A.E. Waite: Words From a Masonic Mystic by Michael R. Poll

Author:Michael R. Poll
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Cornerstone Book Publishers
Published: 2009-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

PILLARS OF THE TEMPLE

Let the student recall in the first place his experience with two figurative Pillars in the Craft Grades of Masonry, how the significance of one is explained to him at the beginning of his life of brotherhood, and that of the second at the next stage of his progress. The importance attributed to both is of that kind precisely which would lead him to expect that he might hear further and more definitely concerning them in some later grade of his advancement. Such, however, is not the case : they pass out of sight completely and he is left at a loose end, wondering perhaps why they have been introduced to his notice in this very express manner, or — with a better gift of reflection — concluding tentatively that he may be said to stand between them as on the threshold of the MASTER GRADE and to issue between them into that Temple built of old, about which he hears in the central legend of the Craft. He has otherwise finished with them forever, not only within the measures of the Craft but in the several sequences of High Grades which are in general knowledge and activity among us. We meet with this kind of inconsequence in all the Ritual Departments. A curtain is drawn for a moment upon a prospect which looks practicable, but it falls again suddenly, and the Candidate does not enter therein. It is as if something were proposed in the mind of makers of Ritual from which they were diverted afterwards, leaving their design unfinished.

Hiram, the Widow’s Son.

Now, the source of the symbolism is I KINGS vii. 13-22, the artificer concerned being Hiram, described as “a widow’s son of the tribe of Naphtali,” whom Solomon sent and fetched out of Tyre. “He cast two Pillars of brass, of eighteen cubits high each.... And he made two chapiters of molten brass, to set upon the tops of the Pillars: the height of the one chapiter was five cubits, and the height of the other chapiter was five cubits. And nets of checker work and wreaths of chain work, for the chapiters.... And two rows..... to cover the chapiters.... with pomegranates.... And the chapiters... were of lily work.... And he set up the Pillars in the Porch of the Temple: and he set up the right Pillar, and called the name thereof Jachin: and he set lip the left Pillar, and called the name thereof Boaz.... So was the work of the Pillars finished” See also 2 CHRONICLES iii. 15-17.

Jachin and Boaz.

On this text the Kabalistic treatise, entitled GATES OF LIGHT, comments as follows: “He who knows the mysteries of the two Pillars, which are Jachin and Boaz, shall understand after what manner the Neshamoth, or Minds, descend with the Ruachoth, or Spirits, and the Nephasoth, or Souls, through Elchai and Adonai by the influx of the said two Pillars.” It is an allegory of the descent of spiritual man from the Supernal

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