De l'origine de la Franc-maçonnerie

Thomas Paine

• Éditeur: Books on Demand
• Année: 2020
• Imprimer l'ISBN: 9782322260980
• ISBN de l'eBook: 9782322228461
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Théologie et religion
• Sujet: Religion

D'origine anglaise, Thomas Paine (1737-1809) fut un personnage étonnant. Émigré en Amérique, devenu Quaker, il soutint la Révolution française, reçut la nationalité française, siégea à la Convention où il refusa de voter la mort du roi, fut emprisonné sous la Terreur, échappa à la guillotine et finit par retourner en Amérique. Auteur de pamphlets à succès, Paine ne vit pas publier de son vivant ce petit ouvrage qui contient une remarquable révélation : les véritables origines de la Franc-Maçonnerie, autrement dit un secret qui n'était confié qu'à certains Maîtres. À partir de textes maçonniques et d'analyse des rituels, Thomas Paine met l'accent sur la tradition solaire de la Franc-Maçonnerie et ses modèles antiques que le lecteur est convié à découvrir.

ANNEXES

ANNEXE I :

ON THE ORIGIN OF FREE-MASONRY

It is always understood that Free-Masons have a secret, which they carefully conceal ; but from every thing that can be collected from their own accounts of Masonry their real secret is no other than their Origin, which but few of them understand ; and those who do, envelope it in mystery.

The society of Masons are distinguished into three classes or degrees :

1^st The Entered Apprentice.

2^d The Fellow-craft ;

3^d The Master Mason.

The Entered apprentice knows but little more of Masonry, than the use of signs and tokens, and certain, steps and words, by which Masons can recognise each other, without being discovered by a person who is not a mason.

The fellow-craft is not much better instructed in Masonry than the entered apprentice.

It is only in the Master Mason’s Lodge, that whatever knowledge remains of the origin of Masonry is preserved and concealed.

In 1730, Samuel Pritchard, member of a constituted Lodge in England, published a treatise entitled : Masonry Dissected ; and made oath before the Lord Mayor of London that it was a true copy.

» Samuel Pritchard maketh oath that the copy hereunto annexed is a true and genuine copy in every particular. » In his work. he has given the catechism, or examination in question and answer, of the apprentice, the fellow-craft and the Master Mason. There was no difficulty in his doing this, as it is mere form.

In his introduction he says : « The original institution of Masonry consisted in the foundation of the liberal arts and sciences, but, more especially on Geometry ; for the building of the Tower of Babel, the art and mystery of Masonry was first introduced, and from thence handed down by Euclid, a worthy and excellent Mathematician of the Egyptians, and he communicated it to Hiram, the Master Mason concerned in building Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem. »

Besides the absurdity of deriving Masonry from the building of Babel, where according to the story, the confusion of languages prevented the builders understanding each other, and consequently of communicating any Knowledge they had, there is a glaring contradiction in point of chronology in the account he gives.

Solomon’s Temple was built and dedicated 1004 years before the christian era ; and Euclid, is may be seen in the tables of chronology, lived 277 years before the same era ; it was therefore impossible, that Euclid could communicate any thing to Hiram, since Eucid did not live till 700 years after the time of Hiram.

In 1783 captain George Smith, inspector of the Royal-Artillery-Academy, at Woolwich in England, and Provincial Grand-Master of Masonry for the county of Kent, published a treatise entitled The Use and Abuse of Free Masonry.

In his chapter of the antiquity of Masonry he makes it to be cœval with creation.

« When, says he, the Sovereign architect raised on masonic principles, the beauteous globe, and commanded that Master science, Geometry, to lay the planetary world, and to regulate, by its laws, the whole stupendous system in just unerring proportion, rolling round the central sun » —

» But, continues he, I am not at liberty, publicy to undraw the currain, and openly to discant on this head ; it is sacred, and ever will remain so. Those who are honoured with the trust will not reveal it, and those who are ignorant of it cannot betray it ». —

By this last part of the phrase, Smith, means the two inferior classes, the fellow-craft and the entered apprentice, for he says in the next page of his work :

» It is not every one that is barely initiated into Free-Masonry that is entrusted with all the mysteries thereto belonging ; they are not attainable as things of course, nor by every capacity. »

The learned but unfortunate Doctor Dodd, grand chaplain of Masonry, in his oration at the dedication of Free-Mason’s-Hall, London, traces Masonry thro’ a variety of stages : » Masons, says he, are Well-Informed from their own private and interior records, that the building of Solomon’s Temple is an important Era, from whence they derive many mysteries of their art. Now, says he, be it remembered that this great event took place above 1000 years before the christian Era, and consequently more than a century before Homer, the first of the Grecian poets, wrote ; and above five centuries, before Pythagoras brought from the East, his sublime system of truly masonic instruction to Illuminate our western world.

» But remote as this period is, we date not from thence the commencement of our art. For though it might owe to the wise and glorious king of Israel, some of its many mystic forms and hieroglyphic ceremonies, yet certainly the art itself is coeval with man the great subject of it ».

» We trace, continues he, its footsteps in the most distant, the most remote ages and nations of the world. We find it among the first and most celebrated, of civilizers of the East ; We deduce it regularly from the first astronomers on the plains of Chaldea, to the wise and mystic kings and priests of Egypt, the sages of Greece and the philolophers of Rome. »

From these reports and declarations of Masons of the highest order in the institution, we see that Masonry, without publicly declaring so, lays claim to some divine communication from the Creator, in a manner different from, and unconnected with, the book which the christians call the Bible ; and the natural result from this is, that Masonry is derived from some very ancient religion wholly independent of, and unconnected with that book..

To come then at once to the point, Masonry (as I shall shew from the customs, ceremonies, hieroglyphics and chronology of Masonry), is derived from, and is the remains of the religion of the ancient Druids, who like the Magi of Persia and the Priests of Heliopolis in Egypt, were Priests of the Sun. They paid worship to this great luminary, as the great visible agent of a great invisible first cause, whom they stiled, Time without limits. »

…………………………………………

In Masonry many of the ceremonies of the Druids are preserved in their original state, at least without any parody. With them the sun is still the sun ; and his image, in the form of the sun, is the great emblematical ornament of masonic lodges and masonic dresses. It is the central figure on their aprons, and they wear it also pendant, on the breast, in their lodges, and in their processions……………………

At what period of antiquity or in what nation, this religion was first established, is lost in the labyrinth of unrecorded times ; it is generally ascribed to the ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians and Chaldeans, and reduced afterwards to a system regulated by the apparent progress of the sun, through the 12 signs of the zodiac by Zoroaster ; the law-giver of Persia, from whence Pythagoras brought it into Greece. It is to these matters Dr. Dodd refers in the passage already quoted from his oration.

The worship of the sun as the great visible agent of a great invisible first cause (Time without limits), spread itself over a considerable part of Asia and Africa, from thence to Greece and Rome, through all ancient Gaul and into Britain and Ireland.

Smith, in his chapter of the antiquity of Masonry in Britain, says, that, » Notwith- standing the obscurity which envelopes Masonic history in that country, variouscircumstances, contribute to prove that Free-Masonry was introduced into Britain about 1030 years before Christ ».

It cannot be Masonry, in its present state, that Smith here alludes to.

The Druids flourished in Britain at the period he speaks of, and it is from them that Masonry is descended. Smith has put the child in the place of the parent.

It sometimes happens, as well in writing as in conversation, that a person lets slip an expression that serves to unravel what he intends to conceal, and this is the case with Smith ; for in the same chapter he says : » The Druids when they committed any thing to writing, used the greek alphabet, and I am bold to assert, that the most perfect remains of the Druids rites and ceremonies are preserved in the customs and ceremonies of the Masons, that are to be found existing among mankind. « My brethren, says he, may be able to trace them with greater exactness than I am at liberty to explain to the public ». This is a confession from a Master Mason, without intending it to be understood by the public, that Masonry is the remains of the religion of the Druids ; the reason for the Masons keeping this a secret I shall explain in the course of this work.

As the study and contemplation of theCreator in the works of the Creation of which the sun as the great visible agent of that being, was the visible object of the adoration of Druids, all their religious rites and ceremonies, had reference to the apparent progress of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac, and his influence upon the earth. The Masons adopt the same practices. The roof of their temples or lodges is ornamented with a sun, and the floor is a representation of the variegated face of the earth, either by carpeting or mosaic work..

Free-Mason’s Hall, in Great Queen-street, Lincolns Inn fields, London, is a magnificent building, and cost upwards of 12.000 pounds sterling. Smith, in speaking of this building, says (page 152) : » The roof of this magnificent Hall is, in all probability the highest piece of finished architecture in Europe. In the center of this roof, a most resplendent sun is represented in burnished gold, surrounded with the twelve signs of the Zodiac, with their respective characters :

Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, Pisces.

After giving this description he says : « The emblematical meaning of the sun is well known to the enli...

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