THE ORANGE BUILDERS

Imagery of the Canadian Orange Order

It is commonly known that, until well into the twentieth century, nearly every mayor of Toronto, and a large proportion of its councillors, were members of the Orange Order of Canada (William Dennison being the last active Orangeman to serve as mayor, from 1967-1972) — with similar representation to be found amongst the governance of those surrounding areas that would eventually amalgamate to form the present city as currently constituted. What this fraternal Irish lodge of Protestant monarchists would have to do with our ruins, however, is not so readily apparent.

In attempting to draw some correlation between the two, we may first note the preponderance of Celtic, and specifically Irish mythology already touched on through our studies. We might then resort to our faithful ploy of deconstructing the name of this organization; noting its descendance from the Dutch-born English king William of Orange, whose title derives from the Holy Roman Principality of Orange, which, in turn, derives from the French city of Orange, which, then (rather than pertaining to the fruit or the colour), ultimately derives from Arausio, the name of a local Celtic deity, whose own etymology likely relates to the Indo-European root *aus-1, meaning "to shine," or *aus-2, meaning "to draw water." While another "shining water god" would apply well enough to much of what has already been covered, we need not go so far back in time to ascribe some esoteric relevance to this group.

Any cursory glance at the symbolism and iconography employed by the Order reveals its obvious origins in late-18th century Freemasonry: from the sashes, gloves, and aprons worn by its members; to the fanciful hierarchy of rites and degrees through which one's membership progresses; to the frequent use of such tracing board imagery as the square and compass, the skull and crossbones, and the "all-seeing eye." One symbol of particular interest, favoured by both of these institutions, is that of the Royal Arch; a stylized representation of the gateway leading into Solomon's Temple, over which is usually inscribed some slogan or motto, including one which announces, at once, its potential affinity to our ruins — Cemented With Love.

Irish Arches: detail of an 18th century Masonic apron from County Down (left);
a 20th century Orangeist mural in Belfast (right)

Intended to denote the solid bonds of Orange and/or Masonic brotherhood, this phrase also indicates the self-evident roots of the societies themselves, which are to be found, of course, in the ancient profession of masonry. Who better, then, to hold the secrets of our enigmatic ruins than those who have, allegedly, since the time of Solomon, been keepers of the secrets — both practical and spiritual — inherent to the very science of architecture and construction? Indeed, the similarities are not limited to the mere products of their craft, and, as the French Masonic scholar Daniel Béresniak writes in his Symbols of Freemasonry, the lineage of their mysteries, as with our ruins, may be even older than they seem to let on:

In the Cooke manuscript (1410), one of the oldest known texts which deals with Freemasonry, we read that: 'at the time of the construction of the Temple of Solomon, begun by King David ... Solomon employed 24,000 Masons ... Solomon confirmed the rights which his father David had bestowed upon the Masons.' ... However, the date of the construction King Solomon's temple has not always been the key date in the Freemasons' cosmology. This central role was once given to the Tower of Babel. The Regius manuscript, which predates Cooke by twenty years, cites King Nemrod, the builder of that famous tower, as 'the first and most excellent master.' He it was, and not King Solomon, who gave the Masons their first 'charge,' rules of conduct and professional code.

"Nemrod," of course, is the Nimrod of before — that centaur, "wild hunter," Cronos-cum-Lucifer figure, with ties, through Babel, to Ea's Eridhu and Marduk's Babylon — and whose name, we'll recall, means "shining light." Béresniak continues:

For a long time both King Solomon and King Nemrod played a part in the tradition. A Masonic text known as the Thistle manuscript, of 1756, says that Nemrod 'created the Masons' and 'gave them their signs and terms' ... Speculative Masons [as opposed to actual working, or Operative Masons], who were concerned with social respectability and had no desire to threaten the establishment, finally rejected the 'Legend of the Craft' which honoured the Tower of Babel, a pagan edifice constructed in open defiance to heaven. Instead of the Promethean or Faustian Nemrod, they preferred 'our wise King Solomon.'

Such oppositional intrigue, and paradoxical patronage, only strengthens in relation to our previous studies as the foundations of Freemasonry, whatever the case, would seem to rest upon ruins, and focus around thresholds: whether they be Nimrod's Tower of "Babel" — from the Akkadian bāb + ili, meaning "gate of God" — left abandoned by God himself through the confusion of its builders speech; or whether they be Solomon's Temple, with its Royal Arch, destroyed by "Nebuchadnezzar" — Babylonian for a "protector of the boundary" (nabu + kudurri + usur) — he of the Ishtar Gate, protected itself by Marduk's Mushhushshu dragon.

Nebuchadnezzar, on a 6th century BC stele,
oversees the oldest known depiction of the Tower of Babel

This somewhat schizophrenic history, part sacred part profane, might also be read into the motto above. While their purported antiquity could have allowed the Masons to grow along with the very development of "concrete" itself (a word which literally means "to grow together," via the Latin com + crescere), we will note that "cement" arrives from the Latin caedere meaning "to cut down," "beat," "hew," or "slay," from the same root as the affix -cide, meaning, of course, "to murder" or "kill" — and murder does figure into Masonic lore. Béresniak pushes the roots of Masonry even further back in biblical time by observing "'East of Eden' is where Cain was married, built a town and founded a dynasty of creators. In the east is where the sun rises, and where the first murderer became the first builder." He then adds that, ""the murder of Hiram, the architect of Solomon's temple, is the central legend of Freemasonry." Every Master Mason "has lived through the passion of Hiram," who, as the story goes, chose death before divulging the secret password of the Masons, a word now lost in time with him. What, then, are we to make of the credo Cemented With Love? An act of sacrifice, perhaps? But of whom, and to what?

By passage through that motto, beneath the Royal Arch, we now arrive at yet another staple of our explorations; that ever recurrent theme of Yorkshire — for the Royal Arch degree is the culminating step in what is traditionally known as York Rite Masonry. The name of this rite refers to a professed set of Masonic constitutions granted during a general assembly of Masons at York in 926 AD. Though of dubious authenticity, these remain the oldest attested records in the history of Freemasonry (even being alluded to in the aforementioned Regius manuscript), and serve as part of the basis for the United Grand Lodge which oversees Masonic activity across Canada. In name, of course, they also serve to connect Masonry even more with our local toponymy, and thus even more with our ruins.

We should note as well that, among the North American branches of York Rite Masonry, the Royal Arch is not only the ultimate degree of the Master Mason, but also the first step in a series of even higher appendant rites including Cryptic Masonry and Knight Templar Masonry, which counts among its degrees the "Illustrious Order of the Red Cross," bringing us back to the East and West Don ruins via St. George and Spenser. While Freemasonry is generally non-denominational, requiring of its members only the vague belief in a "higher power," the post-Arch echelons of York Rite Masonry apply exclusively to Christian Masons. We will now observe of the strictly Protestant Christian Orange Order that the first stage of their own extra-organizational rites is that of the "Royal Arch Purple" (recalling the relations of purple with red), followed by the consummate rite of "Royal Black Preceptory" whose emblem is a red cross encircled by a golden crown, which also pertains to their highest degree. Here again we are drawn back to Spenser, whose sympathies for the Anglo-Protestant cause in Ireland (having spent most of the latter half of his life on the island) are well documented and prefigure much future Orangist sentiment and ideology (refer here to his infamous tract A View of the Present State of Ireland).

If further parallels need be drawn between Masonry, Orangemen, and our ruins, we might next return to that symbol of the "all-seeing eye" — a favoured topic for conspiracists of every ilk, and a likely vestige of the solar Eye of Horus, or Ra, which we then might deign to connect to our own "red king" through Hrwyfy. The Masons, in particular, would seem especially concerned with occular themes of vision, eyes, and light itself. Béresniak cites the sun and moon (the two celestial eyes of Hrwyfy), along with the Lodge Master, as the "three lesser lights" of Masonry. The "three greater lights" are listed as "the volume of the sacred law, the square, and the compasses," with the first being "the Bible, open either at the Book of Kings or at the first page of the Gospel According to Saint John which reads: 'In the beginning was the Word.'"

C.E. Patterson, in Holman's Masonic Edition of the Bible, elaborates on this subject, stating that "Light is a symbol of knowledge. It is the ultimate desire of every Mason to be well informed on Masonry, and may every Mason strive constantly for Light, and especially for Light Eternal!" This is then followed by a reference to the forbidden fruit of Genesis 3:5 — "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" — hinting, perhaps, at some sympathy for the serpent, or condonance of original sin. In fact, among the Mason's many emblems is the so-called Brazen Serpent, the caduceus-like object erected by Moses to protect the wandering Israelites from snake bites in the desert. Béresniak, in dissecting the Hebrew origins of this object's name, then connects this serpent back to Eden:

The brazen serpent appears at the twenty-fifth degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the so-called Knight of the Brazen Serpent. To understand these words, it is enough to listen to their sound. The root letters nun, kaph, sîn give the word nahash, meaning serpent, and also nahash, meaning omen ... The first appearance of a serpent, or snake in the Bible is in the third chapter of Genesis. He predicts what will happen when Adam and Eve have tasted the fruit from the forbidden tree. It should be remembered that the first verse of this chapter says 'Now, the snake was the most naked of all the wild animals', and that in nearly every official translation the word naked (aroum) is wrongly translated as shrewd or subtle. Its nakedness represents the fact that it hides nothing, that it shows its true nature, that it does not lie.

The "brazen serpent" coiled upon a pillar, from the Évangéliaire d'Averbode, c.1150

Returning, then, back to the serpent of Moses, "brazen," of course, refers to brass, and thus to certain other themes. As Béresniak explains:

Derived from this root is nahoshet, with the same spelling plus the feminising taw suffix, which means copper, as well as brass and bronze, two alloys whose main ingredient is copper. The legendary serpent of brass is called Nahash nahoshet (Numbers 21, 9) and, was later to become an object of worship by the Israelites, who called it Nehushtan and made offerings of incense to it ... It was kept by the Israelites after the first temple had been built. It was placed in the courtyard of the temple and the people, believing that it could heal the sick, sacrificed animals to it.

We are reminded once more of Mushhushshu and Mishipeshu, of Lucifer through Venus, and the impact of concrete. We might then consider the orange-ish hue of copper (the chromatic melding of red with gold), but we also have here the adoration of a "false idol," with the serpent now "brazen" in the sense of shameless impiety. Again, we seems to waver between the righteous and the blasphemous, and it is just such ambiguity which has long fed suggestions of Satanic witchcraft, Illuminati sacrilege, and the various other dark complaints commonly levelled against Masons by critics and consumers of popular counterculture. In some instances, though, such allegiances seem all but explicitly stated by the likes of the American Mason Albert Pike in this oft quoted passage from his Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry:

The Masonic Religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian Doctrine. If Lucifer were not God, would Adonay whose deeds prove his cruelty, perdify and hatred of man, barbarism and repulsion for science, would Adonay and his priests, calumniate him? Yes, Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also god. For the eternal law is that there is no light without shade, no beauty without ugliness, no white without black, for the absolute can only exist as two gods: darkness being necessary to the statue, and the brake to the locomotive. Thus, the doctrine of Satanism is a heresy; and the true and pure philosophical religion is the belief in Lucifer, the equal of Adonay; but Lucifer, God of Light and God of Good, is struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of Darkness and Evil.

Here, likely writing under the influence of the contemporary French occultist author Éliphas Lévi, Pike relates his own practice to Lévi's peculiar brand of Gnostic Hermeticism, equating the biblical Hebrew lord Adonai with the demiurge of previous mention and earlier centuries. As we have already come to understand, his is the light-as-wisdom-bearing Lucifer, separate from Satan "the enemy," or the equally adversarial God of the Old Testament who casts shadows of ignorance over one's eyes. While such dealings with Gnosticism and "heroic incest" should, by precedent, be disqualifying to our search, the sheer amount of apparent interrelations between Masonry, Orangemen, and the course of our studies would seem to demand some continued discussion.

Operative and Speculative Masonry at work; detail from the Splendor Solis

A short and inexhaustive survey of some remaining interrelations would include the Masonic "hoodwink," of related significance — a blindfolding device used in numerous rituals of transition from ignorance/darkness into knowledge/light. "It is a symbol of secrecy, darkness, and silence," writes Patterson. Yet, it is also "a mystical darkness in which the mysteries of our art should be preserved from the unhallowed gaze of the profane." Oddly, included within Patterson's "Index of Curious Facts" are various biblical references to the act of winking (with the eye), each cited as being a sign of evil or mischief. We'll now recall all of our numerous characters found totally blind, or missing an eye, as if locked in the act of some permanent "wink."

From here we will note the ubiquitous "Mosaic Pavement" which "has black and white squares like a chessboard," and "can be seen on the floor in the centre of the lodge where its role is to make us think about opposites, how they contradict and complement each other," recounting, now, our own business with both chess and with opposites. We shall also observe a common concern with pillars or columns, both standing and ruined, coming in pairs, or in threes, or all by themselves. We briefly mentioned the Jachin and Boaz pillars of Solomon's Temple (meaning "established" and "with strength," respectively) in connection with our Yellow Creek pillars, which themselves came in threes, and in pairs. These also relate to the Royal Arch, and, by name, to various other motifs. From Béresniak:

The Hebrew word for pillar is amoud (plural amoudim), from the root letters ayin, mêm and daleth which means 'to stand, to be upright, to be situated there.' As for the symbolism of the letters, to which the cabbalists attached a great importance because they give life to the meaning of the words, it goes as follows: ayin is the eye, mêm is the origin, water and mother, and daleth is the door.

The material and composition of these pillars, or of any construction, is also of a certain symbolic import. There are shades of alchemical theory and Arthurian questing placed upon stone through such means as the cryptic Masonic acronym V.I.T.R.I.O.L. — visita interiora terrae, rectificando invenies occultam lapidem — "visit the centre of the earth and by rectifying you shall find the hidden stone." Here, with limestone in mind, we read further from Béresniak "The ancient English texts refer to 'free-stone', a soft chalky rock which builders used for carving figures ... According to certain authors, the etymology of the word Freemason is 'free-stone Mason.'" Then, with specific structures in mind (think Avoca, Roxborough, Curity, etc.), we read of the dichotomy between "cut" and "rough" stone: "Rough ashlar, or unhewn stone, is the raw material to be worked on. Stone symbolises human beings in their natural state, before they work on themselves through introspection. All writers agree on this view of rough ashlar as imperfect humanity." Cut stone, meanwhile, "is seen as a 'becoming.' It is an act which recognises the need for change. The uninitiated are full of metals that speak for them. When rid of these metals, the initiated can speak for themselves." We then, however, read of Tubal-Cain, last descendant of the murderous Cain, "whose name means 'the blacksmith of the Universe'," and who ""has a skill which can accomplish what knowledge only promises, ripping open the belly of the earth, extracting metals, forging tools and everything else he might want and need in order to become a king." What, now, to make of our reinforced concrete with metals inserted back into "stone" — humanity's "natural state" (with regards to Neumann) — made unhewn or smooth through chosen casting, but always left "rough" through gradual ruination?

King William on a local Orange Lodge banner (left); Christ of Revelation 19 (right)

One other symbol of note, specific to the Orange Order, is that of a red-coated King William astride a white steed. So wedded, in fact, are these two in imagery that they assume near-centaurian coalescence (perhaps a nod to the Masonic Nimrod; or to the Irish Ossian/Enbarr, recalling Keane's "almost identical names of Centaurs appearing among our Irish Saints"). The whiteness of his mount is, of course, quite reminiscent as well (recalling Pegasus and other heavenly mounts; the limestone geoglyphs of Wiltshire; the horse/dragon of the invading Saxons; or the "white horse" of Leucippus, and hence the "white light" of Lucifer) — but we needn't rehash all of our prior equine references here, be they white of coat or otherwise. Let us simply introduce one more to our stable, noting that, as the Protestant "saviour" who delivered Britain and Ireland from Catholic rule, William is often equated by his followers with the Saviour of Revelation 19:

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

Here Christ is presented as the many crowned "king," stained "red" with blood, fire, and the grapes of wrath (perhaps with some thought, here, toward the horse-like Silenos who, by name, treads himself in a "wine-trough" as well). Of significance, too, is that unknown name of the "Word of God," thinking back to those words from the Book of Kings and the Gospel of Saint John, to Hiram's secret password, or even to the scattered speech resulting from Nimrod's cursed tower. Language, often hidden, would seem of great importance to these orders — as it has been throughout our own investigations — but, perhaps, not so much in the literal sense. Symbolism, of course, is language concealed, language replaced, and a language itself. As Béresniak once again expounds:

Symbolism looks at the world as if it were a text. It involves thinking about thought and speaking about language. As its etymology suggests, a symbol is an image made up of various elements in such a way that the whole represents more than the sum of its parts. The first degree initiation ritual, that of Entered Apprentice, states: 'Here, all is symbol.' This statement describes the path to follow: 'Here, we learn to look at the symbolic nature of everything that exists.' In other words, everything should be seen as a metaphor.

As we contemplate the symbolic nature of everything uncovered along our path, let us look to one last potential symbol, noting the natural setting of our ruined sites while we then consider the following:

There is a degree at which the Freemason works with nature. The walls of the temple are decorated with fields, mountains and forests, rivers and waterfalls. At this degree, fresh questions are asked concerning everything that has been learnt about Masonic symbols, and the aim of this work is, as the ritual puts it, 'to search for the truth.'

In searching for the truth behind these ruins we have asked many questions, and surely many more remain. We have drawn many connections — perhaps more than were needed — and some likely were not connections at all. At the same time we've certainly left some lose threads, but, for now, we must leave them to hang. It is time to seek answers from all that we've learnt...even if our final answer is that we have none.