The word Philosophy is derived from the combination of two Greek words, “Φιλο” (philo) which means love, and “Σοφια” (sophia) which means wisdom. So the basis of today’s talk, “The Philosophy of Freemasonry” is about the love of the wisdom from the Craft, and it is from this angle, the wisdom derived from the Craft, that I shall base my analysis.

In academic circles, philosophy has acquired a slightly different meaning, that of inquiry into the hidden assumptions, aims and methodology of the subject matter under discussion. For example, a study of the philosophy of science would involve a study of the hidden assumptions of science, the aims and methodology of science and the scientific methods. Initially, I have actually prepared a paper along that route, but on second thought, for the purpose of this evening’s discussion, I will stick to the route as defined by the epistemology of the word, philosophy, love of wisdom, to try and understand the wisdom that’s embedded in the Craft that so many men in ages past and in the age to come, have come to love and will continue to love.

Very often when we are asked by our non-Mason friends what Freemasonry is all about, these are the common answers we give them:

1. Freemasonry is a “peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by

symbols.”

2. The principles of Freemasonry are, “Brotherly love, Relief and Truth”.

3. Freemasonry makes a good man better.

4. Freemasonry is not a religion but it is religious.

We have heard these four statements so often that they are beginning to sound like clichés, but are they mere clichés? No, they are not. They actually encapsulate the principles of the Craft. They bring out the Hero within us.

We all know that there is no historical evidence of the Hiramic story, it is a mythical story. So how can our Craft, the principles of which include “Truth”, be based on a myth? What wisdom does the reenactment of this myth teaches us? And, what’s in the Craft, the myth of Hiram and the building of the Temple, that has managed to attract distinguished men to its fold in the last 500 years, in spite of periods of persecution by the authorities for holding membership in the Craft?

At this point, let me introduce one of the foremost authorities on mythologies, the late Prof. Joseph Campbell. Prof. Campbell has written numerous books and articles on mythologies, and has appeared on PBS (Public Broadcasting System) in the USA giving talks on mythologies.

If I may be allowed to summarize him, his basic thesis is this:

1. We all go through the major life events of birth, growth and reproduction, decline and death.

2. This applies to all mankind irrespective of culture and religion.

3. We all have to deal with the problem of death.

4. Mythologies help us to orientate ourselves in this world and to find meaning and the inner resonance of life while we are living.

5. There is therefore a commonality between all the world’s mythologies

6. Societies also have rituals to help us re-enact those mythologies in our own lives so as to enable us to participate in those mythologies.

Campbell’s best-known work is probably “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” (1), the thousand faces being the myriad figures in the mythologies of different countries and cultures but all actually pointing to the same archetypal figure common to all human beings.

This is a quote from “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. (pp. 30).

Concerning rituals, he has this to say:

The so called rites as passage…are distinguished by formal, and usually very severe, exercises of severance, whereby the mind is radically cut away from the attitudes, attachments, and life patterns of the stage being left behind. Then follows an interval …during which are enacted rituals designed to introduce the life adventurer to the forms and proper feelings of his new estate…so that when … he returns, the initiate will be as good as new. (p. 10).

While Campbell’s book might be a bit heavy going, he had tremendous influence on a man called Christopher Vogler. Vogler’s regular daily job was to read the thousands of scripts submitted to Hollywood everyday and try to predict which script would make a money-spinning movie. After having been in his job for some time, he noticed something very interesting. The blockbuster movies in general have the same structure as that of the myths described by Campbell. He then wrote a book, which is much more readable than Campbell’s, called “The Writer’s Journey” (2). In it he summarized the basic structure of mythologies and then he used a few well-known successful movies to illustrate how that same structure could be discerned in those movies. The movies he selected included “The Titanic”, “Casablanca”, “Pulp Fiction”, “Lion King” and “Star Wars”.

Elsewhere (Appendix I), I have described one of Kurosawa’s movies in detail. “The Hidden Fortress” was filmed in the 1950’s. It was highly unlikely he knew of Campbell’s “Hero with a Thousand Faces”, which was published in 1949, and Vogler hasn’t published his book yet, and yet it displayed the same structure and pattern as described by them, even though the movie was Japanese. In other words, I think what Campbell and Vogler described is very real. It is applicable across time and cultures and it is the intention of my present paper to show how our Craft’s rituals also follow that structure and therefore why the rituals, to this day, still strike a resonant chord within our unconscious minds, and why over the centuries, the Craft has continued to attract men to its fold and impart the wisdom it contains.

According to Campbell and later modified by Vogler, the basic structure of most mythologies that find resonance in our hearts follows this format (I have not modified even one word in the following schematic):

Act One

1.1 Ordinary World

1.2 Call to Adventure

1.3 Refusal of the Call

1.4 Meeting with the Mentor

1.5 Crossing the First Threshold

Act Two

2.1 Tests, Allies, Enemies

2.2 Approach to the inmost Cave

2.3 Ordeal

2.4 Reward

Act Three

3.1 The Road Back

3.2 Resurrection

3.3 Return with the Elixir

I shall now analyze our First Degree Ritual using the Structure of Mythologies as expounded by Campbell and Vogler.

Act One

1.1 Ordinary World: the outside word, the profane world.

1.2 Call to Adventure: change of clothing and putting on of the other paraphernalia.

1.3 Refusal of the Call: waiting in the Adjoining Room

1.4 Meeting with the Mentor: The Junior Deacon comes, (he guides the candidate,

                                     therefore he is the mentor).

1.5 Crossing the First Threshold: Entering the Temple after being Challenged

Act Two

2.1 Tests, Allies, Enemies: challenged by the JW and SW, test of the Tongue of Good

                                       Report. Trial questions by the WM.

2.2 Approach to the inmost Cave: Approach to WM pedestal

2.3 Ordeal: the obligations (ancient penalties), p. at the n.l.b., cable tow.

2.4 Reward: Grip and Token

Act Three

3.1 The Road Back: leaving the Lodge.

3.2 Resurrection: back to the Lodge, putting on the badge, new status, rebirth as a Mason

3.3 Return with the Elixir: leaving the lodge as a Mason having seen the Light.

Now let us do the same analysis with the Third Degree

Act One

1.1 Ordinary World: the outside world, the profane world

1.2 Call to Adventure: opening of the Lodge in the Second Degree

1.3 Refusal of the Call: just sitting there waiting for the SD

1.4 Meeting with the Mentor: the SD comes

1.5 Crossing the First Threshold: approach the center of the Lodge to be tested

Act Two

2.1 Tests, Allies, Enemies: answering the tests questions with the SD as allies.

2.2 Approach to the inmost Cave: lodge in darkness

2.3 Ordeal: knocks by JW and SW

Act Three

3.2 Resurrection: k.d. and r.

2.4 Reward: s/s of a Master Mason, the FPOF and the Master’s Word

3.3 Return with the Elixir: Leaving the Lodge as a Master Mason and living in the Light.

If you ask Masons who have gone through all three degrees, which is the one that is the least satisfying, I think the majority would say the Second Degree. Why?

If you try and analyze the Second Degree using Vogler’s paradigm, you’d find it doesn’t fit well. In addition, there is no dramatic death/resurrection element. Is that the reason?

When I use the phrase “Death and Resurrection”, it does not actually have to be literal death and literal resurrection. It means saying goodbye to an old way of living and coming into a new way of living or a new way of understanding. The movie, “The Hidden Fortress”, by Kurosawa illustrates this point very well (Appendix I). At the end of the movie, the friends died to their old ways of behavior and became better persons. For those of you who have seen the movie “The Last Samurai” starring Ken Watanabe and Tom Cruise, at the end of the movie,

Samurai Ken Watanabe died, but his spirit resurrected in Tom Cruise.

There is another way of looking at the Three Degrees. Instead of analyzing the three degrees separately, one can look at all three as three parts of the same structure. In which case, the First Degree would correspond to “Act One” of Christopher Vogler, the Second Degree to “Act Two” and the Third Degree to “Act Three”. Like fractals, this analysis is also valid. Remember, Act One is about entering the Threshold, in this case, the meaning of entering the Threshold is gaining an entrance into the world of Freemasonry by becoming an Entered Apprentice. Act Two is about approaching the Inner Cave. As a Fellow Craft, one is now more deeply entrenched and is approaching the inner secrets of the Craft. Finally, Act Three is about Death and Resurrection. Need I say more?

One may now ask what is Mythology?

In the words of Joseph Campbell, mythology is an organized collection of stories (i.e., "myths") by which we explain our beliefs and our history. Beneath the story-lines, myths usually confront major issues such as the origin of humanity and its traditions, and the way in which the natural and human worlds function on a profound, universal level.

According to Campbell, mythology serves many purposes. Applying his analysis to the myths re-enacted in our rituals, one might come to the following conclusions:

1. Myths grant continuity and stability to a culture. They foster a shared set of perspectives, values, history -- and literature, in the stories themselves. The Hiram myth certainly grants continuity and stability to the Craft. Throughout the world, we are united in enacting this myth.

2. Myths present guidelines for living. When myths tell about the activities and attitudes of heroes, the moral tone implies society's expectations for our own behaviors and standards. In myths, we see archetypal situations and some of the options can be selected in those situations; we also perceive the rewards and other consequences which resulted from those selections. Definitely, in the Hiram myth, it presents us with the moral ideal of fidelity and secrecy.

3. Myths give meaning to life. We transcend our common life into a world in which heroes lived, and we can believe that our daily actions are part of some grand scheme. In our difficulties, the pain is more bearable because we believe that the trials have meaning; we are suffering for a bigger cause rather than being battered randomly. And when we read that a particular hero experienced something which we are now enduring -- perhaps a struggle against betraying a friend, a struggle against being uncharitable, -- we can feel that our own struggle might have a similar cosmic or archetypal significance, though on a smaller scale.

4. Myths explain the unexplainable.

5. Myths offer role models. The fidelity of Hiram, even unto death definitely offers us a role model.

Christopher Vogler notes that his description of the hero's journey has provided many readers with "some useful metaphor or way of looking at things, some language or principle that defines their problem and suggests a way out of it. They recognize their own problems in the ordeals of the mythic and literary heroes, and are reassured by the stories that give them abundant, time-tested strategies for survival, success, and happiness." In the same way, the work of Joseph Campbell has provided Vogler with a similar insight and inspiration.

Ultimately, the mythic adventure is not mythic at all: the true hero's journey is the individual's conduct of his own life. Our very own lives, our existence, are the ultimate call to adventure.  It is a sacred journey that can only be undertaken once for each of us.

“Our greatest task is the writing of our own stories. These stories are not written on any ordinary paper. They are inscribed on the precious, never-to-be-replaced parchment of our own lives. “ (from Joseph Campbell).

Knowledge of the hero's journey will help us to live that story well. The Hiramic myth, as reenacted in the Craft’s ceremonies, though may not be historical events, are nevertheless psychological and spiritual truth. They therefore have the power to give us the wisdom of the ages and make manifest that hero in all of us, and make us better men.

That hero’s journey involves Brotherly Love, Charity, Fidelity, Trust and Truth. Love, Charity, Fidelity and Trust are all written in the fabric of life. Axelrod (3), in his classic computer experiment using that branch of mathematics known as Games Theory in general, and “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” in particular, and Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter in their paper on “Public Goods Game” (4) have demonstrated irrefutably that just as e=mc² and Newton’s Laws of Gravity are written in the very fabric of our physical world, Charity, Fidelity and Trust are written in the laws of social evolution. (Appendix II and III). Just as it will cost us our very lives if we try to defy the Law of Gravity, so it will cost us our very soul, the soul of the hero within each of us, if we try and defy the Law of social evolution in the form of Brotherly Love, Charity, Fidelity, Trust and Truth.

The journey through the Three Degrees is that of a Hero’s journey, from darkness to light. The structure of the three degrees’ ceremonies is such that it corresponds to the structure of the Hero’s Journey as described by Joseph Campbell.

I will therefore end this talk with a song by Mariah Carey: The Hero.

There's a hero If you look inside your heart You don't have to be afraid Of what you are There's an answer

If you reach into your soul And the sorrow that you know Will melt away

And then a hero comes along With the strength to carry on And you cast your fears aside And you know you can survive So when you feel like hope is gone Look inside you and be strong And you'll finally see the truth That a hero lies in you

It's a long road When you face the world alone No one reaches out a hand For you to hold You can find love If you search within yourself And the emptiness you felt Will disappear

And then a hero comes along With the strength to carry on And you cast your fears aside And you know you can survive So when you feel like hope is gone Look inside you and be strong And you'll finally see the truth That a hero lies in you

Lord knows Dreams are hard to follow But don't let anyone Tear them away Hold on There will be tomorrow In time You'll find the way

And then a hero comes along With the strength to carry on And you cast your fears aside And you know you can survive So when you feel like hope is gone Look inside you and be strong And you'll finally see the truth That a hero lies in you

If we let the Hero inside us come out, as when we went through the Degree Ceremonies, we are all heroes in our lives.

Finally, I would like to quote again from Joseph Campbell (5) to explain why our ceremonies must remain secret to the outside world. This beautiful work is from a wall in Pompeii. This young man is being initiated. There is an initiator and an assistant. The boy is told, “Look in this bowl, it is a metal bowl, and you will see your own face, your own true face.”

The bowl is of such concavity inside that what he is going to see is not his own face at all but the face of old age held behind him. And isn’t that a shock!! He is being introduced to the mythology of the “long body”, the whole body of your life from birth to death. And so, again, we have the mythology of the long body. Now suppose one of his friends, before he went in there, said, “Now look, you see, this guy, he is going to tell you you’re going to see your own face. You’re not. He’s got another fellow there and he’s holding this face of an old man.” There would be no initiation. There would be no shock. That’s why mysteries have to be secret; because what is experienced is experienced for the first time.

Applying this analogy to the Masonic Rituals, this is the best explanation I have come across of why our ceremonies has to remain a secret. They are initiation ceremonies.

Our Craft’s rituals are that of a Hero’s journey. Our own lives, no matter how insignificant other people might think they are, are Hero’s journeys. The best way to help mankind is through the perfection of oneself, to bring out that Hero in oneself. The Rituals of our Craft serve to bring that Hero out of each of us, a hero of Goodness and Compassion, of Uprightness and Charity, of Fidelity and Trust.

References: 

1. Joseph Campbell: “Heroes with a Thousand Faces”, Princeton University Press, 1949.

2. Christopher Vogler: “The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers”,

Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 1998.

3. Robert Axelrod :”The Evolution of Cooperation”, New York, Basic Book, 1984.

4. Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter: “Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments”, American Economic Review 90:980-94, 2000.

5. Joseph Campbell: “Transformation of Myth through Time”, Harper Perennial, 1990 pp 22-23.

Postscript

After this paper was presented, there appeared an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United Sates, Vol 103, No. 42 pp 15623-15628, October 17, 2006 by Jorge Moll , Frank Krueger et al, “Human fronto–mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation” in which the authors demonstrated a neuronal basis for the joy that one feels when one has done some charitable act. For this neuronal capacity to have evolved in the brains of Homo sapiens, it must mean that charitable acts are aids to the survival of the species. This finding therefore supports the argument that Axelrod has demonstrated using Games Theory for the mathematical basis for charitable acts. This therefore again lends support to the idea that the great fundamentals of the Craft are written in the very fabric of the universe

APPENDIX I
The Hidden Fortress by Akira Kurosawa

Set in medieval Japan, the movie’s opening scene showed two country bumpkins dressed in tattered clothes running through a desolate place cursing and swearing at each other. The army to which they belonged had been defeated and they were running for their lives having just escaped from a POW camp.

Suddenly, they saw a group of horsemen running down another man dressed as a samurai. That’s the opening scene.

As the story unfolded, they were caught by the enemy soldiers and became POW again, working as slave labor in a castle trying to find the gold left by the defeated Princess.

There was a prison revolt and they escaped. They swore eternal brotherhood between each other.

They then came across a Samurai who enticed them with promise of gold to help him and a lady carry some gold hidden in twigs to another country. That lady was the Princess of the defeated country.

On the way, they tried to escape with the gold a few times, but always failed as the enemy soldiers were everywhere hunting for the Princess.

Finally, they were all caught and were about to be executed when the officer-in-charge of the enemy contingent realized he had once been saved by that Samurai. He let them go, and they made it to a friendly country.

In that confusion, the horses carrying the gold ran away, but were subsequently found by the two country bumpkins who attempted to take the loot.

But they were arrested by the soldiers of the Princess and brought before her.

Instead of punishing them, the Princess thanked them for helping her carry the gold to the friendly country and she set them free. She also gave them a piece of gold to be shared between the two.

The last scene showed the two leaving the castle, one trying to pass that piece of gold to the other, and the other saying, “Never mind, I trust you. I know you will divide that piece of gold equally.” They have finally become real friends and trusted each other. They have finally stopped being selfish and self-centered, only caring about themselves.

According to Campbell and later modified by Vogler, the basic structure of most mythologies that find resonance in our hearts follows this format:

Act One

1.1 Ordinary World

1.2 Call to Adventure

1.3 Refusal of the Call

1.4 Meeting with the Mentor

1.5 Crossing the First Threshold

Act Two

2.1 Tests, Allies, Enemies

2.2 Approach to the inmost Cave

2.3 Ordeal

2.4 Reward

Act Three

3.1 The Road Back

3.2 Resurrection

3.3 Return with the Elixir

I shall now analyze the movie “The Hidden Castle” and the First Degree Ritual using the Structure of Mythologies as expounded by Campbell and Vogler.

1.1 Ordinary World
Hidden Fortress	First Degree Ritual
World of Constant Warfare	The outside world
The two friends trying to survive	The profane world

APPENDIX II

Prisoner’s Dilemma

Imagine two men caught by the authorities and accused of having done something against the law. The authorities have no proof, only a strong suspicion against them, and needs each of them to stand witness against the other person in order to convict them. In order to do that, the two are put in separate rooms, with no means of communication between the two of them. To each, the following scenario is given:

1. If you assist the state and be a witness against your partner, your partner will get ten years in jail.

2. If you assist the state and be a witness against your partner, and your partner accuses you of the crime, because you have turned state witness, you will get only 5 years.

3. If you don’t assist the state and refuse to be a witness against your partner, whereas your partner turns state witness and accuses you of the crime, you will get 10 years and your partner will go free.

4. Unspoken of course is, if both you and your partner refuse to co-operate with the state, then neither of you will go to jail.

This can be summarized as a table of jail-terms:

Given this scenario what would you do? If you choose to remain, loyal, the best outcome is 0 year in jail for you, but the worst outcome, that of having 10 years in jail is also a possibility. However, if you chose to betray him, the best outcome is also 0 year in jail for you, but now, the worst outcome is only 5 years in year. Logically, you should choose to betray him. Logically, he would follow the same reasoning, and the state would get what it has wanted, a conviction of both of you. However, if only you can trust him and he can trust you to a similar degree, then both of you could have got free!

Robert Axelrod (The Evolution of Cooperation, New York, Basic Book, 1984), in a classic study, posed this problem to a group of top computer scientists and mathematicians. He asked them to write a program to play this “Prisoners’ Dilemma Game”. Each program would meet another program, and depending on whether it took the position of being loyal or betrayal, and at the same time, what was the other program’s position, points would be awarded. This is the payoffs table:

The programs would interact with the other competitors’ programs repeatedly over hundreds of thousands of rounds, and the winner at the end would be the computer program that has accumulated the largest number of points. Again, you will notice, if you betray the other person, you will at worse, get 1 point, but with a possibility of getting 5 points. On the other hand, you choose to be loyal to the other person, at most, you will get 3 points, and at worse, nothing. In terms of both the maximum points you can gain by remaining loyal, and the minimum point you can get by remaining loyal, they are both less than what you can get by betraying him.

The outcome of the experiment defies our intuition. At first blush, as explained above, the best strategy seems to be that of being selfish all the time, ie, betray the other person and adopt a “me-first” position. As it turned out, the winner was a program called “Tit-for-tat”. The strategy “Tit-for-tat” adopted was a very simple one. On first encounter with another program, it will adopt a ‘loyal co-operative” mode. Of course, if the other program has adopted a “betrayal” mode, “Tit-for-tat” will lose out. However, if the other program has adopted a “loyal co-operative” mode, both will win. Now, on the next encounter with the same program, “Tit-for-tat’s” response was dependent on the response of the other program on their first encounter. If at their first meeting, the other program has been “loyal and co-operative”, “Tit-for-tat” will also be “loyal and co-operative”, however, if at that first meeting, the other program was in a “betrayal” mode, “Tit-for-tat” will now adopt a “betrayal” mode.  That is the reason for it being named, “Tit-for-tat”.

Axelrod couldn’t believe the result. Having published the results, he called for a second round of the same competition. Now, all the participants in the second round had known of the result of the first round and of the strategy of “Tit-for-tat” and all kinds of strategies were then tried. What was the result of the second round? “Tit-for-tat” was still the winner.

The lesson for the social evolutionists is very clear. Given the nature of the Darwinian world, there is a place for co-operation and charity. We have to help each other. By helping each other, we survive better. Because just as e=mc² is written into the laws of nature and governs our very physical universe, the law of co-operation, of charity is written into the very fabric of life.

Please note however that “Tit-for-tat” wins only in a situation where the game is played over and over and over. It won’t win if it’s a once off game. In other words, the analogy in real life is if there is eternity, trust, love and charity will be the best policies. The requirement for a Supreme Being is not because without Him, there is no morality. It is because morality, in the form of love and charity, is built into the very fabric of life itself, and He, is the very fabric of life itself.

If one thinks deeper on Axelrod’s experiment, it is very obvious it applies to a one on one encounter. What happens when the encounter is many and varied? What happens when our encounter with other human beings is one on one, but that human being can report on our encounter with him to others?

APPENDIX III

Public-Goods Game

This is a game devised by Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter (“Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments”, American Economic Review 90:980-94, 2000).

Let me describe that game in the using the words of James Surowiecki in his book “The Wisdom of Crowds, p. 172” (Abacus, 2005. ISBN 0 349 11707 1)

“There are four people in a group. Each has twenty tokens, and the game lasts four rounds. On each round, a player can either contribute tokens to the public pot, or keep them for himself. If a player invests a token, it costs him money. He invests one token, and he personally earns only 0.4 tokens. But every other member in the group gets 0.4 tokens, too. So the group as a whole gets 1.6 tokens for every one that’s invested. The point is this: if everyone keep their money and invests nothing, they each walk away with twenty token. If everyone invests all their money, they each walk away with 32 tokens. The catch, of course, is that the smartest strategy ordinarily will be to invest nothing yourself and simply free ride off everyone else’s contributions. But if everyone does that, there will be no contributions.”

Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter found that in general, there are 25% free riders, a few altruists, but the majority are conditional consenters, that is they will contribute if other people contributes, and they will become free riders if the majority does not contribute.