Secrets and Practices of the Freemasons: Sacred Mysteries, Rituals and Symbols Revealed - Jean-Louis de Biasi 2011
The Mythical Spirit
The Masonic Tradition
Any initiatic, spiritual, or religious tradition is rooted in one or several “founder myths.” Basically, this type of myth is the story of the origin and the foundation of all that follows: explanations, interpretations, and rituals. However, in our modern consciousness, myths are mostly considered as fiction or as fictional accounts of history.
On first examination it is difficult to know what meaning and purpose the story of the founder of a religion or an existent fraternity can have. Of course, if the founding story is imaginary and not real, this question has no importance. On the contrary—for the person who believes the story to be “real”—it is for him or her the expression of the truth because it is perceived to come from a supreme power. If there is a contradiction with other statements of history or science, the believer has to give the greater credence to the myth.
The myth is important in itself because it gives meaning to life. Its role is to try to answer the question “why” from a spiritual perspective, while it is the role of science to answer the question “how.” The modern belief that myth is “unreal” is wrong and simply misses the point that there is more than one reality. Myth presents one kind of reality and science presents another kind, and it is important to see them separately, just as it is important that you separate church and state. History shows the fallacy of government and politics dominated by religious ideology that always imposes its certitude to have the “one and only definitive truth,” which then leads to the elicitation of violence on behalf of the “one true god.” So you must determine for yourself whether such a myth is useful or not, its real nature, and how should you make use of it.
To be able to answer these fundamental questions, it is necessary to discuss the nature of the human thought process.
Perhaps it will seem surprising, but the modern “mind” differs from what it was some centuries ago. We’ve mutated. Of course, your brain is fundamentally identical to that of earlier people. It works like always and its hidden and visible faculties are nearly the same. However, the major difference is the appearance and establishment of rational thought. The development of philosophy and the progressive popularization of its way of reasoning, followed by the progress of science, changed your mode of thought.
I can say that modern man has surrounded his original consciousness with a kind of outer shell of rational consciousness. A conflict followed between what I can call the mythical consciousness and the rational consciousness. The foundation of modern society is based on science and technology. The principles are clear, comprehensible by all, and reproducible. It is what gives modern society its strength. If you want to use something like a tool in daily life, it does not lead to a philosophical debate on the reality of this object. You put a dish in the microwave and turn it on. You pick up the phone and speak to your correspondent far away. There is no doubt with this process and you proceed with confidence.
But it is very different when the concern is spiritual or religious. The stories presented in the sacred books refer to another world radically different from that perceived with the rational mind. Our ancestors living at the time when most of the sacred books were written did not see their world the same way you do. “Reality” was not reduced to what is visible and measurable. It was not limited to what is verifiably seen; instead, everything was perceived as real in spite of a different nature: gods, men, animals, etc. were equally real. It was not amazing to see a divinity manifesting among them. Their use of plants as medicine was as natural as the action of prayer. The world was permeable to any influence, and wasn’t divided into several strictly independent levels.
And thus there are many cases where the founding stories calling for faith seem in contradiction with scientific certainties. A believer living in our time has a choice to make that seems irreducible: abdicate the faith or reject science. The consequence is a conflict you see regularly in our society, for example, in the debate between creationism and evolutionism.
All that is a consequence of confusion between two realities: one visible and the other invisible. But this split is recent. It was created unconsciously and people now tend to define themselves as believers in faith or in science, and think they can, simply speaking, have their faith on Sundays and live in the real world the rest of the week. Others find no conflict. It is possible to simply recognize phenomena as involving one reality or another. But, as in a dream with a special message, you accept that there are times when one reality does cross over to another while recognizing that the laws of each apply.
In a spiritual and initiatic tradition such as Freemasonry, the notion of reality is not a problem, because there you are in the world of myth. It is important to understand this definition, because the absence of a clear understanding of this point will lead us to surprising aberrations. You can have an example of that if you go into a bookstore. If you are looking for books about the “immortal gods” (sometimes called “ancient gods”), Egyptian, Greek, Nordic, etc., they are generally in the category “Mythology.” If you are looking for books about Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, they will be in the category “Religion.” You can speculate about in which category you’ll find books about animist or polytheist religions such as the Hindu or Santeria religions. As for Freemasonry, you will most likely find it in either “History” or “Philosophy,” but probably not “Myth” or “Religion.”
The true function of myth has been forgotten and its stories are perceived as legend, or as fictional tales. I have to give a new definition of myth to communicate why it can be useful to us. Any myth is a founder story (about the founder, whether historical or legendary) that has giving meaning to life as its goal. The word meaning indicates that the myth shows the moral values of your life, speaks about your origin, and gives you the direction in which you must go in pursuit of your greater purpose. This is the first step and function of the myth. Consequently, it does not matter if the myth contradicts the apparent reality in which you are living. In fact, the goal of the myth is not to explain how the world works, but why it works. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, science has developed to answer this question of how. Answers can vary according to new discoveries. The results of science remain correct until they are challenged. On the other side, the myth does not have to evolve because its object is the eternal part inside us, our inner consciousness or unconsciousness (in Jung’s definition). Questions on the meaning of life are exactly the same today as one thousand, two thousand, or three thousand years ago.
It is necessary to see the myth as a story linking two things very intimately: (1) facts coming from your mind, and (2) inspiration from the deepest parts of your consciousness capable of answering your existential questions. It is also necessary to realize that your perceptions can interpret or understand something in a completely different way at the same time. A fire, for example, may seem to appear spontaneously, or a whirl of wind will appear to a contemporary mind as a simple meteorological phenomenon. For the believers, on the contrary, this manifestation will be divinity revealing its presence for a precise purpose.
For centuries, initiatic traditions (and sometimes religious traditions) defined these two aspects by using the words esoteric and exoteric. The first corresponds to an invisible plan that can be felt by the use of symbols. The second, exoteric, will be literal and visible. It is the one I called historical. The sacred books are composed in the same way and I will speak about this point later in this book. Even if the creation of these books is close to the myth, they imply a presence of the divine that is not systematic in the myth.
It is now important to learn how you can understand the myth, to be able to clearly perceive its meaning, and, more importantly, to assimilate it. You have to bring the myth inside you, revealing its meaning and modifying your vision of the world and your life. This is the only way the myth will be able to have influence on your way of seeing life and your role in society, as well as your destiny after death.
Myth does not concern the intellectual aspect of your mind. It concerns a part called the imaginary[1] realm of human beings. When a mythical story is told, you must enter into a special state of consciousness, closer to the one of your ancestors before the appearance of the rational and scientific mind. It is necessary to put your rational thinking on hold and become as a child listening to a mysterious history without any doubts regarding the reality. As you will see later in the book, reading the story aloud gives a real existence to the story, which the child intuitively feels. With a little insight you will be able to understand the symbols of the story. But it is not necessary to begin the analysis before deeply living the myth. What is necessary is to feel it in the most intimate parts of your body and soul, in your inner consciousness.
Freemasonry has several founder myths. Some of them are well known: the myth of its origins, the master-builders, and Hiram’s myth. The structure of the myth of the cathedral’s builders is different than the myth of the origins or the one of Hiram. But all three are myths and can be understood through your inner consciousness. The ancient origins to which Freemasonry refers belong to a time of the myth, a moment when the perception of historical reality was not the same as it is today.
The historical and symbolic analyses that can be developed are very important, but are not on the same level. You will see that a little farther along. But let us not forget that the myth does not need proofs, whatever type they are. Proofs are not necessary to perceive the meaning and values of the myth.