Freemasonry: The Study of a Phenomenon

[Tamrin]

Freemasonry: The Study of a Phenomenon

Alexander Piatigorsky, 1999, The Harvill Press, London

[originally published as, Who's Afraid of Freemasonry?, 1997]

[Excerpt]

Freemasonry has existed almost unchanged since the beginning of the eighteenth century, quietly defying history and the march of time, while simultaneously being more obsessed with its own history than any other institution in the world. From the start, the Craft (as it is often referred to) has assiduously recorded its existence year by year, month by month, day by day, constantly defining its own past, while remaining almost unaffected by the history of mankind in general. The whole corpus of Masonic historical literature rivals in size — if not exceeds — the collection of works devoted to the history of any major country during the same period (1717—1990).

So why does Freemasonry persist, and to what end? The range of opinion on this point is very wide. Among Masons themselves, views vary from " the reason is to be enlightened by the divine unfathomable light" (William Preston), through "our scope is spiritual perfection and moral self-improvement" (G. Oliver), to "our utmost pleasure s enjoying the good conversation" (Martin Clare. Among those opposed to Masons the spectrum is equally wide: from the quite innocuous "a children's game which children themselves are not able to understand" (J. Weiss), through "an extreme case of institutional nonsense and religious incongruity mixed with blasphemy" (an American anonym), to "a hidden aspiration to achieve the malevolent power over the whole world" (John Quincy Adams).

The two Masonic paradoxes, its unveiled secrecy and its anti-historical history, do not arise out of our ignorance of Masonry or out of Freemasonry's incomplete knowledge of itself. They are inherent in the nature of Freemasonry as a religious phenomenon and are exacerbated by an incomplete understanding of it as such by Masons and non-Masons alike. To understand Masonry — and this applies to the understanding of any religious phenomenon — is to understand oneself with respect to Masonry. The average contemporary writer on Masonry reflects, on the whole, the general attitude to Masonry in that he usually reacts to it either positively or negatively, and with or without adequate information. Yet what is needed, more than reaction or even knowledge, is understanding.

pp.xiii/xiv

[Tamrin]

Freemasonry: The Study of a Phenomenon

Alexander Piatigorsky, 1999, The Harvill Press, London

[originally published as, Who's Afraid of Freemasonry?, 1997]

[Excerpt]

Most non-Masonic historians have either stressed the extremely eclectic and contrived character of the Masonic Rituals, or simply denied that the Old Testament references have any real connection with Christianity. As for Masonic historians, the majority somewhat contradictorily regard the rituals of Freemasonry as on the one hand unique, and certainly not derived from any pre-Gospel Christian roots, and on the other as having nonetheless a common origin with other Near Eastern and Egyptian hermetic traditions.

My approach to this question is quite different, for I am absolutely sure that if something works as a ritual, a ritual it is, irrespective of how many different separate rituals or entire ritual traditions might have been used in the process of its spontaneous development or, often enough, its conscious and deliberate creation. Each and every ritual may be regarded from at least two points of view. The first is the position of the observer who sees it in its functional totality, when the only thing, when the only thing that matters is how and for what purpose it exists and is used. Whether it was introduced five minutes or five millennia ago, or whether it is homogeneous or heterogeneous in its origins and composition is irrelevant in this case, for this position sees any ritual holistically as an ethos. In other words, it exists sui generis and represents a unity of action, however complex the components might be. The second point of view is of a scholar who not only knows about an immense variety of rituals, past and present, which are elements of the world’s religions, but also and probably first of all, sees in that variety several universal and elementary paradigms or invariants to which this whole diversity can be reduced as variants or versions. Moreover, this approach presupposes that what we call a ritual is always complex and has its own history, being synchronically structural and diachronically subject to change and transformation.

p.87