The Golden Builders

by Tobias Churton

  Nevertheless, Andreae's sense of the spiritual does not make him cower away from the fundamental facts of life. He would have us be “citizens of the world and not the foreign wanderer.” This belief represents his fundamental faith in the mystery and magic of life - and the necessity to fully experience life so as to appreciate, when it comes, the divine harmony which, though Andreae believed it to be frequently invisible to us, nonetheless informs the ‘system’ as a whole.

  Some Sufis have held the view that Christianity is an esoteric form of Judaism in its widest sense, and that the effort to make it into a formalised Church has obscured the heart of the matter. Andreae might have gone along with the substance of this view but only so long as we do not mean by the word ‘esoteric’ a side-line or specialist concept of the religion. The truth within Christianity was for Andreae as for other ‘radicals’ hidden to the eyes of the worldly : only in this sense might the truth be thought to be esoteric. He certainly saw the truth as exiled from the Church of his day, but his radicalism subsisted only in being faithful to the spirit of truth which has forever been to the mind of man something elusive, non-possessible, ambivalent and paradoxical - always confounding the “wisdom of the world”. At first sight it always looks difficult. The obliqueness of the truth is merely a sign that the eyes of material perception are unfocused and out of kilter with reality. That The Truth will make you free was the Christian message Andreae most wished to be understood and acted upon.

  Chapter Ten

  Others have Laboured

  And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house. And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stone-squarers: so they prepared timber and stones to build the house. (I.Kings. V. 17-18.)

  What are those golden builders doing? asked William Blake in his epic poem Jerusalem.68 A certain mystique once surrounded the art of building. Builders exhibited mighty powers; their successes were exemplary, their failures symbolic. Piercing spires strained for the supreme architect: the Creator Himself, architect of the infinite. And if, as John Dee maintained, the root of architecture lies principally in the imagination, then we may also consider the Hermetic principle whereby the cosmos is seen as the divine imagination projected, becoming visible to those in whom that divine imagination has been awoken. Thus enlivened, the architect or master mason becomes a spiritually significant figure. Dee the magus paraphrased the great Augustan architect Vitruvius' Architectura in his Mathematical Preface of 1570:

  An Architect (sayeth he) [Vitruvius in his Architectura] ought to understand Languages, to be skillfull of Painting, well instructed in Geometrie, not ignorant of Perspective, furnished with Arithmeticke, have knowledge of many histories, and diligently have heard Philosophers, have skill of Musike, not ignorant of Physike, know the aunsweres of Lawyers, and have Astronomie, and the courses Caelestiall, in good knowledge.

  For the Hermetist, architecture is potentially magical. Therein lies its dignity, a dignity linked, moreover, to what the building contains. What of a building designed to contain that which cannot be contained? I refer of course to the Temple of Jerusalem which biblical tradition asserts was first built under the auspices of Solomon the Wise (c.961-922 BC).

  And king Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre: he was a widow's son of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in brass : and he was filled with wisdom, and understanding, and cunning to work all works in brass and he came to king Solomon, and wrought all his work. (I Kings VII. 13ff.)

  A close reading of the New Testament and extant Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that at the critical crux of 1st century Jewish religion lay the question of the proper administration, meaning, and essential nature of the Temple.

  Documents from Qumran base much of their opposition to the ruling priestly party in Jerusalem on the conception of a strict, purified and ideal Temple. The first Christian martyr, Stephen, was stoned to death for announcing its imminent destruction. Jesus himself69 entered Jerusalem to attack the Temple's commercial wing with righteous indignation, thus securing his eventual arrest and crucifixion. The ‘abomination of desolation’, whose appearance would signify the final apocalypse (Daniel XI.31; Mark XIII.14) was expected to appear in the Temple. The return of the Jews from exile in Babylon in the fifth century BC was predicated on an imminent reconstruction of the Temple. Figuring prominently in the gospels and Acts, the Temple is where Jesus is presented to Simeon; it is where the boy Jesus astonishes the chief rabbis. John the Baptist's father Zacharias is a priest of the Temple. Jesus teaches his disciples in the Temple. The Apostles pray in the Temple. Paul comes and goes to the Temple in performance of the Nazarite vow. The Temple is frequently the Big Question. But there is more to the matter than mere ubiquity.

  Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. Judgement also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. (Isaiah XXVIII.16)

  The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. This is the LORD's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day which the LORD hath made; (Psalm 118. 22-24a).

  Jesus of Nazareth based much of his radical doctrine on a precise reinterpretation of the nature of the Temple.

  And he beheld them [in the Temple], and said, What is this then that is written, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner? Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, he shall be winnowed. (Luke XX. 17ff.)

  Hit by the Stone

  The stone that falls from heaven has left a traceable pedigree within Jewish apocalyptic and prophetic literature. It appears in the prophecies ascribed to Daniel (Daniel II. 34-35. c.160 BC) as a fatal projectile sent by God against the great image symbolising the empire of Nebuchadrezzar. The false image with ‘feet of clay’ is smashed on impact. Transformed into a mountain which covers the whole earth, the mountain reminds us that it is God who “rules the heavens”. The polyvalent stone is supernatural.

  In the quotation from Luke above, the falling stone of heavenly origin “winnows” the one on whom it falls; it divides the grain from the chaff. (Grain has a long-standing alchemical association with gold -Christian Rosenkreuz is described in the Fama as a grain hid in Christ for example). This process of winnowing occurs when the wheat is tossed into the air for the wind to do the work of division. The Hebrew word for ‘wind’ or breath is ruach, the word for spirit. The winnowing by the stone may be seen as a spiritual process, equivalent to the action of the philosopher's stone in alchemy. Perhaps Jesus knew of alchemy. It can certainly be argued that he understood the spiritual principles underlying it.

  The coming of the stone is a salvific operation; it would be consistent for the believer to say that the best thing is to be hit by the stone, and remade into a new being. This is spiritual alchemy. In the alchemical context, the stone releases the divine spirit. Jesus identifies himself with the cornerstone of the Temple, the “precious” stone referred to by Isaiah.

  And the chief priests and all the council sought for witness against Jesus to put him to death; and found none. For many bare false witness against him, saying, We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands70. (Mark XIV. 55-58).

  The Gospel of John is more explicit. Following Jesus' rout of the Temple commerce, his enemies ask Jesus for an explanation:

  Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. (John II.19ff).

  Should we follow the symbolism literally, the Jesus
of the Gospel of John is responsible for his own raising: “I will raise it up”. Jesus appears to have the art of building at its highest degree. He can raise stones. He can raise himself. He can raise himself in another; he is an initiator:

  And he [Andrew] brought him [Simon] to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone. (John. I.42).

  The new Temple envisioned by Yeshua ben Josef is made up of those who “worship God in spirit and in truth”. These living stones, rejected by prevailing powers, are set in place by the appearance of the keystone within themselves, those who have been, as it were, ‘hit’ by the Stone and become divine: golden builders.

  The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? (John. X.34).

  The highest state for man, according to the Johannine Logos, is absorption in God whence the Logos derives, when “I and my Father are one.” (John X.30). The Logos acts as the hidden stone, buried in the soul - and if fallen man is to be ‘rebuilt’, the stone must be recovered. The saviour's ‘body’ is made of the regenerated stones: the Temple. His followers become the new temple-in-the-making: a spiritual body.

  The parallel of language here between alchemy and architecture is extraordinarily striking. However, much of that surprise comes from our being accustomed to imagine stone as an inert material; this was not the case among the ancients. Stones themselves could contain a secret power. Certain features of landscape might be indwelled by spirits. S. Paul in I Corinthians X refers to a rabbinic legend whereby the rock from which Moses drew water for the Children of Israel in the wilderness actually followed the Israelites around in their wanderings. Paul then goes on to say that “that spiritual rock which followed them: that rock was Christ.” - a quite extraordinary idea until we consider that stones were associated in the ancient world with healing.

  Josephus referred to how the Essenes had knowledge of healing stones. Thus was architecture deeply bound up with the idea of health: spiritual and consequently physical transformation. We are to ‘put our own house in order’. This should help us to understand the origins of such alchemical terms as the ‘philosopher's stone’ and the ‘elixir of life’. They denote the power to transform lower being into a higher state, to regenerate that floppy idiot called man into a living stone, a “house of fire” embodying God. According to gnostic tradition, the great stone - like the Gral of von Eschenbach and the krater containing divine nous of Corpus Hermeticum IV - comes from above:

  And he said to them [his opponents], Ye are from beneath; I am from above : ye are of this world; I am not of this world. (John VIII.23.)

  The Logos is the ‘lost word’ of Free Masonry.

  The Stones in Action

  The value of the preceding metaphysics will become apparent as we examine two giants of the 17th. Century: two builders, two men who were ‘hit by the Stone’, and who in seeking the Stone became ‘living stones’, dedicated to the rebirth, renewal, and reconstruction of the temple of knowledge, nature and of the divine society. In the process, they contributed to the spiritual genesis of two significant institutions which have, at their best, attempted to aid the liberation of humankind from the bondage of material constraint: freemasonry and the Royal Society. I refer to Johann Amos Comensky (or Comenius, 1592-1671), and Elias Ashmole (1617-1692).

  Comenius (1592-1671)

  Between the Westerkerk and Damrak in the city of Amsterdam, visitors still come to the house where Comenius lived in the 1660s. This house was only one of many havens in a long life lived on the move.

  In the year in which the Fama Fraternitatis was published in Cassel (1614), Comenius returned from the Palatinate to his beloved Bohemia. There he wrote a vast pansophic encyclopaedia, an integration of all knowledge written on the micro-macrocosmic principle, envisioning all natural things as part of an unbroken whole, the which whole included the human mind and the spiritual activity of God. He was encouraged in this work by Johann Valentin Andreae, for Comenius dedicated his efforts not to the private world of academe but to the cause of public enlightenment. The new age would be built on the principle of opening the ‘book of nature’ and the house of wisdom to all. In learning lay the key to liberation, the freedom of mind over matter. Learning was not to be the servant of the state or of industry or capital. Capital, industry and the state were to be the servants of learning - a principle we may consider of no little value today.

  This passionate and good man was further encouraged in his efforts by the configuration of two events. Firstly, the public diffusion of the Rosicrucian manifestos, and secondly, the political movement supported by many of his Church (the Bohemian Brethren) to install Frederick of the Palatinate and his wife the Princess Elizabeth as King and Queen of Bohemia. These events seemed to promise a new age of religious toleration, release from Catholic Habsburg domination and the rebirth of science.

  To the delight of Comenius and many others suffering religious persecution, Frederick accepted the throne of Bohemia in September 1619, journeying south for the coronation in Prague Cathedral, an event witnessed by the joyous Comenius himself. Optimists expected James I to support his daughter (Elizabeth) should the Habsburgs intervene, but James did nothing. The Duke of Bavaria's Catholic army invaded. Only the outnumbered army of Christian of Anhalt (Augustus' brother) came to Frederick's aid. After the Battle of the White Mountain (8 November 1620), the “Winter King and Queen of Bavaria” were toppled, the Prague Palace was sacked, and the Thirty Years War began.

  Comenius would lose his house, his library, his wife and one of his children in the ensuing conflagration. Shattered, he escaped to the protection of Count Zerotin at Brandeis. In 1622 he poured forth his despair into a masterpiece of Czech literature, The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart. To all those who have dreamed a great dream, attempted to manifest it in the public domain only to receive the rebuttal of the world's perennial wickedness, stupidity and blindness, this volume speaks.

  The ‘Labyrinth’ of the world is in a sense Campanella's City of the Sun and Andreae's Christianopolis turned into a nightmare. The ordered streets of science lead nowhere; all knowledge is unsound. The Pilgrim is lost in the world. Then he hears the sound of a trumpet: the trumpet of Fame. It is the announcement of the Fraternity of the Rose-Cross, the sound of universal reformation. Pilgrim is tempted to take an interest. Many books appear with promising titles of pansophic enlightenment but are found empty. Pilgrim is confused. The Brotherhood “said that they had the stone, and could by means of it entirely heal all illnesses and confer long life.” He dreams of Paradise, a paradise reborn through access to divine wisdom, but still the Brotherhood is silent. Pilgrim can wait no more; he resumes his journey, falling into greater despair at the sight of war:

  Oh, most miserable, wretched, unhappy mankind! this then, is your last glory? this the conclusion of your many splendid deeds, this the term of your learning and much wisdom over which you glory so greatly?

  A voice penetrates the darkness: “Return! Return whence thou camest to the house of the heart, and then close the doors behind thee!” Comenius is forced by the pressure of events and by profound torment into a cathartic inner experience, a descent into the depths of himself. In the process he encounters a new light, and unexpected aid:

  Yet I saw that they [the Godly] were well sheltered; for I saw that their whole community was encompassed by a wall of fire. When I came nearer I saw that this wall moved, for it was nothing else but a procession of thousands and thousands of angels who walked around them; no foe, therefore, could approach them. Each of them also had an angel who had been given to him by God and ordained to be his guardian. I saw also…another advantage of this holy, invisible companionship - to wit, that the angels were not only as guards, but also as teachers to the chosen. They often give
them secret knowledge of divers things, and teach them the deep secret mysteries of God. For as they ever behold the countenance of the omniscient God, nothing that a Godly man can wish to know can be a secret to them, and with God's permission they reveal that which they know…

  The period of repairing his mind seems to have n several years. Eventually he revived and found, at the end of it all, that far from his ideals having been extinguished, they had matured and even intensified. Comenius never again seems to have lost the sense of divine guidance, and he was certainly cared for to the end of his seventy-nine years.

  A new Court at the Hague

  In 1626, four years after writing the Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, Comenius visited the court-in-exile of Frederick and Elizabeth, still regarded by their many supporters on the continent and in England as the rightful King and Queen of Bohemia. This impoverished court was a catalyst for the rebirth of science. On this occasion, Comenius presented Frederick with an illuminated manuscript of Lux in Tenebris (Light in the Darkness), a work containing the strange prophecies of Bohemian clergyman Christopher Kotter71. In Comenius' preface, he says that Kotter had warned Frederick not to use force against the Habsburgs in 1620. Kotter also prophesied the eventual return of Frederick to Bohemia in triumph and though this might have cheered up the dejected king, it was vain.