The Mysteries of the Masons

Chapter 3

The mysticism of the Sephirothic Tree

The Tree of Life is the methaphor of the "fall" of the divine spirit in the material world (see the vision that God gave to Jacob, of the ladder where angelic entities were descending on earth and ascending to heaven). In this fall the spirit goes through the levels (called spheres) of 11 worlds or universes (called sephiroth) of the conscience. And then there is the "re-ascent" with a flight in the shape of human spirit, towards the eleventh sephir, called Da’ath (the Abyss of Mutation), where it will face the major transmutation.

This is the transformation that concludes the long process of freedom from material perceptions (links with the physical worldmore subtle and therefore even closer to the purity of ). The counterparts which replace them are spiritual perception which is the ultimate goal of material transformation.

This re-draws the principle of inner mutation, common to every esoteric precept which recognises in the inner mutation (like the transmutation of physical lead into spiritual gold) the accomplishment of the initiatory process. The completion of the process of inner transmutation (see Da’ath) marks the entry of the initiated into the sphere of the spiritual power.

God materialises parts of Himself (the Elohim or divine monads) to descend into the living Matter. He consecrates it up to the point of bringing it back under the dominion of the holy conscience: "…sacrificing Himself…" that is, dis-integrating parts of his own conscience (Children made in His own image), which in the descent to revive the matter (souls) lose the conscience (memory) of their holy origin.

But every embodied spirit tends to transcend the material nature to which is fixed (see the – Royal Secret -) and try to become re-integrated with the source of its own "Emanation". So, to compare them to spiritual salmons, they return to their source and reach the "full Light" of the spiritual core in the shape of human spirit; reawakening the particle of divine Essence which lays secluded in themselves.

The hermetic Doctrine calls Great Work the "sanctification of the living matter". In this way every human spirit is meant to be enlightened at the fire (energy) of its own spiritual core. The spiritual core is secluded in the most subtle part of the conscience of the human being. Every core preserves a fragment of the holy Body "crucified" in the 4 elements of the Matter. Some call them "the prisoners of the planet".

Through a process of inner recognition, as explained by mysticism, the prisoner spirits of the matter react to the impulse of re-finding its own generator. This drives them to face the difficult inner re-ascent up to the boundaries of the spiritual conscience.

Reawakening every divine particle secluded in the matter of every living creature, the holy principle (God) becomes aware of Himself again in the physical manifestation.

The descent of the divine who therefore appears in the densest levels of the matter is the realization of the spiritual awakening in the physical aspect and it’s the apex of the initiatory mystery.

At the entrance of many cathedrals on the ground (sephira Malkuth) there is the symbol of the hexagram which marks the descent and re-ascent of the spiritual triad in the material sphere, or a double square which points to where the Work of sanctification of the Mater Matter begins.

The conclusion that the mason can draw is that the sephir of Malkuth, the inert matter, corresponds to the Widow lacking in the Light of the spirit mentioned in the catechisms. According to what is reported in the symbolic initiation at the 3rd degree: in this Master Hiram resurrects in the soul of every master mason (Widow’s Son), so that he becomes a Son of Light, that is, an Initiated who can cry out: now I know immortality!

Generally speaking the Great Work corresponds to the reconstitution of a state of conscience that drives the human being to the re-generation of himself, inwardly resurrecting to the Light of the initiatory spiritualism.

Text by: Athos A. Altomonte
Graphic by: Fabio Gasparri