The grave of Hiram Abiff and the Sanctum Sanctorum. Judaism or paganism?

In this entry we are going to pay attention to the grave of Hiram Abiff, an element that is not always correctly understood, and which also offers some inconsistencies of enormous symbolic implications.

The first time that the location of the Architect's grave appears in the Masonic ritual is in the disclosure Masonry Dissected (1730). Since it does not appear in the earlier catechisms, it is to be assumed that the peculiar text describing the burial was developped in the first quarter of the 18th century, which is logical, as the figure of Hiram Abiff as we know it today begins to appear in the Constitutions of 1723. In Masonry Dissected the grave is described as follows:

(They) found him decently buried in a handsome Grave 6 Foot East, 6 West, and 6 Foot perpendicular;

This description appears, with minor variations, in all the other rituals, although it is the Emulation Ritual that best describes it:

Our Master was ordered to be reinterred as near to the Sanctum Sanctorum as the Israelitish law would permit; there in a grave from the centre three feet East and three feet West, three feet between North and South, and five feet or more perpendicular. He was not buried in the Sanctum Sanctorum, because nothing common or unclean was allowed to enter there, not even the High Priest but once a year...

This description, despite its appearance, has nothing to do with geographical coordinates. If we face north and extend one arm forward and one arm backward, we will span three feet north and three feet south. If we extend our arms to the sides, we will span three feet to the east and three feet to the west. Five or six feet is the height of a human being. The conclusion is obvious: the Centre (the Master, Hiram Abiff) lies within us.

The problem begins when we realise that the Hebrew law that forbids to introduce anything unclean in the Temple only seems to have been respected from 1816 onwards. 

When we look up in the 18th century rituals we find the following:

Masonry Dissected (1730)

Ex. - Where was Hiram inter’d? 

R. - In the Sanctum Sanctorum.

 Three Distinct Knocks (c.1760)

It was always the Master's custom at high twelve at noon to go into the Sanctum Sanctorum to pray to the true and living God.

After this the king Solomon sent those twelve crafts to raise their master Hiram, in order that he might be interred in the Sanctum Sanctorum.

Jachin and Boaz (1762)

When the execution was over, King Solomon sent for the twelve crafts, and desired them to take the body of Hiram up, in order that he might be interred in a solem manner in the Sanctum Sanctorum.

The most interesting text, however, is the one which appears in Duncan's Masonic Ritual and Monitor (Ancient York Rite, 1866):

The body of our Grand Master was buried three times: first, in the rubbish of the Temple; secondly, on the brow of a hill west of Mount Moriah; and, thirdly and lastly, as near the Sanctum Sanctorum, or Holy of Holies, of King Solomon's Temple, as the Jewish law would permit; and Masonic tradition informs us that there was erected to his memory a Masonic monument, consisting of "a beautiful virgin, weeping over a broken column; before her was a book open; in her right hand a sprig of acacia, in her left an urn; behind her stands Time, unfolding and counting the, ringlets of her hair." 

The beautiful virgin weeping over the broken column denotes the unfinished state of the Temple, likewise the untimely death of our Grand Master, Hiram Abiff; the book open before her, that his virtues lay on perpetual record; the sprig of acacia in her right hand, the divinity of the body; the urn in her left, that his ashes were therein safely deposited, under the Sanctum Sanctorum, or Holy of Holies, of King Solomon's Temple. 

That is to say, although the authors of the ritual were maintaining the position, correct in terms of Jewish Law, of burying Hiram Abiff outside the Temple, at the same time they seemed to be eager to take him back to the interior of the Sanctum Sanctorum, and they took advantage of the virgin's staging in order to finally deposit his ashes under the Sanctum Sanctorum.

It is implausible to think that the authors of Masonry Dissected, Three Distinct Knocks and Jachin and Boaz were unaware that, in the Jewish tradition, a corpse was the father of fathers of all uncleaness, in the same way that they knew full well that it was unthinkable to bury a corpse inside the Temple. And yet they insisted in burying Hiram Abiff inside the Sanctum Sanctorum.

In the 19th century, by removing the corpse from the Temple, a problem was created that the authors of Ancient American Ritual tried to fix. Now, what is the nature of this problem?

Let us see what some Masonologists say about the legend of the Third Degree. David Stevenson (The Origins of Freemasonry, p.154) refers to the main legends of Freemasonry (the Noachite and the Hiramite) stating that "These legends concern necromancy, the magical art of obtaining knowledge from the dead". For his part, David Harrison (The Genesis of Freemasonry, p.74) speaks of the Master Mason degree in the following terms: "The theatre of necromancy, presented within the Third Degree ritual, produces excellent dramatic effect, with the death and rebirth of the Master Mason". Douglas Knoop (1938 Prestonian Lecture) states that "The Biblical examples show that the idea of complete coincidence of living and dead was to restore the dead to life. This would develop into necromantic practices, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the idea would survive only as necromancy". Bernard E. Jones and others also speak of necromancy.

Basically, the word "necromancy" is the academically correct way of saying that we are dealing with a form of pagan, non-Christian spirituality. And the problem stems from here.

The archetype of the pagan temple consists of three parts, which we could roughly summarise as a profane part, a part for the faithful, and an innermost part where the mystical experience takes place. This applies to the Greek temples as well as to many other pagan temples, such as those of Baal in Syria. The tabernacle, as well as King Solomon's Temple (which is a tabernacle made of stone), follows the same pattern, for the tabernacle evolved from an earlier heathen temple.

The difference between King Solomon's Temple and the Greek temple is that while the Sanctum Sanctorum is elevated in relation to the rest of the temple, the adyton of the Greek temple is sunken.

Comparison between a drawing of the Debir and the adyton of the Greek temple at Nemea.

This change is due to the fact that, while in the Sanctum Sanctorum takes place an encounter with Jehovah, in the adyton the mystic descends into the Underworld, experiencing a death in life. In other words, the model of theophany changes. Obviously this does not imply that the authors of the early Masonic rituals had compared King Solomon's Temple to Greek temples. But they knew what a pagan temple was like and what it implied. We are using the plan of a Greek temple only as an archetype of the pagan temple.

The origin of these inconsistencies in the ritual lies in the fact that the early authors of the Masonic ritual were aware that, under an apparently Hebrew form, they were recounting a pagan mystical event, and they were not considering the Sanctum Sanctorum in the orthodox Jewish way, but as an adyton. By burying Hiram Abiff outside the temple, the ritual was betraying its own content. Most probably, this is why the authors of the Ancient York Rite tried to reintroduce his ashes in the Sanctum Sanctorum.

To conclude, we reproduce the text that appears in the Graham Ms. (1726?), which leaves no doubt about the pagan nature of the Master Mason degree ceremony.

We have it by tradition and still some refferance to scripture cause shem ham and Japheth ffor to go to their father noahs grave for to try if they could find anything about him ffor to Lead them to the vertuable secret which this famieous preacher had fot I hop all will allow that all things needful for the new world was in the ark with noah. 

Now these three men had allready agreed that if they did not ffind the very thing it self that the first thing that they found was to be to them as a secret they not Douting but did most ffirmly be Leive that God was able and would also prove willing through their fatih prayer and obedience for to cause what they did find for to prove as vertuable to them as if they had received the secret at ffirst from God himself at its head spring so came to the Grave finding nothing save the dead body all most consumed away takeing a greip at a ffinger it came away so from Joynt to Joynt so to the wrest so to the Elbow.

So they Reared up the dead body and suported it setting ffoot to ffoot knee to knee Breats to beast Cheeck to check and hand to back and cryed out help o ffather as if they had said o father of heaven help us now for our Earthly ffather cannot so Laid down the dead body again and not knowing what to do.

 

Raising the Master, by Giovanni Battista Barbieri "Il Guercino" (1591-1666).
In possession of the Supreme Grand Chapter of Scotland