Page 38 - MML - Journal - Centenary Edition - Vol. 01 / 2023

You returned, received the Badge, and heard the Traditional History and the Further Explanation of the Signs. On your return to the Lodge the Senior Warden invested you with your Master Mason’s apron. You then heard the continuation of the story of Hiram Abiff and how, by his death, certain knowledge was lost and because of the way his body was found, certain ‘secrets’ were substituted and are now used in the Third Degree. Further signs were also explained and, on the conclusion of the ceremony you took your place in a Master Mason’s Lodge.
All the Degrees stress the need to follow the ‘principles and tenets’ of the Order and add messages about improving ourselves in various forms – ethical behaviour and moral truth in the First, our intellectual development and knowledge and appreciation of the world in the Second and by confronting our own mortality, spiritual understanding in the Third. From the story of Hiram Abiff, we learn that ‘To the just and virtuous man, death has no terrors equal to the stain of falsehood and dishonour.’ We should live an honourable life by practicing every moral and social virtue.
As the opening prayer of the ceremony states: ‘Endue him with such fortitude that in the hour of trial he fail not, but that, passing safely under Thy protection through the valley of the shadow of death, he may finally rise from the tomb of transgression, to shine as the stars forever and ever’. Freemasonry’s central aim is to help you become a better person – to live a good life and end with a propitious death. To achieve this goal, you must first accept that you need to change, that you are able to change, that the goal is to live respected and die regretted and that the journey of discovery and change starts with the knowledge of yourself.
3. A Closer Look at some of the elements of the Ceremony of the Third Degree
Pass Word:
According to W Bro Meredith, "By singular lapsus linguae the Moderns have substituted Tubal-Cain in the Third Degree for tymboxein, 'to be entombed.' This in the ancient catechesis Arcani was the pass word from the symbolical representation of the state of death to the restored and undying existence." Unfortunately, no authority is quoted for the statement that this pass word was used in the Mysteries, for if it is correct, it would imply either that Masonry obtained the pass word of this Degree from the Grecian mysteries, or that both obtained a word resembling it in sound from some common source.
The word Cain in Arabic, Hebrew and indeed all Syrian languages, means "blacksmith" or any "smith", though in Hebrew another word similarly pronounced means "acquisition" (Cheyne). The word Tubal is derived from a Persian word, meaning "dross" or "scoria of metal, (esp.) of iron or copper", a word in common use to this day in Persian, Arabic, and other languages of the near East. As in so many instances an allegorical title has in translating the Old Testament been mistaken for the name of an actual person, for the name itself means "a w. in m..Is." The connection with H.A.B. is obvious.
Bro. Churchward boldly states that the
Egyptian pass word was "Horus-Behutet". He
says, "Any brother who is interested will find all
in the Ritual of Ancient Egypt" (i.e., the Book of
the Dead); all I can find is that Horus - (or Heru
-) Behutet was the god of the metal-workers at
Edfu (i.e., ancient Teb), as is also apparent from
an inscription in the temple in that place; e.g.,
"Heru-Behutet arrived . . . . and his followers in
the form of workers in metal." That the metal-
workers brought into Egypt this useful art as
well as that of brick-making is not in doubt,
but this is not proof that their god's name
was used as a pass word, even if we assume
that the prototype of the god was a man and "the first artificer in metals."
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A Publication of Madras Masters Lodge No. 103, GLI
Madras Masonic Journal Vol. 01 / 2023 - Centenary Year Edition