IT
(by Hermes)
The Worshipful Master is often considered the most prestigious role a Freemason can aspire to.
This belief, quite widespread, betrays a profane and egoistic vision of the Masonic hierarchical ladder, which is often experienced as a climb up a corporate pyramid and not as the representation of the degrees of development and spiritual awareness of the human being.
In my opinion this office is simply a “power” conferred by men on other men, is no more important than every “today”, than every moment of our daily life in which we Masons are called to exercise a sense of commitment and responsibility without reservations.
For many profanes, but, alas, also for many so-called “initiates”, the sense of responsibility is usually watered down, divided into shares of fault as in an insurance finding after a rear-end collision or a collision with a vehicle. A life, therefore, lived as an endless series of accidents where the fault, or rather the responsibility, is almost always assumed partially, often willingly in competition with others: family, work, society, those who betrayed us, or, more simplistically, the cruel fate. For us Freemasons it should never be like this.
In a written piece of work published on the web, a Brother highlights the importance of being able to recognize that others are not to blame for who we are: “it is a path that is accomplished with suffering, but it is also a path to liberation. In the end we will be able to discover that we are not victims of others but of our inability to express what we want, our desires, and when we know this, others will no longer influence us and we will be freed from slavery, from hell: “L’enfer sont les autres”.
Sartre himself explained that his famous expression “hell is other people” has always been misunderstood: “It was thought that I meant that our relationships with others are always poisoned, that they are always infernal relationships. However, that’s not what I want to say. I mean that if relationships with others are twisted, spoiled, then the other can only be hell. Why? Because, ultimately, others are what is most important in ourselves, for our own knowledge of ourselves.”
Freemasonry, also in terms of psychological perception, has two faces: one projective and one introjective. If on the one hand it presents itself as a historicized and organized social and administrative entity, ethically founded on the principles of freedom, equality, brotherhood, on the other hand, in the mystery of its rites, in the contemplation of its symbols, in the evocative force of its sacred words, in the enigmatic signs and touches that bring us to the border between the Manifestation and the source of Being, is an initiatory reality, freely chosen by us, which offers us, at least virtually, the possibility of translating an immense potential into personal action.
This potential, for us heirs of the ancient professional initiations, essentially translates into the possibility of restoring our primordial state of true, “normal” Man, that is, compliant with the Celestial Rules, through the study and knowledge of Nature and traditional Sciences.
From this point of view, the Worshipful Master, not in the profane personality of the one who from time to time embodies this role, but in his initiatory function, is the personification of this Man who has returned to the Centre of creation.
This condition is well represented by the Worshipful Master’s jewel, the Square, which is nothing other than a cross, the junction point where Heaven and Earth meet: the vertical plane, transcendent -the Senior Warden’s Plumb- and the horizontal plane immanent- the Junior Warden’s Level. This should be everyone’s goal.
