TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Thursday, November 11, 2004

And folks wondered why it's called "the Scottish play."

As posted to underground news & analysis site disinfo.com:

:. Was Shakespeare a Freemason?: Masonic Symbolism in Macbeth .:

by Bro. Robert Guffey

In 1933 Past Master Alfred Dodd published a book that purported to contain evidence linking William Shakespeare with the creation of Freemasonry, an international secret society built around an interest in esoteric knowledge, including the ancient art of alchemy. In the book, Shakespeare: Creator of Freemasonry, Dodd focuses on the Masonic symbolism in two plays, Love's Labours Lost and The Tempest. Except for two brief references he ignores Macbeth, an indispensable play in establishing Shakespeare's ties to Freemasonry. The entire play appears to have been written as an allegory for the bloody murder of Hiram Abiff, the core figure of Masonic ritual.

Upon reaching the third degree the Masonic initiate is led through the mock ritual killing of Hiram Abiff, one of three original Grand Masters of Freemasonry.
[...]
Macbeth can easily be viewed as a mingling of these forces. He is a bundle of paradoxes: nobleman and murderer, murderer and coward, coward and warrior. He is the perfect vessel for Shakespeare's retelling of the ritualistic killing inherent in the third degree, for the three "unworthy craftsmen" possess many of the same contradictory traits.
[...]
Perhaps the most blatant parallel between the death of Abiff and Shakespeare's tragedy: ... Haunted by the witches' prophecy that Banquo would be "father to a line of Kings," Macbeth hires a pair of assassins to exterminate Banquo and his son Fleance. In the following scene, this pair mysteriously transforms into a trio. To the uninitiated this might seem like a discrepancy. However, after all the evidence presented so far it becomes obvious that Shakespeare is purposely waving a red flag in order to attract the reader's attention to this "irrelevant" detail. For the Bard's "fellows" it would have been immediately obvious that the three assassins were to be associated with Jubela, Jubelo, and Jubelum. Certainly it's no coincidence that the assassins kill Banquo in Act Three, Scene Three.
[...]
The idea of Shakespeare having been a Freemason will probably be a controversial theory to literary scholars, but then again anything not generally known since before the Cretaceous Period is controversial to literary scholars. Meanwhile, most mainstream historians believe that Freemasonry was founded in 1717, long after Shakespeare's death. Other, more esoteric authors trace the origins of the Brotherhood all the way back to Ancient Egypt. True or not, neither theory erases the fact that obvious Masonic symbolism is woven into the tragedy of Macbeth, written over a hundred years before traditional history says that such symbolism ever existed.

Labels: masons

| Posted at 16:24 | PERMA-LINK |

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