Читать книгу: «The Shadow of Solomon: The Lost Secret of the Freemasons Revealed», страница 2

The Revolution

What has all this to do with Freemasonry? In actual fact, everything, for when King James was sent into French exile in December 1688, the traditional masonic inheritance of the Kings of Scots went with him—as did his key masonic allies. This is one of the reasons why today the 33-degree masonic working known as the Scottish Rite (albeit, as we will see, now a contrived Scottish Rite) embodies rituals that are unfamiliar to the three degrees of English Craft Freemasonry (see page 308). For now, to complete the 17th-century picture, we need to follow on with the drama of King James.

James had two daughters by his first wife, Anne Hyde of Clarendon, as well as a young son by his second wife, the Italian noblewoman Mary d’Este de Modena. The elder of the daughters, Mary, was married to Prince William of Orange, Stadhouder (chief magistrate) of the Netherlands. It had been hoped that this alliance would calm the long-standing dispute between Britain and Holland over international trading rights but, in the event, it worked to the contrary.

Given the situation of religious unrest in Britain, William saw his opportunity to dominate Britain’s trade from within and, with approval from the Anglican Church, he put together an invasion force. Meanwhile, the Westminster Parliament in London had denied King James the funds to maintain a standing army in times of peace, so when William’s assault came he had no means of defence. What followed in this large-scale, but comparatively localized, revolution was as pictorially dramatic as any Hollywood screenplay.

With a substantial fleet of ships and around 6,000 troops, William of Orange disembarked at Torbay in south-west England on 5 November 1688. Almost immediately, he issued violent threats against James’s family. Consequently, on 21 December, James’s second wife, Mary de Modena (disguised as an Italian laundress), and their son, the infant Prince of Wales, were secreted from London by night. Taken by armed riders across the countryside to the coast in howling gales and driving sleet, they embarked a small boat for Calais. Mary then got word to her cousin, King Louis XIV of France, who sent courtiers to fetch her. Once in Paris, Mary was met by King Louis and presented with the keys to the Château de Saint Germain-en-Laye. (This royal palace had previously been the grand residence of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots 1542-87, before she also became Queen of France in 1559.)

Meanwhile, back in London, James received an ultimatum from his son-in-law, William. It stated that if James did not give up his crown immediately, then his family would be at risk. William was unaware that Mary and the prince had already left the country. Resigned to the situation, King James made a final gesture by throwing the Great Seal of England (the constitutional device of the English monarchy) into the River Thames.⁴ He then made his way to Paris and to the Stuart Palace of St Germain, which became his primary residence thereafter.

Following James’s departure, the parliamentary House of Lords determined that since he had fled, but not formally abdicated, there remained a legal compact between the king and the people. The throne was, therefore, ‘not vacant’ (although not technically occupied either). It was suggested that a Regency (with an appointed state administrator) was the best way to preserve the kingdom during the remainder of James Stuart’s lifetime, but William of Orange made it clear that he had no intention of becoming just a Regent—neither would he consent to sharing in government. His declaration was so forceful that there was an immediate fear of war, and many thought he would seize the crown regardless. A panic conference then ensued between the Houses of Lords and Commons, resulting in a decision that per haps the throne was vacant after all.⁵

With the support of the Anglican Whig aristocracy,⁶ Prince William convened an illegal Parliament at Westminster on 26 December 1688, and the politicians were held at gunpoint to vote in respect of a dynastic change, with the majority voting in favour (although it was still a very close contest). The press later reported that ‘the Convention Parliament was in no way at liberty to vote according to conscience because Prince William’s soldiers were stationed within the House and all around the Palace of Westminster’.⁷ The press report illustrates the effect that this mil-itarily-obligated Parliament had on the monarchical structure:

King James was gone, and William was present with the Dutch Guard at Westminster to overawe, and with power to imperil the fortunes and lives of those who stood in the way of his advancement…William employed actual intimidation which resulted in majorities of one vote, in two of the most important divisions in the history of Parliament…In our time, governments have resigned when their majority over a censuring opposition has not been so small. Yet a majority of one is held to be adequate justification for a revolution involving the fundamental principle of primogeniture upon which our social fabric is based!

Not all the Church of England hierarchy in the House of Lords were in opposition to King James, however. His supporters included Archbishop Sancroft of Canterbury, and the Bishops of Bath and Wells, Ely, Gloucester, Norwich, Peterborough, Worcester, Chichester, and Chester. When James was deposed, they were all deprived of their sees and incumbencies. History has since been manipulated to suggest that James was displaced because he was a Catholic. In truth, he was deposed to guarantee power to a Parliament that was controlled by Anglican supremacists and not elected by a democratic vote of the people.

William did not get everything his own way though. He gained the crown as King William III only with the proviso that his wife, Mary (James’s daughter), held equal rights as Queen Mary II, instead of being ranked Queen Consort as is the norm. Consequently, the reign is known in history as that of William and Mary. At the same time, the 1689 Bill of Rights was introduced, stating that future British monarchs could reign only with parliamentary consent, and that MPs should be freely elected. In reality, MPs of the era were certainly not freely elected. Only a very limited number of male property-owners who enjoyed high incomes were allowed to vote, and the House of Commons was far from characteristic of the populace it was supposed to represent. The monarchical situation remains the same today in that HM Queen Elizabeth II reigns only with governmental consent as a parliamentary monarch. She is not a constitutional monarch (appointed by the provisions of a people’s written Constitution) as are other kings and queens in Europe.

The reason why the 1689 Act came into being was that, although Queen Mary was a devout Protestant, the ministers were concerned about William’s personal relationship with Rome. Holland was the chief northern province of the independent Netherlands which had previously been attached to the Holy Roman Empire, and it was known that William’s army consisted largely of Catholic mercenaries paid from the papal purse. King James II had assisted Louis XIV of France in his nation’s opposition to the Catholic empire, and it was anticipated by the Pope that, with William in charge of Britain, this support would cease, thereby weakening the French position.

On 23 September 2001, Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper ran an article entitled ‘William of Orange funded by the Pope’, explaining how documents discovered at the Vatican reveal that Pope Innocent XI had provided William with 150,000 scudi—equivalent to more than £3.5m today. This came as a surprise to the people of Northern Ireland, who always felt that William’s Orangemen (who prevented James Stuart’s restoration attempt at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690) were a Protestant army.⁸ Cecil Kilpatrick, archivist for the Orange Order, acknowledged that there had already been embarrassing indications of ties between William and the Pope. He said that in the 1930s, when they discovered Pope Innocent XI depicted with Prince William in a portrait at Stormont (the Northern Ireland Parliament), they ‘had to get rid of it’!

Despite William’s outwardly routine aspirations in what his supporters called the Glorious Revolution, the Whig politicians determined that, having facilitated his invasion, they were in a position to impose certain restrictions for the future. Notwithstanding protests from Stuart adherents on the Tory benches, they laid immediate ground rules. The Bill of Rights, with its inherent Declaration of Rights, stipulated that Parliament retained absolute rights of consent over the monarchy, the judiciary and the people. Furthermore, it was henceforth illegal for a monarch to make or amend any laws of the land. So, although William made a great show of strength at his initial Convention Parliament, the politicians maintained the upper hand by granting his kingship on a conditional basis. These measures, coupled with Queen Mary’s Protestantism, curtailed the papal ambitions, but following Mary’s childless death in 1694 the inevitable dilemma of succession arose.

To establish fully the Anglican Parliament’s supreme position over the monarchy during the balance of William’s reign, the 1701 Act of Settlement was introduced to secure the throne of Britain for Protestants alone, and the Act remains in force today—even though it was passed in the House of Commons by a majority of only one vote (118 for, and 117 against). The earlier Act of Abjuration (requiring all government officials to renounce King James) was similarly passed by one vote (193 to 192), and there was no true parliamentary majority for either of these Acts which set the constitutional scene for everything that followed concerning the operational nature of the British monarchy.

Religion and the Great Lights

The much publicized Orange Order was founded in 1795 in the wake of the Williamite revolution and the continuing aggression between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The Order is often portrayed as being a masonic lodge in Ulster, but it is not. Indeed, the very nature of its constitution provides us with a good example as to the contrasting religious stance taken by authentic Freemasonry.

The Orange Order is pseudo-masonic in its presentation, but stipulates that its members must be Protestant Christians. There is no such requirement, nor indeed any religious stipulation in legitimate Freemasonry. Those of any religion (or none) are welcomed into the ranks, and the godhead of Creation is defined not in religious denominational terms, but as the Great Architect of the Universe. The Three Great Lights of Freemasonry (the so-called ‘furniture’, without which no lodge can be convened) include a volume of the Sacred Law. This might be the Judaeo-Christian Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Vedas or the Zend-Avesta, depending on the predominant culture of the lodge concerned. Each and all are acceptable to attendant or visiting masons since the volume is representative of an essential belief in some form of supreme authority, by whatever definition. Outside that, discussion of religious matters is not permitted within the lodge environment.

The other Great Lights of Freemasonry are the square and compasses, representing the psyche and spirit respectively. The configuration in which these physical items are displayed within an active lodge (for instance, with one, two or neither of the compass points revealed in front of the square) denotes the degree in which the prevalent meeting is being conducted. The Three Great Lights in unison denote the extent of a mason’s qualifying achievement within an overall environment of divine consciousness, while the lodge itself is perceived as a bridge between the material and spiritual worlds.

This aspect of lodge working demonstrates that there is something more to Freemasonry than is immediately apparent from its superficial image. The masonic hierarchy is always quick to assert that Freemasonry is not a religion—and indeed it is not—but something else is indicated here: divine consciousness and a recognition of different material and spiritual worlds. If not religious, then there is clearly a spiritual aspect to consider, and the concept of ‘worlds’ is somewhat kabbalistic in nature. In fact, the levels of masonic spiritual attainment between the mundane environment and the higher levels of enlightenment are represented by Jacob’s Ladder from the Genesis story of Jacob’s dream.⁹ This was depicted in Georgian times by the Rosicrucian poet and artist, William Blake (b. 1757), in the masonic tradition of a winding staircase (see plate 2). His is also probably the best-known representation of the masonic Great Architect of the Universe—the Ancient of Days with his compasses (see plate 1). The staircase, in its final interpretation, defines seven levels of consciousness, and can be assigned to each of the seven officers of a lodge (see page 148).¹⁰

While the spiritual path in modern Freemasonry is a journey of allegory and symbolism in pursuit of self-improvement, that of the Stuart era was about the acquisition of scientific knowledge with a much bigger scale of practical involvement. Hence, current masonic teachings point members to a wealth of Renaissance literature, recommending that it should be studied, although those making the suggestions have rarely perused the material themselves. Instead, they are generally in pursuit of social recognition and personal fulfilment, not scientific accomplishment.

The fact remains that any amount of Renaissance literature in the public domain might be studied without revealing the secrets that were lost to the English masonic stage in 1688. Even though all the relevant documentation was not carried to France by King James’s supporters, a good deal was burnt and destroyed as described in the Anderson Constitutions (see page 5).

Intellectuals of the era, such as Sir Christopher Wren (b. 1632) and Sir Isaac Newton (b. 1642), did their best to work with the information to hand. They knew that masonic lore was connected with Kabbalah wisdom philosophy (an ancient tradition of enlightenment based on material and spiritual realms of consciousness). They also knew that it was related to the culture of the biblical kings, and were aware of a scholarly existence before the days of the Roman Empire. They researched the technology of the ancient Babylonians, the philosophies of Pythagoras and Plato, and the mystery traditions of old Egypt, becoming thoroughly absorbed in history beyond the bounds of biblical scripture. But for all that, and despite their own considerable scientific achievements, they also knew that they lived only in the shadow of King Solomon, whom Newton called ‘the greatest philoso pher in the world’.¹¹ Newton viewed the design of Solomon’s Temple as a paradigm for the entire future of mankind and, in referring to the great masters of old, he wrote in a letter to his Royal Society colleague, Robert Boyle, ‘There are things which only they understand.’

Newton believed that the dimensions and geometry of the Jerusalem Temple floor-plan contained clues to timescales,¹² and he used these mathematics in his calculations when developing his theory of gravitation.¹³ The Temple, he said, was the perfect microcosm of existence, and his diagrammatic Description of the Temple of Solomon is held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. At the centre of the Temple, in the Sanctum Santorum (Holy of Holies) was kept the Ark of the Covenant, and Newton likened this heart of the Temple to a perpetual fire, with light radiating outwards in circles, while also being constantly attracted back to the centre. In line with this thinking, a point within a circle was indeed a symbol for Light in ancient Egypt and, in the lodge ritual of Freemasonry, there is a related conversation which takes place between the Worshipful Master and his Wardens concerning the lost secrets. The Master asks the Question: ‘How do you hope to find them?’ Answer: ‘By the centre’. Question: ‘What is a centre?’ Answer: ‘That point within a circle from which every part of its circumference is equidistant’. In due course we shall discover that a point within a circle is the most important of all masonic devices.

Although the Temple of Solomon commands primary attention in modern Freemasonry, far older masonic documents than Anderson’s Constitutions suggest that, for all his great wisdom, Solomon (c. 950 BC) was the inheritor of a much more ancient tradition. From this point, we shall travel back in time to trace the history of Freemasonry as it developed through the ages. What we know at this stage, however, is that the majority of what existed in English masonic circles prior to the 1688 Revolution disappeared from Britain’s shores with the deposition and exile of the House of Stuart. This was explained in 1723 by James Anderson, whose Constitutions formed a base for the development of Freemasonry thereafter. Indeed, it follows that the immediate answer to the question ‘What is Freemasonry?’ can be summed up by saying that it is not the same thing today as it once was.

2 Masonic Origins
Secret Signs

Masons, in the operative sense, are stoneworkers, but the term Freemason is not so readily understandable. Many views have been put forward as to what the word actually means, but even Freemasons tend to disagree. The best routes to the origin of words are good etymological dictionaries—these have no vested interest and do not need to slant their descriptions in any particular way. The most famous of such early works is the 1721 edition of Nathan Bailey’s Universal Etymological Dictionary. This was published just two years before James Anderson’s Constitutions and, interestingly, the word Freemason does not appear. Neither does it in the revised edition of 1736.

Writers such as John Hamill (librarian and curator for the United Grand Lodge of England in 1986) consider that ‘freemason’ is a contraction of ‘freestone mason’—a worker in finely grained freestones such as limestone and sandstone, which have no flaws and are easily cut.¹ Although quite plausible, this is not in keeping with general masonic theory which suggests that the prefix ‘free-’ relates to the realm of the ‘speculative’ rather than ‘operative’—ie, not a working stonemason as such. However, the term ‘freestone mason’ is recorded as far back as 1375, while the epitaph of a freestone quarryman at St Giles Church, Sidbury, describes him as ‘John Stone, free mason’. It is thought that he was the father of the celebrated sculptor Nicholas Stone, who became Master of Works in 1619 for the great architect Inigo Jones at London’s Banqueting House in Whitehall. Among the noted achievements of Devonshire-born Nicholas Stone (1586-1647) is the gate at St Mary’s Hall, Oxford, the monument to the poet John Donne at St Paul’s Cathedral, and numerous tombs including that of Viscount Dorchester at Westminster Abbey. In 1625, he was appointed as Master Mason at Windsor Palace by King Charles I.

When entitling his Constitutions, James Anderson hyphenated the word as ‘Free-Masons’ and, in earlier times, two separate words were sometimes used—which may explain the non-existence of ‘freemason’ in old dictionaries. Another early use of the term comes from 1435, when ‘John Wode, mason, contracts to build the tower of the Abbey of St Edmundsbury in all manner of things that longe to free masonry’.² In line with this, the Oxford Word Library explains that, in those times, stonemasons’ guilds would emancipate (or free) their local members so that they might travel from place to place in order to gain work contracts. When arriving in unfamiliar surroundings, they would communicate their degrees of proficiency by way of secret signs known only to others of their craft.

This makes reasonable sense and certainly gives a valid reason for the use of signs and passwords in order to gain employment at the right level of attainment. However, latter-day Freemasons are, for the most part anyway, not operative stonemasons and do not require the signs for this purpose. Either way, it is clear that by the mid-1600s operative masonic guilds did afford membership to non-operatives³ (for example, selected employers, who would need to know the signs and symbols when hiring their workmen). Thus, as is commonly believed in masonic circles, the structural framework of Freemasonry (even if not the inherent subject matter) does seem to emanate from the methods employed by the medieval workers’ guilds.