THE SANCTUM SANCTORUM
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THE SANCTUM SANCTORUM
In the Entered Apprentice's and Fellowcraft's degrees the altar is the place of obligation. Here in due form the initiate takes upon himself those duties and offers those promises which make of the candidate an Entered Apprentice, which pass the Entered Apprentice to the degree of Fellowcraft.
In the Master Mason's degree the altar is more - much more. It now becomes the Masonic Holy of Holies, which the Great Light teaches us was the center and heart of both the Tabernacle in the Wilderness and the Temple of Solomon. In the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant, over which the Shekinah, the very spirit of God Himself, glowed in a radiance too bright for mortal eyes.
Let him who reads remember the Rite of Discalceation as it was in the preceding degrees and compare it with that practised here. As he reflects on the symbolism of the altar in the Sublime Degree, he will understand why it is different. Exodus iii, 4 and 5 help:
... God called unto him out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
In the East the worshipper removes his shoes that the Temple be not defiled. The Rite of Discalceation does not proclaim that the Masonic initiate will defile the Temple of Freemasonry, but that he is thus made to recognize that "the place whereon thou standest is holy ground" - a place not to be approached as are other places, but one into which one walks as set forth in the prayer book, "reverently, discreetly advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God."
Some things may not be written; not so much that it is forbidden as that they are not to be expressed in words. Kneeling before the altar of the Great Architect of the Universe to offer petition for himself, alone with his Maker, the Freemason is himself a symbol of that strange relationship which all feel and none may speak; that oneness with infinity by which he whose heart is quickened may understand - as much as it may be understood - the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
The lion is one of Freemasonry's most powerful and potent symbols both in the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and the paw of the lion.
Judah was symbolized as a lion in his father's deathbed blessing. The lion was upon the standard of the large and powerful tribe of Judah. "Lion of the Tribe of Judah" was one of Solomon's titles. Christian interpretation of the phrase springs from Revelation (v, 5), Behold, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book and to loose the seven seals thereof.
The idea of a resurrection is curiously interwoven with the lion. In the Twelfth Century, one Philip de Thaun stated: "Know that the lioness, if she bring forth a dead cub, she holds her cub and the lion arrives; he goes about and cries, till it revives on the third day.
Thus the strong lion of Judah
The gates of cruel death being broken
Arose on the third day
At the loud sounding voice of the father.
But the lion was connected with the idea of resurrection long before the Man of Galilee walked upon the earth. In ancient Egypt as we learn from the stone carvings on the ruins of temples a lion raised Osiris from a dead level to a living perpendicular by a grip of his paw; the carvings show a figure standing behind the altar, observing the raising of the dead, with its left arm uplifted and forming the angle of a square.
The Lion of the Tribe of Judah, considered as signifying a coming redeemer who would spring from the tribe, or meaning the King of Israel who built the Temple, or symbolizing the Christ, must not be confused with the mode of recognition so inextricably mingled with the Sublime Degree, teaching of a resurrection and a future life.
Unquestionably the Israelites absorbed much of Egyptian belief during the Captivity, which may account both for the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and our own use of the paw.
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