Biblical Characters With Freemasonry
Foreword
The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
NAMES FROM
BIBLE CHARACTERS RELATED
WITH FREEMASONRY
Table of names used R.é.AA.. aims to facilitate the work of researchers by providing timely information through the biblical and Masonic matches each own name used in the different degrees of the scale of the Masonic Scottish Rite Ancient and Accepted.
If he wants to understand art, every Mason a workshop Perfection should have read, during his Masonic career, this Bible has much attention, since it’s from the Bible basic themes and legends almost all proper names used in the Order. The Bible is an integral part of the symbolic tools of Freemasonry, which is why, given its importance, it is even regarded as the first of three Great Lights in R.é.AA..
You should know that the Bible contains over four thousand names, characters, tribes, places, rivers, etc.., Names that come from diverse backgrounds who may have been “Hebraicized or Hellenized”, others have undergone changes of dialect and other accidents also playback and transmission. Many character names are used to signify the regions and tribes, and some even serve to cover (disguise) of other characters.
The various genealogies mentioned in the Bible are not only extracts the civil and emphasized the unity of all Hebrew clans to live in solidarity and destiny, for example, the Table of Peoples, in Genesis 10, contains a value announcing the undeniable spiritual vocation of all peoples to enter the seed of Abraham, named Abram, a descendant of Shem, son of Noah. This Abraham “by which bless all the families of the earth.”
In the Bible and in ancient Eastern, the names of people almost always have a sense or a lay religious sense. Some are related to the circumstances of birth, others with physical appearance, character or temperament. There are also people who are related to animals, names of trees, flowers, fruits, etc.. Finally, some have a symbolic significance, for example, Jesus (Savior) and Emmanuel (God with us), etc..
Reading the lists of names that we find in many books of the Bible, it is noted that the great people who “made history”, so the most important, are often mentioned as a way insignificant, among others. For example: Abraham, Moses, Ezra, etc..
With regard to Freemasonry, a side of the heads of tribes or families, we must be careful, especially to groups of leaders, government officials, priests, Levites and prophets. But there are other functions that are shown and which concern our Order: Boaz agriculture, Tubal-Cain the founder of metal, the bronze Hiram, Oholiab (Ooliab) sculptor artist, etc..
It’s in the Bible as we find our Abiram, who is mentioned as a mere protest of authority vis-à-vis Moses (but not as the murderer of our legend of Hiram).
Just as the manifestation of our Order has evolved since 1717, according to the circumstances of each era, as well as the Freemasons, the late twentieth century have seen a much broader and deeper the Masonic symbolism, thanks our eminent writers who have managed to expose ourselves in a manner concordant various periods social, philanthropic, political and religious right after the war (1939-1945), a period that brought us the most spiritual way that we know today our workshops.
So would not it time that the many distortions that have occurred throughout the various rituals, especially with the spelling of proper names, are finally ground and inside the Rite, the Supreme Councils harmonize 33 degrees for each of the ages, passwords and the sacred words that should be the same in France, Belgium, Germany, Turkey and, why not? all over the Earth, as the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is universal.
Because remember that proper names, especially those we use in Masonry, all carry a message and a teaching-oriented and confirmed by the corresponding numbers, numbers which we attach particular importance to our Workshops Perfection.
It is only gradually over the previous generations that certain differences have emerged, facilitated by certain contradictions or errors of some copyists or translators of the Bible, where we find such Hiram (Huram, and Hiromi) and Jachin ( Yakin), or Adoniram (Adonhiram or Adoram), etc.. and then also due to the errors of copyists non rituals that often invert certain letters of the Hebrew names complicated, or even “Anglicized or Germanized” with simple taste of simplification without worrying that a particular name is a substitute for a person who participates in the essence of beings and things.
And so many Masonic Workshops at all levels, carry the words wrong, supposedly as a tradition, which not only distort the process of initiation, but often even completely remove it substance. The sooner we rectify the better!
Perfection in our workshops, it is our responsibility to seek to discern, even more than in the past, the plurality of meanings contained in the legends and symbols of our rituals to discover the hidden spirit in the letter in names own, using the numbers on each of them personally, we must read to understand the language of Masonic symbolism and spending plans gradually to lower and middle higher plane of traditional esotericism.
Work hard! looking with faith! be faithful! because Freemasonry requires of us all, since it has completed its work as it will remain human reason to discover the truth.
FOREWORD
We admit it or not, it remains however that the period of our birth our influence for good conformation of thought.
It is present in the teaching of our Order and mainly in degrees so-called “perfection” of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. By cons, it has unfortunately not been sufficiently thorough to date.
It is easy to imagine that the characters who roam the legends of our various degrees were not placed there randomly. Each of them has a name meaning and has a corresponding number that increases or reduces a particular quality.
It is therefore important not only to know the name of each of our characters, but the original spelling of the name and decipher the characteristics attributed to him.
Despite the opinion of our predecessors in the nineteenth century saw only the first period of moral and philanthropic Freemasonry, all levels of our hierarchy are designed deliberately with a definite intention, according to the key importance of back from the fourth level of our Rite.
For example, here one opinion among many of the same kind that were common during the years 1805-1836, which were the first years of implementation of our R.é.AA of 33 degrees, from “a famous Mason instructed and common sense by a host of distinguished Masons, “the brother of Aulnay:
“There is no denying that many of these high grades are pointless, they do with science Masonic reports that far apart. We can point twenty-one absolutely unnecessary and foreign to the true purpose of the Scots. The descent is not always reasonable and does not set a deduction of a constant to another grade, and it should be. ”
It seems clear that at this time when the Masons were limited for the purpose of Masonry to ethics and philanthropy, the System of Higher Degrees to thirty-three degrees might seem useless! Yet our Rite was born out of putrefaction as manure and the lowest instincts of man, because he had to grow and grow, to be strong enough to cross before the new times and social science , to mature in the period we live in today.
But if we, Masons twenty-first, want to be worthy of our mission, it behooves us to first remove the existing masonry slag of the antagonism of the various Rites, unfortunately, inherited from our predecessors, as the rites are simply different expressions our common ideal.
We should all well imagine that all men, despite their relative physical resemblance, are not at all meet in an identical manner and that there are as many “categories” or different types as there are signs of the zodiac spiritual are the manifestation in space and the words which read all the faces of universal thought, so the cosmic mind, thinking of life in the universe, so also every human being who possesses an drop and was the subject of the contemplation of the Ancients when they felt that the thought of me.
However, this experience is it now compatible with individualism, with the freedom “of the Free Mason Lodge in the free”? One may wonder, “Am I still free in my mind if the shape of my mind is due to the action of a zodiac sign, if the shade of idea that arises in me results from the passage of a planet in this sign? … “Make no mistake about that word:” Freedom. ”
The action exerted by the cosmic mind on the thought of the individual does not limit the scope of freedom, it does not reduce its share of responsibility in his use of thought. You just do not bring freedom in an area where it has nothing to do. Freedom is not to suggest that anything anyhow, because thought is a way to get in touch with what is, therefore, to be true, the human mind must necessarily adhere to the cosmic mind.
Of course, we are free to take or reject this means of communion with the universe, but if we take, we must impose its laws. Thought is the fruit of our freedom and not his field of practice. It begins with the use we decide to do.
We are not free to think any way, because the functioning of our thought has value only if it is consistent with the cosmic laws. And we are not more free to think anything, because it is necessary to distinguish between ideas that contain a fact of nature or of mind and those that still have, so to speak, their flesh.
In this age of rapidly changing, there is no issue more topical than that of thought if we do not want to perish in the absurdity and violence and if we find the path that will lead to human thought cosmic mind for a new Alliance.
To better understand the diversity of different conformations of the human mind, here are four descriptions of the twelve core out there, exposed by R. Steiner in his lectures.
Materialistic point of view
“Some men are so constituted that they can not find the path of the mind. There will always be difficult to prove to those of the spiritual existence. They remain what they know, that they are able to know. They are – let’s – what makes them the impression of the strongest, the most striking materialism. Yet the arguments made by materialists to defend their position are not always stupid: much has been written on this subject and very intelligent. These arguments remain valid in the field of material life for the material world and its laws. ”
Spiritual perspective
“Other men are predisposed in some inner life to see in all that is a manifestation of the spiritual material. They know, of course, all
as well as materialistic, that matter exists externally, but they say it is a manifestation of the spiritual element that is its foundation.
These men are not interested maybe not specifically to the material world and its laws. Because they reveling in all that is representative of the spirit, they go through life thinking that the only thing true, superior, and worthy bother with is the mind that only a true reality of matter would be an illusion, fantasy outside. This is an extreme view, but it can exist and can lead to a total negation of material life. Of these men, we should say that they recognize what is in fact the more real: the mind. But they are limited because they deny the importance of matter and its laws. It takes a lot of subtlety to support this conception of the universe. Let’s call this: spiritualism.
“Can we say that the spiritualists are right? As for the mind, their statements can provide insights quite right, but about the matter and its laws, they will probably discover anything important. Can we say that the claims of materialists are justified? Yes, in terms of matter and its laws, they can certainly provide some useful and valuable, but if it comes to mind, they may say that nonsense. Conclude, therefore, that the proponents of these different design are due in their fields. ”
Realistically
It can also be men who said, “In reality, everything is there as material or spirit, we can not learn, the human faculties are unable to decide. One thing is clear is that there is a world that extends around us, we do not know whether or not based on what chemists call the material atoms. But we perceive the world around us we see and we can apply our thinking. We have no particular reason to assume it is based on the spirit and we stick to what we see. ”
“These men, they can be called” realistic “and realistic conception they have of the universe. Just as we can put an infinite insight to defender as well as materialism spiritualism (while saying , as in the case of nonsense about the mind or matter) and can provide the most convincing reasons to the realism that I have outlined and which is neither one nor the each other. ”
Idealistic point of view
“Another category of people said:” Around us spread the material and the material world of appearances. But this material world of appearances is by itself no meaning and it has no real meaning if it does not tend to move forward, if not born in him something to which the human mind can lead and that is not contained in the world around us. ”
“From this point of view, the world must contain an ideal, an ideal. Those who adopt recognize the reality of the phenomena of the universe. They are however not realistic because they believe that real life must be coupled with an ideal life which alone gives it meaning.
“In the flight of a similar mood, Fichte once said:” The whole universe that extends around us is the condition embodied in the performance of duty “, or: “The world is embodied the substance of duty.”
The defenders of this system, where everything in the universe is only a means to ideas that pervade all phenomena, are idealists and idealism can be called their conception of the universe. It was said some wonderful and great things for this idealism. All combined to prove that the universe would have no purpose or reason that if the ideas were fantastic images created by men and did not really rooted in the universal process. On this ground, idealism has its purpose perfectly. But it does not explain such external reality, the existence of real things. It is therefore necessary to distinguish it from other systems in the world.
“Here are four theories each of which has its purpose and meaning in their specific area: Materialism, Spiritualism, Realism, Idealism. ”
And he concludes:
“There is not a worldview, the only defensible, with only its purpose, there are twelve. And let’s face it: if there are good reasons in favor of one of them, one can find much in favor of each of the other eleven. The universe can not be locked into a single, partial, in one conception, one idea: it is revealed to him who knows to go through them all, as the sun passes through the Zodiac signs to inform the land of twelve different points … ”
This is also the teaching of certain degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, which does not form any dogma, but merely to avoid the deep thoughts of all Masons, regardless of their innate design for their personal development.
To each his own to understand that design is only for himself and that in exchange for the contribution of our Order. it is responsible to communicate to his brethren the fruits of his experience to help them also to fight against narrow-mindedness.
At the dawn of history, China, India and Persia reported a tradition that their priests proclaimed already several thousand years and whose frame
Is identical to that of the law of Moses that Christ came to accomplish.
And the symbolism of the Pharaonic and Jewish religions remained strictly connected to an astronomical term, positive and rational, devoid of metaphysics.
It is, in some form, which is expressed by the first three degrees of symbolic Freemasonry which is then further in the studio perfection, 4th to the 14th degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
It is precisely to go further than our Rite held its teaching using many biblical characters whose names are of Hebrew.
The Tyler of Vuillaume reproduces the Hebrew alphabet with pronunciation of words from the Bible, because Hebrew is not a language like the others. She has never changed since its origins in Hebrew, there is not numbers, it is the twenty-two letters of the alphabet have numerical value:
– The first nine letters represent the units
– The nine following the tens
– The last four hundreds.
Since 1717, Masonry is always the perpetuation of the old masonry of the Middle Ages, but it does have abandoned the path laid by our predecessors with regard to the mode of teaching and content.
As soon as she travels in Europe and America, speculative masonry in 1717 stood almost exclusively in terms of moral and social amériolation by ennoblisment of man, then to act on the mass of people to material for a starter.
Then the spiritual purpose of Masonry, which had been temporarily abandoned, forced to create some Masons higher Workshops Workshop called Perfection, which kindled our Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, with a spiritual purpose, the search for unity in the appellation of the Great Architect of the Universe, to complement the teaching of Freemasonry symbolism of the first three degrees had become strictly exoteric.
But times have changed since the eighteenth century and the understanding of symbolism and esoteric teaching and purpose have changed so much from our Masons late twentieth century it becomes urgent to restore order in the chaos traditional elements that make up our teaching.
Indeed, ages, batteries, passwords and the sacred words of the Supreme Councils of the various workshops in Europe have often been modified, reversed or falsely transmitted from one generation to another and thus continue to be passed as a true tradition. To correct such errors, the Tyler of Vuillaume, which dates from the beginning of creation, our Rite with 33 degrees, can be as effective help.
As for the allegorical language of the legends of our various degrees, we know that it is incomprehensible if we do not consider that the external point of view and equipment. Far from helping us to understand, the only intellectual reasoning becomes more of a barrier as it is with our “spiritual ears” that we must listen to this language to make it more clear and full of wisdom.
However, in most of our rituals intermediate degrees (when available) may be misunderstood by tradition, the comments have remained those of the eighteenth century moralism distressing limited to only express as main goal the only problems of good and evil, justice or charity, for which three workshops of Masonry, however, are symbolic than enough!
Trying to be conscious and realistic. With advances in science and the huge media available to us, the Masons of the twentieth century have acquired a clearer understanding of the symbolic aspects and general metaphysical than our predecessors in the eighteenth century, which knew only the first period of humanitarian and philanthropic Freemasonry.
And since 1717, Freemasonry has also evolved. She spent on philanthropy and humanism to the higher level by the inflows of the esoteric spiritual, of the Kabbalah, the study has spread even among Christians, alchemy and the occult understood that we return today.
This is a view of the evolution of this general knowledge already in the second degree, our Rite asks us to study the Liberal Arts and Sciences, there is no question of trying to transform our companions or at 30th level, our knights in Kadoch scholars of all our Arts scale, let alone all the Sciences. Initiation is rather because, unlike an agent moderator escalating knowledge “forbidden” and an emotional catalyst for the noblest sentiments.
If the initiation was pure science, i would be impossible to reconcile with the notion of love, which is the basis of Masonic education. But despite this, it is clear that initiation still has some scientific, bringing knowledge to humanity cause, even if it is obscured by the symbol.
Initiation is the search for truth by a rise at the beginning of heredity and tradition. It is knowledge, not the production of gold or sulfur wisdom be gained the Great Work, but knowledge of what was history and what may be his destiny in the universe noticeable when it fits.
Initiation involves an over-all values, a kind of access to the transcendent state of indifference, which is that of sage, the saint as conceived by our Knight Kadosh. Enlightenment, is an explicit full interior that borders on empty, is an outcome that reduces all the way to irrelevance. Whoever reaches the goal no longer exists as an individual, as a special feature of being, it merges with Universal Being, and his story is over. It’s like he found eternal life by losing.
Of course, only those who have experienced the fulfillment can tell if it is possible. But these are no condition to say anything. And the unspeakable nature of Initiation completed prohibits testimony.
The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
His Creation
According to several Masonic writers, and in summary, our Rite was first known in France as the Rite of Perfection. He took the title of Scottish Rite after the founding of the first Supreme Council in Charleston.
Thus he was born in France when the English Masonry, reclaimed, began to spread across the continent.
Many lodges were created there, indeed, by immigrants English, Scottish and Irish supporters of the Stuarts expelled from the throne of England in 1688.
Thus in 1726, three English gentlemen in Paris founded the Lodge of St. Thomas who took a rapid growth which, in turn, created other workshops, three:
Goustand the Lodge, the Lodge The Arts-Sainte-Marguerite Lodge and Louis d’Argent, who, with her, became the building blocks of the Provincial Grand Lodge of France in 1735.
It was during the first general meeting of the Grand Lodge that the speaker, the Chevalier Ramsay, PhD, University of Oxford and tutor Stuart Jacques III, strong supporter of the Scottish Rite as practiced by the Grand Lodge of Edinburgh, gave a speech in which the impact was great. He said that Scotland had a more complete Masonry as England and many French Masons heard about the first great symbolic lodges.
The Scottish Rite advocated by Ramsay was a huge success and developed into various systems that took a considerable extension. It was a flowering of high rank who were all skilled Scots, though born in France.
Among the Masonic bodies that appeared at that time, it should quote the Chapter of Clermont in Paris, which was founded in 1754, had a rite of perfection, including 4 with 7 grades higher. He tried to revive the system of Ramsay and the Masons openly represented as descendants of the Templars.
This Rite was absorbed in 1758 by the Rite of the Emperors of East and West, which included 25 degrees. This rite is entrusted to one of its members, Stephan Morin, known in America for business, naming him a Grand Inspector license and permit “to work regularly for the benefit and advancement of Art Royal and be brothers to the sublime degrees of perfection. ”
Morin established his headquarters in Santo Domingo and founded many Inspectors General. One of them, Isaac da Costa, founded the Lodge of Perfection of Charleston, in the State of South Carolina. Seven new levels were added to the existing 25, which gave a rite to 32 degrees.
The Americans invented shortly after a new grade to which they gave the 33, and thus was created the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite and the first Supreme Council, 31 May 1801.
In 1804, on behalf of Grasse, Marquis de Tilly, a former officer of the royal army, arrived at Paris, bearing a license issued by the Supreme Council of Charleston, giving it the right to form the new Scottish Rite Masons and former accepted. He created a Supreme Council 33rd degree, thus recognizing the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in Europe. This Rite was to develop rapidly in the two continents, Europe and America.
Of Rites and Degrees
The rites are for the Order that are in the family habits, customs and traditions in the state, the customs and procedures enshrined in secular life, the liturgical ceremonies in the Church.
They are a kind of codification in time, the general rules of life that Freemasonry offers its followers, rules that are expressed in symbolic form through the grades or degrees, in varying numbers in different systems.
But all obey these rules, however, a number of key principles that the moments of history, the spirit or tendencies of those who referred, took out different, yet without changing the essential foundations on which they rest.
Rites and Degrees thus form a whole, as these are the concrete form, the expression in some kind of material of those trends.
Masonic ritual, what it is, will never be worth as by the spirit that animates the esoteric and there is implicitly included. Place, as did the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, under the aegis of the Great Architect of the Universe, was the preserve of secular concerns, sources of conflict and divisions.
The place also in the three great lights (volume of sacred law, compass, square) was to give in time and space, a consistency that, based on the past, preparing for the universality of Freemasonry in a unit to recover.
It is obvious that our symbolic Masonry, in its three degrees of initiation, remains the cornerstone of our Order and necessary, provided it knows to stay true to its “Landmarks”, ie the basic principles that can ensuring its universality and its sustainability.
Only respect for these fundamental principles can, as stated by Brother Triaca, the Grand Lodge of France, in his interesting pamphlet About Landmarks, make different “of many cultural groups, philosophical, humanitarian, religious, etc … Who share with Freemasonry trends. ”
Unfortunately, most followers of the Royal Art merely receive the first three symbolic degrees, but they never actually own them. They hold a treasure, but ignoring the value and derive no advantage.
However, the high rank have no other mission than to gradually enter the esoteric of the three basic degrees of Freemasonry. They do not claim to reveal many secrets, foreign to the symbolic Masonry; all their ambition is limited, however, to impress it, to emphasize in the minds of his followers, to that it is important to effective learning, so they can become real companions, able to aspire to the true Master. This degree is necessarily the ultimate ideal that we propose, which we must tender, but whose realization is not in our means. Our Temple will never be complete and no one can expect to see him resurrect the authentic and eternal Hiram.
His method
Masonic Education is slow and gradual; different from all other institutions, Freemasonry begins with the study of man, his duties to fulfill toward his fellow men and to himself.
The first truth it teaches, is the existence of a Great Architect of the Universe, author of everything, the first obligation it imposes is love of neighbor.
Necessary result of these teachings conservation physical, moral and intellectual perfection.
The second level shows how to achieve this goal. It presents an insider secret to its organization and the end he has to offer, the study of science and art he is shown not to raise individual knowledge and, therefore, useless to man collective but a true science and fruitful, since it results in the Truth.
But science has its dangers, when he was instructed, the man who had been free, choose and get lost. Pride made him forget and ignore his duties, he forgot that, place the center of the spiritual nature. Then, of himself, he became god and evil prevailed, the date his downfall. This is the third degree symbol.
Hiram is the symbol of light, truth and justice than ignorance, lies and ambition fight and seek to destroy. The man and fallen, evil reign on the earth instead of love of neighbor, and successive efforts were attempted to lead humanity to its regeneration. Various institutions were formed and if the unit is no longer found either in their principles or in their teaching is that human pride had substituted the letter and the spirit that the disputes had ended up on the words by being the only object proposed.
Masonry, which is not the last word of science, but that sums up all the philosophical systems, realized that the man could be restored to its original purpose as a primitive initiation by a bottom-up education and has included especially, and it is a truth that served as the basis for ancient mysteries, that is no more intellectual equality among men, that physical equality.
It has therefore divided his teaching classes, each containing a greater or lesser degree, by that she wanted to be initiated following the strength of their intelligence.
This explanation shows why the first three symbolic degrees, came to group the other thirty degrees of Scotland.
By that division, which in the nomenclature of classes retained the septenary of ancient initiation, the Mason, whose soul is likely to open up to the highest aspirations can hope to lift the veil which envelops the eyes of nature laymen.
Since Freemasonry is a temple open to all good feelings at all noble thoughts and aspirations of all humans, it is the outpost of progress and civilization.