THE THREE PRINCIPAL ROUNDS

Researched Author Sir Godfrey Gregg OHPM, ROMC

 And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. ¹¹ And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. ¹² And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. ¹³ And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;

These words (Genesis 28:10-13 inclusive) are the foundation of that beautiful symbol of the Commanding Officers Degree in which the initiate first hears. . . the greatest of these is charity, for our faith may be lost in sight, hope ends in fruition, but charity extends beyond the grave, through the boundless realms of eternity.

At least two prophets besides the describer of Jacobs’s vision have spoken aptly reinforcing words Job said (33:14-16):

For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. ¹⁵ In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; ¹⁶ Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction,

And St. John (1:51):

 And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.

Since the dawn of thought the ladder has been a symbol

• of progress,
• of ascent,
• of reaching upward,

in many mysteries, faiths and religions.

• Sometimes the ladder becomes steps,
• sometimes a stairway,
• sometimes a succession of gates

or, more modernly, degrees;

but the idea of ascent from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge and from material to spiritual is the same whatever the form of the symbol.

In the Persian Mysteries of Mithras, the candidate ascended a ladder of seven rounds and also passed through seven caverns, symbolized by seven metals, and by the sun, moon and five planets. The early religion of Brahma had also a seven-stepped ladder. In the Scandinavian Mysteries, the initiate climbed a tree; the Cabalists made progress upward by ten steps. In the Scottish Rite, the initiate encounters the Ladder of Kadosh, also of seven steps, and most of the early tracing boards of the Craft Degrees show a ladder of seven rounds, representing the four cardinal and three theological virtues. At one time, apparently, the Masonic ladder had but three steps. The Prestonian lecture, which Mackey thought was an elaboration of the Dunkerlys system, rests the end of the ladder on the Holy Bible; it reads: By the doctrines contained in the Holy Bible, we are taught to believe in the Divine dispensation of Providence, which belief strengthens our Faith, and enables us to ascend the first step.

That Faith naturally creates in a Hope of becoming partakers of some of the blessed promises therein recorded, which Hope enables us to ascend the second step. But the third and last being Charity comprehends the whole, and he who is possessed of this virtue in its ample sense is said to have arrived at the summit of his profession, or more metaphorically, into an ethereal mansion veiled from the mortal eye by the starry firmament.

The theological ladder is not very old in Masonic symbolism, as far as the evidence shows. Some historians have credited it to Matin Clare, in 1732, but on very slender evidence. It seems to appear first as a tracing board approximately dated 1776 and has there but three rounds. As the tracing board is small, the contraction from seven to three may have been a matter of convenience. If it is true that Dunkerly introduced Jacobs’s ladder into the degrees, he may have reduced the steps from seven to three merely to emphasize the number three, so important Masonically or Mystically; possibly it was to achieve a certain measure of simplicity. Preston, however, restored the idea of seven steps, emphasizing the theological virtues by denominating them principal rounds. In my research, I found the seven steps to be of great importance in our quest to reach that light so making it a part of The Mystical Court

The similarity of Jacobs Ladder of seven steps to the Winding Stairs, with three, five and seven steps has caused many to believe each but a different form of the same symbol; Haywood says (The Builder, Vol.5, No.11):

Other scholars have opined that the steps were originally the same as the Theological Ladder and had the same historical origin. Since this Theo-logical Ladder symbolized progress, just as does the Winding Stair, some argue that the latter symbol must have come from the same sources as the former. This interpretation of the matter may be plausible enough, and it may help towards an interpretation of both symbols, but it suffers from an almost utter lack of tangible evidence.

Three steps or seven, a symbol similar to the Winding Stairs or different in meaning and implications, the theological virtues are intimately interwoven in the Mystical system. Our many rituals alter the phraseology here and there, but the sense is the same and the concepts identical.

According to the dictionary (Standard), Faith is a firm conviction of the truth of what is declared by another . . without other evidence: The assent of the mind or understanding to the truth of what God has revealed.

The whole concept of civilization rests upon that form of faith covered in the first definition. Without faith in promises, credit and the written word society as we know it could not exist. Nor could The Mystical Court have been born, much less lived through many centuries without secular, as distinguished from religious, faith; faith in the integrity of those who declared that The Mystical Court had value to give to those who sought; faith in its genuineness and reality; faith in its principles and practices.

Yet our ritual declares that the third, not the first, round of the ladder is the greatest of these because faith may be lost in sight. Faith is not needed where evidence is presented, and in the far day when the human soul may see for itself the truths we now accept without demonstrations, faith may disappear without any consciousness of loss. But on earth faith in the divine revelation is of the utmost importance to all, especially from the Mystical Court standpoint. No atheist can be made a member of The Mystical Court. Any man who misstates his belief in Deity to become a member of The Mystical Court will have a very unhappy experience in taking the degrees. I must remind you: Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death To break the shock blind nature cannot shun And lands through smoothly on the further shore.

The candidate that has no bridge across the gulf will find in the degrees only words which mean nothing. To the soul on its journey after death, the third round may indeed be of more import than the first; to a member of The Mystical Court in their doctrine and their Courts, the first round is a foundation; lacking it no brother may climb the heights.

Hope is intimately tied to faith: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. The dictionary declares hope to be desire with expectations of obtaining: to trust confidently that good will come. However, the dictionary definition fails to express the mental and spiritual importance of hope. Philosophers and poets have done much better.

Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavour, says Samuel Johnson, phrasing a truism everyone feels though few express. All ambitions, all human actions, and all labours are founded on hope. It may be crystallized into a firm faith, but in a world in which nothing is certain, the future inevitably is hidden. We live, love, labour, pray, marry and become members of The Mystical Court, bury our dead with hope in the breasts of something beyond. Pope wrote: Hope spring eternal in the human breast; Many never are, but always to be, blest, blending a cynicism with the truth.

Shakespeare came closer to everyday humanity when he said: True hope is swift, and flies with swallows wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures, kings. Dante could find no more cruel words to write above the entrance to hell than Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here. Nor can we argue out of hope; doctors say of a loved one, she must die, but we hope; atheists attempt to prove there is no God – we hope. Facts demonstrate that our dearest ambition can never be realized – yet we hope. To quote Young again, we are all: Confiding, though confounded; hope coming on, Untaught by trial, unconvinced by proof, And ever looking for the never seen. And yet, vital though hope is to man, to Masons, and thrice vital to faith. our ritual says that charity is greater than either faith or hope.