MSA-OC89
                 THE HIRAMIC LEGEND
                         bY
                 George S. Draffen

Ceorge S. Draffen, of Fife, served in 1975 as Deputy Grand Master
of the Grand Lodge of Scotland he is a Past Master of Quatuor
Coronati Lodge No. 2076, London, and Past Grand Deacon of the
United Grand Lodge of England.

  During the ceremony of the Third Degree, which is so well named
the Sublime Degree, you can hardly fail to have been deeply
impressed by the tragedy of Hiram Abiff. To understand it, and to
appreciate to the full its profound richness of meaning, is
something that will remain with you as long as you live.

  It is first of all important to understand that the drama of
Hiram Abiff is a ritualistic drama. We all know what a drama is.
It is a conflict between a man and other men or between a man and
other forces, resulting in a crisis in which his fate or fortune
lies at stake. The crisis, or problem, is followed by a
solution or resolution. If it turns out in favor of the man the
drama is a comedy, in the true and original meaning of that word
as a happy ending. If it turns against him, and as a result he
becomes a victim or a sufferer, it means that the drama is a
tragedy.

  By drama in either sense I do not refer to plays as they are
acted on the stage, which are not dramas at all, but
representations of dramas. I refer to drama as it occurs in our
own lives, to everyone of us, and in our daily experience. The
only reason for our interest in reading or seeing stage plays is
because they mirror the drama in which in real life we ourselves
are the actors.

  But the ceremony of Hiram Abiff is not only a drama, it is a
ritualistic drama, and the major emphasis should be placed on the
world "ritualistic."

What is a ritual? It is a set of fixed ceremonies which address
themselves to the human spirit solely through the imagination. A
play in the theatre may be built round some historical figure or
some historical event, as in the case of Shakespeare's plays
about the English kings and about Macbeth or Hamlet. And if the
figures and events are not actually historical, they are sup-
posed to be, so that the facts of time, place and individual
identity are of some importance to it.

 A ritualistic drama, on the other hand, does not pay any heed to
historical individuals, times or places. It moves wholly in the
realms of the spirit, where time, space and particular in-
dividuals are ignored. The clash of forces, and crises and fates
of the human spirit alone enter into it, and they hold true of
all men, everywhere, regardless of who they are, or where and
when they are.

 Since the drama of Hiram Abiff is ritualistic, it is a mistake
to accept it as history. There was a Hiram Abiff in history, but
our Third Degree is not interested in him. Its sole concern is
with a Hiram Abiff who is a symbol of the human soul, that is,
its own Hiram Abiff. If, therefore, you have been troubled with
the thought that some of the events of this drama could not
possibly have ever happened you can cease to be troubled. It is
not meant that they ever happened in ancient history, but that
they are symbols of what is happening in the life of every man.

 For the same reason it is an inexcusable blunder to treat it as
a mere mock tragedy. Savage peoples employ initiation ceremonies
as an ordeal to test the nerve and courage of their young men,
but Freemasonry is not savage. Boys in school often employ
ragging, which is horseplay caricature of the savage ceremonial
ordeals, but Freemasonry is not juvenile. The exemplification of
our ritualistic drama is sincere, solemn, and earnest. He who
takes it trivially betrays a shallowness of soul which makes him
unfit ever to become a Mason.

 Hiram Abiff is the acted symbol of the human soul, yours, mine,
any man's. The work he was engaged to supervise is the symbol of
the work you and I have in the supervision, organization, and
direction of our lives from birth to death.

 The enemies he met are none other than the symbols of those
lusts and passions which in our own breasts, or in the breasts of
others, make war on our characters and our lives.

 His fate is the same fate that befalls every man who becomes a
victim to those enemies, to be interrupted in one's work, to be
made outcast from the lordship (or mastership) over one's own
self, and, at the end, to become buried under all manner of
rubbish--which means defeat, disgrace, misery and scorn.

 The manner in which he was raised from that dead level to that
living perpendicular again is the same manner by which any man,
if it happens at all, rises from self-defeat to self-mastery.
And the Sovereign Great Architect, by the power of whose word
Hiram Abiff was raised, is that same C;od in whose arms we
ourselves forever lie, and whose mighty help we also need to
raise us out of the graves of defeat, or evil, and death itself.

 Did you wonder, while taking part in that drama, why you were
personally made to participate in it? Why you were not
permitted to sit as a spectator?

 You were made to participate in order to impress upon you that
it was your drama, not another's, there being exemplified. No man
can be a mere spectator of that drama, because it takes place in
his own soul. Likewise because it was intended that your
participation should itself be an experience to prepare you for
becoming a Master Mason, by teaching you the secret of a Master
Mason, which is, that the soul must rise above its own internal
enemies if ever a man is to be a Mason in reality as well as in
name. The reality of being a Master mason is nothing other than
to be the Master of one's self.

 Did you wonder why it was that the three enemies of Hiram Abiff
came from his own circle and not from outside? It is because
the enemies to be feared by the soul are always from within, and
are nothing other than its own ignorance, lust, passions, and
sins. As the Volume of Sacred Law reminds us, it is not that
which has power to kill the body that we need most to shun, but
that which has power to destroy the spirit.

 Did you wonder why it was that, after Hiram Abiff was slain,
there was so much confusion in the Temple? It was because the
Temple is the symbol of a man's character, and therefore breaks
and falls when the soul, its architect, is rendered helpless.
Because the Craftsmen are symbols of our powers and faculties and
they fall into anarchy when not directed and commanded by the
will at the centre of our being.

 And did you wonder why the lodge appeared to neglect to explain
this ritualistic drama to you at the end of the degree? It was
because it is impossible for one man to explain the tragedy of
Hiram Abiff to another. Each must learn it for himself; and the
most we can obtain from others is just such hints and scattered
suggestions as these I have given you. Print the story of Hiram
Abiff indelibly upon your mind; ponder upon it; when you yourself
are at grips with your enemies recall it and act accordingly to
the light you find in it. By so doing you will find that your
inner self will give in the form of first-hand experience that
which the drama gave you in the form of ritual. You will be wiser
and stronger for having the guidance and the light the drama can
give you.
