PREFACE
The
Hiramic Legend is the heart of the third degree ritual. Hiram Abif
is one of the brightest characters recorded in the annals of
Freemasonry, and his story is held up as the shining example for all
Masons to emulate. Being the principal actor in the drama of the
ritual, he might fairly be expected to make a ceremonial entrance
from the wings. But Hiram comes to centre-stage through a trap door
as it were. The legend is presented, suddenly and dramatically, in
the third degree, without the least hint of it in the preceding
degrees; neither the Entered Apprentice nor the Fellow-Craft knows
anything at all about Hiram Abif.
Masonic
scholars have tried to trace the origin of the Hiramic Legend, and
discover when and why it was introduced in our ritual. But there is
very little written record available about the internal working of
the lodges before the early 18th century, and the little
that is available is "complex, confusing, and often fragmentary".
Our knowledge of the history of those times is incomplete and
obscure, and according to Robert Gould:
To a necessarily great
extent therefore, all speculations with regard to the more remote
past of the sodality must repose on inference or conjecture; and
deductions which are accepted with easy faith by some, will be
rejected as irrational by others.
In
this paper I have tried to present, with as little speculation as
possible, a plausible and coherent account of the origin of the
Hiramic Legend and of its inclusion in the traditions of our Craft.
With
this rather lengthy preamble let us now start on the subject of this
paper, for doing which there can be no better place than the
VSL.
HIRAM
ABIF IN THE BIBLE
The
Bible has two accounts of the building of King Solomon's Temple - in
the Second Book of Chronicles, and the First Book of Kings.
According to Second Chronicles (ii:3) Solomon requested Hiram, King
of Tyre, to furnish men and materials for building the Temple.
Solomon also asked for a specially gifted craftsman :
Send
me now, a man cunning to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass,
and in iron, and in purple, and crimson, and blue, and that can
skill to grave with the cunning men that are with me in Judah, and
in Jerusalem. (ii:7)
The
King of Tyre accordingly sent Hiram to King Solomon,
saying:
And
now I have sent a cunning man, endued with understanding, of Huram
my father's, the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his
father was a man of Tyre, skillful to work in gold, and in silver,
in brass,
in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple, in blue. and in fine
linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of graving, and to
find out every device which shall be put to him, with thy cunning
men, and with the cunning men of my lord David thy
father.
(
ii. 13 &14)
From
this it is apparent that Hiram was esteemed highly in his profession
as to have been deputed for so important a work. He is alluded to as
"Hiram Abi," and the word "Abi," meaning "my father," is usually
taken in the sense of "master," a title of respect and
distinction.
Solomon
had asked for a craftsman to work and engrave on metals and that is
exactly what Hiram was. The pieces which he executed for the Temple
were:
The two pillars, and the
pommels and the chapiters which were on the top of the pillars ; and
four hundred pomegranates on the two wreaths; two rows of
pomegranates on each
wreath, to cover the two pommels of the chapiters which were upon
the pillars. He made
also bases, and lavers made he upon the bases; one sea and twelve oxen
under it. The pots
also, and the shovels and the flesh hooks and all their instruments,
did Huram his father
make to King Solomon, for the house of the Lord, of bright
brass.
Chronicles (2: iii. 15 to 2:
iv:16) & Kings (1: vii: 15 to 45)
So
how did a skilled metalworker come to be known as a master stone
mason? Alfred Mackey offers an interesting explanation.
In the original Hebrew text
of the passage in the book of Chronicles, the words which designate
the profession of Hiram Abif are Khoresh nekhoshet,- literally, a
worker in brass. …. The error into which the old legendists and the
modern Masonic writers have fallen, in supposing him to have been a
stone-mason or an architect, has arisen from the mistranslation in
the Authorized Version of the passage in Chronicles where he is said
to have been " skillful to work in gold and in silver, in brass, in
iron, in stone, and in timber." The words in the original are
Baabanim vebagnelsim, in stones and in woods,- that is, in precious
stones and in woods of various kinds. That is to say, besides
being a coppersmith he was a lapidary and a carver and
gilder.
The
wrong translation of the words 'stones and woods' in the singular to
'stone and timber', could well have led to the supposition that he
was a stonemason.
There
are two other differences between the accounts given in the two
texts. In the Second Chronicles he is described as "the son of a
woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre",
while First Kings says
" He was a widow's son of the tribe of Naphtali and his father was a
man of Tyre, a worker in brass".
Similarly,
according to the Chronicles Hiram was sent to Jerusalem by the King
of Tyre, when Solomon started to build the temple. But the Book of
Kings says that "King Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre"
(vii; 1 & 8) when the temple was completed.
While
most Masonic historians dismiss these as minor discrepancies, some
argue otherwise, and suggest that there could have been
two persons - possibly father and son - and claim that this
interpretation confirms the death of Hiram. The first, a master
craftsman who could work on any metal, who was probably murdered
before his work was completed. And the second, his son, (his mother
having become a widow because of the death of his father), who could
work only in brass. Solomon sent and fetched him out of Tyre,
instead of merely summoning him, (that is he sent his men to conduct
him safely because of what happened to his father) to complete the
work left unfinished by the death of his
father.
Be
it as it may, let us next look into Hiram in our Masonic
history.
HIRAM
ABIF IN MASONIC TRADITIONS
The
earliest factual information that we have about Masonic history
comes from a collection of documents known as the “Old Charges” or
the “Manuscript Constitution” of Masonry. Two of the earliest of
these are the Regius Manuscript of 1390 and the Cooke Manuscript of
1410. There are 130 versions of these documents running right
through the 18th century. We meet with the first allusion to Hiram
Abif in the Cooke MS. It says:
And at the making of
the Temple in Solomon's time, as stated in the Bible in the third
book of Kings and the fifth chapter, Solomon held four score
thousand masons at work. And the son of the king of Tyre was his
master mason.
Here
Adoniram, the chief of the workmen on Mount Lebanon who was "over
the levy", and who was later stoned to death, has been confused with
Hiram Abif. The literal meaning of Adoniram being Lord Hiram, it has
been mistakenly concluded that this Lord Hiram was the son of the
King of Tyre. In nearly all the succeeding manuscripts the word
Adon, seems to have been corrupted, and he is called variously as
Aynon, Aman, Amon and Adon.
The
first mention of the Hiramic Legend, including the murder, the
discovery and the raising occurs in 1730, in Samuel Prichard's
Masonry Dissected. But the name of Hiram Abif is first found in Dr.
James Anderson's Book of Constitutions of 1723 in which he
says
The King of Tyre sent to
King Solomon his namesake Hiram Abif, the prince of architects . .
. the wise King Solomon
was Grand Master of the Lodge at Jerusalem, King Hiram was Grand
Master of the Lodge at Tyre, and the inspired Hiram Abif was Master
of Work.
The
second edition of Anderson's Constitutions published in 1738
mentions the death of Hiram Abif.
Their joy was soon
interrupted by the sudden death of their dear master, Hiram Abif,
whom they decently interred in the Lodge near the Temple, according
to ancient Usage.
And
that is the first known reference to the death of Hiram
Abif.
ORIGIN
OF THE HIRAMIC LEGEND
The
question that naturally arises is how did the elaborate legend of
the builder originate from such slender references, and how was a
tragedy invented where there probably was none?
Most
Masonic researchers are of the view that the Hiramic Legend
is
simply the adaptation of the Legend of Orisis, with a Masonic and
Biblical background. John Fellows suggests "The story of Hiram is only
another version, like those of Adonis and Astarte, and of Ceres and
Prosperine, of the fable of Osiris and Isis."
This legend is briefly
narrated below:
Osiris was the wise
and benevolent king of Egypt who was killed by his jealous brother
Seth. This evil brother then cut up Osiris' body and scattered the
parts throughout Egypt. Osiris had a faithful wife Isis who, along
with her sister Nephthys, gathered the pieces together. Using her
magical abilities, Isis put the pieces back together, but Osiris
could never again live like the other gods. He, therefore, reigned
as lord of the underworld. Horus, the falcon-headed son of Osiris
and Isis killed his uncle Seth in battle and became the ruler of
Egypt. Horus was born to Isis after the death of Orisis, and was
therefore called a widow's son.
As
Fellows so categorically states, "The likeness throughout is so
exact as not to admit of doubt."
We
might now digress a little to briefly discuss the structure of the
Craft and the evolution of the ritual in the 17th and
18th centuries.
TRANSITION
FROM OPERATIVE TO SPECULATIVE MASONRY
Until
the 17th century, Freemasonry was mainly operative, and
consisted of three classes or ranks - not degrees - of Masons,
namely, Masters, who made contracts and undertook the work of
building for employers; Fellow-Crafts or Journeymen employed by
these Masters; and Entered Apprentices, who were received and taught
the art of building. After seven years the apprentice was required
to offer an essay or master's piece as proof of proficiency, and
then admitted as a Master of the Art and a Fellow of the Craft. This
ceremony of admission is the basis of our ritual.
In
those days Fellow Crafts followed the work from building site to
building site. When
a building was completed they travelled, sometimes a considerable
distance, to the site of another building, seeking employment. As
they were not so well known to one another or to the Masters, it was
necessary for the Master to be satisfied that the man was not a
cowan, or rough layer, but capable of skilled work. It also had to
be ensured that that he had been regularly received into the Guild,
a necessary condition of employment in those days. So "lodges" were formed at
each site, to meet when necessary, to admit apprentices and Fellow
Crafts. According to
C.N.Batham:
The picture, then, is
of lodges throughout the country meeting irregularly as occasion
demanded, perhaps not surviving for any great length of time, and of
informal meetings of groups of members of the Craft for the sole
purpose of initiating friends of theirs. There is nothing other than
brief references to their ceremonies as, unfortunately for Masonic
historians, brethren of those days were pledged to the utmost
secrecy about all aspects of Free-masonry and so committed nothing
to writing if they could possibly avoid doing so.
But
as the erection of great buildings such as cathedrals, palaces, and
castles grew less,
masons became more settled in towns where they were employed in more
ordinary building. Then
they formed what Bro. Knoop calls "territorial lodges". After the settling of
lodges at fixed centres, non-operative members began to be admitted.
Thus in the 17th century the
transition from "operative" to "speculative" got well under way.
Hughan remarks:
:
The
17th century
operative Masons were most favourable to the speculative element in
their midst, and encouraged their admission to such an extent, that
sometimes the Lodges consisted almost exclusively of brethren in no
way connected with building.
This
culminated in the transition to a wholly speculative character in
the 18th century. Alfred Mackey
says:
These two elements of
Freemasonry continued to exist together for a very long period of
time. But at length,
from causes which must be attributed to the increasing power and
influence of the Speculative element, as well as to intellectual
progress, there came a total and permanent disseverance of the
two. . . . The
men of culture and science who were in constant communion with their
operative associates, were getting dissatisfied with a society of
mechanics who had lost much of that skill as architects. …The first
act of severance occurred in England in the year 1717, when the
Grand Lodge of "Free and Accepted Masons" was organised … …. followed nineteen years
afterward by the organization of the Grand Lodge of Scotland with
similar methods.
EVOLUTION
OF THE THREE DEGREE SYSTEM
We
had seen earlier that, in the early 17th century the
ritual consisted of a simple ceremony of accepting an apprentice,
and that because of illiteracy and secrecy, there exist few records
of the nature of this ceremony. Some Masonic scholars hold that
there were two ceremonies.
G.W. Speth believes that:
The Apprentice
was "made" a Mason by some ceremony of a secret character, and
received certain signs and words and so on for recognition. At the
end of his servitude, his passing into the ranks of free craftsmen,
Masters of the Art and fellows of the Fraternity, was celebrated by
another secret ceremony, in which further signs and words and so on
were communicated, and that this ceremony contained the essentials
of the present third degree.
This
theory is borne out by the
Edinburgh Register House Manuscript dated 1696, found in the
Public Records Office of Edinburgh. This contains the earliest
description of the ceremonies and catechisms of the two degrees.
We
now move on to the founding of the Grand Lodge in 1717. We
definitely know that there were two degrees at that time and the
second or senior degree was titled “Master and Fellow-Craft.” The
founding of the Grand Lodge also signalled the transition of the
Craft from Operative to Speculative, the Speculatives being
dominant. In time, the simple Operative ritual was no longer
considered to be fitting to the character of the new Order and was
progressively replaced by a more ornate one adapted to the designs
of Speculative Freemasonry. According to
Mackey:
On the establishment
of the Grand Lodge . . . Speculative Freemasons . .
.
. . . perfected the
transition from wholly Operative to wholly Speculative Freemasonry
by the fabrication of degrees and the development of a more
philosophical ritual, composed, as it has always been conjectured,
by Desaguliers and Anderson, but principally always by the
former.
The
original first degree was split into two and the second degree
became the third. The Three-Degree System grew up by a gradual
process between 1717 and 1730 and the ritual evolved from a simple
ceremony for communicating the secrets of the Craft, to a
sophisticated philosophical system of allegory and symbolism. This
evolution from rudimentary ceremonies and catechisms, to the
beautiful and elaborate ritual of today continued - through the time
of the Union of the 'Antients' and the 'Moderns' in 1813, and the
formation of "Stability Lodge of
Instruction" in 1817, and the "Emulation Lodge of Improvement" in
1823 - until 1835.
HIRAMIC
LEGEND IN THE RITUAL
The
first record of the third degree being conferred was at London in
1724. But the Hiramic Legend was probably not part of the ritual of
that time. We had seen earlier that Anderson's Constitutions of 1923
make no mention of the tragedy, but just fifteen years later, in the
second Constitutions of 1938, the three ruffians had killed the
Prince of Architects. This is conclusive proof that the Hiramic
Legend became a part of Masonic Traditions between 1723 to 1738, and
not earlier.
Pick
and Knight, in their Pocket
History of Freemasonry say:
It is probable that, before
the Craft finally settled on the building of King Solomon's Temple,
.... other prototypes were tried out, perhaps by small groups of
Masons in isolated parts of the country.
We
come across one such prototype in the Graham MS of 1726, with which
we shall deal in detail in the next section of this
paper.
For
the present we shall continue with the question
whether the story was entirely originated by the compilers of the
new ritual, or was there some foundation for it existing in the
craft guilds before the formation of the Grand Lodge?
Gould thinks:
If the murder of Hiram Abiff
had been a tradition of the Craft in early days, not only would
allusions to him be found in the literature of the Order, but he
would have appeared in the earlier degrees, and not been thrust
without any sort of warning into the third degree, much to the
surprise of all who regard Craft Masonry as a gradually developing
spectacle.
Hughan
is also of the opinion that ritualistically Hiram Abif is unknown
before the Third Degree, and this has not been traced before
1723-7.
But
there is another school of thought that contends, with
justification, that Brethren, who a few
years later, split up on very simple points into Ancients and
Moderns, would not have allowed an entirely new legend to be
introduced into Freemasonry and believes that there is sufficient
evidence to prove that some part of the story of Hiram was known to Masons before
this period. For instance, we read that, at the installation of the
Duke of Montagu as Grand Master in 1721, Dr. John Beal, Deputy Grand
Master, was invested and installed into the chair of Hiram Abif, to
the left of the Grand Master.
I
would like to end this part of our discussion by quoting Gould:
When the legend of
Hiram's death was first incorporated with our older traditions, it
is not easy to decide, but in my judgment it must have taken place
between 1723 and 1729, and, I should be inclined to name 1725 as the
most likely year for its introduction.
-
but with the proviso that it is not impossible that the Legend , or
some part of it, was
known to the Craft before that time.
THE
LEGEND OF NOAH AND THE GRAHAM MANUSCRIPT
We
had, in the previous section, mentioned the Graham manuscript of
1726.This is of special importance for a study of the development of
our Ritual because this
manuscript makes very clear reference to King Solomon and
Hiram Abiff, and their respective parts in the building of the
Temple:
Four
hundred and four score years after the Children of Israel came out
of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over
Israel, that Solomon began to build the House of the Lord. . . . Now
we read in the 13th verse of the 7th chapter of the First Book of
Kings that Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre, he being a
widow's son of the Tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of
Tyre, a worker in brass. . . . And he came to King Solomon and
wrought all his work for him.
But
the manuscript does not go on to give us the legend of our third
degree, which has Hiram as its central figure. Instead, it gives
practically all the ingredients of that legend in a very different
setting, with a "traditional history" of which Noah was the central
figure - which may be taken as about 1,300 years before the building
of King Solomon's Temple. In the words of
H.W.Coil:
We have it by tradition and
still some reference to scripture that Shem, Ham and Japeth went to
their father Noah's grave to try to find something about him to lead
them to the veritable secret which this famous preacher had, for all
things needful for the new world were in the Ark with Noah. Now these 3 men had agreed that,
if they did not find the very thing itself, that the first thing
they did find was to be to them as a secret thing not doubting but
did most firmly believe that God was able and would cause what they
did find to prove as veritable to them as if they had received the
secret at first from God himself. So they came to the grave finding
nothing but the dead body
almost consumed. Taking a
grip at a finger, it came away; so from joint to joint; so to the
wrist; so to the elbow; so they reared up the dead body and
supported it; setting foot to foot, knee to knee, breast to breast,
cheek to cheek and hand to back, and cried out: 'Help, O, father,'
as if they had said; 'O, Father of Heaven, help us now for our
earthly father cannot.'" So they laid down the dead body again and
not knowing what to do, one, said: 'Here is yet marrow in the bone;'
and the second said: 'But a dry bone,' and the third said; 'It
stinketh.' So they agreed to give it a name as is known to
Freemasonry to this day.
We
cannot fail to observe that there are several details that are
almost identical with elements in the Hiramic Legend.
Anderson,
in the Book of Constitutions of 1723 calls Noah and his three sons
"all Masons true". This perhaps was an admission that the Legend of
Noah was in use at that time, and a hint that its inclusion in the
ritual of the proposed Third Degree was being contemplated by him
and Dr. Desaguliers.
SYNOPSIS
Recapitulating
the summary of the preceding sections of this paper, it can be
reasonably assumed that: -
-
Hiram
Abif is mentioned in the Bible and in Anderson's Constitutions and
is referred to by different names in the Old
Charges.
-
The
Hiramic legend is an adaptation of the legend of
Osiris;
-
Freemasonry
had become predominantly, if not completely, speculative by
1717;
-
Prior
to 1717 a two degree system was in existence, and the ritual of
the second degree contained elements of the present Third
Degree;
-
The
Three Degree system was probably invented in 1724 by Dr.
Desaguliers to give a philosophical and ethical content to the
ritual.
-
The
Legend of Noah was in use when the Three Degree system was
introduced, and was later replaced by the Hiramic Legend.
REASONS
FOR THE INTRODUCTION OF THE LEGEND.
Let
us next discuss the reasons for the introduction of the legend of
the Builder in the ritual of Freemasonry. We know that the three
degrees were meant by Dr. Desaguliers to represent birth &
infancy, adulthood & education, and old age, death, &
immortality of the soul, respectively. The symbolism of the third
degree is expressed by the powerful imagery of Ecclesiastes xii,
which is an exhortation to remember the Creator while you are still
young, because old age will soon catch up with you, and the
pleasures of life will no longer be yours to seek. That is, in old
age, one should be able to look back on a life well spent, one's
responsibilities fully discharged, and contemplate the end with
equanimity and without fear, secure in the knowledge that the it is
only the body which will perish, while the soul is immortal. The
great and useful lesson of the third degree is
that:
(Nature) prepares you, by
contemplation, for the closing hours of existence, and when by means
of that contemplation she has conducted you through the intricate
windings of this mortal life, she finally prepares you how to
die.
And
also that one need not fear death because the soul is
immortal:
. . . in this perishable
frame there resides a vital and immortal principle . . .
I
submit that had this sentence been completed with a phrase like '"which will endure when time with
you shall be no more" it would have been more appropriate to the
context, and more in tune with the theme of the teaching. But the
ritual says that " the Lord of Life will enable us to trample the
King of terrors beneath our feet'. The resentment, violence and deep
anger expressed in these words appears to be in sharp discord with
the spirit of the degree, which is tranquility.
Let
us now look at the Graham manuscript, and the Legend of Noah. It is
fully in consonance with, and would have, as it probably did, amply
illustrated the message of the Third Degree.
-
We
have a very old and venerated patriarch, who was laid to rest
after a life of great achievement.
-
It
has its origins in the Bible and is, in fact, older than the story
of Solomon's Temple.
-
It
has been referred to in all the Old Charges, and is well known to
the Craft.
-
It
has all the elements that make up the legend of
Hiram.
-
It
was used in the third degree ritual before being substituted by
the Hiramic Legend.
Now
comes the important question.
Why was the Legend of Noah replaced by the Legend of Hiram?
Both are similar enough to warrant the continuance of the former.
But if the Hiramic Legend replaced it in the Third Degree Ritual, it
obviously was because it had an element which the former lacked -
that of betrayal, violent death, martyrdom and revenge.
When
we are taught to face death serenely, knowing that the soul is
immortal, where is the question of grieving over a death, and
avenging it? Truth to tell, it is this contradiction that prompted
my study, and I believe that, it is in the answer to this question
that we will find the reason for including the Hiramic Legend in our
ritual.
BRIEF
HISTORY OF ENGLAND & SCOTLAND IN 17th AND
18TH CENTURIES
We
had mentioned earlier that
Masonic scholars have tried to trace the origin of the
Hiramic Legend, and discover why it was introduced in our ritual.
They have propounded many theories, some of which are listed
below:
1. The actual death of
Hiram Abif.
2. The legend of
Osiris.
3. Expulsion of Adam from
Paradise.
4. The entry of Noah into
the Ark.
5. Death and Resurrection
of Christ.
6. The murder of Thomas
Becket.
7. Persecution of the
Templars and the death of DeMolay.
8. Execution of Charles
I.
9. An invention of the
Jacobites to aid the house of Stuart.
10.
A representation of Old Age.
Of
these, I would like to take up the execution of Charles I, for
further examination. This is because, it was a cataclysmic event
which had the element of violent death, martyrdom and revenge; it
could have provoked the strong resentment and anger observed
earlier; and it occurred at the precise period of time that has been
the subject of our discussions.
At
this juncture, we might take a brief look at the history of the
Royal House of Stuart during those turbulent years of early
17th century. At is zenith, the dynasty ruled over the
kingdoms of England & Scotland, but in 1746 its fortunes were
irretrievably lost in the bloody battle of Culloden.
For
over 300 years Scotland had to struggle constantly to preserve its
independence and fend off a powerful England. Yet ironically, in
1603, it was the Scottish king, James VI who ascended the English
throne as James I and united the two kingdoms. On his death in 1625,
his son Charles became king. But in 1649, after a civil war, Charles
was tried by Parliament, and beheaded. The regicide traumatised the
nation because, the populace remained largely royalist at heart; as
evidenced by the fact, that after the Parliament had ruled the
country for 11 years, monarchy was restored. Charles II, exiled son
of the dead king ascended the throne and his brother, James II
succeeded him. James attempted to restore royal prerogative, and
supported the Catholic faith. In 1688 Parliament forced James to
abdicate in favour of his Protestant daughter Mary, and her husband
William, to prevent succession by his Catholic son, James Francis
Edward, later to be known as the Old Pretender. This is called the
Glorious Revolution of 1688. James died in exile in France in 1701.
The Old Pretender, and his son, called Bonnie Prince Charlie, or the
Young Pretender, made several efforts to recapture the throne of
England; their supporters were called Jacobites. There were two
major Jacobite uprisings; the attempt of the Old Pretender in 1715
had considerable support in Scotland but failed due to inept
leadership; that of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745 was badly planned
and the Jacobites were mercilessly slaughtered in Culloden. That was
the end of the Jacobite cause.
HIRAMIC
LEGEND AND THE EXECUTION OF CHARLES I
It
must now be emphasised that from hereon the evidence is
circumstantial, and our arguments, like Freemasonry in the middle of
the 17th century, become predominantly speculative. With
this caveat, let us return to the Hiramic Legend and the execution
of Charles I. By the middle of the 17th century,
Freemasonry had acquired power and prestige. Many eminent Masons -
Robert Murray, Elias Ashmole, Inigo Jones and Nicholas Stone, to
name a few - were staunch royalists. It is quite probable that the
dead King's son, then in exile in France, was in contact with his
supporters, and that they met in the safety and privacy of the Lodge
to further their designs. For obvious reasons those designs had to
be concealed from other members of the Craft. A suggestion was
advanced that the Hiramic Legend might have been invented and
cautiously introduced in the ritual to promote loyalty to the
royalist cause. In the words of Hextall, the Hiramic Tradition
was:
Calculated to remind
the Royalist Freemasons, in the strongest possible manner, of the
murder of their King, and of events to be striven for in the
future.
In
his History of the Three Grand Lodges, Rebold supports this theory
and suggests that the speculative Masons of England and Scotland
invented two higher degrees, and gave to Freemasonry an entirely
political character; that these Masons were men of power and high
position, and it was through their influence that Charles II was
enabled to recover the throne in 1660.
Professor
Robinson in his 'Proofs of Conspiracy' also appears to entertain
similar thoughts:
It
is not improbable that the covert of secrecy in those assemblies had
made them coveted by the Royalists as occasions of meeting. Nay, the
Ritual of the Master's Degree seems to have been formed, or perhaps
twisted from its original institutions, so as to give an opportunity
of sounding the political principles of the candidate, and the whole
of the Brethren present. For it bears so easy an adaptation to the
death of the King.
Ragon,
in his Masonic Orthodoxy, goes still further. He says that Ashmole
and other Brethren had renounced the simple initiation and
established new degrees. That the Fellow Craft degree was fabricated
in 1648, and that of Master a short time afterward; that the
decapitation of King Charles I, and the part taken by Ashmole in
favour of the Stuarts produced great modifications in this third and
last degree, which had become of a Biblical
character.
Dr. Oliver, in a posthumous
work titled "The Discrepancies of Freemasonry," says that "The Grand
Mystery", published in 1924
. . .was the examination or
lecture used by the Craft in the 17th century, the original of
which, in the handwriting of Elias Ashmole, was given to Anderson
when he made his collections for the "Book of Constitutions.
There
is one other fact that lends credence to this theory. In 1720 "
several valuable manuscripts concerning the Lodges, regulations,
charges, secrets and usages of Masons (particularly one written by
Mr. Nicholas Stone, the Warden under Inigo Jones) were too hastily
burned by some scrupulous Brothers" in order that the papers " might
not fall into strange hands". The destruction followed a request by
Grand Master Payne that any old writings or records concerning the
fraternity, to show the usages of ancient times, should be brought
to the Grand Lodge. Preston, in his Illustrations,
remarks:
Many of the
fraternity's records of this and the preceding reigns were lost at
the Revolution: and not a few were too easily burnt in our times by
some scrupulous brothers, from a fear of making discoveries
prejudicial to the interests of Masonry.
There
is evidence enough here to concede that the execution of King
Charles I was the possible cause of the invention of the Hiramic
Legend, to which Elias Ashmole was possibly instrumental. But even
if the legend had been actually invented and introduced in our
ritual, there would have been no justification for its continuance,
since its purpose - viz. restoration of monarchy - was accomplished
in 1660. So it might not be unreasonable to suggest that the
propagation of the Hiramic Legend was abandoned after the
Restoration, but was resumed after 1715 when the Jacobite cause
demanded it.
HIRAMIC
LEGEND AND THE JACOBITE CAUSE
Let
us now examine the possible connection of the Hiramic Legend with
the Jacobites. The 1708 Act of Union was repugnant to the Scots, and
the accession of the Hanoverians to the thrones of England and
Scotland in 1714 rekindled their latent loyalty to the Stuarts. The
rebellion of 1715 nearly succeeded, and brought home the fact that
the Jacobite cause had many influential supporters, not a few among
them probably being Freemasons. It
is not improbable that they used the
privacy of the Lodge, as was done during the Cromwellian
interregnum, and revived the old legend of the builder to test and
keep alive the loyalty of Brethren to the Jacobite cause.
Much
has been written about Freemasonry and the Jacobites and it is
unnecessary for us to dwell in detail on that aspect. But no account
of the subject would be complete without the mention of Chevalier
Michael Andrew Ramsay, who was tutor to the Young Pretender. Ramsay
was a man of learning and genius - a Scotsman, a Jacobite, a Roman
Catholic, and an ardent Freemason to boot. He used his not
inconsiderable powers to adapt Freemasonry as a fitting instrument
for the restoration of
Stuart fortunes. It is a matter of history that he invented
the High Degrees during the second and third decades of the
18th century for this purpose. It is not improbable that
he would have influenced the development and interpretation of the
Craft ritual as well to the advantage of the Jacobites. Being
intimately acquainted with the old legends of Masonry, he
transferred the Biblical allusions of Freemasonry to his political
aim.
Many
examples of this can be cited from the rituals of the Scottish
Rites. But we will
restrict ourselves here only to those in respect of our Craft. One
such is that, after the
death of James II in 1701, his Queen Consort, Mary of Modena,
survived as a widow for a period of seventeen years; her son the Old
Pretender was
styled " the widow's
son", thus being
identified with Hiram Abif. Similarly, the Jacobites invented
a new substitute word for the master's degree, very similar to the
word that we know.. This word,
'Macbenac' is derived from the Gaelic Mac, a son, and benach,
blessed, and literally means the " blessed son"; and this word was
applied by the Jacobites to James.
According
to Rev. Covey Crump:
The possibility does
remain that the Hiramic Tradition had in some way a Jacobite
application, and that it was with the object of concealing that
connection from Anderson that the famous holocaust of Masonic
documents was effected in 1720.
We
thus have reasonable grounds to propose that Jacobite loyalties
could well have influenced the preferment of the Hiramic legend over
the Legend of Noah in our ritual. I would now sum up this
discussion with the words of Mackey, from whom I have drawn much in
the course of this treatise:
It cannot be denied
that at a subsequent period the primitive degrees were modified and
changed till their application of the death of Hiram Abif to that of
Charles I., or the dethronement of James II, and that higher degrees
were created with still more definite allusion to the destinies of
the family of Stuart.
CONCLUSION
In
the preceding pages I have attempted to present a compendium of
facts about the most celebrated Mason of all time. I have approached
the Legend of Hiram Abif purely in a spirit of historic enquiry, and
I believe, established a tenable case that its inclusion in the
ritual of our Craft could have been influenced by the Jacobites. But
it must always be remembered that any conclusion about its antiquity
or authenticity can in no way affect the value of the legend to
Freemasons. The lessons found in the
Legend of Hiram Abif reach to the roots of the soul and spirit. They
are instilled in the heart forever. They depict man's search for
truth, for courage, for his immortal soul. And that is why the
Legend will live on and on and Hiram Abif will be venerated in the
traditions of Freemasonry and continue to shine as the stars for
ever and ever.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I
gratefully list below the works of eminent Masonic scholars, which I
have consulted and quoted from, in preparing this article.
History
of Freemasonry - Albert G. Mackey
Freemasonry
- From AD 1600 to the Grand Lodge Era: A Sketch of the transition
Period - Bro. W.J. Hughan
The
Story of Hiram Abiff -
William Harvey
The
Legend Of Hiram Abiff - Jerry Marsengill
The
Hiram Abif legend in Freemasonry - Paul M. Bessel
The
Hiramic Legend - R.W. Bro. J. L. Rankin
Making
of a Nation - George S. Draffen.
The
Hiramic Tradition.
- W. Bro. Rev.
W. W. Covey Crump
The
Legend of The Third Degree
- R.S. Thornton
The
Degrees of Masonry: Their Origin and History - A.L.Kress &
R.J.Meerken
Masonic
Education Course - Kent Henderson
The
Hiramic Legend and The Ashmolean Theory - W. B.
Hextall
The
Formation of the Three Degree Structure - Ron
Blaisdell
History
of the Craft Ritual - Dr. Bing Johnson
Our
Ritual: A Study In Its Development - Bro. J. Mason Allan
Early
Masonry in England - Bro. C.N. Batham
The
Origin of Freemasonry (A New Theory) - C.N.
Batham
Masonry
Dissected - Samuel Prichard
The
Old Charges Of Freemasonry - Bro. H.L. Haywood
King
Solomon's Temple and the Story of the Third Degree - Robert Smailes
The
Jacobite Cause - Louise Yeoman
Ecclesiastes - R. W. Bro. Rev. Brian
Burton
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