The Sine of Masonry (Part 1)

By Sir Knight Thomas J. Driber, Ph.D.
Excerpted from an article in the Knight Templar Magazine, August, 2015  for educational purposes.

The Holy Saints John of Jerusalem

Today Masonic Lodges are dedicated to the Holy Saints John.  John the Baptist and John the Evangelist were not adopted simultaneously as the Patron Saints of Masonry ... John the Evangelist was not adopted until late in the sixteenth century.  Their feast days were arbitrarily chosen [on the calendar] and have nothing to do with their conceptions, births, deaths, deaths or any other known fact of their lives.

The first question and answer of the Entered Apprentice Catechetical lecture where the Holy Saints John first make their appearance to the newly made Brother requires a clear re-statement and a translation of the terms since they are as expected, "allegorical"... "Whence came you?"  The answer is given "from the Lodge of the Holy Saints John at Jerusalem."

We know that Jerusalem is the city where the Temple of Solomon was built.  Melchizedek reigned as priest and king there.  Christianity, Judaism, and Islam claim rights to that "sacred ground."  Abraham, father of these three religions, was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac there .... John the Evangelist wrote of his vision of the New Jerusalem as a "heaven on earth."  ... Jerusalem is an allegorical term used to refer to a place of musical significance which yet evokes other notions including heaven, immortality, and eternalness.  From this translation it seems that Masonry tells of our coming from a place of immortality and eternity as represented by the term "at Jerusalem."

This translation is further amplified by the explicit use of the Patron Saint, John the Baptist.  The feast day of John the Baptist is June 24th.  This date is of significance because it marks the time immediately following the summer solstice ... Masonry celebrates Saint John the Baptist Day on June 24th, and always it is three to four days after the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. ... The sun is that great luminescent orb which symbolizes for us Masons that essence of divine truth after which we must continually seek.

The answer to the first question explicitly includes reference to a Lodge of John the Baptist or the essence of divinity (the sun) in descent.  The translation then seems to suggest that we are descendent into this material world from a place of divine truth.  That divine truth is that same eternity marked by the term "Jerusalem," and the fact that the sun is in its descent on that particular date suggests our descent from eternalness into mortality, albeit brief and temporary in the density of the material world.

We come from the Lodge of the Saints John.  The second John is John the Evangelist who wrote the Book of Revelation, who was the "Beloved Apostle."  He was a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth and a prophet.  If we follow the same method to translate the meaning of Saint John the Evangelist, we find again a Feast Day corresponding to a period immediately following the winter solstice ... that day of celebration is December 27th and immediately after the date when the sun shines at its lowest point .... On Saint John the Evangelist Day, the sun is already ascending back to its highest and brightest point in the heavens.  Again, and most importantly, we say that we symbolically come from that Lodge of John the Evangelist.  Then, we too are essentially ascending back to our eternal nature which "re-members" us with the essence of eternalness and infinity, the essence of Deity! ... A concise translation then might go as follows; "I come from eternity, that place of truth, into the material world and am ascending back to my eternal nature."

More to come...