The Fellowcraft’s Handbook

The Fellowcraft’s Handbook

Those who have read the first volume of this series, which deals with the E.A. Degree, will realize that our ceremonies have a deep inner meaning and teach profound spiritual lessons seldom realised by the average Mason.

In the second volume we are dealing with the degree of Life, in its broadest sense, just as in the first degree we were dealing with the degree of birth, and as life in reality is educational for the Soul, we are not surprised to find that throughout the whole degree the subject of education is more or less stressed.

We should, however, realize that each of the degrees builds on the one which has gone before, and the ingenuity with which the lessons inculcated in the first degree are carried forward and developed in the succeeding degrees is one of the most striking characteristics of our Masonic ritual.

This is true not only of the obvious exoteric moral instruction conveyed in the ceremonies, but even more of the deep mystical and spiritual lessons which lie hidden beneath the surface.

For example, in the first degree we perceived that the steps which led the initiate to the pedestal when combined with that which we found thereon symbolically produced the Name of God, and in the second degree the main lesson is that the Brethren discover the name of God in the middle chamber, while the manner of approaching the pedestal gives us the Divine name, written with the five letters which denote that the Creator has become Messias, the King.

Thus among other lessons we learn that the second person of the Trinity comes forth from the first. When we come to the book which deals with the Master Mason we shall perceive that that degree likewise builds on what has gone before.

In the first few years of my Masonic career I utterly failed to realize the tremendous importance of the second degree, and used glibly to say that, while the first and third degrees impressed me greatly, and had valuable lessons to impart, the second disappointed me by its lack of depth and mystical teaching.

Many brethren have said practically the same thing to me, but I have come to the conclusion that those of us who think this are mistaken. The truth is that the real inner teaching of the second degree is less obvious than that of the first and third, but every whit as important, and until one has grasped its full significance one has no conception of the wonderful symmetry of our Craft rituals. In short, the interpretation of the second degree forms the key to the full interpretation of the third.

It is to impress this fact on my Brethren that I have written this book, and in particular have laid so much stress on the manner of approaching the middle chamber, and the full Kabbalistic meaning of the Name there discovered.

It must never be forgotten that while there are meanings within meanings in the Craft ritual, all of which are important, the great lesson of our system is the Mystic Quest after God, and the journey of the Soul towards union with its Creator.

With these brief words of introduction I venture to place in the hands of my Brethren this little volume, which, whilst not attempting to be exhaustive, will, I hope, be of some help to those who, amid the turmoil of mundane affairs, have little time to devote to an extensive study of the inner meaning of those ceremonies which they have nevertheless grown to love and venerate.

As one or two Brethren who have read this manuscript have asked me to refer them to a copy of the Kabala where they can themselves read what those ancient sages wrote concerning the descent of the letter “Shin,” I would recommend the “Kabala Denuda,” translated by Mathers, where they will find that, and many other points of peculiar interest to Masons.