But the date at which this legend originated is unknown. Clavel thinks that the "Hebraic mysteries" existed as early as the Roman Collegia, which he describes as largely Judaized[288]; Yarker expresses precisely the opposite view: "It is not so difficult to connect Freemasonry with the Collegia; the difficulty lies in attributing Jewish traditions to the Collegia, and we say on the evidence of the oldest charges that such traditions had no existence in Saxon times."[289] Again: "So far as this country is concerned, we know nothing from documents of a Masonry dating from Solomon's Temple until after the Crusades, when the constitution believed to have been sanctioned by King Athelstan gradually underwent a change."[290] In a discussion which took place recently at the Quatuor Coronati Lodge the Hiramic legend could only be traced back--and then without absolute certainty--to the fourteenth century, which would coincide with the date indicated by Yarker.[291]
Up to this period the lore of the masonic guilds appears to have contained only the exoteric doctrines of Egypt and Greece--which may have reached them through the Roman Collegia, whilst the traditions of Masonry are traced from Adam, Jabal, Tubal Cain, from Nimrod and the Tower of Babel, with Hermes and Pythagoras as their more immediate progenitors.[292] These doctrines were evidently in the main geometrical or technical, and in no sense Cabalistic. There is therefore some justification for Eckert's statement that "the Judeo-Christian mysteries were not yet introduced into the masonic corporations; nowhere can we find the least trace of them. Nowhere do we find any classification, not even that of masters, fellow-crafts, and apprentices. We observe no symbol of the Temple of Solomon; all their symbolism relates to masonic labours and to a few philosophical maxims of morality."[293] The date at which Eckert, like Yarker, places the introduction of these Judaic elements is the time of the Crusades.
But whilst recognizing that modern Craft Masonry is largely founded on the Cabala, it is necessary to distinguish between the different Cabalas. For by this date no less than three Cabalas appear to have existed: firstly, the ancient secret tradition of the patriarchs handed down from the Egyptians through the Greeks and Romans, and possibly through the Roman Collegia to the Craft Masons of Britain; secondly, the Jewish version of this tradition, the first Cabala of the Jews, in no way incompatible with Christianity, descending from Moses, David and Solomon to the Essenes and the more enlightened Jews; and thirdly, the perverted Cabala, mingled by the Rabbis with magic, barbaric superstitions, and--after the death of Christ--with anti-Christian legends.
Whatever Cabalistic elements were introduced into Craft Masonry at the time of the Crusades appear to have belonged to the second of these traditions, the unperverted Cabala of the Jews, known to the Essenes. There are, in fact, striking resemblances betwen Freemasonry and Essenism--degrees of initiation, oaths of secrecy, the wearing of the apron, and a certain masonic sign; whilst to the Sabeist traditions of the Essenes may perhaps be traced the solar and stellar symbolism of the lodges.[294] The Hiramic legend may have belonged to the same tradition.
The Templar Tradition
If then no documentary evidence can be brought forward to show that either the Solomonic legend or any traces of Judaic symbolism and traditions existed either in the monuments of the period or in the ritual of the masons before the fourteenth century, it is surely reasonable to recognize the plausibility of the contention put forward by a great number of masonic writers--particularly on the Continent--that the Judaic elements penetrated into Masonry by means of the Templars.[295] The Templars, as we have already seen, had taken their name from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. What then more likely than that during the time they had lived there they had learnt the Rabbinical legends connected with the Temple? According to George Sand, who was deeply versed in the history of secret societies, the Hiramic legend was adopted by the Templars as symbolic of the destruction of their Order. "They wept over their impotence in the person of Hiram. The word lost and recovered is their empire...."[296] The Freemason Ragon likewise declares that the catastrophe they lamented was the catastrophe that destroyed their Order.[297] Further, the Grand Master whose fate they deplored was Jacques du Molay. Here then we have two bodies in France at the same period, the Templars and the compagnonnages, both possessing a legend concerning the Temple of Solomon and both mourning a Maître Jacques who had been barbarously put to death. If we accept the possibility that the Hiramic legend existed amongst the masons before the Crusades, how are we to explain this extraordinary coincidence? It is certainly easier to believe that the Judaic traditions were introduced to the masons by the Templars and grafted on to the ancient lore that the masonic guilds had inherited from the Roman Collegia.
That some connexion existed between the Templars and the working masons is indicated by the new influence that entered into building at this period. A modern Freemason comparing "the beautifully designed and deep-cut marks of the true Gothic period, say circa 1150-1350," with "the careless and roughly executed marks, many of them mere scratches, of later periods," points out that "the Knights Templars rose and fell with that wonderful development of architecture." The same writer goes on to show that some of the most important masonic symbols, the equilateral triangle and the Mason's square surmounting two pillars, came through from Gothic times.[298] Yarker asserts that the level, the flaming star, and the Tau cross which have since passed into the symbolism of Freemasonry may be traced to the Knights Templar, as also the five-pointed star in Salisbury Cathedral, the double triangle in Westminster Abbey, Jachin and Boaz, the circle and the pentagon in the masonry of the fourteenth century. Yarker cites later, in 1556, the eye and crescent moon, the three stars and the ladder of five steps, as further evidences of Templar influence.[299] "The Templars were large builders, and Jacques du Molay alleged the zeal of his Order in decorating churches in the process against him in 1310; hence the alleged connexion of Templary and Freemasonry is bound to have a substratum of truth."[300]
Moreover, according to a masonic tradition, an alliance definitely took place between the Templars and the masonic guilds at this period. During the proceedings taken against the Order of the Temple in France it is said that Pierre d'Aumont and seven other Knights escaped to Scotland in the guise of working masons and landed in the Island of Mull. On St. John's Day, 1307, they held their first chapter. Robert Bruce then took them under his protection, and seven years later they fought under his standard at Bannockburn against Edward II, who had suppressed their Order in England. After this battle, which took place on St. John the Baptist's Day in summer (June 24), Robert Bruce is said to have instituted the Royal Order of H.R.M. (Heredom) and Knights of the R.S.Y.C.S. (Rosy Cross).[301] These two degrees now constitute the Royal Order of Scotland, and it seems not improbable that in reality they were brought to Scotland by the Templars. Thus, according to one of the early writers on Freemasonry, the degree of the Rose-Croix originated with the Templars in Palestine as early as 1188[302]; whilst the Eastern origin of the word Heredom, supposed to derive from a mythical mountain on an island south of the Hebrides[303] where the Culdees practised their rites, is indicated by another eighteenth-century writer, who traces it to a Jewish source.[304] In this same year of 1314 Robert Bruce is said to have united the Templars and the Royal Order of H.R.M. with the guilds of working masons, who had also fought in his army, at the famous Lodge of Kilwinning, founded in 1286,[305] which now added to its name that of Heredom and became the chief seat of the Order.[306] Scotland was essentially a home of operative masonry, and, in view of the Templar's prowess in the art of building, what more natural than that the two bodies should enter into an alliance? Already in England the Temple is said between 1155 and 1199 to have administered the Craft.[307] It is thus at Heredom of Kilwinning, "the Holy House of Masonry"--"Mother Kilwinning," as it is still known to Freemasons--that a speculative element of a fresh kind may have found its way into the lodges. Is it not here, then, that we may see that "fruitful union between the professional guild of mediæval masons and a secret group of philosophical Adepts" alluded to by Count Goblet d'Aviella and described by Mr. Waite in the following words:
The mystery of the building guilds--whatever it may be held to have been--was that of a simple, unpolished, pious, and utilitarian device; and this daughter of Nature, in the absence of all intention on her own part, underwent, or was coerced into one of the strangest marriages which has been celebrated in occult history. It so happened that her particular form and figure lent itself to such a union, etc.[308]?
Mr. Waite with his usual vagueness does not explain when and where this marriage took place, but the account would certainly apply to the alliance between the Templars and Scottish guilds of working masons, which, as we have seen, is admitted by masonic authorities, and presents exactly the conditions described, the Templars being peculiarly fitted by their initiation into the legend concerning the building of the Temple of Solomon to co-operate with the masons, and the masons being prepared by their partial initiation into ancient mysteries to receive the fresh influx of Eastern tradition from the Templars.