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WHY IS THE MASTER ALWAYS IN THE EAST?
“And yet you are a man and not a god,
however you may think yourself
like a god.”
Ez. 28:2
God governs the world by authority and never by pressure. Were it in any other case, there can be no freedom or rule of regulation. One is free to be both believing, or unbelieving. Nothing and nobody can compel any one in every of us to have religion. No scientific discovery, no argument of logic and no torture of physique or thoughts can drive us to consider something, and even to simply accept the authority of the Supreme Architect of the Universe. However, as soon as that authority is acknowledged and embraced, the powerless turn out to be highly effective reminding us of the parable Jesus delivered concerning the mustard seed – a grain of religion is adequate to maneuver mountains.
The Master of a lodge of Freemasons represents that authority. During one phase of the ritual in a Masonic diploma, the candidate is instructed that the Master is all the time stationed within the east, whereas the Senior and Junior Wardens are all the time stationed within the west and south respectively. The ritual doesn’t clarify why that’s so and most sideline veterans of Masonic levels are fast to recommend it’s just because that’s the approach it has all the time been. While that rationalization is definitely true to some extent, it’s incomplete and wholly unenlightened.
To be one thing, to know one thing and to be able to one thing is what empowers an individual with authority, such because the Master of a lodge. When all is claimed, it’s authority which is the true and distinctive energy. Compulsion or pressure is merely an expedient which one might use to treatment a scarcity of authority. Where authority exists in its purest type one can sense and really feel the breath of sacred magic crammed by the hearth of mysticism – the essence of that which is divine.
At his set up, the Master of a lodge is entrusted with a gavel and advised by his putting in officer that it’s an emblem of his authority which he might wield on behalf of acts of nice goodness, or higher evil. The level right here symbolized is that true Masonic authority is wielded by the scepter and never by a weapon. Masonry’s first Most Excellent Grand Master Solomon, King of Israel, is reported in Masonic ritual to have wielded the scepter over Israel, not one other weapon, and thus stands because the foremost instance of how Masonic authority is, or must be exercised.
The Kabbalah teaches that each one authority has its supply within the ineffable identify of deity -YHVH – and that each one regulation derives from that identify. The clear implication right here, in addition to in all Masonic lodges, is that the human bearer of authority doesn’t substitute divine authority. Rather, he renounces his personal will and permits himself to conduct himself as a conduit for divine authority. Always stationed within the east, the Master renounces motion, versus obedience, ease in favor of obligation and motion in favor of standing sentry. In different phrases, the Master is a guardian of his publish and primarily guards the scepter.
The scepter is symbolized by the gavel, which additional is symbolic of the restraint a Master should train, if his authority is ever to be efficient. The Master who shouts down his opposition, yells to make his level, deviously politicizes his lodge, or blithely points orders with out logic or cause has not exercised that restraint. Instead, he has undertaken steps designed to deprive the brethren of freedom of the deity’s loving steerage. A Master who’s aware that the gavel represents the scepter withholds his naturally impulsive nature in order that it doesn’t intervene and substitute God as the top of the lodge.
The lesson of such restraint is just not new because it applies to the Master, it’s merely utilized equally to the brother with authority, in addition to to the brethren obligated to comply with. Thus, it isn’t the person who’s predominant when Masonic authority is taken into account: it’s the Supreme Architect of the Universe. Candidates are instructed all through their Masonic journey that the compasses is a helpful instrument for educating that in his coping with different males, notably different Masons, he’s to circumscribe his wishes and hold his passions inside due bounds. That type of restraint inures to the direct advantage of the brother or particular person who comes into direct contact with a Mason. The type of restraint utilized to the Master is meant to profit your complete lodge, the entire physique of brethren and, in flip, all these outdoors the lodge with whom every brother has contact.
When he obeys the accountable obligation of all the time remaining at his station within the east, the Master signifies that he has made a spot inside himself for the divine identify, YVHV, which is the supply of true authority. He additionally signifies that he has not solely renounced the liberty of bodily motion, but in addition that of mental motion. It is meant inside each lodge of Freemasonry that the void which ends up must be crammed by the divine, that’s motion bodily and intellectually ought to solely happen following prayerful session with the Supreme Architect.
By remaining at his station, the Master additionally signifies that he has renounced any private mission, or effort to advertise his personal esteem. He has actually grow to be nameless. His identify has given approach to the ineffable identify of the divine and he has thereby grow to be the embodiment of lasting regulation and order.
A Master’s obligation to train such restraint might greatest be supplemented by the next instructions:
(1) be humble and you’ll stay whole;
(2) be worn and you’ll stay new;
(three) be empty so that you could be obtain a lot from God;
(four) chase not rewards that you could be not be embarrassed;
(5) keep away from approving of your self and turn into famous;
(6) give glory to these round you that you could be excel; and
(7) compete not together with your brethren, as a result of there isn’t any one who can compete with you – you might have authority.
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Source by John R. Heisner