This is an exposition of Freemasonry’s inner meaning by Charles W. Leadbeater, a bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church and a leading figure in the Theosophical Society, published by the Theosophical Publishing House at Adyar. Annie Besant introduces the volume in a foreword dated 1925, presenting it as another of Leadbeater’s studies of the hidden side of things, written for Masons who feel the beauty of their ancient Rite and want knowledge added to zeal. The book is not a history of the Craft but a reading of its ceremonies and furniture as vehicles of occult force, and it is addressed chiefly to members of the Co-Masonic Order, though Leadbeater hopes it will reach Brethren of the masculine Craft as well.
“It is said that “three rule a Lodge, five hold a Lodge, and seven or more make it perfect”.”
The Core Argument
Leadbeater’s central claim is that Masonic ritual is not a system of moral allegory but a working mechanism. The ceremonies, he argues, were designed to build a thought-form above the Lodge and to draw down and distribute spiritual force, and they still do this whether or not the Brethren understand what they are doing. The opening ceremony is an effective formula calling entities to aid and preparing a definite service; the closing blessing pours out on the world the energy the Lodge has gathered. Without that purpose, he writes, the preliminaries are like massive doorways leading nowhere.
From this it follows that the officers are not merely presiding dignitaries but living symbols of the principles of man. The three principal officers represent the divine trinity in the Deity and in the human being made in that image — spiritual will, intuitional love, and higher intelligence — while the assistant officers stand for lower mind, the emotional nature, the etheric double, and the dense physical body. The Lodge is the universe in miniature, and its officers are the seven principles at work. Because the Founders arranged the recitation of offices and duties as they did, the mere asking of the appointed questions evokes the angels of those levels; thousands of Masters have asked them without knowing they produced effects in unseen worlds.
A third strand concerns succession and power. Leadbeater draws a parallel between Masonic initiation and Church ordination: as only a bishop can ordain priests, so only an Installed Master can initiate, pass, and raise Masons and create other Installed Masters. There is a succession of Installed Masters in Masonry as there is a succession of bishops in the Church, and it reaches back to the priests of the Mysteries of ancient Egypt. But the transmission is more elastic than in the Church. At a clandestine meeting, even with a duly qualified Installed Master present, inner recognition is not given and powers are not conveyed — something Leadbeater says he has personally experienced twice.
Inside the Book
Foreword and Preface: A Guide Through the Labyrinth
Annie Besant opens the book with a short commendation written at Adyar on Christmas Day, 1925. She frames the volume as another in a series on the hidden side of things by Bishop Charles W. Leadbeater, a true Mason whose aim is to spread the Light and drive back the darkness of Chaos. Seeking, seeing, and following that Light, she reminds the reader, were duties familiar to the Masons of ancient Egypt—though the gloom of that old land never matched the density now shrouding the West. She commends the book to Freemasons who feel the beauty of their ancient Rite and want knowledge added to zeal. The inner history of Masonry is set aside for now; instead, a trustworthy guide leads the apprentice through the labyrinth that guards the central Shrine from careless and idle inquirers. Obscure places grow bright, dark allusions clear, solid walls melt, and doubt gives way to confidence. In place of half-understood traditions, the reader finds a splendid science and a reservoir of power for uplifting the world—a concerted effort to become fellow-labourers with the Great Architect in His plan for human evolution.
Leadbeater’s own preface explains why such a book is needed. A candidate joins Freemasonry blindfold and can learn little until inside the ranks; even then, most Masons grasp only a general idea of the ceremonies and rarely move past an elementary moral reading of the chief symbols. His object is to explain something of the deeper meaning and purpose while preserving due secrecy, hoping to stir reverence and understanding among the Brethren. The book is meant chiefly for the Co-Masonic Order, whose ritual seeks to pour esoteric knowledge into Masonic vessels, though he hopes it reaches a wider circle, including Brethren of the masculine Craft. He likens humanity to a caterpillar feeding on a leaf, unaware of the tree or forest; as a butterfly its view widens, and every caterpillar is a potential butterfly. Religion has always spoken of unseen things close around us here and now. Much of the book’s information, he says, was obtained through natural but super-normal faculties of the soul—a heritage of the whole race, unfolding as evolution proceeds. After more than forty years of research he is certain of the method’s reliability, known to the wise of old but forgotten in the darkness of the early Middle Ages. He compares it to the wireless telegraph, the aeroplane, the spectroscope—all once inconceivable—and cites Lodge, Crookes, Lombroso, Flammarion, and Myers as men of science convinced such faculties exist. He recommends his own Clairvoyance and two books by W. L. Wilmhurst, thanks several helpers, and notes that the second edition adds a few corrections and some information on the higher degrees.
The Origins of Freemasonry and a Personal Memory
The contents list chapters on the Lodge, its fittings, the preliminary ceremonies, the opening, the three degrees, the higher degrees, two wonderful rituals, and the closing—plus plates. Chapter I, “Introductory,” begins with the admission that Freemasonry’s origins are lost in the mists of antiquity. Last century many traced it no further than mediaeval guilds of operative masons, though some saw those guilds as relics of the Roman Collegia. Students of the Ancient Mysteries who are also Freemasons know the true philosophical ancestry lies along that line, since much in the ceremonies could have meant nothing to a mere operative mason. Some assign the foundation to King Solomon; one writer claims its wisdom is all that remains of the divine knowledge Adam possessed before the fall.
Leadbeater then offers a fragment of personal experience. By years of effort and practice he developed psychic faculties that let him remember previous existences—pre-existence, he states, is a fact of his own experience. One earlier life was lived some four thousand years before Christ in Egypt. When he was initiated into Freemasonry in this life, his first sight of the Lodge came as a great and pleasant surprise: he found himself perfectly familiar with every arrangement, identical with what he had known six thousand years earlier in the Mysteries of Egypt. The placing of the three chief officers is unusual, the symbols significant and distinctive, their combination peculiar—yet all belonged to ancient Egypt. Almost all the ceremonies are unchanged, only a few minor points differing. The steps taken and the kisses given carry a symbolical meaning he distinctly remembers.
Egyptian Evidences and the Chain of Lives
He gathered corroboration on the physical plane from books. The explanation of the First Degree tracing board notes that usages and customs among Freemasons preserve vestiges of the ancient Egyptian and Dionysian mysteries. The chain of his own incarnations continues: after Rome he returned to his birthplace in England, was appointed governor of the fortress there, held the post of Master of the Works, superintended repairs at Verulam, and served as Imperial Paymaster. Workmen were treated as slaves and wretchedly paid until S. Alban introduced Freemasonry, secured better wages, and improved conditions. The Watson MS of 1687 credits S. Alban with bringing ancient charges from France, practically identical with those used now. He was beheaded under Diocletian in 303, and the great abbey of S. Alban rose over his remains some five hundred years later.
In 411 he was born in Constantinople as Proclus, the last great exponent of Neo-Platonism, whose influence overshadowed the medieval Church. A gap follows, then rebirth in 1211 as Roger Bacon, the Franciscan reformer of theology and science. In 1375 he was born Christian Rosenkreutz, founder of the Rosicrucians. Some fifty years later he used the body of Hunyadi Janos, a Hungarian soldier and leader; about 1500 he lived as the monk Robertus somewhere in middle Europe, about whom little is known. In 1561 he was born Francis Bacon, about whom history tells little truth and much falsehood; the real facts are emerging through a cipher story he wrote secretly into his published works, sketched elsewhere in The Hidden Side of Christian Festivals. A century later he took birth as Jozsef Rakoczi, a prince of Transylvania; mystery surrounds his later movements as he travelled Europe. He was the Comte de S. Germain at the time of the French Revolution and worked much with Madame Blavatsky, then incarnate as Pere Joseph. He also appears to have disguised himself as Baron Hompesch, last of the Knights of St. John of Malta, who arranged Malta’s transfer to the English. This great saint and teacher still lives, his present body showing no great age; the narrator met him physically in Rome in 1901 and had a long conversation.
The Head of All True Freemasons
In Co-Masonry he is called Head of all True Freemasons throughout the world. Some Lodges place his portrait in the east above the Worshipful Master’s chair and beneath the Star of Initiation; others in the north above an empty chair. The validity of all rites and degrees depends on his recognition and assent as Head of the Seventh Ray. He selects pupils from Masonic Brethren and prepares them for the true Mysteries of the Great White Lodge, of which Masonic initiations are faint reflections; Masonry has ever been a gate to that White Lodge. Few Masons acknowledge him as Sovereign Grand Master, though the possibility of discipleship is recognized in the Order’s traditions. An ancient catechism of masculine Masonry asks: whence come you?
The Two Pillars and the Doctrine of Pairs
The treatise returns to Jachin and Boaz, the twin pillars that frame the Lodge. They stand for the two laws of progress: karma, which supplies the material world and its conditions, and dharma, which steers the self from within. Where the two meet in harmony, a man gains the stability the occult path demands, reaching a circle of safety in which even a Master Mason cannot err. Priests once used the pillars to teach the doctrine of pairs — spirit and matter, good and evil, light and darkness, pleasure and pain. Kabbalistic writers read them as involution, the descent of divine Life into lower worlds; the treatise The Gates of Light, quoted by A. E. Waite, holds that whoever knows their mystery understands how Minds, Spirits, and Souls descend through El-chai and Adonai, and how souls ascend again to their divine Source. Only through this portal may the sanctuary of man’s true Godhead be reached. In the French working the pillars stand inside the Lodge beside the western door, with the Wardens seated at triangular tables — an arrangement drawn from the Chaldaean system. The author firmly rejects any phallic reading, having searched for one by inner sight and found none.
The Fittings of the Lodge: Pavement, Border, and Star
The Ornaments open the chapter on the Lodge’s interior. The mosaic pavement, with its alternating black and white squares, speaks of spirit and matter intermingled everywhere; interlaced double triangles say the same. No life exists without matter, and no matter without life. Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose’s Response in the Living and Non-Living showed no line divides the living from the dead — even a grain of sand holds some life. His apparatus traced identical response curves for tin and muscle; tetanus, fatigue, and poison affected metals as they affect animals. The Secret Doctrine is quoted to the same end: the same infinitesimal invisible Lives compose the atoms of mountain, daisy, man, and tree. In ancient Egypt the pavement’s sanctity was jealously guarded, trodden only by the candidate, the officers, and the Thurifer; squaring the Lodge matters because currents of force rush along the pavement, and one should move with the force, keeping one direction. The Indented Border surrounds it — once twining threads, now machicolated, called in the early eighteenth century “the indented tassel,” later corrupted to “tesselated border.” Co-Masonic ritual makes it the Guardian Wall: Adepts who attained human perfection in past centuries, standing around humanity in the spiritual worlds to save mankind from greater misery. Its four corner tassels mean temperance, fortitude, prudence, and justice, but also the four orders of devas of earth, water, air, and fire, whose Rulers are invoked at Co-Masonic initiations with real benefit. The Blazing Star, properly six-pointed and lit from within, hangs at the ceiling’s centre, with a movable star below on the floor; it is the sign of the Deity, inscribed with G, or in Co-Masonic Lodges a serpent with its tail in its mouth — eternity — its head altered to form the letter. The star also figures the sun, symbol of God; its spiritual meaning is that God’s reflection is ever in our midst, and man, made in His image, is an expression of God Himself.
The Jewels of the Officers
The Master’s apron bears three figures that look like levels but are inverted T’s, matching the erect column of the Senior Warden and the recumbent column of the Junior Warden. They signify that the life of the Second Logos, the Christ, flows, while the Third Logos’s life has not ceased, since it flows while an external world exists. The upright line of the Tau is masculine, the horizontal feminine, showing God manifests as Mother as well as Father; in Egypt the symbol became the ankh, everlasting life. The Immediate Past Master’s jewel adds to the square either Euclid’s forty-seventh proposition or, in America, compasses extended to sixty degrees with a sun at the centre. The 3:4:5 triangle, used by builders for right angles, was to the Egyptian priests the universal Trinity — Osiris and Isis the sides, Horus the hypotenuse. The Senior Warden’s level emblematizes equality and harmony, and the universal Christ-principle in which all men are brothers; the Junior Warden’s plumb-rule, rectitude. Other officers carry a book, crossed pens, crossed keys, crossed wands; in Co-Masonry the Deacons have doves as messengers. The immovable jewels are the tracing board and the rough and perfect ashlars, lying open in the Lodge. The tracing board is the plan in the thought of the Logos, the Greeks’ “Intelligible World”; the Master and brethren should bring the Lodge into harmony with that ideal Lodge, as the Great Architect laid His plans above. Two centuries ago it was drawn afresh in chalk each meeting, and a good Master could draw it without a copy.
The Ladder and the Three Virtues
In the diagram the altar holds the Volume of the Sacred Law, and a ladder rises to the seven-pointed star — the Monad in man, in whom seven types of life are to be perfected, and also the Logos, the supreme consciousness of our solar system. The steps are the virtues by which we ascend, or, in Egypt, the initiations; the two are interchangeable, since virtues are the qualifications for initiation. Wilmshurst calls the ladder a symbol of the Universe and its step-like planes; the Father’s house has many mansions. The Universe and man are ladder-wise: one universal substance descends by densification and ascends enriched by experience. This was Jacob’s dream, perceptible still to opened inner eyes — ethereal worlds, angels ascending and descending, souls descending through denser planes, gathering veils, struggling on the chequered floor of good and evil, and the conquerors ascending pure to their Source. On the ladder appear a cross, an anchor, and a cup with a hand stretched out: faith, hope, and charity. Charity’s standard symbol is a heart, but the cup is older and means more.
The Procession, the Apron, and the Censing
In Co-Masonic Lodges a Thurifer with a censer of aromatic gums heads the procession, followed by the Tyler with his sword and the Director of Ceremonies; together they purify the Lodge, the Director the directing brain, the sword driving unwanted thought from the mental and emotional atmosphere. Members follow in reversed order of precedence, officers and higher-degree brethren after them, and the Master last, completing the work of those before him and building the walls of the cella — the old Greek temple with outer columns and an inner dark shrine, the brethren standing around it like columns. Every Mason must wear the apron to be properly clothed; without it he cannot be admitted, save a candidate not yet a brother. The apron suggests the ancient Mysteries. The modern apron differs from the Egyptian triangular one, and the key change is the modern idea that the apron itself is everything while the band merely secures it; in old days the belt was the important feature — a magnetized circle enclosing a disc of etheric matter, separating the upper from the lower body so Masonic forces might be shut off from the lower part.
The Lodge Officers as Seven Principles
The officers of a Masonic Lodge, the text argues, are not merely a committee with ceremonial roles. Each one corresponds to a level of the human constitution and to a rank of super-physical beings, so that the Lodge as a whole mirrors the sevenfold structure of man. The Founders arranged the recitation of offices and duties so that the naming of each officer would summon the devas or Angels of that level. Thousands of Worshipful Masters have put the appointed questions without any idea that they were producing effects in unseen worlds—and yet they received angelic help that would have astonished or terrified them had they known.
The spirit turns to the intelligence, which names the three lines through which force flows, drawing the Angels of those lines. Asked how many principal officers there are, the Master answers three: himself, the Senior Warden, and the Junior Warden—the divine or spiritual trinity in the Deity and in man, made in that image. These answer to atma, buddhi, and manas: spiritual will, intuitional love, higher intelligence. Three assistant officers follow, not counting the Outer Guard or Tyler: the Senior Deacon (lower mind), the Junior Deacon (emotional nature), and the Inner Guard (etheric double), while the Tyler stands for the dense physical body. Because the porchway is the entrance to the invisible inner world, the Tyler alone remains outside, visible to the profane; the other six principles lie beyond physical sight, each on a plane of ascending subtlety. The upper triangle of principles is the ego or higher self, the soul that takes many incarnations; the lower triangle, with the dense body, forms the personality of a single life. Most egos, the text observes, are still in infancy, not yet awake to purposeful life on their own planes.
The duties rehearsed in the ritual carry a symbolism the curious answers betray. The physical body should shield the soul’s lodge from outer dangers and temptations; the Tyler keeps out all cowans and intruders—”cowan” from the Greek kuon, a dog, long a symbol of violent animal passion. The etheric double, as Inner Guard, also defends the Lodge, under the higher mind or intelligence, the Junior Warden, who tests all seekers, showing that intelligence must discriminate what thought or emotion enters the temple of man. The Master communicates with the Tyler only through the Junior Warden and Inner Guard, signifying that spirit does not act directly on dense matter but impresses itself on etheric matter through intelligence. The upper triangle is reflected point for point in the lower, giving sympathetic relations between principles two and five, three and four, one and six. Through purified emotion man unfolds intuitional love; through mind he casts off the fetters of delusion, doubt, superstition, and unreasoning likes and dislikes, letting spiritual will express itself. This explains why the Junior Deacon acts between Senior Warden and Junior Warden, why the Junior Warden takes charge of Entered Apprentices and the Senior Warden of Fellow Crafts, while Master Masons come under the Master. The open Lodge is where brethren symbolically undergo advanced evolution, so its officers must show the principles of man acting upon one another. The Third Aspect of the Divine Being is typified by the Junior Warden directing the passage from labour to rest; the Second Aspect by the Senior Warden closing the Lodge at the Master’s command, for when the Second Aspect withdraws from forms, everything resolves into primal elements and the universe ceases—the Hindu end of a manvantara and beginning of pralaya.
Masonic and Church Succession Compared
The Master Mason, having passed through the symbolic death and rising, stands in a position of power and may bless others as a priest does; as a priest may administer sacraments, so the Master Mason may accept office in the Lodge. Yet neither can convey power or authority to another. Only the bishop can ordain priests or consecrate bishops; only the Installing Master can initiate, pass, and raise Masons and create other Installing Masters. Both bishop and Installing Master can give a fuller blessing than priest or Master Mason. So there is a succession of Installing Masters in Masonry as there is a succession of bishops in the Church—a succession the author traces back to the priests of the Mysteries of ancient Egypt and beyond. As clergy are linked in degrees to the Head of the Church, the Lord Christ, so initiates are linked by rank to the Head of all true Freemasons and to the reservoir of power for the Craft. Every Freemason has some touch with Him, but the first great direct link comes in the degree of Installing Master; closer links come in the higher degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, until the earnest Mason becomes an outpost of His consciousness, a channel of His power, a minister of His will. The author deeply regrets that few modern brethren realize the sacredness of their office and their responsibility to use power selflessly.
Differences separate the two systems. In Catholic theology, confirmed by occult investigation, the powers given at ordination are invariably conferred provided the bishop stands in the apostolic succession, intends to confer Holy Orders, the recipient intends to receive them, and the laying on of hands follows ancient tradition. The beliefs of bishop and candidate do not affect validity, nor is the sacrament withheld if they are out of communion with a branch of the Church or of questionable moral worth; the Lord Christ overlooks human frailties so His flock may be fed. Transmission in Masonry is not so unalterably fixed, probably because Masonry is a secret Order not in direct relation with the outer world; its scheme is more elastic. Powers may be introduced or withheld as the Head of all true Freemasons sees fit. At a clandestine meeting, even with a duly qualified Installing Master present, inner recognition is not given and powers are not conveyed—the author has personally experienced two such cases. In the Church a priest can perform a sacrament anywhere and alone, and a bishop can pass on his power at his own discretion; but in Craft Masonry the unit is the Lodge, and a number of brethren is essential to validity, except when degrees are conferred by communication by one with due authority. “Three rule a Lodge, five hold a Lodge, and seven or more make it perfect.” The author does not assert that powers conferred on the many in Masonic degrees equal those given to the few carefully selected candidates in the Church’s Major Orders; he wishes only to draw attention to correspondences too numerous and remarkable to be coincidence. Masonry does give powers commensurate with the Church’s, but only in its very highest degrees and to the very few.
The Candidate and His Undertakings
When a member of the general public wishes to become a Freemason, he usually applies to a friend known to be a member of the Craft. This friend probably introduces him to the Secretary of the Lodge, who supplies certain papers. The candidate must give particulars about himself—his age, occupation, reason for wishing to join. In Co-Masonry he is handed a notice stating that the obligations are of the most serious and solemn character and must be honourably discharged. He undertakes to try to lead a noble and upright life and to work at improving his character. He undertakes to attend regular meetings unless prevented by sufficiently grave cause; these are usually held once or twice a month except at holiday seasons. Emergency Meetings for special work are not obligatory, but the true Mason regards attendance as both a solemn duty and a great privilege, realizing the Lodge’s wider function of shedding Masonry’s spiritual influence on the world; his progress depends on his zeal and assiduity.
The Second Degree and the Control of the Mind
The Second Degree turns on the mind. Conquering the mental faculty, the text insists, is harder for most people than the earlier conquest of the body, and many candidates must first have their minds aroused at all. Few can think effectively; a slightly clairvoyant observer can confirm this by examining the vague, uncertain thought-forms of ordinary acquaintances, among which clear, definite shapes are rare. Real progress therefore demands that the average candidate acquire clear thought. Ruskin is quoted from The Ethics of the Dust: opening people’s eyes is the great difficulty, since touching feelings and breaking hearts is easy while breaking heads is hard, and changed feelings without understanding help no one, because good intentions may only smooth the road to the bottomless pit.
The candidate must control his mind, or develop it if he has none worth the name. That is the trend of the Degree and its ceremonies. He must study, strive to open centres in his higher bodies, and advance daily in Masonic knowledge. The Senior Deacon, representing the mental body, takes charge of him and bears the principal part. The Lodge’s colour shifts: the officers’ distinctive light-globes remain but are modified by a dominant tint, crimson in the Entered Apprentice degree and yellow in the Fellow Craft.
The chakra awakened here is an astral centre giving power to sympathize with others’ emotional vibrations, so that a man instinctively knows their feelings; when the corresponding etheric chakra is stimulated, he becomes aware on the physical plane of others’ joys and sorrows. Forces from the spleen centre play through this chakra; the yellow ray goes to the heart, then to the brain, directing it mainly to the twelve-petalled flower at the crown. Its link to the Second Degree is obvious given its characteristics of companionship and service, its association with the second member of the Trinity, and the buddhic principle. The prayer before opening asks that Craftsmen be enlightened in virtue and science, and the Lodge is opened for instruction and improvement. In the invocation the Worshipful Master uses the title Grand Geometrician for the Logos. Plato said God geometrizes; crystallography shows it in mineral forms, and higher kingdoms show order and regularity. The more nature is studied, the greater the admiration for Him who made it all.
Having proved himself as an Entered Apprentice, the candidate performs his last work in that capacity. The Senior Deacon leads him, being concerned with the lower mind the Fellow Craft must control and develop. He is brought to the Junior Warden’s pedestal, given a mallet and chisel, and instructed to kneel and give three blows, striking the chisel on the rough ashlar. The stone from the quarry has irregular sides; strictly it is not an ashlar until the Apprentice makes it regular, and here he finishes that work, though the stone must still be smoothed and polished before lifting into the edifice—part of the Second Degree’s work. With inner sight, people gathered at a lecture, theatre, or church appear astrally and mentally out of shape, like rough stones or twisted, stunted trees in an unfavourable clime; such are not yet apprentices in any Lodge.
The Five Journeys and the Stages of Consciousness
The five stages are journeys round the Lodge; at each end the candidate receives instructions from a printed card and by word of mouth, carrying tools for practical realization. The journeys outwardly sign the raising of consciousness through the planes. In the first stage he carries mallet and chisel and learns the five senses—touch, hearing, sight, taste, smell. This is the physical stage; the physical body is valuable only as the vehicle of senses through which a man gains knowledge of the physical world to direct his work. In the second stage he carries a rule and compasses and learns of the Arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry—all forms of beauty—indicating that all true work produces what is beautiful. The rule and compasses remind him to apply geometry to his feelings, guiding and controlling his astral body so his work expresses high emotion and arouses it in others. In the third stage he has a rule and level and reads and hears of natural science—mathematics, geometry, philosophy, biology, sociology. He deals with the mental plane and bodies thereon; rule and level tell of order, balance, and common sense. At the next stage he no longer deals with personal nature but looks upward to the higher part of himself that will flower later. He sees such matters first in great men and women of history. He carries a pencil and book and learns of benefactors of humanity—sages, artists, scientists, inventors, legislators. These exemplify the unity of mankind, living not for themselves alone but with clear consciousness of mankind’s happiness and sorrows and great desire to help and give. Here is expressed that quality springing from buddhi on the plane beyond the mental, where there is direct intuitional vision of the unity of life. Beyond this is the fifth stage, trodden with hands free, ready to take up any instrument required. In this he learns of service—that the highest ideal of life is to serve. The brethren sing: “Thou shalt show me the path of life; in Thy presence is the fullness of joy; and at Thy right hand there is pleasure for evermore. I will behold Thy presence in righteousness: and when I awake up after Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it.” This is the path of the spirit, the One behind the many, the first cause.
The Third Degree: The Solar Myth and the Path of the Initiate
The Third Degree, that of Master Mason, treats its symbols, ritual, and legend as vehicles of spiritual and evolutionary meaning. The officers’ journey “from east to west” is read as the solar myth and the path of the Initiate: the sun is new-born in winter darkness, struggles through spring clouds, rises to summer’s height, is hemmed in by autumn shadows, falls before winter, yet through a figurative death in the west finds renewed life and rises again in the east. So the Initiate passes through successive lives, dispersing the clouds of ignorance, until at the completion of his temple-building he travels west, finds perfect immortality, reaches the centre, rests, and becomes a pillar in the temple of God, going out no more. East and West both take part in this consummation: the East gives spiritual teaching and light; the West provides accuracy, definiteness, and practicality, enabling application to the outer world. The chivalry of the West joined the philosophy of the East in the quest after the lost sacred word.
The preparation of the candidate involves both elements, since in the due-guard both are raised in blessing and laid open to a double influence having positive and negative quality, conferring power and sensitiveness, one point at rest in the centre while the other describes a circumference. However far we travel from God, the divine spark cannot be truly separated from Him. Both are used in the ceremony, and both are placed on the mosaic pavement to take fullest advantage of its concentrated magnetization. In the internal preparation, the candidate seeks his object by the united aid of the square and compasses, signifying that development depends on right use of body and soul. He must look forward to what shall be, not rest in what is. The Master Mason’s perfection is attained fully only when the triangle’s three points—spiritual will, intuition, intelligence—are aroused and in control of the four lower vehicles: mental, astral, etheric, and dense physical bodies. Bro.
The Order of Angels and the Sovereign Grand Inspector General
The cosmic Order of Angels, common to other solar systems, keeps its permanent centres of consciousness on the intuitional plane. These beings draw mental and astral matter around themselves when they wish—at greater Lodge ceremonies, for instance—and stand always ready to bless when invoked. They are inseparably one with the Sovereign Grand Inspector General, linked to his higher Self, and never desert him unless by unworthiness he first deserts them. The sun and moon symbols on his gauntlets point to these Angelic Powers, much as the symbols attached to a Bishop at consecration.
The association is unusual, for the shining retinue does not visibly accompany the Bishop or the Sovereign Grand Inspector General, yet their consciousness stays in touch. The Angel keeps a line of communication open, its end resting in the human partner’s aura like a star or a tiny point of light. No call is needed; the merest flash of thought suffices. The intention to perform any episcopal act, even an ordinary blessing, attracts these collaborators’ attention without conscious thought of them.
The author wonders whether it is irreverent to see that tiny point of light as an infinitely lower analogy to the Host in the Tabernacle, vehicle of the Lord Christ. He recalls a small village church on the Continent, the gentle glow of the Holy Presence, and a humble peasant-woman kneeling in prayer, the glow flashing into sun-like radiance in response. The Holy Presence is never absent but acts more actively in answer to appeal. Another analogy is the twelve stars of the Apocalypse shown in medieval paintings round the Blessed Virgin; these represent powers, perhaps corresponding to points of light Angels leave in the aura. The Star over an Initiate’s head betokens the Power of the King; the star on his forehead symbolizes his own acquired power.
The Workings in Egypt
The chapter “Two Wonderful Rituals” opens with the Workings in Egypt. Where no candidate exists, after business the R.W.M. or an expert Brother gives Masonic instruction or a historical lecture; sometimes the Masculine Craft’s formulated “Lectures” in question-and-answer form are rehearsed, or the official explanation of the t…b… is recited with comment. In ancient Egypt, ordinary Lodges gave special Mystery teaching here: informal talks by the R.W.M. on various sciences, with Brothers permitted questions, conducted with decorum and archaic reverence. Examinations were held when convenient; no Brother could pass to a higher degree without satisfying officials of his knowledge and capability. Subjects were copiously illustrated by pictures, models, dramatic representations of ancient history, and materialization of otherwise unobtainable objects.
The three Grand Lodges differed: members already had scientific knowledge, so devoted themselves entirely to pouring spiritual power over the country through a magnificent ritual. Grand Lodges were limited to forty members, each picked to represent a particular quality or activity—Knight or Lord of Perseverance, of Courage, of Tact. A list of qualities follows, though the author is dissatisfied because English equivalents for Egyptian ideas are often difficult: Love and Wisdom, Strength, Power to discover and appreciate Beauty, Discernment, Eloquence, Truth and Accuracy, Industry, Efficiency, Sense of Unity, Courtesy, Tact, Decision, Courage, Cheerfulness, Confidence, Calm, Balance, Perseverance, Reverence, Devotion, Foresight, One-pointedness, Sense of Honour, Impartiality, Justice, Desirelessness, Control of Thought, Control of Emotion, Control of Body, Judicious Speech, Control of Memory, Meditation, Purity, Patience and Gentleness, Persuasiveness, Adaptability, Tolerance, Eagerness for Service, Study, and Perspicuity—with corresponding officers such as R.W.M., W.S.W., W.J.W., I.P.M., Orator, Secretary, Administrator, Director of Ceremonies, Director of Music, S.D., J.D., I.G., and Tyler.
Each brother’s duty was to fit himself to expound or express his quality as part of the whole—cultivating courage not to be brave but to represent courage in a composite unity. Each had to know his quality from every other quality’s viewpoint through cross-correspondences, delivering sermons on his quality from each other quality’s perspective.
The principal work was “The Building of the Temple of Amen.” The Brothers held that the Hidden Light of God dwells in every heart, however unevolved; the enlightened one must live so that Light shines unobstructed through him, and help arouse and unveil it in others. They found that giving help to large numbers simultaneously was best achieved by outpouring vast spiritual force over the surrounding country. All Light comes from the Great One; earthly mirrors reflect it where it otherwise would not penetrate, and the Great One accepts their help. They prepared eagerly and performed with unsurpassable enthusiasm.
They met in a vast subterranean hall resembling a cathedral. The Lodge was a small area like a Greek temple’s cella, with mosaic floor, tessellated pavement, and the usual Masonic arrangements. For this rite the altar stood in the middle; normally the Egyptian Lodge was a double square, altar at the middle of the eastern square, but here it was absolutely central. Altars were greatly important, called beacon-lights of liberty, the Lodge a city of refuge. Outside the Lodge’s north side stood nine subsidiary altars like round-topped tables—carved stone pillars over three feet high, table-tops about two feet in diameter—each bearing a great Archangel’s name. These were the altars of the Nine Orders of Angels; the one now called Michael was central. Shallow troughs below burned incense.
The Rising of Osiris
Fairy-like music swells as a voice emerges, singing that Osiris is immortal, broken into thousands of parts yet reunited, many yet One; the Brethren join in chorus. The R.W.M. gives a sign and commands the Brethren to rise as Osiris and give as they have received. He rises, turns East, uncovers his lamp, and declares, “I, Osiris, give the Light of wisdom.” The Brethren face outward; the W.S.W. gives the Light of strength; the W.J.W. sends the Light of beauty; each brother uncovers his light, sending his quality into the cathedral’s darkness. The language’s flexibility allows “the Light of beauty” to mean “the beauty of the Light.” The R.W.M. adds the Light of love, which enfolds all.
After silent concentration, the R.W.M. repeats a sevenfold sign answered by Wardens and Guards; the Brethren face inward and chant triumphantly that Osiris hath risen, is One, and they are all one in Him; there is no death or fear. This culminates in the shout “Shine forth, Osiris-Ra; let the Light shine!” The R.W.M. turns on the Blazing Star, flooding the hall; the Brethren extinguish their lamps and don festal robes. A dialogue follows: the W.S.W. and W.J.W. answer the R.W.M.’s questions—Osiris is ever One yet shows Himself in many forms when He divides and descends into lower worlds for our sake, because without Him we could not be. They affirm they are Osiris, His Light shines through them, coming from the Eye of Osiris; if He turned away His glance, the world would cease.
Key Ideas
The book opens with a fragment of personal experience that grounds everything else. Leadbeater states that by years of effort he developed faculties enabling him to remember previous existences, and that one of those lives was lived in Egypt some four thousand years before Christ. When he was initiated into Freemasonry in this life, the Lodge was perfectly familiar to him — the placing of the three chief officers, the symbols, their peculiar combination — all of it belonged to ancient Egypt, and almost all the ceremonies were unchanged. From this he builds a case that Masonry descends from the Mysteries, transmitted along the Jewish line through Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and reaching David and Solomon. Solomon built his temple on Masonic lines but failed to preserve the clue to meaning; the external ceremonial survived while the interpretation was lost. A parallel Chaldean tradition gave rise to Continental Masonry, and another line seems to have been brought back by the Knights Templars.
The fourfold Egyptian interpretation of the rites is set out as the key to reading them. First, the ceremonies symbolized in action how the Great Architect constructed the universe; the vortical movement in censing, the raising and lowering of columns, the cross, anchor, and cup upon the ladder were all so interpreted. Second, because the laws of the universe are universal, the Great Architect expected a life in accordance with His law — the square applied literally to stones and symbolically to conduct. Third, the work prepared candidates for death and what follows; the two pillars stood at the entrance to the other world, and the candidate’s experiences symbolized those coming after passing from this physical world to the next. Fourth, the rites were a system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols, based not on “Thus saith the Lord” but on definite facts and laws in nature.
The furniture of the Lodge carries the same weight. The mosaic pavement’s alternating black and white squares symbolize the intermingling of spirit and matter everywhere, and Leadbeater cites Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose’s experiments on response in living and non-living matter to argue that no line exists between them. The indented border, once a wavy cord with tassels, becomes the Guardian Wall — the Adepts who attained human perfection in past centuries and stand around humanity in the spiritual worlds. Its four corner tassels mean temperance, fortitude, prudence, and justice, but also stand for four orders of devas connected with earth, water, air, and fire, whose Rulers are invoked at Co-Masonic initiations with real beneficial consequences. The blazing star, properly six-pointed and lit from within, is the sign of the Deity; in Co-Masonic Lodges it takes the form of a serpent with its tail in its mouth, the symbol of eternity.
The tracing board is read as a diagram of the cosmos. The altar holds the Volume of the Sacred Law; a ladder rises to the seven-pointed star, representing the Monad in man, in whom seven types of life are to be perfected, and also the Logos, the supreme consciousness of our solar system. The ladder’s steps indicate the virtues by which we ascend, or, in Egypt, the initiations — interchangeable methods, since as virtues they are qualifications for initiation. On the ladder appear a cross, an anchor, and a cup with a hand stretched out, called in the ritual faith, hope, and charity. The whole cosmic process, Leadbeater writes, was Jacob’s dream: souls descend through denser planes, gather veils, reach materialization, struggle on the chequer-work floor of good and evil, and the conquerors ascend pure to their Source.
The apron receives a chapter of its own. The modern apron differs from the ancient Egyptian triangular apron with apex upward, and the key change is the modern idea that the apron itself is everything and the band merely secures it. In old days the belt was the most important practical feature — a highly magnetized circle enclosing a disc of etheric matter, separating the upper from the lower body so that Masonic forces might be shut off from the lower part. W. L. Wilmhurst’s The Meaning of Masonry is quoted on the point turned up for the Entered Apprentice, making a five-pointed figure symbolizing the fivefold man, with the triangle above the square showing the soul hovering over the lower body but hardly working through it; later the flap is turned down, showing the soul within and acting through the body.
The tyling of the Lodge is treated as a discipline of concentration. The Master asks the Junior Warden what is the first care of every Freemason, and the answer is to see the Lodge close tyled. Symbolically, the fortress of Mansoul needs a strong wall, so Spirit calls to intelligence, which asks the etheric double, which signals the dense physical body. Each person must tyle his own Lodge on every level: the mental body against the crowding thought-centres of the astral and mental worlds, the astral body against ill-directed emotions while never failing in true sympathy, the physical body against psychic infection. The middle path of occultism, Leadbeater writes, is narrow as a razor’s edge, between the Scylla of indifference and the Charybdis of confusion.
The signs and gestures are read as operations on the force-centres. The Entered Apprentice sign, with the hand at the left breast and the right forearm raised, indicates the centre taken first in the Egyptian scheme continued in Freemasonry, commanding the aid of connected powers. The seven centres — base of spine, spleen, navel, heart, throat, between the eyebrows, top of the head — are described as saucer-like vortices in the etheric double, small dull circles when undeveloped and blazing coruscating saucers when awakened. Other centres exist, used by schools of magic, but awakening them is the greatest misfortune; hence Egypt’s emphasis on the apron’s girdle and the etheric web.
The initiation ceremony itself is presented as a symbolic enactment of death and the journey after it. The candidate is received between the two pillars, touched with the point of the compass, and warned to guard the secrets of Freemasonry. Inside the door stand the Senior and Junior Deacons with crossed wands, representing the triangular door of the ancient Egyptian Lodge and the first symbolical portal. The Lodge typifies the higher world entered at death; the first portal is the gate of death, and the candidate’s bowed head signifies submission to divine will. The Inner Guard, his office done, has no further role, indicating withdrawal from the etheric double after death; the Junior Deacon takes over, signifying the astral body. The candidate then takes three symbolical journeys through three portals, invisible to physical eyes but real because made by thought, the first of which emblematizes death.
Themes
The book is, at bottom, an argument about what ritual does. Leadbeater insists that Masonic ceremonies, long supposed opposed to received religion, are a relic of the most sacred part of a great ancient religion, and that nothing should be changed without the greatest care and only by those who know its full intent, lest the symbology be spoiled. The unvarying actions preserve the memory of certain facts and laws in nature; books filled a far less prominent place in Egypt, and recording knowledge in appropriate suggestive actions made a more powerful appeal and fixed it better in memory than reading from a book.
Running beneath this is a theory of evolution as the soul’s long ascent. The caterpillar feeding on a leaf cannot perceive the tree or forest, but when it becomes a butterfly its view widens; every caterpillar is a potential butterfly, and we can anticipate that stage. The faculties of the soul, if developed, enable perception of the inner world, and these faculties are the heritage of the whole human race, unfolding as evolution progresses, though some may gain them in advance. Leadbeater affirms that much of his information was obtained by such natural but super-normal faculties, and that after over forty years of research he is certain of the method’s reliability. He compares it to wireless telegraph, telephone, aeroplane, automobile, and the spectroscope, all once inconceivable, and cites Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, Professor Lombroso, Camille Flammarion, and the late Professor Myers as men of high scientific attainments convinced the faculty exists.
A third theme is the recovery of a lost inheritance. The ancient wisdom slipped into oblivion and the true secrets were lost to the Brethren, but among the Hierophants of the Great White Brotherhood they have ever been preserved and will reward the earnest Mason. Later sub-races may prove as unselfish and capable as the people of old — indeed may be those same men returned in new bodies, bringing the old attraction to that faith and work. Reviving that spirit means hard work: every officer must do his part perfectly, requiring training and practice, and each Lodge should make itself a model Lodge, efficient, impressing visitors by good work and magnetic atmosphere. The Lodge should be holy ground, consecrated and set apart, never used for secular purposes, having its own atmosphere like medieval cathedrals, its walls radiating strength, broadmindedness, and brotherly love.
Why It Matters
The book matters less as a history of Freemasonry than as a document of a particular moment in esoteric thought. Annie Besant’s foreword places it in a series on the hidden side of things, and Leadbeater’s preface names his intended audience plainly: members of the Co-Masonic Order, whose ritual desire is to pour the waters of esoteric knowledge into Masonic vessels, and Brethren in the masculine Craft seeking a deeper interpretation of Masonic symbolism. He recommends his own Clairvoyance and two books by W. L. Wilmhurst, The Meaning of Masonry and The Masonic Initiation, and thanks the Rev. Herbrand Williams, the Rev. E. Warner, Mrs. M. R. St. John, and Professor Ernest Wood. The second edition added a few trifling corrections and further information on certain higher degrees.
Its enduring interest lies in the completeness of its system. Leadbeater does not offer scattered insights but a total reading in which the Lodge is the universe, the officers are the principles of man, the furniture is a diagram of cosmogenesis, the signs are operations on the chakras, and the candidate’s journey is the soul’s passage after death. Whether or not one accepts the clairvoyant method, the book shows how a ritual tradition can be interpreted as a single coherent science — and it preserves, in its detailed accounts of censing, of the apron’s magnetism, of the tyling of the Lodge, a picture of Co-Masonic practice as it was understood by one of its most influential expositors. The closing chapters turn to the higher degrees and to two wonderful rituals, and the book ends with the closing of the Lodge, where the force gathered in the opening is poured out on the world with the final blessing.
