Many books have been written about the origins of Freemasonry and many myths have been interwoven into them. Even Freemasons agree that its origins seem to be purposely obscured, however virtually all agree that it was brought to the West in its embryonic form by the Knights Templar after discovering something in the Temple of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.
Virtually all this research and all the books written have one thing in common ~ they were researched and written by Westerners trying to make sense of the scant information available. One thing must be remembered though, prior to the capture of Jerusalem by the West it was in Arabic and Islamic control; the Temple of the Rock was the second most sacred place in Islam next to the Kaaba in Mecca; during Western occupation there was still strong Islamic influence in Jerusalem and around the Temple of the Rock, albeit underground; after Christian occupation Islam re-established itself there up to present time. Within Islam there is the Sufi, the Islamic mystics, they have always had a strong presence in the Temple of the Rock ~ the reason will soon become apparent. The Sufi are not only spiritual mystics, but, also often highly intellectual and learned. It will be no surprise then to learn that they have unbroken lines of transmission of what was really going on at that time and the key to unlock the codes found in Masonry.
So, rather than dwell on broken transmissions in the West, let us look at the Sufic transmissions of the origins of Freemasonry. Below is a reproduction of one chapter from The Sufis by Idries Shah, this chapter deals with the origins of Freemasonry and how to use Sufi knowledge to decode it.
Read on and enjoy.
The Secret Language
II. The Builders
Detach from fixed ideas and
preconceptions. And face what is
to be your lot.
(Sheikh Abu-Said Ibn Abri-Khair)
"Sufi-ism," said Sir Richard Burton, was "The Eastern parent of Freemasonry." Whether Burton was a Freemason or not, there is no doubt he was a Sufi.
Freemasonry has been upheld by distinguished people in many countries, reviled and persecuted, linked with politics, reduced to the relative informality of staid businessman's frolics, penetrated by Rosicrucianism, attacked as a Jewish imposture by the Nazis. It would not be seemly for a Freemason to engage upon a public portrayal of any part of the Craft's symbols or beliefs - indeed it is more than probable that a member would be under oath of secrecy whereby he must preserve every part of the brotherhood's workings from all who were not initiated. The source of material purporting to be Masonic for the non-members, therefore, is bound to be fairly one sided ~ the inner workings of Masonry provided by renegades and probably by opponents of the Craft.
When a study is made of all available literature purporting to contain Masonic secrets, certain definite outlines appear, which might justifiably be considered to form a reasonable amount of true information, on the no-smoke-without-fire principle. But that as it may, what interests the Sufi is the fact that, out of the material which claims to be partially or wholly Masonic, a very great deal is at once seen to concur with matters of everyday Sufi initiatory practice. Either Freemasonry is, as Burton claimed, derived from the Sufis; or else the substance of the frequent and plentiful exposes, which may not be of Freemasonry at all, are in fact exposures of a Sufic cult other than Freemasonry. For the purpose of this study we shall approach this exciting part of the enquiry from the only perspective open to us. Parallels will be sought between what the exposers claim to be Freemasonry, and what we know of Sufic schools.
One of the best methods of tracing Arabic-Sufi transmission to the West is through terminology. When a certain word is used with an esoteric significance, it is generally worthwhile studying it and seeking a parallel between the two systems. The fundamental word which we find most used in Masonic exposures is composed of the three Hebrew letters A, B, L, Transliterated into Arabic letters, this word proves to be the password of the Sufi society called the Builders (al-Banna); and the Arabic word for Mason is also al-Banna. Far from ending here, the parallels are just beginning.
As in the case of the troubadours (TRB, Arabic root), the Builders (first said to flourish under this name in the ninth century) chose this triliteral word with care, searching the dictionary for a term which would embrace as many aspects of their organization as possible. The result, analysed by inflecting the Arabic root in the normal manner, provides this list of characteristics of the school:
ABL = monk, sexton, etc.; heirophancy
ABL = to gather people together; grouping
LaBA = to stop, to halt at a place
BaLA = to give a thing, to be beneficent
BAL = heart, mind; attention; state; boldness; welfare
Even without other information which exists about this Sufi school, we can already glean something of their organization and objectives through this breakdown of their secret word. The first word intimates initiation, the second the congregation, the third the stages of the Path of the Sufis, the fourth the giving (of love and charity) which was their means of expression, the fifth various aspects of their activities and training. Why was this word written in Hebrew and not in Arabic? Some late hand has reshaped the Arabic origins of the Craft into a form more acceptable to people with a Judo-Christian tradition; and we can safely assume from the published materials that it was to just such a community that the modern form of Masonry as we know it in the West was addressed.
To the Sufi Builders, these three letters symbolized three meditation postures. The Kufic letter alif was the kneeling position. Duh'l-Nun Misri, one of the greatest Sufi teachers, is believed to have formulated it in this shape. It became powerful in Turkey during the sixteenth century. Western writers say "it is strangely like the Masons." It was illustrated by a set square, a primal symbol of the Masons. In Arabic, again, the word square is RBA ~ which summarizes meditation very well in it's alternative meaning of "waiting, restraint." The second letter, ba, is written in Arabic letters like a boat with a dot under it. This forms a fairly passable diagram of its symbol ~ the level ~ also used in Masonry. This conveys the emblematic meaning of "prostration and concentration." The final letter, lam, is likened to a rope. In shape it is very much like a hook or curving piece of rope. It means to the Builder "the rope which binds all in union."
[The following goes into Sufi symbolism which although not exactly relevant is so in a round about way so I'm including it ~ Rob].
There are, according to the Sufis, ninety-nine divine names or attributes. The development of the effect of all these names produce the complete individual. The hundredth name is secret and becomes known to the Seeker only when he has become imbued with the spirit of the others. The number 33 is used by the Builders to denote one third of the total training system which produces the first grade of enlightenment. In the numerical system of the Arabic alphabet (where every letter has a number) 33 provides: 30 = letter L; 3 = letter J. This is the only way in which the number can be split up by this system. If the letters L and J are then considered to spell a word, they constitute a password or initiatory meaning of the first third of Sufi enlightenment. Is there a word LJ or JL in Arabic? Indeed there is. There are both. LJ spells "flame," and Sufistically stands for the illumination, the burning desire of love. JL spells "illustrious." The flaming sword which is reputedly a Masonic emblem is used by the Builders to correspond with this meaning ~ the thirty-three names.
What of the hundredth name? This, strange as it may seem, seems to be the (now corrupted) original of the strange G-like symbol found within the Masonic star in items of regalia. In the cult of the Builders, this G is the Arabic letter Q, which it closely resembles. [Note ~ In Colloquial Arabic, the Q sound may be rendered, especially by non-Arabs, as G. This tendency is more marked still in some countries which use Arabic words, but themselves lack the guttural Q sound.] And Q stands for the secret, the final element. In the same Arabic letter-number notation, Q is equivalent to the number one hundred.
The method of codes within codes and using letters and numbers to convey matters which only the initiated understand is the characteristic of dervish poets; and since it occurs in too many particulars to be mere coincidence, the Masonic usage and the Sufi one are identical. Take the matter a stage further. If we add the letter Q, the hidden power, to the three letter word ALB, eliding the letter A, in Arabic we have a further panorama of hidden meaning:
Q-ABL = beforehand, first, prior (primacy of the cult)
Q-ALB = heart (Sufi symbol for contemplation and inner metaphysical contact)
L-aQB = title, honorific (the distinction of the cult)
And whether by accident or design, the three letters Q, L, B, when added together according to Arabic notation produce 132. This can be read as 32 + 1 = 33. But according to the Builders, it is an intimation of the secret teaching passed on with great secrecy by one whose name, when calculated by the same method in Arabic, provides the number thirty-three. And this is how they spell it.
M = 40 +H = 8 +M = 40 +M = 40 +D = 4= 132
The word, spelled according to Arab orthography, is Mohammad. We are now at the stage when the Builders reveal that the Sufic lore which they practice was a part of the secret teachings of Mohammad himself.
This figure of thirty-three, or the letter Q, the Sufi Builders inscribed within a pentagram, and sometimes in a star composed of two triangles. In other esoteric traditions, these superimposed triangles are explained as standing for male and female principles, as fire and air, and so on. But to the Sufi Builder, the lower triangle is the shaped Arabic numeral seven. The upper one is the outline of the number eight. And, taken together, the six sides of the two triangles comprise the number six. This, to them, means the series 786. And 786 is the religious formula Bismillah ar-Rahmam, ar-Rahim, reduced to figures by direct substitution. The meaning of the phrase is the same as that found on a Sufic crucifix from the ninth-century Ireland ~ In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the merciful.
The Kaaba (cubical temple) of Mecca was rebuilt in 608 A.D., when Mohammad was thirty-five years old, and five years before he started his teaching. This temple was built with thirty-one courses of stone and wood [the other two courses are, of course, earth and sky, according to Sufi symbolism]. The Sufis add: "with Earth and Sky, thirty-three."
It would be improper to go any further in presenting material which both Freemasons and organized dervish fraternities posses and consider to be of high initiatory significance. But, there are incidental facts that can be mentioned, and are of some general interest. Freemasonry, according to some of its historians, came to England in the time of Aethelstan (about 894-932), the Saxon King who brought England into close contact with the rest of Europe. His life covered almost the same period as that of the illustrious Spanish Sufi Ibn Masarra (883-931) from whose illuminist school a tremendous and continuing influence upon Western thought has been traced. It was during the same century that Dhu'l-Nun the Egyptian, the Sufi and reputed founder of the dervish Order of Builders, lived and taught. Dhu'l-Nun, revered by all Sufis, is referred to as having been of Nubian ("black") origin, giving a connection with the adoption of "black" (fehm) and "knowledge, understanding" (fehm) by the dervish school of the Coalmen, which we associate with the Carbonari.
"Black" is also another word for Egypt, said to be derived from the colour of the soil. The Black Art is thought by many to mean nothing more than "the Egyptian Art," or the "Art of Understanding." By a similar process of thought, the Black Virgins of the middle ages could be translated as the "Wise Virgins." The confusion between the Black Art, the Hermetic Art and the Egyptian Secrets has appeared and reappeared throughout medieval literature. The misunderstanding exists only because of ignorance of the similarity of "black" and "wise" in Arabic by foreigners.
The connection between Black Art, alchemy and Rosicrucianism has baffled many students, who have assumed for the most part that all these things were dabbled in by Europeans of the middle ages just because of a general credulity and desire to penetrate secrets and find a hidden teaching.
The connection between the Shriners and the Masons has seemed to many observers to be absurd, or some sort of false association. A Shriner must be a Mason. His ritual is avowedly based upon a myth and ritual connected with the Holy Temple of Mecca. What possible connection, it is sometimes asked, could there be between the Mecca temple of the Moslems and the Temple of Solomon and its building? There could be a very close connection indeed. First let it be noted that charges against ancient Sufis include the terrible allegation that a mime of the Mecca pilgrimage ceremonies could be carried out anywhere with equal validity to an actual pilgrimage. Secondly, let us remember that the great Sufi teacher Maaruf Karkhi (died 815) is known as Son of David, and also as "king," a common Sufi appellation. The Son of David, by association, was Solomon. Solomon it was who rebuilt the Temple. Why Son of David? Because Karkhi was the disciple of the illustrious teacher Daud el Tai. Daud is Arabic for David.
This David died in 781. Less than a century before, about 691, the Saracens rebuilt the Temple of Solomon on the site which is now known as the Dome of the Rock. This, and no earlier one, is the Temple whose servants were the Knights Templar, accused of Saracenic leanings. It is no accident that after the dissolution of the Order of the Templars the Freemasons took on the Templar traditions.
It should not be forgotten that the Kaaba (literally, the Cube) is the foursquare temple of Mecca. The "black stone" of Mecca is set in an outer corner of the Kaaba. It is thus correctly described as the Kaaba (Cube) stone, easily rendered as the Cubic Stone. It is also called hajarel aswad (black stone). "Black" as we have noted, is rendered as "coal," and the "stone of black" can be rendered as hajarel fehm, "stone of wisdom," or even, in translation, "stone of the wise." Second only to this place for all Moslems is the sanctified spot known as the Temple of Solomon in Palestine.
Sufi tradition has it that a band of early classical Sufis were a number of men who assembled in the Mecca temple and devoted themselves to its service. On the fall of Jerusalem to the Arabs, the first act of the Moslems was to repair to the site of the Solomonic Temple to acquire it for Islam. That the Sufi tradition was continued in respect of the Dome of the Rock is evidenced by the fact that its later interior decorations contained Sufi symbolic designs. Templar churches and other indications show the influence of the Saracen version of the Solomonic Temple.
There are two lines of diffusion of this lore to the West ~ initially through Saracen Spain, with or without Jewish amalgamation of ideas (because Jews were active in co-operation with the Arab Cabalists), and again through the Crusades, when members of the cult known as the Builders may very well have found similar rituals among the dervishes of the Near East.
Finally, the darkness-and-light motif attributed to Freemasonry has dervish parallels so close that these alone would give one cause to wonder. The dervishes speak of light as truth, illumination. Black, as we have already noted, is associated with wisdom (being homonymous with it in Arabic); and white, too, stands for understanding. Knowing the true meaning of wisdom and light, of good and bad, of the real "darkness" of the ignorant is the central point in dervish activity. Sufis ultimately in this connection depend upon the Light Verse in the Koran (Sura 24, 35), which says: "Rejecters' deeds are like darkness: darkness upon darkness. No light at all has he who has not Allah's light." This theme was taken up in careful detail by Ghazali, whom we know influenced all scholastic West. He wrote a book on the subject of light and darkness ~ the Niche for Lights.
The dervish usage of the light and darkness theme carries on through the literature. A fair sample is in the Secret Garden of Shabistari, composed in 1319: "The dervish path is dark in both worlds; yet it is but the gloom that on the horizon of the desert gladdens the wayfarer and tells the tents are near at hand....Within a day of darkness shineth light."
Johnson Pasha's translation (The Dialogue of the Gulshan-i-Raz, Cairo, 1903), whether from Masonic or Builder sources, is not unknown in English literature. Pope, for instance (Dunciad, Bk. IV), could have been using a Sufi allegory when he wrote:
Of darkness visible, so much is lent.
As half to show, half veil, the deep intent.
From our knowledge of dervish usage, we can interpret the mysterious message in a curious and repeated Masons mark which appears in medieval buildings. This is a mark which looks like a figure 4. If the professional Mason's of the middle ages were connected with dervish orders in the West, as the Eastern building workers certainly were, we have a concealed message here.
The Sufi diagram known as the Magic Square of fifteen is drawn thus:
4 9 2
3 5 7
8 1 6
This square adds up to the number fifteen, whichever way the lines of figures are added up. It is used in Cabalism as a code from by means of which to convey a message. This is done by drawing lines to link up the numbers which it is intended to emphasize. The Mason's mark which we are considering looks something like this: [here I must point out that I do not have graphics to display it, but, it looks like a large 4 linked to a similar size 1 to the right of it ~ Rob]
If the figure is superimposed upon the above number frame we find that a line is drawn passing through 1, 5, 9, then from 9 to 3, then through 3, 5, 7, then through 6, 7, 2, and hence we can read off what numbers have been involved in the message. The outline crosses through all the squares of the figure, except the one occupied by the figure eight!
Eight symbolizes the number of perfect expression, the octagon, representing, among other things, the cube. The figure also covers eight of a total of nine squares. The meaning here is "The eight (balance) is the way to the nine." Nine stands in Arabic for the letter Ta, whose hidden meaning is "secret knowledge."
The outline is given additional significance when it is realized that the figure which looks like a four with a bar (sometimes a curve) attached is also a rough representation of the Arabic word hoo ~ the dervish liturgical word, chanted in order to produce ecstatic states. [I can confirm this as I have experienced it ~ Rob]
That the Masons are connected to alchemy through this sign alone is made more likely by the fact that this magic square has been found in use in China and commented upon by recent alchemical researchers, who there link it with both alchemy of the symbolic kind and the Taoist tradition. If further indications were needed, one could refer to the fact that this same magic square is used by Geber, the patron of both Eastern and Western alchemy, and (as Professor Holmyard remarks) used also by the Sufi society of which Geber was a member.
Far from an irregular and haphazard collecting of mysterious and unconnected lore, the alchemist, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Carbonari and others were almost certainly intermingled, because of Sufic symbolic constituents in their original or early objective ~ the development of human consciousness.
Footnote by me.
When the Knights Templar went to Jerusalem it was for, superficially, to protect the pilgrims. It is obviously not true as such a small group could never have done that. In Graham Hancock's The Sign and the Seal he points out that they never left the Temple and what they were really doing was extensive excavation under the Temple of the Rock. However, this tunnel has been found and opened and it is obvious that it would not have taken the amount of time that they were there to dig. The excavations are another false trail, a double loop. What were they really doing that had to be kept so secret? Why! learning the Sufi lore and Sufi science of number etc. which was then put into practice in the building of the Gothic cathedrals, the same science that was used in the building of the Temple of the Rock and the Kaaba of Mecca - the tradition was continued and eventually gave birth to the Freemasons. It is unlikely that all but a very small number of Masons know these facts as it was never written down to ensure its secrecy, but, through the study of symbol etc. the truth can be dug up. Fortunately Shah's approach to these matters turns out to be exactly the same as mine, however, he has a head start on me as he has already had the training in symbol and number as part of his tradition. Hence why I copy all this instead of writing it myself, he has done it better and more precisely than I could.
Both Freemasons and Sufi consider Thoth to be their patron...Thoth, the Master of Eight.
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