Freemasonry's Answer to the Spiritual Problem of Modern Man

By: Wor. Jason E. Marshall

                                          A Phoenix rising from its ashes

My first exposure to Jungian psychology was during my undergraduate studies, when I happened upon a copy of Dr. Carl Jung’s 1933 book, Modern Man in Search of a Soul. While up until that point I had never even heard of Dr. Jung, the title resonated with me because I identified as a modern man in search of a deeper understanding of myself, and the world around me; therefore, I was compelled to read the book. What I discovered in those pages set me firmly upon my spiritual path, so I owe a great deal to the wisdom contained in those pages.

The Swiss psychologist Dr. Carl Jung (1875-1961), founded the field of analytical psychology, which seeks to aid individuals on the path of individuation. Rather than rejecting religion as his contemporary Dr. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) had done, Dr. Jung explored and integrated religion, alchemy, and esoteric elements into his theories. By exploring various religious and esoteric studies, Dr. Jung, integrated a great deal of ancient wisdom into his theories. Dr. Jung’s theories regarding the unconscious and conscious subparts of the psyche can be extremely beneficial in understanding the methods, rationales, and goals of the world religions, as well as esoteric and initiatic systems, including Freemasonry.

One of the final chapters of, Modern Man, is aptly titled, “The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man”, and it really sums up the issues that most of us encounter in our spiritual lives, as well as the solutions to lead a more balanced and spiritually integrated life. In this chapter Dr. Jung discusses the fact that modern people often suffer from various forms of anxiety and neurosis, because we have severed our conscious self from our unconscious subparts. Most modern people no longer reflect or partake in personal introspection, instead we are only concerned with instant gratification and that which can be validated by our physical senses. However, this causes a myriad of problems, because no matter how hard we try to divorce our conscious self from our unconscious, our unconscious will always seek to guide and gain control. Since modern people don’t partake in introspection, and thereby gain an understanding of our unconscious subparts, we are in essence trying to sail a ship without an adequate knowledge of the engine or navigation mechanics.

According to Jung, we are born with a sense of wholeness; however, we lose this sense of wholeness during the process of maturation. While most of us neglect our unconscious subparts, we always seek a path of reintegration, where we can return to our true essence, which in analytical psychology is called “The Path of Individuation“. This is why so many religions have stories of “The Fall” (The Garden of Eden is one example), as well as a way to salvation.

Freemasonry calls us to the internal quarry of the psyche, so that we can apply the working tools and lessons of the fraternity to our inner work. Freemasonry provides a means to literally transform our inner being, so that it becomes a more perfect representation of a perfect ashlar. However, In order to accomplish inner transformation, we must put the working tools and lessons of our fraternity to use, we cannot be complacent, we must be willing to die to our former self. In Freemasonry, the act of spiritual death and resurrection is played out in the drama of the third degree. This is no mere story line, because the death and resurrection of the third degree represents our old self dying and being reborn, so that we can become a true master, a true phoenix rising from the ashes of our former self. 

“The act of consciousness is central; otherwise we are overrun by the complexes. The hero in each of us is required to answer the call of individuation. We must turn away from the cacaphony of the outerworld to hear the inner voice. When we can dare to live its promptings, then we achieve personhood. We may become strangers to those who thought they knew us, but at least we are no longer strangers to ourselves.” – James Hollis

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What is Gnosticism?

By: Robert G. Davis, 33*, Grand Cross

One overriding theme in Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol is that the deeper philosophy of Freemasonry comes from Gnosticism—an early Christian belief system whose adherents accepted the knowledge of Pagan religions as helpful in discerning the truth about the nature of God. Indeed, the term “Gnosticism” is derived from the Greek, Gnosis, which means knowledge—a word specially employed in religious inquiry to designate the science of things divine.

What is perhaps less known is that the term Gnosis was originally used by a sect of Jewish philosophers belonging to a school in Alexandria calling themselves the Peripaticians, who endeavored to show that all the wisdom of the Greeks was derived from Hebrew Scripture. For instance, they argued that any passage of the Old Testament could be interpreted allegorically so that any sense one desired could be attained from any passage of scripture. In this way they showed that Plato, on his sojourn to Egypt, had actually been their scholar. A single production of this Jewish sect has come down to our time. It is the ‘Book of Enoch,’ whose main object was to make known a description of the heavenly bodies and the true names of the same. Thus, to this sect of Gnostics, the beginning of perfection may have been the knowledge of man, but absolute perfection was definitely the knowledge of God.

A review of the teachings of Gnosticism guides one to conclude that it held itself above a paradigm that had slipped into so many religious creeds--that man had turned God into the image of himself. That is, the true nature of God had been diminished so that the human mind could better relate to Him in man’s own terms.

The Gnostics held this to be the greatest error of human nature. So they devised a way in which one could be a Christian while holding to the ancient, purer and truer ideas about the nature of God. And their approach was tied to the Ancient Mysteries. As every division of sectarianism tended more to corrupt the pure nature of God, and as idolatrous forms of worship became more established and popularly regarded as true and real in themselves, the Gnostics practiced and secretly taught an esoteric theology of which the corrupted forms of religion and worship were but the exoteric form of their faith. One could be an “immature” Christian in public and a “mature” Gnostic in thought.

Hence, the Gnostics taught that there was a mystery which related to the real and ineffable God; and those consciously initiated into this mystery held to a purer creed. Thus, the Gnostics preserved the old teachings while encouraging sectarianism itself. This enabled them to be Christians on the outside, while on the inside accepting all religious systems as having some basis of truth, and extracting from each what brought harmony to their ideas.

In short, the Gnostic spirituality was about looking within. The Divine aspect was immanent as well as transcendent. Thus, there was no real chasm separating humanity from its creator. God is within His creation. This offers the possibility that self-knowledge and knowledge of God can be one thing--that the Self and the Divine are identical.

Needless to say, religion as a matter of personal exploration didn’t play too well for those who were otherwise doing quite well at organized religion. So Gnosticism quickly became a heresy. By the sixth century, it was pretty much extinct as a religion as far as Europe was concerned. But it left behind deep traces in the writings and symbolisms of the magicians, astrologers, kabbalists, and seekers after the grand arcanum throughout the whole of the middle ages and through the renaissance.

The Ancient Mysteries continued to quietly flourish, although authorities of the church didn’t worry much about it, feeling they had successfully discredited it as being wrought with too much philosophizing and over-imagination. Then, in 1945, an Egyptian peasant stumbled upon an earthen vase full of papyrus books stored in a cave at Nag Hammadi. It turns out there were more gospels to the gospels than the early church had led everyone to believe. One of them proclaimed Jesus to be a Gnostic teacher. Another, the Gospel of Phillip, describes the initiate as “no longer a Christian, but Christ!” What the writer meant was that a man’s maturity in spirituality can become so intimately joined to Christ that he becomes Christ-like.

Dan Brown’s claim in his latest novel that organized religion has subverted the original meaning of the Bible is hardly surprising. Nor is it new news. He is simply using the message of the Gnostics as reflected in the Buddha who said, “You are God yourself,” and as taught by Jesus, who said, “the kingdom of God is within you,” and as quoted by the first antipope, Hippolytus of Rome, “Abandon the search for God…instead, take yourself as the starting place.” Novelist Brown simply chose to focus on Gnostic teaching as the underlying treasure to be discovered in the search for the Lost Word.

So the question becomes: Does this have anything to do with Freemasonry? In a historic sense, very little; since there is not a shred of evidence that Freemasonry evolved from the Ancient Mysteries. There are very few Gnostic symbols and talismans that have been borrowed by the authors of our craft Masonic ritual. The only such connection the operative fraternity may have made with the mysteries was that the mason marks of the stone masons were often the same as those used in Hindu religious practices; which can be traced back through Gothic retention, Gnostic usage, through Greek and Etruscan art to their ultimate Hindu source.

But the speculative side of the craft is another story. Many of the early writers on Freemasonry held the view that the Craft, particularly the Higher Degrees, was a continuation of the Ancient Mysteries; that is, Freemasonry was not a lineal descendent of the mysteries, but was a continuation of the mystery tradition. As an example, one of the cryptic themes so prevalent in our Degrees is that Initiation can lead to a personal epiphany and transformation. This is a Gnostic idea. Similarly, the comment above from the Gospel of Phillip that one must be resurrected in life is a symbolic parallel to the raising of the Master Hiram in the allegorical drama of the Third Degree. Indeed, one of the fraternity’s most respected writers, Walter Wilmhurst, defined the aim of Initiation as bringing into function that dormant and submerged faculty that resides at the depth and center of our being which is the vital and immortal principle of our personality. The goal is to regain our spiritual consciousness, that higher world and life within us—our soul consciousness. In Masonry, this goal is sought, at least in part, through the search for the Lost Word.

The bottom line is that progress in initiation is gnosis. It is not rational knowledge that we seek. Nor is it accumulation of information. Neither is it theoretical knowledge. What we seek is insight, or knowledge gained through direct experience; for gnosis involves a process that embraces both self knowledge and knowledge of ultimate, divine realities. It is the path of the psychology of being. It is about keeping the faith in the religious tradition of our choice, while having faith in our own intuition, the personal experience of our own inner liberation. The inner work of Freemasonry, and particularly the Scottish Rite, is to effect a significant change in consciousness that transports the knower to a higher awareness of himself, his nature, God’s nature, and his intimate and immortal connection to the divine.

Dan Brown in The Lost Symbol has helped us understand and accept the premise that we are all divine, and that we can all access the divine within us. What is above; is below. Knowledge is freedom. “If we know the truth, we shall find the fruits of the truth within us.”

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Can a Flag Weep?

By: Robert G. Davis, 33*, Grand Cross

When I was a boy it was still close to the war. There was a proud reverence for the men in my town who had been to Omaha Beach, Iwo Jima, Midway, Normandy, Bataan, and the scores of other places we had never heard of; and didn't know existed--at least not until we heard the fellows talk about them at the drug store or ball park, domino hall, or family reunions. These men were my heroes, of course. They held a sacred place of respect in my heart.

I thought they had been to the most exotic places in the world; seen things that no one else in my county could have even imagined, and brought back stories that a boy like me could listen to for a lifetime. I grinned when they laughed, and I felt bad when they cried. And yes, they showed me that it was okay for men to cry. And that men could cry for the gentlest of reasons, or weep over some secret memory held close to their heart. Some of them knew pain--great pain. Some of them remembered too much, and it was hard for them. I felt a sadness for them.

But I admired them deeply. I wanted to be like them. They were my ideal of how one should be an American. They were almost a fraternity in themselves. I heard them joke to each other about which branch of the service was best; and I'm not sure some of their stories were always the whole truth. In fact, I suspicioned that they could be a little "windy" at times. Maybe their memories relaxed with years. It seemed their stories got a little bigger each time they told them. But I loved to hear them tell them. They had experienced things which went far beyond what we learned about our country in books, or in school.

These wonderful men taught me that being an American was more than just feeling safe and watching parades, and eating hot dogs and skinny-dipping in farm ponds; or going to the baseball game on Saturday nights, or showing livestock at the county fair. These fellows understood. Above everything else, they were deeply patriotic men. And I knew how important that ideal was to them.

You see, I was a trumpet player--and even by the time I got to junior high, I was a good one. These fellows invited me to travel with them throughout the county whenever they needed help in burying a fallen comrade. I played taps. They shot their guns in ritual salute. And they solemnly folded the flag which had been draped over their brother's coffin and handed it to his family. And I knew that his spirit had not died with him. They would keep it alive every time they marched with that flag, every time they displayed it at their own homes, every time they folded it in tribute to another brother. Every time they felt their faith in our demorcracy needed to be exemplified, the flag was somehow there.

That was a long time ago. Then, not so long ago, I saw people burning that same flag at a demonstration in Washington DC to make a point about something. It was their right to do that, of course; a right ironically given them by the freedom that same flag had secured for them long before they were even born.

I wondered what my heroes (now gone themselves) would think. Can a flag weep? Do we still care enough?

And for a moment--just a fleeting moment--I remember back across the decades to a young lad who, a long time ago in the first grade, always ran the last few blocks to school in the morning. And when his teacher asked why he did so, he gave this simple answer: "Mrs. Huffer, when I pledge allegiance to the flag I can feel my heart."

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