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

From the Secret Stone to the Sacred Temple
The Masonic Tradition

You may wonder what you have in common with these master-builders and this magnificent myth. Contemporary Freemasons are not necessarily Christians or Jews. You need to ask what practical value a myth such as this one, so rooted in the biblical text, can have for you.

As I said before, any myth has universal consequences. It uses symbols and archetypes present in different cultures and that is why such a myth can transcend historical and anecdotal matters. It is necessary to see through the myth, much as you look at a landscape through a dusty window. The dust and dirt, and visible defects in the window glass, are part of what you see. However, you know that the view through the glass of the window is something different than directly seeing the landscape. Both the landscape and the image through the window glass each have their own reality, but the one you are looking for in the myth is the primary source located in the landscape, not that seen through the window. That’s how you must see the myth I tell. I will not explain right now the nature of the symbols and their relationship to the ritual. To give light to this tradition that lives today in the lodges, I have to be able to go beyond the surface of the story. For that, it is necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff and to try to understand what the ancient masters wanted to tell.

The Masonic model of the master-builders of the Temple is interesting, but in all honesty it seems completely anecdotal, like a delightful fairy tale from your childhood when you played at building sand castles. It is very entertaining to choose a few simple objects and symbols and then imagine that they might contain a great secret.

Now let me take a different perspective and ask these questions: Is it seriously possible to imagine that universal secrets are hidden behind a square, a compass, or a rule? Can you really believe that Freemasonry set up a worldwide conspiracy among the master-builders of cathedrals? What would be the reason? It may seem difficult to follow Dan Brown’s logic and believe that this noble fraternity, which continuously repeats an old-fashioned ritual, is capable of leading us to the discovery of an immemorial secret linked to the nature of God.

You are facing a problem if you want to go behind the veil of appearances. The relationship between the master-builders’ guilds of the Middle Ages and Freemasonry is well established. However, you can see clearly presented in The Lost Symbol novel, as in the foundation myth, that moral requirements are present. And once again it’s easy to see that a moral attitude has few things in common with the worker who builds a temple or a house. The honesty you would expect from a house builder would be honesty in relation to the contract signed. But to know if this worker has an inner spiritual morality is something different. Common sense clearly shows us that Freemasonry is something different, on another level. Considering the number of direct or indirect allusions to esoteric and spiritual traditions, there’s no doubt that I am speaking of this higher dimension. The presentation of Freemasonry you can see in the tradition and in the novel is this:

For the first step, you can just listen to the subtleties expressed in the novel, especially about the origins of stonemason guilds. But one of the fundamental points of the novel is not directly about the worker, but the material he uses—in other words, about the nature of the “stone.” In the whole Western esoteric tradition, the nature of the stone is central. But not just any stone; it is the one used in alchemy. This aspect is expressed in the tradition of the philosopher’s stone, an alchemical substance that could transmute lead into gold and even confer immortality to its owner.

Alchemy has principally two appearances: the one called the internal, and the second called the external (plant and mineral) alchemy. For now I am speaking about the internal or spiritual alchemy, which looks for the hidden stone within in order to work on it.

The short description of the philosopher’s stone doesn’t say enough about the true essence of the stone, but its myths bring us back to an ancient time in the Middle East, at the origin of humanity. The original myth gives us an indication of the origin of the revelation, God, but seems not able to go further. However, the traditional texts have not been lost. One of them reveals an essential key for understanding the search for the philosopher’s stone, which will become the cornerstone on which you will raise the temple. Then you will be able to analyze more precisely the hidden characteristics of the Masonic initiation ritual and understand why Freemasonry can be so useful and yet so subversive.

Plotinus, one of the Masters of the Neoplatonic Hermetic Tradition (which I will define precisely later), wrote a set of these traditional texts, called the Enneads. The sixth book of this group of texts is titled Beauty. In this text, there is an amazing passage:

And this inner vision, what is its operation? [. . .] But how are you to see into a virtuous soul and know its loveliness?

Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smooths there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.[2]

What Plotinus shows us here in a wonderful way is that you are this stone. It is necessary to turn your vision inside you, to be interiorized, to look for the Beauty. If it does not appear immediately, it is necessary to act and begin to work on the raw stone that you are, to cut it, to fashion it as the cutter or the sculptor is doing, in order to obtain a perfect stone illustration of your moral improvement. I am speaking here about the real work of the cutter, but the moral aspect is now explicit. It is necessary to work “until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness.”

You can find this idea of Beauty also in the Bible, but not really with the same meaning. Beauty is often connected to woman (principally her face), sometimes to God, and also to the nature of man before he was banished from heaven’s garden, as you can read in this quotation from Ezekiel:

“The word of the Lord came to me. He said: Son of man, sing this sad song about the king of Tyre. Say to him, ’This is what the Lord God says: You were the perfect man so full of wisdom and perfectly handsome. You were in Eden, the garden of God. [. . .]

’Your business brought you many riches. But they also put cruelty inside you, and you sinned.

’So I treated you like something unclean and threw you off the mountain of God. [. . .]

’Your beauty made you proud. Your glory ruined your wisdom.’”[3]

Without debating the goodness of God, you can see in this quotation that Beauty is the expression of the divine world and the essence of man when he was in the Garden. Once banished and exiled, the king’s beauty is no more than mere external beauty. So, it is very important to know which stone Plotinus was talking about. The hermetic principles expressed by Dan Brown indicate that it is the hidden stone of the philosophers (alchemists).

The practice of the sculpture will give you an interesting indication. To carve a statue in a block of stone, you have two possibilities: (1) impose a form on to the stone, or (2) feel the statue that lives inside the block and cut the stone to liberate the figure that is already inside to appear. You reveal it. So, the goal is not to create a figure with the stone, but to realize the inner truth and beauty you have to unveil, and bring it to light.

Figure 3: Bust of Plato in the Library of the Scottish Rite, Washington DC

(House of the Temple, AASR-SJ, USA)

This is what Plato says clearly. (Let us remember that Plato can be considered as the founder of philosophy. His bust is in the House of the Temple, which is the heart of the Scottish Rite in Washington DC.) In his famous text The Republic he writes:

The soul, I said, being, as is now proven, immortal. [. . .] Her immortality is demonstrated by the previous argument, and there are many other proofs; but to see her as she really is, not as we now behold her, marred by communion with the body and other miseries, you must contemplate her with the eye of reason, in her original purity; and then her beauty will be revealed, and justice and injustice and all the things which we have described will be manifested more clearly. Thus far, we have spoken the truth concerning her as she appears at present, but we must remember also that we have seen her only in a condition which may be compared to that of the sea-god Glaucus, whose original image can hardly be discerned because his natural members are broken off and crushed and damaged by the waves in all sorts of ways, and incrustations have grown over them of seaweed and shells and stones, so that he is more like some monster than he is to his own natural form. And the soul which we behold is in a similar condition, disfigured by ten thousand ills.

[. . .] How different she would become if wholly following this superior principle, and borne by a divine impulse out of the ocean in which she now is, and disengaged from the stones and shells and things of earth and rock which in wild variety spring up around her because she feeds upon earth, and is overgrown by the good things of this life as they are termed: then you would see her as she is, and know whether she has one shape only or many, or what her nature is. Of her affections and of the forms which she takes in this present life I think that we have now said enough.[4]

Here is the secret stone I spoke about, the stone that is inside us since immemorial time, the stone you can feel without knowing it: the secret stone is the soul! You should not be surprised that Dan Brown makes a digression in his novel about the subject of the reality of the soul in your body. Its existence explains why the question of life after death is mentioned in the novel. Of course, the author doesn’t write a lot about this notion, but it is implicit in The Lost Symbol. You must now understand what it says about your destiny and the meaning of your existence.

But before that, it is important to notice that this notion has been present in Freemasonry since the creation of this fraternity in its speculative constitution. The Masters who created Freemasonry used the myths of their culture, but introduced significant elements of its true origins to help us to find them. Among the fundamental elements of Freemasonry you can find that of “Beauty.” Written in the most ancient Masonic instructions of the eighteenth century, we find the following statements:

Q. What supports your Lodge?

A. Three great Pillars.

Q. What are their names?

A. Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty.

A Masonic writer, Dr. Samuel Hemming, wrote in his Lectures, adopted by the Grand Lodge of England in 1813: “Our institution is said to be supported by Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty, Wisdom to contrive, Strength to support, and Beauty to adorn. Wisdom to direct us in all our undertakings, Strength to support us in all our difficulties, and Beauty to adorn the inward man.”

Finally, you can see that the two other pillars of Freemasonry are also present in the Enneads of Plotinus. They are always used in the same perspective, to emphasize the essence of soul and the moral qualities that must be linked to it. For wisdom, Plotinus said:

For, as the ancient teaching was, moral-discipline and courage and every virtue, not even excepting Wisdom itself, all is purification.

[...] And Wisdom is but the Act of the Intellectual-Principle withdrawn from the lower places and leading the Soul to the Above.[5]

And for Strength he wrote:

If all this be true, we cannot be, ourselves, the source of Evil, we are not evil in ourselves; Evil was before we came to be; the Evil which holds men down and binds them against their will; and for those that have the strength—not found in all men, it is true—there is a deliverance from the evils that have found lodgment in the soul.[6]

So it is clear here that these elements present from the birth of speculative Freemasonry are fundamental in order to understand the true objective of the Craft.

It is necessary now to see why this secret stone, the soul, is imprisoned in you, what you can deduce from this situation, and what the Masonic way can propose to perform the inner work.

It is also necessary to go deep inside your own self to find the solution and listen to the way of the ancient Masters who left these indications for you.

According to the Neoplatonic tradition (to which Plotinus belongs), your being is composed of two parts: the first is spiritual and invisible, and the second is material and visible. Of course, the ancient philosophers and initiates went further than this duality, but it is this duality that is fundamental. The soul is undying and belongs to the divine world; on the other hand, the body is material and belongs to the physical world. There is no need to go back to the beginning with the insolvable question of the emergence of an undying soul. It is enough to believe it was with the first impulse of the Great Architect of the Universe that souls appeared in the upper planes that I call the divine realms.

In its evolution, the soul was embodied in the physical envelope. That means that the soul descended through the different veils of the cosmos represented by the ancients as the zodiac and the seven traditional planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon). Going through each of these levels, the soul was not transformed. The soul remained what it was, but was surrounded by more and more dense envelopes, much as shellfish and other concretions covered the statue thrown in the bottom of the sea in the example given by Plato. So there is no moral sin in this descent, but only a consequence of the progression of soul.

So, you are in a situation in which your soul lost its original clear vision. Now your soul must try to see through the dense veils of character and influences it received. As Freemasons say, you are in the darkness and looking for the light: the shine of the ideal, harmonious, and divine world. You are trying to return to the place you came from.

This is the reason why Freemasonry asks you to believe in a supreme being and at the same time not to claim a specific faith. Freemasonry is religious in the most etymological meaning. Understanding this ancient doctrine, its founders knew that it was necessary to remember this ancient origin. At the same time, it was important not to be locked in temporal and political religious dogmas but to be free to pursue one’s own spiritual vision.

It is necessary to remember your divine origin and to feel the inner desire coming from the soul. The ancient masters said this desire is felt very deeply in the heart of your soul and comes from an unconscious memory of the world that is really yours. You keep in your inner being a picture of what you saw there and how you lived. This is the place where you will return after your death, after the disappearance of your physical body. The Neoplatonist says you will not stay in this divine world but will come back to this material world where you learn by experiment, by trial and error. The ancient initiates knew and taught what they called the metempsychosis (reincarnation), undoubtedly a long time before the Far East even began speaking about it.

But without going so far, your characteristic of being dual, both spiritual and material at the same time, calls for you to move aside the veils of the illusions of this world to express as best you can the divine light you have inside you. As Plotinus said, you must take the tools of the sculptor and cut away those crusts surrounding you to reveal the divine statue of your soul.

You must work on your secret stone in order to reveal it to yourself and to the world. This is the first step of the Masonic work and the first act of a sculptor. This perfect stone, your soul, is at the same time the cornerstone of the temple. It is from it and on it that we will be able to lean in order to build the temple.

In the text of the Gospels you can read this sentence credited to Jesus: “I can destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.”[7] Without any doubt, the temple of this text is your own being. The nuance is important and it is necessary to emphasize it. The goals of Freemasonry are to build, to organize order above chaos and not the opposite. The purpose can’t be to reject, banish, or criticize. You must choose, purify, order, and build. As I just pointed out, these purposes can be established upon the cornerstone, from the desire of your soul.

As you saw in the founder myth of Freemasonry, the building of the Temple of Jerusalem consists of two parts: the material one with the magnificence and the beauty of the Temple, but also the subtle part that is the presence of the divine. It means that the beauty of the Temple expresses the beauty of the divine. This law common to all Master architects and builders in all epochs gives us a fundamental key of the Freemasonry Order: the sacred temple can’t be built without the help of the physical elements that constitute it!

Your body must not be rejected or considered as a curse or obstacle. On the contrary, from its origins Freemasonry taught that the body is a blessing for the soul. Your physical envelope can express by its acts the inner beauty of the soul, which is divine. Freemasons are not monks living with the secret desire to leave the world and be in a place far from everything. Freemasons live and work in this world because they know that, like the body, the physical world is the best and most beautiful way to express the divine that is inside us and in the universe! For that, the inner work and the construction of our temple according to the rules of beauty and harmony based on moral commitments are the fundamental elements.

Here is the basic rule of the temple, heart of the Masonic code: learn continuously to be better! Thus can be built the sacred temple.

But, like every master-builder and architect, you must discover and learn the divine laws of harmony, beauty, wisdom, and force. These laws are present in the Masonic symbols and in all worship in all ages. However, your understanding of the laws is not immediate because, as I said before, your vision is obscured by the veils of illusion. Therefore it is necessary to move forward for a while on the other side of the veil (or mirror) in order to catch sight of the divine plan, the afterlife. It is necessary that, in this unique moment and these specific conditions, someone takes your hand and helps you to cross this threshold. With this help you will be able to understand and accomplish your destiny. This step is the initiation!

The ancient Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic philosophies organized this process, which you can find partly in Freemasonry. The Master Initiate must give a helping hand to the apprentice (or companion) and help him or her to symbolically step across the doors of death. To philosophize is to learn to die, said Socrates, the master of Plato. To philosophize is to liberate the soul and to allow it to see beyond, to perceive the other plan. To be initiated is to learn how to die.

But it’s important not to make a mistake in thinking that it would be necessary to commit some strange suicide in order to learn this secret. It is absolutely the opposite. Every Western initiate of this tradition always forbade suicide, because as I said, the temple you erect is here and now. It is your physical body and the body of the society. You learn by living your term of life, and fulfilling your life’s purpose.

The initiatic process, on which I will speak further, gives this privilege: make the inner experience of contact with the soul and with the other side of reality. It is from this instant that you will understand how to rebuild the temple. The secret of the initiation and of the master-builder (as for a shaman) is to see the temple destroyed, razed to the ground, and to know which is the stone that you will be able to use in order to rebuild the temple.

Then it was obvious that this myth of death and resurrection had to be at the heart of Freemasonry because it constituted the heart of the initiatic quest. The inspiration was that of the Egyptian traditions. So appeared the myth of Hiram, the eternal master-builder, dying at the hand of ruffians, experiencing chaos and destruction, to come back to life and rebuild the temple, its body on the cornerstone of his soul hidden in the depths of the ruins. Revived Hiram is revived Osiris, and it is what these two myths will show us.