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"Why is it," the young student
of the Craft often asks, "that prominent among
symbols is one that typifies darkness, when the whole
burden of the ritual is a teaching.
concerning Light, and more Light? What is the point
of representing a man as being in darkness when all
the while he is supposed to have received the fullest
illumination?" Every Brother Mason will know what
symbol is here referred to.
The answer is that this symbol itself belongs, paradoxical
as it may sound, to the whole symbolism of Light. Its
teaching is a teaching concerning illumination, of the
nature of illumination itself, of the conditions by
which it is prevented or eclipsed, and of the manner
in which it may be obtained.
This symbol is not new. It has been used from time
immemorial, in all quarters of the globe, among religious
mysteries, cults, and secret associations. For this
reason we have a right to look upon it as one of those
inevitable and universal symbols which come into use
as naturally as a gesture or a sigh. Through it, as
through certain other ritualistic passages and emblems,
Freemasonry comes into contact with the general culture
of mankind.
The purpose of it is not to teach that a man must be
darkened; rather it is to tell him that he is already
in darkhess. It is as if he were told, "You have
as yet no knowledge, never have you had knowledge, of
the secrets and arts which you seek, secrets and arts
that must remain to you as though without existence
until you have completed your initiation."
Masonic initiation can nev~r be understood unless one
remembers that initiation itself is a process of becoming
born. Masonry is a life. A life with a world of its
own. A life that can be lived only by those who are
citizens of that World.
Thus it is that to be initiated in truth and in fact
means that a man who formerly lived entirely outside
that world, with no knowledge of it, save by distant
hearsay and vague rumor, now enters into itnenters into
it as a babe comes from the imprisoning darkness of
its mother's womb into the full light and freedom of
day.
Our symbol, then, is a representation of that relative
darkness men live in until they have passed through
the gate of initiation. As such it does not imply that
anything has been arbitrarily concealed. Everything
is already there, and exists as much before initiation
as afterwards. It means that the man using the symbol
does not yet see those realities because the curtain
which hangs between him and them has not yet been lifted.
By H.L.Haywood Published in The New York Masonic Outlook
- June, 1928
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