Freemasonry is said to be a beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. What is an allegory?
Allegory is from two Greek words and means, “story within a story”the Masonic story is told as a fact, but it presents the doctrine of immortality. Allegory, parable, fable, myth, legend, tradition, are correlative terms. The myth may be founded on fact; the legend and tradition more probably are founded on fact, but the allegory, parable, fable, are not. Yet they may be “true” if “true” is not taken to mean factual. “In the night of death hope sees a star and love can hear the rustle of a wing” is beautifully true allegory, but not factual. All allegories may contain truth, without being fact.
Related Questions
- How can you "diminish" the influence of Judeo-Christian religious symbols in the Golden Dawn system? Isn’t the Golden Dawn a form of esoteric Christianity?
- Freemasonry is said to be a beautiful system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. What is an allegory?
- What kind of morality system is suggested by the Philosophy of Essence?
