In search of the Sacre in Freemasonry

A search implies wandering, not just through places but, as Homer taught
us with his Odyssey *1, through human thoughts and in ideas.
I would like in this draft of an essay on a Quest, I would like to talk about the
ever present but constantly fleeting element of masonry, the Sacré.
It is my belief that I’m doing it in a moment of crisis; not a crisis of ideas or
theories, but the existing, tangible one of the current everyday life; a crisis
that concerns not only Greece, but the entire Europe also and, maybe, many
other parts of our planet. A crisis that is partly economic in nature, but
mainly a crisis of institutions, a cultural crisis, a crisis of values.
It is no wonder that in those special times that we happen to live in, where
the diesenchantment that Max Weber had predicted is evident everywhere, in
this desacralized world, many brothers or even Masonic lodges seek out and
propose secularized2 versions of freemasonry. By instinctively seeking the
familiar, absorbed in the vortex of the crisis, they propose easy “esoteric”
interpretations and interpretative outlets. This should be compatible with
their social and – covertly or openly – political or religious background, no
matter if it is an Eastern or Western one.

I'm not going to mention the ancient rules of Anderson and of Frederic the
Great, among others, who warn against or even forbid any relationship with
politics and religion. It is not illogical when any human being, any brother is
finding himself intensely troubled or in a personal dead end to choose and
propose solutions based on his social or religious background.
Life in the Lodge and the initiation process deepen a brother's thought and,
as it is said, it makes a good man better. Thus, it is to be expected that many
brothers around the world propose and participate in social interventions
and charity events. Many even find analogies and interpretations of masonry

1
πολλῶν δ᾿ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω, / and many were the men whose towns he
saw and whose mind he learnt . Homer's Odyssey, Rhapsody A, 3.
2
A simple rendering of secularization is the interpretation of reality without accepting any
metaphysical reference.
according to the religious tradition of their upbringing and become better
religious persons. Still, all of this – and this is just my opinion – do not
represent a way of progress or modernization of freemasonry. They are the
result of an interesting, even revolutionary in this era of stagnation of ideas,
but always-secular view of freemasonry. This leads to the transformation of
the initiation act in a bright celebration that can defuse emotion and satisfy
personal egos dressed in gold regalia, even though the joy of the celebration
cuts out the mystical communion and the action that through the passions
could potentially lead, according to Aristotle, to Catharsis.
All of the above attract a great number of today's freemasons – and none of it
is new.
Let me remind you of what Plato was saying while talking about the
mysteries of the age to Phaedon, an age that for many of us has mythical and
idealized dimensions. Most of the people participating in those rituals were
just flamboyantly wearing the bright regalia of the era. Just a few of them
were the real Bacchants3, those that through the drama experienced Catharsis
or Hierophany.
He refers to the ever-escaping Sacré as opposed to the siren-like attractive
Secular. According to Mircea Eliade this unapproachable Sacré has a first
definition given as: Sacré is anything composing the contrary of the Secular.

I believe that it is the right time to talk about our foundations.

Masonic life in its entirety takes place within the Lodge and nowhere else.
I consider it as a given that all brothers fully understand that metals must be
left «before the Temple's gate» and that they act upon it by locking away the
passions and influence of everyday life before we meet in brotherhood as
freemasons. They all act in reminiscence of the peak moment after the
completion of their initiation, when they faced the self/enemy in the Mirror.
The Mirror is the symbol of the world, the field of the reflected image, the
profane, i.e. secular everyday life. And that is the trap that led young Zagreas

3
«Εἰσί γάρ δή οἱ περί τάς τελετάς ναρθηκοφόροι μέν πολλοί, Βάκχοι δέ τε παῦροι» (Many
comes to the ceremonies carrying a Thyrsos, but very few are real Bacchus)
- Dionisus to his sacrifice and through that to the birth of the manifested
world, as it is emphatically underlined to the neophyte.
Profane world and time are phrases the mason hears and I want to point out
that the profane here is not related with any religious interpretation. It only
means the secular human being and the secular time of an everyday life.
The coming together of freemasons always contains allegories, mythical
narratives, specific marks, movements and words, all these things that we call
symbolism and symbols. These special symbols are the only elements that
masonry offers, alongside the initiation act, to every brother, so that he can
grow in his masonic path by understanding them. Nothing more is given.

So what are symbols?

According to Joseph Campbell, symbols are the archetypal forms that have
inspired the years of human civilization, the basic images of ritual, of
mythology and vision. The symbolic myth «is the secret opening through
which are shared/ entering the never-ending energies of the world in the
human cultural manifestation, presenting solutions that directly apply to the
whole of mankind».
Symbols are those that «contribute» in experiencing a holy place beyond the
secular space of our everyday life, and through this in the approach of that
which is not approachable to reason, causing the transcendence.

Not all of that is exactly masonry, but they clearly indicate something to us.
If we approach symbols in a different way, there is the potential that they will
lead us to the source of the myth that existed before the birth of the city, of
the society and of its religious phenomenon. This is an exceptional way of
interpretation, and it is great when a young mason decides to study this
approach, moving beyond secular pursuits.
But not even that can provide anything on the Experience of the Sacré. Any
attempt of understanding the essence of it through psychology, sociology, or
any other science is doomed to fail.
Think: The most successful effort to define the Sacré is by saying what it is
Not – i:e. through negative determinations – or by using analogies:
The element of the Sacré is the only non-reducible element which can only be
experienced and not defined. The word «experienced» reminds us that the
A.A.S.R. (Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite) is a long initiatory and
experiential process. Nobody ever said it is easy, or brief, or that there are
instructions and manuals to guide a rational approach.
Masonry, through its symbolism and initiation acts is something analogous to
the mysteries, an echo of ancient acts performed with the hope that by
imitating a great and perfect act, and through the passions, the viewer would
be led to Catharsis4; and through it, maybe even to the breach of time and
space that will allow – for a moment – Hierophany.
By using one more characteristic phrase of Rudolf Otto, I would say that the
Sacré appears always as mysterium tremendus et fascinans: a terrible mystery
that causes a sense of horror and awe and at the same time one of irresistible
charm.
So how can we talk about that which cannot be reduced to approachable to
us as concepts and as a result cannot be defined or classified?
By adopting an old method, I'm going to pretend I know the subject that I
will develop to you like a mythical narration, hoping that some of you will be
swayed by my certainty and probably understand something that is beyond
words. Unfortunately, I do not have all necessary knowledge to analyze our
Greek ancestors, and especially Plato, who in abandoning anthropomorphic
interpretations talked about the one, the En. During the Neoplatonic period,
there is a classification and reproduction of the ancient knowledge, and thus
it passes to Europe and to the present, shaping the entire Western tradition. It
is then that Damaskius mentions the En (one) that is placed before the unit
and is the symbol of the ineffable beginning.

4
The definition of tragedy according to Aristotle : “A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action
that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable acces-
sories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative
form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such
emotions.” Imgram Bywater, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press,
1920.
On the other hand Proclus, on his comments on Plato's “Politeia” repeats that
“before the numbers, there is the beginning of everything, the Unit and the
Dyad. The Unit is identified with the idea of the Finite (the limit, the end, the
perfect) and the Dyad with the idea of the unlimited, the infinite and the
endless. Still, before the Unit and the Dyad there is the Ena (One) that is the
cause of the finite and the infinite: ”
That is to say, the ineffable beginning of Damascius, the unspeakable, such
which can not be said.
During the same period the Hermetic texts are written. There we find the
well-known hint: «that which is above is as that which is below, and that
which is below is as that which is above… so from this One Thing come all
things by adaptation / analogy».
We already established that the ineffable, the Sacré is the only non-reducible
element, but our primitive brain, trying to understand, always escapes to the
convenience of analogy.
During the same Hellenistic period occurs the formation – with deep
influences from Neoplatonism – of Cabala, which I choose to go on.

Before the existence of the biblical «In the Beginning», before the existence of
time space and mind that could wonder about this absence, there was the
Ayin, a word that clearly reminds us of the En (One).
When it obtains consciousness of itself, a fold into nothing creates the Ayn
Sof, that could be freely translated as the first Wisdom and named as the
second form of the Ineffable .
And then a reflection on this fold creates the first flash, the first light.

My Brothers.
We enter in the masonic space to create the Universe of the Lodge, i.e.
another existential condition than that of our everyday life. We enter in
absolute darkness that is light upon by a flash, a small flame, a pre-existing
small light that gets there from the primordial flash of the Sacre.

The Worshipful Master at the Far East, lights the other two lights that
represent the first small – Lesser Lights – of the Lodge. We could claim that
he represents the fourth principle that along with the three mentioned above
gives the pythagorian tetractis. The first geometrical solid of the creation, the
pyramid, symbol of the divine and of perfection and, according to the
Egyptians, of the primary matter that came out of the primordial waters
(Benben). The Pyramidion that according to our Masonic Ritual is placed
above the cubic stone of the perfect mason.
The Scottish masonic dictionaries consider the ultimate point of the edge of
the pyramid to be the point from where the spiritual radiation and influence
spreads to the four directions of space, as well as the point that defines the
World Axis.
(Think about the analogy of the cube and the pyramid, with Apprentice apron that has the
triangle cover raised and that of the Companion having more distance from the first
spiritual influence, he explores the matter, i.e. the square)

For the continuation of the creation the Worshipful Master gets to his place,
the N.E. limit of the Lodge -where they used to place the foundation stone of
the Cathedrals.
There, he summons the representatives of the two Pillars that define the
entrance to the Universe of the Lodge, just as the columns B and J were
defining the entrance to Solomon's Temple. Those are the Senior and Junior
Wardens. The limits of the creation of the Universe of our Lodge are
described in detail in the Ritual: From East to West, from South to North and
from Zenith to Nadir.
Who does not understand that they describe a Universe beyond the
measurements of the astronomers and of the everyday calendars that have
existed, exist and will exist?
An atopic Universe being created for the sake of the brothers of the Lodge
and only for them. The Worshipful Master and the two Wardens will light
the three columns that will support this atopic Cosmos being created.
And then the material light spreads to every corner of space.

After that characteristic moment (a moment hardly perceptible moment), the

Sacre is hidden or forgotten in the East and we enter in the symbolic (under
creation ) universe of the Lodge – beyond the profane, secular existence of
our everyday life- and of the Brothers that constitute and will keep
constituting it, from the moment of its birth to the end of the Ages.
The next step of the opening of the lodge leads us from the Hellenistic period
to Heizenberg's uncertainty principle.
When you look at the world, the world behaves in the way you look at it.
Or, simply put, the universe exists because of the existence of the Observer. I
exist because of the existence of the «Other» that observes me (an interaction
that according to some works both ways).
Remember that God created everything as a potentiality, but they obtained
substance – living soul (ψυχὴν ζῶσαν) of the Bible only when Adam named
them, thus making them part of his myth. We will come back to it at the end
of this paper.

Coming back where we started from, the Lodge is still being created. How is
it going to obtain substance?
Undertake to Mythesize, the namegiving of creation. It is taken up not by the
representative of the distant Principle, the Worshipful Master, but the
representatives of the limits of this universe, the Senior and Junior Warden.
They name and define the properties of space, of themselves and finally o the
Worshipful Master himself.
By then «everything is according to the rite», and the Worshipful Master asks
from the Wardens to inform the members that « …that the Worshipful Master
intends to open the works ».
In this Lodge there is always a constant repetition from and to our brothers of
our ritual, i.e. the allegories, narratives, words, marks, steps, the totality of
the symbols.

Do all realize their existence and meaning? The A.A.S.R. is, as we mentioned
above, a long initiation and experiential path. Baudelaire adequately
described it in his « Correspondances », talking about the temple,

“… in which living pillars sometimes give voice to confused words; man passes there
through forests of symbols which look at him with understanding eyes”.
No book and no interpretation of an older master can cover one's necessary
initiation path. Every brother will walk his personal experiential path
between symbols and concepts, till that time when those that had neither
image nor name, the ineffable, will obtain for him substance and meaning.

Everybody knows that the Tracing Board illustrates the universe of the
Lodge just as it evolves gradually between ranks. It is placed in the only
ABATON, inaccessible part of the Lodge, the mosaic floor. As we know from
anthropological studies of certain rituals the trespassing into the ABATON,
the rupture of this spatial taboo is necessary and confirms its secret
significance. The drama culminates in a sacrifice.

According to Mircea Eliade this sacrifice is equated with an act of creation,

with a transition from the shapeless and iconic to the shaped and secularized,
i.e. to another level, a different existential level beyond the profane,
secularized everyday life. And this process of formation, this definitive
creation of the universe of the Lodge in another level, is illustrated as a
Temple.

The sacrifice gives the potential to rupture the cosmic levels, re-establishing
communication between them. This interface is expressed with different
images, all related to the axis of the Universe, AxisMundi. (Remember how
we pointed it out in the symbol of the Pyramid and of the cubic stone?)
Which are the images? An upright man, Jacob's stair, the column, the circle
with the point of its center. Symbols that we find engraved in the place of the
Abaton in all masonic rites and express the following: The universe of the
Lodge, or, masonicaly speaking, the Temple, has been restored extending
around that cosmic axis, which is a holy place, a navel, center of the circle and
of the world. And all of this is accomplished because of the restored axis, i.e.
the raised, the conscious mason.
It is obvious that the three columns, not having a reason of existence from
that point on, disappear.
That moment the entire Cosmos is represented as a Man-Temple (3 rd grade).
And the mason realizes (or should realize) that he as well as every human
being, every brother that existed, exists and will exist are part of this ideal
Man, of this ideal Temple, this ideal Cosmos, and that their forms at some
moment were coincide?
With that in mind and standing at the point of rupture of the levels in front of
the position of the altar and the sacrifice he looks to an East which is no
longer the same.

There is a good reason the place is named Devir, which means the WORD
(logos). Not an analogy, not a cause, but Logos, the word.
«In the beginning was the Word» reminds to us the always open on the altar
gospel of John. The Logos that existed before the Cosmos and the form,
before the existence of sound that could carry it, i.e. the ineffable, has become
discernible in the depths of the East, but still it's hardly approachable.

From the quest for the unexpressed or ineffable starts the long journey of the
mason, one of gradual experiential evolution through the progressive
initiation path of Philosophical masonry.
It's a road of duty and at the same time of liberty on the path of the tragic
initiatory hero.
Each mason is alone and at the same time he contains and is contained in the
totality of the masons.
Like Nikos Kazantzakis writes in his Askitiki / The Saviors of God, «His
invisible body is his dead ancestors and unborn progeny». His debt towards
them, his ultimate Duty, being «heavy as death» makes him journey to the
ends of earth seeking for that which is lost.

The path of Duty in relation to the «other» and to «alterity» is the path
reaching to Freedom.

The Freedom of choices and decisions that can lead one to the experience of
the Sacre.
He is the Axis of the World, he is the stairway that brings together sky and
earth. And just like Jacob, if and when he faces Heaven's Gate, he will mutter
«Awesome this place is».

And what happens then?

Remember that in the ancient mysteries the initiatory hero didn't intend to
settle on Olympus among gods. He was opening the way to Olympus and
wilfully coming back to share with his brothers the new existential horizons,
denying the Olympian immortality.

There is no talk about Messiahs or saviors neither intermediaries will take

our own responsibility. This is exclusive property of religions and never had
anything to do with the mysteries. This is a fundamental difference that very
few people realize.
The initiatory hero is the tragic hero. He comes back to his brothers, knowing
very well that he can be hated and hunted down by those not yet able to
understand him, and still he chooses with absolute freedom the undertaking
of the highest Duty.

He does that because the «other» is not anymore somebody else, but the
Brother. At that moment the secular otherness that penetrates our everyday
life disappears in the Brotherhood.

All the members of the brotherhood, as I've already mentioned several times,
can through this way be reduced to one man. Maybe even reaching to the
first Adam, whom if you remember I mentioned in the beginning of my
work.
The Father Adam, who then named him and Kadosh. What does this word
mean? One who is separated from everything and at the same time is the
unity to which everything tends. Separated reunited in End Times (ultimum).
Where that any differences present distinct and purified on the white and
black eagle.
And here is presented a difficult philosophical question that I pass on to you.
If the entire masonic universe, our entire existence can be perceived as part of
one being, no matter if we call it First Adam, Jordan, John or George, then...
who's the «other»? Who's the observer that because of his gaze we and he
will exist? Who can be the person, the «other» that, according to Levinas or
Martin Buber etc, we can never know or meet, the unknown (inconnu) that
will always be in infinite distance, outside our entire Universe without the
possibility of correlation , reduction or correspondence *

*As Other, the philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-1995) defines everybody other than the Self. Yet, any
Other, is finally understood and reduced to the Same, thus nullifying the Alterity. It becomes part of the
circle, the empire of the Wholeness of Being.
It is MY knowledge, MY experience that crashes the Alterity.
Subjectivity cannot be conceived in the level of her purely egoistical protest against Totality, or in her
anguish facing death, but as being founded in the idea of Infinity.
Lévinas writes that “Infinity is the absolute Other” and “God is the Other”
The Other, that must not and cannot become an object of knowledge or experience.
A meeting, even if it occurs, is “without relationship”, because it does not establish neither equality nor
understanding.
Such a meeting is not an event that can be placed in time. It is more of a structural potentiality that precedes
and makes possible any subsequent experience.
«Beyond the visage ».

I think that all this presents an interesting context for the deafeningly present
but ubiquitous absent protagonist of the entire masonic narrative that which
is named, and right so with no further definition, G.A.O.T.U.

Before my last word I would like to underline something more. I used,

except for our Ritual, phrases coming not from masonic treatises but from
anthropologists, religious researchers, philosophers and poets that I named to
remind you the following, in case it is not already obvious enough.
Everything exists inside our Ritual. It is all in the symbols found there, that
are patiently waiting for every single one of us to see them, using any tool
that might be familiar to him, philosophy, science or anything else, so as to
converse with them and experience the co-substantial identification with each
and every one of them.

When at least one mason stops narrating and searching, but becomes Himself,
through the experience, the myth, the allegory, the symbol and the Temple,
then the possibility will rise that the ever-escaping can become approachable.
Under the glow of the sun at the Ζenith.
The Camp, which within it conceals the Royal Secret is revealed.
In the Sacre place, where our Universe, its axis, the stairway to heaven, the
masons and all the symbols will be dematerialized. In the center of a Circle or
of the Labyrinth, that could be the center of Saint Andrew's cross. It will be
able to be a huge heart, a Holy Εmpire, a homeland and open-armed hug for
each of us that wandered through the whole span of A.A.S.R..

And then the ever-escaping, without any effort or intention, will be present;
as we return in this first, long-gone moment (that repeats itself every time the
Lodge opens);
When in the pitch black darkness shone a small light;
Though in another level.

So mote it be!

Iordanis Poulkouras 33o

April 2015