GNOSIS AND FREEMASONRY
Gnosis, said T.'. Ill'. F.'. Albert Pike, 'is the essence and marrow of Freemasonry.' Here Gnosis must be understood to mean that traditional knowledge which constitutes the common basis of all initiations, the doctrines and symbols of which have been transmitted from the most distant antiquity down to the present day through all the secret Fraternities, the long chain of which has remained unbroken.
Esoteric doctrines can be transmitted only through initiation, and every initiation necessarily comprises several successive phases, to which there correspond as many different grades. These grades and phases can always be reduced to three, considered as marking the three ages of the initiate or the three periods of his education and are characterized by the three words birth, growth, and production, respectively. Here is what F.'. Oswald Wirth says on the subject:
The goal of Masonic initiation is to illumine men, that they might be taught to work usefully, in full conformity with the very purpose of their existence. Now in order to illumine men, it is first necessary to rid them of all that might keep them from seeing the Light. They are therefore submitted to certain purifications intended to eliminate heterogeneous residues, themselves the causes of the opacity of the layers that serve as so many protective shells for the spiritual kernel of man. As soon as they are made clear, their complete transparence allows the rays of outward Light to penetrate to the conscious center of the initiate. Then his entire being is progressively saturated by Light until he
is Illumined in the highest sense of the word; he is thereafter known also as an adept, himself transformed into a radiant focus of Light.
Masonic initiation is thus made up of three distinct phases, consecrated successively to the discovery, assimilation, and propagation of Light. These phases are represented by the three grades of Apprentice, Fellow, and Master, corresponding to the triple mission of the Masons, which consists first in searching for, then possessing, and finally being able to spread the Light. The number of these grades is absolute: there can be only three, no more, no less. The invention of various systems known as high grades rests solely on an equivocation, by which the initiatic grades, strictly limited in number to three, are confused with the degrees of initiation, the multitude of which is necessarily indefinite.
The initiatic grades correspond to the triple program pursued through Masonic initiation. They carry in their esoterism a solution to the three questions of the Sphinx's riddle: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? and they thereby correspond to all that can interest men. They are immutable in their fundamental character, and in their trinity they form a complete whole, to which nothing can either be added or taken away: Apprenticeship and Fellowship are the two pillars supporting Mastery.
As to the degrees of initiation, they allow the initiate to penetrate more or less deeply into the esoterism of each grade. From this there results an indefinite number of different ways of entering into possession of the three grades of Apprentice, Fellow, and Master. It is possible to possess their outward form only, the uncomprehended letter; in Masonry, as everywhere, there are in this regard many called but few chosen, for it is only given to the true initiate to grasp the inner spirit of the initiatic grades. What is more, not everyone will achieve the same results; more often than not, an initiate will scarcely emerge from esoteric ignorance, and will never advance in a decided manner toward integral Knowledge, toward perfect Gnosis.
Perfect Gnosis, which in Masonry is symbolized by the letter G. within the Blazing Star, applies simultaneously to the program of intellectual discovery and to the moral training of the three grades of Apprentice, Fellow, and Master. With Apprenticeship, it aims to penetrate the mystery of the origin of things; with Fellowship, to unveil the secret of man's nature; and with Mastery, to reveal knowledge of the future destiny of beings. Moreover, it teaches the Apprentice to increase his interior strength to its highest level; it shows the Fellow how to attract surrounding forces to himself; and it instructs the Master to reign as sovereign, subjecting nature to the scepter of his intelligence. It must not be forgotten in all this that initiatic Masonry relates to the Great Art, the Sacerdotal and Royal Art of the ancient initiates. [1]
Without wishing to enter here into the quite complicated question of Masonry's historical origins, let us simply recall that in the form in which it is currently known, modern Masonry resulted from a partial fusion of the Brotherhood of the Rose-Cross, which had preserved gnostic doctrine since the Middle Ages, with the ancient building guilds of the Masons, whose tools had moreover already been used as symbols by the Hermetic philosophers, as can particularly be seen in a figure like Basil Valentine. [2]
But laying aside the restricted point of view of Gnosticism for the time being, we must stress above all the fact that the goal of Masonic initiation, as of all other initiations, is the attainment of integral Knowledge, which is Gnosis in the true sense of the word. It is precisely this knowledge that, properly speaking, constitutes the Masonic secret, which is why this secret is essentially incommunicable.
To conclude, and in order to avoid all ambiguity, we shall observe that for us Masonry cannot and must not be bound to any particular philosophical opinion, that it is no more spiritualist than materialist, no more deist than atheist or pantheist in the ordinary sense of all these terms, for it must only be Masonry pure and simple. In
entering the Temple, each member must divest himself of his profane personality, laying aside all that is foreign to the fundamental principles of Masonry, on which all must be united in order to labor together on the Great Work of universal Construction.