“Finally the brother works towards the consummation of his labors in the form of a master builder (denique sub architecti figura operatur frater ad huius operis perfectionem).... Only for the better carrying out of our building and thereby to attain the rose-red bloom of our cross concealed in the center of our foundation ... we must not take the work superficially, but must dig to the center of the earth, knock and seek.” (Summ. Bon., p. 48; Trans. Katsch, pp. 413 ff.) Just after that he speaks of the three dimensions, height, depth, and [pg 180] breadth. The masonic symbolism is accompanied clearly enough in the “Summum Bonum” by the alchemistic. Notice the knocking and seeking, and what is mentioned in the doctrines about the form of the Lodge. Immediately thereafter is a prolix discussion of the geometric cube.
Frizius and Fludd contribute also a letter supposed to have been sent by rosicrucians to a German candidate. It says, “Since you are such a stone as you desire, and such a work ... cleanse yourself with tears, sublimate yourself with manners and virtues, decorate and color yourself with the sacramental grace, make your soul sublime toward the subtile meditation of heavenly things, and conform yourself to angelic spirits so that you may vivify your moldering body, your vile ashes, and whiten them, and incorruptibly and painlessly gain resurrection through J[esus] C[hrist] O[ur] L[ord].” In another passage: “Be ye transformed, therefore, be ye transmuted from mortal to living philosophic stones.”
In the “Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae Fluddanae” (published in Latin in 1633), are passages like the following: “Indeed every pious and righteous man is a spiritual alchemist.... We understand by that a man who understands not only how to distinguish but with the fire of the divine spirit to separate [spagiric art] the false from the true, vice from virtue, dark from light, the uncleanness of vice from the purity of the spirit emulating God. For only in this way is unclean lead turned into gold.” (P. 75.) “If one now ventures to say that the [pg 181] Word of Christ or the Holy Ghost of wisdom dwells in the microcosmic heaven [i.e., in the soul of man] we should not decry the blind children of the world as godless and abandoned. [But certainly the divine spirit is, as is later averred, the rectangular stone in us, on which we are to build.] This divine spark is, however, continuous and eternal; it is our gold purchasable of Christ.... So it happens in accordance with the teachings of Christ, or the Word become flesh, that if the true alchemists keep on seeking and knocking, they attain to the knowledge of the living fire.” (P. 81.) So again the important knocking and seeking of masonic symbolism, and this indeed, for the purpose of learning to know a fire.
In reference to the really elevating thoughts of the “Summum Bonum,” Katsch, enthusiastic about these ideas, exclaims: “What language, what an unflinching courage, what a dignified humility. Even the most reluctant will not be able to avoid the admission that here quite unexpectedly he has ... met the original and ideal form of freemasonry.”
The comparison of masonry and alchemy remains true even if we work more critically than Katsch, who is accused of many inaccuracies. I recall for instance the later researches of the thorough and far-seeing Dr. Ludwig Keller.
For the illumination of the darkness that has spread over the past of freemasonry, Keller shows us (B. W. and Z., pp. 1, 2) the rich material of symbolism that is offered the diligent student, first of all in the very copious literature, printed matter, [pg 182] and especially in the manuscripts, that is known by the name of Chemistry or Alchemy.
In the symbols of the alchemists, the rosicrucians, the Lodges, etc., “we meet a language that has found acceptance among all occidental peoples in analogous form, not indeed a letter or word language, but a language nevertheless, a token or a symbol language of developed form, which is evident even in the rock temples of the so-called catacombs, once called latomies and loggie. The single images and symbols have something to say only to the person who understands this language. To the man who does not understand it, they say nothing and are not expected to say anything.”
In reference to the symbol and image language, which was comprehensible only to the initiated, we think naturally of the ancient mysteries. The religious societies of the oldest Christians, in the centuries when Christianity belonged in the Roman Empire to the forbidden cults, found a possibility of existence before the law in the form of licensed societies, i.e., as guilds, burial unions, and corporations of all sorts. The primitive Christians were not the only forbidden sects that sought and found this recourse. Under the disguise of schools, trade unions, literary societies, and academies, there existed in the jurisdiction of the Roman Empire, and later inside of the world church, organizations that before the law were secular societies, but in the minds of the initiated were associations of a religious character. Within these associations there appeared very early [pg 183] a well developed system of symbols, which were adopted for the purpose of actually maintaining, through the concealment necessitated by circumstances, their unions and their implements and customs—symbols that they chose as cloaks and that in the circle of the initiated were explained and interpreted according to the teachings of their cult.
Valuable monuments of this symbolism are preserved in the vast rock temples that are found in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Sicily, and the Apennine peninsula, in Greece, France, and on the Rhine, and these vaults, which in part also served the early Christians as places of worship, show in their images and records and in their architectural form so close a resemblance that they must be acknowledged as the characteristic of a great religious cult extending over many lands, which has had consistent traditions for the use of such symbols and for the production of these structures.
Many of these symbols, it should be noted in passing, are borrowed from those tokens and implements of the building corporations, which were necessary to the completion of their buildings (Keller, l. c., p. 4). An important part was played even in the early Christian symbolism by the sacred numbers and the figures corresponding to them, a group of educational symbols which we find likewise in the pythagorean and platonic schools. It is known that the symbolical language of the subterranean rock temples, some of which were used by the earliest Christians for their religious worship, are closely [pg 184] connected with the pythagorean and platonic doctrines. From the year 325 A. D. on, every departure from the beliefs of the state church was considered a state offense. So those Christians who retained connection with the ancient philosophic schools were persecuted. In the religious symbol language of the church, the sacred numbers naturally began to disappear from that time. In the writings of Augustine begins the war on the symbolic language, whose use he declared a characteristic of the gnostics. In spite of the suppression the doctrines of the sacred numbers continued through all the centuries in religious use, in quiet but strong currents which flowed beside the state church. The sect names, which were invented by polemic theology for the purpose of characterizing methods that were regarded as imitations of the gnostics, are of the most varied kinds; it may be enough to remember that in all those spiritual currents, that like the old German mysticism, the earlier humanism, the so-called natural philosophy, etc., show a strong influence of platonic thinking, the doctrines of the sacred numbers recur, in a more or less disguised form, but yet clearly recognizable. (Keller, Heil. Zahl., p. 2.)