The Tower
(of Babel?)
The WORD, therefore, I conceive to be the symbol of Divine Truth; and all its modifications--the loss, the substitution, and the recovery--are but component parts of the mythical symbol which represents a search after truth.
How, then, is this symbolism preserved? How is the whole history of this Word to be interpreted, so as to bear, in all its accidents of time, and place, and circumstance, a patent reference to the substantive idea that has been symbolized?
The answers to these questions embrace what is, perhaps, the most intricate as well as most ingenious and interesting portion of the science of masonic symbolism.
This symbolism may be interpreted, either in an application to a general or to a special sense.
The general application will embrace the whole history of Freemasonry, from its inception to its consummation. The search after the Word is an epitome of the intellectual and religious progress of the order, from the period when, by the dispersion at Babel, the multitudes were enshrouded in the profundity of a moral darkness where truth was apparently forever extinguished. The true name of God was lost; his true nature was not understood; the divine lessons imparted by our father Noah were no longer remembered; the ancient traditions were now corrupted; the ancient symbols were perverted.
But this night was not to last forever. A brighter dawn was to arise, and amidst all this gloom and darkness there were still to be found a few sages in whom the religious sentiment, working in them with powerful throes, sent forth manfully to seek after truth. There were, even in those days of intellectual and religious darkness, craftsmen who were willing to search for the Lost Word. And though they were unable to find it, their approximation to truth was so near that the result of their search may well be symbolized by the Substitute Word.
And now we know by this symbolism what is meant by masonic labor, which, too, is itself but another form of the same symbol. The search for the Word--to find divine Truth--this, and this only, is a mason's work, and the WORD is his reward.
Labor, said the old monks, is worship--laborare est orare; and thus in our lodges do we worship, working for the Word, working for the Truth, ever looking forward, casting no glance behind, but cheerily hoping for the consummation and the reward of our labor in the knowledge which is promised to him who plays no laggard's part.
Extracts from http://www.sacred-texts.com/mas/sof/sof33.htm
Show me the traces of our Old Wor(l)d!
How far can we follow them back in Our simulated New Wor(l)d?
The Swedish physician Andreas Kempe wrote a satirical tract in 1688, where he made fun of the contest between the European nationalists to claim their native tongue as the Adamic language. Caricaturing the attempts by the Swede Olaus Rudbeck to pronounce Swedish the original language of mankind, Kempe wrote a scathing parody where Adam spoke Danish, God was a Swede, while the serpent was a francophone.[3]
ReplyDelete^ Olender, Maurice (1992). The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674510526.
[Extracted from Wikipedia, "The Confusion of Tongues" article
Nietzsche speaks of a conversation he overheard in which the following is said:
ReplyDelete“This is age of the masses, who prostrate themselves before everything built on a massive scale. That’s
how it is in politics, as well. If a statesman piles up a new tower of Babel for them, anything at all that’s
immense in riches and power, they call him ‘great.’” [BGEii PT8 S241]
Franz Kafka books
ReplyDelete"If it had been possible to Built the Tower of Babel without ascending it, the work would have been permitted."
http://www.kafka-franz.com/kafka-Biography.htm