The conception of the Builder is basic
and everywhere manifest in Freemasonry.
Hiram, the Master Builder, who drew the
plans of the temple and day by day placed
the "designs on the trestleboard", is taken
as a human symbol of the Designer and
Creator of the Cosmos. The relation of
Hiram to the Temple symbolizes the relation
of the G. A. 0. T. U. to the Universe
itself.
In the building of the Temple the work
of construction fell to the Entered Apprentices
and Fellowcrafts. When the Temple
was completed these also were to become
Masters and receive the Word. The progressive
science of human life, and the
natural, orderly and progressive relation
of man to God, were thus involved and
ingrained, without dogmatizing or theologizing.
It was illustrated and left to the
apprehension and intelligence of the candidate.
This method of teaching, and the lesson
taught, is the supremacy of human wisdom.
It involves the idea of progressive intelligence
which, loyal to truth, duty and obligation,
assures the higher and still higher
evolution of man. It is based on the
facts of human observation and experience.
Man is an Individual Intelligence; God
the Universal Intelligence. The growth
of intelligence in man; his conformity to
law and order; his allegiance to duty and
obligation ; his proficiency in all preceding
work or degrees give him the right, and
secure for him the benefit of higher degrees
of knowledge, power and privilege.
This is not "argued out". It is illustrated
by a personal experience, and demonstrated
at every step. The personal experience
that is thus secured brings the
man constantly nearer to the Master, as it
brings the Master nearer to God.
What our ancient brethren in the Greater
Mysteries called "the Immortal Gods",
were simply perfected by this normal human
evolution. " First a man, then a
Master, then a God.
The theologians who have made such a
caricature or a fetish of Jesus, were ignorant
of this normal, progressive, higher
evolution of man. No man of intelligence
nowadays will assume that the practice of
the precepts under consideration can have
any other result than this higher evolution.
Neither can he determine any limits to the
process and possibilities of such evolution,
Hence, the theologian has created an impassable
gulf between the man Jesus and
the Christ ; or between man and God ; thus
annulling the wages of an upright life. To
patch up the inconsistency and bridge the
gulf thus created, they invented the Vicarious
Atonement, the application of which
Clericalism proceeded to preempt and to
monopolize. Preach and theorize as they
may, they make an upright life and a dissolute
one practically equal.
The just and upright man, who, nevertheless,
denies the creed and refuses tithes
for Mass, if murdered by a villain, or by
priests under the charge of heresy, is
bound for hades; while his murderer, by
confession and "fixing" it up with the
cleric, gains absolution and goes to heaven.
No greater abomination in morals was
ever practiced upon the children of men.
The "sinner" sees the point, compromises
with his conscience and his sense of personal
responsibility, and "takes his
chances". Such a doctrine can have but
one result, viz., to blunt the moral sense.
Strictly speaking, there is no theology
in Freemasonry. It does not speculate regarding
the Being of God. It recognizes
certain self-evident propositions. As Intelligence
designs the Temple, so Intelligence
designs, builds, governs and beautifies
the Universe. The analogy is self-evident.
What Intelligence is, we do not know.
What it does, we see everywhere around
us. We see how it grows, to what uses it
can be applied, and how the highest and
noblest results can be attained. We learn
this beyond all controversy from the facts
of human experience.
Selfishness, debauchery and uncharitableness
degrade man toward the brute.
Self-control, the recognition of personal
responsibility and loving-kindness lead
man upward to Mastership and toward
Divinity.
The analogy is complete between man as
the builder of character through self-control;
man, the builder of temples from intelligent
designs; man, the builder of society
through Brotherly Love, Belief and
Truth; and God, the Builder of Worlds
the " Grand Architect of the Universe", in
all, through all, and over all.
Man everywhere and at all times creates
his own concept, his own idea of God.
Every nation and each religion has its
Divinity. Philosophers, and even poets,
like Watts, are God-builders. Listen to
Watts:
"His nostrils breathe out living flames.
He's a consuming fire,
His jealous eyes his wrath inflames
To raise his vengeance higher."
"Infants not a span long" would indeed
be a "dainty dish" for such a being.
Could man have done much worse had he
never heard or dreamed of God at all?
The atheist, however, in trying to escape
from these caricatures of Deity, and in
denying Divinity altogether, is wholly illogical.
The atheist is also the creation of
theologians. The antithesis does not lie
between the "God of the heathen", or of
Watts, and no God; but between the God
of Fear and Superstition, and the God of
Love, Reason and Justice.
The postulate of Divinity, this concept
of the Grand Architect of the Universe
found in Freemasonry, is, like all others,
the creation of man. As an incentive to
adoration and worship, as a conception apprehensible
to the human mind, and implying
a relation to man that constantly
draws him nearer to God and forms the
basis of ethics for the building of character,
it has no equal in the history of
human thought, or the intelligent conception
of man.
While theologies are going to pieces, and
men imagine they can get along without
God and are willing to be called "atheists",
here lies the strongest bulwark for
the preservation of that spirit of reverence
and devotion which elevates and ennobles
man. Such a concept is indeed a "strong
anchor" to the human soul.
This recognition of Divinity in Masonry
is of such a character and is used in such a
way as to give no offense to a Brother of
any religious faith, be he Jew, Christian,
Buddhist, or a believer in any other of
the world's great religions. Coming as it
does from remote antiquity, the concept
worked out by Masters of human thought
and noble living in the Greater Mysteries
of antiquity, and commensurate with the
highest intelligence of any age; avoiding
crass materialism and atheism on the one
hand, and fanaticism and fetishism on the
other ; it stands as a boon, a priceless jewel
to the human race.
This does not imply that the intelligent
mind, the reverent and devout soul, cannot
enlarge on the concept. The range of human
intelligence as a spark of Divinity "
seems practically infinite. It does mean,
however, that it stands as a consistent,
wise and inspiring theorem, a consensus of
human thought, reverent, reasonable, consistent
and uplifting.
This recognition of Divinity is never
overlooked nor forgotten in the Lodge
room. It can never there be degraded to
a fetish. It is not involved in words and
ceremonies that can ever degenerate into
"lip service". As already shown, it can
never give offense nor excite controversy
except by misinterpretation, and by being
misapplied; and this would be wholly un-
Masonic.
There has been a tendency, at certain
times and in certain directions to "Christianize"
certain Masonic degrees. Any sectarian
or religious bias given to any degree
in Masonry is wholly un-Masonic and
wholly opposed to the real Genius of Freemasonry.
The whole of true Masonry is potentially
embodied in the first three degrees.
Beautiful, impressive and sublime as are
some of the so-called higher degrees, they
all have their root in, and take their rise
from the Blue Lodge, and must be held consistent
with that body.
There are not only many concepts of
the Supreme Being, but many names by
which these concepts have been designated.
Among the Jews from whom a great deal
of the Masonic ritual is derived and legends
adapted, there were several of these
God-names involving certain attributes of
Deity. The same is true of the Hindoo,
Persian and many other ancient peoples
and religions. To give any one of these
words, or God-names, supremacy above all
others and call it the true word, or the
"real word", with no reason or explanation
therefor, is a mere conceit bordering
on dogma.
The real Word is not a mere matter of
phonetics, an empty sound "signifying
nothing". Words, at best, and at most,
are symbols of the intelligent concepts of
man; and as Bro. Albert Pike abundantly
showed, if any one word known to man in
any language can convey the meaning of
the "Lost Word", it is the Sanscrit A U M.
But this involves a whole philosophy of
man and the Universe. It also involves the
science of Phonetics, up to Marconi and
beyond; the synchronous vibration of the
being of man with both God and Nature.
It were better for the enlightenment of
the Craft had no attempt been made to enlarge
or improve upon the concept of
G. A. O. T. U., and that every just and upright
Mason should remember, apprehend
and reverence the Builder and the Sustainer
of man, the Light of the Universe.
If the sincere and thoughtful Mason
would "take notice" of the symbolism and
the use made everywhere in the Lodge of
the word "Light", and remember that the
real Initiates are called also "the Illuminati",
(Sons of Light), those who are
illumined, and who in turn illuminate,
he might gather clues of, not only the
whole symbolism of Masonry, but also of
the real "Word".
Light and Love are the most significant
omnific words. Nor is this true in a figurative
sense only. Often has the refined spiritual
vision of men "discerned a light",
and presently, a "radiant Being in the
midst thereof", when it was seen that the
Being emanated the light. The halo around
the heads of saints is not a purely human
invention, and the transfiguration of Jesus
will one day be explained and apprehended
as naturally as the "waves" of Marconi.
The concepts of the human mind are
everywhere undergoing refinement, as man
rises in the scale of human evolution. With
all this progress and refinement, and with
these wonderful discoveries regarding
"Nature's Finer Forces", it will still be
found that in the symbolism of Freemasonry
there was planted a real knowledge
capable of unfolding, and destined to unfold
for, lo, these many generations.
To all of these profound secrets, the concept
of "the Grand Architect of the Universe"
stands, and will forever remain the
' ' Rock of Ages ' '
; the acme and the epitome
of human wisdom as a concept of Divinity.
JD BUCK 1907
