THE JOURNAL OF THE MASONIC SOCIETY
Aristeas, as an ancient traveler, was profoundly affected by what he saw in the Temple. And every experienced Mason knows that when we show similar respect for the work being done in our temples today, our “travelers” (that is, our candidates) are inspired with a similar wonder. When our officers know their roles and need no prompting, the work is much more powerful to see. Consistently doing so creates a space in which powerful and lasting impressions can be made, and in which the teachings of Freemasonry can be more clearly transmitted from each generation to the next. Silence therefore is not emptiness. A deep and abiding silence is not a null or a void. It is a container, holding within it both the impressive words of our ceremonies and the often difficult to express wisdom that we may slowly come to perceive through our practice of Freemasonry. The first step toward this “deep silence” is a simple, unwavering respect for the correct flow of work within the Lodge. A reverent atmosphere will take our work to a higher level, and allow us—and the many we shall initiate—to begin to hear more of the wisdom so carefully implanted within our rites so many centuries ago. ***** “Finally, silence, silence, silence, should be the first, second and third degrees of every man’s Masonry.” M.W. Bro. Abraham T. Metcalf Grand Master of Masons in Michigan 1871 Shawn Eyer is the Worshipful Master of Academia Lodge No. 847 (http://academialodge.org), and was recently appointed the editor of The Philalethes Society’s quarterly journal.
8. For example, the 1805 first American edition of Dermott’s Ahiman Rezon and James Hardie’s Monitor (New York, 1819). The actual classical phrase was digito compesce labellum, as given in Juvenal, Satires 1.160. 9. Horace, Odes 3.2.25–28. Horace is specifically referring to the ritual secrecy of the Eleusinian mysteries, as the passage continues: “Never would I allow one who has profaned the mysteries of Ceres [Demeter] to stay with me beneath the same roof, nor to set sail with me in the same fragile ship.”Author’s translation. 10. Albert G. Mackey, An Encyclopædia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences (Philadelphia: Moss & Co., 1879), vol. 1, 70. 11. Z. A. Davis, The Freemason’s Monitor (Philadelphia: Desilver & Muir, 1843), 126. 12. Commissioned by the Grand Lodge of New York and sculpted by the famous artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1874. This Angerona, perhaps the finest of them all, stood at the main staircase in the Grand Temple from 1876 until it was removed to the New York Masonic Hospital in Utica in 1923. See John H. Dryfhout, The Work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2008), 75. 13. Charles Whitlock Moore (Ed.), The Freemason’s Monthly Magazine, vol. 1 (1842), 85. 14. Colin Dyer, William Preston and His Work (Shepperton, UK: Lewis Masonic, 1987), 175. 15. William Preston, Illustrations of Masonry, Second Edition (London: J. Wilkie, 1775), 173. 16. Jeremy Ladd Cross, The True Masonic Chart, or Hieroglyphic Monitor (New York: Cross, 1850), 39. 17. Charles Whitlock Moore & S. W. B. Carnegy, The Masonic Trestle-board (Boston: C. W. Moore, 1846), 77.
1. Stobaeus, fragment 24.
18. An example of the renewed interest in this traditional Masonic motto is the popular ring designed by Bro. Andrew Horn in 2003, featuring the words Vide Aude Tace as its central motif and inspiration.
2. James Anderson, The Constitutions of the Free-Masons (London: J. Senex, 1723), 52. Similar to this is the note about the quarterly Grand Lodge communication: “[A]ll Matters that concern the Fraternity in general, or particular Lodges, or single Brethren, are quietly, sedately, and maturely to be discours’d of and transacted.” (63)
19. Letter of Aristeas § 92, 94–95, 99. Translation and commentary in C. T. R. Hayward, The Jewish Temple: A NonBiblical Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1996), 26–37. What the traveler Aristeas describes deeply resonates with a verse from Habakkuk: “The Lord is in His holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.” (2:20)
Endnotes
3. W. L. Wilmshurst, The Masonic Initiation, Revised Edition (San Francisco: Plumbstone, 2007), 30–31. 4. Lesley Adkins & Roy A. Adkins, Dictionary of Roman Religion (New York: Facts on File, 1996), 9, 242–43. 5. Naturalis Historia 3.9. 6. Ibid. 7. Laurence Dermott, Ahiman Rezon, or A Help to a Brother (London: James Bedford, 1756), 7. 26 • SUMMER 2009
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