Oh Gee! Exploring the "G" of Freemasonry

Oh Gee! Exploring the “G” of Freemasonry

Kerry A. Shirts, F.C. Dec. 13, 2009

 

I just recently received my Fellow Craft Degree in Free Masonry this last week and was duly impressed with the whole ritual, initiation, and instruction. Twice now I have been hoodwinked, once as an Entered Apprentice, and the 2^nd time as a Fellow Craft, and twice when the blindfold was lifted from my eyes, the first thing I saw was that bright shining letter “G” piercing the darkness as the first form of light in the East above the Worshipful Master’s chair. We are instructed that it stands for “God.” In the Fellow Craft, we are also taught that it stands for “Geometry.” Geometry is by far one of the most important of the 7 Liberal Arts which we are importuned to sincerely begin paying attention to, studying, practicing, and teaching. There simply could be no architecture, whether on earth, or in heaven, without the science, the art, the wonder, that is Geometry.

 

In my readings through the years of various ancient authors and of sundry subjects, it occurred to me that the instruction that ”G” is for “God and “Geometry” is probably intended to tease our minds into recognizing, if not downright establishing, more connections, themes, ideas, and ideals than these two words alone, magnificent as they are. Right off the top of my head it quickly dawns on a Fellow Craft

Mason that “knowledge” is precisely what one should and must desire to attain, and work as diligently as one can to acquire this knowledge of all things in order to build our Brotherhood worldwide. The Greek word for knowledge is, interestingly enough, Gnosis, another very powerful, and completely relevant vital word for our “G” words theme! Nor do I consider this a mere coincidence. In pondering this, I realized that indeed, many subjects of words beginning with “G” actually do have significant bearing upon our craft of Free Masonry. This paper explores multitudinous avenues of inquiry which all tie in, in astonishingly fascinating ways to Free Masonry, as I will demonstrate. As our ancient Masonic brothers needed patience and diligent effort to lay a foundation for their buildings in order for a building to stand stalwart and enduring, so must I build a foundation of information for you, my fellow Masonic brethren, which show the letter “G” was, in all reality, not even close to being chosen merely for one or two themes alone, but rather  is literally an intersection of several disciplines, themes, and cultures which simply builds Masonry into an all inclusive subject of which we are building with in our own Spiritual Houses, not made with hands, Eternal in the Heavens. This synthesis of inter-disciplinary study broadens and deepens our souls, our minds, and hearts of things virtuous, lovely, and of good report. This simple symbol letter “G” brings about the recognition of an all encompassing nature of our Masonic Brotherhood, worldwide, in both place and time, our mottos, and our symbolic emblems which we find in other systems, philosophies, religions, and cultures.

 

“G” is for “God” the Great Architect of the universe. Albert Pike, in discussing various Eastern religions views of God, notes that God is identified as “One great and incomprehensible Being existing from all Eternity – everything we behold and we ourselves are portions of him. The soul, mind or intellect of gods and men and all sentient creatures are detached portions of the Universal Soul.”[1] Masonic philosophy, he admonishes us, is the great gathering of all truths from all areas into one whole, and this universal “Kabbalistic” theme “like Masonry, it incessantly trends toward spiritual perfection…”[2]

 

James T. Tresner, a 33^rd degree Mason, recently discussing the significance of a lost speech of Albert Pike, in Heredom, the journal of the Scottish Rite Research Society. He showed many points of Pike’s teaching about how a Mason should conduct himself, and the reasons for his charitable and tolerant attitude with his fellow man, thus emulating “God.” The kind of Deity one conceives of, definitely causes us to live in certain ways and manners. “Therefore Masonry strives to help each Mason form a truer concept of Deity… Masonic charity should be like God’s charity. If He can forgive us, we can surely forgive others… no one can KNOW that his concept of faith and Deity is right, however strongly he BELIEVES it. That knowledge is reserved for another life. The nature of God cannot be determined by a majority vote.”[3] W. Kirk MacNulty, a 33^rd degree Mason, in a stimulating analysis of Kabbalah and Masonry made the point, among many others, that in the Fellow Craft degree, the letter G stands for both Geometry and the Name of Deity, quoting Bernard Jones, “we shall not be far wrong when we teach the Fellow Craft that the letter “G” denotes God who is the Grand Geometrician of the Universe.” MacNulty, in placing the Masonic symbols on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, puts the letter “G” in Keter (the crown) not because it is the Divine Presence, but because it allows us a glimpse of the Name of Deity. “The Fellow Craft may now practice the second of the Theological Virtues, Hope.”[4]    

This theme of spiritual perfection and hope of being or even becoming Divine was had in many ancient cultures and religions from around the world. We now understand Masonry as standing directly on that same path. We now realize why Horace taught, as did Virgil, that Octavian was a god already on earth, identifying him with Hermes, while the immortality and identity of Augustus with Jupiter in heaven becomes more intelligible.[5] In the neo-Platonic view, (ca 300-600 A.D.) God as a destroyer, as is sometimes understood from reading about the Deity in the Old Testament, is given a most fascinating context. “What does God destroy? When one is conscious of the Divine Presence, that Presence (God) destroys everything unlike itself. That is because the neo-Platonic point of view was that “God is everything that is real, everything unlike God is an illusion, an illusion that is dispelled when one is conscious of the Divine Presence.”[6] The Bahir (a Jewish book of mysticism attributed to Rabbi Nehuniah ben HaKana, a Talmudic sage of the first century) teaches that the Divine Presence is called Tzedek, since it is Righteousness itself.[7] Interestingly enough, the gnosis, according to Clement of Alexandria, one of the most prominent Early Christian Fathers, was the perfection man achieved by living through the process and the living of the Godly attributes one had. Gnosis, as practical teachings applied to living the life of Godliness leads to deification.[8] The greatest of these Godly attributes according to St. Paul was charity (1 Corinthians 13). Our letter “G” in Masonry meaning God with geometry, gnosis, charity, and the study of the seven liberal arts are seen to be spot on! And there is much more.

 

In Early Christianity we are told that “Deification was often seen as the telos (goal) of human existence and of Salvation.”[9] The Pseudo-Dionysius was the first to define the word Theosis as “Divinization consists of being as much as possible like and in union with God.”[10] The mystical Kabbalistic Jewish teaching is that man as a microcosm is made in the image of God because the Tree of Life and its sephiroth can be superimposed onto the body of man (the tree is in us, because of its Godly attributes, of which are shared with mankind according to some teachings), and this image is described by the term ha-male meaning “fullness” which is directly equivalent to the Gnostic term pleroma (divine) fullness, of which man partakes.[11] In the Mithraic mysteries the soul upon dying returns to that original home of his beyond the stars in the heavenly spheres, and in fact “is connected with its own star.” The Milky Way in fact, is seen as the celestial path for the soul to travel to get back to the stars and become on of them in what Cumont has called “celestial immortality,” which can also be found in Plato’s Timaeus, “where each soul is said to be connected with its own star.”[12] “The Orphic belief that purified souls went up to stars, nay even became stars,” is shown by Jane Harrison.[13]

 

In light of our Masonic injunctions to study the seven liberal arts, especially geometry, and including astronomy (specifically mentioned in the Fellow Craft lecture as well), these themes at once poignantly interest us. In the Genesis Apocryphon of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Noah is described as glowing when he was born, and his father, Lamech, was seriously upset with his wife because he thought she had conceived Noah by an affair with the gods! Noah is described as being so incredibly brilliant that he “lit up the rooms of the house like rays of the sun.”[14] This theme of ancient heroes being begotten of the gods is also found in Plutarch who noted that Theseus, like Romulus himself, (one of the founders of Ancient Rome), were “sprung from the gods.” Theseus was begotten by Neptune according to Pittheus. Alexander was even said to have been descended through Hercules and been begotten by the Egyptian god Ammon.[15] Pythagoras himself was said to be a son of God and so descended from God.[16] Our letter “G” can easily, and obviously mean “Godly” as surely as it stands for “God” also. And this “Godliness,” and “Goodness” encompasses mankind with it. Macrobius as well rightly taught “Know, therefore, that you are a god, if, indeed, a god is that which quickens, feels, remembers, foresees, and in the same manner rules, restrains, and impels the body of which it has charge as the supreme God rules the universe…to make it clear that the soul is not only immortal but is a god.”[17]

In the Hermetic book called “Asclepius” it declares the divine part of man resides in the head and our root is in heaven, whence was the birth of our souls from the beginning. Plato had said that man is a plant of heaven, he is like an inverted tree, the roots of which are turned to heaven and its top toward the earth.[18] Coomaraswamy demonstrated the exact same conception is in the Rig Veda, Upanishads, and  in the other Eastern literatures.The theme is being “rooted in the dark ground of the Godhead” which tree represents the axis of the universe from earth to heaven.[19] In the Zohar, in the Hebrew tradition the Tree of Life spreads downwards from above, and is entirely bathed with light from the sun.[20] The ancient Norse Yggdrasil was another such tree.[21] In Mesoamerica the yaxche tree is significantly a world axis as well, giving us hints of the theme of Jacob’s Ladder, the ascent between the worlds, another significant Masonic theme, of which I will write on in another paper. The maize tree “symbolizes the original act of creation, sacrifice, and rebirth,” all significant Masonic themes as well.[22] The esoteric hint is in the Tarot Major Arcana card called “The Hanged Man,” which I also am in the process of writing about. Significantly, he hangs upside down from a tree, in the shape of the Hebrew letter Tav, an earthly, human representation of the upside down Tree of Life. In the B.O.T.A. deck, he has a Golden (another “G” word) halo of Glory (yet another “G” word) encircling his head signifying the Logos, significantly enough.[23] Interesting, in Livy we learn that when a man was condemned for treason, his head was veiled and he was hanged upside down on a barren tree, everything the opposite in the Hanged Man, and men in Masonry, who submit to civil authority and are taught excellence in citizenship of their nations.[24]

 

The Hermetic books also teach that Hermes was the equivalent and in fact was the Biblical Patriarch Enoch.[25] Enoch was equated, or else became the Arch-Angel Metatron, “The Measurer of the earth and of the Lord.”[26] This is precisely the definition of Geometry! The “measure” of man is in the Bible, the “cubit,” the length of the bent arm to the square (!) from the elbow to the tip on the middle finger. This cubit, called an “ell” “(hence ell.bow demonstrated when the arm is bent, or ‘bowed’). In Greek elbow is eolene, and the deities name “is imprinted on the creation through this measure.” When the arm to the square is rotated 90 degrees upright, it looks exactly like the Egyptian hieroglyph “neter” which is the word for “God.”[27]

In the inscribed star maps in the coffins and tombs of the kings and Pharaohs of Egypt in the Middle Kingdom, we learn that “the stars were regarded as gods or as the souls of the blessed dead.”[28] Mankind’s tie in with not only God but the entire Cosmos was believed and lived for. We read literally hundreds of descriptions of how the King rules over the stars, ferries his way over the Eastern Horizon to them, climbs the stairway of the sky to get to them, summons them, is set in the sky as a star, etc. Not only the ascension is prominent, but the circumambulation about the stars as the heavenly aspect of his kingdom is understood.[29] Walter Wreszinski discusses this in his article "Das Buch vom Durchwandeln der Ewigkeit nach einer Stele im Vatikan," showing the significance of this cosmological uniting and wandering through the Cosmos precisely because the Egyptians were initiated and ritualized their lives as Masons have our rituals for the same purposes precisely, to become “Good” and live “Great” lives the “Glory” be to “God” as we unite all in Brotherhood. The ideology through the rituals are exactly the same.

Wenn du dich zum Himmel erhebst, wird dein Arm nicht gehindert, wenn du zur Unterwelt niedersteigst, wirst du nicht abgehalten. Du wandelst auf dem Wege der Götter, die im Horizonte wohnen, und du bereitest deine Stätte bei den Bewohnern des Westens. Du umwandelst den Himmel hinter den... Gestirnen und umkreisest das Firmament der Unterwelt mit den Sternen. Du kommst als Bote der Herren des Horizontes und folgst denen die in der Unterwelt sind. Du vereinigst dich mit dem Herrn der Ewigkeit, wenn er am Tage aufgeht, und mit dem Herrn der Unendlichkeit, wenn er eintritt in der Nacht. Geöffnet ist dir diese Erde als einem Edlen der Lüfte.

“When you rise to the heaven, your arm is not hindered, if you descend to the underworld, you are not kept away. You continue on the way of the Gods that live on the horizon, and you make ready your place with the Westerners. You circulate in the heavens in their times... You circumambulate with the stars in the heavens of the underworld. You come as the messenger of the Lords of the Horizon and accompany those that are in the underworld. You unite with the Lord of Eternity, when he rises on his course in the day, and with the Lord of Infinity, when he enters the night. This earth is opened for you as a noble one of the airs.”[30]

Edward F. Wente’s analysis proves that the Egyptians were not all about funerals alone, nor were their literatures such as the Coffin Texts, Pyramid Texts, Books of the Dead, Books of Breathings, etc., the exclusive property and for use for the dead, rather, the Egyptians were “involving the initiations of living persons… some of the vast amount of funerary literature was familiar to living Egyptians.”[31] Dr. Thomas Milton Stewart, a 33^rd degree Mason and Past Master, in discussing the significance of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and Masonic ritual in general, concludes that “For the soul must win his way by his own personal effort, relying on the promptings of the Divinity within. He aids himself by assuming identity with the great gods, but he must have made some success in developing his capacity and powers of his own nature similar to those of the god in whose likeness he masquerades for the time being, or failure will result. That is to say, the acts in life must mould character along those lines that make for permanency in the next world. He must “Fight the good fight and lay hold on eternal life” as Timothy puts it in the New Testament.”[32] The Egyptian Book of Wandering Through Eternity describes precisely this reward.

Du schreitest zu dem Orte, zu dem du willst, du fährst nordwärts, und südwärts von Elephantine bis zum Delta an den Festen aller Götter. Du steigst auf die heilige Barke mit den Seligen, dein Sitz ist vorn im Götterschiff.

“You proceed to the place, to which you want, you travel northwards, and southwards from Elephantine up to the delta at the festivals of all the Gods. You climb on the sacred Barke with the blessed ones, your seat is in the front of the Ship of the God.”

To be allowed onto the ship of the God is to traverse eternity with the gods. This is one of the ultimate goals of the Egyptains. Heaven is not a boring place where there are simply seats and seats row after row of happy folk with nothing else to do except sing forever. That isn’t heaven at all in this view. Heaven is to move, to travel, to enjoy seeing new sights, and enjoy good company. Heaven is learning, and working on our ignorance. There is nothing static about heaven in these views of these ancient documents anywhere. It is energetic, alive, diffuse, interesting. The ultimate blessing is to share these exciting learning and enjoying experiences with friends and family. And this is precisely how the Book of Wandering Through Eternity ends.

Kraft, Freudigkeit, zu eilen bei Tag und Nacht im Horizonte der Ewigkeit... Dein Name bleibt und wächst, dein Haus dauert und hat Bestand auf Erden, indem dein Sohn gesegnet ist auf einem Sitze und deine Kindeskinder dauernd gemacht sind hinter dir, unvergänglich, immer und ewig.

“Strength, joyfulness, hurry along with day and night in the horizon of the eternity... Your name remains and grows, your house lasts and has continuance on Earth, in that your son is blessed on a throne (seat) and your grandchildren are continually behind you, immortal, always and eternally (forever and ever).”[33]

The value of reading the Egyptian ideas is for comparison for our own assumptions about what we wish to have; what we wish to be, or what we hope is truthful, righteous, and just. By comparing/contrasting ideologies, we become a better people. Studying their rituals, laws, governments, religions, sciences causes us to “Grow” in “Goodness” and “Godliness” towards all men who really are our brothers. Our living rituals connect us together in our lives right now and prepare us for the next life, precisely as the Egyptian ones did from the so-called “Book of the Dead,” a mis-translation of the more correct title “Book of Going Forth By Day.”[34] A powerful lesson for expanding our awareness of the letter “G” in our lodges given us by Stewart is that “knowledge is based on experience. Symbols have a different meaning for the reason that a symbol represents a definite individual experience which could be reproduced in the life experience of another individual despite the lapse of time. This then becomes also a criterion for truth. Religion likewise was based on experience, it was simply the application of the temple teachings to the living of a life. The putting into practice of the ethical teachings such as are found in the 125^th Chapter of the Book of the Dead.”[35] What this precipitates is the “participation in Deity.” The end view of all the Egyptians, Hermeticists, Theurgists and the Greek and Christian mysteries alike was the “conscious and hypostatic union of the soul with Deity and its participation in the life of God.”[36] The reason for our rituals, our dramas, our participations in life, bringing about a world-wide Brotherhood is precisely because, as the ancients taught, and as Masons regard, “in man we have faculties, capacities, and powers as attributes of the Individual Intelligence, or the Spark of Divinity.”[37]

The “Gnosis” and “Geometry” and its sister discipline “Gematria,” as well as “Glory” and “Great Work” (Alchemy” and other disciplines) will have to wait for the 2^nd part of this paper, as this is long enough for us to comprehend that the letter “G” is not merely chosen for lack of a better letter, or without significant meaning and use in our own lives, and more especially in our Masonic lives.

To be Continued…

Endnotes

1. Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, 604. Hereafter cited as M&D.
2. Pike, M&D, p. 625.
3. James T. Tresner, “St. John’s Day Among the Creek: A Rediscovered Speech of Albert Pike,” in Heredom: The Transactions of the Scottish Rite Research Society, Edited by S. Brent Morris, Vol. 8 (1999-2000): 140. These are only a few of the points in the speech Pike made.
4. W. Kirk MacNulty, “Kabbalah and Freemasonry,” in Heredom: The Transactions of the Scottish Rite Research Society, Edited by S. Brent Morris, Vol. 7 (1998): 171.
5. George E. Duckworth, “Animae Dimidium Meae: Two Poets of Rome,” in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 87 (1956): 292f, and notes 45-47.
6. MacNulty, Ibid., p. 176.
7. Aryeh Kaplan, The Bahir: Illumination, Samuel Weiser, 1979: 45. In The Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis) edited, and translated by S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers, TzDQ (Tzedeq) is specifically linked with Jupiter.
8. Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and the Secret Gospel of Mark, Cambridge University Press, 1973: 34.
9. Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology, Edited by Stephen Finlan, Vladamir Kharlamov, Princeton Theological Monograph Series, Pickwick Publications, (2006): 5.
10. Finlan. Kharmalov, Ibid., p. 5.
11. Simo Parpola, “The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy,” in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 52, No. 3 (1993): 173, and note 56.
12. David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology & Salvation in the Ancient World, Oxford University Press, 1989: 86.
13. Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Princeton University Press, 1991: 205.
14. Joseph S. Fitzmyer, The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave 1 (1Q20), Editrice Pointificio Instituto Biblico, Roma, (2004): 122.
15. Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, translated by John Dryden, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough, Modern Library, n.d.,  pp. 3, 5, 801f for Alexander.
16. Arnold Hermann, To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides, The Origins of Philosophy, Parmenides Publishing, (2004): 23.
17. Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, edited, translated by William Harris Stahl, Records of Western Civilization, Columbia University Press, (1990): 222-223.
18. Walter Scott, Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings which Contains Religious or Philosophic Teachings Ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, Kessinger Reprints Publishing, (1926): Vol. 3: 36, and note 1.
19. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Traditional Art and Symbolism, Edited by Roger Lipsey, Princeton University Press, (1977): 377).
20. J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, Barnes & Noble, (1971): 348.
21. Georgio de Santillana and Hertha von Deschend, Hamlet’s Mill: An Essay on Myth & the Frame of Time, Gambit Books, (1969): 223, where they mention the Yggdrasil, the world darkening Oak of the Kalevala, Pherecydes world oak tree draped with the starry mantle and the Tree of Life in Eden.
22. For a fabulous general treatment of this theme, Linda Schele, David Friedel, and Joy Parker, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path, William Morrow and Co., (1993).
23. Paul Foster Case, The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages, BOTA, Revised edition, (1990): 135.
24. R. B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate, Cambridge University Press, First Paperback, (1988):133, note 1.
25. Walter Scott, Hermetica: The Ancient Greek and Latin Writings which Contains Religious or Philosophic Teachings Ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, Shambala Press, (1993): 43, note 3.
26. Andrei Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, Mohr Siebeck (2005): 234ff.
27. Marke Pawson, Gematria, the Numbers of Infinity, Green Magic Press, (2004): 73. See  Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, Cornell University Press, (1982): 34, for illustrations of different stylistic neters, as well as interesting discussion pp. 33-65.
28. Raymond O. Faulkner, “The King and the Star-Religion in the Pyramid Texts,” in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 25, No. 3 (July 1966): 153.
29. Faulkner, Ibid., pp. 155-161.
30. Walter Wreszinski , "Das Buch vom Durchwandeln der Ewigkeit nach einer Stele im Vatikan," in Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, 1908: 111-122).
31. Edward F. Wente, “Mysticism in Pharaonic Egypt?” in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 41, No. 3 (1982): 161-162.
32. Thomas Milton Stewart, The Symbolism of the Gods of the Egyptians and the Light They Throw on Freemasonry, The Baskerville Press, (1927): 39.
33. Wreszinski, Ibid., p. 118.
34. John Gee, “The Use of the Daily Temple Liturgy in the Book of the Dead,” in Totenbuch-Forschungen, (2006): 73-86.
35. Stewart, Ibid., p. 58.
36. A. E. Waite, The Secret Tradition in Alchemy, Kessinger Reprint, n.d., p. 22.
37. Stewart, Ibid., p. 66.

 

Comments

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