The Law of Silence

The Law of Silence

The Law of Silence

By Constant Chevillon. Translated by Paul Freeman

Egyptian priests personified silence with the symbol of the god Harpocrates. He was all eyes and
ears, but his mouth was closed. This attitude is evocative: it is necessary to see, to listen, to
understand, but, among the truths discovered, nothing should be revealed thoughtlessly. Later,
Apuleius would write in the Golden Ass: “No danger could ever force me reveal to the layman
what has been confided to me under the seal of secrecy.” And so it was with all esoteric
teachings of the ancient mysteries - for those of Isis and the Pyramids, for those of Eleusis where
were celebrated the mysteries of Demeter, Persephone and the divine Iacchus, for those of the
Kabeiroi and of Mithras. It was even so for the mysteries of faith during the first centuries of the
Common Era, divulged to the faithful in the silence of crypts and catacombs. The law of silence
is at the origin of all real initiations. Its origins are, without a doubt, lost in the night of
prehistory.
Why, then, does society use this like a machine of war against initiatic societies and in particular
against Freemasonry? The reason is simple; they have lost the meaning of this law. Laymen and
the enemies of this institution consider it, or at least feign to consider it, like a vow, mixed with
hypocrisy, with a subversive goal and shameful mysteries attenuated by its auspicious shadow.
Ignorance and a lack of faith explain this perception. All masons truly worthy of the name know
that the law of silence hides nothing questionable, immoral or subversive; it is the legitimate
extension, however necessary, of the injunctions given to the ancient adepts, an echo of the
evangelical saying: “do not cast pearls before swine.”
But if the law of silence is legitimate, if the masters of esoteric thought have laid it down in
precise terms, how should it be interpreted? Many ignore it, both among its benevolent...

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