Part 59

And, as the Thought of the Soul, emanating _from_ the Soul, becomes audible and visible in Words, so did THE THOUGHT OF GOD, springing up within Himself, immortal _as_ Himself, when once conceived,--immortal _before_, because _in_ Himself, utter Itself in THE WORD, its manifestation and mode of communication, and thus create the Material, Mental, Spiritual Universe, which, like Him, never _began_ to exist.

This is the _real_ idea of the Ancient Nations: GOD, the Almighty Father, and Source of All; His THOUGHT, _conceiving_ the whole Universe, and _willing_ its creation: His WORD, _uttering_ that THOUGHT, and thus becoming the Creator or Demiourgos, in whom was Life and Light, and that Light the Life of the Universe.

Nor did that Word _cease_ at the single act of Creation; and having set going the great machine, and enacted the laws of its motion and progression, of birth and life, and change and death, cease to exist, or remain thereafter in inert idleness.

FOR THE THOUGHT OF GOD LIVES AND IS IMMORTAL. Embodied in the WORD, is not only _created_, but it _preserves_. It conducts and controls the Universe, all spheres, all worlds, all actions of mankind, and of every animate and inanimate creature. It speaks in the soul of every man who lives. The Stars, the Earth, the Trees, the Winds, the universal voice of Nature, tempest, and avalanche, the Sea's roar and the grave voice of the waterfall, the hoarse thunder and the low whisper of the brook, the song of birds, the voice of love, the speech of men, all are the alphabet in which it communicates itself to men, and informs them of the will and law of God, the Soul of the Universe. And thus most truly _did_ "THE WORD BECOME FLESH AND DWELL AMONG MEN."

God, the unknown FATHER [Πατήρ Άγνωστος.. Pater Agnōstos], known to us only by His Attributes; the ABSOLUTE I AM:... The THOUGHT of God [Ένννοια. Ennoia], and the WORD [Λόγος.... Logos], Manifestation and expression of the Thought; .... Behold THE TRUE MASONIC TRINITY; the UNIVERSAL SOUL, the THOUGHT _in_ the Soul, the WORD, or Thought expressed; the THREE IN ONE, of a Trinitarian Ecossais.

Here Masonry pauses, and leaves its Initiates to carry out and develop these great Truths in such manner as to each may seem most accordant with reason, philosophy, truth, and his religious faith. It declines to act as Arbiter between them. It looks calmly on, while each multiplies the intermediates between the Deity and Matter, and the personifications of God's manifestations and attributes, to whatever extent his reason, his conviction, or his fancy dictates.

While the Indian tells us that PARABRAHMA, BRAHM, and PARATMA were the first Triune God, revealing Himself as BRAHMA, VISHNU, and SIVA, _Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer_;....

The Egyptian, of AMUN-RE, NEITH, and PHTHA, _Creator, Matter, Thought_ or _Light_; the Persian of _his_ Trinity of Three Powers in ORMUZD, Sources of _Light, Fire_, and _Water_; the Buddhists of the God SAKYA, a Trinity composed of BUDDHA, DHARMA, and SANGA,--_Intelligence, Law_, and _Union_ or _Harmony_; the Chinese Sabeans of _their_ Trinity of _Chang-ti_, the Supreme Sovereign; _Tien_, the Heavens; and _Tao_, the Universal Supreme Reason and Principle of all things; who produced the Unit; that, two; two, three; and three, all that is;....

While the Sclavono-Vend typifies _his_ Trinity by the three heads of the God _Triglav_; the Ancient Prussian points to _his_ Triune God, _Perkoun, Pikollos_, and _Potrimpos_, Deities of Light and Thunder, of Hell and of the Earth; the Ancient Scandinavian to _Odin, Frea_, and _Thor_; and the old Etruscans to TINA, TALNA, and MINERVA, _Strength, Abundance_, and _Wisdom_;....

While Plato tells us of the _Supreme Good_, the _Reason_ or _Intellect_, and the _Soul_ or _Spirit_; and Philo of the _Archetype of Light_, _Wisdom_ [Σοψια], and the _Word_ [Λογος]; the Kabalists, of the Triads of the Sephiroth;....

While the disciples of Simon Magus, and the many sects of the Gnostics, confuse us with their _Eons, Emanations, Powers, Wisdom Superior_ and _Inferior, Ialdabaoth, Adam-Kadmon_, even to the three hundred and sixty-five thousand emanations of the Maldaïtes; ....

And while the pious Christian believes that the WORD dwelt in the Mortal Body of Jesus of Nazareth, and suffered upon the Cross; and that the HOLY GHOST was poured out upon the Apostles, and now inspires every truly Christian Soul:....

While all these faiths assert their claims to the exclusive possession of the Truth. Masonry inculcates its old doctrine, and no more:.... That God is ONE; that His THOUGHT uttered in His WORD, created the Universe, and preserves it by those Eternal Laws which are the expression of that Thought: that the Soul of Man, breathed into him by God, is immortal as His Thoughts are; that he is free to do evil or to choose good, responsible for his acts and punishable for his sins: that all evil and wrong and suffering are but temporary, the discords of one great Harmony, and that in His good time they will lead by infinite modulations to the great, harmonic final chord and cadence of Truth, Love, Peace, and Happiness, that will ring forever and ever under the Arches of Heaven, among all the Stars and Worlds, and in all souls of men and Angels.

XXVII.

KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE TEMPLE

This is the first of the really Chivalric Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. It occupies this place in the Calendar of the Degrees between the 26th and the last of the Philosophical Degrees, in order, by breaking the continuity of these, to relieve what might otherwise become wearisome; and also to remind you that, while engaged with the speculations and abstractions of philosophy and creeds, the Mason is also to continue engaged in the active duties of this great warfare of life. He is not only a Moralist and Philosopher, but a Soldier, the Successor of those Knights of the Middle Age, who, while they wore the Cross, also wielded the Sword, and were the Soldiers of Honor, Loyalty, and Duty.

Times change, and circumstances; but Virtue and Duty remain the same. The Evils to be warred against but take another shape, and are developed in a different form.

There is the same need now of truth and loyalty as in the days of Frederic Barbarossa.

The characters, religious and military, attention to the sick and wounded in the Hospital, and war against the Infidel in the field, are no longer blended; but the same duties, to be performed in another shape, continue to exist and to environ us all.

The innocent virgin is no longer at the mercy of the brutal Baron or licentious man-at-arms; but purity and innocence still need protectors.

War is no longer the apparently natural State of Society; and for most men it is an empty obligation to assume, that they will not recede before the enemy; but the same high duty and obligation still rest upon all men.

Truth, in act, profession, and opinion, is rarer now than in the days of chivalry. Falsehood has become a current coin, and circulates with a certain degree of respectability; because it has an actual value. It is indeed the great Vice of the Age--it, and its twin-sister, Dishonesty. Men, for political preferment, profess whatever principles are expedient and profitable. At the bar, in the pulpit, and in the halls of legislation, men argue against their own convictions, and, with what they term _logic_, prove to the satisfaction of others that which they do not themselves believe. Insincerity and duplicity are valuable to their possessors, like estates in stocks, that yield a certain revenue: and it is no longer the _truth_ of an opinion or a principle, but the net _profit_ that may be realized from it, which is the measure of its value.

The Press is the great sower of falsehood. To slander a political antagonist, to misrepresent all that he says, and, if that be impossible, to invent for him what he does _not_ say; to put in circulation whatever baseless calumnies against him are necessary to defeat him,--these are habits so common as to have ceased to excite notice or comment, much less surprise or disgust.

There was a time when a Knight would die rather than utter a lie, or break his Knightly word. The Knight Commander of the Temple revives the old Knightly spirit; and devotes himself to the old Knightly worship of Truth. No profession of an opinion not his own, for expediency's sake or profit, or through fear of the world's disfavor; no slander of even an enemy; no coloring or perversion of the sayings or acts of other men; no insincere speech and argument for any purpose, or under any pretext, must soil his fair escutcheon. Out of the Chapter, as well as in it, he must speak the Truth, and _all_ the Truth, no more and no less; or else speak not at all.

To purity and innocence everywhere, the Knight Commander owes protection, as of old; against bold violence, or those, more guilty than murderers, who by art and treachery seek to slay the soul; and against that want and destitution that drive too many to sell their honor and innocence for food.

In no age of the world has man had better opportunity than now to display those lofty virtues and that noble heroism that so distinguished the three great military and religious Orders, in their youth, before they became corrupt and vitiated by prosperity and power.

When a fearful epidemic ravages a city, and death is inhaled with the air men breathe; when the living scarcely suffice to bury the dead,--most men flee in abject terror, to return and live, respectable and influential, when the danger has passed away. But the old Knightly spirit of devotion and disinterestedness and contempt of death still lives, and is not extinct in the human heart. Everywhere a few are found to stand firmly and unflinchingly at their posts, to front and defy the danger, not for money, or to be honored for it, or to protect their own household; but from mere humanity, and to obey the unerring dictates of duty. They nurse the sick, breathing the pestilential atmosphere of the hospital. They explore the abodes of want and misery. With the gentleness of woman, they soften the pains of the dying, and feed the lamp of life in the convalescent. They perform the last sad offices to the dead; and they seek no other reward than the approval of their own consciences.

These are the true Knights of the present age: these, and the captain who remains at his post on board his shattered ship until the last boat, loaded to the water's edge with passengers and crew, has parted from her side; and then goes calmly down with her into the mysterious depths of the ocean:--the pilot who stands at the wheel while the swift flames eddy round him and scorch away his life:--the fireman who ascends the blazing walls, and plunges amid the flames to save the property or lives of those who have upon him no claim by tie of blood, or friendship, or even of ordinary acquaintance:--these, and others like these:--all men, who, set at the post of duty, stand there manfully; to die, if need be, but not to desert their post: for these, too, are sworn not to recede before the enemy.

To the performance of duties and of acts of heroism like these, you have devoted yourself, my Brother, by becoming a Knight Commander of the Temple. Soldier of the Truth and of Loyalty! Protector of Purity and Innocence! Defier of Plague and Pestilence! Nurser of the Sick and Burier of the Dead! Knight, preferring Death to abandonment of the Post of Duty! Welcome to the bosom of this Order!

XXVIII.

KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT.

God, is the author of everything that existeth; the Eternal, the Supreme, the Living, and Awful Being; from Whom nothing in the Universe is hidden. Make of Him no idols and visible images; but rather worship Him in the deep solitudes of sequestered forests; for He is invisible, and fills the Universe as its soul, and liveth not in any Temple!

Light and Darkness are the World's Eternal ways. God is the principle of everything that exists, and the Father of all Beings. He is eternal, immovable and Self-Existent. There are no bounds to His power. At one glance He sees the Past, the Present, and the Future; and the procession of the builders of the Pyramids, with us and our remotest Descendants, is now passing before Him. He reads our thoughts before they are known to ourselves. He rules the movements of the Universe and all events and revolutions are the creatures of His will. For He is the infinite Mind and Supreme Intelligence.

In the beginning Man had the WORD, and that WORD was from God: and out of the living power which, in and by that WORD, was communicated to man, came the LIGHT of his existence. Let no man speak the WORD, for by it THE FATHER made light and darkness, the world and living creatures.

The Chaldean upon his plains worshipped me, and the sea-loving Phœnician. They builded me temples and towers, and burned sacrifices to me upon a thousand altars. Light was divine to them, and they thought me a God. But I am nothing--_nothing_; and LIGHT is the creature of the unseen GOD that taught the true religion to the Ancient Patriarchs: AWFUL, MYSTERIOUS, THE ABSOLUTE.

Man was created pure; and God gave him TRUTH, as He gave him LIGHT. He has lost the _truth_ and found _error_. He has wandered far into darkness; and round him Sin and Shame hover evermore. The Soul that is impure, and sinful, and defiled with earthly stains, cannot again unite with God, until, by long trials and many purifications, it is finally delivered from the old calamity; and Light overcomes Darkness and dethrones it, in the Soul.

God is the First; indestructible, eternal, UNCREATED, INDIVISIBLE. _Wisdom, Justice, Truth_, and _Mercy_, with _Harmony_ and _Love_, are of His essence, and _Eternity_ and _Infinitude of Extension_. He is silent, and consents with MIND, and is known to Souls through MIND alone. In Him were all things originally contained, and from Him all things were evolved. For out of His Divine SILENCE and REST, after an infinitude of time, was unfolded the WORD, or the Divine POWER; and then in turn the Mighty, ever-acting, measureless INTELLECT; and from the WORD were evolved the myriads of suns and systems that make the Universe; and _fire_, and _light_, and the electric HARMONY, which is the harmony of spheres and numbers: and from the INTELLECT all Souls and intellects of men.

In the Beginning, the Universe was but ONE SOUL. HE was THE ALL, alone with TIME and SPACE, and Infinite as they.

--HE HAD THIS THOUGHT: "I Create Worlds:" and lo! _the Universe_, and the laws of _harmony_ and _motion_ that rule it, the expression of a thought of God; and bird and beast, and every living thing but Man: and light and air, and the mysterious currents, and the dominion of mysterious numbers!

--HE HAD THIS THOUGHT: "_I Create Man, whose Soul shall be my image, and he shall rule_." And lo! _Man_, with senses, instinct, and a reasoning mind!

--And yet not MAN! but an _animal_ that breathed, and saw, and thought: until an immaterial spark from God's own Infinite Being penetrated the brain, and became the Soul: and lo, MAN THE IMMORTAL! Thus, threefold, fruit of God's thought, is Man; that sees and hears and feels; that thinks and reasons; that loves and is in harmony with the Universe.

Before the world grew old, the primitive Truth faded out from men's Souls. Then man asked himself, "_What am I? and how and whence am I? and whither do I go?_" And the Soul, looking inward upon itself, strove to learn whether that "I" were mere matter; its thought and reason and its passions and affections mere results of material combination; or a material Being enveloping an immaterial Spirit: ... and further it strove, by self-examination, to learn whether that Spirit were an individual essence, with a separate immortal existence, or an infinitesimal portion of a Great First Principle, inter-penetrating the Universe and the infinitude of space, and undulating like light and heat: ... and so they wandered further amid the mazes of error; and imagined vain philosophies; wallowing in the sloughs of materialism and sensualism, of beating their wings vainly in the vacuum of abstractions and idealities.

While yet the first oaks still put forth their leaves, man lost the perfect knowledge of the One True God, the Ancient Absolute Existence, the Infinite Mind and Supreme Intelligence; and floated helplessly out upon the shoreless ocean of conjecture. Then the soul vexed itself with seeking to learn whether the material Universe was a mere chance combination of atoms, or the work of Infinite, Uncreated Wisdom:... whether the Deity was a concentrated, and the Universe an extended immateriality; or whether He was a personal existence, an Omnipotent, Eternal, Supreme Essence, regulating matter at will; or subjecting it to unchangeable laws throughout eternity; and to Whom, Himself Infinite and Eternal, Space and Time are unknown. With their finite limited vision they sought to learn the source and explain the existence of Evil, and Pain, and Sorrow; and so they wandered ever deeper into the darkness, and were lost; and there was for them no longer any God; but only a great, dumb, soulless Universe, full of mere emblems and symbols.

You have heretofore, in some of the Degrees through which you have passed, heard much of the ancient worship of the Sun, the Moon, and the other bright luminaries of Heaven, and of the Elements and Powers of Universal Nature. You have been made, to some extent, familiar with their personifications as Heroes suffering or triumphant, or as personal Gods or Goddesses, with human characteristics and passions, and with the multitude of legends and fables that do but allegorically represent their risings and settings, their courses, their conjunctions and oppositions, their domiciles and places of exaltation.

Perhaps you have supposed that we, like many who have written on these subjects, have intended to represent this worship to you as the most ancient and original worship of the first men that lived. To undeceive you, if such was your conclusion, we have caused the Personifications of the Great Luminary of Heaven, under the names by which he was known to the most ancient nations, to proclaim the old primitive truths that were known to the Fathers of our race, before men came to worship the visible manifestations of the Supreme Power and Magnificence and the Supposed Attributes of the Universal Deity in the Elements and in the glittering armies that Night regularly marshals and arrays upon the blue field of the firmament.

We ask now your attention to a still further development of these truths, after we shall have added something to what we have already said in regard to the Chief Luminary of Heaven, in explanation of the names and characteristics of the several imaginary Deities that represented him among the ancient races of men.

ATHOM or ATHOM-RE, was the Chief and Oldest Supreme God of Upper Egypt, worshipped at Thebes; the same as the OM or AUM of the Hindūs, whose name was unpronounceable, and who, like the BREHM of the latter People, was "The Being that was, and is, and is to come; the Great God, the Great Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent One, the Greatest in the Universe, the Lord;" whose emblem was a perfect sphere, showing that He was first, last, midst, and without end; superior to all Nature-Gods, and all personifications of Powers, Elements, and Luminaries; symbolized by Light, the Principle of Life.

AMUN was the Nature-God, or Spirit of Nature, called by that name or AMUN-RE, and worshipped at Memphis in Lower Egypt, and in Libya, as well as in Upper Egypt. He was the Libyan Jupiter, and represented the intelligent and organizing force that develops itself in Nature, when the intellectual types or forms of bodies are revealed to the senses in the world's order, by their union with matter, whereby the generation of bodies is effected. He was the same with Kneph, from whose mouth issued the Orphic egg out of which came the Universe.

DIONUSOS was the Nature-God of the Greeks, as AMUN was of the Egyptians. In the popular legend, Dionusos, as well as Hercules, was a Theban Hero, born of a mortal mother. Both were sons of Zeus, both persecuted by Heré. But in Hercules the God is subordinate to the Hero; while Dionusos, even in poetry, retains his divine character, and is identical with Iacchus, the presiding genius of the Mysteries. Personification of the Sun in Taurus, as his ox-hoofs showed, he delivered earth from the harsh dominion of Winter, conducted the mighty chorus of the Stars, and the celestial revolution of the year, changed with the seasons, and underwent their periodical decay. He was the Sun as invoked by the Eleans, [Greek: Πυριγενης], ushered into the world amidst lightning and thunder, the Mighty Hunter of the Zodiac, Zagreus the Golden or ruddy-faced. The Mysteries taught the doctrine of Divine Unity; and that Power whose Oneness is a seeming mystery, but really a truism, was Dionusos, the God of Nature, or of that, moisture, which is the life of Nature, who prepares in darkness, in Hades or Iasion, the return of life and vegetation, or is himself the light and change evolving their varieties. In the Egean Islands he was Butes, Dardanus, Himeros or Imbros; in Crete he appears as Iasius or even Zeus, whose orgiastic worship, remaining unveiled by the usual forms of mystery, betrayed to profane curiosity the symbols which, if irreverently contemplated, were sure to be misunderstood.

He was the same with the dismembered Zagreus, the son of Persephone, an Ancient Subterranean Dionusos, the horned progeny of Zeus in the Constellation of the Serpent, entrusted by his father with the thunderbolt, and encircled with the protecting dance of Curetes. Through the envious artifices of Heré, the Titans eluded the vigilance of his guardians and tore him to pieces; but Pallas restored the still palpitating heart to his father, who commanded Apollo to bury the dismembered remains upon Parnassus.

Dionusos, as well as Apollo, was leader of the Muses; the tomb of one accompanied the worship of the other; they were the same, yet different, contrasted, yet only as filling separate parts in the same drama; and the mystic and heroic personifications, the God of Nature and of Art, seem, at some remote period, to have proceeded from a common source. Their separation was one of form rather than of substance: and from the time when Hercules obtained initiation from Triptolemus, or Pythagoras received Orphic tenets, the two conceptions were tending to re-combine. It was said that Dionusos or Poseidon had preceded Apollo in the Oracular office; and Dionusos continued to be esteemed in Greek Theology as Healer and Saviour, Author of Life and Immortality. The dispersed Pythagoreans, "Sons of Apollo," immediately betook themselves to the Orphic Service of Dionusos, and there are indications that there was always something Dionysiac in the worship of Apollo.