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The Hiramic Legend and the
Symbolism Of The Master's Degree

by Leon Zeldis, MPS

The present work is not so much con-
cerned with the history of the Master's
degree, or the three-degree system in
general, as with the meaning of the
Hiramic legend which, as we know, lies
at the core of this degree. A short bibli-
ography at the end will be of help to those
Brethren interested in pursuing further
this investigation, which must be per-
force sketchy, to keep within the boun-
daries of an article.

We have no certainty about the exact
dates when the third degree began being
worked but, as far back as 1711, the
Trinity College, Dublin, MS, mentions
three separate classes of Brethren:
Entered Apprentices, Fellow Craftsmen
and Masters, each with its own secrets. (1)

By 1730, when Prichard's Masonry Dis-
sectcd was published, the three-degree
system had become firmly established.
The introduction of the Hiramic legend
in Freemasonry dates from the same pe-
riod, as proven by the advertisement for
sale in 1726 of a publication entitled The
Whole History of the Widow's Son Killed by
the Blow of a Beetle. (2)

The name Hiram appears in Masonic
manuscripts much earlier, even centur-
ies before, but we have no indication that
the medieval mason was familiar with
any tragic legend associated with that
name, which appears with different spel-
lings and variations, such as Anyone,
Aman, Amon, Aymon and Hyman. We
note here a certain confusion between
the name Hiram, belonging to the King
of Tyre, as well as the chief architect, and
the Hebrew word Aman or Ooman,
meaning chief of the works or artificer.

All readers are presumably familiar
with the Hiramic legend as exemplified
in the third-degree working. We should
keep in mind, however, that like most
myths, the legend is larger than any one
specific recounting. Some features of
Hiram Abif's story have been eliminated
from this or that Masonic ritual, and
appear in other degrees, in the allied
Masonic bodies, or in rituals belonging
to other Masonic rites.

Another word of warning. When
studying a mythical tale, we should not
expect to find logic or coherence. Each
and every detail of the myth has a sym-
bolic explanation, or several; in the
course of time, the story becomes em-
broidered and additions are made which
not always tally with the rest. We are
told, for example, that the death of
Hiram Abif caused the loss of the true
secrets of the M:.M:., but we are also
told that King Solomon and King Hiram
of Tyre shared those secrets. This is an
obvious contradiction, yet such is the
nature of myth. We must accept it as it
had been handed to us.

Hiram's Murder

The hours high-twelve (noon) and
midnight figure prominently in the
legendary recounting of HA's murder.
Not surprisingly, these are the ritual
hours of work in the first three degrees of
the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

The murderers are three evil workers
driven by ambition, envy and ignorance.
The names of the three vary according to
the texts. Here are some of the varia-
tions:

 Jubelas, Jubelos, Jebelum

 Giblon, Giblas, Giblos

 Ahiram, Romvel, Gravelot or
Hobbden

 Starke, Sterkin, Austerfuth (or
Oterfut)

 Phanox, Amru, Methusalem

The abundance of alliterative names
should be noted. The same phenomenon
can be observed in other, non-masonic
initiation legends, as we shall see below.

The Number Five

The raising of Hiram's body (or his
surrogate) is connected with the five PP.
of F. The number five, of course, has a
rich lore of symbolism attached to it.
Suffice to say that five was held in the
highest esteem by the Pythagoreans,
who called it "Hygeia " or Health. It was
regarded as the conjection of the first
"female " number - 2 - and the first
"male " number - 3, thus being as-
sociated with marriage (one, the unit,
was not considered to be a number at
all).

Five is related to the pentagram or pen-
talpha, that magic five-pointed star as-
sociated everywhere with the occult. One
of its properties is that every straight line
in the pentagram is divided by the others
in the golden section. The number five
also appears in the legend as the number
of fellow-crafts sent to look for Hiram:
three groups of five craftsmen each.

Jones mentions that in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries there was
much public discussion on the five
points, but these referred not to fellow-
ship but to the five points of doctrine to
which Calvinism had been reduced.

Five is the hypotenuse of the smallest
Pythagorean triangle, that is, a right-
angled triangle with integral sides. The
Pythagoreans also associated this tri-
angle with marriage, and Pythagoras'
Theorem was sometimes called the
Theorem of the Bride.(3) Five is also the
fifth Fibonacci number. The Fibonacci
sequence or series is an amazing series of
numbers that appears everywhere in na-
ture, connected with processes of growth
and spirals, among others. Many flowers
have five petals, and fruits often have
five compartments. Five is also automor-
phic, that is, all powers of 5 end with the
digit 5. Five, then, is a number con-
nected with life, growth, renewal and
eternity.

A question comes to mind, why should
five figure so prominently in the third
degree, when the Masonic age ofthe M: .
M:. (in the S.R.) is "seven years and
more. " It's the fellow-craft who has the
number five assigned as his symbolic
age, the five orders of architecture and
the five senses figure in his studies, etc.
Even the blazing star, with the letter G,
which is actually a pentagram, belongs
to the second degree, not the third.

We must see in this confusion another
confirmation, if any was needed, that
originally Masonic rituals comprised at
most two degrees, and possibly a single
ritual divided into several parts. Another
vestige of this situation is the fact that, in
England, at least, the installation cere-
mony is conducted in the second degree. In
Scotland we find another peculiarity -
Scots, after all, must show their inde-
pendence! - the Mark Master degree,
although given only to Master Masons,
is worked with the Lodge open in the
Second Degree.

The Substitute Words

Although undoubtedly of Hebrew
origin, the Master's words have become
corrupted and their exact meaning can-
not be decided with certainty. The most
plausible explanation, in this author's
view, is that both refer to Hiram's death
one coming close to the Hebrew for "the
builder is dead" and the other for "your
son is dead, " as if addressing a woman.
Jones mentions that in a Christian Diction-
ary, printed in 1678, there are definitions
of certain alternative Hebrew words
which, we are told, mean "the smiting of
his son, " "the poverty of understanding "
or "the smiting of the builder" (p. 305).
We can safely dismiss the middle ex-
planation as window-dressing, but the
other two coincide rather closely with the
explanation given above.

An interesting feature that must be
noted is that both words now in use can
be represented by the initials M and B,
which leads to the thought that perhaps
both words had a common origin. Men-
doza has a different theory, suggesting a
Christian origin to the words, but he
appears to be in the minority. As to why
two words are used, and not only one, as
in the first two degrees, it appears that
one word was in use in England in those
Lodges holding under the Premier
Grand Lodge, or Moderns, while the
other was used by the Moderns. (4) At the
time of the union, in 1813, when a uni-
fied ritual was compiled, both words
were left in use.

The Wider Context

Let us now examine Hiram's legend
within the wider context of world my-
thology and religion. Some elements of
the story are common to many mysteries
in which a god or an extraordinary
human being suffers death in order to be
reborn on a higher state of existence. Let
us list some of the more or less common
features:

- The element of special wisdom or
knowledge possessed by the victim.

- The element of betrayal.

- Burial and putrefaction or dismem-
berment of the body.

- Searching for the body or grave.

- Raising the body for identification or
for a second burial.

- Vengeance or punishment of the
murderer(s).

It has been suggested that Hiram' s
story might have been derived from the
ancient foundation sacrifices, in which a
human being was immured in the foun-
dation of the intended structure, to pro-
vide it with a "guardian soul. "

What is certain is that the Hiramic
legend belongs in the tradition of the
classical initiation ceremonies, involving
death and rebirth. Anthropologists have
described such rites in all primitive cul-
tures, and historians have transmitted to
us similar solemnities in the ancient
world, from Egypt and Persia, Greece
and Rome. "To die is to be initiated,"
said Plutarch, making a play of words
between tekutan and teksthai. (5) On the
contrary, we might remark, to be in-
itiated is to die...in order to be born
again.

Already the cuneiform texts of Me-
sopotamia, seven or eight thousand
years old, relate that Dammouzi (Tam-
muz), the lover of the goddess Ishtar, had
been swallowed by the underworld, the
kingdom of the dead, the country from
which there is no return, the abode of
darkness. Ishtar, "widow of the Son of
life, " (another widow!) undertakes to re-
lease him and bring him back to life,
which she does by going through a
graded series of trials.

Among the Phoenicians, this myth be-
came that of Astarte and Adonis. Adonis
is the lover of Nature, that is, Astarte,
who weeps his death and ends by resur-
recting him. Every spring, funeral
ceremonies were held at Byblos (a city
with particular connotations for the In-
stalled Master), with weeping women
tearing their clothing and wounding
their breasts, running about desperately,
as if looking for someone. An empty cof-
fin was placed in the temple, ready to
receive the body, represented by a
wooden statue that was first hidden, and
then placed within the coffin. Towards
the end of Autumn the festival was re-
peated, with an important difference:
grief and lamentations lasted for seven
days, but on the eighth, mourning gave
way to uninhibited joy. The god had
been reborn and ascended to heaven.

The Adonis of Phrigia was called Attis
or Papas, the divine shepherd, husband
of Cybele or Maa, goddess of the earth.
The mysteries of Cybele were brought to
Rome after the end of the Punic wars,
and were celebrated in Rome with in-
creasing enthusiasm during six hundred
years.

In Egypt, we find the myth of Isis and
Osiris, too well known to repeat here.

The Greeks had not one, but several
versions of these legends. One, the mys-
teries of Cabires, in Samothrace, in-
cluded the dramatic representation of
the history of three brethren: Axieros,
Axiokersos and Axiokersa (note the allit-
eration!). According to the version re-
ported by Firmicus Maternus, two of the
Cabires killed the third and buried him
at the foot of Mount Olympus. He was
then brought back to life by Hermes, the
god of the occult. Some Etruscan mir-
rorsv show engraved scenes of this drama.
In one, we see Axieros seized by his two
brethren, before two columns with
Corinthian capitals. In another,
Hermes, accompanied by two satyres
serving as his helpers, approaches the
corpse and tries to raise it with the help of
his magic wand. The Cabires, like
Hiram, are of Phoenician origin.

In the Mysteries of Mithra, as well, the
initiate was symbolically killed. Once,
the emperor Commodus who was offici-
ating as mystagogue - the conductor of
the dead - got carried away by the drama
and actually murdered the unfortunate
initiate. Fortunately, no such mishap has
ever happened in a Masonic ceremony!

The Dionysiac mysteries, also very
popular in Rome, as in the Eastern pro-
vinces of the Empire, featured the dis-
memberment of Dionysus, later reas-
sembled and resurrected by Zeus.

Some of these rites continued for many
centuries after the spread of Christianity,
sometimes disguised under a Christian
cloak. D'Alviella (p. 77) mentions, for
example, a ceremony held in the island
of Malta, in the 16th century, as re-
counted by an Arab writer. At the time
of the feast of St. John, which coincided
with the flowering of beans, the priests
hid a statute of the saint under branches
of flowering beans. The saint was then
mourned as if dead. After three days, his
return was celebrated, the statue was
uncovered and carried in procession to
the church. It is not difficult to perceive
that the saint here was a surrogate for
Dionysus .

The role of initiation in human society
can be best summarized by quoting Mir-
cea Eliade (p. 220): "Initiation appears
in all authentic human existence, for two
reasons: on the one hand, because all
authentic human life implies deep crises,
trials, anguish, loss and recovery of the
self, 'death and resurrection'; on the
other, because, no matter how full, all
existence appears, at a certain moment,
as an unfulflled promise.

This is not a moral judgement about
the past, but a vague feeling of having
missed the vocation, of having betrayed
the best within oneself. In such moments
of total crisis, one hope only seems
capable of providing sa,vation: the hope
of being able to start life again. That is,
in short, that we dream of a new exist-
ence, renewed, plentiful and meaning-
ful...The nostalgia of an initiatic renoua-
tion which arises sporadically in the heart
of hearts of modern irreligious man,
seems to us therefore as most significa-
tive: it would be, in the final analysis, the
modern expressions of man's eternal
longing to find a positive meaning to
death, to accept death as a rite of passage
to a superior state of being.

If initiation can be said to be a distinc-
tive dimension of human existence, this
is due, above all, to the fact that only
initiation assigns a positive task to death:
to prepare the new birth, purely spir-
itua,, access to a mode of being secure
from the ravages of Time. "
Notes
1. Jones, p. 242.

2. Op. cit., p. 3 18.
3. Well, p. 58.
4. This explanation appears in the 1762 exposure
Jachin and Boaz, quoted by Mendoza.
5. D'Alviella, p. 65.

Selected Bibliography

Daniel Beresniak, La Legende D'Hiram
et les Initiations Traditionnelles, E. Detrad,
Paris, 1987.

Goblet D'Alviella, Des Origines du Grade
de Maitre dans la Franc-Maconnerie, Guy
Tredaniel, Paris, 1983.

Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth,
Harper & Row, New York, 1958.

Bernard E. Jones, Freemason's Guide and
Compendium, Harrap, London, 1950.

Harry Mendoza, "The Words of a
Master Mason," Ars Quatuor Corona-
torum, Vol. 102, 1989, p. 164.

David Wells, The Penguin Dictionary of
Curious and Interesting Numbers, Penguin
Books, London, 1986 (repr. 1988).

The Philalethes, February 1992
