Researched by Frank Albo M.A,
assembled by W. Bro. Victor G. Popow and presented to the Study Group by W.
Bro. Larry Swanson Sept/25/02.
This past summer I was re-acquainted with a person whom I had made contact with during the visit of famous Dead Sea Scholar Prof. Robert Eisenman in Winnipeg, Classical studies and near Eastern Religions Master’s student Frank Albo. Frank is a dynamic and enthusiastic young man who is on his own quest for deep religious and spiritual truths via his academic studies, which by no accident, brought us together. It is Frank to whom I credit this paper, who is responsible for intuitively stumbling upon the Legislatures great curiosities and features and it is he whom I thank for including me in his quest for details and further knowledge from a Masonic stand point.
For the purposes of this paper I employ the
word ‘occult’ from its Latin derivative which means hidden. Quite often, in our
contemporary mass-media culture occult,
much like the symbology of horns on a
forehead (more about that later), the five pointed star pentagram has to come to be interpreted and perpetuated quite
ignorantly as ‘evil’ symbols.
The Legislature as a model for King
Solomon’s Temple.
The
Legislature’s architectural plan alone should peak the interest of a
Mason. The building exemplifies the
features of classical sacred Temple architecture- all five orders of
architecture[1]
are represented. As well, the building
is sited geographically true north, south, west and east.
Of greatest
interest, it was Frank who pointed out that the Legislature’s floor plan was a
model representative of King Solomon’s Temple.
Mainly, there is an outer chamber, an Inner chamber and a Sanctum
Sanctorum or Holy of Holy’s chamber (which we will remember was a perfect
square- 20 cubits by 20 cubits) that housed, among other things the sacred Ark
of the Covenant. Frank, who is currently
working on his Master’s dissertation in Toronto, speaks of the Legislature
mainly as a building that reflects an ancient Mesopotamian metaphorical journey
into seven successive gates of the underworld.[2] It is a model that symbolizes the uniting of
the underworld with the that of the heavens- in essence the Hermetic model of
“as below so above.” It is the chemical
wedding of alchemy between the feminine and male principles, and this not
difficult to see once one takes into the account the marvelous and un-usual
architectural details of the Legislature.
The Manitoba Legislature is billed as one
of North America’s finest examples of architecture. It’s opulence is unappreciated by those who
live in the province and it’s construction was three times over budget. As one enters the Legislature from the
outside north entrance one witness’ the classical Temple architecture with six
columns mounted by the unusual relief’s presented upon the portico, as well as
the two great sphinx[3]
figures facing east and west. Upon entry
into the building, a visitor will find the Grand Staircase hall, which a Mason
may interpret, as the symbolic Outer Chamber of King Solomon’s Temple. In the Grand Staircase hall may be found
curious objects such as the bust of Athena[4],
found in the north, the head of Medusa[5],
found south, and numerous cattle skulls upon the ceiling that themselves are
profound in their meaning as they were objects employed in ancient times to
sanctify or ward of evil intent in holy or temples of justice[6].
As one passes the great buffalos and
ascends the great staircase (3 sets of 13 stairs) one stands at the second
story Rotunda chamber or if one follows the King Solomon model the Middle
Chamber. Now the mystery deepens, if
there is to consistency in the King Solomon model then one should find a
‘sanctum sanctorum.’ Indeed Frank
pointed out that there is a square chamber- the Lt. Governors office that was
located EAST of the Rotunda! Both Frank
and I were escorted in a specially arranged private tour provided by
Legislature representative-------- who also allowed us explore and photograph
the Lt. Gov. office and gain entry into the Legislative assembly. Indeed the Lt. Governors office is a square
chamber with unique features incorporated.
As Frank had pointed out in his own explorations. If this was a model of King Solomon’s Temple,
the Lt. Governors office should have, somewhere, an ‘ark’ but where? There was nothing of note to be found within
the room! That was when he had pointed
out to me a great detail. Above the Lt. Gov’s office, facing the east on the outside of the
building were to be found two massive stone carvings of warriors protecting a
large oblong box to which an investigator could only interpret as a symbolic
representation of the “Ark of the Covenant!”[7]
I was drawn to yet another design feature,
central to the Legislature, which reflects Masonic allegory and its progressive
initiatory rites. From the ‘Middle
Chamber’ or the second story Rotunda one encounters a circular Italian marble
balustrade surrounding a circular opening that allows a visitor to view below
the eight-pointed ‘Pool of the Black Star[8]’
built in the floor below. Directly above
in alignment with the ‘Pool of the Black Star’ below one may look upon the
Great Dome above on which, on the outside of the Legislature, the Golden Boy is
mounted. This alignment between the
Black Star feature situated below and the Golden Boy above marks one degree off
the longitudinal centre of Canada. Yet
another curious feature. There is of
course a curious interplay represented here.
In ancient times the initiate of the Great
Mysteries was required to become initiated in the depths, in the underworld of
the feminine spirit, where wisdom and anointment would symbolically occur. This is not unlike the symbolical death of
Hiram that occurs at the western gate of the Temple, the place of the setting
sun, where the initiate undergoes symbolic death and is symbolically raised in
the north of the Temple. The north
position of the Lodge is the symbolic quadrant representative of death, where
the sun has receded, and one is astronomically and symbolically in the shadows
of the moon, where darkness resides, where one receives the secrets of the
underworld. It is here that the initiate
is raised. It is in the north where the
raised initiate and the incoming Master receive their respective symbolic
Words. In the ancient east the divine
feminine spirit was associated with moon as the male spirit was associated with
the sun. The feminine goddess was Ishtar
in Mesopotamia; Isis in Egypt who had ‘assembled’ Osiris after, not unlike
Hiram Abiff, his murders had victimized him.
In Greece, the prototype was Eleusis, and in the twelfth century this
same allegory was the Black Virgin incorporated in the Gothic cathedrals. Each divine spirit of the underworld bestowed
the dead (the initiate who traveled to the nether world) with wisdom and divine
knowledge- this is the symbolic essence
of all the ancient symbolic Mystery rites.
The unique temple architecture of the Legislature maintains this ancient
allegorical model as it has its own unique ‘underworld’ represented by the Pool
of the Black Star reputedly modeled after the sacrificial altars in ancient
Egypt. The Black Star not unlike many
of the central alters of Masonic Lodges, are similar to the features of the
Classical and Near Eastern world whose altars “were figured as symbolic microcosms
of the centre of the universe.” We find
“the centre of the temple should never be thought of as a mere fixed point” but
rather “a storehouse from which flow the movements of the one to the many.”[9] As the famous Hermetic maxim states “As above
so below” so the architecture of the Black Star represents the underworld of
Ishtar, Cybele (worshipped as a black stone), Isis, the Black Virgin of ancient
cultures and Gothic Cathedrals. The Black Virgin is black because “she is
exposed to the sun of the east,”[10] The Holy Virgin, the astronomic
representation of the constellation Venus bestows wisdom and knowledge upon the
initiate. The Golden Boy is a metaphor
for Hermes the Greek Mercury, Eleusis, the winged messenger symbolic of
commerce. I was to find out that the
Legislature was opened to the public on July 15, 1920- this was also
coincidentally the very day that that the planets Venus and Mercury were in
alignment[11].
The Legislative Assembly Chamber
From the Temple architecture we may take
special note of the Legislative Chamber whose features as well may be regarded
as unique. The horseshoe shaped chamber
s not unlike the chamber of the Black Star possessing unusual acoustical
properties by token of its attention to the employment of geometry-
specifically the use of the Fibonnaci series[12]. At 34 feet 6 inches wide two people may stand
at opposite ends of the chamber and whisper and hear one another with perfect
clarity. The luxuriously designed
Legislative Assembly is replete with many frescoes and sculptures conveying
laws and legislation of the past. The
murals by Vincent Tack of New York are adorned with various allegorical figures
representing ten moral virtues. It is
Frank’s assertion that these ten virtues reflect perfectly the characteristics
of the ten Sephiroth of the mystical Hebrew Kabbalah[13]. Not to be missed are two giant bronze
statues, sculpted in France by Gardet featuring the great Hebrew lawgiver Moses
in the east and Greek lawgiver Solon in the west. Upon close examination I was almost stunned
by the detailed inclusion of two ‘horns’ fixed upon the forehead of Moses. I pointed out to Frank these details were
identical to the classic Renaissance features I have viewed in St. Peters
Cathedral, Rome as incorporated in the statue of Moses by Michelangelo. Again most people wouldn’t even take note of
these features, but why horns? It would
seem they are symbolic of someone who has been anointed, an initiate of the
sacred Mysteries[14].
Conclusion
I have barely scratched the surface in my
report based upon Masters Student Frank Albo’s latest research that should be
of great interest to the speculative Freemason.
I haven’t even spoken to the numerous busts such as the Great Buffalos
found in the Great Hall as being used in ancient Near East and Palestinian
temples as guards to protect the temple precinct; we haven’t examined the busts
of Hermes represented in the ‘Middle Chamber’ and other the repetitive
decorative patterns and original furniture throughout the building. Much work remains to find out and verify if
Chief Architect of the Legislature Frank Simon or the various sculptors and
muralists, the majority from London, and Liverpool and New York were
Freemasons. I anxiously await the slow
moving wheels of the Masonic administration to send verification. I have begun some elementary investigation
into a possible cornerstone ceremony of the foundation of the legislature begun
sometime in 1912 or 1913. I have yet to
probe the archives of the legislature or its library. I can only theorize that if some of the
builders and designers were Masons that there would be some record of their
possible contact with Grand Lodge or Masons within Manitoba during that time
but this requires work and unfortunately as a full time employed person and
amateur historian I am limited.
God Bless those who seek.
[1] The five orders of architecture as explained in detail in the Fellowcraft degree York Rite – the columns as exemplified by Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan, Composite.
[2] Based in the ancient Sumerian hymn Inanana’s Decsent to the Underworld. The hymn is a universal archetypical model of initiation. Where the initiate descends into the underworld and is provided wisdom such that they are reborn into the world as an anointed Master, Priest or King.
[3] Upon the breasts of both Sphinx may be found perfect Egyptian hieroglyphics which are coherent in meaning that allude to the divine name of Thutmoses III (1479-1425 BC 18th Dynasty) who was a prolific General and the translation of the cartouche translates: “The firm/lasting manifestation of Re, the good god who has given life.” As to the connection to the north pediment and the symbology of the Legislature I cannot at this time venture a theory.
[4] Athena was a fitting representation in the ancient world who symbolized democracy and whose purpose was interwoven with the state as she presided over reason, wisdom and intelligent activity- a fitting keystone for our Legislative representatives to be ‘anointed by.’
[5] Medusa which adorns the keystone to the entrance of the ‘Middle Chamber’ may be seen to ward off evil and as opposite the bust of Athena may be seen as two sides of one character. For more see Vincent Scully, The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture, New York, 1969.
[6] As to the significance of the white cattle skulls arranged in intervals around the ceiling perimeter of the Grand Staircase hall Frank Simon (the Legislature’s Chief “When [Chief Architect Frank] Simon heard it (the idea that the skulls were memorials to Manitoba’s Bison's), he frowned in annoyance at such ignorance. He said, “the cattle skulls are copied from ancient temples in the Classical Mediterranean lands, where they were survivals from the earliest times of the offering of animal sacrifices, when it was the custom of the sacrificing priest to fasten a skull of the sacrificed animal high on the trunk of the tree beneath which the sacrificial ceremony was performed.” ...“The groves were God first temples.” Healy W.J. “The Manitoba Legislature Building” The Canadian Thinker, 7:5-9.
[7] Frank had explained to me that as of late there have been some academics who have theorized that the Ark of the Covenant were protected not by angelic cherubim but flanked and protected by two armed warriors. See Emanuel Schmidt, Solomon’s Temple in the light of other Oriental Temples, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1902.
[8] The eight pointed black star has long been considered the signature symbol of the Mesopotamian goddess of fertility Ishtar, Queen of the Underworld who was also associated with the planet Venus. See Carl G. Liungman, Dictionary of Symbols, California, 1991.
[9] The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant.
[10] The Cult of the Black Virgin by Ean Begg, pp.47.
[11] Frank Albo, The Sacred Marriage of Hermes and Ishtar Exemplified through the Architecture of the Manitoba Legislative Building, Winnipeg, 2002.
[12] The Fibonacci Series- a succession of irrational numbers can be generated from the sum of its two preceding numbers (ie: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5,8,13,21…). And have been demonstrated to have far reaching application to explain various natural phenomena such as the shape of seashells, the branching of plants, leaf and petal arrangement. The sequence is shown to produce the Golden Proportion that was espoused as a proportional building methodology by the Pythagorean philosophers of the 6th century. (http://www.mscs.dal.ca/Fibonacci/)
[13] The ten Hebrew Sephiroth or characteristics of God are themselves the reinvention of the earlier Assyrian Tree of Life as documented by Simo Parpola, The Assyrain Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol 52, No. 2, pp.161-208.
[14] “English ‘horn’ is Latin ‘cornu,’ therefore English ‘corn.’ Greek keras
(horn) is English kern and kernel; also grain (granum), garner.
But also cornu (horn) is corona (crown) Greek keras (horn) is Greek kras, or English cranium, a head. Greek kratos
indicates a head of power, an authority; krainein
or authorize. Herne the horny hunter is
German hirn (brain). Herne was brainy; like the horned Moses. Cerebral (brainy) is from the same root as Ceres (Goddess of growth), cresco (grow), creo (create).” From Norman
O. Brown, Apocalypse and/or
Metamorphosis.