"32nd Degree - Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret (Master of the Royal Secret)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Albert)

The Hermaphroditic figure is the Symbol of the double nature anciently assigned to the Deity, as Generator and Producer, as BRAHM and MAYA among the Aryans, Osiris and Isis among the Egyptians. As the Sun was male, so the Moon was female and Isis was both the sister and the wife of Osiris. The Compass, therefore, is the Hermetic Symbol of the Creative Deity and the
Square of the productive Earth or Universe.

From the Heavens come the spiritual and immortal portion of man; from the Earth his material and mortal portion. The Hebrew Genesis says that YEHOUAH formed man of the dust of the Earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Through the seven planetary spheres, represented by the Mystic Ladder of the Mithriac Initiations and it by that which Jacob saw in his dream (not with three, but with seven steps), the Souls, emanating from the Deity, descended,
to be united to their human bodies; and through those seven spheres they must re-ascend, to return to their origin and home in the bosom of the Deity.

The COMPASS therefore, as the Symbol of the Heavens, represents the spiritual, intellectual, and moral portion of this double nature of humanity and the SQUARE, as the Symbol of the Earth, its material, sensual and baser portion. "Truth and Intelligence", said one of the Ancient Indian Sects of Philosophers, "are the Eternal attributes of God, not of the individual Soul, which is susceptible both of knowledge and ignorance, of pleasure and pain; therefore God and the individual Soul are distinct" and this expression of the ancient Nyaya Philosophers, in regard to Truth, has been handed down to us through the long succession of ages, in the lessons of Freemasonry, wherein we read, that "Truth is a Divine Attribute and the foundation of every virtue."

"While embodied in matter" they said, "the Soul is in a state of imprisonment and is under the influence of evil passions; but having, by intense study, arrived at the knowledge of the elements and principles of Nature, it attains unto the place of THE ETERNAL; in which state of happiness, its individuality does not cease".

The vitality which animates the mortal frame, the Breath of Life of the Hebrew Genesis, the Hindu Philosophers in general held, perishes with it; but the Soul is divine, all emanation of the Spirit of God, but not a portion of that Spirit. For they compared it to the heat and light sent forth from the Sun, or to a ray of that light, which neither lessens nor divides its own essence.

However created, or invested with separate existence, the Soul, which is but the creature of the Deity, cannot know the mode of its creation, nor comprehend its own individuality. It cannot even comprehend how the being which it and the body constitute; can feel pain or see or hear. It has pleased the Universal Creator to set bounds to the scope of our human and finite reason, beyond which it cannot reach and if we are capable of comprehending the mode and manner of the creation or generation of the Universe of things, He has been pleased to conceal it from us by an impenetrable veil, while the words used to express the act have no other definite meaning than that He caused that Universe to commence to exist.

It is enough for us to know, what Masonry teaches, that we are not all mortal; that the Soul or Spirit, the intellectual and reasoning portion of ourself, is our Very Self, is not subject to decay and dissolution, but is simple and immaterial, survives the death of the body, and is capable of immortality; that it is also capable of improvement and advancement, of increase of knowledge of the things that are divine, of becoming wiser and better and more and more worthy of
immortality and that to become so, and to help to improve and benefit others and all our race, is the noblest ambition and highest glory that we can entertain and attain unto, in this momentary and imperfect life.

In every human being the Divine and the Human are intermingled. In every one there are the Reason and the Moral sense, the passions that prompt to evil and the sensual appetites. "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die," said Paul, writing to the Christians at Rome, "but if ye through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God". "The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh" he said, writing to the Christians of Galatia, "and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would". "That which I do, I do not willingly do" he wrote to the Romans, "for what I wish to do, that I do not do, but that which I hate I do. It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. To will, is present with me; but how to perform that which is good, I find not. For, I do not do the good that I desire to do and the evil that I do not wish to do, that I do do. I find then a law, that when I desire to do good, evil is present with me; for I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin".

Life is a battle and to fight that battle heroically and well is the great purpose of every man's existence, who is worthy and fit to live at all. To stem the strong currents of adversity, to advance in despite of all obstacles, to snatch victory from the jealous grasp of fortune, to become a chief and a leader among men, to rise to rank and power by eloquence, courage,
perseverance, study, energy, activity, discouraged by no reverses, impatient of no delays, deterred by no hazards; to win wealth, to subjugate men by our intellect, the very elements by our audacity, to succeed, to prosper, to thrive. Thus it is, according to the general understanding, that one fights well the battle of life. Even to succeed in business by that
boldness which halts for no risks, that audacity which stakes all upon hazardous chances; by the shrewdness of the close dealer, the boldness of the unscrupulous operator, ever by the knaveries of the stock-board and the gold-room; to crawl up into place by disreputable means or the votes of brutal ignorance, these also are deemed to be among the great successes of life.

But that which is the greatest battle and in which the truest honour and most real success are to be won, is that which our intellect and reason and moral sense, our spiritual natures, fight against our sensual appetites and evil passions, our earthly and material or animal nature. Therein only are the true glories of heroism to be won, there only the successes that entitle us to triumphs.

In every human life that battle is fought and those who win elsewhere, often suffer ignominious defeat and disastrous rout and discomfiture and shameful downfall in this encounter.

You have heard more than one definition of Freemasonry. The truest and the most significant you have yet to hear. It is taught to the entered Apprentice, the Fellow-Craft and the Master, and it is taught in every Degree through which you have advanced to this. It is a definition of what Freemasonry is, of what its purposes and its very essence and spirit are and it has for
every one of us the force and sanctity of a divine law and imposes on every one of us a solemn obligation.

It is symbolized and taught, to the Apprentice as well as to you, by the COMPASS and the SQUARE; upon which, as well as upon the Book of your Religion and the Book of the law of the Scottish Freemasonry, you have taken so many obligations. As a Knight, you have been taught
it by the Swords, the symbols of HONOUR and DUTY, on which you have taken your vows: it was taught you by the BALANCE, the symbol of all Equilibrium and by the CROSS, the symbol of devotedness and self-sacrifice; but all that these teach and contain is taught and contained, for Entered Apprentice, Knight and Prince alike, by the Compass and the Square.

For the Apprentice, the points of the Compass are beneath the Square. For the Fellow-Craft, one is above and one beneath. For the Master, both are dominant and have rule, control and empire over the symbol of the earthly and the material.

FREEMASONRY is the subjugation of the Human that is in man by the Divine; the Conquest of the Appetites and Passions by the Moral Sense and the Reason; a continual effort, struggle and warfare of the Spiritual against the Material and Sensual. That victory, when it has been achieved and secured, and the conqueror may rest upon his shield and wear the well-earned laurels, is the true HOLY EMPIRE.

To achieve it, the Mason must first attain a solid conviction, founded upon reason, that he hath within him a spiritual nature, a soul that is not to die when the body is dissolved, but is to continue to exist and to advance toward perfection through all the ages of eternity, and to see more and more clearly, as it draws nearer unto God, the Light of the Divine Presence. This the Philosophy of the Ancient and Accepted Rite teaches him and it encourages him to persevere by helping him to believe that his free will is entirely consistent with God's Omnipotence and Omniscience; that He is not only infinite in power and of infinite wisdom, but of infinite mercy, and an infinitely tender pity and love for the frail and imperfect creatures that He has made.
Every Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, from the first to the thirty-second, teaches by its ceremonial as well as by its instruction, that the noblest purpose of life and the highest duty of a man are to strive incessantly and vigorously to win the mastery of everything, of that which in him is spiritual and divine, over that which is material and sensual; so that in him also, as in the Universe which God governs, Harmony and Beauty may be the result of a
just equilibrium.

You have been taught this in those Degrees, conferred in the Lodge of Perfection, which inculcate particularly the practical morality of Freemasonry. To be true, under whatever temptation to be false; to be honest in all your dealings, even if great losses should be the consequence; to be charitable, when selfishness would prompt you to close your hand, and
deprivation of luxury or comfort must follow the charitable act; to judge justly and impartially, even in your own case, when baser impulses prompt you to do an injustice in order that you may be benefited or justified; to be tolerant, when passion prompts to intolerance and persecution; to do that which is right, when the wrong seems to promise larger profit and to wrong no man of anything that is his, however easy it may seem so to enrich yourself; in all these things and others which you promised in those Degrees, your spiritual nature is taught and encouraged to assert its rightful dominion over your appetites and passions.

The philosophical Degrees have taught you the value of knowledge, the excellence of truth, the superiority of intellectual labour, the dignity and value of your soul, the worth of great and noble thoughts and thus endeavoured to assist you to rise above the level of the animal appetites and passions, the pursuits of greed and the miserable struggles of ambition and to find purer pleasure and nobler prizes and rewards in the acquisition of knowledge, the enlargement of the
intellect, the interpretation of the sacred writing of God upon the great pages of the Book of Nature.

And the Chivalric Degrees have led you on the same path, by showing you the excellence of generosity, clemency, forgiveness of injuries, magnanimity, contempt of danger and the paramount obligations of Duty and Honour. They have taught you to overcome the fear of death, to devote yourself to the great cause of civil and religious Liberty, to be the Soldier of all
that is just right and true; in the midst of pestilence to deserve your title of Knight Commander of the Temple and neither there nor elsewhere to desert your post and flee dastard-like from the foe. In all this, you assert the superiority and right to dominion of that in you which is spiritual and divine. No base fear of danger or death, no sordid ambitions or pitiful greeds or base considerations can tempt a true Scottish Knight to dishonour and so make his intellect, his