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Updated: July 1, 2025
There is a very great similarity between their doctrines and those of the Freemasons; so much so that the two associations have sometimes been confounded. He was the presiding officer, and his rank and duties were analogous to those of the master of a masonic lodge. HIRAM ABIF. The architect of Solomon's temple.
HIRAM OF TYRE. The king of Tyre, the friend and ally of King Solomon, whom he supplied with men and materials for building the temple. But I doubt the antiquity or authenticity of any such symbolism. Hiram of Tyre can only be considered, historically, as being necessary to complete the myth and symbolism of Hiram Abif.
The Spirit of Life seeks to express itself in our individuality, through the three avenues of reason, feeling, and will; but as in the Masonic legend of the murder of Hiram Abif, the architect of Solomon's Temple, it is beaten back on the side of reasoning, by the plummet of a logic based on false premises; on the side of feeling, by the level of conventional ideas; and on the side of will, by the hammer of a short-sighted self-will, which gives the finishing blow; and it is not until the true perception of the Principle of Life is resurrected within us, that the Temple can be completed according to the true plan.
But these two currents were not always to be kept apart, for, springing, in the long anterior ages, from one common fountain, that ancient priesthood of whom I have already spoken in the 8th proposition, and then dividing into the pure and spurious Freemasonry of antiquity, and remaining separated for centuries upon centuries, they at length met at the building of the great temple of Jerusalem, and were united, in the instance of the Israelites under King Solomon, and the Tyrians under Hiram, King of Tyre, and Hiram Abif.
In the mythology of the philosophers, Adonis was a symbol of the sun; but his death by violence, and his subsequent restoration to life, make him the analogue of Hiram Abif in the masonic system, and identify the spirit of the initiation in his Mysteries, which was to teach the second life with that of the third degree of Freemasonry.
Thus, that there was such a man as Hiram Abif; that he was the chief builder at the temple of Jerusalem; that he was the confidential friend of the kings of Israel and Tyre, which is indicated by his title of Ab, or father; and that he is not heard of after the completion of the temple, are all historical facts.
Its historical details are barren, but its symbols and allegories are fertile with instruction. The Legend of the Third Degree. The most important and significant of the legendary symbols of Freemasonry is, undoubtedly, that which relates to the fate of Hiram Abif, commonly called, "by way of excellence," the Legend of the Third Degree.
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