Part 21 (1/2)
Those only who feel a deep interest and affection for this world will work resolutely for its amelioration; those whose affections are transferred to Heaven, easily acquiesce in the miseries of earth, deeming them hopeless, befitting, and ordained; and console themselves with the idea of the amends which are one day to be theirs. It is a sad truth, that those most decidedly given to spiritual contemplation, and to making religion rule in their hearts, are often most apathetic toward all improvement of this world's systems, and in many cases virtual conservatives of evil, and hostile to political and social reform, as diverting men's energies from eternity.
The Mason does not war with his own instincts, macerate the body into weakness and disorder, and disparage what he sees to be beautiful, knows to be wonderful, and feels to be unspeakably dear and fascinating.
He does not put aside the nature which G.o.d has given him, to struggle after one which He has _not_ bestowed. He knows that man is sent into the world, not a spiritual, but a composite being, made up of body and mind, the body having, as is fit and needful in a material world, its full, rightful, and allotted share. His life is guided by a full recognition of this fact. He does not deny it in bold words, and admit it in weaknesses and inevitable failings. He believes that his spirituality will come in the next stage of his being, when he puts on the spiritual body; that his body will be dropped at death; and that, until then, G.o.d meant it to be commanded and controlled, but not neglected, despised, or ignored by the soul, under pain of heavy consequences.
Yet the Mason is not indifferent as to the fate of the soul, after its present life, as to its continued and eternal being, and the character of the scenes in which that being will be fully developed. These are to him topics of the profoundest interest, and the most enn.o.bling and refining contemplation. They occupy much of his leisure; and as he becomes familiar with the sorrows and calamities of this life, as his hopes are disappointed and his visions of happiness here fade away; when life has wearied him in its race of hours; when he is hara.s.sed and toil-worn, and the burden of his years weighs heavy on him, the balance of attraction gradually inclines in favor of another life; and he clings to his lofty speculations with a tenacity of interest which needs no injunction, and will listen to no prohibition. They are the consoling privilege of the aspiring, the wayworn, the weary, and the bereaved.
To him the contemplation of the Future lets in light upon the Present, and develops the higher portions of his nature. He endeavors rightly to adjust the respective claims of Heaven and earth upon his time and thought, so as to give the proper proportions thereof to performing the duties and entering into the interests of this world, and to preparation for a better; to the cultivation and purification of his own character, and to the public service of his fellow-men.
The Mason does not dogmatize, but entertaining and uttering his own convictions, he leaves everyone else free to do the same; and only hopes that the time will come, even if after the lapse of ages, when all men shall form one great family of brethren, and one law alone, the law of love, shall govern G.o.d's whole Universe.
Believe as you may, my brother; if the Universe is not, to you, without a G.o.d, and if man is not like the beast that perishes, but hath an immortal soul, we welcome you among us, to wear, as we wear, with humility, and conscious of your demerits and shortcomings, the t.i.tle of Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason.
It was not without a secret meaning, that _twelve_ was the number of the Apostles of Christ, and _seventy-two_ that of his Disciples: that John addressed his rebukes and menaces to the _Seven_ churches, the number of the Archangels and the Planets. At Babylon were the Seven Stages of Bersippa, a pyramid of Seven stories, and at Ecbatana Seven concentric inclosures, each of a different color. Thebes also had Seven gates, and the same number is repeated again and again in the account of the flood.
The Sephiroth, or Emanations, _ten_ in number, three in one cla.s.s, and seven in the other, repeat the mystic numbers of Pythagoras. Seven Amschaspands or planetary spirits were invoked with Ormuzd: Seven inferior Ris.h.i.+s of Hindustan were saved with the head of their family in an ark: and Seven ancient personages alone returned with the British just man, Hu, from the dale of the grievous waters. There were Seven Heliadae, whose father Helias, or the Sun, once crossed the sea in a golden cup; Seven t.i.tans, children of the older t.i.tan, Kronos or Saturn; Seven Corybantes; and Seven Cabiri, sons of Sydyk; Seven primeval Celestial spirits of the j.a.panese, and Seven Karfesters who escaped from the deluge and began to be the parents of a new race, on the summit of Mount Albordi. Seven Cyclopes, also, built the walls of Tiryus.
Celsus, as quoted by Origen, tells us that the Persians represented by symbols the two-fold motion of the stars, fixed and planetary, and the pa.s.sage of the Soul through their successive spheres. They erected in their holy caves, in which the mystic rites of the Mithriac Initiations were practised, what he denominates a high _ladder_, on the Seven steps of which were Seven gates or portals, according to the number of the Seven princ.i.p.al heavenly bodies. Through these the aspirants pa.s.sed, until they reached the summit of the whole; and this pa.s.sage was styled a transmigration through the spheres.
Jacob saw in his dream a _ladder_ planted or set on the earth, and its top reaching to Heaven, and the Malaki Alohim ascending and descending on it, and above it stood IHUH, declaring Himself to be Ihuh-Alhi Abraham. The word translated _ladder_, is [Hebrew: ???] _Salam_, from [Hebrew: ???], _Salal_, raised, elevated, reared up, exalted, piled up into a heap, _Aggeravit_. [Hebrew: ????] Salalah, means a heap, rampart, or other acc.u.mulation of earth or stone, artificially made; and [Hebrew: ???], _Salaa_ or _Salo_, is a rock or cliff or boulder, and the name of the city of Petra. There is no ancient Hebrew word to designate a pyramid.
The symbolic mountain Meru was ascended by Seven steps or stages; and all the pyramids and artificial tumuli and hillocks thrown up in flat countries were imitations of this fabulous and mystic mountain, for purposes of wors.h.i.+p. These were the ”High Places” so often mentioned in the Hebrew books, on which the idolaters sacrificed to foreign G.o.ds.
The pyramids were sometimes square, and sometimes round. The sacred Babylonian tower [[Hebrew: ????], Magdol], dedicated to the great Father Bal, was an artificial hill, of pyramidal shape, and Seven stages, built of brick, and each stage of a different color, representing the Seven planetary spheres by the appropriate color of each planet. Meru itself was said to be a single mountain, terminating in three peaks, and thus a symbol of the Trimurti. The great PaG.o.da at Tanjore was of six stories, surmounted by a temple as the seventh, and on this three spires or towers. An ancient paG.o.da at Deogur was surmounted by a tower, sustaining the mystic egg and a trident. Herodotus tells us that the Temple of Bal at Babylon was a tower composed of Seven towers, resting on an eighth that served as basis, and successively diminis.h.i.+ng in size from the bottom to the top; and Strabo tells us it was a pyramid.
Faber thinks that the Mithriac _ladder_ was really a pyramid with Seven stages, each provided with a narrow door or aperture, through each of which doors the aspirant pa.s.sed, to reach the summit, and then descended through similar doors on the opposite side of the pyramid; the ascent and descent of the Soul being thus represented.
Each Mithriac cave and all the most ancient temples were intended to symbolize the Universe, which itself was habitually called the Temple and habitation of Deity. Every temple was the world in miniature; and so the whole world was one grand temple. The most ancient temples were roofless; and therefore the Persians, Celts, and Scythians strongly disliked artificial covered edifices. Cicero says that Xerxes burned the Grecian temples, on the express ground that the whole world was the Magnificent Temple and Habitation of the Supreme Deity. Macrobius says that the entire Universe was judiciously deemed by many the Temple of G.o.d. Plato p.r.o.nounced the real Temple of the Deity to be the world; and Herac.l.i.tus declared that the Universe, variegated with animals and plants and stars was the only genuine Temple of the Divinity.
How completely the Temple of Solomon was symbolic, is manifest, not only from the continual reproduction in it of the sacred numbers and of astrological symbols in the historical descriptions of it; but also, and yet more, from the details of the imaginary reconstructed edifice, seen by Ezekiel in his vision. The Apocalypse completes the demonstration, and shows the kabalistic meanings of the whole. The Symbola Architectonica are found on the most ancient edifices; and these mathematical figures and instruments, adopted by the Templars, and identical with those on the gnostic seals and abraxae, connect their dogma with the Chaldaic, Syriac, and Egyptian Oriental philosophy. The secret Pythagorean doctrines of numbers were preserved by the monks of Thibet, by the Hierophants of Egypt and Eleusis, at Jerusalem, and in the circular Chapters of the Druids; and they are especially consecrated in that mysterious book, the Apocalypse of Saint John.
All temples were surrounded by pillars, recording the number of the constellations, the signs of the zodiac, or the cycles of the planets; and each one was a microcosm or symbol of the Universe, having for roof or ceiling the starred vault of Heaven.
All temples were originally open at the top, having for roof the sky.
Twelve pillars described the belt of the zodiac. Whatever the number of the pillars, they were mystical everywhere. At Abury, the Druidic temple reproduced all the cycles by its columns. Around the temples of Chilminar in Persia, of Baalbec, and of Tukhti Schlomoh in Tartary, on the frontier of China, stood _forty_ pillars. On each side of the temple at Paestum were fourteen, recording the Egyptian cycle of the dark and light sides of the moon, as described by Plutarch; the whole thirty-eight that surrounded them recording the two meteoric cycles so often found in the Druidic temples.
The theatre built by Scaurus, in Greece, was surrounded by 360 columns; the Temple at Mecca, and that at Iona in Scotland by 360 stones.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
MORALS AND DOGMA
CHAPTER OF ROSE CROIX
[Ill.u.s.tration]
XV.