminum capstone was finally set December 6, 1884, and the completed monument was dedicated on February 21, 1885. It was the world’s tallest structure until 1889, when Paris’ Eiffel Tower took that title. The Washington Monument, and the geography of Washington DC, p lay a key role in The Lost Symbol, as does the mythology of Freemasonry.

It is rather necessary to say that an extraordinary gift was given at America’s founding by a line of Freemason initiates, entrusting to the new nation the future of their beliefs and idealism. But, as Dan Brown said in his novel, this gift does not belong to the past. It is something living and unique, providing inspiration to the nation through its most difficult periods of history, and Freemasons acted according to this noble ideal.

What exactly is Freemasonry? Freemasonry is known as, according to Masonic texts, “a beautiful system of Morality veiled in Allegory and illustrated by Symbols.” Also called “the Craft,” Freemasonry is a wonderful worldwide movement of fraternity, tolerance, and philanthropy. Altruism is not always an easy virtue to express individually. People are focused on their own difficulties, problems, or pain. Most of the time, it is difficult for us to forget our personal feelings and consider those of other people. Sometimes it is even difficult to go beyond challenges of religion, culture, age, color, status, and profession to remember that every human being has fundamental rights to life, liberty, and happiness; to the freedom to practice his or her beliefs; and to have access to education, wellness, and opportunities for self-development and growth.

It is only too human, too natural, to focus on immediate personal needs. To surmount this reaction, humanity’s leaders understood a long time ago that it is necessary to live by laws and ideals conceived with the vision of an ever more glorious future. Then, a kind of competitiveness occurs, helping each person to become better and to remember that this work must be constant.

Freemasonry represents and demonstrates this principle. It helps every initiate to work on one’s self to become better and to put the good of all before his or her own needs. Freemasonry shows to the world that an action like that is possible between brethren, and also between them and those who are not initiated but are in need. Then it is seen that this effort is accessible to every human being and is actually intrinsic to our continued advancement.

Even more, Freemasonry’s longevity reveals that this way is an essential key to survival and progress. There is not an epoch when it would be more important than the others. Human nature has been the same, whatever the period of history. Today, technological powers increase the dangers of human errors, and the stakes have become total and planetary. Any sectarian deviance or expression of intolerance is immediately felt worldwide. You begin understanding that your individual acts may result in unlimited repercussions. See, for example, the problem of climate change and the case for climatic modifications, and observe the divisions between those who resist the obvious need for action and those who accept the challenge of taking corrective action. The characteristics of the human being I described before are always the same. Freemasonry has no claim to find answers to all these questions, but the consequence of its teachings and its rituals makes the appropriate answers appear. Here is a manifestation of the extraordinary power of this tradition to give an understanding of what is right, and to make you capable of putting it into practice and using it in every moment of your life. These ideas are essential, and they constitute the moral pedestal of Freemasonry and its philanthropic action.

To most, the rituals and private customs of this brotherhood have long seemed strange. The symbols used in Masonic myths do not seem always useful in relation to the ambitious and important role I’ve foreseen and described. What relationship can exist between being initiated in a very strange ceremony, invoking strange and exotic names that may not be understood, and those Masons known as Shriners? Why would these Shriners wear such colorful and fanciful clothing if the goal is to find inner simplicity and learn to be a better person? Well, Freemasons operate many of the world’s greatest charitable organizations. The best known is the Shriners, with their circuses, their colorful parades, and their work on behalf of physically challenged children through the Shriners Children’s Hospitals. Lesser known is the fact that each Shriner must be a Freemason before being becoming a Shriner.

Of course, appearances can be misleading. Rituals perpetuated carefully, inherited from ancient traditions, are not always what they seem to be. Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol shows very well that the history of the brotherhood doesn’t start or stop at the time of the master-builders of the cathedrals in Europe as the Masonic mythology says. Even if the most visible symbols refer to it (the square, compass, level, rule, etc.), many of them are really more ancient.

You must look in the ancient places where the first civilizations of humanity appeared. It is symbolically (or actually) necessary to walk on the rich lands of Chaldea, mysterious Egypt, intellectually stimulating Greece, the glorious enlightenment of the Italian Renaissance, and empowering Elizabethan England to understand how the ancient initiations have been perpetuated. It is necessary to “visit” these ancient temples and open secret and sacred books to begin to discover the true origin of Freemasonry.

The relationship between Freemasonry and symbols is fundamental. It has been known for a long time that the mind’s powers, rediscovered today, are the central concerns of the initiates. Ritual processes are the visible manifestation of the invisible world as understood by the ancient adepts of these traditions. Their inner experience of the different realities of the world and their perception of hidden powers of the psyche allowed them to create efficient transformative practices. What is now called noetic science has long known that you use only a little part of your mind’s powers. Most of these innate abilities remain unawakened and undeveloped. The ancient adepts knew this reality and, without the obstacles experienced in our culture and our time, they used these abilities and organized a specific process for their development. But just like any tool, this knowledge can be used for weal, or it can be used for woe.

It is for this reason that the moral commitment of the initiate is key. This morality must imperatively be linked to the development of your hidden abilities. For centuries, this rule remained central in any initiatic society.

You can imagine that such training cannot be made in a single step. It is necessary to reveal the truth gradually through progressive training. It is for this reason that degrees were developed, allowing us to practice in complete safety. Supervision by experienced initiates validated this quality of transmission. In fact, the teaching received, which opens our consciousness, cannot be limited to the present life. This is only a visible exterior, an envelope that contains much more. The perception of our unearthly and invisible spirit shows us inevitably that the strongest existential anxiety of humanity is the fear of death (or more precisely, the belief in interrogation and review of life after death).

The ancient initiates did not provide only a philosophical essay on the different hypotheses you can make on this life after death. Knowing how those processes work in our mind, they created ritual practices, allowing us to have a real experience of this state of consciousness, without having to die physically. The goal was to put a foot on “the other side” and, with this experience, erase the common anxiety we all have and replace it with knowledge. These processes were secretly transmitted. Amid the wonderful encounters with many different ancient cultures, the city of Alexandria in Egypt became the birthplace for the Hermetic Tradition, one of the major traditions that later gave us Freemasonry. It is Hermeticism that developed this deep respect for every religion, seeing in each of them an aspect of the supreme truth. It is Hermeticism that transmitted the understanding of ritual structure and explained how to use it.

In any initiatic tradition, there are group rituals and practices, as well as individual ones. This is also the case in Freemasonry. The initiations can create in the candidate a particular state of consciousness. This is an important step. But after that, it is the progressive practices that allow him to learn how to manipulate these “inner vibrations” and then to advance in using these inner powers. This knowledge is less known and rarely given out. Surprisingly, Dan Brown’s novel refers to it often and you can believe that, perhaps, the author intuitively has perceived important realities of this tradition.

Every period of history gives different challenges. Those problems we are living through now give us the opportunity to accept the ways they work on us and take our destiny in hand.

The work in this book, while explaining the most significant elements of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, will allow you to actually experience this initiatic transmission. It is time to move beyond historical and philosophical speech and give you the opportunity to act. The rituals known as the Scottish Rite contain in themselves practical and ritual keys immediately useful for people initiated or not. I will provide you with several opportunities to begin your own journey through the mysterious staircase, giving you enlightenment and control of your life here and now!

These two aspects, philanthropic and initiatic, will immediately give you a wonderful key to know divinity (inside and outside), to truly practice tolerance, and to become more and more capable of using your very real innate abilities.