Page 21 - ASHLAR - April - June 2019

N A L G
I O
G E RAND LODGE
The Ashlar R Vol. XV Issue I
You Are Mason - A Freemason
by W.Bro.Govind Welling
You are a mason - a Freemason – a outside world.
Speculative Freemason, so you have the To the higher level, however, belong matters of
rituals and can quote from them and know them an entirely different order of instructiveness,
by heart, you have a great diction and you do matters drawn from and linking us directly with
impress all that see you do the ritual, fantastic older and advanced systems of philosophic
good, but do your fellow masons have the same and experimental Mysticism beyond the
respect for you outside? mental horizon of the average Brother who for
Take me for example, I do not consume liquor want of requisite preparation and instruction
but because of that if I claim a moral high (for which also he too often has neither
ground that is such a croc, the ritual has aptitude nor desire), is not only at a loss to
actually two levels and I wish to refer it to two understand the main features of our system,
very different and easily distinguishable levels but is precluded from vitally benefiting from it.
of teaching; a lower and common-place level So he remains an initiate (He is a Master
which is simple and intelligible to everyone; and Mason par excellence) in name only, not in
a higher and distinctly esoteric level relating to fact, whilst the Order instead of cultivating the
matters of advanced philosophic wisdom. secret science and royal art to which,
To the lower level belong the various charges nevertheless, it pays much empty lip-service,
and counsels to morality, and such matters as degenerates into a vast semi-public social and
the simple explanations of the cardinal and benevolent institution conducted upon the
other virtues and of the elementary symbolism same lines and in the same spirit as
of building tools. These are matters of no characterize the outer world, against which
philosophic significance. They have nothing our doors are theoretically meant to be shut
about them distinctive of a secret science or an and closely tiled. How many Masons could say
Initiatory Order. what initiation really is and involves?
They inculcate only what might be imparted to How many could explain the doctrine of the
non Masons. The ideals of conduct they center, the meaning of the circle and the point
proclaim are not higher or other than any within it, and the two grand parallel lines
uninitiated man of rectitude and good feeling bounding it, or the implications of the structure
normally acts upon, whilst their interpretations and contents of a Lodge, of the Blazing Star or
of symbolism are adapted to a quite puerile Glory at the center, or manifest any personal
order of intelligence. Of themselves they do not experience of the mystical death dramatized in
justify the existence of a Secret Order and an our Third Degree? How many could explain all
elaborate organization to perpetuate them, and that is meant by the Star in the East or testify to
their sole advantage is that they serve as the its rising in actual spiritual experience and not
foothills to the higher peaks of doctrine and merely in symbolic ceremony, bringing with its
provide a common basis of elementary rising the peace and salvation to which that
understanding and conduct among the Degree alludes and that open vision, cosmic
members of a Society the majority of whom do and beatific, which the ceremony attempts
not look for or aspire to anything more than faintly to portray?
good fellowship and pleasant social relations, Our Masons do not know how to walk the
which could just as easily be found in the tessellated border and how to hold the

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