The Secret of Masonry and the Mystery of the Holy Mass
Theodor Reuss
The ceremony of the holy mass conceals a mystery that few people recognize. Still even fewer people realize that the mystery of the holy mass and the true secret of the ancient accepted freemasons, the schismatic Templars, and the true Rosicrucians, is one and the same secret.
This mystery of the Mass and true secret of the ancient Freemasons, the schismatic Templars, the true Rosicrucians, and the Gnostic Neo-Christians, lies in the communion with God whose symbolic fire the holy mass depicts in its drama.
The declarations and explanations which the Roman Catholic church may give concerning the essence of the Mystery of the holy mass are incorrect, the truth being concealed, dismissed, even partly falsified. To be sure, they are intentionally incorrect, for the spiritual authorities in the Vatican know the true nature of the mystery and the true meaning themselves. The lowest Cleric is however, for official reasons, left completely in the dark concerning the true nature of the mystery. This concealment and falsification has gone hand in hand with the gradual falsification and corruption of the whole of original Christianity by the churchfathers. Just as misleading, however, as the explanations of the Roman Catholic church concerning the essence of the mystery, are the explanations of so-called recognized Freemasonry concerning the essence and the “inner work” of Freemasonry.
The very fewest of Freemasons recognize the true secret of Freemasonry, and the greater few of those that do recognize it, do not attempt to really understand what they have discovered or guessed.
As everyone knows who has dealt with the subject, today every candidate in England (the motherland of modern recognized Freemasonry) or America (earlier also, Germany) who wishes to be taken into Masonry must swear a severe oath. This old English oath (rings) in the German translation: “I XYZ in the presence of the great architect of the universe hereby swear most solemnly and sincerely upon the holy script, that I will always hide, conceal and never reveal any part or parts, point or points of the secrets of the mysteries belonging to free and accepted Masonry which have been revealed to me or may be communicated to me in the future, unless it be to a true and lawful brother or brothers and not to him or them until after the most ruthless test their of faithfulness. Further, I promise solemnly that I will never write down these secrets, nor inscribe, hew, draw, engrave, scribble, cut, scratch, carve or in any other way or manner repeat or communicate them. It will be further cause or fault, if another do so when it is in my power to hinder him by anything sensible or insensible under the canopy of heaven – If anyone in the world understand or be able to read by or through any such letters, signs, or symbols or if our secret art and our hidden mysteries (through my unfaithfulness) be given to the profane! All these several points I solemnly swear to observe without exception, ambiguity or spiritual reserve of any kind, under no less a penalty than by breaking any of these points to have my throat cut through from ear to ear – my tongue cut out – my heart torn from my body, my body cut in two below the navel, my innards ripped out and thrown into the deepest sea – or tossed out to the vultures to eat. So help me God my oath to keep faithfully which is the vow of a Freemason.”
Thereafter the candidate must kiss the holy script. It is now clear that every sensible Candidate who was ever compelled to make such a fearful oath on the bible has unquestionably expected and must indeed expect, that he will be thereafter entrusted with fearful secrets and that he will be initiated into profoundly secret things. To his astonishment, however, every Candidate, who has been compelled to swear such a fearful oath to be accepted into Freemasonry, now learns that the whole immense secret lies in a sign, a grip and a word! Such things which have be printed in so many books (so-called heretical writings) whose recognition, however, does not ensure the admittance of the Candidate at once to any Freemasonic lodge unless he first possesses another special pass or proves himself through the payment-receipt of his lodge dues! This situation will almost certainly strike any candidate after his acceptance and appear very odd to him.
Each Candidate taken into a Freemasonic lodge will say to himself that it is highly ‘overdone’ or at least in all cases be compelled to admit that it is ‘carried too far’ – to solemnly swear that one would rather have one’s throat cut through – or have his heart and tongue torn out – or have his body cut in two and his innards thrown into the sea – rather than to betray the secret of Freemasonry, when this secret consists of nothing more than how to shake another Freemason’s hand, certain rectangular signs made on the body with the hand and the keeping silent about short syllabled words which are only to be spelled or halfed words which mean nothing more than, eg.
“The Lord will raise you up”
“The Lord will strengthen you”
“Raise yourself, you live in the son”
Because now, despite all grumbling and study and promotions in the lodge, a Freemason, whether in England, America, or Germany, trusts in further secrets from accepted masonry, or having received them, preserves them himself, if he has belonged to a lodge for 50 years and in the same way has reached the highest office and dignity. Most Freemasons lend themselves to the program just so, satisfied to have joined an exclusive social club whose membership increases for them many social and material opportunities. And afterward no longer considering why the ancient ancestors and founding fathers of Freemasonry actually swore such severe oaths. The oath having become to them an empty formula.
This mindstate and this mentality of disappointment over the absence of knowledge and the non-understanding of the grounds upon which the Masonic forefathers swore such severe oaths was borne out by the German lodges a hundred years ago, in which time certain German Freemasonic systems such as, e.g., the Schroeder teaching and the Freiburger teaching shoved off these old oath formulas and a put a simple promise in the place of the old severe oath. The old oath became historically communicated only as a sort of curiosity. This so-called reformation was, in a certain way, really very logical by the German F.M. intellects who believed to have rightly recognized that F.M. had and concealed no sort of secrets which could justify so severe an oath. This reformation, however was, at the same time, a sad situation for German masonic intellects, when Masonry became seen as an apparent delusion of non-existing secrets and made an undignified joke of, all-over.
These conditions and the apparent recognition of the nonexistence of real secrets lead to the terrible levelling of Freemasonry in most lands. In the Latin countries the F.M. lodges became political clubs with the result that it clearly unveiled the world war for all those who wanted to see it. And still the good honorable intellects of German masonry were locked in a great big association of error, as they believed it proven that F.M. concealed no secret worthy of such an old severe oath-formula.
The German Freemasons who had changed the old oath formula were seen as idiots despite their thought and research and their dedication to Freemasonry. And the idiocy of Freemasonic reformers of that time had contributed to their followers raising from the non-existence of secrets really worthy ones to so-to-say “dogma”. The dismissing of the old severe oath would have only been logical, if there was really no secret, no mystery, whose keeping justified such a severe oath.
And yet – and this may now be said, understood and firmly put forth, – and yet – Freemasonry DOES conceal a secret, a secret which completely and fully justifies and demands the swearing of the old severe oath formula.
Only this true secret has been lost to the Brotherhood in the run of time, or rather better said, on the grounds of appropriateness has been in a certain time suppressed and foisted out by a replacement “Ersatz” [substitute] secret. One cannot exactly say that the secret had been perverted or falsified – one can, however, say that what was once communicated as secret in freemasonry, is a false secret, and not the real and true one. The real and true one is still to be recognized and discovered through and within the symbols used in Freemasonry today. This is especially the case in the symbology of the higher grades of certain F.M. systems and programs.
However, as already said earlier, the majority of the few Masons which have on hand the Freemasonic symbols, who recognize or discover the true secret, shirk to openly express their understanding, for this admission (and revelation) would cause them severe shame among their so-called bourgeois fellow citizens; baptized in so-called respectable behavior and in pseudo-morality. The pseudo-sacred public opinion would hand over such understanding persons to the moral ‘death by burning at the stake’, just as they prepared a burning alive at the stake in ancient times for the Templars.
And since the advent of world domination by the Christian-Nazarene church the true meaning of the mystery of the sacrament of the holy mass has been suppressed and resupplied with a replacement interpretation. The Roman Catholic church molded itself in this way since the very first century of Christian reckoning and domination of the Roman Catholic church in all parts of the world wherever the leadership of the new Church-Christianity of the churchfathers reached. Fraternities, sects and secret societies etc. which protected the true meaning of the mystery of the Mass, were, for the very fact, persecuted through all the centuries by the ruling Christian church. Any members of these sects and secret societies were, in the case that they were discovered, immediately condemned to death.
To these sects and secret societies which protected the true meaning and interpretation of the mysteries of the Holy Mass belonged the Gnostics, the Templars, the true esoteric Rosicrucians and the Ancient Primitive Freemasons. These so called sects and secret societies have survived to this day despite the persecution and troubles of the centuries.
The Gnostic Neo-Christians or Gnostic Templars of the Orient which are closely bound to the ancient primitive Templar-Freemasons, guard the true secret of Freemasonry today which is identical to the secret and mystery of the Holy Mass.
All people who have recognized the inner falsity of the teachings of the controlling Christian church, or perhaps only instinctively have sensed the falsity – far away from all Freemasons – which have recognized and understood that the present day so-called Freemasonry has fallen from the true mystic secret, turn their backs to the church and Freemasonry – disappointed. They see in the modern so called ‘recognized Freemasonry’, I must say, a reflection of false things, a society which pretends to fathom the world-riddle, to aim to teach in high esoteric in deed and truth, but is nothing other than a good-deeds fraternity and a corporate social club. Now the practice of charity and general humanitarianism in the material realm are secondary means to reaching the goal of Freemasonry, also the reciprocal support in the material realm can be seen as a secondary means, but with the persecution of this helpful means and with the turning back of the inner education of the brothers, the main objective and principal work is completely lost in oblivion and the word is lost.