Masonic Cross

 CROSS.Although the cross to Christians possesses a well-known meaning as a symbol of salvation, it is by no means peculiar to Christianity. The Egyptians, Assyrians, Ancient Americans, Hindus, Greeks, and Romans, were all acquainted with the cross in one or other of its modifications. Among the Egyptians it was the sign of life, and so occurs continually in the rituals of that country, where, under various forms, and associated with various legends, we find the worship of one God inculcated by the priesthood. The Brahmans and Buddhists, in like manner, adored one God under various aspects. In Masonry, we find the cross retained in the Royal Arch degree as the Triple Tau; and this may be also found of continual occurrence in the higher ineffable and philosophical degrees. Indeed, according to an ancient Masonic tradition, we find the cross foreshadowed in the Temple of King Solomon. This noble structure was said to have three foundations; the first of which contained seventy stones, five rows from north to south, and fourteen in each row running from east to west. The centre row corresponded with the upright of a cross, the transverse of which was formed by two stones on either side of the eleventh stone, from the east side of the centre row of which the upright is formed, and the fourth stone from the west end of it. This stone, which hence occupies the crossing of the beams, was under the sanctum sanctorum, where were deposited the Ark of the Covenant and the Shekinah.

--Mackenzie's Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia

Masonic Gnosticism

GNOSTICISM (Greek, GnwsiV, or Knowledge). There was a period of a priori knowledge, which, fostered by the ideas of Proclus and his school--itself founded upon Platonism--intermingled with the more recondite mysteries of the east, in which a powerful and singular sect of philosophers arose, called the Gnostics. Gnosticism was very attractive to minds imbued with mystical ideas; and semi-pantheistc in nature, it sought to purify its disciples from the corruptions of matter, and elevate them to a higher scale of being, suited only to those who were to become perfect by knowledge. As nearly as that ancient doctrine can be interpreted, it ran thus--

1. That the supreme God had dwelt from all eternity in a pleroma of inaccessible light--perhaps, in comparison with this world's material light or fire, inappreciable light.
2. They called this, God, first Father, or Principle; also, Bythos to denote his unfathomable nature.
3. Copying from the Brahmans, they considered that this Being, by a purely mental operation, or by his bissexual character, derived from Platonism, produced from his own being, in striking similarity to the Genetical mystery, two other beings of different sexes, from whom, by a series of avatars or descents, of a more or less numerous character, several pairs of beings, termed eons, or aeons, ensued.

These were successively inferior in quality, and they were an essential ingredient in the great plan, in order to account for the creation of the world, without making the supreme God the author of evil; and these aeons existed throughout countless ages, in a state of quiescence, with their Father--being constantly, however, given off by their ever prolific Creator, and as they were ejected from this first primordial Being, they deteriorated in proportion to their distance from the pleroma in which He existed. A collision between these and the pre-existent dead matter would naturally occur within the course of ages, and this collision so altered the form of dead, latent, or inert matter, that it became instinct with a species of secondary or mortal life--not immortal, because derived, created, and yet not made,--inevitable, although not designed, but a natural result of the intermixture between that which partook of the divine and eternal nature, and that which, although perishable, was susceptible of mutation of form; in other words, was corruptible, and might again arise into new forms of life. Although such crude notions may be resisted by the philosophies of modern ages, still, beholding as we do new discoveries every year in the richness and fulness of microscopical animal life, they are worthy of a passing notice. And the more carefully research is pushed, with our gradually improving instruments, into the Microcosm or Infinitely Little, the greater must be our appreciation of those truths dimly taught by the Gnostics. Everywhere we perceive orderly laws, even regulations of a fiscal and communal life, and a ceaseless activity on the part of the organized microscopiae. Doubtless, with better magnifying power, we could trace, and even become familiar with, many forms of life as yet beyond our knowledge or conception. It is wise under the circumstances to bear in mind some very ancient lines alluding to this continual action of the formative principle. Men, unfamiliar with any forms but their own, are too apt to hold in contempt other admirable animated shapes, and hence the words of Xenophanes (Fragmenta, V. and VI.) may well be quoted here:--

But men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are, 
And have, too, a dress like their own, and their voice, and their figure: 
But if oxen and lions had hands like ours, and fingers, 
Then would horses like unto horses, and oxen to oxen, 
Paint and fashion their god-forms, and give to them bodies 
Of like shape to their own, as they themselves too are fashioned.

In fair defence of Gnostic ideas, we may readily ask, why may not the lower creations, as man proudly calls them, have Soters or Saviours of their own, in their own forms, and why is mortal man to arrogate to himself the humiliating and odious necessity of a Saviour? Surely man must, with his known gifts of reason, memory, and discrimination, be far below the brutes, and even the animiculae, to require, or even to merit, a special elevating power to redeem him from the results of the inadvertent error of original sin? Original sin, in its essence, I take to e nothing but ignorance; and ignorance has ever led to intolerance, strife, and opposition,--a fatal waste of mortal life, lamentably illustrated by the known history of the world. Divested of the portions of eastern lore derived by slow and imperfect means from their source, and even then first misrepresented, and afterwards misunderstood, Gnosticism offers a fair picture of philosophic thought at a time when to think freely, and even reverently, was death; and when, also, the rival principles of ancient polytheism and nascent Christianity were engaged in the throes of a death struggle. That struggle has been prolonged through the centuries by the political power--now, happily, on the wane--acquired by the Church of Rome, as the true inheritrix of the pagan system. Perhaps the main reason why Gnosticism has not recommended itself to the world, is in the base and slavish worship paid by its votaries to the mere outside show of amulets and phylacteries, derived from the Jewish element in its main philosophy. To regard an emblem as typical of something beyond has been, in all times, a custom--to adore it as the thing or essential principle is exactly as reprehensible, and by the common consent of mankind this has been banished from the realm of thought. It was therefore to that time, when men of the Gnostic faith pinned their success in everyday concerns to the possession of certain talismans, or palladia,, that we may refer the downfall of their otherwise pure and wise views on creation. In these troublous times, such arrogance is best replaced by humility; such speculations, by industrious emulation in the attainment of knowledge, and in faith and chartiy towards all mankind. The principal defenders and instructors in it were Basilides, Menander, Saturninos, Persicos, Marcion, and Valentinus, and especially Cerinthus. They were stigmatized by the later Roman Church because they came into conflict with the purer Church of Christianity,--the possession of which was usurped by the bishops of Rome, but which original continues in its docility towards the founder, in the Primitive Orthodox Greek Church.

--Mackenzie's Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia

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