Tag Archives: allegory

Our teaching is purposely veiled in allegory and symbol and its deeper import does not appear upon the surface of the ritual itself. This is partly in correspondence with human life itself and the world we live in, which are themselves but allegories and symbols of another life and the veils of another world; and partly intentional also, so that only those who have reverent and understanding minds may penetrate into the more hidden meaning of the doctrine of the Craft. The deeper secrets in Masonry, like the deeper secrets of life, are heavily veiled; are closely hidden. They exist concealed beneath a great reservation; but whoso knows anything of them knows also that they are “many and valuable”, and that they are disclosed only to those who act upon the hint given in our lectures, “Seek and ye shall find; ask and ye shall have; knock and it shall be opened unto you”.

W L Wilmshurst, The Meaning of Masonry, Chapter I The Deeper Symbolism of Freemasonry

Hermetic quote Wilmshurst The Meaning of Masonry Deeper Symbolism purposely veiled allegory symbol reverent understanding minds penetrate hidden meaning doctrine craft

Hermeneuticon

Hermeneuticon and the Hermeneuticon Wiki are some of the original site enhancements I’d planned to develop when I took over the Hermetic Library site. Hermeneuticon and projects hosted there are intended to enhance the content of the main library site by offering a place for the kind of additional information I personally find interesting and useful, and, of course, hope you will also. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons this companion site has lain fallow for far too long …

Recently I’ve renovated the Hermeneuticon site a bit, but also completely converted the Hermeneuticon Wiki to a new wiki engine and also more closely integrated it with the library.

 

Hermeneuticon

The Hermeneuticon site name is inspired by and a play on the folk etymology of “hermeneutics”, which suggests that the origin comes from Hermes, the messenger of the gods in Greek religion; because of the adianoeta and allegory with Hermes Trismegistus, to whom the terms hermeticism and hermetic are related.

I wanted to have a place where I could develop projects that added value to and encourage engagement with the texts offered by the main library site through sharing metadata, including hermeneutics, cross-indexes, cross-references, annotations and other marginalia; primarily through a wiki where such information could be collectively developed, but also through other projects as well.

There are currently five projects living at Hermeneuticon, four of which are being built on the wiki, including the Hermeneuticon Wiki itself but also Metadata, Concordance and Serapeion project spaces. A fifth project, the Aleister Crowley Reference Desk, is a separate development intended as a resource and generator for useful information, especially concordance tables and tag clouds, but is still in a very early alpha state though it may see itself renovated soon as well to support the rest of the projects, especially the Concordance Project for which it was originally developed.

 

Hermeneuticon Wiki

The primary tool at Hermeneuticon is the wiki.

The Hermeneuticon Wiki root namespace is intended to develop entries on key terms found across the entire main library site, similar to what one might expect from a wiki-based encyclopedia. However, articles in the primary namespace are intended to be unique resources, not copies or duplicates of another encyclopedia. If there are other articles or references, instead of importing them there, as one might on some other wiki, one will simply add them to one of the reference link lists toward the end of the article. However, if the material in another resource is of particular interest, one should consider quoting from those resources in an appropriately fair use citation.

There are some initial examples of articles and you can take a gander at all the pages and namespaces via the sitemap. Mostly there are some stub articles, but there are a few just a little bit more filled out, such as the entry for Florence Farr, to give you an idea.

 

I especially want to point out to you today the way that the information from the Metadata Project at the wiki is now more fully integrated with the rest of the library. As I mentioned already, the idea of offering a place for metadata is to increase the breadth and depth of engagement with the texts on the site. I think an example will do much to demonstrate what I mean by all of this.

If you head over to the main library site, and for this example I’m looking at Liber Ararita, in the upper right corner of most pages are a few useful links, such as a site search tool (including a convenient way to add the Hermetic Library site search to your browser, by clicking on the ‘+’ mark, if your browser supports such things), a link which opens some helpful bookmarking links, and a ‘Metadata’ link.

Hermetic Library metadata link

Clicking on this Metadata link will open a window which is populated with information directly and dynamically pulled from the matching page on the wiki from the Metadata Project.

Hermetic Library - Hermeneuticon Wiki metadata window

 

I think you can see from this example the potential for adding useful hermeneutics, cross-indexes, cross-references, annotations and other marginalia that are not part of the text itself, but of interest to the student and researcher, to the site. On the whole, there are not many entries available yet, but if you have comments, questions, or suggestions about these things or the site in general, feel free to contact me via the librarian alias.

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

“Under the name of Hiram, then, and beneath a veil of allegory, we see an allusion to another Master; and it is this Master, this Elder Brother who is alluded to in our lectures, whose ‘character we preserve, whether absent or present’, i.e., whether He is present to our minds or no, and in regard to whom we ‘adopt the excellent principle, silence,’ lest at any time there should be among us trained in some other than the Christian Faith, and to whom on that account the mention of the Christian Master’s name might possibly prove an offence or provoke contention.” [via]

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

“It has always been the custom for Trade Guilds, and even for modern Friendly Societies, to spiritualize their trades, and to make the tools of their trade point some simple moral. No trade, perhaps, lends itself more readily to such treatment than the builder’s trade; but wherever a great industry has flourished, there you will find traces of that industry becoming allegorized, and of the allegory being employed for the simple moral instruction of those who were operative members of the industry.” [via]