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To be admitted into the Privileges and Mysteries of Ancient Freemasonry

To be admitted into the Privileges and Mysteries of Ancient Freemasonry

Presented by Bro. Vincent Lombardo, P.M.

    At the Masonic Education Night
October 27, 2015

Before exploring what the Privileges and Mysteries of Ancient Freemasonry may be, let's see who should be granted admission to, and enjoyment of them.   We learn, in the booklet "the Ceremony of Installation and Investiture of Officers of a Lodge" (GLC 2010, p. 86 ff.) who these men are:

The Ideal of a Freemason

"If you see a man who quietly and modestly moves in the sphere of his life; who without blemish fulfils his duties as a man, a subject, a husband and a father; who is pious without hypocrisy, benevolent without ostentation, and who aids his fellow men without self-interest; whose heart beats warm for friendship, whose serene mind is open for licensed pleasure, who in vicissitudes does not despair, nor in fortune will be presumptuous, and who will be resolute in the hour of danger."

"The man who is free from superstition and free from infidelity; who, in nature, sees the finger of the Eternal Master; who feels and adores the higher destination of man; to whom Faith, Hope and Charity are not mere words without meaning; to whom property, nay, even life, is not too dear for the protection of innocence and virtue, and for the defense of truth."

"The man who towards himself is a severe judge, but who is tolerant with the debilities of his neighbor; who endeavors to oppose errors without arrogance, and to propagate intelligence without precipitation, who properly understands to estimate and to employ his means; who honors virtue though it be in the most humble garment, who does not favor vice thought it be clothed in purple; and who administers justice to merit, whether dwelling in palaces or in cottages."

"The man who, without courting applause, is loved by all noble-minded men, respected by his superiors, and revered by his subordinates; the man who never proclaims what he has done, will do, can do, but where need is, will lay hold with dispassionate courage, circumspect resolution, indefatigable exertion, and rare power of mind, and who will not cease until he has accomplished his work, but who then, without pretension, will retire into the multitude, because he did the good act, not for himself, but for the cause of good."

"If you, my brethren, meet such a man, you will see the personification of brotherly love, relief and truth; and you will have found the ideal of a Freemason."

200 years ago, in his Letters to Constant, Bro. Johann Gottlieb Fichte describes the ideal Freemason thus:

"His mind is free from prejudices of every sort. He is a master in the realm of ideas and looks out over the region of human truth as widely as possible. But truth is for him only one — a single indivisible whole, and he puts no side of it before another. To him, the development of the spirit is only a part of the whole development, and it does not come into his mind to have entirely completed it, even so little as it comes into his mind to wish to be deprived of it. He sees very well and does not hesitate to acknowledge how much others are backward behind him in this respect, but he is not overzealous about this since he knows also how much this depends upon luck. He obtrudes his light, and much less the full shine of his light, upon no one, while yet he is ever ready to give to anyone who asks it so much as he can carry, and to give it to him in such dress as is most agreeable to him, and he does not mind if no one asks enlightenment of him. He is righteous throughout, scrupulous, strict against himself within himself, without externally making the least fuss about his virtue and obtruding it upon others through the assertion of his integrity through great conspicuous sacrifices, or affectation of high seriousness. His virtue is as natural, and I might say modest as his wisdom; the ruling feeling as to the weaknesses of his fellow-men is good-hearted pity; in no wise angry indignation. He lives in faith in a better world already here below, and this faith in his eyes gives value, meaning and beauty to his life in this world; but he does not press this faith upon others. Instead, he carries it within himself as a private treasure."

"This is the picture of the perfected man; this is the ideal of the Mason. He will not ask nor boast a higher perfection than mankind everywhere can attain. His perfection can be no other than a human and the human perfection. Each man must be busied continually in the approximation to this goal. If the order has any efficacy, every member must visibly and consciously occupy himself with this approximation. He must keep this picture before his mind as an ideal set up and laid next to his heart. It must be, as it were, the nature in which he lives and breathes."

"It is very likely that not all, yes perhaps no one, of those who call themselves Masons will reach this perfection. But who has ever measured the goodness of an ideal or only an institution by what individuals actually attain? It depends on what they can attain under the given circumstances; on what the institution through all given means wills and points out that which its members should attain."

"Moreover, I do not say that Masons are necessarily better than other men, nor that one cannot reach the same perfection outside of the order. It is quite possible that a man who had never been taken into the society of Freemasons could resemble the picture set forth above, and there actually comes to mind at this moment the picture of a man in whom I find it eminently realized; and he knows the order only by name at most. But the same man, if he had come into the order and, through it, he has become by himself that which in the greater human society would be more capable of making others the same as he is, and his whole culture would be more social, more communicable, and directly also essentially modified in its inner self. What comes into being in fellowship has in practice more life and strength than what is produced in seclusion."

"These are the hints that I wished to give you as to the working of the Society of Freemasons upon its members. Either it must effect a happy approximation to the ideal set forth above, or nothing at all. More than that cannot be achieved. What is less can be achieved everywhere. It is a matter of course that the members must be susceptible to their salutary influence, also that the institutions must be of such a nature that the most and the least susceptible nevertheless in his just relation profits in it and goes forward."

I have premised this modern and ancient wisdom about Freemasonry and its members in order to better appreciate the Privileges the Order may afford and the Mysteries it may reveal.

So, you were made a lodge member, to partake in the privileges and mysteries of ancient Freemasonry.   Tell me now, my brethren, is any of you such a man?   Did you really dished out all that money in initiation fees when you joined the lodge, and every year in dues, in order to take part in the privileges of ancient Freemasonry, and discover its mysteries, in order to better yourself and society, and to do what is good for the cause of good, or, let's be honest, — for some other motives?   Have you received good value for your money?   Have you made use of any of these privileges and mysterious things you think, or you thought Freemasonry would afford you?

Those privileges and mysteries in Freemasonry were put together over the ages by men fitting the ideal picture delineated above, who wanted to better themselves, and also mankind, and they did do so indeed in their lodges and in their world as giants.   After all that work, unfortunately, very little has been and is done in recent times; and we now bask in the glory of their achievements — dwarf infants unable to grow into men, due to lack of time, inspiration, and mores; as nullities — characterized by mediocrity, still blind, long after the blindfold was removed.

If you are to honor those giants, and become yourself one, you ought to take your place in this work to the best of your abilities and strengths, to the full extent of your cable tow, otherwise, this place is not for you, and you may as well save yourself your money and your time, which you could spend otherwise and in other places more suitable to you.   Because, both your money and your presence would be offensive to us, and to our Institution, if you were to consider the lodge a place of opportunity, where to expand your business, or gain prestige and preference; or to consider it a convenience store, where you can pick up little fleeting pleasures off the shelves, and then go home.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I will allow you your motives were pure, and your commitment sincere; and you entered the lodge searching for light — that knowledge that you think or thought could be found in our Institution alone, and nowhere else.   I can assure you that this has been so, in fact, for centuries and in many countries; but it does not come neatly wrapped in easy to digest morsels, but rather encased in hard to hewn stone. It is for this that we come to lodge — our quarry — to work on our personal refinement, and that of our fellow members, and of society in general by extension.   In the lodge you are not a spectator, but a co-worker.   In lodge you are not a passenger in a vehicle driven around by others for your enjoyment, or on a boat that others steer and propel by the sweat of their brows — you are one of the oarsmen, and one day you could be at the helm; and your fate, and the pleasure of your destination rest in the calluses of your hands, and in the sweat on your brows.

And should you find, without precipitation, and after proper estimation, that around you in the Lodge, or in the District, or even in Grand Lodge, only a few, or even none and not even the principal Officers and Grand Officers, and God forbid — also the Grand Master, are not men such as the one idealized above, but just men of mediocrity, who have reached their exalted positions exclusively for their own self-interest or self-aggrandizement either by pretense or by default — because no one else has been or is in the position to humbly dedicate his time and skills for the good of the Lodge and of the Institution by volunteering to serve in that office, as it is now frequently the case in our Jurisdiction; and should you also find that too many of such offices are today, unfortunately, filled by such men — then you can either take the easy way out, as many have done in recent times, by withdrawing from the Institution, or, if you have the means and the time, with dispassionate courage, circumspect resolution and unshaken determination, work for the betterment of your fellow members, and your own, so that in the near future those important offices shall be filled by men who resemble that ideal of a Freemason as close as possible, and the Institution, which for the past decades has experienced a steady decline in membership, dignity, and quality of men among its subscribers, may again flourish and experience a better future.

It won't be easy.   The few who have tried have been often bitterly opposed and vilified by those who they tried to correct and by their followers in mediocrity.   Should you decide to walk away, I won't blame or reproach you.   Now let's have a coffee and a 15-minute break; on resuming, we will explore where to go from here.

On resuming:

Well, well, you are all here, I am encouraged.

(One Brother from the audience): Salam has left, cursing the lodge and all its members.

Salam who, and why?

(From the audience): Salam H- - - - d.   He said that we are wasting his time; that we should rather concentrate, like every other lodge in the District, in becoming proficient with the rules of Protocol and Etiquette, the Essence of Freemasonry, and shine brightly amongst all the other lodges; and then try to capture the Travelling Gavel during our Swarming raids, instead of wasting our time with these lofty subjects, for which only a few idealistic elitists have the passion for.

My brethren, almost 200 years ago, in 1836, a most distinguished German lodge of that time revised its Constitutions and, among other things, wisely carved in it in stone the following: "By its procedures, peculiar to it, Freemasonry wants to promote the refinement of human beings as such.   Clearly, it is hereby stated that customs, symbols, and forms are to serve only as means to the purpose, — that, accordingly, a lodge would be on a very erroneous path, was it to believe that its task was solved by teaching and practicing formality" [Protocol and Etiquette].

For the past couple of years, we have received, in monthly installments, the fruits of the labor of the Protocol & Etiquette Committee. Excellent work, effective in fostering elegant uniformity in the external appearance of our Craft.   We have seen of late brethren engaged in a race to out-do each other in the observance of these rules of protocol and etiquette, called "Essentials"; we have seen a remarkable improvement in "name-calling" – I mean: the proffering of full list of rank and titles of everybody in sight, the more the merrier, repeatedly, unconcerned about the unstoppable ticking of the clock toward the midnight hour; we have seen deviations to these rules, especially the name-calling rule, big or small, treated as mortal sins – but all that is vacuity, exteriority, and child's play: anything but Essence.

This misconception has been going on for many decades, with disastrous consequences to the Craft.   Already in 1962 M.W. Bro. Dwight L. Smith, P.G.M. and Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Indiana, wrote extensively about it, especially with his paper: Whither Are We Travelling?   Unfortunately his voice was not heard or his advice heeded.

What then are the Privileges and Mysteries of Ancient Freemasonry?

Let's deal first with the Privileges.   By becoming a member of a Masonic Lodge, where the fundamental principles, or Tenets, of Ancient Freemasonry: Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth, is not a mere slogan, but tenets to be lived and practiced, you can then expect the privilege of being treated and loved as a real, equal brother by just and upright men, independently from their or your social status in the civil society.   Should you one day experienced difficulty or sickness, you can then expect from these brethren relief and assistance, and by the same token, you have the privilege of extending relief and assistance to any of them, should they be in need, within the limits of your abilities. They will be truthful to you, without evasion or prevarication; they will defend your good name and reputation without envy; and should they think you have erred, they will lovingly try to make you realize your error, and never conspire to slander you behind your back, or have you punished, should their opinion and explanation not convince you have erred, and surrender to them.   There have been, unfortunately, a few — too many — cases in history, and even in recent times, where, driven by envy and bigotry, a few dwarf Masons have systematically caused the slander of a Brother, and thereby sullied this so highly moral precept, as you can read about it here; and I urge you never to blindly join such Masons in their prejudice or spiteful persecution of fellow-Masons, based on idle gossip or hearsay.

Brotherly love also gives you the privilege of partiality. It is human nature to favor — everything else being equal — your brother over a stranger. This, however, is not being intended as systemic preference for a fellow-Mason; and a just and upright man, such as the ideal Mason depicted above, will act justly and fairly towards all men.

You have the privilege and right to voice your opinion in the administration of the affairs of the Lodge, to vote, — not sheepishly, because others around you have raised their hand, — but after due consideration regarding the question voted on.   You have the privilege to hold office, and to demit; and the right and privilege to affiliate in other lodges, according to their laws.   Also of visiting in Lodges in which you don't hold membership, which is both a right and a privilege, though not a duty; but not unannounced, as it is done today in our Jurisdiction in the swarmings mentioned above; it is only common courtesy to correspond in advance with the lodge you wish to visit, and having received its consent, bring something valuable to them, be it information or just fraternal greetings, and not only your fork and knife.   Also important: on passing near the Broken Column (or Poor Collection Box), don't rush by, looking the other way, but deposit in it what your conditions may permit, thus honoring your host lodge in its charitable endeavors.   It is a right in the sense that you may seek admittance into any regular Lodge; it is a privilege in the sense that your admission into the Lodge is contingent upon being vouched for, or examined, if necessary, and being permitted to enter by the Master.   If a Mason is not permitted to enter some Lodge at a certain time, the fact does not cancel his right to seek to visit it at another time or to seek to visit any other Lodge.

You have the privilege of sharing equal fellowship with men of the most diverse profession and social standing, thus expanding your perception and knowledge of things by their perception and knowledge, otherwise impossible even today in our civil society, if you had remained in your own private space.   Bro. Fichte described this privilege more eloquently in his Fourth Letter:

"Now the picture of Masonry, as it is in and of itself, or uniquely can and should be, will govern your soul.   I draw this picture as yet with few strokes.

Here men of all walks of life come freely together and bring into a hoard what each, according to his individual character, has been able to acquire in his calling. Each brings and gives what he has: the thinking man definite and clear conceptions, the man of business readiness and ease in the art of living, the religious man his religious sense, the artist his religious enthusiasm. But none imparts it in the same way in which he received it in his calling and would propagate it in his calling. Each one, as it were, leaves behind the individual and special and shows what it has worked out within him as a result. He strives so to give his contribution that he can reach every member of society, and the whole society exerts itself to assist this endeavor and, in this way, to give his former one-sided training a general usefulness and all-sidedness. In this union each receives in the same measure as he gives. Just through this that he gives it is given him, this is to say, the skill to give."

In certain Jurisdictions there is also the privilege of a Masonic Wedding; in other your family has the right of requesting you be afforded the privilege of a Masonic Funeral and even Burial in your honor.  This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the privileges Freemasonry affords its members, but sufficient to describe how valuable they are.

Now for the Mysteries.  Let's start by dispelling any misunderstanding of this term — which is not something unknown and unknowable.
In a practical or specialized sense, a Mystery is the secret knowledge and practices or ritual peculiar to a profession or a body of people such as were the Masons' Guilds of the Middle Ages, whose practices and methods were kept secret for economic purposes.   In a more classical sense, as it relates to the Speculative Masons who separated from the Operative Masons at the beginning of the 18th century, the Mysteries are intended as that body of teachings which has existed "since time immemorial" pertaining to the truer spiritual purposes of human existence, and which, applied to an individual level, delineates the goal to be sought, the objectives and reasons for the soul's purpose through the medium of the form, the sequential stages of the disciplines to be applied to oneself in the pursuit of achieving these objectives step by step, and all with the view to eventually achieving, as close as possible, self-mastery, and thus expressing the inner divinity of the spiritual being on the physical plane through the medium of the form.   The fundamental tenet of the true Mystery Schools, such as the Eleusinian Mysteries, pertains to the spiritual evolution of the inner being, the soul, on its own plane. This is the esoteric path. The secondary factor requires the cooperation of the personality through which the soul actualizes this Plan.   This is the exoteric path, which our ancient brethren put to practice in their lodges, and which has, unfortunately, been supplanted in our lodges by that Protocol and Etiquette, claimed by our inept leaders as the Essence of Freemasonry.
This Plan pertains essentially to the unfolding, developing, maturation and expansion of consciousness, ever upwards and onwards towards a greater Light: that Making Good Men Better we proclaim in our slogan without knowing what it means.   But success upon this "path of return" does require the cooperation of both sides of the one human being, the inner and the outer.

In the Mystery Schools of past ages, such as those in India, the Zoroastrians, Chaldea, Egypt and Greece, one of the major methods for training and teaching its neophytes was by dramatic enactments of rites and rituals representing and illustrating by allegories and symbols certain precepts of the Ancient Mysteries which taught the origin of things, the nature of the human spirit, its relations to the body, and the methods of its purification and restoration to a higher life expression, plus the greater exposition of the interrelationships within and between those greater spiritual Entities of the Macrocosmic Whole.

By your admission into Masonry, and through the advancement in the various degrees, you have been briefly exposed to these rites and symbols, but their deeper study and understanding is no longer pursued in our lodge today; and even when you, half asleep, see them performed now and again in our lodges, either by fault of the actors, or by your inattentive mind concerned with your ride home and the pressing tasks awaiting you in the morning, they wash over your mind as rain over a window in a summer day. This study, research, and understanding ought to be your personal pursuit, in the solitude of your private space; and then enhanced by sharing with your brethren the fruits of your researches in settings such as this.