Oriental Masonry

Secret Societies that protected Truth arose from the natural and insuperable difficulty of communicating the great truths of astronomy to the ignorant, and of preserving records of the great phenomena of nature. Without universal relations no ethic, but only expediency, is possible. All the mystery and allegory grew upon the necessity of using symbols and characters by which the skilled might communicate with each other, but which the ignorant ran away with. And as they were infinitely in the majority, the learned found their symbols taken out of their own hands, and they were not allowed to rectify the errors of general ignorance, nor explain their own meaning. * Parsons, “New Light from the Great Pyramid.”

The Secret Societies “never” had any intention of being as secret as they are. Priests of the Religion were only too willing to teach the people, but the people “were no more willing to receive the truth then than they are now.” The ”accusation by religious” systems that the secret Orders are of the devil because they do not admit all, Initiated and uninitiated , is utterly false. It is not the Men of these Orders that exclude the people from them. It is the people themselves through their ignorance, that exclude them. The Elders of the “genuine” Orders have learned long ago as Christ taught: “Cast not pearls before swine, lest they trample upon them.” All Orders are open to the people if they are willing to learn. Freemasonry opens it door to Supreme Initiation, but it cannot take the ignorant on the same footing as the learned, for he who knows not the A.B.C. of Education cannot become the teacher of Latin, nor can the ignorant of Religion and Philosophy become the teacher of these systems. The “Secret Orders” are open to those “who are willing to learn and obey until such time as they are able to take care of themselves.”

All Masonry deals largely with ethics and symbolism of the Ancient Mysteries. The writer believes that through the well-timed efforts of Masons today the grandest achievements in knowledge ever gained by man, which originally concealed in the Greater Mysteries of Antiquity, and in time became lost to the world, may again be recovered. In the strictest sense this knowledge has never really been lost, as there have always existed those who were possessed of the great secret. It was originally veiled in order to conceal it from the profane, and written in a universal language of Symbolism that the wise among all nations and throughout all time might read it, as it were, in their own language. It is also written in parable and allegory, so that the unlettered and common people might not be deprived of its wise precepts, and of its force in shaping character, dissipation ignorance, and inspiring hope. This Ancient Wisdom is the foundation from which (all) Masonry takes its rise(accept American/English Masonry). The true Science of Symbolism in time became lost; the Temples of Initiation fell into decay, or were destroyed by priests and potentates, jealous of their influence. For many weary centuries men have been trying to recover the lost key and to restore the ancient wisdom from the parables and allegories in which it had been concealed. But progress in this inverse order is not only necessarily slow and uncertain, but all such attempts have, more or less, given rise to fantastic flights of the imagination, and resulted in confusion, rather than in enlightenment. The result has been to bring the whole subject under contempt, and to make the name “mysticism” mean something vague and uncertain, if not altogether foolish, to those ignorant of its true meaning.
Dr. R. Swinburne Clymer, M.D.