The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal: VIII. The Analogies of Masonry: § A. The Assumption of the Building Guild

VIII

THE ANALOGIES OF MASONRY

§ A. THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BUILDING GUILD

The interpretation of doctrine is good, but the thing which is essential is life, and thereafter those measures of experience which are proper to the degree of life. In like manner, there is the study of the symbolism which is outside doctrine but gives evidence of its inward sense; herein, as I believe, there are the keys of many sanctuaries, or at least of many gates leading to the holy places; but again it is a certain quality of life--and this only--which sheds light upon symbolism, or by which there is an entrance effected beyond the threshold or artificial and corporate part of secret knowledge and much more therefore into the Holy of Holies. It is in this sense that it is said in the old Scriptures: "He is not the God of the dead but of the living."

As regards the keys and the secrets, it is necessary also that we should distinguish between life and its records. The latter remain as examples, as traces, as evidences, and no one should presume to affirm that they are not of high value. It is, however, after their

It is especially over the place and importance of certain literatures which contain a hidden meaning, and over certain unmanifested confraternities which communicate mysteries other than political in their complexion, that the memorials of the past sometimes prove to be as lavender laid among linen--fragrant, as it may perhaps be, but dead as the past which has buried them. So long, for example, as our great, authorised scholarship--holding, though it does, all warrants of textual research--has recourse only to pre-Christian Celtic records for an explanation of the Graal and its literature, so long it will have nothing to give us but the dry bones of things antecedent in semi-savage folk-lore, and not the essence which is alive. Again, while other experts in research seek among the trade guilds of the Middle Ages for the sources of that which is termed Masonry, they will find nothing that will communicate to them either life or the life of life. Of the latter it should be added that scholarship is not in search, and at its sudden manifestation the old students might be perplexed, and that certainly. I am writing, however, for those who in literature and in secret association would look indifferently for some signs of that quest which they are themselves pursuing--I mean, the Divine Quest. To these I can say plainly that out of the mere things of genealogy there is nothing that can rise again. It is only under high light and guidance that the gift of interpretation, acknowledging all antecedents which have been demonstrated in the historical order, can relegate them to their proper sphere, and can say at need to others, as they have said long since to themselves:

I have bracketed for the moment the external history of the Holy Graal with that of Freemasonry, because although the analogy between them is of one kind only it is an analogy of great importance. As a time came when the old Celtic folk-tales were taken over in a Christian and indeed in a mystic interest, as it is only subsequently to this acquisition that the literature of the Holy Graal can be said properly to exist, so also came that hour when the mystery--such as it was--of the old building guild was assumed by another mystery, as a consequence of which it was re-expressed with a different intention, and it is thus, and so only, that, as a shadow of things beyond it, there came into being the association which we understand as symbolical Masonry. So far as we can regard it under the aspect of a succeeding or co-incident witness, the epoch of Kabalism was prolonged by the scholiasts of the Zohar, until that period when the next witness was beginning to emerge. After this manner I return to my initial statement that the gift of interpretation is good, but that which is essential is life. It is only the spirit of life which can account, in whatever form it was manifested, for the assumption either of the romance-literature or the particular craft. Without it we have indeed interpretations, as we have also hypotheses of origin, but they are devoid of true roots. As a species of extra-illustration in the first case, there have been various hypotheses put forward which are neither countenanced by the records of the past nor characterised by a gift of understanding; while in the second case we have had simply the romance of archæology or that alternative gift which fills gaps in history by arbitrary suppositions masqued thinly in the guise of fact. Official authorities may be sometimes short of sight, as they are, outside their horizon, but these unaccredited intermediaries have brought their subjects