
THE BUILDER APRIL 1926

EASTER EGGS AND COLORED VEILS

BY BRO. H.S. DARLINGTON, CALIFORNIA


In a small city, where the writer lived, there is a College, or
locus of wisdom, on the eastern edge of town; and on the western
edge an abandoned cemetry. How Masonically appropriate this is,
that we should find Wisdom or Light's-New-Birth in the East, and
that Death, Sunset and Oblivion should be in the West. The College
is alive and growing under the care of an excellent Mason; but the
old cemetery, as a symbol of mortality, is neglected, forgotten;
yes, fairly "overcome".

But just to the east of the College, or rather just to the
northeast, as if it were the House of Dawn, there is a spacious
lawn belonging to a Mason whose initials are P.A.N. Now this man
P.A.N., the wealthiest man in the vicinity, takes a particular
delight each Easter Day in inviting the children of the town to
hunt out, and roll the various colored Easter eggs that are placed
in hiding upon this broad sloping Elysian field. One could almost
think the Golden Age of the Greeks was once more upon us.

Masons might well ask themselves: "Is there an appropriate
symbolization in this egg-rolling frolic, to the East of the Seat
of Wisdom --- some spiritual quality or degree of righteousness
attainable for man which transcends the Light of Wisdom itself? Is
there any significance in the behavior of innocent little children,
joyously disporting themselves with brightly decorated eggs, which
latter in themselves are symbols of a promise of a New Life--
seemingly a Life that shall be gloriously illuminated in the
variegated tints of Dawn?"

Before answering our own question, let us give consideration to the
most common analogy that mankind observes between himself and the
cardinal positions of East and West. From the oldest records that
we can trace of ancient philosophies and cultures, and from the
information that missionaries and ethnographers have gathered with
respect to the more general attitudes of mankind toward the
phenomena of sunset and sunrise, we discover that, by far the major
number of tribesmen and nations of this earth, have looked upon the
setting of the sun in the west as symbolical of the descent of the
soul of man into the "underworld" at death. It would appear that
the soul or spirit of man is vaguely thought of as being analogous
to a luminous something, a sort of glory, that is swallowed up in
darkness at death, by the powers of the nether world. With this
view, none too well defined, or rationalized upon, in the
background of his mind, man has frequently been led, half
instinctively, to bury his dead to the west side of his sacred
village or hamlet, taking care that the feet should be placed to
the east or to sunrise. This custom, however, is by no means
absolutely universal.

Accompanying this concept of man's having a soul analogous to the
bright sun that sinks unto its death at evening in the west, there
has nearly always been the contrasting or reciprocal notion that
even as the sun is seen to arise from death in youth and glory, in
the rosy east, cleansed from the taints of the underworld by being
washed in the baptismal waters of the bright eastern seas, so
shall, the soul of man arise ultimately from the grave, in radiance
and perfection. And the Day of Resurrection arrives when the Great
God Pan shall call the soul out from the underworld of material
life, and shall cause it to roll around to the East, where the
age-old promise of a new birth shall be fulfilled in the glorious
illumination of innocent, sex unconscious spiritual wisdom.

Seemingly, York Rite Masonry is attempting to teach just such a
doctrine of rebirth into the very realms of God, when we have gone
through the lessons that must be learned in the underworld of
death, and materially directed efforts; until at length, by passing
through the zone of wisdom, or crossing the college campus, we
reach the Elysian Lawns, where we are to disport ourselves in
searching out the hidden Egg-of-Rebirth that shall become "our
very, very own" when discovered.

Let us pursue an inquiry into the meaning of our rituals. The first
three degrees of Freemasonry we may call the illiterate degrees or
degrees of unenlightenment. We may say of them, to bring out our
analogy, that they are the Western, Sunset, or Graveyard degrees
because of the blindfolding of the candidate? and the plunging of
the lodge in darkness in the third degree. When we say they are the
illiterate degrees, we mean that the rites do not assume: that the
candidate is able to read and write, as the rites in the Chapter
do. But the four degrees of the Chapter may well enough be termed
the enlightened or literate degrees, the Sunrise, Dawn or Ascension
degrees, for the reason that learning is looked upon as
enlightenment, almost the world over. Even the rude African
tribesman, such as the Ekoi, in attempting to divine the future,
will hold up an egg to the sun and pray: "As the bush fowl cries
for light, so may light be shed on all we wish to know." The Ekoi
is looking for more Masonic light in his own way. So, we think, we
are justified in asserting that the Chapter Degrees may be termed
Eastern, Sunrise or Re-birth degrees.

In the individualistic work of Masonically building a more stately
mansion for his soul, the meditative Mason is searching for that
illusive and promisory egg-of-rebirth. He is engaged in the
half-drifting, half consciously directed, soul-shaping work of
preparing his thoughts and actions by gradually gained spiritual
conceptions of man as man, in relation to men, until at length he
can tune-in on the harmonies of Deity. In the fourth or Mark
Master's Degree, the candidate must be able to read and write, for
the first time; for he must be able to read the "marks" or the
signatures of the craftsmen, and he must be able to keep time, and
figure their wages correctly. In the fifth degree, the candidate
attains great wisdom, and is on a par with Solomon, who was the
oracle of all knowledge, in the opinion of the ancient Jews. Now,
with this attainment of wisdom, he should also attain unto an
illumination or unto enlightenment. This idea is accordingly
symbolized in the following, the sixth, or Most Excellent Master's
Degree. Fire descends from Heaven into the completed Temple. But
the Temple, we must ever bear in mind when trying to find out what
Masonry means, is invariably the human body, as a housing for the
soul. It is intellectual fire that really falls from Heaven. It is,
then, spiritual knowledge that is conferred upon the candidate; and
thus he becomes transfigured in the sixth stage of soul attainment,
and release from the carnal world of matter.

It is not solely the enlightenment of spiritual wisdom that is
conferred upon the tyro in this sixth degree; for symbolically, he
is freed from all carnal desire, and raised to a level of
innocence, and freedom from all shame. This does not mean
shamelessness. He is raised to the status of a little child that is
naked and innocent and without a sense of shame in his state of
unawakened sexuality. This attainment of purity of thought is
symbolized by the dropping away of the loin-cloth of shame, which
is the apron, in which he was clothed up to the moment of
illumination. The real meaning in this connection is not so much
that of sexlessness, as it is that of androgenity, or the reunion
of the soul that was dichotomized into an Adam half and an Eve
half.

The Royal Arch Mason's Degree, or the seventh and last one in the
Chapter, comes next. The soul having symbolically been educated and
purified in spiritual wisdom and innocence, is in line for the
attainment of that status which may be known as Sainthood,
Avatarhood, or Christhood. Symbolically taken, this is the approach
from the west, eastwardly to the area beyond the campus of
spiritual wisdom, even unto the precincts of the Great God Pan;
that is to say, the soul advances to godliness in the very realms
of God.

However, the seventh degree does not start the candidate off as if
he were coming directly from the sixth attainment; but it puts the
advancing one through a recapitulation of his whole progress up to
that point. He is symbolically put through the first three degrees
again, as the first half of the seventh degree. These Blue Lodge
degrees are represented in an apparent aimless and discouraging
wandering across the desert in an attempt to reach the Holy city.
The tyro is blindfolded all this time, because he is supposed to be
traversing the Sunset or Unenlightened steps, as prerequisites in
soul attainment. Prayers are made, and offerings made at the
ancient altars until finally he gets a faint and far-off glimpse of
the Holy city of God. Yet, he is left outside of that New
Jerusalem, while his spiritual and invisible conductor who has been
whispering words of wisdom in his intuitive ear, from time to time,
abandons him, and turns him over to a more advanced, brightly robed
or illuminated spiritual guide, for further advancement his
hoodwink now being removed.

Now his eyes are opened to the non-material world. He finds he is
bathed in a glory of lights of varying colors. He passes several
veils of different colors, symbolizing a self-radiation of grades
of spiritual consciousness. They are supposed to be atmospheres
that the candidate sheds about himself by reason of his overcoming
material concepts and desires, and an entrance upon spiritual might
and effulgence. The total progress is gradual, slow and most
discouraging Each colored veil he passes into symbolizes a new
birth in spiritual being, or the finding of another egg-like
promise of new, scintillant and vibratory life.

After having been inducted within the first veil, which is really
a recapitulation of the fourth or Mark Master's Degree, or is
supposed to be, the tyro throws a rod to the ground, which becomes
a serpent. This he must pick up by the tail, which is an esoteric
way of stating that he must take hold of it in a way that seems to
be the reversal of what we would ordinarily call the normal. On so
doing, the serpent is immediately transformed into a rod. The
lesson in this veil is then supposed to have been mastered by the
candidate, who then advances into the second veil.

But this idea of the serpent and the rod cannot be understood in
its true psychological import unless we take the psycho-analytical
view of it. Following Freud, we may say that the subconscious or
the unconscious! as we shall call it, does not take either the rod
nor the serpent in the literal sense at all. The rod, when held
aloft and upright, out of contact with the material ground under
our feet, or out of contact with the reproductive soil, or garden
of Mother Earth, is a Rod of Command. He who carries this Rod of
Command is a sovereign, and a king, by virtue of its mystic
properties that may either kill or quicken into life. But, the
moment this Rod is thrown down, and plows up this material Mother
Earth, then straightway, this Rod of Command is transformed into
the lowly "libido." This "libido" is none other than the
conscienceless sexual urge, that is said to be so fatal to the
gaining of a spiritual consciousness. The serpent is the symbol of
the "libido", even of sexuality itself.

The candidate must learn self-control, and suppression of the
animal passions. Therefore, he is instructed to pick up the serpent
by its tail. In so doing he reverses its nature, so that the libido
is lifted into the spiritual plane, and the serpent is sublimated
as it were into a Rod of Command over all creation. This
sublimation of the "libido" makes man a creator on the mental
plane, and a Power and Authority in the Universe, instead of being
the slave of carnal desires on the animal plane. Now the spiritual
aspirant has done away with sexual desires, in a symbolical way.
Thus he has reached the same stage in progress that he symbolically
won in the sixth degree when he threw off his loin cloth apron. By
rights, this rod and serpent drama should parallel the
apron-dropping drama, chronologically, but it does not. This is
what we would term a ritualistic error.

When the candidate has advanced to the fourth or last veil, he
spills some water on the ground, or rather he discards water for
good. Water is a symbol of birth and rebirth, so the
psycho-analysts tell us. We see it in the baptismal rites, whereby
the child is symbolically and poetically "reborn" into a spiritual
life. Hence, in repudiating water, the meaning must be that the
candidate is born for the very last time, so that hereafter never
again will he need the cleansing offices of rebirth to help him
reach the stage of undying, pure, spiritual life. Accordingly, as
soon as he spills the water, he is passed out of the last veil and
enters into the august presence of the symbolical Trinitarian
Deity. All the regalia are now seen to be gorgeous and resplendent,
and the tyro himself is clothed in an illuminated robe, and is
given a crown to wear. He has now pecked his way out of the last
colored egg-shell of clouded comprehension of things spiritual on
this symbolical Easter Day . . . the day of his being raised to the
Supreme Degree of Royal Arch Mason. Then as a climax to all, a new
name, a trinitarian deific compound, is conferred upon him, thus
raising him to companionship with the Highest. The name is a
quality of the soul.

York Rite Masonry is really teaching in an esoteric way a doctrine
of soul attainment, unto absolute perfection.

Perhaps we can confirm this interpretation of Easter Eggs and
Masonry by citing a parallel case from the Bible. When Jesus
Christ, who normally was a Rod of Command in the Right Hand of God
the Father, according to the Christian tradition, threw Himself
down in the Garden of Gethsemane, He met His death and passed down
into the Underworld as a Sun that had set. There He stayed for
three days, thus symbolizing the three unenlightened degrees of the
Blue Lodge. Following that, He was raised from the dead, so that He
immediately received a partial enlightenment, such as we try to
symbolize in the fourth degree. But He was in a state of only
partial incorporeality, and He alternated from time to time from a
state of visibility to invisibility, still on this earth, over a
period of forty days, until His Ascension as a Rod of Command in
the Right Hand of His Father. But psycho-analysis informs us that
forty days in a psychological sense only means the same as four
days, because the Unconscious has no knowledge of noughts in its
system of mathematics. Therefore, the three days in Hell, and the
forty days on earth, should be added as the sum of three and four,
thus making seven. The meanings seem to be that the full period
occupied in arising from death to everlasting life requires seven
stages of soul growth, of which three are in utter darkness or
exclusion of all spiritual light.

Now that Biblical event with spiritual import, that is celebrated
in Christian lands on Easter Day, is doctrinally taught by means of
dramas in our York Rite Masonry; and moreover, is taught by such
beautiful and poetical folk-customs as that very practice at Ada,
Oklahoma, where the little innocents find their promised births
into perfection, in the diligent but joyous search for their four
resplendently lighted sheaths of consciousness, as symbolized in
the brightly colored eggs under the radiant smile of the All in
All, the Great God Pan.

