History of Masonic square and compass

Originally posted by Doc Velocity

I own actual Gothic manuscripts, hand-lettered and illuminated, from the 13th & 14th Centuries, although I'm not sure if mine are The Gothic Manuscripts to which you refer. I can't read them fluently, as they are in Latin, but my wife can. In any event, I didn't say that the whack-o mythology was abruptly manufactured in the 19th Century; rather, I believe I stated that "The other Freemason nonsense [meaning the 2000+ year-old mythology that Freemasonry professes] was fabricated, totally dreamed up, by imaginative and zealous members over the centuries that followed." And I still stand by that. I think it's accurate.

— Doc Velocity

I meant the Gothic Manuscripts (as they are usually called) of Freemasonry. These are dated from the middle ages, and most are in the British Museum. They were written in Old English in sort of a Chaucerian style, but translations in modern English are eay to come by.

These often to allude to the allegory of Solomon's Temple, the association of Euclid and Pythagoras with Masonry and the Egyptian Mysteries, etc.

I think I understand what you're trying to say, but I'm not sure I'd use the word "fabricated". The mythology is allegorical and does have meanings, unlike fabrications. Also, the Gothic Manuscripts show that such legends existed in Freemasonry well before the modern period.

About this:

Originally posted by Masonic Light
According to Albert Pike, from the alchemical drawing featured at the beginning of chapter 32 in "Morals and Dogma', which depicts Hermes-Aphrodite holding a square in one hand, and a compass in the other.

XXXII

SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET

[Master of Royal Secret]

...The Hermetic Science of the early Christian ages, cultivated also by Geber, Alfarabius, and others of the Arabs, studied by the Chiefs of the Templars, and embodied in certain symbols of the higher Degrees of Freemasonry, may be accurately defined as the Kabalah in active realization, or the Magic of Works.

It has three analogous Degrees, religious, philosophical, and physical realization...



...Magic is that which it is; it is by itself, like the mathematics; for it is the exact and absolute science of Nature and its laws.

Magic is the science of the Ancient Magi: and the Christian religion, which has imposed silence on the lying oracles, and put an end to the prestiges of the false Gods, itself reveres those Magi who came from the East, guided by a Star, to adore the Saviour of the world in His cradle.

Tradition also gives these Magi the title of "Kings;" because initiation into Magism constitutes a genuine royalty; and because the grand art of the Magi is styled by all the Adepts, "The Royal Art," or the Holy Realm or Empire, Sanctum Regnum.


The Star which guided them is that same Blazing Star, the image whereof we find in all initiations. To the Alchemists it is the sign of the Quintessence; to the Magists, the Grand Arcanum; to the Kabalists, the Sacred Pentagram. The study of this Pentagram could not but lead the Magi to the knowledge of the New Name which was about to raise itself above all names, and cause all creatures capable of adoration to bend the knee.

Magic unites in one and the same science, whatsoever Philosophy can possess that is most certain, and Religion of the Infallible and the Eternal. It perfectly and incontestably reconciles these two terms that at first blush seem so opposed to each other; faith and reason, science and creed, authority and liberty.

It supplies the human mind with an instrument of philosophical and religious certainty, exact as the mathematics, and accounting for the infallibility of the mathematics themselves.

Thus there is an Absolute, in the matters of the Intelligence and of Faith. The Supreme Reason has not left the gleams of the human understanding to vacillate at hazard. There is an incontestable verity, there is an infallible method of knowing this verity, and by the knowledge of it, those who accept it as a rule may give their will a sovereign power that will make them the masters of all inferior things and of all errant spirits; that is to say, will make them the Arbiters and Kings of the World.

Science has its nights and its dawns, because it gives the intellectual world a life which has its regulated movements and its progressive phases. It is with Truths, as with the luminous rays: nothing of what is concealed is lost; but also, nothing of what is discovered is absolutely new. God has been pleased to give to Science, which is the reflection of His Glory, the Seal of His Eternity.

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge. The Priests of Egypt knew, better than we do, the laws of movement and of life. They knew how to temper or intensify action by re-action; and readily foresaw the realization of these effects, the causes of which they had determined. The Columns of Seth, Enoch, Solomon, and Hercules have symbolized in the Magian traditions this universal law of the Equilibrium; and the Science of the Equilibrium or balancing of Forces had led the Initiates to that of the universal gravitation around the centres of Life, Heat, and Light...

Splendor Solis











www.gnosticvideos.org...








[edit on 7-2-2007 by Tamahu]

Good post, Tam. I didn't have time to run a search on the image when I posted that. Thanks for that, as well as the Pike quotes.

You're welcome.


Albert Pike obviously had some Knowledge of the Gnostic Secret Doctrine so to speak.





I've also updated the list from this post:

From Earlier Post

Jorge Adoum, The Noble Drew Ali, Dante Alighieri, Ra Un Nefer Amen, Johann Valentin-Andreae/Francis Bacon, Muata Ashby, Elias Ashmole, William Blake, H.P. Blavatsky, Jacob Boehme, J.D. Buck, Robert Burton, Cagliostro, Albert Churchward, Henry W. Coil, Malcolm C. Duncan, Robert Fludd, Dion Fortune, Fulcanelli, Jocelyn Godwin, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Robert Freke Gould, Manly P. Hall, Franz Hartmann, Max Heindel, Arnold Krumm-Heller(Huiracocha), Godfrey Higgins, John Heydon, Hargrave Jennings, Athanasius Kircher, Heinrich(or Henry) Khunrath, C.W. Leadbeater, Eliphas Levi, Schwaller de Lubicz, Mario Roso de Luna, David Murray-Lyon, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Robert Macoy, Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, Albert G. Mackey, Michael Maier, Gerald Massey, S.L. MacGregor Mathers, G.R.S. Mead, Mirandola, The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Isaac Myer, Isabel Cooper-Oakley, H.S. Olcott, Fabre d'Olivet, Paracelsus, Eugenius Philalethes, Albert Pike, Proclus, Plotinus, Ragon, Knorr Von Rosenroth, Ammonius Sacca, Rudolph Steiner, Thomas Taylor, Thomas Vaughan, J.S.M. Ward, V.M. Samael Aun Weor, William Wynn Westcott, W.L. Wilmshurst, John Yarker, and a few others.

Those authors should lead one to the teachings of authentic Alchemists and Spiritual Teachers, and not to Black Lodge teachings.




Just remember:

The Perfect Matrimony

...According to tradition, in the center of the labyrinth is found the synthesis, that is to say
the Labarum of the Temple. The word labyrinth is etymologically derived from the word
Labarum. The latter is a double-edged axe, a symbol of the masculine-feminine sexual
force. The person who really finds the synthesis commits the greatest foolishness when
he leaves the Center and returns to the complicated corridors of theories that form the
labyrinth of the mind. Christ and Sexual Magic represent religious synthesis...

The Center or Synthesis is explained in the YouTube-Link above-video.

Practical Gnosticism - 02: Taurus

...As we were explaining in the beginning, when Poseidon saw that this king Minos did not perform what he promised, then he made his wife to fall in love with the bull, the white bull. And then it is stated that Daedalus, a great inventor, created a cow, an artificial cow, in order to put the queen inside the cow in order to have sex with the bull. So they managed to do it, and the bull had sex with the queen. The outcome was the Minotaur.

This is a great symbol there, of course, of our own nature, because when we promise to enter into the path but we do not do it, and we sacrifice all our things but we do not transmute our sexual energy, at the end our own nature, which is the symbol of the queen, transforms the fire, the holy fire of that white bull that represents the force in the body, of the Holy Spirit, into a Minotaur, a monster which dwells within each one of us. That monster is Medusa, Minotaur, and many other names. But in this beautiful myth you find that it has of course a human body but the head of a bull, and a tail. And that is precisely the most beautiful representation of the humanity of this planet Earth, because everybody in himself is a minotaur. In the physical plane we have the face of a human being, but if you inquire and investigate the face of any human being in the mental plane, everybody has a face of an animal, usually a bull.


And we see the tail, which symbolizes the wrong way we use the sexual energy, which is called the Kundabuffer or the tail of Satan, which is developed when we manage the forces of the animal in the wrong way. This develops when we do not follow the rules which are written in all religions, and that is why we have to transform ourselves into a Perseus in order to go into the labyrinth, which is our mind. The power in the center of the labyrinth is precisely the bull, the Minotaur, which is ourselves. We have to go there and to kill it. But for that we have to follow the rules which are written in a very wise way in this myth of the Minotaur. So behold here how everything is symbolized.


If you conquer it, of course, then you become a holy bull. But you have to transform it. That is why ancient people knew that, and that is why they were worshipping the bull Apis, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, the spouse of the divine cow, the Divine Mother. And their son was the calf, or Kabir, whose name was Horus. It is written Horus, but it is pronounced “Aurus,” and when you add to it the Cross which we have to work with, the result is: Taurus.

Taurus rules the throat. The throat is the area in which Taurus works. We find that this mysterious Sephirah of the Tree of Life called Daath, Gnosis, knowledge, is precisely located at the level of the throat. “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God,” it is written. Here you see Aurus, or Horus, with the Tau, the cross. You can divide them also as Tau, the cross Tau, and Aurus: Taurus.

This is the symbol of the Taurine mysteries which are now lost to most of humanity. Fortunately the Gnostic Church kept that, because everything, old wisdom, old knowledge, that was lost in this three-dimensional world, was not lost in the fourth dimension, it still exists. Maybe here, people will burn books, or destroy the wisdom of other civilizations, but that wisdom remains in the fourth dimension within the sacred temples of the White Lodge...

Regards




[edit on 8-2-2007 by Tamahu]

I concur with Masonic Light, Tam. It appears you've put a lot of effort into an educated post. I am now in the process of putting in the time to do more reading using the sources you have mentioned. Best regards. PS: I have read some of the authors you mentioned. Two men who are still alive are Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas. They have co-written several books that are a might interesting.

[edit on 8 2 07 by BCRanger]

Thanks BCRanger


I've thought of looking into the writings of the authors you mention.

From what I've seen, I doubt that they are Adepts or Masters like Eliphas Levi, Albert Pike, or Samael Aun Weor.

However, I'll bet that there's some interesting info they offer, that is not found else-where.






More on the 32nd Degree(interestingly enough, when you add up 32 Kabbalistically, you get 5 the number of Samael):

SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET

[Master of Royal Secret]

...Measure a corner of the Creation, and multiply that space in proportional progression, and the entire Infinite will multiply its circles filled with universes, which will pass in proportional segments between the ideal and elongating branches of your Compass. Now suppose that from any point whatever of the Infinite above you a hand holds another Compass or a Square, the lines of the Celestial triangle will necessarily meet those of the Compass of Science, to form the Mysterious Star of Solomon.


All hypotheses scientifically probable are the last gleams of the twilight of knowledge, or its last shadows. Faith begins where Reason sinks exhausted. Beyond the human Reason is the Divine Reason, to our feebleness the great Absurdity, the Infinite Absurd, which confounds us and which we believe. For the Master, the Compass of Faith is above the Square of Reason; but both rest upon the Holy Scriptures and combine to form the Blazing Star of Truth....

SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET

[Master of Royal Secret]

...The Secret of the Occult Sciences is that of Nature itself, the Secret of the generation of the Angels and Worlds, that of the Omnipotence of God.


"Ye shall be like the Elohim, knowing good and evil, "had the Serpent of Genesis said, and the Tree of Knowledge became the Tree of Death.


For six thousand(6+0+0+0 = 6) years the Martyrs of Knowledge(Daath/Gnosis) toil(for the sake of all sentient beings) and (their egos)die at the foot of this tree, that it may again become the Tree of Life.







The Absolute sought for unsuccessfully by the insensate and found by the Sages, is the TRUTH, the REALITY, and the REASON of the universal equilibrium!


Equilibrium is the Harmony that results from the analogy of Contraries.








Until now, Humanity has been endeavoring to stand on one foot; sometimes on one, sometimes on the other...

[edit on 9-2-2007 by Tamahu]

To explain more about Hermes-Aphrodite and the Square and Compass:

Samael Aun Weor and Goethe on the Philosophical Stone

The woman is the one who delivers the sword to man. She is the Urania-Venus with the sword in her hand...


...Disgracefully, as Goethe said, "The law of the woeful and severe man inquires, fights and agitates. What he needs the most is what he knows the least".

The man (human being) needs the Arcanum A.Z.F., but he does not know it. This is what he needs the most, but this is what he knows the least.

Master Jesus said:

"When you make male and female into a single one... then you will enter into the Kingdom." - Jesus of Nazareth, from The Gospel of Thomas

"So then, you, my brother Thomas, have beheld what is obscure to men, that is, what they ignorantly stumble against."

The stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence. - 1 Peter 2: 7-8

Occult Anatomy

The wise North-American Kabbalist Manly P. Hall, who was cited by the great Master of the White Lodge, Dr. Francisco A. Propato, said in his book of Occult Anatomy of Man, the following: "Those who will be incapable of lifting the fire of the spinal medulla throughout their Sushumna canal, will be cast aside into a lateral kingdom, similar to that of the present apes (monkeys, chimpanzees, etc.)."

This Aryan Root-Race has already converted itself into a mass of talking apes, capable of manufacturing radios, televisions, rockets, and atomic bombs, etc.

Aquarian Message

The experiences of life complicate and strengthen the "I". We have been evolving for many millions of years... so what? What did we gain with these many experiences?

The simple human being of eighteen million years ago is now the complicated, perverse, sly and selfish person of these great cities.

Is this progress?

[edit on 10-2-2007 by Tamahu]