Post by Tamrin on Jul 14, 2009 7:00:33 GMT 10
Through Ritual to Enlightenment
[Excerpt - Paper by Julian Rees, Thirteenth Annual
Wendell K Walker Memorial Lecture - Linked Above]
[Excerpt - Paper by Julian Rees, Thirteenth Annual
Wendell K Walker Memorial Lecture - Linked Above]
A paper I wrote some years ago for the English publication Freemasonry Today reminded the readers that the p roper means of instructing young masons was not by repetition of degree ceremonies but by a system of set lectures. I made this discovery on reading Colin Dyer’s Emulation – A Ritual to Remember. In the late 18th and early 19thC, lodges of instruction did not teach degree ceremonies, so much more engaged were they in philosophical and moral debate. My discovery of this fact resonated with my own feelings on the matter, and was one of the stages in a journey I had undertaken, and still continue to make today, a journey whose name may be expressed as follows: Are we as Freemasons so bound up in the form of our craft as to have lost sight of the content behind the form? Let me put it another way. A christian priest or minister may pronounce the words of the Euc harist from beginning to end in the belief that by speaking the words he thereby fulfils his obligation, without taking the words into his heart, without feeling them, and without knowing, deep down, what the words are telling him. I do not of course suggest that this is true of all priests, merely that it can happen. And I have, over many years as a Freemason, come to the conclusion that some Freemasons intone the words of our beautiful ritual, often with great expressiveness and after having spent great effort memorising them, but without having a sense of the words, of how they affect and influence their lives, without, in short, having a sense of the divine. Many lodges in the world do not suffer from such myopic attitudes, but sadly the majority do seem to.
It was not always so. In England the history of ritual development provides some intriguing insights, and we may here digress for a moment to trace a little of the history of Freemasonry in England in the 18thC. In 1717, at the time of the constitution of the first Grand Lodge in England, Freemasonry consisted of only two degrees, both of which were very strongly christian in content. In the 1720s the third degree was added, or more correctly the second degree was split into two to form the second and third degrees, and at this time the de-christianizing of the ritual had begun. Our sensitivity to the mystical was in question; the Royal Arch degree was removed from its proper place at the heart of craft Freemasonry. The experience of the English in their empire-building in India and other parts of the world meant that the influence of religions other than the christian were brought into play, and in your own country there were instances of amerindians, who recognised shamanism, embracing Freemasonry.
It was not always so. In England the history of ritual development provides some intriguing insights, and we may here digress for a moment to trace a little of the history of Freemasonry in England in the 18thC. In 1717, at the time of the constitution of the first Grand Lodge in England, Freemasonry consisted of only two degrees, both of which were very strongly christian in content. In the 1720s the third degree was added, or more correctly the second degree was split into two to form the second and third degrees, and at this time the de-christianizing of the ritual had begun. Our sensitivity to the mystical was in question; the Royal Arch degree was removed from its proper place at the heart of craft Freemasonry. The experience of the English in their empire-building in India and other parts of the world meant that the influence of religions other than the christian were brought into play, and in your own country there were instances of amerindians, who recognised shamanism, embracing Freemasonry.
