The Masonic Myth by Jay Kinney

The Masonic Myth by Jay Kinney

Author:Jay Kinney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-06-07T16:00:00+00:00


A League of Gentlemen

The 17th century in England was marked by intellectual elite circles intrigued with alchemy and Kabbalah (of both Jewish and Christian varieties). A fascination with the trope of Solomon’s Temple was also present in such circles. Talmudic commentary and Kabbalistic legends have long spoken of the Ark of the Covenant (and other treasures) supposedly buried beneath the site of the Temple.14 And one variety of Kabbalistic teachings puts an emphasis on the spiritually potent power of sacred names.15

As we’ve seen before, it is almost impossible to try to make sense of Freemasonry’s history and preoccupations without falling prey to speculations and theories based on circumstantial evidence. And even as I note the conjunction of these ideas in 17th-century England, I am forced to admit that there is no clear line of transmission from that century to the 18th, which is when the Hiramic legend and the Royal Arch first appeared in ritual.

It is tempting to hypothesize that just as a circle of esoteric German Protestants in the early 17th century apparently devised the legends of Christian Rozenkreutz, the reputed 15th-century founder of Rosicrucianism, and successfully seeded certain spiritual and political ideas into European culture through the intriguing ruse of issuing manifestos from a mythical society of Rosicrucians, a circle of esoteric Englishmen—fascinated and inspired by the Rosicrucian gambit—might have devised another set of legends involving builders in order to seed a further crop of ideas within the culture.

If this were so—and it is a big if—it might account for the great Masonic emphasis on secrecy: it was emphasized not because the secrets were terribly profound or special, but because secrecy is itself fascinating. The Rosicrucian myth seized the imagination of the European elite, in part because the Rosicrucians were ostensibly a hidden order operating in secret. How better to attract the interest of Freemasonry’s target audience—which was certainly no longer stonemasons but the aristocracy and the rising bourgeoisie—than to play up the secrecy of the Craft?

The main drawback of this technique is that if you use secrecy to attract members and heighten your image, they’re going to expect some decent secrets if and when they join. A gaggle of handshakes and passwords hardly passes muster as secrets worth having. And, at first glance, having the third degree conclude with the loss of “the secrets of a Master Mason” seems like some kind of practical joke.

But what if that was merely a test? “We’ll hand the guy a MacGuffin and see how he reacts.”16 Those who took the degrees expecting a big payoff of some kind would decide that there was “no there there,” as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, and go inactive or seek their treasure elsewhere. But those who “got it,” even if they sought no degrees beyond the third, would be those who saw that the initiatory experience and the ideas and values conveyed were what was important and that the secrecy was secondary at best.

In a way, the Royal Arch confirms this perspective,



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