Q. As a Master Mason, whence come you?
A. The East
Q. Whither directing your course?
A. The West
Q. What inducement have you to leave the East and go to the West?
A. To seek for that which was lost, which by your instruction and our own industry, we hope to find.
Q. What is that which was lost?
A. The genuine secrets of a Master Mason.
Q. How came they lost?
A. By the untimely death of our Master Hiram Abiff.
(Emulation Third Lecture, First Section)

Like Melchizedek and Enoch, Hiram of Tyre has become something of a mythological figure, yet the record of I Kings and II Chronicles - as well as Jospehus (Antiquities VII.22) - seems straightforward enough. Hiram’s technical services were made available to King Solomon’s temple project as a gift from the King of Tyre, also called Hiram. However, in masonic circles the oft-quoted reference in I Kings VII.13-14 is frequently conjoined to a reference to Hiram Abiff. But nowhere in the Bible does the name appear in this form. This masonic name seems to be a corruption derived from II Chronicles II.13: “And now I have sent a cunning man, endued with understanding, of Huram my father’s.” (AV). The Geneva (Breeches) Bible of 1607 has: “Now therefore I have sent a wise man, of understanding of my father Hurams,”. The Hebrew phrase Huram abi clearly has no certain translation in its context. The scribe concerned seems to be working from an ambiguous text (now lost to us). It is especially odd since Chronicles is generally regarded as having relied on Kings for some of its information - the textual ambiguity does not pertain to Kings. Furthermore, Kings says Hiram was of the tribe of Naphtali, whereas ‘Huram’ is of the tribe of Dan. Was there a significance now lost to us in this distinction? The author of Chronicles appears to have another tradition before him and seems to be prepared to put an ambiguous phrase into his text, perhaps in fidelity to it - or of course problems may have occurred due to a later copyist’s error. But why have the translators kept the distinction between Hiram and Huram, when it is plain that the same persons are being referred to? Merely another tradition? It’s not enough to say simply ‘Hiram (or Huram)’, especially since the Phoenician king is plainly called Huram also in Chronicles. Changes in names in biblical sources usually have some significance viz: from Abram to Abraham. Huram abi could once have been a single name, whose equivalent could be something like Huramson: the son of Huram (lit: Huram of my father). A case can be made for Huram being either the father or son of the King of Tyre - and either word may not necessarily imply a physical relation.
    What is interesting to me is that in spite of all this, some masonic writer in, presumably, the early 18th century (there is no evidence for a Third Degree Hiramic ritual before this time), seems to have chosen to confound the references and create a ‘new figure’- essentially a masonic figure - Hiram Abiff. There is the suggestion here of some cabalistic word-play, the meaning of which appears to be lost. It is reasonable to suppose that the composer of the ritual had older material to work on. If such material ever existed, then it - like the ‘original secrets’ (of which ours, we are told, are substitutes) - has also disappeared.
    JSM Ward’s book, Who was Hiram Abiff? (Lewis Masonic - first published in 1925) has been popular among masons seeking further elucidation on the subject but tends to be disparaged by masonic scholars for its over-reliance on JG Frazer’s famous but often discredited study of ancient religion, The Golden Bough. However, in spite of the eccentricities of Ward’s book, I believe it has a point of view worthy of consideration. Ward tells us that the name ‘Hiram’ means ‘Whiteness’, ‘Exaltation of Life’, ‘Their liberty’ and, most interestingly, ‘He that destroys’. The name is suggestive of the religious role associated with Middle Eastern kings who apparently enjoyed priestly functions bound to their deified status. Ward makes much of this relation (and identification) of god and king, filling his book with examples from primitive cultures involving the ritual and often actual physical sacrifice of kings once they had lost their powers of generation. Ward combines this idea with his knowledge of the Ishtar/Astarte-Tammuz/Adonis cult to produce a theory accounting not only for the identity of ‘Hiram Abiff’ (who was, he thinks, the slain father of the King of Tyre, sacrificed at the foundation of the Temple) but also for key aspects of Masonry’s Third Degree (the slaying of the Master was originally an acceptable cult sacrifice, not the work of three ‘villains’, but of key officers of the cult). There can be little doubt that the Third Degree, read through the eyes of one acquainted with the Ishtar-Tammuz cult does bear striking coincidences with this particular mystery. What is the essence of this cult?
    The cult legend (which the Prophets demonstrate was very popular among Israelites) has many forms but the basic scheme concerns the marriage of the fertility goddess from on high with the spirit of vegetation (Tammuz) who impregnates her. This act, like that of the bee in relation to its female counterpart, is his ‘undoing’ and (losing his phallic potential) he dies and, like the seed that falls when the corn is cut at harvest-time, enters the underworld. Ishtar (Babylonian) or Astarte (Syrian) goes in search of him, being led (or perambulated) through the gates and guardians of the underworld (divested of her ‘garments’ as she goes) until she recovers Tammuz and ensures his ‘resurrection’ in Spring. Astarte/Ishtar emerges in the eastern sky as the Morning Star - our Venus - as goddess of ‘love’: guarantor of the continuity of life and harbinger of the Sun. Ishtar is of course ‘the widow’ (her husband having ‘died’) and Hiram is called “a widow’s son”, as masons are also called ‘sons of the widow’.
    Ward also observes that the name Hiram is found in a number of biblical figures who are killed, Adoniram for example, where Adon means Lord (Adonai) - another name for Tammuz - and the apparent root of the Greek Adonis, the beautiful god who must suffer sacrifice. Ward’s implication is clear. The King of Tyre took it that Solomon was building a temple to ‘the Lord’ (the site of the building was an ancient threshing floor - significant in the destiny of Tammuz) and offered his old infertile father as a foundation sacrifice, ritually assuming the role of Tammuz, and giving his spirit to the enterprise. Solomon is well known as one who entertained the worship of gods derided by the Hebrew Prophets. Ward offers many clues to his thesis, among them the ancient notion that the spirit of the sacrificial stand-in for Tammuz emerged as a tree, from which votive offerings (and sometimes the god himself) were hung. Witnesses to the Third Degree will think of the sprig of acacia at the grave. All in all, Ward’s main thesis is compelling and makes it more so by reminding his readers that forms of the Ishtar-Tammuz cult existed in Syria at the time of the Crusades, when masons were brought thence to this country. Similar rites have existed among country-folk in this country since time immemorial - just think of ‘John Barleycorn’ and the making of corn-dollies. It is difficult to fail to identify a Tammuz-like figure with that of our familiar ‘Green Man’ who, like Nature herself, is sometimes seen in the role of ‘one who destroys’.
    Mainstream Christian writers have not been impressed by Frazer’s presentation of the ‘slain and resurrected god’ as the underlying type or myth for the destiny and cultic significance of the Easter Jesus, condemning the idea that ‘Christianity’ might in fact be seen as an ethical form of paganism. Those who have fixed critical dates of the Christian calendar in tune with the natural fertility cycle have recognised a connection, albeit understood symbolically, viz: the ‘Morning Star’ can represent Christ or the Virgin Mary. Ishtar, like the ‘black madonnas’ was black (see The Song of Solomon).
    But if the rituals of Freemasonry can be seen to be derived from ancient, near-universally prevalent myths concerning death and rebirth, the presumably 17th or early 18th century formation of the Hiram Abiff ritual is almost certainly Judaeo-Christian (if universalist) in orientation. How could this be?
    A copy of the ‘Breeches Bible’ (Printed by Robert Barker in 1607), employed continually throughout the 17th century and beyond, may hold a clue. Therein is to be found a printed note to I Kings V.7. The Kings reference is as follows: “And when Hiram heard the words of Salomon [sic.], he rejoiced greatly, and sayd, Blessed be the Lord this day, which hath given unto David a wise son over this mighty people.” (cf. Luke I.68-69) The 1607 notes also tell us that King Hiram had “the true knowledge of God”. The note-maker of the 1607 Bible is not slow to pick up the messianic (Son of David) reference (as he or his tradition saw it) within the text and wrote, startlingly: “In Hiram is prefigurate the vocation of the Gentiles, who should help to build the spiritual Temple.” It is not unreasonable to suppose that the wise man, full of understanding, who is sent to Solomon, may in fact be one of the sons of the King of Tyre or his surviving father: a wise son sent to a wise son in the bond of divine knowledge. (Hiram the worker of brass could have been the offspring of another marriage of the King’s father - or himself - to a ‘widow’ or even a ‘cult child’, born from a female devotee or priestess of Astarte, dedicated to the service of the cult, embodying the spirit of the god/goddess). Anyhow, the note above was certainly read by freemasons and Accepted Free Masons in the 17th century and its implications would be astounding. It is the craftsman, skilful and understanding, the legendary ‘son of the widow’, the ‘Gentile’ who will build the spiritual Temple. In fact, from the point of view of Masonry, it does not matter whether the builder was the father or the son. Either way, he was the instrument of the Most High.
    A hand-written copy of the freemasonic Old Charges, dated 1646, tells us that “there was a King of an other Region yt men called Hyram and hee loved well Kinge Solomon; and gave him timber for his worke; And hee had a sonne that was named Aynon and he was Mr of Geometry; and hee was chiefe Mr of all his Masons;” (Sloane MS.3848. British Library). While the provenance of the name ‘Aynon’ is mysterious, it is clear that this masonic document sees not ‘Hiram Abiff’ as the key figure but instead the King of Tyre and, particularly his son, inheritor of his father’s wisdom. (There is a 13th century Jewish midrash on Ezekiel XXVIII.1-10, the Yalkut Shimoni, attributed to Simeon of Frankfurt, which describes the horrific murder of King Hiram of Tyre. According to Rev Bro Michael Plaskow, the midrash contains themes of death, decay and resurrection). Perhaps it was that the first reference in a masonic context to ‘Hiram Abiff’ was to force an identification of the Master Mason with the ‘son of the father’ (the Apprentice), whether that ‘father’ be understood as King Hiram, King Solomon (masons were known as ‘Solomon’s sons’) or the King of Kings Himself. The subtextual Hiramic messianic identification (Solomon/Christ/Hiram) could have been made to preserve a hidden Christian element while the Craft in England opened its doors to men holding ‘that religion on which all men can agree’ (see Anderson’s Constitutions): the universal Temple of the Lord whose construction united Jews and Gentiles in common purpose. For Christians, the ‘slain Master’ can stand for Christ (a strong allusion in the Rose Croix ritual), with the raising of the Master both reminiscent and suggestive of the resurrection of Christ or of the Christian Mason in Christ, understood as the lost Word and ‘rejected cornerstone’: the Stone (or logos spermatikos) that fell from heaven to make the ‘bread of life’.
    The tradition of seeing Christ as the Master Mason of all master masons is of course a long one. One need only look to I Corinthians III.10 to find Christ linked to the work of the master mason, save that He is not only the one who lays the stone but is the stone of the spiritual Temple itself: “According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise master-mason [Greek architekton=master builder, origin of our inclusive term ‘architect’], I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. .. For other foundation stone can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (Jesus himself is described in the gospels as the son of a tekton, usually translated as ‘carpenter’, the word means craftsman or builder, of stone or any other material). The 16th century English magus John Dee (much loved by initiate Elias Ashmole) referred to Christ as “our Heavenly Archemaster”. The earliest known English freemasonic catechism (c.1700. Sloane Ms. 3329) asks, “Who is that on earth that is greater than a freemason? [Ans.] He it was carried to ye highest pinacle of the Temple of Jerusalem.”
    The inference is I think reasonably clear. The masonic figure of ‘Hiram Abiff’ is a gloss on a number of deep biblical traditions, and his death is tantalisingly conflated - but not necessarily equated with - the sacrifice of Christ. ‘Huram abi’ was an ingenious choice for masonic progenitor: in him the believers in one Lord could all find an example or type of the divine builder. His legend is then re-conflated by freemasons with the masonic tradition of sworn secrecy: Hiram Abiff dies to protect the ‘secrets’. The resulting mythos is of course so rich that masons have been vouchsafed an endless trail of possible speculations, with the vital caveat that all this is to be understood as an allegory, so returning us to the spiritual Temple which all master masons must strive to build.
    Therefore, to write - as masons frequently do - of Hiram Abiff as simply the arch-workman of Solomon’s historical Temple, neatly fitted into a chronological schema, as if masons had simply lifted an ‘historical figure’ of this name out of history, is misleading to say the least. The Bible does not tell us about ‘Hiram Abiff’. The Old Charges were clearly a mythological history, peppered with the names of ancient figures, the whole thing being an allegory for the transition of knowledge through time of things material and divine. I do not believe that we should ascribe an historical veracity to the legend of ‘Hiram Abiff’ as being a precursor of our Order. That would be to strain on an historically dubious gnat while passing the richly laden camel of spiritual symbolism. One must avoid materialism and embrace the far more important spiritual meaning which mythology so wondrously encloses. When we find the heart of the myth, mere history is discarded. Time is only a shell.