I have read another book about religion and Freemasonry, this one is a bit more peculiar. It is called The Hidden Life In Freemasonry and was written by C.W. Leadbeater in 1926. I know my last post claimed to be the last dealing with religion but this work is worthy of discussion.
C.W. Leadbeater is a 33rd degree Master Mason of the European Lodge and claims that he is reincarnated, with his earliest remembered life in Ancient Egypt as he claims in the second paragraph; “The only one of those previous lives of mine with which we are here concerned was lived some four thousand years before Christ in the country which we now call Egypt.”
From this book I learned that possibly, to some extent, Masons believe in reincarnation. Whether this is a universal or secret belief is something that I need to explore a bit more, however, there is a picture hanging in my Lodge of a man that no one in the lodge, including our District Education Officer, could name.
It is a rather large, very old portrait in an ornate frame that is sitting by itself in the north east corner and is easily dismissed. What struck me first was how he was dressed and the large jewel around his neck. It was definitely of Masonic origin but much more adorned than most of the others I have seen in recent photos.
Leadbeater writes; “That the rituals and symbols should have been preserved to us with so wonderfully little alteration is surly a marvelous thing; it would be inexplicable but for the fact that the Great Powers behind evolution have taken an interest in the matter, and gradually brought people back to the true lines when they had swerved somewhat away from them.”
One “soul” which he mentions is the Master of the Wisdom or Comte de S. Germain which title he appeared under in the 18th century. Names that he mentioned appointed to this title started around the third century A.D. are; Albanus (or later known as S. Alban), Proclus, Roger Bacon, Christian Rosenkreutz, Hunyadi Jones, a monk named Robertus, Francis Bacon, Prince Jozsef Rakoczi, Pere Joseph and a Baron Hompesch (which the author met and had a long conversation with in 1901).
Leadbeater goes on to say; “In Co-Masonry we refer to Him as the Head of all True Freemasons throughout the world (abbreviated as the H.O.A.T.F.) and in some of our Lodges His portrait is placed in the east, above the chair of the R.W.M., and just beneath the Star of Initiation; others place it in the north, above an empty chair.”
Again, the portrait in my Lodge sits above an empty chair in the NE corner. I have searched all the names in Google Image Search and Bing’s Image Search and none of the images I found match however, the portrait of Prince Rakoczi does have some of the same features. Regardless of the lack of Internet matches, I believe that this portrait is of the “Master of the Wisdom”.
If this portrait in question is truly that of the “Master of the Wisdom”, did the fore-fathers of my Lodge believe that this man was the reincarnated “soul” of Albanus, a man of a noble Roman family, born at the town of Verulam in England?
As we read further into this book he confirms one of the other arguments, against Freemasonry, by some of the Christian anti-mason groups. Leadbeater talks many times about God being in Man and of the Hindu belief that God is in Everything and Everything is in God. To be assured of salvation you must get in contact with the God within yourself.
I am having a hard time placing any stock in this authors opinions however. Many subjects are brought up but are dismissed because they are going to be or have already been discussed in other books that he wrote. This work seems to be a lot of “look how smart I am” and “buy my other books.”
It is an interesting read if only for the insight provided to the belief of reincarnation and life in Ancient Egypt. The ironic thing is, is that he claims that he was born in 4k B.C. and most, if not all, of our rituals originate from that era of which he participated. But yet some of our rituals were lost to time because of the lack of written instructions. If he lived in that time why doesn’t he just tell us how it is supposed to be, that way we could get it straight from the horses mouth?
Possibly, this concept is well over my head and the reason I don’t believe is because I don’t understand, but as a Mason it is not for me to say that he is right or wrong in his belief and to explore and accept the world around me. However, personally I place this idea in the same boat as time travel which, I believe, will never be possible simply for the fact that if it will exist it would have always have existed.
Five million years after we discover the secrets of time travel, someone would have gone back in time and stopped Hitler and it would have never happened. Someone would have gone back in time to be the first to discover time traveling to be eventually credited to the same cave-man that invented fire. The burning of the library at Alexandria would have been stopped or at least all the documents would have been saved and we would have known exactly how the ancient Egyptians built the Pyramids.
But, as always, I could be wrong (I am a man after-all) so I guess I will just keep reading and questioning.
Till next time…
SF
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