So many times we seem to look at Ritual Work as not being that important, and that it doesn't have to be done that well. We feel that just need to have more Masons for our Lodges. If we fail to share the teachings properly, who do you think looses?
I would like to have you think back to that first night, it could of been a warm or cool night, that we all share. That night we were so apprehensive, or for the sake of better words, confused as to what was going to happen.
Those first words you heard said at the Lodge door, asking questions and wanting answers of you, and how you were treated was only the start of your Masonic life. That life that leads most of us on a continuous journey of Masonic travel the rest of our lives.
For some of us, who had to memorize the Degree and Obligations, we share something that no one else can understand. This task of learning them, that we choose to do, and we did. This struggle teaches us what we all can do with hard work and a true desire to accomplish things.
So many times I have listened to the lectures, and still I find them as interesting as the first time I heard them. Every time I hear them, I find a new perspective that I have missed before. I fear for those that do not choose to listen to them in this way, as they will never find the lessons that are taught there in Masonry.
And as for those that give those grand lectures, they learn as well. They learn how it feels to give that perfect lecture and also when they don't get it perfectly right! Most of the time just stopping for a moment to think or to taking a breath. I think we can all learn hidden lessons here too. How we should overlook everyone's little mistakes that we all make in life. Also to remember
sometimes the best intentions go wrong by accident.
"Value Your Word" For What Worth Hath a Liar!
Friday, January 23, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
An excerpt from "Greetings to all Masons" By MWBro Nicolas G Ricafrente
"We Masons have long held the proud belief that Masonry has existed since time immemorial and that it is the oldest fraternity in the world. It is universal. But consider the proposition that it is not the number of Lodges and the existence of various Grand Lodges in the world that make it universal but the fundamental principles and tenets which Masonry promotes.
Masonic organizations are but the vehicles for propagating Masonic thoughts and philosophies. Lodges and Grand Lodges are but the venues to administer them.
Masonry is a way of life hence it knows no territorial boundaries or barriers. Its teachings were culled from age old philosophies and moral beliefs transmitted from generation to generation. [And] so enlightening are its lessons that people from all walks of life have been attracted to it.
It is like the music of Mozart and Sibelius; two great composers of all time whose works are still being played and appreciated all over the world. Can you imagine these two masons or their music being barred from another lodge because of self proclaimed territorial boundaries?"
An excerpt from "Greetings to all Masons" Philippine Masonry web site.
By Nicolas G. Ricafrente, GM
Past Master, Bagong Ilaw Lodge No. 6 IGLPI
Masonic organizations are but the vehicles for propagating Masonic thoughts and philosophies. Lodges and Grand Lodges are but the venues to administer them.
Masonry is a way of life hence it knows no territorial boundaries or barriers. Its teachings were culled from age old philosophies and moral beliefs transmitted from generation to generation. [And] so enlightening are its lessons that people from all walks of life have been attracted to it.
It is like the music of Mozart and Sibelius; two great composers of all time whose works are still being played and appreciated all over the world. Can you imagine these two masons or their music being barred from another lodge because of self proclaimed territorial boundaries?"
An excerpt from "Greetings to all Masons" Philippine Masonry web site.
By Nicolas G. Ricafrente, GM
Past Master, Bagong Ilaw Lodge No. 6 IGLPI
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Unite Now!
"History repeats itself in cycles.
A diligent study of history makes it possible for us to perceive the things yet to come that our progress through the ages might wisely be controlled. Viewed as such, history becomes a useful, living covenant between the past and the future.
History is not, as some people want to believe, a chronology of persons and events from which one may read and derive “a priori” principles supporting the claim to superiority, as if superiority, is measured by the height of a family tree.
Unfortunately for Masonry – and for the Philippine family in particular – there are still those who share this view of history going about us with superior air about them. The present chaotic condition of Freemasonry in the Philippines is not new in the long history of the fraternity. No Brother, much as he desires to bridge the gap, entertains the sincere belief that any historical and legal pronouncements alone, however erudite can bring the much needed order into the chaos.
However, it cannot for a moment be doubted that in the heart of every Brother is the supreme desire to bring harmony and peace to the present melancholy condition of Masonic affair. The history of Freemasonry in the Philippines from the time the first American Mason landed in Manila until the present, has a faithful counterpart in the early history of Masonry in England from 1717, when the four Lodges met and formed the Grand Lodge of England, until 1813, when the Grand Lodge of the “Moderns” and the Grand Lodge of the “Ancients” united to form the United Grand Lodge.
In 1751 a group of Irish Masons ceded and established their own Grand Lodge in the Southern part of England and called themselves the true Ancient Masons. It was from this body that the biggest and most influential jurisdictions in the United States were warranted. These are the so-called York Masons in the United States and in the Philippines today, and who were called "irregular Masons" then, although many of them were Masons from Ireland.
From this short account, a historical cycle becomes apparent and one may perceive at once that the present members of the Gran Logia Nacional de Filipinas [GNLF] are the mirror-images, historically speaking, of those Ancient Masons. These Brothers seceded also from the Grand Lodge of the Philippines for reasons both honorable and sufficient, and they, too, were Freemasons even before the American “Yorks” came to the Philippines.
It is not necessary here to give a detailed story of the very heated arguments that went on and on both in England and America between the Moderns and the Ancients from 1751 until 1813, a period of over sixty years. The important event worthy to be recalled was the final union of the two Grand Lodges made possible by two blood-brothers - the Duke of Kent and the Duke of Sussex, Grand Masters both, of the Ancients and the Moderns, respectively.
The Ancient Masonic history in England as well as the history of the Order both in the continent of Europe – especially in France – and in America, teaches one simple cardinal lesson, and it is this:
The forward march of Freemasonry, from diversity to unity is irresistible.
We, of this generation, whether we like it or not, cannot prevent the final union, under one United Grand Lodge of the Philippines, of all Filipino Masons. And if we of this generation, cannot, and will not, UNITE NOW, the next generation will, without doubt, do that enviable labor of love for us. I say “enviable” because no one conscious of the working of history can fail to see that Masonic niche now prepared and ready to receive a modern Duke of Kent and a Duke of Sussex, and brothers all with big hearts and bigger understanding.
The cold logic of Masonic history demands the completion of the Temple. With the impossible we should disagree, with the probable we could compromise, to the inevitable we must acquiesce.
UNITE NOW!"
New York, New York TALIBA (PRINTED IN SOLIDARIDAD 25th anniversary PUBLICATION, ENGLISH EDITION)
Adapted from the Magdalo Lodge No 79, GNLF site (click here.)
A diligent study of history makes it possible for us to perceive the things yet to come that our progress through the ages might wisely be controlled. Viewed as such, history becomes a useful, living covenant between the past and the future.
History is not, as some people want to believe, a chronology of persons and events from which one may read and derive “a priori” principles supporting the claim to superiority, as if superiority, is measured by the height of a family tree.
Unfortunately for Masonry – and for the Philippine family in particular – there are still those who share this view of history going about us with superior air about them. The present chaotic condition of Freemasonry in the Philippines is not new in the long history of the fraternity. No Brother, much as he desires to bridge the gap, entertains the sincere belief that any historical and legal pronouncements alone, however erudite can bring the much needed order into the chaos.
However, it cannot for a moment be doubted that in the heart of every Brother is the supreme desire to bring harmony and peace to the present melancholy condition of Masonic affair. The history of Freemasonry in the Philippines from the time the first American Mason landed in Manila until the present, has a faithful counterpart in the early history of Masonry in England from 1717, when the four Lodges met and formed the Grand Lodge of England, until 1813, when the Grand Lodge of the “Moderns” and the Grand Lodge of the “Ancients” united to form the United Grand Lodge.
In 1751 a group of Irish Masons ceded and established their own Grand Lodge in the Southern part of England and called themselves the true Ancient Masons. It was from this body that the biggest and most influential jurisdictions in the United States were warranted. These are the so-called York Masons in the United States and in the Philippines today, and who were called "irregular Masons" then, although many of them were Masons from Ireland.
From this short account, a historical cycle becomes apparent and one may perceive at once that the present members of the Gran Logia Nacional de Filipinas [GNLF] are the mirror-images, historically speaking, of those Ancient Masons. These Brothers seceded also from the Grand Lodge of the Philippines for reasons both honorable and sufficient, and they, too, were Freemasons even before the American “Yorks” came to the Philippines.
It is not necessary here to give a detailed story of the very heated arguments that went on and on both in England and America between the Moderns and the Ancients from 1751 until 1813, a period of over sixty years. The important event worthy to be recalled was the final union of the two Grand Lodges made possible by two blood-brothers - the Duke of Kent and the Duke of Sussex, Grand Masters both, of the Ancients and the Moderns, respectively.
The Ancient Masonic history in England as well as the history of the Order both in the continent of Europe – especially in France – and in America, teaches one simple cardinal lesson, and it is this:
The forward march of Freemasonry, from diversity to unity is irresistible.
We, of this generation, whether we like it or not, cannot prevent the final union, under one United Grand Lodge of the Philippines, of all Filipino Masons. And if we of this generation, cannot, and will not, UNITE NOW, the next generation will, without doubt, do that enviable labor of love for us. I say “enviable” because no one conscious of the working of history can fail to see that Masonic niche now prepared and ready to receive a modern Duke of Kent and a Duke of Sussex, and brothers all with big hearts and bigger understanding.
The cold logic of Masonic history demands the completion of the Temple. With the impossible we should disagree, with the probable we could compromise, to the inevitable we must acquiesce.
UNITE NOW!"
New York, New York TALIBA (PRINTED IN SOLIDARIDAD 25th anniversary PUBLICATION, ENGLISH EDITION)
Adapted from the Magdalo Lodge No 79, GNLF site (click here.)
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Chapter 1: The Eternal Quest by Bro Manly P. Hall
The average Mason, as well as the modern student of Masonic ideals, little realizes the cosmic obligation he takes upon himself when he begins his search for the sacred truths of Nature as they are concealed in the ancient and modern rituals. He must not lightly regard his vows, and if he would not bring upon himself years and ages of suffering he must cease to consider Freemasonry solely as a social order only a few centuries old. He must realize that the ancient mystic teachings as perpetuated in the modern rites are sacred, and that powers unseen and unrecognized mold the destiny of those who consciously and of their own free will take upon themselves the obligations of the Fraternity.
Freemasonry is not a material thing: it is a science of the soul; it is not a creed or doctrine but a universal expression of the Divine Wisdom. The coming together of medieval guilds or even the building of Solomon's temple as it is understood today has little, if anything, to do with the true origin of Freemasonry, for Masonry does not deal with personalities. In its highest sense, it is neither historical nor archaeological, but is a divine symbolic language perpetuating under certain concrete symbols the sacred mysteries of the ancients. Only those who see in it a cosmic study, a life work, a divine inspiration to better thinking, better feeling, and better living, with the spiritual attainment of enlightenment as the end, and with the daily life of the true Mason as the means, have gained even the slightest insight into the true mysteries of the ancient rites.
The age of the Masonic school is not to be calculated by hundreds or even thousands of years, for it never had any origin in the worlds of form. The world as we see it is merely an experimental laboratory in which man is laboring to build and express greater and more perfect vehicles. Into this laboratory pour myriads of rays descending from the cosmic hierarchies. These mighty globes and orbs which focus their energies upon mankind and mold its destiny do so in an orderly manner, each in its own way and place, and it is the working of these mystic hierarchies in the universe which forms the pattern around which the Masonic school has been built, for the true lodge of the Mason is the universe. Freed of limitations of creed and sect, he stands a master of all faiths, and those who take up the study of Freemasonry without realizing the depth, the beauty, and the spiritual power of its philosophy can never gain anything of permanence from their studies. The age of the Mystery Schools can be traced by the student back to the dawn of time, ages and aeons ago, when the temple of the Solar Man was in the making. That was the first Temple of the King, and therein were given and laid down the true mysteries of the ancient lodge, and it was the gods of creation and the spirits of the dawn who first tiled the Master's lodge.
The initiated brother realizes that his so-called symbols and rituals are merely blinds fabricated by the wise to perpetuate ideas incomprehensible to the average individual. He also realizes that few Masons of today know or appreciate the mystic meaning concealed within these rituals. With religious faith we perpetuate the form, worshiping it instead of the life, but those who have not recognized the truth in the crystallized ritual, those who have not liberated the spiritual germ from the shell of empty words, are not Masons, regardless of their physical degrees and outward honors.
In the work we are taking up it is not the intention to dwell upon the modern concepts of the Craft but to consider Freemasonry as it really is to those who know, a great cosmic organism whose true brothers and children are tied together not by spoken oaths but by lives so lived that they are capable of seeing through the blank wall and opening the window which is now concealed by the rubbish of materiality. When this is done and the mysteries of the universe unfold before the aspiring candidate, then in truth he discovers what Freemasonry really is. Its material aspects interest him no longer for he has unmasked the Mystery School which he is capable of recognizing only when he himself has spiritually become a member of it.
Those who have examined and studied its ancient lore have no doubt that Freemasonry, like the universe itself, which is the greatest of all schools, deals with the unfolding of a three-fold principle; for all the universe is governed by the same three kings who are called the builders of the Masonic temple. They are not personalities but principles, great intelligent energies and powers which in God, man, and the universe have charge of the molding of cosmic substance into the habitation of the living King , the temple built through the ages first of unconscious and then conscious effort on the part of every individual who is expressing in his daily life the creative principles of these three kings.
The true student of the ancient Craft realized that the completion of the temple he was building to the King of the Universe was a duty or rather a privilege which he owed to his God, to his brother, and to himself. He knew that certain steps must be taken and that his temple must be built according to the plan. Today it seems that the plan is lost, however, for in the majority of cases Freemasonry is no longer an operative art but is merely a speculative idea until each brother, reading the mystery of his symbols and pondering over the beautiful allegories unfolded in his ritual, realizes that he himself contains the keys and the plans so long lost to his Craft and that if he would ever learn Freemasonry he must unlock its doors with the key wrought from the base metals of his own being.
True Freemasonry is esoteric; it is not a thing of this world. All that we have here is a link, a doorway, through which the student may pass into the unknown. Freemasonry has nothing to do with things of form save that it realizes form is molded by and manifests the life it contains. Consequently the student is seeking so to mold his life that the form will glorify the God whose temple he is slowly building as he awakens one by one the workmen within himself and directs them to carry out the plan that has been given him out of heaven.
So far as it is possible to discover, ancient Freemasonry and the beautiful cosmic allegories that it teaches, perpetuated through hundreds of lodges and ancient mysteries, forms the oldest of the Mystery Schools; and its preservation through the ages has not depended upon itself as an exoteric body of partly evolved individuals but upon a concealed brotherhood, the exoteric side of Freemasonry. All the great Mystery Schools have hierarchies upon the spiritual planes of Nature which are expressing themselves in this world through creeds and organizations. The true student seeks to lift himself from the exoteric body upward spiritually until he joins the esoteric group which, without a lodge on the physical plane of Nature, is far greater than all the lodges of which it is the central fire. The spiritual instructors of humanity are forced to labor in the concrete world with things comprehensible to the concrete mind, and there man begins to comprehend the meaning of the allegories and symbols which surround his exoteric work as soon as he prepares himself to receive them.
The true Mason realizes that the work of the Mystery Schools in the world is of an inclusive rather than an exclusive nature, and that the only lodge which is broad enough to express his ideals is one whose dome is the heavens, whose pillars are the corners of creation, whose checker-board floor is composed of the crossing currents of human emotion and whose altar is the human heart. Creeds cannot bind the true seeker for truth.
Realizing the unity of all truth, the Mason also realizes that the hierarchies laboring with him have given him in his varying degrees the mystic spiritual rituals of all the Mystery Schools in the world, and if he would fill his place in the plan he must not enter this sacred study for what he can get out of it but that he may learn how to serve.
In Freemasonry is concealed the mystery of creation, the answer to the problem of existence, and the path the student must tread in order to join those who are really the living powers behind the thrones of modern national and international affairs.
The true student realizes most of all that the taking of degrees does not make a man a Mason. A Mason is not appointed; he is evolved and he must realize that the position he holds in the exoteric lodge means nothing compared to his position in the spiritual lodge of life. He must forever discard the idea that he can be told or instructed in the sacred Mysteries or that his being a member of an organization improves him in any way.
He must realize that his duty is to build and evolve the sacred teachings in his own being: that nothing but his own purified being can unlock the door to the sealed libraries of human consciousness, and that his Masonic rites must eternally be speculative until he makes them operative by living the life of the mystic Mason. His karmic responsibilities increase with his opportunities. Those who are surrounded with knowledge and opportunity for self-improvement and make nothing of these opportunities are the lazy workmen who will be spiritually, if not physically, cast out of the temple of the king.
The Masonic order is not a mere social organization, but is composed of all those who have banded themselves together to learn and apply the principles of mysticism and the occult rites. They are (or should be) philosophers, sages and sober-minded individuals who have dedicated thernselves upon the Masonic altar and vowed by all they hold dear that the world shall be better, wiser, and happier because they have lived. Those who enter these mystic rites and pass between the pillars seeking either prestige or commercial advantage are blasphemers, and while in this world we may count them as successful, they are the cosmic failures who have barred themselves out from the true rite whose keynote is unselfishness and whose workers have renounced the things of earth.
In ancient times many years of preparation were required before the neophyte was permitted to enter the temple of the Mysteries. In this way the shallow, the curious, the faint of heart, and those unable to withstand the temptations of life were automatically eliminated by their inability to meet the requirements for admission. The successful candidate who did pass between the pillars entered the temple, keenly realizing his sublime opportunity, his divine obligation, and the mystic privilege which he had earned for himself through years of special preparation. Only those are truly Masons who enter their temple in reverence, who seek not the ephemeral things of life but the treasures which are eternal, whose sole desire is to know the true mystery of the Craft that they may join as honest workmen those who have gone before as builders of the Universal Temple.
The Masonic ritual is not a ceremony, but a life to be lived. Those alone are truly Masons who, dedicating their lives and their fortunes upon the altar of the living flame, undertake the construction of the one universal building of which they are the workmen and their God the living Architect. When we have Masons like this the Craft will again be operative, the flaming triangle will shine forth with greater lustre, the dead builder will rise from his tomb, and the Lost Word so long concealed from the profane will blaze forth again with the power that makes all things new.
In the pages that follow have been set down a number of thoughts for the study and consideration of temple builders, craftsmen and artisans alike. They are the keys which, if only read, will leave the student still in ignorance but, if lived, will change the speculative Masonry of today into the operative Masonry of tomorrow, when each builder, realizing his own place, will see things which he never saw before, not because they were not there but because he was blind. And there are none so blind as those who will not see.
THOUGHTLESSNESS
The noblest tool of the Mason is his mind, but its value is measured by the use made of it. Thoughtful in all things, the aspiring candidate to divine wisdom attains reality in sincere desire, in meditation, and in silence. Let the keynote of the Craft, and of the Ritual, be written in blazing letters: THINK OF ME.
What is the meaning of this mystic maze of symbols, rites and rituals? THINK!
What does life mean, with the criss-crossings of human relationship, the endless pageantry of qualities masqueradin g in a carnival of fools? THINK!
What is the plan behind it all, and who the planner? Where dwells the Great Architect, and what is the tracing board upon which he designs? THINK!
What is the human soul, and why the endless yearning to ends unknown, along pathways where each must wander unaccompanied? Why mind, why soul, why spirit, and in truth, why anything? THINK!
Is there an answer? If so, where will the truth be found? Think, Brothers of the Craft, think deeply; for if truth exists, you have it, and if truth be within the reach of living creature, what other goal is worth the struggle?
--------------------------------
From the publication: "The Lost Keys of Freemasonry or The Secret of Hiram Abiff by Manly P. Hall
Freemasonry is not a material thing: it is a science of the soul; it is not a creed or doctrine but a universal expression of the Divine Wisdom. The coming together of medieval guilds or even the building of Solomon's temple as it is understood today has little, if anything, to do with the true origin of Freemasonry, for Masonry does not deal with personalities. In its highest sense, it is neither historical nor archaeological, but is a divine symbolic language perpetuating under certain concrete symbols the sacred mysteries of the ancients. Only those who see in it a cosmic study, a life work, a divine inspiration to better thinking, better feeling, and better living, with the spiritual attainment of enlightenment as the end, and with the daily life of the true Mason as the means, have gained even the slightest insight into the true mysteries of the ancient rites.
The age of the Masonic school is not to be calculated by hundreds or even thousands of years, for it never had any origin in the worlds of form. The world as we see it is merely an experimental laboratory in which man is laboring to build and express greater and more perfect vehicles. Into this laboratory pour myriads of rays descending from the cosmic hierarchies. These mighty globes and orbs which focus their energies upon mankind and mold its destiny do so in an orderly manner, each in its own way and place, and it is the working of these mystic hierarchies in the universe which forms the pattern around which the Masonic school has been built, for the true lodge of the Mason is the universe. Freed of limitations of creed and sect, he stands a master of all faiths, and those who take up the study of Freemasonry without realizing the depth, the beauty, and the spiritual power of its philosophy can never gain anything of permanence from their studies. The age of the Mystery Schools can be traced by the student back to the dawn of time, ages and aeons ago, when the temple of the Solar Man was in the making. That was the first Temple of the King, and therein were given and laid down the true mysteries of the ancient lodge, and it was the gods of creation and the spirits of the dawn who first tiled the Master's lodge.
The initiated brother realizes that his so-called symbols and rituals are merely blinds fabricated by the wise to perpetuate ideas incomprehensible to the average individual. He also realizes that few Masons of today know or appreciate the mystic meaning concealed within these rituals. With religious faith we perpetuate the form, worshiping it instead of the life, but those who have not recognized the truth in the crystallized ritual, those who have not liberated the spiritual germ from the shell of empty words, are not Masons, regardless of their physical degrees and outward honors.
In the work we are taking up it is not the intention to dwell upon the modern concepts of the Craft but to consider Freemasonry as it really is to those who know, a great cosmic organism whose true brothers and children are tied together not by spoken oaths but by lives so lived that they are capable of seeing through the blank wall and opening the window which is now concealed by the rubbish of materiality. When this is done and the mysteries of the universe unfold before the aspiring candidate, then in truth he discovers what Freemasonry really is. Its material aspects interest him no longer for he has unmasked the Mystery School which he is capable of recognizing only when he himself has spiritually become a member of it.
Those who have examined and studied its ancient lore have no doubt that Freemasonry, like the universe itself, which is the greatest of all schools, deals with the unfolding of a three-fold principle; for all the universe is governed by the same three kings who are called the builders of the Masonic temple. They are not personalities but principles, great intelligent energies and powers which in God, man, and the universe have charge of the molding of cosmic substance into the habitation of the living King , the temple built through the ages first of unconscious and then conscious effort on the part of every individual who is expressing in his daily life the creative principles of these three kings.
The true student of the ancient Craft realized that the completion of the temple he was building to the King of the Universe was a duty or rather a privilege which he owed to his God, to his brother, and to himself. He knew that certain steps must be taken and that his temple must be built according to the plan. Today it seems that the plan is lost, however, for in the majority of cases Freemasonry is no longer an operative art but is merely a speculative idea until each brother, reading the mystery of his symbols and pondering over the beautiful allegories unfolded in his ritual, realizes that he himself contains the keys and the plans so long lost to his Craft and that if he would ever learn Freemasonry he must unlock its doors with the key wrought from the base metals of his own being.
True Freemasonry is esoteric; it is not a thing of this world. All that we have here is a link, a doorway, through which the student may pass into the unknown. Freemasonry has nothing to do with things of form save that it realizes form is molded by and manifests the life it contains. Consequently the student is seeking so to mold his life that the form will glorify the God whose temple he is slowly building as he awakens one by one the workmen within himself and directs them to carry out the plan that has been given him out of heaven.
So far as it is possible to discover, ancient Freemasonry and the beautiful cosmic allegories that it teaches, perpetuated through hundreds of lodges and ancient mysteries, forms the oldest of the Mystery Schools; and its preservation through the ages has not depended upon itself as an exoteric body of partly evolved individuals but upon a concealed brotherhood, the exoteric side of Freemasonry. All the great Mystery Schools have hierarchies upon the spiritual planes of Nature which are expressing themselves in this world through creeds and organizations. The true student seeks to lift himself from the exoteric body upward spiritually until he joins the esoteric group which, without a lodge on the physical plane of Nature, is far greater than all the lodges of which it is the central fire. The spiritual instructors of humanity are forced to labor in the concrete world with things comprehensible to the concrete mind, and there man begins to comprehend the meaning of the allegories and symbols which surround his exoteric work as soon as he prepares himself to receive them.
The true Mason realizes that the work of the Mystery Schools in the world is of an inclusive rather than an exclusive nature, and that the only lodge which is broad enough to express his ideals is one whose dome is the heavens, whose pillars are the corners of creation, whose checker-board floor is composed of the crossing currents of human emotion and whose altar is the human heart. Creeds cannot bind the true seeker for truth.
Realizing the unity of all truth, the Mason also realizes that the hierarchies laboring with him have given him in his varying degrees the mystic spiritual rituals of all the Mystery Schools in the world, and if he would fill his place in the plan he must not enter this sacred study for what he can get out of it but that he may learn how to serve.
In Freemasonry is concealed the mystery of creation, the answer to the problem of existence, and the path the student must tread in order to join those who are really the living powers behind the thrones of modern national and international affairs.
The true student realizes most of all that the taking of degrees does not make a man a Mason. A Mason is not appointed; he is evolved and he must realize that the position he holds in the exoteric lodge means nothing compared to his position in the spiritual lodge of life. He must forever discard the idea that he can be told or instructed in the sacred Mysteries or that his being a member of an organization improves him in any way.
He must realize that his duty is to build and evolve the sacred teachings in his own being: that nothing but his own purified being can unlock the door to the sealed libraries of human consciousness, and that his Masonic rites must eternally be speculative until he makes them operative by living the life of the mystic Mason. His karmic responsibilities increase with his opportunities. Those who are surrounded with knowledge and opportunity for self-improvement and make nothing of these opportunities are the lazy workmen who will be spiritually, if not physically, cast out of the temple of the king.
The Masonic order is not a mere social organization, but is composed of all those who have banded themselves together to learn and apply the principles of mysticism and the occult rites. They are (or should be) philosophers, sages and sober-minded individuals who have dedicated thernselves upon the Masonic altar and vowed by all they hold dear that the world shall be better, wiser, and happier because they have lived. Those who enter these mystic rites and pass between the pillars seeking either prestige or commercial advantage are blasphemers, and while in this world we may count them as successful, they are the cosmic failures who have barred themselves out from the true rite whose keynote is unselfishness and whose workers have renounced the things of earth.
In ancient times many years of preparation were required before the neophyte was permitted to enter the temple of the Mysteries. In this way the shallow, the curious, the faint of heart, and those unable to withstand the temptations of life were automatically eliminated by their inability to meet the requirements for admission. The successful candidate who did pass between the pillars entered the temple, keenly realizing his sublime opportunity, his divine obligation, and the mystic privilege which he had earned for himself through years of special preparation. Only those are truly Masons who enter their temple in reverence, who seek not the ephemeral things of life but the treasures which are eternal, whose sole desire is to know the true mystery of the Craft that they may join as honest workmen those who have gone before as builders of the Universal Temple.
The Masonic ritual is not a ceremony, but a life to be lived. Those alone are truly Masons who, dedicating their lives and their fortunes upon the altar of the living flame, undertake the construction of the one universal building of which they are the workmen and their God the living Architect. When we have Masons like this the Craft will again be operative, the flaming triangle will shine forth with greater lustre, the dead builder will rise from his tomb, and the Lost Word so long concealed from the profane will blaze forth again with the power that makes all things new.
In the pages that follow have been set down a number of thoughts for the study and consideration of temple builders, craftsmen and artisans alike. They are the keys which, if only read, will leave the student still in ignorance but, if lived, will change the speculative Masonry of today into the operative Masonry of tomorrow, when each builder, realizing his own place, will see things which he never saw before, not because they were not there but because he was blind. And there are none so blind as those who will not see.
THOUGHTLESSNESS
The noblest tool of the Mason is his mind, but its value is measured by the use made of it. Thoughtful in all things, the aspiring candidate to divine wisdom attains reality in sincere desire, in meditation, and in silence. Let the keynote of the Craft, and of the Ritual, be written in blazing letters: THINK OF ME.
What is the meaning of this mystic maze of symbols, rites and rituals? THINK!
What does life mean, with the criss-crossings of human relationship, the endless pageantry of qualities masqueradin g in a carnival of fools? THINK!
What is the plan behind it all, and who the planner? Where dwells the Great Architect, and what is the tracing board upon which he designs? THINK!
What is the human soul, and why the endless yearning to ends unknown, along pathways where each must wander unaccompanied? Why mind, why soul, why spirit, and in truth, why anything? THINK!
Is there an answer? If so, where will the truth be found? Think, Brothers of the Craft, think deeply; for if truth exists, you have it, and if truth be within the reach of living creature, what other goal is worth the struggle?
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From the publication: "The Lost Keys of Freemasonry or The Secret of Hiram Abiff by Manly P. Hall
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