Their Varied Meanings Are Only To Be Discovered by Reflection and Study

The symbols and ceremonies of Masonry have more than one meaning. They rather conceal than disclose the Truth. They hint it only, at least; and their varied meanings are only to be discovered by reflection and study. Truth is not...

Source: Morals and Dogma  by Albert Pike

Every Visible Thing Is Only an Effect of the Invisible or Causal

Light is not only a physical element, it is also a mental and spiritual element and in the temple the disciple is told to revere the invisible sun even more than the visible one; for every visible thing is only...

Source: Melchizedek and the Mystery of Fire  by Manly P. Hall

Rolling Round the Central Sun

In his chapter of the antiquity of Masonry, [Captain George Smith] makes it to be coeval with creation, 'when,' says he, 'the sovereign architect raised on Masonic principles the beauteous globe, and commanded the master science, Geometry, to lay the...

Source: On the Origin of Free-Masonry  by Thomas Paine

They Were Not Allowed Even to Speak of These Important Secrets

The secrecy in which they buried their Mysteries, had that end. Those to whom they were confided, bound themselves, by the most fearful oaths, never to reveal them. They were not allowed even to speak of these important secrets with...

Source: Morals and Dogma  by Albert Pike

Links in This Vast Chain Extending Round the Whole Globe

I might point to the fact that, although the meetings of our society are of necessity enshrouded with the veil of secresy, which circumstance, in seasons of excitement and peril, the designing and malicious would have converted into matter of...

Initiating and Advancing Other Men

To attain this transmutation, this metamorphosis of himself, he is taught first to purify and subdue his sensual nature; then to purify and develop his mental nature; and finally, by utter surrender of his old life and losing his soul...

Source: The Meaning of Masonry  by W.L. Wilmshurst

A Co-Conscious Vehicle of Divine Wisdom

He is able to discern that it was himself who at first was "without form and void" and who in virtue of that Fiat Lux! has at last become transformed from chaos and unconsciousness into a form so perfect and...

Source: The Meaning of Masonry  by W.L. Wilmshurst

The Real Purpose of Modern Masonry

This - the evolution of man into superman - was always the purpose of the ancient Mysteries, and the real purpose of modern Masonry is, not the social and charitable purposes to which so much attention is paid, but the...

Source: The Meaning of Masonry  by W.L. Wilmshurst

The Science of the Spheres and Heavens

The Square is a right angle, formed by two right lines. It is adapted only to a plane surface, and belongs only to geometry, earth-measurement, that trigonometry which deals only with planes, and with the earth, which the ancients supposed...

Source: Morals and Dogma  by Albert Pike

The Corpus Hermeticum

[Renaissance philosophers] were alerted to the ancient manuscript tradition named after their supposed author, Hermes Trismegistus... The documents were collectively called the Corpus Hermeticum or, simply, the Hermetica.

Source: The Magus of Freemasonry  by Tobias Churton