The Isis Mystery in the Reburial of Hiram and Osiris Exposed

Welcome dear readers and friends,

In earlier posts I have described the Pansophic legend in its various forms, and have outlined a special blueprint that underlies the primary western mystery traditions.

When I first launched this blog not everyone had heard of the Pansophic movement outside of Germany so I appreciate the folks who have taken to it. As a heritage that has passed hands through interesting characters, including Meyrink and Willy Schrödte, and hence is one of the few chains that we could safely term ‘Rosicrucian Tradition.’

Here in Germany the Rosicrucians have used Pansophy to describe key symbols that unite all the paths through this Hermetic blueprint, and yet until now much of it has remained hidden.

For those new to Pansophy I recommend you take a look at this post on the Pansophic Legends, where I revealed that an Adept of ‘the third degree’ from each of the esoteric traditions has in fact undergone the very same experience of symbolic regeneration.

This is because there are certain signpost symbols and events, even deities, which together comprise the Pansophic drama, and both Rosicrucians and Masons experience the same.

Bear in mind that we are not just talking about solar mysteries and ‘death and resurrection’ here. That would be too general. What makes them Pansophic is the ‘gift of the goddess.’

That earlier post compared the initiation cycles of King Arthur, with Isis and Osiris, and Christian Rosenkreuz, pointing out certain symbols and objects. It also examined our subject of today: Hiram Abiff the Masonic hero who met with the goddess Isis after all.

Today we’ll look at the Pansophic symbols present in the Hiram story, and although Masonry has its own ideas about Hiram, this post will offer an initiated Rosicrucian view.

But Wait, What Was the Pansophic Legend Again?

Let’s briefly recap on the Pansophic Secret of the Rosicrucians. We are dealing with symbols here and it may help if you’re familiar with mythologies quite well. Essentially:

A hero is slain and at some point a Virgin appears and grants a gift.

It is as simple as that. That is a one sentence explanation of the Pansophy Secret.

The gift handed over by the goddess is always a symbol of the ‘New Will’ of the spiritually-realized initiate, indicating that the New Self was created with Virginity and Intuition.

The old will has died and this New Will is the compass needle pointing us towards a spiritual north. We are renewed with spiritual invigoration, and have the power of our higher calling.

The goddess, as Virgin, normally gets pregnant, and delivers a heroic redeemer.

Let’s take a quick look at the classic examples, because we all do love a good tale:

Osiris was slain, and Isis came along, put his pieces back together and guess what; she also had to restore him with a wooden phallus, as his brother Set had destroyed the other one. The phallus here was the ‘gift of the goddess’ and in other stories it takes many forms.

‘Death dies unto death’ meaning the old will/ego belongs to Set who claimed it.

King Arthur was also defeated. His sword was broken. The Lady of the Lake gave him a new one, the famous Excalibur. But at least he had lots of friends and a neat round table. Actually the symbolism is quite consistent, as the Black Knight also lost his manhood.

Percival as the new young knight seeks out the Grail. When he visits the ‘castle of the wounded fisher king’ he sees a lance and a grail. The lance is the key here…

Christian Rosenkreuz appears in two stories. In the first he is in a tomb. In the second he gets invited to a wedding by the Venus. Lo and behind; she is holding a horn…

Seems everyone is meeting virgins here but me, but then I haven’t lost my bits yet.

Haven’t met any goddesses with a sword or lance either.

But then my mother did whack me a lot with a wooden spoon. I probably deserved it.

ALL of these symbols do point to the great mystery of the Rosicrucians.

The Virgin of Hiram as the Goddess Isis

Freemasons, when initiated into the third degree also meet their solar hero. Hiram Abiff is slain with a blow to the head, and the initiate symbolically dies.

Now, Hiram, the hero of the Masonic got a quite makeover in America.

Something cool then happens in the American rituals; a Virgin comes along and plants upon Hiram’s tomb an acacia sprig very much mirroring Isis granting the phallus to Osiris.

Even Albert Pike in his Morals and Dogma equated this figure with Isis. Denying the connection would be plain silly though some do try it, gosh knows why.

And now even cooler; Hiram even got a broken pillar next to his grave, just like the stolen phallus of Osiris or the broken sword of King Arthur that needed replacing. Fancy that.

Suddenly the legend of Freemasonry was aligned to the Pansophic Secret.

But how did it happen? Actually there is no clear answer, profound as the connection is.

The first published reference appears in 1819 in the ‘True Masonic Chart’ by Jeremy Cross. So what’s the problem here? Well, he was uneducated and probably wasn’t a ritual genius.

Whoever did form the link WAS a ritual genius, and the connection goes deeper.

(According to my Masonic researcher friends, in fact the broken column image at least did not start with Jeremy Cross, as it appears in the Rite of Strict Observance 1764 where it called called the ‘Adhuc Stat’ and in the Scottish Rectified Rite 1782.)

For the Osiris-Hiram deniers it might all seem coincidence. But there is one more KEY element to the Pansophic legend: the fact that most of the heroes are TWICE SLAIN.

Consider that in the Egyptian legend Osiris was first tricked into a coffin by Set. It was nailed shut and thrown into a river during a party with the gods. But Isis found him lodged inside a tree trunk. So the adversary Set got even crankier, and this time cut up Osiris into 16 pieces.

Now Isis had to put him back together, restore the phallus which accounts for the ‘second slaying’ which many Pansophic legends present at this moment in the mystery rites.

The Christian Rosenkreuz legend is slightly different in that he restores ‘lost knowledge’ to Europe and hides it in his tomb. But it gets lost yet again. Luckily after 120 years the tomb is opened and the knowledge is restored to the brotherhood for a second time.

Dionysus is the same, also ‘twice slain’ according to Greek legend, first by the bolt of Zeus, and then secondly when he transforms into a bull he is torn apart by the Titans. Even Adam ‘fell twice’ in the Rosicrucian system of Frankenburg, the first in being split into two beings, Adam and Eve, and the second his actual casting out of paradise.

Ok, so what about Hiram Abiff?

Hiram Abiff Was In Fact
twice buried’ just like Osiris

Indeed, Masonic rituals state that Hiram was buried first in temple ruble and then later his body was moved and reburied on a hill west of Mt. Moriah. Some accounts actually state that Hiram was raised form a ‘dead level’ to a ‘living perpendicular’ which is odd symbolism.

But then again, the first slaying of Osiris found him inside a pillar at Byblos. After his coffin had grown inside a tree along a river, a king had taken that tree and crafted from it a beautiful djed pillar, of which Isis had to win back. There are many Egyptian reliefs commemorating this event called the ‘raising of the djed pillar.’

The raising of this pillar, from horizontal to upright, mirrors the reburial of Hiram. But don’t take my word for it, here is what Albert Pike said:

‘Masonry still retains among its emblems one of a woman weeping over a broken column, holding in her hand a branch of acacia, while Time stands behind her… of this representation of Isis, weeping at Byblos, over the column torn from the palace of the King, that contained the body of Osiris.’ Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, pg 379.

As said, Osiris is found again by Set, but this time cut up into pieces, burying him again, which forced Isis to replace his missing phallus with a wooden one, as the gift of the goddess.

Thus like Osiris our Hiram Abiff is buried twice as well, with a Virgin finding him.

Why is this all so important?

Well, as you’ll see in my following post, I believe the Golden Dawn used this legend in its higher grades, and that they performed a ritual enactment of the ‘gift granted by the goddess.’

Hang tight for more, this one is a ripper.

In loving service,

Samuel Robinson