The Secret Teachings of All Ages · 203 of 236

The Mystery of the Macrocosm

Redrawn from Cesariano's Edition of Vitruvius.

Summarizing the relationship between the human body and the theory of architectonics, Vitruvius writes:

"Since nature has designed the human body so that its members are duly proportioned to the frame as a whole, it appears that the ancients had good reason for their rule, that in perfect building the different members must be in exact symmetrical relations to the whole general scheme. Hence, while transmitting to us the proper arrangements for buildings of all kinds, they were particularly careful to do so in the case of temples of the gods, buildings in which merits and faults usually last forever. * * * Therefore, if it is agreed that number was found out from the human fingers, and that there is a symmetrical correspondent between the members separately and the entire form of the body, in accordance with a certain part selected as standard, we can have nothing but respect for those who, in constructing temples of the immortal gods, have so arranged the members of the works that both the separate parts and the whole design may harmonize in their proportions and symmetry." (See The Ten Books on Architecture)

Context

Vitruvius's Ten Books on Architecture (De Architectura), written around 25 BCE for Augustus, is the only complete classical work on architecture to survive. Book III, from which Hall is quoting, develops the doctrine of symmetry in temple design from the proportions of the human body — the source of the famous 'Vitruvian Man' (Leonardo's drawing of 1490 illustrating the passage). The doctrine is foundational for Renaissance architectural theory: Alberti, Palladio, and Serlio all build on Vitruvius. The connection between human proportion, architectural proportion, and cosmic proportion was treated as continuous and necessary by Renaissance Hermeticists like Fludd and Cesariano (whose 1521 edition of Vitruvius Hall is citing). Modern architectural history has separated the empirical and the symbolic readings; the Renaissance synthesis treated them as one.Vitruvius, De Architectura III; Cesariano edition (1521); Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism.

By some it is believed that St. Paul was initiated into the Dionysiac Mysteries, for in the tenth verse of the third chapter of First Corinthians he calls himself a "master-builder" or adept: "According to the grace of God which is given into me, as a wise master-builder, I have laid the foundation and another buildeth thereon. " As survivals of the ancient Dionysiac rites, the two diagrams of Cesariano, accompanying this chapter are of incalculable value to the modern mystic architect.

Insight

The reading of 1 Corinthians 3:10 — 'as a wise master-builder I have laid the foundation' — as Paul's claim to Dionysiac mystery initiation is a Masonic-Hermetic interpretation, not a mainstream New Testament reading. The Greek architekton (master-builder) is the standard term for a chief craftsman; Paul is using it metaphorically for his founding role in the Corinthian church. The Dionysiac Artificers (collegium fabrorum tignariorum or, in the esoteric reading, an organized guild of building craftsmen tracing back to Dionysos as patron of mystery building) are a Masonic-tradition construction with limited classical documentation. The mainstream classical evidence for organized building guilds in the ancient world is real; the specific 'Dionysiac Artificers' as documented in Hall and earlier Masonic literature is more interpretively constructed. The Masonic reading takes the architekton language as initiatory; the New Testament scholarship takes it as professional metaphor.1 Corinthians 3:10; Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment on Masonic-classical syntheses.

in the organization of the intellectual faculties with which he has been endowed; by arithmetic he not only is instructed in the mystery of universal order but also gains the key to multitude, magnitude, and proportion; by geometry he is inducted into the mathematics of form, the harmony and rhythm of angles, and the philosophy of organization; by music he is reminded that the universe is founded upon the laws of celestial harmonics and that harmony and rhythm are all-pervading; by astronomy he gains an understanding of the immensities of time and space, of the proper relationship between himself and the universe, and of the awesomeness of that Unknown Power which is driving the countless stars of the firmament through illimitable space. Equipped with the knowledge conferred by familiarity with the liberal arts and sciences, the studious Freemason therefore finds himself confronted by few problems with which he cannot cope.

Insight

The seven liberal arts and sciences — grammar, rhetoric, logic (the trivium) and arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy (the quadrivium) — that Hall is describing here as the Masonic course of study is the medieval curriculum codified by Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Isidore of Seville, drawn from late-antique Greek philosophical education. The structure persisted through the medieval universities (where the seven arts were the bachelor's curriculum, theology-medicine-law the higher faculties) and was canonized for Freemasonry by the Anderson Constitutions (1723) and the rituals that followed. The connection Hall makes — astronomy as understanding the immensities of time and space, music as harmonic reminder of cosmic order — preserves the medieval-Pythagorean reading where the quadrivium is the soul's training in cosmic literacy. The modern split between liberal-arts education and esoteric self-cultivation is a recent fracture.Boethius, De Institutione Arithmetica; Anderson, Constitutions (1723); Wilkinson, Lectures on Ancient and Modern History of Freemasonry.