FREEMASONRY’S CORE SECRET
Ancient Craft Masonry culminates in the symbolism of the Lost Word and the quest for its recovery, yet little explanation is provided for this mystery. The deepest objective of the Masonic path is to find that which was lost. The Lost Word symbolizes something concealed and serves as a clue to that mystery.
From the ancient Israelites came the idea of supernatural power contained within a secret Word that could cause the heavens to tremble and the earth to quake for anyone who dared speak it. This Word was the ineffable Name of the Divine, YHVH, which should never be spoken "in vain," meaning without a holy intention to properly and morally direct its immense power.
Some Masonic writers contend that the oldest omnificent name of G-d is AUM, pronounced “aaome,” coming from India. In the Hebrew tradition, however, the Sacred Name is the Tetragrammaton, comprised of the four letters Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh (YHVH). Today, Christians pronounce it as "Jehovah" and scholars as "Yahweh," but since no vowels were used in ancient writing, the actual pronunciation has remained lost.
According to tradition, the greatest catastrophe of Israel's captivity in Babylon was the loss of the sacred Name through the death of the high priest who had no successor. Since then, priests and scribes have searched to no avail for the lost Name. While they retained the four consonants, the vowel sounds that accompanied them have remained a mystery. It is believed that this four-letter name of G-d is the Lost Word of Freemasonry, but what is it exactly?
The Lost Word is the consummation of all Masonic symbolism because it represents divine truth. According to Masonic allegory, only three people knew this secret and powerful word. When one of them suddenly died, this most sacred knowledge was lost, despite the other two still possessing the information. This leaves the initiate wondering: "If three people knew the secret word and one was killed, why didn't the other two pass on the secret? How was it lost?"
One who goes through the Scottish Rite degrees may become further confounded by discovering that there is not just one Word but several. He may receive the "Lost Word" in the 13th degree (Royal Arch of Solomon) and then be presented with a different "True Word" in the 18th degree (Knight Rose Croix). The allegory surfaces once more in the 32nd Degree (Master of the Royal Secret), in which he receives a third "Sacred Word." To confuse matters further, the "Lost Word" recovered in the Royal Arch of the York Rite differs entirely from the one given in the Scottish Rite.
The Quest for the Word
Let us, therefore, explore this symbolism that is so important as to be worthy of recurring in various rites. Perhaps the Lost Word does not represent a word with magical power but instead a language of Spirit, including the capacity to both comprehend and translate the language into ordinary words. In essence, what was lost was not actually a word but a capacity to engage an alternate means of cosmic communication and translation.
In short, we may be dealing with two distinctly opposite kinds of language: that of the corporeal intellect as the spoken word and that of the Spirit, which presents itself as a pure, unformed idea. Moreover, these two kinds of language have an interface problem. While we may have once been able to perform this interface effortlessly, we can no longer do so.
The allegory of the three men who knew the Lost Word tells us that three aspects of our being are requisite to regaining the ability to tap into the language of Spirit, which I shall herein call Unity Consciousness, or UC.
• The first aspect is the human intellect, which can deduce the existence of UC but cannot access it. Logic may lead one to conclude that all things are interconnected by a transcendental Unity at the ground of existence, just as all numbers contain within them the power of a singular "zero." While zero lacks a positive number value itself, it nonetheless contains all numerical values to infinity, as it upholds every number. The intellect is too linear in its operation to grasp anything more than this about a Divine Principle that is immanent in all things and yet transcends the visible universe. Logic has its limits.
• Secondly, intuition allows us to sense UC, but not utilize it intelligibly. Joseph Campbell taught that divine love is the visceral realization of the transcendental unity between oneself and another; at the deepest level, we are all One. Experiencing a sense of the sacred, or gazing at the night sky in awe, constitutes intuitive experiences of unity with the All. However, The Word remains lost. Like intellect, intuition has its limits. While it provides a sense of UC, it doesn't enable us to tap into it and convert its elusive wealth of information into spoken words.
• To access Unity Consciousness directly, we should either possess an innate ability or, alternatively, employ a substitute technique that initiates it. Masonic lore claims that the Lost Word can be partially regained using a "substitute," Could this possibly refer to a divination technique that compensates for a lost innate ability to achieve Unity Consciousness. By utilizing such a technique, might we regain this lost interface? Having prophets in the world again would provide the badly needed guidance we lack.
The Substitute
Let us, therefore, explore this symbolism that is so important as to be worthy of recurring in various rites. Perhaps the Lost Word does not represent a word with magical power but instead a language of Spirit, including the capacity to both comprehend and translate the language into ordinary words. In essence, what was lost was not actually a word but a capacity to engage an alternate means of cosmic communication and translation.
In short, we may be dealing with two distinctly opposite kinds of language: that of the corporeal intellect as the spoken word and that of the Spirit, which presents itself as a pure, unformed idea. Moreover, these two kinds of language have an interface problem. While we may have once been able to perform this interface effortlessly, we can no longer do so.
The allegory of the three men who knew the Lost Word tells us that three aspects of our being are requisite to regaining the ability to tap into the language of Spirit, which I shall herein call Unity Consciousness, or UC.
• The first aspect is the human intellect, which can deduce the existence of UC but cannot access it. Logic may lead one to conclude that all things are interconnected by a transcendental Unity at the ground of existence, just as all numbers contain within them the power of a singular "zero." While zero lacks a positive number value itself, it nonetheless contains all numerical values to infinity, as it upholds every number. The intellect is too linear in its operation to grasp anything more than this about a Divine Principle that is immanent in all things and yet transcends the visible universe. Logic has its limits.
• Secondly, intuition allows us to sense UC, but not utilize it intelligibly. Joseph Campbell taught that divine love is the visceral realization of the transcendental unity between oneself and another; at the deepest level, we are all One. Experiencing a sense of the sacred, or gazing at the night sky in awe, constitutes intuitive experiences of unity with the All. However, The Word remains lost. Like intellect, intuition has its limits. While it provides a sense of UC, it doesn't enable us to tap into it and convert its elusive wealth of information into spoken words.
• To access Unity Consciousness directly, we should either possess an innate ability or, alternatively, employ a substitute technique that initiates it. Masonic lore claims that the Lost Word can be partially regained using a "substitute," Could this possibly refer to a divination technique that compensates for a lost innate ability to achieve Unity Consciousness. By utilizing such a technique, might we regain this lost interface? Having prophets in the world again would provide the badly needed guidance we lack.
The Substitute
According to Rosicrucian lore, we lost our ability to immediately access Universal Consciousness when our distant ancestors were annihilated in a global war. An ancient enemy committed genocide against the original mankind, leaving a spiritually un-endowed remnant to be controlled by priest-kings and ruler gods. These rulers kept them ignorant through blasphemous, idolatrous religions. Masonic lore reveals that the Word has not been spoken since the Temple's destruction; instead, a substitute has been used. Both systems allude to an occult history in which mankind was once more psychically endowed but devolved after a catastrophic assault.
In Masonic allegory, King Solomon was forced to introduce the substitute when the Master, who once knew the Sacred Word, was murdered and it was lost. Perhaps this "Master" represents the original mankind that was annihilated, and the destroyed “Temple” was their original genetic structure replaced by our current lesser form, possibly the true meaning of the fall of man.
This suggests that a select few initiates may possess an effective substitute: a divination method allowing them to access UC. Utilizing this technique would require proper intellectual understanding, refined intuition, and instruction in its use. With these three types of knowledge working together, perhaps the lost language of the Spirit can indeed be retrieved.
This would resemble a meditation using a divination technique that enables one to receive non-verbal information from the Spirit and translate it into spoken words. In Jewish mysticism, three factors contribute to the process of divine creation: Creation, Formation, and Making. The purely creative language of Spirit is like a formless yet creative Idea, lost to the uninitiated. The initiate learns to tap into it through intuition and then to employ a divination technique that forms the idea into a concept that can be further made, or translated, into uttered words. Thus, the mystical principles of Idea, Word, and Utterance of the Word correlate with Creation, Formation, and Making.
In the Kabbalah, Beriah is the realm of pure Creation, described as the uppermost world of pure spiritual existence. Yetzirah, the realm of Formation, is an intermediate world that connects our physical existence to the upper realms. This middle world is also called the angelic world. The Biblical Hebrew word for angel, malach, means messenger. These angels are go-between entities that convey information between the lower and upper realms and initiate physical action down to the smallest degree. This implies that nothing truly happens by chance. Finally, Asiyah, the realm of Making, is the lower physical realm. The hierarchy of these realms reveals the process for achieving UC, or prophecy.
Let’s examine how these three principles operate when using a divination method such as the Tarot, for example. The reader begins by engaging the upper realm to make a psychic connection with All That Is. Then, when the cards are shuffled, it activates the middle, angelic realm. This is where spiritual intelligences use their quantum magic to manifest the layout of the spread. Finally, the reader employs the lower realm, or the intellect, to interpret the cards. From there, wisdom is gleaned from the three levels to assist the reader in planning a course for advancing the project of his or her personal Creation.
The lore equating the Lost Word with the Tetragrammaton likely emerged because the letters of the Divine Name, YHVH, were used in a distinctly Jewish divination method. The ineffable Name might itself be an allegory in which the hidden language of divine communication is represented by consonants that equate with a physical divination technique, while the unspoken vowels signify the hidden spiritual principles at work in the process. We know that the high priests used a divination method called the Urim and Thummim that employed dice engraved with consonants. It’s a small leap from there to associating the alphabet with a divine language, the Word.
While the Jewish system undoubtedly contains an effective method of divination, it is certainly not the only one. There is no singular method of acquiring the Lost Word, but only a lost ability to translate spiritually received information into the spoken word.
The Lost Word as The Logos
The Word, as used in the Book of John, is actually a translation of Logos, a Greek term denoting word, speech, reason, and/or plan. In Greek philosophy, it also refers to a universal, divine reason implicit in the cosmos that orders it and gives it form and meaning. It is immanent throughout nature, yet transcends all oppositions and imperfections. One would expect that achieving an interface with such an amorphous Higher Consciousness might be unlikely. However, gnosis is possible because this Logos animate us from the root our being, infusing us each with the creative power of life that derives from pure Unity. This is the deeper meaning of "I am That I AM." One who brings this deeper connection to consciousness become the Word and needs no substitute, no divination technique.
Today's speculative Masons would agree that divine truth can be embodied in the concept of the Logos, the Word, or the Sacred Name. Through this foundational symbol, all other Masonic symbols guide the initiate onward and upward towards G-d. Meanwhile, the deep secret lies beyond the purview of ordinary language. Whether individual Masons will be prepared to acquiesce practical divination, however, depends on their true level of initiation, which has little, if anything, to do with performed rites.
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For more on Jewish divination, check out this article on the Urim and Thummim
Learn about an ancient enemy who deprived mankind of direct access to Unity Consciousness following a catastrophic ancient war. Forbidden Disclosure is available here.
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