A few months ago, I was asked to collaborate on writing a syllabus for those who want to understand Masonic symbolism. A small group of us met to discuss the idea.
The roots of Freemasonry are generally traced back to 1400 CE, specifically to various texts written and preserved by stonemasons in England. Looking at artifacts and literature in a recent issue of Fraternal Review, I suggested that we can plausibly, conservatively (not in the political sense of the word), trace the historical roots of Freemasonry back several centuries further, to stonemasonry in Anglo-Saxon England. (By “roots of Freemasonry I mean, simply, stonemasonry as the conduit for certain esoteric knowledge or “Mysteries.”)
Yet, in our short meeting, the discussion almost immediately turned to Kabbalah and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as if these can explain the symbols of an initiatic society that grew, largely organically, over the centuries, since the medieval period.
One of those gathered suggested that symbols are “universal.” “The sun is the sun,” he said.
True. And, yet, in different cultures, the sun symbolizes different (and even opposite) things.
Yes, the sun has always been recognized as emitting heat and light. But these are experienced very differently in freezing northern countries than they are in hotter countries.
Hence, in many ancient traditions, the sun was male (Helios, Ra, Sol Invictus, etc.), whereas, in Anglo-Saxon England, it was female. A sun god might be fiery and martial, but a sun goddess might be nurturing and life-giving.
Hence, the Old English Rune Poem speaks of the sun as a “blessing to all.” The sun is also implicitly (or esoterically) contrasted with the torch (O.E., Cen) that burns inside the hall, where the elite come together.
Whether it’s the O.E.R.P., the Masonic Ritual, or even the oeuvre of a poet or artist, things that last have their own internal logic. They have their own genius.
“Esoteric” refers to the “inner” meaning. We have to go within any tradition to understand it. It has to be penetrated before the tradition or oeuvre can be truly understood.
Trying to understand it by exploring a more complex and secretive external (exoteric, “outer”) tradition is the opposite of esotericism. Mostly, it leads to confusion, as the initiate of several Orders tries to understand why a symbol (e.g., the Rosy Cross) in one system is different to the same, or a similar, symbol in another system.
Worse, the leaders of such groups will often try to tell you that they are uniquely qualified to interpret other traditions. They’re not. They will also tell you that their particular tradition is the most authentic or ancient. It almost certainly isn’t.
The habit of constantly comparing systems keeps the student (and, despite his title, even the head of any system) on the outskirts of them all, for he must recognize only the most trivial similarities between them. And he or she must ignore their unique histories and very different core meanings.
Let’s compare the esoteric system to a lover. If you’re dating, you can either view your new romantic partner as being “just like” your previous partners (which probably means you’re projecting your own biases and issues onto them) and look for proof of said similarities. Or you can get to know them for who they are “in themselves.”
Which approach will lead you to the truth, to the depths of their soul and yours, and, yet, to the ecstatic highs of love?
Why do so many people find themselves trapped on the esoteric merry-go-round, endlessly referring to one system after another, secretly dissatisfied with them all? In probably all cases, they lack the essential experience that makes sense of their tradition(s).
In a vision, St. Teresa beheld a beautiful angel. He penetrated her body with a golden spear. Teresa said that, when the angel drew out the spear, she was,
“… all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.”
The saint did not need the Kabbalah (Christian, Hermetic, etc.), or the correspondences of color, crystals, planets, and letters, to experience what seemed to be beyond human consciousness itself. She lived with what the Portuguese call saudade, a sweet melancholy or a longing (for God) that transformed life itself.
The consciousness has to be forged anew in the “fire” of the sacred to understand its symbols and language.
Hence, a person cannot understand a love poem if he or she has never experienced love.
Most people today have felt not even the tiniest fraction of what St. Teresa experienced. It is alien to them. So, to them, she is simply “mad” or “stupid.”
Notably, although it goes uncommented upon, something counterintuitive (including to the modern esotericist) occurs in Freemasonry: The initiate is led through the ritual first. Only after, does he learn the meaning of everything that occurred during the ritual. And, only after, are the Masonic symbols explained to him.
Ecstatic experience first, the language of the ecstatic later.
Yet, the esoteric has largely been divorced from the ecstatic, not least of all because esotericists themselves have come to study symbols the way that academics study their subjects; not with St. Teresa’s “fire” but, rather, with cool detachment, and in the hope of being recognized as something of an intellectual.
Perhaps surprisingly, considering his studies of shamanism, anthropologist Mircea Eliade disliked modern occultism. Yet, he believed that revelations of the Mysteries could be found outside of the world of Initiatic Orders. Hence, he says in his Rites and Symbols of Initiation,
“…the few modern works in which initiatory themes are discernible—James Joyce’s Ulysses, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land—were created by writers and artists who make no claim to have been initiated and who belong to no occult circle.”
The Mysteries have always been associated with poetry, the oracular, the power of speech and language, etc. Even without initiation, the poetic genius can sometimes perceive them. Even the great secular poet penetrates reality to a greater degree than the average man.
If you want to penetrate the Mysteries, you must, as Yukio Mishima once said, first “turn your life into a line of poetry.”
This means immersing yourself in an inner ecstasy to such a degree that you are able to discern poetic connections between things, even though they shall seem unconnected to others.
Moreover, it means that you will have the power to wind the threads of Fate together, to draw them, taut, as a bowstring, and direct the arrow of Destiny.