Kabalistic Tradition and Masonry
Arthur Edward Waite
The existence of a building secret, represented as a Master-Word, is like a pivot upon which revolves the Legend of the Third Degree. The Master-Builder died to preserve the secret of this Word. Owing to his untimely death the Word was lost and—being unfinished at the moment of this untoward event—the Temple remained with its operations suspended, to be completed later on by those who possessed not the Grade of Knowledge represented by that Word, of which every Master Mason is hypothetically still upon the quest. What does this mean? We have no concern at the present day—except in archaeology and history—with King Solomon’s Temple. What is signified for us by such Temple and what is the Lost Word? The only direction in which we can look for an answer is to that which is their source. As to this it must be remembered that the Legend of the Master Grade is on the surface a Legend of Israel under the aegis of the Old Covenant, and though it has no warrant in Holy Writ it is not improbable antecedently that something to our purpose may be found elsewhere in the literature of Jewry. I do not of course mean that we shall meet with the Legend itself: it would be interesting if we did but not perhaps helpful per se, apart from explanation. The root-matter of much which is shadowed forth in the Legend, as regards the meaning of the Temple and the search for the Lost Word, is to be found in certain great texts known to scholars under the generic name of Kabalah—a Hebrew word meaning reception, or doctrinal teaching passed on from one to another by verbal communication. According to its own hypothesis, the tradition entered into written records during the Christian Era, though hostile criticism has been disposed to represent it as invented at the period when it was reduced to writing. The question does not signify for our purpose, since the close of the thirteenth century is the last date that the most drastic view—now abandoned generally—has proposed for the most important text.
Solomon’s Temple
We find therein after what manner, according to mystic Israel, Solomon’s Temple was spiritualised; We find profound meanings attached to the two Pillars J and B; we find how a Word was lost and under what circumstances the chosen people were to look for its recovery. It is an expectation for Jewish theosophy, as it is for the Craft Mason. It was lost owing to a certain untoward event, and although the time and circumstances of its recovery have been calculated in certain texts, there has been something amiss with the methods. Those who were keepers of the tradition died with their faces towards Jerusalem, looking for that time; but for Jewry at large the question has passed long since from the field of view, much as the quest is continued by Masons in virtue of a ceremonial formula but cannot be said to mean anything for those who undertake and pursue it officially.
Book of Splendour
I am collecting things in a summary fashion that are scattered up and down the vast text with which I am dealing—that is to say, Sepher Ha Zohar, The Book of Splendour. The word to which reference is made is that Divine Name out of the consonants of which we have formed Jehovah, or—by another speculation—Yahve. If it be asked: What is the connection between the loss and dismemberment which befell the Divine Name Jehovah and the Lost Word in Masonry, it is obvious that I cannot answer, except in a veiled manner; but every Royal Arch Mason knows what is communicated to him in the Supreme Degree. In the light of the present explanation he will see that the “great” and “incomprehensible” thing so imparted comes from a Secret Tradition in Israel.
Pillars J and B.
It is also to this Kabalistic source rather than to the variant account in the First Book of Kings or in Chronicles—that we must have recourse for light on the important Masonic Symbolism concerning the Pillars J and B. There is very little in Holy Scripture to justify a choice of these objects as particular representatives of an art of building spiritualised. But in later Kabalism, in the texts called The Garden of Pomegranates and The Gates of Light there is a very full explanation of the strength which is attributed to B, the left-hand Pillar, and of that which is “established” in and by the right-hand Pillar, called J.
Secret Tradition in Israel
As regards the Temple itself I have explained elsewhere after what manner it is spiritualised in various Kabalistic and semi-Kabalistic texts, so that it appears as “the proportion of the height, the proportion of the depth and the lateral proportion” of the created universe, and again as a part of the transcendental mystery of law which is at the root of the Secret Tradition in Israel. I will say only that it offers another aspect of the fatal loss in Israel and the world which is commented on in the Tradition. That which the Temple symbolises above all things is, however, a House of Doctrine, and as on the one hand the Zohar shews us how a loss and substitution were perpetuated through centuries, owing to the idolatry of Israel at the foot of Mount Horeb in the wilderness of Sinai, and illustrated by the breaking of the Tables of Stone on which the Law was inscribed, so does Speculative Masonry intimate that the Holy House, which was planned and begun after one manner, was completed after another and a word of death was substituted for a word of life.
The Word in Kabalism
The complement in Kabalism of that Sanctuary loss to which Masonry confesses is therefore the Sacred Name, which became a dismembered symbol in Jewry. It is on record that the mode of vocalisation was a secret of the Holy of Holies and was reserved thereto. But there came upon Israel the stress and terror of that time which is called the Greater Exile, and from year to year no longer did the High Priest pass behind the veil and pronounce the Great Word on the other side of the curtain of palms and pomegranates. It came about in the course of the centuries that the true way of its pronunciation passed even from the memory of the elders. Therefore, “until time or circumstances should restore the genuine,” they continued to do of necessity that which had been done previously in accordance with the Law of the Sanctuary—by the substitution of Adonai for Jehovah in the reading of the Law, and by writing the latter Name with the vowel-points of the former. “My Name is written Jehovah but is read Adonai,” say the texts of the Holy Tradition on the part of the Master of Wisdom, and the Tradition with its whole heart looks for that day to come when Israel shall be taken out of exile and the palladium of the elect people shall be declared in the hearing of all who have come out of great tribulation into the inheritance of Zion.
The Divine Name
This—as I have said—is the story on its literal side, and though it would be easy to allegorise thereon, it is of the temporal and national order. On the emblematic side it exhibits a cosmic sanction. The Divine Name is without change or shadow of vicissitude in the Supernal World; but according to tradition the He final descended to earth at the Fall of Man as part of the scheme of His redemption, and became Shekinah in exile. The Divine Name was dismembered in this manner. But the He final is the Bride of Messias, Who is the Divine Son, represented by the letter VAU. He is in search of His Bride through the ages. A day shall come when He also will descend to earth, that He may raise up the He, whereby and wherein there shall be unity restored to the Name: it will be the epoch of the Great Jubilee and the Seventh Day of the Cosmos, when it shall repose in God.
The Master-Builder
There is no need to say that beneath such veils of allegory and amidst such illustrations of symbolism the Master-Builder will be found significant of a principle and not a person—historical or otherwise. He stands indeed for more than a single principle; and in the world of mystical intimations through which we are now moving, such a question as “Who is the Master?” would be answered by many voices. But generally he is the imputed and very real life of the Secret Doctrine which lay behind the letter of the Written Law, which “the stiff-necked and disobedient” of the patriarchal, sacerdotal and prophetical dispensations contrived to destroy. According to the Secret Tradition in Israel, the whole creation was established for the manifestation of this life, which unfolded actually in its dual aspects when the spiritual Eve was drawn from the side of the spiritual Adam and was placed over against him, in the condition of face to face. The intent of creation was made void in that event which is termed the Fall of Man, though this particular expression is unknown in Scripture. By the hypothesis, those “fatal consequences” which followed would have reached their term on Mount Sinai; but the Israelites, when left to themselves in the wilderness, “sat down to eat and rose up to play.” That which is concealed by the evasion of these last words corresponds to the state of Eve in Paradise, when she had become infected by the Serpent.
The Greater Exile
The Fall of Man is of course a story of Israel from the standpoint of Zoharic Kabalism, and that exile of the ages which followed the expulsion from Eden is like the exile of Jewry from Zion through the Christian centuries. When, according to the traditional dream, the elect shall come into their own it will be as if Adam went into Paradise under the folded wings of the Cherubim, or as if the High Priest passed into the Holy of Holies. There are hence certain analogies between the literal and emblematic stories, and the loss memorised on the literal side has its complement—as I have said—in Masonry. But in all its Rites and Orders there is an analogy between the Emblematic Art and the Emblematic Myth of the Zohar. The Art recognises after its own manner that Symbolical Masonry has one foundation and one keystone, which is the Sacred Name Jehovah, but in common with all Israel in exile it can give that Name only with the pointing of Adonai, and in so doing it is ruled out of court by the voice of the whole tradition.
Christian Grades
There remain, however, the Christian Grades of Masonry—as, for example, that of Rose-Croix understood as a typical instance. They know nothing of Israel and its tradition of secret theosophy, but only that the quest of the Craft Grades is left in fine unfinished. For them and their votaries the eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear filled with hearing the Divine Name, whether read and written as Jehovah or Adonai. Their hypothesis does not say that it is imperfect: it is the sum of perfection and Providence within the measures of the Old Law, but this is an unfinished experiment, and with all respect to the Masonic Grades which subsist under that obedience the Word of Quest is not to be found therein, till that which makes for completion is added thereto. Herein lies the office of the Holy and Christian Grades, and the work is done by taking the letter Shin—which is called the letter of the Spirit—and inserting it in the Name יהוה, the result of which is יהשוה, being the Name of Jesus and the Word of the New Law. It will be seen therefore that the Grand Master did not come to set aside or destroy but to fulfil the Sacred Name of old, which stands about His own symbol as the hills stand about Jerusalem. He came also to fulfil the Law by the work of its transmutation from that of bondage to the Law of Grace. But the corner-stone of the New Temple was rejected by Jewry and the walls of Zion fell down. There was no Temple henceforth in Israel and no place for the chosen people. The amplius et perfectius tabernaculum, non manu factum rose up in the Gentile world and not in Palestine. For the Christian Grades of Masonry it was obvious therefore that the experiment of the Symbolical Degrees could be finished only in the Light and Law of Christ. In Him also the Master-Builder—whom the Craft had mourned so long—must arise if he is to restore all things.
Christian Kabalism
If the sources of Craft Masonry—taken at its culmination in the Sublime Degree—are thus found in Kabalism, what manner of people were those who grafted so strange a speculation and symbolism on the Operative Procedure of a Building-Guild? The answer is that all about the period which represents what is called the “transition”—and indeed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries—many Latin-writing scholars of Europe were animated with zeal for an exposition of the Tradition in Israel, with the result that memorable and even great books were produced on the subject. Materials were thus provided and were ready to the hands of symbolists. What purpose had the latter in view? The answer is that in Germany, Italy, France and England the zeal for Kabalistic literature had more than a scholastic basis. It was believed that the texts of the Secret Tradition shewed plainly—out of the mouth of Israel itself—that the Messiah had come. This is the first fact. The second is in Ceremonial Masonry itself and namely, that although the central event of the Third Degree is the Candidates’ Raising, it is not said in the Legend that the Master-Builder rose, thus suggesting that something remains to come after which might at once complete the Legend and conclude the Quest. The third fact is that in an important High Grade of a philosophical kind, now almost unknown, the Master-Builder of the Third Degree does actually rise as Christ—as we have found in its proper place. It follows that although the Opening and Closing of the Third Degree and the Legend of the Master-Builder, with all their speaking mystery, may seem to come from very far away, they are not so remote that we cannot trace them to their source.
Of Spiritual Building
If there were ever emblematic in the sense of spiritual builders, we must count the Jewish theosophers of the greater exile as first and chief among them. The Kabalists were builders of a city not made with hands, of a heavenly Zion, of a Temple and Sanctuary within the walls thereof, of which the Sacred House of the Eternal King in the earthly Jerusalem was but an imperfect external sign. The world for the Kabalists was full of palaces and sanctuaries, while visible creation—in particular, this lower world, the sphere of the Kingdom—was viewed as the House of Adonai, the abode of the Indwelling Glory. It will be seen how readily this conception lent itself to the institution of multitudinous analogies in the fervid mind of Jewry; how the outward Sanctuary was transfigured by many meanings, so that it was now the body of man enlightened by the abiding spirit—which was also the understanding of the Law; and now celestial Jerusalem; how the destruction—when this came about—of the material city signified the Secret Doctrine laid waste by the advocates of the letter, or again the chosen nation, the peculiar people delivered into hands of idolators; and finally—if I may plunge for a moment more deeply into the complexities of Kabalistic reverie—how the external city and its holy places were symbols of the primeval world before the serpent ascended into the Tree of Life; how—from this point of view—their destruction typifies the Fall; how the later city stands for a restored world in Kabalism which differs from the first in glory; and how there is yet another city, which is to come, and over this a new firmament shall shine. It is this dwelling of the elect that the Kabalist rebuilds in his heart; and as I know that its splendid spectrum, like a bow of promise, rests over all the later literature of Israel, I register an inward conviction that some shadowed reflections thereof have been derived into occult associations, not even excepting Masonry, from spiritual enthusiasts of the ghettos.
The Restoration of Zion
I know that long after the golden age of Kabalism, yet far earlier than the earliest date which we can assign to any Rituals of Initiation now worked among us, the Rosicrucian Fraternity also symbolised a sacred city and house not made with hands; while at the very period when the wonder and rumour of the Zohar first astonished the academies and synagogues of Spain there fell that Order of Knights Templar which speculation has always accredited with the design of restoring Zion. From this source something also has been acquired by High Grade Masonry, which has drawn from many fountains, not excepting—however indirectly—the Christian Mystics, who in their own manner dreamed of a Spiritual Sanctuary, from the days of St. Augustine and The City of God to those of St. Teresa. The office and mission of the Church itself may be similarly regarded, for this is also a city of many palaces, which—in virtue of inherent vitality—builds itself up from within and is improved and beautified for ever by the continual transmutation of its living stones.
Of Words Made Void
The legend of a literal Master-Word which perished with a Master-Builder—or was hidden with him in a sepulchre—-which connoted rank in a sodality, or a grade of skill in craftsmanship, can spell nothing whatever to us as Emblematical Masons, and from the moment that it might pass into desuetude for any reason it would lose all consequence to Operatives. Whatever substitution might be agreed upon would acquire at once the value and efficiency of the original. There would be nothing to connect, nothing to seek, for in fact there would be no loss. In certain Orders existing at this day there are Temporal Passwords which are replaced regularly by others at given times and seasons: when the old ones pass out of use they fall into the limbus of forgotten things, or are buried in the records of Minute-Books. If the Master-Word of Masonry was actually and literally a Word, then it belonged to this category, and the great quest of the Craft Degrees becomes nonsense, not only on the face of things but in their very heart. Put otherwise and more plainly, Emblematic Freemasonry is stultified at once as such. It is beyond all question therefore that those who made it, as now practised, were dealing in another subject, which they veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. As to its real nature I have indicated in this section the direction in which we must look. But the Secret Doctrine of Israel is another illustration by allegory and another veil of symbolism: it is of no greater profit on the merely literal and formal side than is the Legend of the Master Grade, when the sense of this is restricted within its surface aspect. When both have dissolved there emerges that Secret Doctrine which is based on experience and which tells to those who have ears—meaning those who are capable of the experience or have already passed through it—(1) that the Word is Life; (2) that this Life is Divine; (3) that it must be made flesh within us, by realisation of its presence in the heart of hearts; (4) that until it has become so incarnate the Word is lost.
Verbum Christus est
It is to be understood that I am speaking here from the deep root of things, remembering the place of the Logos in philosophy and its application to the Mystery of Christ. We have to remember, however, that the symbolism of the Word in Masonry does not stand alone, but calls for consideration in connection at large with the Craft Traditional History and with that which is enacted ritually and is built up on this basis. After passing therefore through the ceremonial experience of a figurative death and resurrection, we have to realise in the first place that the Craft Masters do not find the Word which was the secret and seal of Masters in the plenary light of Masonry: they make shift for the time being with a devised and arbitrary substitute. It is as if something had been enacted symbolically which must be fulfilled hereafter in life and experience, as if the Way of Divine Life and the Way of Truth had been delineated in a metaphysical sketch and its application left to themselves in their proper persons. A quest-motive arises in this manner, and we hear of a quest in Masonry; but within the measures of the Craft Degrees it is pursued always after the same manner and reaches the same suspension. The Candidate is told, however, the direction in which he must turn if he would attain his end in Masonry. It is to that bright and Morning Star about which it is said—“whose rising brings peace and salvation, and of which we learn otherwise that this is the root and stock of Jesse, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the First and the Last. It is obvious therefore that the Word in Masonry is Christ, and again that the finding of the Word is the finding also of Christ. In its preliminary meaning, the loss of the Word signifies the death of Christ. The three assassins are the world, the flesh and the devil—to make use of familiar technical and conventional terms. The Master-Builder who erected the House of Christian Doctrine is Christ Himself. From another point of view the malefactors were Pilate, Herod and Caiaphas.
A Practical Counsel
Amidst the high technicalities and involved reveries of the Secret Tradition in Kabalism the Doctors of later Israel remembered from time to time, and indeed continually, that which is the life of Doctrine, its realisation in the heart of the student. The crown of their theosophy in respect of the Word is contained in a single sentence which is a guarantee of experience in Israel: “If man aspires after the Supreme and Holy Utterance”—Verbum ineffabile—“he draws it down from above.” It is not Jehovah or another—of the Royal Arch, the Militia Crucifera of the Temple and Holy Sepulchre, or the Rose-Croix, Ordo Sanctissima. As Mary conceived in the heart before she conceived in the body, so is the Word generated and so only is born in the heart of the Master Mason. The impregnation by which it is brought about is a seed of life; the Word is alive in the heart; it is an utterance found in life, a life which enters into expression. The ne plus ultra Grade of this Mystery had been taken by St. Paul when he said: “I live, but not I: it is Christ liveth within me.” Our verbal utterances are fore- and post-shortened, suspended and broken on our lips; they are shadows of Divine Utterance; and for want of power in speech we express only in the heart that which is the Word of Life. It is the other side of that story of secret life concerning the Temples and Palaces which we have pledged ourselves to erect for the Glory of God in the Highest: “Most Puissant Sovereign, for want of territory we build them in our hearts.” But there comes that time for some of us when we realise in our heart of hearts that there in our hidden centre—and in the last resource there only—have we been called to the work of such building.
The Question of Antiquity
It is to be observed that the presence of a Kabalistic element in the Traditional History of the Craft—and elsewhere—by no means connotes antiquity; and antiquity is a difficult thing to predicate of the Third Degree, at least in its present form. By whomsoever created or developed, its author was a student of the Secret Tradition in Israel and drew important lights therefrom, possibly at first hand, more probably perhaps from those Latin commentaries and synopses already mentioned. The great bulk of these were compiled already if we place his work early in the eighteenth century, as we must, almost beyond doubt. Much of it was available previously, supposing that more considerable antiquity could be postulated of the Third Degree. But we must be content with what is evidentially reasonable in this respect, until time or circumstances shall provide better warrants. If we cannot get behind Desaguliers I am prepared to abide by him, who was a man of learning in his way, had read in many directions and may not have been unfamiliar with Picus de Mirandula, Riccius, Capnion, Archangelus de Burgo Nuovo and Knorr von Rosenroth. At the same time I shall look with no unhopeful eye towards the ancient Masonry of York, where I feel that many things had a hidden repository for a period. For Speculative Masonry as a whole we may have to rest content also if we cannot date it much further back than the close of the seventeenth century, recognising that its present characteristic developments are to be sought in and about the Revival period. It puts an end to romantic hypotheses, but the great intimations of the Third Degree remain—a speaking pageant in symbolism, however late its origin. The Quest of the Word remains, with all Zoharic Theosophy behind it and all the Rites of Christian Masonry in front. That mythos connects our Order by reflection with the chief figurative Mysteries of past ages, while the Opening and Closing of the Lodge therein are much greater than anything extant in the memorials of Greece and Egypt.
Recurrence to Hermetic Schools
We may therefore at this point reach a general conclusion on the Hermetic Schools and their alleged intervention for the transformation of an Operative Guild into an Emblematic Freemasonry, and it shall be expressed in such a manner as will be without detriment to ourselves or our connections as loyal and devoted Masons. In Dionysian architects, Roman Collegia, Comacines and Building Guilds of the Middle Ages I have failed to discover any traces of an art of building spiritualised. I have taken the Old Gothic Constitutions and have sought to digest them like Anderson “in a new and better method”; but however they were passed and repassed through the mental alembic they have yielded nothing corresponding to a “system of morality, veiled m allegory and illustrated by symbols.” Not even the Regius MS. betrays a single vestige, though I have followed Gould anxiously. As regards the Hermetic Schools, and speaking—if I may venture to say so—as one who knows the literatures, the allegation of Albert Pike—mentioned in a previous section—is true in respect of a few world-wide symbols which prove nothing and false in all things else. There is no legend of three Grand Masters in alchemy, there is no Substituted Word, and there is no Master of the Lodge, for there is no record of Ritual procedure among all its cloud of witnesses. The witness of alchemy to Masonry is the witness of Elias Ashmole, the sole alchemist in the seventeenth century whom we know to have become a Mason. The Rosicrucian influence I believe to have been marked in character and exercised for a considerable period; but we know it only in its developments, which belong to the eighteenth century and are of course beyond our scope. Provisionally and under all reserves, I am inclined to hold that it began earlier, in the sense of an atmosphere belonging to the formative period of Emblematic Freemasonry. But the great Rosicrucian maxim cited by Robert Fludd about 1630 must be ruled out unfortunately. Transmutemini, transmutemini de lapidibus mortuis in lapides vivos philosophicos does not signify that the Brothers of the Rosy Cross had either joined or invented our figurative and speculative Art: it is rather a contrast established between material and spiritual alchemy. For the present at least, we are called also to set aside the winning speculation concerning a secret school of Emblematic Masonry coexistent through several generations or centuries with the Operative Guild and sometimes identified with Rosicrucians. There are no Rosicrucian traces prior to 1598. Moreover, the alleged school is a notion arising out of a false construction of the Regius MS.
A Final Reduction of Issues
We are left in this manner with the Kabalistic element, about which I have spoken plainly. But now as a last point: supposing that there is in reality no trace of the Third Degree prior to 1717; that after this epoch it was devised by a group of Masonic literati or alternatively by an anonymous Brother, whether famous like Desaguliers or obscure: what then is our position? My own at least is this—that the Third Degree was formulated on the basis of the Ancient Mysteries and illustrated by the lights of Kabalism facts about which there is no open question; that it belongs as such to an old and secret tradition, though not in respect of time, that it stands on its own symbolical value; and that—in the words of Martines de Pasqually: We must needs be content with what we have. As a student of the past, I could wish that it were otherwise, but in this as in all else the first consideration is truth. There are High Grades of Masonry for which no one in their senses predicates antiquity, and yet they are great Grades. They are even holy Grades, which—from my point of view—carry on the work of the Craft towards something that stands for completion. I conclude, therefore, with an affirmation which I have made in other places, that antiquity per se is not a test of value. I can imagine a Rite created at this day which would be much greater and more eloquent in symbolism than anything that we work and love under the name of Masonry. Yet for what Masonic antiquity is—let us call it two hundred years, under all needful reserves—such an invention would not have the hallowed and beloved associations which have grown about our Emblematic Craft. Here is the matter of antiquity which really signifies: it is part of the life of the Order. And after all the fables and all the fond reveries, the false analogies and mythical identifications with other and immemorial Mysteries, it is again the life which counts, the life of that great world-wide Masonic organism, in which we ourselves live and move and have our Masonic being.