“ Certain adhering partly to these [Ptolemy’s measures of the universe] as if having propounded great conclusions, and supposed things worthy of reason, have framed enormous and endless heresies : and one of these is Colarbasus, who attempts to explain religion by measures and numbers.”—HIPPOLYTUS, “Refutation,” bk. iv., ch. iii.
First published in 1999 by
Samuel Weiser, Inc.
Box 612
York Beach, ME 03910
www.weiserbooks.com
This edition is limited to
49 numbered, leather-bound copies
and 950 numbered, cloth-bound copies
This is copy number____
Introduction to the Revised Edition © 1999 R. A. Gilbert
Foreword © 1974 John Michell
Annotations and Marginalia © 1999 Samuel Weiser, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Stirling, William
The canon : an exposition of the pagan mystery perpetuated in the Cabala as the rule of all arts / William Stirling; introduction, R. A. Gilbert; foreword, John Michell; preface, R. B. Cunning-name Graham,
p. cm.
Originally published: London: Elkin Matthews: 1897.
Includes index, annotations.
ISBN 0-87728-923-9 (alk. paper)
1. Occultism. 2. Cabala—Miscellanea. 3. Symbolism of numbers. I. Title.
| BF1999.S76 1999 | 98–46118 |
| 135’.47—dc21 | CIP |
Printed in the United States of America
MV
The paper used in this publication meets all the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).
INTRODUCTION TO THE REVISED EDITION BY R. A. GILBERT
FOREWORD BY JOHN MICHELL
PREFACE BY R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM
I. INTRODUCTION
II. THE HOLY OBLATION
III. THE CABALA
IV. NOAH’S ARK
V. NAMES OF THE GODS
VI. THE HOLY ROOD
VII. THE TOWER OF BABEL
VIII. THE TEMPLES
IX. FREEMASONRY
X. MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
XI. RITUAL
XII. GEOGRAPHY
XIII. RHETORIC
ANNOTATIONS AND MARGINALIA
INDEX
TO THE REVISED EDITION
WILLIAM Stirling was a man ahead of his time. Today the concept of “Sacred Geometry”—the idea that ancient sacred structures were based upon an established canon of proportion, the key to which could be found within ancient sacred texts—is unexceptionable. Within esoteric circles it is now taken as read that down to the time of the Renaissance, societies that were, either explicitly or implicitly, theocratic in nature would determine the siting and construction of sacred buildings by analogy with the proportions of divine realities. It is also accepted that a knowledge of such a canon of proportion was lost or buried during times of cultural barbarism, which include the eras of European industrialization and of modern political absolutism.
Stirling’s self-imposed task was to recover that canon, and he accomplished this task to a large extent, although he laid himself open to the criticism of sceptics by a somewhat cavalier attitude to mathematical precision in his numerical calculations. The Canon is a difficult book to digest, as its early reviewers discovered. Reviewing the book at considerable length (in The Theosophical Review, vol. XXII, 1898, pp. 85–90), William Wynn Westcott pointed out that “This is not a book for the general public; it is too abstruse and too mathematical.” He also found it to be a confusing book: “The reviewer shrinks from the attempt to write a logical account of this work,” and considered that “The chapter on Geography is the wildest.” Even so, he heaped praise on the then unknown author (Stirling’s name did not appear in the book) for “his perseverance, his erudition, and his ingenuity,” and generally found favor with the book.
Westcott, however, was alone in his assessment. Other esoteric journals of the day simply ignored The Canon, while lay reviewers—who included H. G. Wells, in The Saturday Review—either poked fun at it or found it to be utterly bewildering. Not until Stirling had been more than seven years dead was The Canon again commended to esoteric readers, when A. E. Waite considered it critically in The Occult Review (vol. 11, January 1910, pp. 53–54).
Agreeing with Westcott as to both its complexity and its significance—“It is,” he noted, “beyond the pale of understanding” by “the general reader.” Waite looked upon the book not merely as “a deeply involved example of the fantastic spirit,” but as being “more also.” “I can certify on my own knowledge,” he wrote, “that those who hold certain keys and are therefore acquainted with things implied mystically in the measures of the heights and deeps and extensions of palaces and temples and cities lying four-square, will find vestiges herein for the extension of consciousness in this mode of symbolism. “To these,” he concluded, “I commend it.” And just who did Waite have in mind?
He noted, correctly, that the book is concerned with the development of the Secret Tradition that is found in the Kabbalah, in Freemasonry, and in the Ancient Mysteries generally. But he significantly ignored the one aspect of the book that most concerned him at that time—the tarot. Why should Waite have done this? Stirling was deeply versed in tarot symbolism, as presented by Papus, and it is inconceivable that Waite was not intrigued by his application of the symbolism of the tarot trumps to the canon of proportion. It is quite likely that Waite’s reason for omitting any reference to the tarot in his review had more to do with a specific copy of The Canon than with the theories put forward in the text, but before we attempt to answer the question of Waite’s motivation, it is necessary to consider the life of the book’s author.
William Stirling’s life is obscure. Born in 1861, he was a Scot who settled in London and lectured on architecture at University College, London. He was also a keen book collector, and it is highly probable that he derived his remarkable and profound knowledge of kabbalistic, masonic and tarot symbolism, of Neoplatonism, and of early Christian biblical exegesis, from private study of both ancient and modern esoteric literature. If he shared his researches with his contemporaries, then he left no record of having done so. He was not a member of the Theosophical Society, nor of the Order of the Golden Dawn, nor of any other known institution or private circle dedicated to esoteric, religious, or masonic speculation. It is asserted by John Michell that Stirling was a freemason, but no record survives of his membership of either a regular or a clandestine masonic body.
This should not, perhaps, surprise us, for Stirling was an intensely private man—as the anonymous publication of The Canon makes clear—although he was by no means an isolated man. He was a friend of the Scots author Robert Cunninghame Graham (who wrote the Preface to The Canon), and of the artist William Rothenstein, who “found in Stirling an exquisite and lovable nature…. he was one of those men who made others, however gifted and famous, appear coarse by contrast” (Men and Memories, 1932). Through Rothenstein he also met W. B. Yeats. This meeting, which took place in March 1902, might well have brought Stirling into just those esoteric circles that would have helped to propagate his ideas, but it coincided with the onset of mental disorder. At this time Rothenstein later recorded that he began to see in Stirling:
… symptoms which made me uneasy. For Stirling talked as though he were being spied on, and this mood grew upon him. He had lodgings in York Buildings, where someone, he said, had lately taken rooms and was watching his movements (Men and Memories).
Perhaps financial anxiety contributed to Stirling’s mental state, but whatever the cause, it led finally to his committing suicide on 24 April of that year.
A harrowing account of his death, which also adds a little to the meagre details of his life, was later given by Wyndham Lewis, in Rude Assignment (1950):
He supported out of his slender reserves an aged mother and sister and lived in a small dark flat at the Adelphi. For two or three weeks no one saw him around. At last they broke in: he was lying just inside the front door with his throat cut. The rats, infesting the London sewers, had chewed away some of his flesh.
Stirling’s papers had been left to Rothenstein, who was his literary executor, and in the hope of salvaging something from them, Rothenstein sought Yeats’ help. Yeats felt inadequate to the task—when Stirling had showed him “a quantity of designs for some sort of heathen temple which seemed very imaginative,” he commented that, “I couldn’t follow his numerical speculations & indeed had no great trust in them” (letter to Rothenstein, 17 October, 1902)—and turned for advice to A. E. Waite, to whom he also sent a copy of The Canon. Waite was unimpressed with the unpublished manuscripts, which he found to be “an indistinguishable mass of chance notes and fragments,” an echo of Rothenstein’s comment that they “were too scrappy and inchoate,” and he was not convinced by the argument of the book, although he did find it “curious” and “here and there suggestive.” Given this halfhearted endorsement, it is, to say the least, curious that Waite should have later commended the book to “those who hold certain keys.” Unless he had other reasons for his commendation.
And here we must turn to the anonymous student of sacred measures whose annotations of the text of The Canon are reproduced in this edition of the book. Anonymous he may have been, but it is immediately obvious that he possessed a profound and accurate knowledge of Patristic authors, especially of their apologetic works and their mystical commentaries on the New Testament. From this we may reasonably conclude that he was a clergyman—it should be noted that at that time there were neither female priests nor female theologians—but an unusual cleric in that he was also fully conversant with the kabbalah and with tarot symbolism. The style and orthography of the hand in which the marginal notes are written date them to the early years of this century. Beyond this we know nothing of the writer.
It would be reasonable to assume that he may have been involved in one or another of the many esoteric organizations of the time, but his Christian commitment and bias toward western occultism would almost certainly rule out membership in the Theosophical Society. The most likely body to have attracted him would have been the Order of the Golden Dawn. Can we identify him among the known members? Alas, we cannot.
All that we can do is to consider two meagre clues in the annotated copy of the book. The first of these is an inscription on the front endpaper. The book was inscribed, undated and in an unidentified hand quite different from that of the marginal notes, “To Miss Nalyor In Memoriam—The Author William Stirling.” This is an odd, un-English name that does not fit with any other recognizable nationality. It is, perhaps, intended to be “Naylor.” There is also one possible hint as to the author of the notes in a marginal note on p. 365. Part of this note consists of the letters “G.N.” which may be the initials of the annotator. These initials do not, however, fit those of the name or motto of any member of any branch of the Golden Dawn.
But it does seem probable that this annotated copy was seen and studied by A. E. Waite at some time between 1903 and 1909, and that the annotations in it led him to change his views on The Canon and to commend it to those whose view of the Secret Tradition matched his own. More specifically, I would suggest that his own detailed study of tarot symbolism during this period benefited from the comment about the Hanged Man (p. 389), and that he pointed those with eyes to see (“those who hold certain keys”) in the same direction.*
If this copy did come into Waite’s hands, it is possible to suggest the means. Assuming that the annotator was a clergyman with a sympathetic and educated interest in occultism, it is highly probable that he knew, and was known by, such colleagues as the Revd. W. F. Geikie Cobb and the Revd. A. H. E. Lee—both active in esoteric circles and both associated with Waite. Even if he died in the early 1900s and the book had passed to one of these, it would inevitably have been made known to Waite. Further research into the work of this and similar clerical circles has long been needed for many reasons, and will in due time be carried out. When it is, not the least result will be that we shall finally be enabled to identify and give due recognition to the unknown scholar who built upon Stirling’s work and added in no small measure to the value of an unjustly neglected classic in the canon of esoteric literature.
* A full account of his researches and unique interpretation and use of the tarot trumps will be given in my forthcoming study, The Tarot of A. E. Waite.
One of the most revolutionary books of the late 19th century, and consequently one of the most neglected, The Canon owes its high reputation among the discerning few to the august literary style of its author, as well as to its remarkable contents. Of the mysterious individual, William Stirling, whose life’s work is displayed in this volume, nothing biographical has been ascertained, other than that he was a Freemason, and died by his own hand in his rooms in The Adelphi, London. Evident through The Canon is its author’s lack of sympathy with the modes and mores of his contemporaries, and they, in return, as the present rarity of The Canon suggests, were equally indifferent to the ideas expressed in his writing. At the time of The Canon’s first publication, in 1897, the evolutionary theories of the Darwinians, which preclude serious interest in ancient philosophy, were less critically received than may be the case today, the complacent faith of the previous century in the inevitability of human progress having now become somewhat less compelling. It is not therefore improbable that The Canon will be found to be of more general and immediate interest at the present time than it was in the past, earning for its author the customary reward of excessive originality—posthumous appreciation.
The subject of The Canon is the ancient and esoteric Law that formerly regulated every aspect of human activity, providing a canonical standard for all the arts and sciences, as music, decoration, sculpture, astronomy and the art ol government, and which, according to Plato, preserved for over 10,000 years the stability of Egyptian culture.
The numerical ratios, of which the Law was essentially composed, were also applied to metaphysics and theology. The nature of each god was represented by a number, to which reference was made in the numerical value of the letters in his name, in the dimensions of his temples, in the number of verses in the hymns addressed to him, and in all his various rites and attributes. An initiate into these mysteries was thus able to study the relative significance of the individual gods within the cosmic scheme, of which the Law was both the symbol and the image.
Apart from certain references in the anti-gnostic writings of the Church Fathers, few sources of information on the lost numerical science of antiquity are openly available. The Canon was the first modern work on the subject, and no finer introduction exists to the study of mysticism (which Stirling here defines in its highest sense as synonymous with gnosticism), and the ancient tradition than this most idiosyncratic book. It can not be denied that the author’s profound knowledge of the true Platonic philosophy and the classical austerity of his language, which the subject demands, is attended by a certain wildness in his numerical speculation. The effect of this, on reading the book, may be somewhat disturbing, and so it was no doubt intended. The Canon is not presented as a textbook of mystical mathematics, but has a more subtle purpose: to illustrate the methods by which the priests formerly regulated the lives of the people in accordance with their interpretation of the cosmic laws and cycles. To understand the meaning of this science—even to admit the possibility of an accurate and skilfully applied cosmological knowledge among the ancients—it is necessary to disregard several fundamental assumptions of modern history and philosophy.
As Kathleen Raine observes in her recent work on Thomas Taylor, the Platonist, “Spokesmen of the now dominant culture speak of an ‘advance’ from ‘ignorance’ and magic to ‘knowledge’ and material science; yet in terms of philosophy, religion and the arts the same event can only be seen in opposite terms, as a decline from knowledge to ignorance”. Equally concise and mordant is Stirling’s expression of the same deteriorationist point of view: “As for the enlightened among ourselves who conscientiously suppose that the ancients were children, and patronize them as such, we imagine that the slightest acquaintance with the works of both must make it conclusively apparent who the children are”.
Any inquiry into ancient history must be incomplete that fails to consider that most important aspect which is the subject of The Canon. Nor is the importance of this book merely historical; for the ancient philosophy, the truth of which was once found susceptible to a precise, mathematical demonstration, has a relevance which is by no means limited to a particular age or set of circumstances. On this account it has been called by its professors the eternal tradition, and valued as such by the various groups and individuals of the historical period, as for example the Platonists, Christian gnostics, alchemists, medieval orders of chivalry and early Freemasons, who sought to regain it. In justification for a life’s work dedicated to the same end, the author of The Canon might have quoted the aforementioned Tom Taylor on the Elensinian and Bacchic mysteries:
“As to the philosophy, by whose assistance these mysteries are developed, it is coeval with the universe itself; and however its continuity may be broken by opposing systems, it will make its appearance at different periods of time, as long as the sun shall continue to illuminate the world”.
In preparing this reprinted edition of The Canon for publication, a number of errors and inaccuracies have been discovered, only to be expected of an author who followed Plotinus in attending rather to the content than to the details of his work. The errata listed in the original edition have been remedied.
TO
“SYMBOLISTS.”
CONTEMPT of ancient learning is a sure sign of an enlightened mind.
We are the men.
Before our time, reason but little influenced mankind.
The demonstration of the above assertion being that in times gone by there were no railways, steamboats, torpedoes, or any of those anaesthetic inventions in regard to time and space on which we pride ourselves, and upon which we base our claim to have advanced the general welfare of mankind.
Marvels of science, mechanical improvements, increase of wealth (and income tax), and the perfection of all warlike apparatus, seem to blind us to the fact that abstract qualities of mind have shown no symptoms of progression. A rich barbarian, pale and dyspeptic, florid or flatulent, seated in a machine travelling at eighty miles an hour, with the machine luxuriously upholstered and well heated, and yet the traveller’s mind a blank, or only occupied with schemes to cheat his fellows and advance himself is, in the abstract, no advance upon a citizen of Athens, in the time of Pericles, who never travelled faster than a bullock cart could take him, in all his life.
Science has no marvels; every so-called discovery heralded as marvellous (for men of science understand the power of bold advertisement to the full as well as scientists in clog dancing, in hair dressing, and tightrope walking), is not a marvel in the true meaning of the word.
The Röntgen Rays, the microphone, the phonograph, are all as simple in themselves as is the property of amber rubbed to take up straws. From the beginning there have been Rontgen Rays, and the principles of microphone and phonograph are coeval with the world. The wonder lies not in the discovery (so-called), but in the fact they have remained so long unknown. The real mystery of mysteries is the mind of man. Why, with a pen or brush, one man sits down and makes a masterpiece, and yet another, with the self-same instruments and opportunities, turns out a daub or botch, is twenty times more curious than all the musings of the mystics, works of the Rosicrucians, or the mechanical contrivances which seem today so fine, and which our children will disdain as clumsy. The conquests of the mind never grow stale, let he who doubts it read a page of Plato and compare it with some à la mode philosopher.
I take it that one of the objects of the author of this work is to sustain, that in astronomy, in mathematics, and in certain other branches of learning, the ancients knew a good deal more than modern men of science care to admit.
Knowledge today is not diffused, as writers in newspapers, makers of almanacks, members of school-boards, and worthy men who see the means but cannot grasp the fullness of achievement, are never tired of stating, but on the contrary, goes almost contraband. The fact that all can read and write, cypher and scan the columns of a newspaper, can tell the latitude (the longitude more rarely) of Jella Coffee, can prattle innocently of literature, art, spiritualism, and chemistry, can make their pertinent remarks upon theosophy, discuss religion, say a word in season on lithotomy, and generally comport themselves as if their minds were fashioned after the pattern of a kaleidoscope, does not go far to prove the claim of wide extended knowledge.
When all write books and few have time to read, when thought grows rare and talking never ends, a serious book in which a man has put the labour of his life needs some apology for its appearance. Deal with sex problems (pruriently, of course), be mystic, moral, or immoral, flippant, or best of all be dull, success is sure. Still, in an age of symbolism, for everything we see is but a symbol, as kings, queens, dukes, lords, princes, barons, and sandwichmen, it must perforce be interesting to some to read of why the chief symbol of our present faith came to be held in veneration.
In modern times we use a word, merely to express a thing, and only rarely concern ourselves with the exact value that the word may have. This may account to some extent for the loose style of many English writers, but to examine into that would be quite foreign to my purpose. Certain it is that in the ancient world, words and even letters all had their value apart from what we, now-a-days, call meaning. Thus it is that oriental nations, and especially the Jews and Arabs, attach to their particular alphabets not merely a divine origin (for I suppose our alphabet is just as divine as theirs), but a particular sense of sanctity. No one supposes if a better alphabet than that we now employ were to be found that we should still adhere from superstitious motives to our own. In the ancient world, apart from letters, every ceremony, each rite, and all the arts and sciences had some peculiar canon which was supposed to govern them. If, in his researches, the author has brought to light some canon which may enlighten architects, and so redeem us from the outrages our builders heap upon us, if he can do even a little to stay the hands of Deans and Chapters from destroying buildings which, by the folly of the nation, have been committed to their care (like sheep to wolves), or put a stop to the restorer, that arch-fiend, who in consuming thirst for unity tears down a fine Renaissance doorway in a Gothic church, and puts up in its stead what he thinks Gothic, his labour will not have been lost. Could he redeem us from Victorian Queen Anne—but mitigate the horrors of plate-glass, set bounds to all the Gothics, ranging from Strangulated, through the degrees of Congregational and Convulsional down to Ebenezaresque, could he but find a style in which our builders could express their thoughts, and help them build for us, our churches, houses, theatres, and bridges, without adhering slavishly to bygone styles, the twelve shillings which I understand his volume is to cost will be well spent.
Music and literature, with painting, surgery, and economics, with boxing, fencing, and others of the liberal arts, all have a style fit and peculiar to the times, but architecture yet remains a blot and a disgrace to those who live by it, and to all those who use the edifices which it makes, and pay the makers’ bills.
But leaving architects bemired in stucco and happy in their “co-operation with the present system,” let us return to the folly of the ancients.
Strabo and Celsus, with Diodorus Siculus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Maimonides, Raimundo Llull, with the Rabbi Jehudah ben Gabirol and others, whose names look well writ large in a quotation, have all remarked upon the symbolism not only of the Cross but of all ancient temples.
Pedro Mexia in his curious Silva1 de Varia Leccion says that the Egyptians and the Arabians honoured the figure of the cross,2 and thought so much of it, that the Egyptians drew it upon the statue of Serapis, adored it, and held it as a god. To comprehend which it is necessary first to know the Arabians of old times were people very learned in the heavens, and in the phases of the stars … made images and statues … rings and other things, taking care to do so, at certain times and epochs when the planets and other stars were in a certain posture.” And further on he says, “it is remarkable how the Egyptians esteemed the symbol of the cross above all other symbols.”
It may be that, as Pedro Mexia says, the Egyptians looked upon the cross as something sacred, because it is “a perfect and most excellent figure geometrically considered.” All things are possible, but a whole people lost in the admiration of a figure for geometric reasons seems improbable. Geometry is a most admirable science, but appeals little to imagination, and still less to any of the well rooted principles of folly inherent in mankind, which generally impel them to choose a subject to adore.
Again Antonio Llobera, in his book called “El Porqué de Todas las Ceremonias,” printed at Figueras by Ignacio Porter in 1758, informs us that “all temples and churches are symbols or figures of the human body … the high altar is the head, the transepts are the arms, and the rest of the temple … is the body,” so that he knew apparently, that churches were built according to a canon and had assumed the form in which we know them for a special reason. Many have known as much as did Antonio Llobera, and like him either have cared not, or have dared not, push their theory to its conclusion.
The author of the present work has not been so deterred, and argues out his case with much precision and a wealth of figures, proving most clearly that the external measurements of almost every ancient temple, the figures of the New Jerusalem, Holy Oblation, and other temples, real and imaginary, reveal the magnitudes of the sun, moon, and other planets, together with the distance of their orbits. And most ingeniously he argues that, as all these calculations were, of necessity, impossible of comprehension to the vulgar, they were typified by symbols, the principal of all these symbols being the cross. Therefore it follows, in his opinion, that the rage of the so-called Reformers of the church was not a blind unreasoning fury, blended with a dislike to beauty, but a reasoning fury against a symbol that they understood. And he remarks, when speaking of the Puritans, whom he most justly stigmatizes as both “ridiculous and ignorant,” that it was curious that, having cast away the cross, they should still retain the Christ, as both are one.
We know the mystic letters I. H. S., familiar from our childhood on altar fronts, embroidered in gold thread by pious ladies, were used as symbols of Bacchus, and venerated in his temples by the unreasoning but faithful worshipper just as they are with us.
Thor’s hammer was a cross; the ruins of Palenque bear sculptured on their lintels the mystic symbol, and Bernal Diaz tells us that, in Cozumel, upon the altars of the temples, crosses were seen deep graven in the stone.
Thus it appears that almost every nation, every age, has had its Cross, and, if this is the case, what is the reason ?
The writer of this work most plainly sets it forth, and, in so doing, connects conclusively our symbolism with that which seems inherent in mankind, and gently puts aside all our pretensions to the possession of a faith revealed to us alone.
Into these mysteries I shrink from entering, but watch him boldly walk amongst the Canon Laws which govern Architecture, Music, Religion, and other things, the laws of which I take on trust.
Unorthodox even in his unorthodoxy, he is sufficiently unEnglish to be logical and not to shirk, after the English fashion, the just conclusions towards which his reasoning leads.
Following his argument, it appears that, in “The Abbey” when the nave and aisles are packed with rich and pious Iris de Florence scented worshippers silently waiting for the circulating plate, they sit within a building built, like the ancient temples were, to typify the body of a man, and the chief symbol which the Romans held in honour they, too, venerate, when, in their pious contemplation, they lift adoring eyes towards the Cross which stands upon the altar or communion table.
1 “Madrid,” por Joseph Fernandez de Buendía, Año de 1662.
2 The Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega, in his “Comentarios Reales,” vol. i., chap, iii., “Tuvieron los Reyes Incas en el Cozco, una Cruz de Marmol fino de color bianco y encarnado….. No adoravan en ella, mas de que la tenian en veneracion; debia ser por su hermosa figura, ó por algun otro respeto, que no saben decir.”
“The wisdom of the Egyptians, what was it but principally astronomy?”—ST. AUGUSTINE, “ City of God,” bk. xviii., c. 39.
THE failure of all efforts in modern times to discover what constituted the ancient canon of the arts, has made this question one of the most hopeless puzzles which antiquity presents. It is discouraging in the extreme to approach the subject at all. The absence of all explicit information from the ancients themselves, combined with the complete ignorance of modern authorities, is sufficient to make one hesitate to lay before the reader any proposition, however plausible, on this obscure subject. It is hoped, however, that the investigation of what appears to be a clue to the method practised by the old architects in building the temples, may prove of some assistance in elucidating the principles, which were the common groundwork of the arts and sciences of the past. For it would appear, that there was an established canonical law underlying the practice of building as well as all other arts.
In a general way this has been felt by all competent students of antiquity ; and many traces of such an uniformity have been pointed out, but as the root of everything in the old world was primarily centred in religion, it is to the ancient theology, that we must look for the foundation and basis of the old canon.
The priests were practically the masters of the old world. Everything and everybody was subservient to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and no work could be undertaken without its authority. That the priests were legitimately entitled to regulate the building of the temples of the gods, nobody will deny. And that they did exercise this control is beyond dispute. For we find that freemasons, or some body corresponding to the mediaeval freemasons, with exclusive privileges and secrets required for building the temples, under ecclesiastical authority, have always existed. And the knowledge which we possess of the mediaeval freemasons is sufficient to show that their secrets were the secrets of religion, that is, of mediaeval Christianity.
It is these secrets of the old priests, carefully guarded by them, and only communicated to the authorized builders of the temples, that we propose to treat of in the following pages, and we shall endeavour to show that these secrets, comprising the esoteric doctrine of religion, have been transmitted in unbroken continuity, at least from the building of the Great Pyramid, down to recent times. It is, of course, far beyond the scope of this small work, limited to a single object of inquiry, to enter into a historical examination of the evidences of this continuity of idea, and since there are already in existence books dealing with this special investigation, it is superfluous to undertake it. It is only necessary to accept the testimony of the old Greek historians, who emphatically assert, that the essential doctrines of the Greek religion were imported into Greece from Egypt. We know that all modern civilization in Europe is of Greek origin. The Gospel itself is indisputably as much a Greek as a Hebrew creation. It is written in Greek, and was first established among Hellenized peoples, and wherever it was accepted in succeeding generations, it brought with it the ideas of Greece. As there is no reason to doubt the assertions of the Greek historians, as to the indebtedness of their nation to the Egyptians for instruction in the arts and sciences, there has clearly been, through the Greeks, a direct communication of Egyptian ideas to the Hellenized portions of the world, to which we ourselves belong.
Just as Pythagoras and Plato, and other Greek philosophers, visited Egypt to study the religion and sciences of that country, so every educated man of a subsequent age studied the religion and philosophy of Greece with the same object, namely, to perfect themselves in that knowledge, of which the Greeks were known to have been the recipients. To us the Egyptians are only a step further off; but fundamentally the doctrines which we are now investigating were the same both in Greece and Egypt. How much, the original religion and philosophy of the Egyptians may have been improved by filtering through the refining influence of Greece, must be decided when Egyptologists come to have a deeper knowledge of Egyptian things, than they have at present. But whatever changes may have been added by Greeks and Christians to the original Egyptian theology, it is insisted, that the central mysteries were accepted by all priests and philosophers, as the only possible basis of religion. And more than that (for we must not always be content with a sensible reason for anything in human affairs) the absolute conservatism, always observed in religious matters, would scarcely admit that any received doctrine, once established, should be removed.
It must be borne in mind, that only the vaguest ideas at present prevail as to the mystical secrets1 of the old priests. Everybody knows that the Egyptians, Greeks, and other Eastern nations concealed the vital doctrines of their theology from the ignorant and vulgar, and it was only by a gradual process of initiation that the meaning of the sacred writings and ceremonies were explained. And then, after this preparation, the initiates were allowed to be full partakers in the religious rites. It is a misfortune that all the ritual of the older religions has been destroyed, and it is particularly regretable that no scrap of the sacred writings, or temple ritual of pagan Greece or Rome, has survived to our time. We do not even know whether the Hebraized or Christianized version of the Masonic ritual, as we now know it, has anything more than a faint resemblance to its primitive form. Besides the ordinary services in the pagan temples, it is well known that there were in certain periods especially mysterious celebrations of the nature of dramatic shows or plays, in some cases apparently intended to form the concluding spectacle of the initiations. A few ancient authors have alluded to these shows, but when everything is collected from their works, it amounts to very little indeed. Plutarch, St. Clement of Alexandria (who had been initiated at Eleusis before he became a Christian), Lucian, Apuleius, Macrobius and other writers give some slight information, directly or indirectly, on these mystical ceremonies. Besides these, there is a treatise by Jamblichus pretending to expound the whole subject of the mysteries, but this work has been composed with such careful and scrupulous obscurity, that few people have found themselves much the wiser after reading it. There is also the Jewish Cabala, containing an explanation of the priestly secrets and mysteries of the Hebrews, but no one at the present day can fully understand it. There are the works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus preserved by the Neo-Platonists, written in the same philosophical jargon used by Jamblichus and the rest; and there are the references to the doctrines of the heretical Christians called Gnostics, preserved in the controversial works of the early fathers. These are some of the most direct sources of information on the mystical doctrines common to the Egyptian, Greek, Hebrew, and Christian religions.
But turning from these obscure and fragmentary references, the law of the Hebrew Scriptures and the extensive commentaries of the Talmud, the Gospel with the offices and ritual of the Church, are each an epitome, in its most complete form, of those mysteries for the expounding of which they were severally created ; if these works were clearly understood the difficulty would be cleared up. The deplorable fact, which we have now to regret is, that the priests who ought to be able to tell us the meaning of the Scriptures, which they undertake to expound, know nothing whatever of their real significance. It is probable, that there is not a single Christian priest who knows what the Canon of the Church is, or why a certain office or literary arrangement is canonical or what makes it so. He would deny that the Old Testament and the Gospel are allegorical books, but has no explanation to offer for the absurdities, which occur in these works, if taken literally. In fact, the modern priest, to whom we naturally turn for instruction in the mysteries of the Church, is the very last person from whom we are likely to get any information. Let us therefore leave this man, who does not seem to be aware that his office was created that he might receive the canonical tradition from the mouth of a pre-ordained teacher, and by its light impart the spirit to the letter of the law.
We shall assume, that at the building of the Great Pyramid, the first principles of all later theology were already established and fixed, and it would seem, notwithstanding the modern belief to the contrary, that at that early period the Egyptians had arrived at some elementary knowledge of astronomy and cosmography; that they knew the measures of the earth, and the distance of the planets, and had observed the recurrent cycles of the sun and moon in their several orbits, and many other simple astronomical phenomena; that from these ascertained facts, they derived a scheme embodying, in the persons of certain hypothetical gods, a symbolical image of the created universe, and the invisible powers which regulate it. The deity in this scheme was conceived according to the exact forms manifested in the phenomena of nature. The whole physical and material universe was symbolized by the seven revolving planets and the sphere of the fixed stars, while the agent, or mover, who inspires all bodies with life, was personified by the figure of a man. Thus the philosophers constructed a system, which attributed to God a body composed of all the matter of the world, and a soul, which was diffused through all its parts. The creed of the philosophers, however, was never openly avowed in the popular religion, but was concealed in the parables of which the old theology was composed. For the old priests never scrupled to believe, that history and philosophy “sufficed but for the chosen few,” while the populace were carefully instigated to the practice of morality by being instructed in that kind of fiction which, in this country, emanates from Exeter Hall. Strabo admirably expresses the attitude of an educated man to the religion of his day. He says, “The great mass of women and common people cannot be induced by mere force of reason to devote themselves to piety, virtue, and honesty; superstition must therefore be employed, and even this is insufficient without the aid of the marvellous and the terrible. For what are the thunderbolts, the aegis, the trident, the torches, the dragons, the barbed thyrses, the arms of the gods, and all the paraphernalia of antique theology, but fables employed by the founders of states as bugbears to frighten timorous minds ?” (Strabo’s “Geography,” bit. i., ch. ii, § 8).1 Again, the difference between Moses, and Linus, Musæus, Orpheus, and Pherecydes, is well defined by Origen, who says, that the Greek poets “display little concern for those readers who are to peruse them at once unaided, but have composed their philosophy (as you term it) for those who are unable to comprehend its metaphorical and allegorical signification. Whereas Moses, like a distinguished orator, who meditates some figure of rhetoric, and who carefully introduces in every part a language of two fold meaning, has done this in his five books; neither affording, in the portion which relates to morals, any handle to his Jewish subjects for committing evil; nor yet giving to the few individuals who were endowed with greater WISDOM, and who were capable of investigating his meaning, a treatise devoid of material for speculation.” (Origen “Against Celsus,” bk. i., ch. xviii). That is to say, the Hebrew delivered his fictions in the guise of moral precepts, while the pagan Greeks were not so particular.
It is well known to many people that certain numbers had an important place in the philosophical and theological system of the ancients. The Pythagoreans concealed their doctrines in a numerical and geometric system, which was the only form of their philosophy given to the outer world. The Jewish priests also elaborated an extensive system of numeration in the Cabala, and the Rabbis frequently make use of it in the Talmudic commentaries on the Scriptures. The early fathers of the church have preserved considerable expositions of the system in their books controverting the heretical opinions of the various sects of Christian Gnostics. But the purport of all these theories of numbers has ceased to be understood, together with the greater part of the doctrines of the ancient mysteries of which this numerical philosophy formed a part.
The oldest use of numbers as symbols of an esoteric doctrine is to be found in Egypt, from whence it was derived by the Greeks, and transmitted by them to the modern world. Although we have, unfortunately, no direct evidence of how the mysterious people of Egypt actually made use of their numbers, it would appear that their numerical system formed a part of the dogma in those laws, referred to by Plato as having been ten thousand years old, and was perpetuated, as one of the bases of religion and art by all subsequent peoples. The words of Plato are : “Long ago they appeared to recognize the very principle of which we are now speaking—that their young citizens must be habituated to forms and strains of virtue. These they fixed, and exhibited patterns of them in their temples ; and no painter or artist is allowed to innovate upon them, or to leave the traditional forms, or invent new ones. To this day no alteration is allowed, either in those arts or in music, at all. And you will find that their works of art are painted or moulded in the same forms that they had ten thousand years ago (this is literally true, and no exaggeration), their ancient paintings and sculptures are not a whit better, or worse than the work of to-day, but are made with just the same skill.” (“Laws,” 656. Jowett’s translation, vol. v., p. 226). What this canon of art actually was is now unknown, but it is possible to discover the traces of it in the religion and art of the Greeks and Christians.
Theology, in its various forms, has always been the epitome of art, and constituted the law for its guidance. From the times of ancient Egypt this law has been a sacred arcanum, only communicated by symbols and parables, the making of which, in the ancient world, constituted the most important form of literary art; it therefore required for its exposition a priestly caste, trained in its use, and the guilds of initiated artists, which existed throughout the world till comparatively recent times, were instructed in it. Now-a-days, all this is changed. Theology has dropped her secrets; her symbols have become meaningless ornaments, and her parables are no longer understood. The artist in the service of the Church no longer represents her mysteries in metaphorical shapes, and the priests have as little skill in the old art of myth-making, as they have in interpreting the Scriptures.
Few people have an adequate appreciation of this lost principle—the art, that is, of working symbolically. To us, who have now nothing to conceal, such a practice has naturally gone out of fashion, and the symbol, as a means of concealing rather more than it was intended to explain, has become gradually obsolete. We still write or paint symbolically, but only to make that, which is obscure, more plain. In the hands of the old priest, or artist, on the contrary, the symbol was a veil for concealment, beautiful or grotesque, as the case might be. A myth or parable, in their hands, subtly conveyed a hidden truth, by means of a more or less obvious fiction; but it has come to pass, that the crude and childish lie on its surface is ignorantly believed for the whole truth, instead of being recognized, as the mere clue to its inner meaning. All theology is composed in this way, and her two-fold utterances must be read with a double mind. Thus, when we read in the Scriptures of the Church, or in the saintly legends, a fiction showing more than ordinary exuberance of fancy, we may be sure, that our attention is being specially arrested. When miraculous events are related of the gods, or when they are depicted in marvellous shapes, the author gives us to understand, that something uncommon is being conveyed. When singular and unearthly beasts are described, such as Behemoth and Leviathan, the unicorn, or the phcenix, it is intended, that we should search deeply into their meaning: for such are some of the artifices, by which the ancients at once concealed and explained their hidden mysteries.
When everything was mystical and metaphorical, it was only natural that numbers should have been brought to the service of Art. Geometry also provided a symbolical code, which may some day be understood. These geometrical symbols enabled the mathematicians to import the secret mysteries into their works, and also gave to the builders a means of applying a numerical system to the temples, which, as Plato says, exhibited the pattern of the laws in Egypt. Considerable traces of this symbolical geometry survive in the arcana of Freemasonry. Most of the practical secrets of the old mediaeval architects, who built the cathedrals according to the mysteries of the church, have perished with the old craft lodges, which preceded the establishment of the modern theoretical masonry. Nevertheless it is possible to gather out of the early architectural and technical books some clue to the old practice of building. All old writers on architecture, as well as freemasons, insist that geometry is the foundation of their art, but their hints as to its application are so obscure, that no one in recent times has been able to explain how it was used.
Philosophy must have been equally dependent upon some system of geometry, for Plato wrote over the door of his academy “LET NONE IGNORANT OF GEOMETRY ENTER HERE,” and in the “Republic” (bk. vii. 527), he says, “You must in the utmost possible manner direct the citizens of your beautiful city on no account to fail to apply themselves to GEOMETRY”—a science which, he says, “flatly contradicts the language employed by those who handle it.” From this it may be concluded, that Plato meant to inform us, that no one could understand his philosophy without knowing the geometrical basis of it, since geometry contained the fundamental secret of all the ancient science.