Stage II: Intermediate
Freemasonry and Initiation
To see Masonic ritual as an architecture of moral and spiritual formation, and to keep its history, its symbolism and its speculation distinct.
“Thus he shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in his hand.”
- Stations
- 6
- 5 marked chapters · 1 book
- Episodes
- 5
- 7 h in full
- Of marked passages
- 13 min
- Where each station opens; listen on as long as you like
The route
6 stations, walked in order
The Craft in its own words and in its history: a system of morality veiled in allegory, the operative builders behind the speculative lodge, the candidate's station between the pillars, the shape of initiatory ritual, the moral grounding the lodge gives before magical work, and the fuller light toward which the esoteric Masonic writers point.
Keep each station as you finish it
Your place is kept in this browser alone.
Station IListen· Kept
A system of morality veiled in allegory
Episode 4On the MysteriesLands on Moral symbolism and the tools of Masonry Listen from 26:274 min chapterMasonry in its own words, as the Entered Apprentice hears them from the Worshipful Master in the East: a beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. Worshipful, it is explained, is an archaic word for honourable, and it names an office that changes every year, not a man. The Mason's belief in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man and the hope of the soul's immortality is tied to right conduct, walking uprightly before God and man, and the compasses are taken up as a geometer's tool and a moral one.
Sit with this
Why would a fraternity of builders keep its working tools long after it stopped building?
Station IIRead· Kept
Read the builders' history
Read alongside
The Builders: A Story and Study of Masonry
Joseph Fort Newton
Newton's history and study of the Craft, from the ancient builders and the Roman colleges of architects to the modern lodge. In On the Mysteries it is the book read on taking the first degree, called a classic for the more mundane Mason and a way of keeping one's head straight for anyone who comes to Masonry from the esoteric side.
Sit with this
As you read, keep three lists: the connections that are historical, those that are symbolic, and those that are speculative.
Station IIIWatch· Kept
Stand between the pillars
Episode 28Liminality and Species of InitiationLands on Liminal Space in Initiatic Orders Watch from 19:051 min chapterGolden Dawn ritual keeps the initiate in liminal space, standing between the pillars, through the whole of the outer order, and that, the speaker holds, is what it means to be an initiate. The danger is hardening: a strong opinion is one thing, a rigidity that admits no exception another. Initiation through trauma and the changes of life is then weighed against formal initiation.
Sit with this
Where in your life do you stand between the pillars now, no longer what you were and not yet what you are becoming?
Station IVListen· Kept
Study initiation as form
Episode 21The Seven Sages, Socrates, Plato, and the Hermetic CurrentLands on Hermetic Texts as Initiatory Manuals Listen from 54:052 min chapterThe Hermetic Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth is read as a manual of initiation that follows the shape of Masonic and Golden Dawn ritual: an entry, an invocation, a lecture, and a climactic moment when the higher enters the lower. The hierophant who walks between the pillars, like the Worshipful Master who brings the candidate light, is described as working toward one brief union of the candidate with the higher self.
Sit with this
The Discourse moves through entry, invocation, lecture and union. Which of the four have you known in your own practice, and which is missing?
Station VWatch· Kept
Ground before you ascend
Episode 23The Masonic Magician, the American Psyche / War on Morality & the Pitfalls of Career OccultismLands on Role of Freemasonry in Personal Development Watch from 23:512 min chapterOne speaker wishes that everyone could become a Mason before entering the Golden Dawn. Magic disrupts a life far beyond dream work and scrying, the alchemical initiations of the magical orders demand stability, and Masonry is offered as the ground: objective morality, universal cause and effect, and an ordered life.
Sit with this
Which of your habits would need to be in order before you could safely stir forces you do not yet understand?
Station VIWatch· Kept
Seek the fuller light
Episode 30Freedom Pt 4 : America's Founding Ideals & Philosopher KingsLands on Freemasonry, Virtue & Spiritual Development Watch from 38:475 min chapterSpeaking as a Mason, one host finds among his brethren, though not in all, a moral life lived without full illumination: good, and in a corrosive age good enough, yet something more essential in Masonry is still to be followed. The esoteric Masonic writers, Manly P. Hall and Albert Pike among them, are named as a wealth of spiritual instruction that was never hidden from anyone willing to read it.
Sit with this
Is the moral life without full illumination enough? What would it mean to ask more of the rite than it asks of you?
End of the route · its last question goes with you