I continue to study our Fraternity’s oldest documents looking for clues that might show our ancient brethren knew things that were being forced out of humanity’s stored knowledge and so hid them in the fabric of Freemasonry. The degrees of Masonry as we know them have been moved around over the centuries. Some degrees have been lost, some more modern ones added. Some original degrees were moved to the Royal Arch and Scottish Rite. So this got me to thinking, since much of our appendant body degrees originated within the framework of Freemasonry at some point in our history, then maybe it’s ok to look for clues as to the original intent and meaning of Freemasonry in the Royal Arch and Scottish Rite degrees.

Before looking closely at that, I found it worthwhile to remind myself that my research makes a basic assumption that is not shared by all Masons. There are two primary schools of thought about what Freemasonry really means, and the research and opinions that result from each are different.

Those two schools of thought are the Authentic and the Romantic. The Authentic school advocates a “transition theory” back to the operative stonemasons of Scotland and England. The Romantic school believes that Masonic legends, symbolism, and circumstantial evidence point to a number of other possible origins. Among the most popular romantic notions of origin are Solomon’s Temple, the Tower of Babel, the medieval Knights Templar, the Hermeticists and/or Rosicrucians, the Essenes, the Ancient Egyptians, and any number of the ancient mystery religions and/or schools.

The Authentic school readily admits that Freemasonry’s symbols and legends  borrow from a wide range of traditions, but historians are quick to note that this eclecticism should not obscure the society’s true origins. There is a compelling and substantive evidence that the Masonic lodge, including it’s private ceremonies of admission, was a byproduct of the operative stonemasons by the late sixteenth century.

I imagine any open minded Masonic researcher would have to notice the time period we’re talking about, and if the advocates of the Authentic school are correct, and we’re nothing more than a group of philanthropic good men that cloak ourselves with a meaningless hodge podge of borrowed mysterious symbols and stories, well, umm, what exactly where those “real” stonemasons doing in their secret meetings that we supposedly come down from?

This was during a time when some of the most fantastic and incredible stone architecture on the planet was supposedly being built. These structures were often placed on an invisible global geometric grid and built by fantastic means and are awesomely gloriously beautiful. Buildings we can not replicate today. Buildings that likely involved an electrical generating/transmission aspect.

If Freemasonry “borrowed” from the real stone masons of the 1300-1700’s, how exactly much of what they knew did we “borrow”? How to move stone through the air using Jachin and Boaz energy towers? How to soften stone so it can be press fit into place with it’s neighboring stones? Knowledge of how to make a concrete that when cured is indistinguishable from “normal” granite, doloriite, etc.?

The years we are talking about when Authentic researchers believe Freemasonry began borrowing elements from operative Masonry are right in the middle of the series of global cataclysms we have looked at where it appears a whole set of technology and science was lost. It is right in the time period wherein we have paintings by Leonardo da Vinci done with multiple layers of paint each laid down as thin as ink jet printer ink and the colors smoothly blend with each other very much like, well pretty much exactly like, a print. It is a time period wherein we see solid marble statues that show evidence of having been 3d printed from molten stone. We have looked at these things, and many others, so I will not elaborate on them here or give further examples of lost technology from the recent past, but my point is that an Authentic Masonic researcher would be making a mistake not to think that the elements we borrowed from the operative stone masons did not bring with them, perhaps even unwittingly, information about the real secrets of the stone masons.

I actually hadn’t considered the concept of Masonry having borrowed elements from operative stone masonry not knowing of the secrets they represented. I’m convinced that most (likely all) of Masonry today has forgotten it’s own inner secrets, if they existed at all, so looking at our history to better understand our symbolism may reveal secrets that did not even originate from or were known about by our Freemasonic founders, but are real nonetheless having originated from those that were doing the actual megalithic stone construction.

I’d like to believe, in my heart, in the Romantic model; that Freemasonry was created in order to hold certain secrets about the world and ourselves. I’d like to believe that our symbolism and ritual were all written and chosen to convey knowledge of these core secrets, hidden in plain sight in order to preserve them during a time when this knowledge was systematically being wiped out.

In the final analysis however, it doesn’t matter whether one believes in the Authentic or the Romantic model. Either our symbols convey no real secrets beyond their well accepted outer meanings and exist only to help educate us on being better men and growing a more civil world, or they were chosen to convey secret knowledge, except that the secret knowledge has been forgotten and so the symbols remain in use today only for their outer teaching.

I suppose the difference is a believer in the Authentic model would not need to research our symbols looking for hidden meaning, since they believe they were chosen as cool but rather random symbols to convey basic “being a good human” messages. The Romantic however does do this research. I find the Romantic model more fun. I feel like we are sharing a Dan Brown adventure together.

Maybe I and other Masonic scholars of my ilk are adding a ton of meaning into Freemasonry that wasn’t intended by our ancient brethren that started our Craft. This is what Authentic believers feel we Romantics have done, turning a system of allegory into a giant meaning filled monstrosity. I don’t think so however. Actually, I really don’t think so. My research indicates that our ancient brethren knew exactly what they were doing. My mind remains open that they might have been part of the obfuscation of history that was going on at the time, or they might have been (what I would rather believe) preserving knowledge in plain sight at a time when it was being forced out of our history. They might even have borrowed symbols and unwittingly brought real secrets they didn’t recognize into our Craft.

So I thought it would be a good idea to take a closer look at our appendant body’s ritual, ceremonies, and symbolism for further clues to our Craft’s origins. I’ve seen all the degrees. I have been shown all the secret modes of recognition: signs, grips, and words (though I doubt I remember all but a few). I barely remember a few high points of any of these many degrees. There could be a treasure trove of data to by mined about our origins in some of these degrees, many of which are as old as the current Blue Lodge degrees.

Specifically I have been studying the Scottish Rite degrees and synthesizing the teachings of each down to a bottom line simple statement. There are certainly books (A Bridge to Light and Scottish Rite Ritual Monitor and Guide are two examples), actually very large books, which go into great esoteric detail of each Scottish Rite degree, and truly there is a ton of information in each degree to occupy an armchair Masonic scholar for several long winters, but I’m talking about a 10,000 foot up look. By doing this exercise I hope to get a sense for the overall messages and to see if there are some common threads.

Remember, I think there are three main secrets at the root of Masonry: who we really are, our real history, and knowledge about how the ancient (and not so ancient) megalithic stone buildings were constructed and why.  Together we have discovered secrets held in Freemasonry about the first two, and we have teased out some very interesting threads towards the third.

I am doing my best to be an autodidactic, in other words rather than reading a whole lot about what other people think the original information meant, I’m looking at that original data and forming my own conclusions. Today we have a more advanced world view than our previous Masonic scholars and authors; we might spot things they missed. For example, we could not have recognized the Teotihuacan complex or Persepolis in Iran as looking like a computer circuit board until computer circuit boards were in wide use. Stay tuned for next month when I’ll share some initial insights from the 10,000 foot view of the Scottish Rite.