An instrument of initiatory research
by Athos A. Altomonte

Freemasonry is a precious instrument of initiatory research for those who want to overcome the barrier of its formal and exoteric aspects.

Although Freemasonry is not the only mysteric source of the West, it is certainly the most significant container of symbolic representations available to the researcher. It is a complex of ancient and archaic initiatory fragments that, between past and present, build a wisdom bridge for a tradition flowing from the East to the West.

It is a big container and an efficient instrument of study of the principles of initiation. The latter can be found in ancient memories from the arcane of the Pramantha (the cold fire of Brahman cosmogony ), present as a symbol in the 18 th Scottish degree, to the sidereal correlations between man and stars that ancient builders hid in the external shapes of Pyramids; from sephirothic cosmology of the Temple of Jerusalem to the mysteric metaphors of Hellenic theogony.

Next to the most ancient ideas of the man-universe , Freemasonry puts the most recent, although not dissimilar, concepts of the hermetic and alchemic symbolism. In this way the old and modern aspects of the human Being end up by joining with the chivalrous ideals of the Masonic Scottish rite.

Although Freemasonry doesn't transmit any initiatory charisma, it is the instrument that allows to observe the process of the appearance of charisma in the humankind, of the metamorphosis that this has brought to the being and the will to be in its spiritual light.

Freemasonry is a practical magnifying glass through which we can observe the plurality of initiatory principles that are preserved in ceremonial forms, from the most ancient to the most recent. These representations must be read properly and not only slavishly interpreted. The value of their ritual psycho-dramas is not the same as any exoteric and popular viaticum. The purpose of its representations is not to satisfy the fancy of a crowd of postulants.

Each representation shows a particular fragment of reality, conceived through an exclusive learning system: intellectual intuition. In order to reach intuitiveness it is necessary to use symbols (see article) because each symbol offers to the conscious eye the reminiscence of the idea that founds it.

Once the meanings of the idea-root are left to a psychic mechanism similar to reflected memory, they are available to the perception of the observer as sensitive objects , as symbols and symbolic representations. With the improvement of the interaction between the observer and the meanings of the observed object, his sensitive conscience will become intellective knowledge.

Whilst sensitive knowledge is often only instinctive and without precise consequences in the conscience, intellective knowledge is a form of knowledge conscious of itself. It is a subtle sensitivity ready to grasp in the idea hidden in the symbol the reflection of ideas already existing in his soul (Plato) through intellectual intuition.

Going back to our method of research, Masonic representation offers all the advantages of a view of the whole without the disadvantages of a specific and particular view that would obscure the general sense of the work. The researcher, conscious that no interpretative fragments can be considered exhaustive, doesn't fall in the partiality of singularity, but he looks for the sense of every subject (biblical, alchemic, hermetic, Rosicrucian, templar, etc.) to add up in the view of a unique synthesis. The Masonic Pyramid in its wholeness makes this view visible, showing a principle that otherwise would remain nullified by the singularity of the fragment.

The initiate opposes any specialization that leads to a fragmentation of an initiatory reality, which he considers univocal and inseparable; he knows that nothing and nobody is ever how it appears. He plunges in the enigmatic depth of every form and expression, looking for meanings that haven't been lost but only abandoned and forgotten.

No seed is lost completely; every thought can be re-built if we understand that every human principle can be found in the humankind.

We shouldn't be surprised if the search for lost meanings resembles an inner dig. It is a kind of psychic archaeology that dipping in the memory of the symbol reflects on the emotional, psychic and spiritual sphere of a researcher, who is able to carry on and go beyond his limits in order to reach the truth he's looking for.