The Deeper Symbolism of Freemasonry from The Meaning of Masonry by Walter Leslie Wilmshurst.

“In all the schools of the Mysteries, as well as in all the great religions of the world, the attainment of the spiritual goal just described is enacted or taught under the veil of a tragic episode analogous to that of our third degree; and in each there is a Master whose death the aspirant is instructed he must imitate in his own person.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “We are told seven or more years was the normal period, though less sufficed in worthy cases. The most severe tests of discipline, of purity, of self-balance were required before a neophyte was permitted to pass forward, and a reminiscence of these tests of fitness is preserved in our own working by the conducting of the candidate to the two wardens, and submitting him to a merely formal trial of efficiency.”
  2. “Tis scarcely true that souls come naked down To take abode up in this earthly town, Or naked pass, of all they wear denied. We enter slipshod and with clothes awry, And we take with us much that by-and-by May prove no easy task to put aside. Cleanse, therefore, that which round about us clings, We pray Thee, Master, ere Thy sacred halls We enter. Strip us of redundant things, And meetly clothe us in pontificals. [Strange Houses of Sleep by A. E. Waite.]”
  3. “What is extremely ancient in Freemasonry is the spiritual doctrine concealed within the architectural phraseology; for this doctrine is an elementary form of the doctrine that has been taught in all ages, no matter in what garb it has been expressed.”
  4. “As every Christian is taught that in his own life he must imitate the life and death of Christ, so every Mason is ‘made to represent one of the brightest characters recorded in our annals’; but as the annals of Masonry are contained in the volume of the Sacred Law and not elsewhere, it is easy to see who the character is who is alluded to.”
  5. “In all periods the world’s history, and in every part of the globe, the secret orders and societies have existed outside the limits of the official churches for the purpose of teaching what are called ‘the Mysteries’: for imparting to suitable and prepared minds certain truths of human life, certain instructions about divine things, about the things that belong to our peace, about human nature and human destiny, which it was undesirable to publish to the multitude who would but profane those teachings and apply the esoteric knowledge that was communicated to perverse and perhaps to disastrous ends.”