The Masonic Myth is a rarity in books on Freemasonry: well-written, extremely informative without being ploddingly over-detailed, and a damn good read from the first page to the last. Jay Kinney was for some years the editor of Gnosis magazine, one of the most respected esoteric publications for decades.
Unlike all too many books on the history and ritual of Freemasonry, Kinney doesn’t just concentrate on the what and the when, but focuses on the why. Why do people want to be Masons? He explores the importance of ritual and of initiatory experiences, and what people get out of them. He examines not just the “meaning” of Masonic symbolism, but what it means to the individual.
Years of serious historical research have not always managed to cut through the sometimes deliberate obfuscations on the origins of Freemasonry. Kinney’s own description is one of the clearest one could hope to see:
“Beginning with an understructure derived from operative Masonry’s myths and rituals, it absorbed a smattering of Hermetic, Kabbalistic and Rosicrucian symbols, took on many of the values of the Enlightenment, and then became a playing field for the projections of antiquarian mythographers and the imaginations of would-be chivalric knights.”
But more controversially, while accepting the piecemeal development of Freemasonry, Kinney suggests that “some key men among the earliest developers of speculative Masonry must have consciously set out to found what might be described as a new kind of do-it-yourself mystery school: a non-denominational, philosophical, initiatory order dedicated to Enlightenment values and self-improvement.”
Kinney displays a sort of exasperated resignation towards the blinkered inventions of both speculative historians and funda-mentalist Christian opponents of Freemasonry, especially over Freemasonry’s rich symbolism.
“Once again we can see the multifaceted nature of symbols and the futility of trying to consider any single interpretation as definitive. Any symbol worth its salt is bound to mean different things to different people, which helps explain both Freemasonry’s universal appeal and the hostility it receives from fundamentalist anti-Masons who consider more than one possible meaning for anything to be a sign of duplicity.”
The author’s clear attachment to inner spirituality shines through – as does his humour. If you have to read just one book on Freemasonry, make it this one. Its only fault, inexcusable in such a superb book, is the lack of an index.
The Masonic Myth is not only a perfect introduction to Freemasonry, it is also a thoroughly satisfying study for readers more familiar with the subject.
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