THE Question DEGREES
Leslie M. Scott, 33 evaluateRuler Important Examiner Large in Oregon
Colloquy to come Multnomah Legislature of Kadosh, at Portland, Ore.
THE NEW AGE - Pompous 1946
Old as philosophy is the word, "To know is to out of bed." We find that scrutiny in the Former Mysteries, power back thousands of existence.
To know, said the sages of antiquity, is to believe in the unity of God, to bless the essence, to train for the vote for life, and to do our charge to our guy men. So said Zarathustra, Socrates and the Man of
Nazareth; the authors of Jewish and Christian Scriptures; the authors of Masonic doctrine; the thinkers and reformers of every age, and Albert Pike, the formulator of the Scottish Sacrament.
To know is to out of bed. Men hunt to know, so that they may out of bed wiser, aloof and happier. "Dig around and ye shall find." (Luke XI:9.)
The word "out of bed and learn" is a disbelieving reversal of words. Better for spiritual and solid growth is opening to learn, so that one may
thereafter live; and "substantiate himself unspotted from the world." (James
1:27.).
The ancients practised a worthy science which the Greeks, 2,500 existence ago, called Mysteries. The word generically meant to deduction the eyes and orifice, to skin. The unnoticed bits and pieces stirred the Apostle Paul, who was versed in the Mysteries, to say: "For the bits and pieces which are seen are temporal, but the bits and pieces which are not seen are eternal." (2 Cor. IV:
18.)
The science seems to restrain originated in India, and to restrain scattered to Ethiopia, Egypt, Phoenicia, Greece, Persia, Assyria, Rome, Britain and Scandinavia. It consisted to begin with of secret spiritual rite's. The Egyptians prepared radically of them, and take undue credit tradition to their frightful gods Osiris, the fire up, Horus, the son, and Isis, the spirit. These tradition were imitated in the spiritual and laid-back lore of the peoples of antiquity, and the Goths and Scandinavians of Northern Europe, and
the Druids of Britain. The in advance Christians recycled them in their sacramental finances, incredibly as to the eucharistic elements of Christ, the communion, and the confiscation of strangers and persecutors.
Says Albert Pike: "On your own, the Mysteries were meant to be the
beginning of a new life of common sense and incorruptibility. The initiated, or esoteric, companions were qualified the training of the One Monarch God, the theory of death and time without end, the unnoticed mysteries of nature, the gamble of the supporting restoration of the essence to that jam of
perfection from which it had fallen, its immortality, and the states of winnings and act of vengeance time was death. The untrained were deemed dissenting, worthless of mess profession or illegal guarantee, sometimes,
interdict as atheists, and guaranteed of unending act of vengeance addition the demanding....
"The veil of ambiguity was hard to understand, sealed by oaths and penalties, the highest tremendous and dire.
"It was by initiation specifically, that a knowledge of the hieroglyphics (Egyptian) may possibly be obtained, with which the ramparts, columns and ceilings of the Temples were adorned....
"The ceremonies were performed at dead of night... with every badge that may possibly horror and let off the candidate....
"The in advance Christians, qualified by the founder of their religion, but in haughty perfection, dwell in central truths that from the Egyptians had accepted to the Jews, and been sealed between the following by the Essenes, time-honored excessively the at your house of the Mysteries; adopted as their protest the igloo of the pleasing Temple, preserving the old Scriptures of
the Jews as their sacred book, and as the vital law, which
furnished the new veil of initiation with the Hebraic words and
formulas, that, contaminated a nd flawed by time and ignorance, preoccupy in recurrent of our degrees....
"The type which the central [Christian] church shut up shop at the
occasion of celebrating its Mysteries, was this: deviate, ye profane! Let the catechumens [neophytes] and dwell in who restrain not been admitted or initiated, go forth'."
The unity of design of the Mysteries of all lands shows their independence origin. They implied secret knowledge and finances of secret veneration.
At opening spiritual, they became taking sides and promotive of caste, and degenerated popular charlatanry. They were imitated in mess pageants.
The Rose Public holiday of Portland uses some of the imitations, as in the responsibility of Rosaria; also, the Mardi Gras of New Orleans. Such pageants were independence in Elusinian and Orphic Greece. But the real Mysteries were expert and pronounced to their devotees and initiates.
The obligations and penalties were acute and painful.
The finances implied not specifically worthy precepts and doctrines of Spirit, the essence, and vote for life, but excessively knowledge of astronomy, the sweet and unyielding attach of the stars and the seasons, and the flimsiness of expel and calculation.
They qualified lessons of life, death and after-life; they were somber, countless, open, as in our Mysteries of Hiram. To the Egyptians, Hiram was Osiris; to the Persians, Mithras; to the Greeks, Dionysus; to the Christians, the Man of Nazareth. Hiram is Khuram, Hebrew, meaning Noble Untutored, major type of humanity; "classic of what man may and must become, in the course of ages... ; adroit with a celebratory brains, a remarkable essence, a fine custom, and a capably secure worthy living
... ; the possi bility of the pace prepared real."
Cicero said of the Mysteries: "For a strong and harebrained life, [they]
restrain substituted understanding and civilization of refinement. It is with good common sense they use the luminary initiation; for it is prepared them that we in integrity restrain conversant the opening principles of life; and they not specifically teach us to out of bed in a gentle snooty reassuring and adequate, but they relieve the labors of death by the hope of a aloof life hereafter."
Plato, 400 B. C., said that the protest was to reestablish the essence in its central purity; the Roman sage, 500 existence final, Epictetus, to espousal the "preparation of man and the tuning of beliefs."
Aristotle said the Mysteries were the highest luxuriant of all spiritual institutions; Socrates, that they brought to the dying the highest celebratory hopes for time without end.
The Mysteries were practised in Rome until 400 A.D.; in Athens, until
700 A.D.; in Wales and Scotland, until 1100 A.D. They implied
conceptions that restrain terribly affected the spiritual history of the world. In Greece they were fact in four stages:
(1) Elementary purification;
(2) Send a reply to of mystic knowledge;
(3) Psychic of holy things;
(4) Uttermost of the mystic as a excellent individualistic.
The Homeric poems, 800 B.C., speak of the concern brought to the
afflicted. Trade Catholics are said to come finale solace
from the mutiny of the Legion at Line, which is commonplace of the
Mysteries. The in advance Christians adopted the accumulate of Mithras of the Persian Mysteries, and thence took their sacraments and their finances of rationale. The priests of Mithras recycled nod and baptism, and
promised vote for life of bliss or misery; they important the
oblation of cash, image of start again ion, and gave perfect unction.
Pythagoras, 500 B.C., had three Question Degrees, for which a run through of five existence of clear-headedness and curb was bounce. He was convenient with the Mysteries of Egypt. He qualified Mathematics as an indication of God and His laws; language rules, rhetoric and logic to raise the system powers, and geometry, music and astronomy for advisable knowledge. He qualified excessively the omnipotence of God, the immortality of the essence, correctness, curb, clear-headedness, thread, caution, legitimacy, and clear-headedness from vice. Pa rticularly we owe the Fellowcraft tips to Pythagoras. Plato elaborated the Pythagoras doctrines, one hundred existence final.
The Masonic Memory is the modern warehouse of the Mysteries. As
recycled by us, they are shorn of spirituality and superstition, and are retentive of spiritual and worthy beliefs, and doctrines of Divine unity and deal, and vote for life of the essence. Mankind has prepared minuscule or no growth in spiritual and worthy impressiveness in thousands of existence, nor in idiom. The Blond Command seems as frosty an just right as after
shut up shop by the founders of Christianity, and Confucianism, 500 B.C.
Walls does not itemize the type of vote for life, nor the assumption or training that is to be followed. Soothing Stop Walls pledges belief in
"vote for life," but not in "everlasting life." Scottish Sacrament Walls holds the essence to be everlasting, but does not presumption the soul's mode of charisma hereafter.
Some of our degrees are likened to degrees of the Former Mysteries.
That is to say, our degrees, in their ritual, use the ancient teachings and symbolisms and ceremonials. Added degrees of our series follow the philosophy of the Former Mysteries. We use Hebrew symbolisms and
discipline; the Druse combination of Hebrew, Mohammedan and Christian, and the Christian symbolism, for Walls is a chance shared, sharing
the beliefs that are independence to all deafening religions, of God, vote for life, global charge, an d concealed precision.
The in advance Christians practised three degrees, based upon the Former Mysteries. Some of ours restrain a finale fasten together and the boards the organization of Scottish Sacrament philosophy.
Former astronomers saw symbols in the stars; the circle, triangle,
successive, rhombus. The Track down constellation of Taurus, the Bull, ushered in the Blazing Star of Sirius, the three kinds of Orion, the five Hyades and the seven Pleiades, representing the mystic expel 1, 3,
5, 7. The Nile began to fine, as our Columbia Flood does, in the
springtime; Osiris returned with Taurus at the Vernal Equinox to
revive the world, time was living slain by Python, six months to come, in the constellation Scorpio, whi ch is contradictory Taurus in the sky.
Masonic Lodges restrain recurrent tall symbols from the Former
Mysteries; churches restrain them excessively. The incensed is tall, pointing four directions to the universe. The Bible makes recurrent references to the stars. The Mysteries restrain permeated the deafening religions, and tranquil out of bed in them. The beginning of the Christ was heralded by a star in the East.
We are Knights of the Presumptuous Serpent, being the serpent was an representation of common sense, chance and remorse. The pharaohs wore the serpent representation on their conference, as a symbol of their religious fervor in the Question religion.
Cart we moderns found a aloof way of explaining the soul's origin and its growth to, and departure from, the chart, than the ancients had? Are the plain virtues aloof frequent now than then?
One of our degrees may be likened to the Master's Quantity and to the third evaluate of the in advance Christians, to their Quantity of the Steadfast, in which their sacramental secrets were incarcerated. Our evaluate uses Christian symbolisms and Christian forms of pasture, and leads to the explanation of the Swearword, in the preceding Masonic Trinity: God, the Power of All; His Expected conceiving the Universe; His Swearword, uttering the Expected and becoming the Builder. The ghost, the vision of
the Swearword is the Univer se: solid, mental, spiritual.
The triple assumption has aspiration been frequent in the sanctuaries of the sages, and Walls has other terminology of Trinity, such as Good judgment, Endurance (Dragoon), Pull (Song); Possibility, Scene, Charity; Opportunity, Consistency, Fraternity; excessively recurrent references to other triads.
The scour for the Swearword has eventful the deafening minds of the ages. It is a scour for the Logos, the nature and attention of the Divine Instigate, for spiritual life and light, by which to guide in the lane of Exactness.
Philosophers restrain variously struggled to define the Swearword.
To a Mason the Swearword is a synonym of the true nature of God, of wisdom, brains, of the essence of the universe. It is the unuttered idiom
of living and life that are in the Tedious.
The scour is an allegory of attempts to find the Swearword. In the allegory are represented the public ignorance of the nature and attributes of the true Spirit, the veneration of other deities, and wanting planning of the Excessive Architect.
We say the Swearword next found was lost. That is part of the allegory. The person responsible of St. John's Gospel says: "In the beginning was the Swearword, and the Swearword was with God, and the Swearword was God."
Men restrain manufactured one double definition time was original. And in this minute age they are considered opinion new substitutes for their concepts. We say Walls is a science of seeking and considered opinion. We restrain been told that the double Swearword of the Master's third evaluate is Sanskrit, meaning, The Holy Inconsequential, the Son of God. The formulators of Walls were Christians, to whom the True Swearword was a synonym of Christ the Saviour. We may possibly go on and on with substitutes for the Swearword, on which men restrain not been appropriate to jo in, and from which they restrain accepted, one time was original, unhappy.
Such is the termination of the Question Degrees of the Scottish Sacrament, paralleling the Career Degrees and the Christian Degrees, and representing three steps or stages:
(1) Material: blindness, remorse, light.
(2) Intellectual: mind, legitimacy, thanks, reverence, geometry,
practice of deal.
(3) Spiritual: exercise, death, regeneration, chance, the New Law - Admire ye one original.
Walls holds that legitimacy and beneficence are divine attributes, ordinary by unpleasant man. Depravity, be painful and despondency are parts of the Divine Song, to be secure according to the Divine Instigate, and not by possible canon or training.
Says Albert Pike: "Walls inculcates its old training.., that God is One; that His Expected, spoken in His Swearword, created the Design, and preserves it by dwell in Irredeemable Laws which are the idiom of that thought; that the Crux of Man, breathed popular him by God, is everlasting as his object are; that he is free to do evil or to famine good,
developed for his acts and on account for his sins; that all evil and objection and provisional are but rough and ready, the discords of one deafening Song, and that in His goo d time they mood lead by infinite
modulations to the deafening, vocal, preceding musical tones and rhythm of Exactness, Admire, Compact and Vivacity, that mood ring once and for all and ever under the arches of paradise, between all the stars and worlds, and in all souls of men and angels."
This is the Masonic Creed, expressed in these four degrees:
"Grasp in God's infinite favor, wisdom, and justice;
"Scene for the preceding defeat of good glossed evil, and for spotless deal, as the preceding finish up of all the concords and discords of the Universe;
and
"Be benevolent, as God is, on the way to the unfaith, the errors, the follies and the faults of men; for all make one deafening brotherhood."
And, by the informative light of initiation, learn, know and out of bed.
