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Short Talk Bulletin Vol 13 No 09
SHORT TALK BULLETIN - Vol.XIII September, 1935 No.9
TWO PILLARS
by: Unknown
Few references in Freemasonry are less understood than the two brazen
pillars in the porch of King Solomons Temple. Probably a greater
mass of misinformation exists regarding these than any other symbol
in the Craft.
Early ritualists confused the mythical pillars of stone, spoken of in
almost all the old Charges, or Manuscript Constitutions of the Craft,
with the Brazen pillars of the porch - the result is that modern
Freemasons have composite pillars, fusing of the ancient and the
mythical pillars on which were supposed to be engraved the arts and
sciences of the time before the flood, and those which Hiram Abif
erected - undoubtedly with Egyptian influences and memories of
Egyptian Temples to guide him - before the great house of the Lord
which Solomon built.
The fascinating, if wholly legendary, history of the Craft, repeated
with variations in the majority of the old manuscript rolls,
beginning with the Regius of 1390, is older than any Freemasonry we
know in practice. The story varies from manuscript to manuscript, but
in its essentials is much the same - it was evidently a tradition as
strong in its day as is our legend of Hiram. To quote but a few line
bearing on the pillars, consider these words from the York Manuscript
No. 1, written about A.D. 1600:
Before Noah flood there was a man called Lamech as is written in the
Scriptures in ye Chatr of Genesis And this Lamech had two wives ye
one named Adah by whome he had two sons ye one named Jabell ye other
named Jubell And his other wife was called Zillah by whome he had one
son named Tubelcaine & one Daughter named Naamah & these four
children founded ye beginnings of all ye Sciences in ye world viz
Jabell ye oldest Sone found out ye Science of Geomatre he was a keepr
of flocks and sheep Lands in the Fields as it is noted in ye Chaptr
before sd And his bother Jubell found ye Science of Musicke Song of
the Tongue harpe & organ And ye third brother Tuball Caine found ye
Science called Smith Craft of Gold Silvr Iron Coppr & Steele & ye
daughter found ye ara of Weaving And these persons knowing right well
yt God would take vengencance for sinne either by fire or water
wherefore they writt their severall Sciences yt they had found in two
pillars of stone yt might be found aftr Noah his Flood And ye one
stonbe would not burn wth fire & ye othr called Lternes because it
would not dround wth wtr etc.
The word here spelled Lternes is rendered on other old
Constitutions as laterns, usually translated brick. But marble
does not resist fire; brick - especially early unscientifically
vitrified brick - does not resist water. If the word be considered a
perversion of latten, which means brass or bronze, then the ancient
legendary pillars are made of metal and marble, a more sensible idea,
since metal would resist fire, and the marble, water.
In Tyre was the great Temple to Herakles with two pillars, one of
gold, the other of smaragdus (polished green marble). Other Tyrian
Temples to Melkarth had two metal pillars or two monoliths.
Modern Masonry has hollow pillars to serve as safe repositories for
the archives of Masonry and to preserve them from flood and fire,
in spite of the fact that sacred history says nothing of Masonry, or
the reason for the pillars being hollow. It is reasonable to suppose
that the ancient Masonic tradition of Lamechs children and their
pillars was confused, as knowledge of the Bible became more common
after the invention of printing, with other brazen pillars of an
ancient day, and finally with those of Solomons Temple.
How high were the pillars? A question which has agitated American
Freemasonry - largely without reason - for many years! A majority of
American rituals state that they were thirty-five cubits in heights.
A minority hold to eighteen.. One compromises on thirty. A few do
not give the height at all.
Mackey (Revised Encyclopedia of Freemasonry) says:
Immediately within the porch of the Temple, and on each side of the
door, were placed two hollow brazen pillars. The height of each was
twenty-seven feet, and the diameter about six feet, and the thickness
of the brass three inches. Above the pillar and covering its upper
part to the depth of nine inches, was an oval body or chapiter seven
feet and a half in height. Springing out of from the pillar at the
junction of the chapiter with it, was a row of lotus petals, which
first spreading around the chapiter, afterwards gently curved
downward toward the pillar, something like the acanthus leaves on the
capital of a Corinthian column. About two fifths of the distance
from the bottom of the chapiter, or just below its most bulging part,
a tissue of network was carved, which extended over its whole upper
surface. To the bottom of this network was suspended a series of
fringes, and on these again were carved two rows of pomegranates, one
hundred being in each row.
This description, it seemed to Dr. Mackey, is the only one that can
be reconciled with the various passages which relate to these pillars
in the Books of Kings, Chronicles, and Josephus, to give a correct
conception of the architecture of these symbols.
In 1904 Brother John W. Barry, of Iowa, later to become Grand Master,
rendered an exhaustive report to his Grand Lodge on the height of the
pillars, proving anew the belief, practically accepted by Biblical
students, the that thirty-five dimension is that of both pillars
together, the actual height of each being eighteen cubits.
The confusion arises in the two accounts in Chronicles and Kings.
Various explanations have been advanced as to the discrepancy between
thirty-five as the height of each. The missing cubit is explained on
the theory that while actually each pillar from root to summit was
eighteen cubits, only seventeen and one-half showed. The rest being
hidden in chapiter and base.
This explanation apparently began with the Genevan Bible (Breeches
Bible) in which is a marginal note stating of the pillars every one
was eighteen cubits long, but halfe cubite could not be feene, for it
was hid in the roundeneffe of the chapiter, and therefore he giueth
to every one 17 and a halfe.
To know the actual size of the pillars, it is necessary to know the
length of a cubit. And here is room for speculation and many
authorities! The Abingdon Bible Commentaries says: The common
cubit, equal to about 18 inches, the longer Royal cubit to about 20-
1/2 inches. John Wesley Kelchner, whose restorations of King
Solomons Temple are to be found in Masonic Bibles, considers the
cubit to bee equal to two feet. The Standard Dictionary gives the
cubit as the measure of length determined by the average arm from
elbow to middle finger tip. The Britannica considers that the Temple
cubit must have been in excess if 25 inches, Canon J.W. Horsley,
Past Grand Chaplain, England, who has studied and written much upon
the pillars, give a table of sizes in which the cubit is but 14 2/5
inches.
Many rituals set forth the fact that Hiram cast the pillars on the
plains of the Jordan, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zarthan,
or Zeredetha. Both I Kings and II Chronicles are authority for the
statement. But if there ever existed a clay ground in the location
specified, it has disappeared and left no trace. Explorations (Lynch
in 1847, Ridegway in 1874 not only found no clay ground, but no trace
of smelters, furnaces, or other means of melting and casting brass.
The point is of little importance - the pillars and the Temple
vessels were cast, somewhere. But a failure of fact in a statement
so absolute may be an indication the other I Kings and II Chronicles
statements about the pillars were also inaccurate as to facts -
vide the height statements.
The globes celestial and terrestrial which usually surmount
American Lodge room pillars are wholly modern inventions, without
basis in Scriptural fact. Somewhere, at some time, some ritual maker
confused the spherical form of the chapiter with an additional an
additional sphere. Desiring to account for it, he drew a map of the
world on one and a map of the heavens on the other! But in the Kings
and Chronicles accounts and in Josephus, there are no mentions of
celestial and terrestrial globes.
All this is more interesting than important. The symbolical meaning
of the pillars is the vital matter to Freemasons.
In the eyes of critical scholarship, the ancient meaning was of the
might and majesty of Deity. From the dawn of religion the pillar,
monolith or built up, has played an important part of the worship of
the Unseen. From the huge boulders of Stonehenge, among which the
Druids are supposed to have performed their rites, through East
Indian temples, to the religion of ancient Egypt, scholars trace the
use of pillars as an essential part of the religious worship; indeed,
in Egypt the obelisk stood for the very presence of the Sun God
himself.
The ancient believed the earth to be flat and that it was supported
by two Pillars of God, placed at the western entrance of the world as
then known. These are now called Gibraltar, on one side of the
strait and Cueta on the other.
Some writers have suggested that the pillars represent the masculine
and feminine elements in nature; others, that they stand for
authority of Church and State, because on stated occasions the high
priest stood before one pillar and the King before the other. Some
students think that they allude to the two legendary pillars of
Enoch, upon which, tradition informs us, all the wisdom of the
ancient world was inscribed in order to preserve it from inundations
and conflagrations. William Preston supposed that, by them, Solomon
had reference to the pillars of cloud and fire which guided the
Children of Israel out of the bondage and into the promise land. One
authority says a literal translation of their names is: In thee is
strength, and, It shall be established, and by a natural
transposition mat thus be expressed: Oh Lord, Thou art almighty and
Thy Power is established from everlasting to everlasting.
Quoting Abingdon again:
The fact that each pillar had a particular name further suggests
that they were not simply a part of the architectural adornment, but
originally bore some analogy to the pillars which, singly or in
pairs, formed an important feature of the Semitic sanctuaries. At
Melkarts shrine at Tyre there were, according to Herodotus, two
costly obelisks at which Melkart (and probably his wife-consort) was
worshiped. Two pillars also stood before the temples in Paphos and
in Hierapolis. Ashurbanipal on the occasion of his expedition to
Egypt and Ethiopia recounts that part of his spoil included two
obelisks high with resplendent plating of fine workmanship . . from
the threshold of the gate of the Temple. Therefore these pillars at
Jerusalem, built, like the Temple itself, by Phoenician workmen, were
probably intended to be symbols of the Deity; they were an artistic
refinement of the Mezzabah, or stone obelisk which, at many Israelite
sanctuaries, still stood beside he altar in much later days. But it
does not necessarily follow that Solomon and his subjects so
interpreted the significance of these novel and foreign brass
objects: for them the Ark in the oracle seemed to have symbolized
Jehovah.
But it is possible that instead of Jachin (or Jakin,) he (Jehovah)
was carved on one pillar by Huram-abi and subsequently altered into
his name; and Boaz (i.e., in him is strength) may be a later
substitution for Tammuz, whose cult was very prevalent in the
Semitic world.
The Entered Apprentice in the process of being passed to the degree
of Fellowcraft passes between the pillars. No hint is given that
he should pass nearer to one than the other; no suggestion is made
that he either may work a greater influence than the other. He
merely passes between.
A deep significance is in this very omission. Masons refer to the
promise of God unto David; the interested may read Chapter VII of II
Samuel, and gather that the establishment promised by the Lord was
that of a house, a family, a descent of blood from David unto his
children and his childrens children.
Used to blast stumps from fields, dynamite is an aid to the farmer.
Used in war it kills and maims. Fire cooks food and makes steam for
engines, fire also burns houses and destroys forests. But it is not
the power but the use of power which is good or bad. The truth
applies to any power; spiritual, legal, monarchical, political or
personal. Power is without either virtue or vice; the user may use
it well or ill, as he pleases.
Freemasonry passes the brother in the process of becoming a
Fellowcraft between the pillar of strength - power; and the pillar of
establishment - choice or control. He is a man now and no minor or
infant. He has grown up Masonically. Before him are spread the two
great essentials to all success, all greatness, and all happiness.
Like any other power - temporal or physical, religious or spiritual -
Freemasonry can be used well or ill. Here is the lesson set before
the Fellowcraft; if he, like David, would have his kingdom of Masonic
manhood established in strength he must pass between the pillars with
understanding that power without control is useless, and control
without power, futile. Each is a compliment of the other; in the
passage between the pillars the Fellowcraft not only has his feet set
upon the Winding Stairs but is given - so he has eyes to see and ears
to hear - secret instructions as to how he shall climb those stairs
that he may, indeed, reach the Middle Chamber. He is to climb by
strength, but directed by wisdom; he is to progress by power, but
guided by control, he must rise by the might that is in him, but
arrive by the wisdom of his heart.
So considered, the inaccuracies and misstatements of ritual regarding
the pillars become relatively unimportant; whether eighteen of
thirty-five cubits high, whether cast in one place or another,
whether or not surmounted in Solomons day with globes terrestrial
and celestial, matter little. The lesson is there, the meaning of
the symbol to be read. The initiate of old saw in the obelisk the
very spirit of the God he worshiped. The modern Masonic initiate may
see in the two pillars the mans by which he may travel a little
further, a little higher towards the secret Middle Chamber of life,
in which dwells the Unseen Presence.
