TEMPLE
Encyclopedia Masonica
The symbolism of Speculative Freemasonry is so intimately connected with temple building and temple worship, that some notice of these edifices seems necessary.
The Hebrews called a temple beth, which literally signifies a house or dwelling, and finds its root in a word which signifies "to remain or pass the night," or hecal, which means a palace, and comes from an obsolete word signifying magnificent. So that they seem to have had two ideas in reference to a Temple.
When they called it beth Jehovah, or the House of Jehovah they referred to the continued presence of God in it; and when they called it hecal Jehovah, or the Palace of Jehovah, they referred to the splendor of the edifice which was selected as his residence. The Hebrew idea was undoubtedly borrowed from the Egyptian, where the same hieroglyphic signified both a house and a temple. Thus, from an inscription at Philae, Champollion (Egyptian Dictionary), cites the sentence, "He has made his devotions in the house of his mother Isis."
The classical idea was more abstract and philosophical. The Latin word templum comes from a root which signifies to cut of, thus referring to any space, whether open or occupied by a building, which was cut off, or separated for a sacred purpose, from the surrounding profane ground. The word properly denoted a sacred enclosure where the omens were observed by the augurs. Hence Varro (De Langua Latina vi, 81,) defines a temple to be "a place for auguries and auspices." As the same practice of worshiping under the sky in open places prevailed among the northern nations, we might deduce from these facts that the temple of the sky was the Aryan idea, and the temple of the house was Semitic. It is true, that afterward, the augurs having for their own convenience erected a tent within the enclosure where they made their observations, or, literally their contemplations, this in time gave rise among the Greeks and the Romans to permanent edifices like those of the Egyptians and the Hebrews.
Freemasonry has derived its temple symbolisms as it has almost all its symbolic ideas, from the Hebrew type, and thus makes the temple the symbol of a Lodge. But of the Roman temple worship it has not been neglectful, and has borrowed from it one of the most significant and important words in its vocabulary.
The Latin word specular means to observe to look around. When the augur, standing within the sacred precincts of his open temple on the Capitoline hill, watched the flight of birds, that from it he night deduce his auspices of good or bad fortune, he was said, specular, to speculate. Hence the word came at length to denote, like contemplate from templum, an investigation of sacred things, and thus we got into our technical language the title of Speculative Masonry, as distinguished by its religious design from Operative or Practical Masonry, which, is devoted to more material objects. The Egyptian Temple was the real archetype of the Mosaic Tabernacle, as was that of the Temple of Jerusalem.
The direction of an Egyptian temple was usually from East to West, the entrance being at the East. It was a quadrangular building, much longer than its width, and was situated in the western part of a sacred enclosure. The approach through this enclosure to the Temple proper was frequently by a double row of sphinxes. In front of the entrance were a pair of tall obelisks, which will remind the reader of the two pillars at the porch of Solomon's Temple. The Temple was divided into a spacious hall, the sanctuary where the great body of the worshipers assembled. Beyond it, in the western extremity, was the cell or sekos, equivalent to the Jewish Holy of Holier, into which the Priests only entered; and in the remotest part, behind a curtain, appeared the image of the god seated on his shrine, or the sacred animal which represented him.
Grecian Temples, like the Egyptian and the Hebrew, were placed within an enclosure, which was separated from the profane land around it, in early times, by ropes, but afterward by a wall. The Temple was usually quadrangular, although some were circular in form. It was divided into two parts, the porch or vestibule, and the cell. In this latter part the statue of the god was placed surrounded by a balustrade. In Temples connected with the Mysteries, the cell was called the aavrov the Latin word is adyturn, and to it only the Priests and the initiates had access; and we learn from Pausanias that various stories were related of calamities that had befallen persons who had unlawfully ventured to cross the threshold. Vitruvius says that the entrance of Greek Temples was always toward the West; but this statement is contradicted by the appearance of the Temples still partly existing in Attica, Ionia, and Sicily.
Roman Temples, after they emerged from their primitive Simplicity, were constructed much upon the model of the Grecian. There were the same vestibule and cells, or adybum, borrowed, as with the Greeks, from the holy and the most holy place of the Egypttians. Vicruvius says that the entrance of a Roman Temple was, if possible, to the West, so that the worshipers, when they offered prayers or sacrifices might look toward the East; but this rule was not always observed. It thus appears, notwithstanding what Montfaucon (Antiquities ii, 1, 2) says to the contrary, that the Egyptian form of a Temple was the type from which other nations borrowed their idea. This Egyptian form of a Temple was borrowed by the Jews, and with some modifications adopted by the Greeks and Romans, whence it passed over into modern Europe. The idea of a separation into a holy and a most holy place has everywhere been preserved. The same idea is maintained in the construction of Masonic Lodges, which are but imitations, in spirit, of the ancient Temples. But there has been a transposition of parts, the most holy place, which with the Egyptians and the Jews was in the West, being placed in Lodges in the East.
