Treaty of Esoteric Symbology and Archaic Cosmogony of the Masonic Temple
for the Freemason Brothers
Index: The boundaries of the Temple - The Masonic oblong square - The floor of the Temple
The boundaries of the Temple
The space that marks the Masonic Temple off is divided by three rectangular perimeters.
The first of the three rectangles is symbolical and it is the Lodge Picture; the second, energetic, is emanated from the Squaring of the Temple created by the Brothers and re-absorbed at their Ritual exit. Finally, the third is represented by the physical form of the Temple.
It is a good idea to remember that the same perimeters are valid for any "Man" structure; the Lodge Picture finds its correspondence in the Cardiac Center (or Tiphereth) of the Western Initiatory System, whilst the other two perimeters are configured in the Psychic Aura of man and by its physical-concrete representation.
This three-fold interpretation is therefore valid both in the man-micro aspect and in the reading of the "structure" aspect of the Macrocosmic Man.
The first rectangle of the Temple represents and in actual fact is its innermost and truest part; indeed, traditionally, its presence alone ratifies the rituality and the achievement of the Masonic Works carried out in this place.
In synthesis, it is stated that the presence of the Ritual rectangle, Lodge Picture and symbolic container qualifies as sacred and inviolable a space that would otherwise be profane.
Ritually used, the presence of the Lodge Picture determines univocally the qualification of the place and the Work, as indication of a consecrated Space.
Even though the concept that the Lodge Picture represents the symbolic container of the Masonic and initiatory meanings of the cognitive levels in the degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft or Master Freemason is true, if we only said this we would limit and hide the true Masonic sense of the symbolic expansion in the Lodge Picture as a center emanating knowledge in analogy with Tiphereth, the Heart of the System.
Therefore let's acknowledge that:
a) The Lodge Picture qualifies the space of the Temple and the level of the Work.
b) The Work in the Temple , with its Ritual, forms and keeps an Eggregore.
c) The Eggoregore, like a child, is initially educated by a specific family (Lodge).
d) The Ritual Eggregore of the M.L. clings to the center of the sacred Triangle lit by the three Lights evocating its essential qualities for the lighting of the three Ritual Fires:
«May Wisdom enlighten our Works,
May Strength make Them strong,
May Beauty irradiate and accomplish Them,
For the benefit of the Humankind and to the Glory of the Great Architect of the Universe.»
e) The Eggregore of the M.L. is the emanation, on the plane of microcosm, of the psychic Will and the ethereal Energy of the Bro. Ms. that take part in it and the conjoined and sacred counterpart of the Ideal represented by the G.A.O.T.U.
f) The Eggregore, regularly constituted by the Lodge, according to the principles emanated by the Archetype through the Laws of Harmonics can be put in contact, through a planned Ritual, with the Eggregore of the Masonic Order of which, for the moment, only the Name and the general concept has been exteriorized, but that remains and must remain inviolate.*
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* The general concept is known by the Name of Universal Freemasonry and it will remain inactive until the Masons will be told, in all safety, the Laws of Sound, whose first emanation is the Destructing effect.
In order for this to happen, the Master Masons must remember that: the Eggregore of the Lodge must grow in Similitude with the Laws that rule the life of the Eggregore of the Order, which is on its turn Harmoniously Constituted , on the Laws that rule the same Planetary Logos which we are all part of and that in its turn is in Sinchrony with its W.M., the Solar Logos.
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g) It follows that the Evocative Technique is simple. Through this, the Bro. M. Ms. gathered in the Temple, through themselves and by the Elevation in the Ritual Tension and in the Symbols of the Picture Lodge and of the Ceremonial, can recall and increase the strength and the vibration of the Eggregore of any Masonic degree and level of knowledge, up to a possible umbrage whose contents cannot be exteriorized.
You will understand how, through the strengthening of a Ritual Will the Power of the Eggregore in the Ceremonial is elevated and at the same time the power of the Symbolic Mirror, the Speculum of Initiates enclosed in the triangle of the Three Sacred Luminaries of the Temple, source emanating qualified energy, whose reflection will be transmitted on the Brothers by the Three Lights that support the Lodge, creating the regenerating Energetic Motion to which, by effect of Resonance , the first occult Sound of the true and perfect Lodge will respond. It is a psychic or spiritual drive of Its components towards the idea of the G.A.O.T.U. and the response of this Ideal in Its Will to reach Its creations.
We can conclude by saying that in the central Triangle, made by the lighting of the Ritual Fires, is enclosed the Rectangle, the Speculum, that contains and preserves the mundane and Super-mundane Soul of the Lodge, as Chorda Fratres or Chain of Unification.
The second Rectangle, Ritually drawn by the Ceremonial of the Bro. Initiates, is the psychic and ethereal energy of the Lodge as part of a Unique and Necessary Masonic Body, with which we can be in Harmony only by receiving its influences or in Disharmony by remaining excluded and separated in a blunt profane blindness.
The third Rectangle, the walls, is the physical and manifested counterpart of the Temple with Its symbols of stone.
The physical and concretely manifested part of the Lodge is in actual fact made by the ritualized body of its components, the Bros.
The psychical and ethereal counterpart of the Bros creates and joins the ethereal of the Lodge.
The Power of the Word, that is the physical counterpart of the G.A.O.T.U. in the Unification or Fusion with the Ideal called to reflect itself in the consecration of His Name, forms its Eggregore, the Soul of the Chorda Fratres in harmony and to the Glory of the G.A.O.T.U.
The Masonic oblong square
The rectangular form of the oblong square (*) in the Temple concretely and symbolically shows the Path or Initiatory Way which, along the equatorial ecliptic of the Planet leads from the West to the East, seat of the rising Sun.
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* Oblong square: «a parallelogram, or foursided figure, all of whose angles are equal, but two of whose sides are longer than the others. Of course the term oblong square is strictly without any meaning, but it is used to denote two squares joined together to form a rectangle.» (From "Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and its kindred sciences, by Albert C. Mackey˚ ).
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The Temple represents the image of the Planetary Logos in the Cosmos; this is why its dimensions cannot be defined. Its width goes from North to South and its height from Nadir, the center of the Earth, to the Zenith, the center of the Sun, the Solar Logos, whose perfect mathematical and astronomical representation has been passed on to us in the proportions of the Pyramid.
The oblong square, which we will study in detail when we will deal with the symbology represented in the Floor of the Masonic Temple, is made of a rectangle, a figure geometrically composed by the sum of a double square, whose symbolic meaning is certainly already known to the Brother.
Once the Squaring of the Temple is activated by the Bro. Initiates, the oblong square becomes the equivalent of the Magic Circle of the works of contact with the elemental Spirits or Energies of the four Kingdoms of Nature.
The Master Mason acts with the purpose of allowing the appearance of the Spirit of the Order in the Vortex of the Eggregore; by appearing among the Brothers, it transforms the humblest of the rooms into the most Venerable of Temples thanks to the Strength of the Ritual Magic of the Ceremonial.
The floor of the Temple
As I have pointed out in other works, on the Floor of the Temple appear and are carried out all the multifold possibilities of advancement on the Initiatory Path of the Master Mason, only with the conditioning given by Free Will and the shrewdness of knowing or wanting to recognize.
I will say that the Floor of the Temple represents the (horizontal) plane of Reason or concrete Mind (the Manas of Easterners) and it is the only physical part able to receive the reflection of (vertical) Heaven as an Act of comprehension of Spirit, in the manifestation of its various levels of energetic density.
On the Floor are represented all the parts of the System that can be reasonably absorbed by Man in his expansion up to the limits of the representation itself.
The Initiate will have the total comprehension of the Great Work in the complete vision of the parts; he will then free himself from the need of a Symbolic and therefore elementary representation of the Planetary Logos; by demolishing the Pillars of the Temple, which are its artificial representation, he will access with open eye the Light of the vertical plane of the Intellect and the affirmation of Truth in recognizing the reality of the Path, which proceeds from the Planet which we are the manifestation of towards the Solar Logos, the G.A.O.T.U..
All this remains perfectly readable in the demolition of the Pillars, in the Ritual of symbolic initiation of the Knight Kadosh; the trampling on the floor of the Red Curtain with the Templar Cross symbolizes the overcoming of the last prison of the initiate, the Order itself, guardian of the Symbolic Temple , the Temple of Solomon.
" ...there, where science stops, religions offered to guide you in the 'non knowable'. Freemasonry on one hand let you go up the Hierarchy of its degrees, with the promise always renewed and always failed to let you know the secret of the Verb. Therefore you have been led to build the Temple that you have now symbolically demolished.
Now, you must understand that what you demolished is neither Religion nor Freemasonry, or the ingenuous or ingenious symbols where the Humankind embodied, in different places and during millenary periods, the highest aspirations of its imagination and its heart.
What you have demolished is the belief that such symbols have some kind of value outside the idea that is placed on them, it is the claim that the Great Architect of the Universe is enclosed inside the Pillars of a Temple, even the Masonic one.
On such ruins You can today accomplish the mission of the Knight Kadosh, working for the building of the Temple that doesn't depend on the stone or the hammer, because it is the Temple of Ideal...".
I thought it was better to illustrate clearly a series of information on the Floor in order to reach together certain conclusion that I consider fundamental for the passage through the various levels of comprehension.
We have repeatedly considered how the mosaic floor of the Temple represents the ancient Mosaic Law, which addresses the consideration of the opposites such as good and evil, beauty and ugliness, fairness and unfairness, which the Mason must learn to recognize and walk between them and separate them as an Act of Discrimination and Consciousness.
It must be clear that such considerations remain in the field of moral Codes, of black and white; it is an elementary interpretation of reality and therefore it is of easy access for the reason of any Aspirant.
But by penetrating a little more in the graphic representation of the next image we can immediately consider that the two access Pillars marked J and B are placed specularly to the Tree of Life, which is placed vertically on the bottom of the Temple.
After the moral aspect we find an esoteric interpretation of the representation of the Temple.
The two visible Pillars, J and B, represent in the Work of the Temple the presence of the two energies, male and female; but if we look carefully both on the ground and on the Tree of Life, we can see a third Pillar that we could call invisible if it wasn't more appropriate to say metaphysical.
The central Pillar, therefore, represents the Spiritual energy present in every stage of the manifestation even if it is invisible to the physical eye.
Such energetic presences are remembered in the Masonic Ritual by the three columns, Doric, Ionic and Tuscan, placed in front of each of the Three Lights.
The three Pillars of the Tree of Life, or Sephirothic Tree, represent the Trees of Knowledge of Good and Evil on the right and on the left, whilst the central one represents the Tree of Life. This is the definition of the Old Testament.
But we would be closer to the truth if we recognized them as Pillars of Three-fold Energy: active, passive and neutral (for the physical world).
By ideally demolishing the three vertical Pillars on the floor, to the first moral meaning of the Mosaic surface we add a second energetic meaning, male (right pillar), female (left pillar) and neutral (central pillar); we also add a third meaning, for which on the floor are carried out the 10 main Stations called Sephirs and the 22 transversal Paths, each with a meaning explained by the Ancient Hebrew Tradition. Since this work doesn't have the purpose of explaining the origin and the meaning of the Sephiroths, we will only mention their presence on the Floor of the Temple in order to understand their energetic motion hidden by the Builders.
The three pomegranates placed at the top of the Passive Pillar B represent the constant Work, invisible to the eye of the non Introduced to the Mysteries, carried out for the humankind by the Great Mother that contains everything in Herself .
Whilst at the top of the Active Pillar J lies the representation of the Planet, to remind us that the Work of Freemasonry "for the Benefit of the Humankind" must in actual fact have a wider aspect, up to the realization of being an integrating and integrated part of the Life of the Logos itself with the Laws of Its Great Book of Nature (see The Great Book of Nature).
Paradoxically we might define Humankind as the blood of the Planet, since it is the Vehicle of Its Ego.
The energy that moves in the Temple, precisely the one which is not produced by man, comes as a reflection and therefore specularly; this means that we will always perceive it opposite to its original form. For this reason the people who work with metaphysics must be prepared to perceive everything reversed, or rather to reverse everything they see.
In the next image we find the Traditional Sephirothic System on the Oblong square, complete with the original indications of the Esoteric Cabbala, which establish that for the Work of the temple there are 10 necessary presences for the life and constitution of an Eggregore of the Order.
The Constitution of a True and Perfect Lodge at the glory of the G.A.O.T.U. is defined by the exact formation of an Eggregore, otherwise nothing happens.
For exactness of information, in the lower part of the previous image I represented the formation of a Circular Temple according to the Hebrew Archaic Tradition, following the esoteric development of the Sephiroths. In actual fact, apart from a short comment, I don't think that at the present time the learning of such a System can interest the Mason other than in a historical contest.
The Hebrew System in the whole stopped 4,000 years ago; since then it has remained separated from man's evolution in a kind of splendid crystal and it is now unreachable.
But all Traditions originate from a unique Truth and during time they keep in their folds, for people able and willing to find it, all the original initiatory knowledge. In the Sephiroths hidden in the Floor of the Temple we will find the Adam Kadmon whose Ethereal Body's Centers they represent.
In the third image we find the representation of the two Adams hidden in the Temple.
The Macrocosmic Adam, son of the World of Light, which with a biblical term we can call the Son, and the Earthly Adam, us the Personalities, daughters of the World of Darkness.
The Prodigal Son in the painful quest on the Path of Return.
They are the Two Twins of all Traditions
The Twins hidden in the Masonic Oblong square
Ten Master Masons, present and working on the horizontal Plane of the Temple , the Plane of concrete mind, make the Astral Body of the Lodge Eggregore.
This is the meaning of the first diagram in the image that follows:
To stop the Work of construction at this level means to impregnate the Energy of the Group only with astralism (emotions and desires), which is separating and selfish. It would be a work deviating towards Negativity, viz. towards the Path of the Left Hand.
I am certain that the text that accompanies the diagrams of the Table in stages 1, 2, and 3 are explanatory enough, as much as it is possible for an exposition that omits the technical aspect of the Sephirothic System, which on the other hand we have treated and used in other works.
Even though I might surprise many Bros., I would like to state clearly that the Traditional Hebrew System as it can be seen today, even in its most esoteric forms, is only a Saturnine System, therefore only with Mental values of Intelligent Activities (3 rd Aspect) of high level, but nothing more.
The System we are discussing doesn't contain any more a Real Initiatory potential, but only a speculative one. So much so that, stuck in the Work of the Oblong square, they don't have reached yet the prerogatives for the construction of the Circular Temple.
Let's carry on in the quest for some sound conclusions.
In the next image we can find at the same time the Three Levels of the Journey that the Mason carries out in order to complete his instruction and to be able to operate in an autonomous and conscious manner.
At the bottom, in stage one, we recognize the level of the Oblong square, which we had already discovered implying only the Concrete Mental Body of the Student.
I will not waste time in giving explanations for a Table that is already quite clear, but I would like to highlight the common denominator of the three Floors: the succession of the Zodiacal Motion. This matter is little appreciated and understood by the Masons who work on the first level, concrete moral and mental.
This situation changes in the passage to the Middle Chamber or Chamber of Perfection. The Mason becomes more scientific in the quest for results and in his affirmations.
Since the Floor expresses the quest for Synthesis in the minds, it is represented in reality by a geometrical figure – not real because it is made of two squares – (the Rectangle), which this time will be the Square.
Once the need for a representation of the Temple immobile in Time and Space has left the Initiate, in Man it will appear the ability to understand and follow the motion of the System and therefore of the Order through Motion, in Its Universal manifestation.
Rhythm and Ritual Comprehension of such Initiate will constantly and naturally follow the Motion and the Real Meanings of His True Lodge, which he always and by right belonged to, but to which he will have access only in a physical form, demonstrating that he is able to live the Universal concept. 
