THE GENUINE SECRETS

Talk No.13

Peter Taylor is a Past Master of Lodge Albert No.448 and Discovery No.1789

First delivered by Peter at Lodge Albert Lochee 448 on the 25th September 2008

Question - what is that which was lost.
Answer - the genuine secrets of a master mason.

As, according to the ritual, those secrets were lost during the building of K. S. Temple it would seem natural to assume that they were the secrets of the operative master mason. We have replaced them with casual signs, tokens and words until such times as the genuine secrets are recovered, which of course they never will be. Because the genuine secrets referred to in the ritual are purely symbolic and have nothing to do with operative masonry. They are, like the rest of the ritual, referring to symbolic or spiritual masonry. That spiritual temple that we are to build within ourselves, and all the masonic references contained within the ritual are designed to assist us to that end. The masonic ritual is based on the old testament story of the building of K.S.T. Can we assume that the basis for this story is accepted historical fact or is it a conglomeration of myths and legends and is there some hidden truth here that is not immediately discernible.
Looking at it from an operative point of view, our GM Hiram Abif could not divulge the secrets without the assistance of the other two GMs, S.K. of I .and H.K. of T. So, either he wasn’t the only one who knew the secrets, or he only knew one third of them. Further to that, Jerusalem was not the only city where buildings were being erected so other people elsewhere must have had knowledge of the genuine secrets. So the loss of the secrets being due to the death of Hiram Abif seems to be stretching it a bit.
There are a couple of things that stand out that deserve further scrutiny and like most of the ritual, we tend to take them for granted without any real thought, but they might just provide a clue.

At the building of K.S.T. as well as at the temple of Zerubabel and Herod’s temple, no metal tools were used, nor was there any used at the building of the Pyramids. A passage from Deuteronomy 27-5 states “And there shalt thou build an altar unto the Lord thy God, an altar of stones, thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them”.
So even although they must have known of the existence of iron tools, for some reason they were not allowed to use them. I want you to keep that in mind because it will be mentioned again later on.
In the 1850s there was a great storm at sea around the west coast of the Orkney Islands. The huge waves removed the turf from a part of the shoreline on the main island revealing the top of some circular buildings. The archaeologists naturally pounced on this and got to work with their buckets and spades and uncovered 12 or 13 dwellings all connected by a passageway and all of similar design.

Just like government rental properties, you know, all made out of ticky tacky, and they all look the same. Except that these dwellings weren’t made out of ticky tacky, they were built of stone. They are 10” high, the outer walls are built of random stone, what is referred to as dry stone walling. Each dwelling contains a central fireplace, two beds, a chair a sideboard with shelves built into the outer wall and a door frame all made from stone which had to be cut and shaped.
Also on the main island is the remains of a standing stone circle. This is only one of over a thousand stone circles or the remains of stone circles that have been found in the British Isles. There are others in Europeand the Middle East. All of the stones for these circles have had to be cut and shaped to suit the requirements. The curious thing about the Orkney circle is that it is built on bedrock, and it has a henge or ditch all the way around it which is 6” deep, 10” across and is 130” in diameter, and it has been carved out of solid bedrock.

The dwellings and the stone circle have been carbon dated at over 5500 years old, which is about 2000 years before the bronze age or the iron age.
So there were no metal tools used in the building of the dwellings, the standing stones or the Henge around the stone circle. There are other ancient buildings of the same period that have been uncovered in the Boyne Valley in Ireland and in Anglesey in North Wales.
If we group these ancient buildings with K.S.T. and the altar referred to in Deuteronomy 27-5, one is inclined to wonder is it possible that the ability to cut and shape stone without the aid of iron tools the real lost genuine secrets of a master mason.
Isn’t that food for thought?

Peter Taylor 2008