The three sojourners discover the underground vault in the ruins of the first temple.
The ritual of the Royal Arch describes the discovery, buried within a long-forgotten vault, of the sacred name of God.
The candidate, tasked with clearing a building site discovers an arch or dome of stone, from which he removes the keystone and opens the vault, penetrating the depths until, with his companions’ assistance, he discovers the word, deposited within.
The ritual describes the response of the candidate when asked what he found as “For the want of Light I am unable to discover”… that Light is the true Key and is the discovery by the Candidate, through reflection, that God is at the centre of our very being.
The traditional sacred word of the Royal Arch can be seen to be a philological metaphor of the unity of the Great Creator. Prior to the changes imposed by the Supreme Grand Chapter of England in 1989 in response to strong media and Church pressure, and still in use in other jurisdictions worldwide, one of the sacred words was a synthetic and syncretic threefold glyph for the name of God.
This compound word unites the name of God from three different belief systems, and underlines the belief that there is but One Light, manifested in myriad ways and perceived differently by different groups of mankind, but arising from a single source. The word can therefore be seen as a metaphor for the unity of the Light and the One.
The other (and under the UGLE presently the only) Judaeo-Christian sacred word is used in Gnostic belief systems to represent the same unifying and unitising principle of the One True Light.
The allegory of the Royal Arch degree is therefore the inner discovery of that which was lost previously. The goal of restoration and reintegration is predicated by the concept of the Fall of Man from grace, the loss of synergy with the One and the undoing of his spirit which must be counteracted by own internal search for the truth within us.
One common doctrine of eschatology states that in the End all will come back to the Beginning. Reintegration will restore that which is lost.
The Masonic and Royal Arch allegory tell us that the genuine secrets of the Master Builder were lost by the untimely death of Hiram Abiff, and that in the Royal Arch we will rediscover the genuine secret, or more specifically, the name of God.
The Royal Arch can thus be seen as the discovery, deep within each of us, of the One True Light; that Consciousness can be found within ourselves through our labour.
Job 19:26 says ‘in my flesh I shall see God’. The candidate becomes the apotheosis of mankind, discovering the Divine within and restoring himself to his original state.
In the Royal Arch story, the three Sojourners belong to a tribe that fell from grace; the captivity in Babylon shows a parallel to the fall of Adam Kadmon, from freedom and liberty in light to enslavement and darkness in servitude.
In the Royal Arch degree, the sojourners regain their former status; namely through their discovery they experience Reintegration.
In Haggai 2:3-9 the Lord asks of the Jews who had seen this house (of God) in its former glory, and how it seems now as nothing.
But that the glory to come will eclipse the former. The whole of Haggai may be viewed as a metaphor for the fall of Man and the prophecy of Reintegration into Unity.
In the traditional Scottish version of the Royal Arch, the arch is depicted as being supported by two pillars, united by the keystone of the Mark Master Mason degree and subsequently constructed during the Most Excellent Master degree.
These pillars not only represent those described in Craft masonry, but also the two opposing pillars of kabbalistic dualism.
God found within is further symbolised by the figure of a point within a circle, bounded by two parallel lines; the point of Unity within the whole of Existence, and the One True Religion within the sphere encompassing all forms of worship, juxtaposed by the two lines representing the antagonistic forms of nature and the dualism of opposites.
The Point within a Circle is the Unity Principle within the centre of Eternity and represents Reintegration.
As a minor diversion it is useful to acknowledge that this is a symbol of great antiquity, being first described by the cosmology of the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus in the 5th century BCE as relating to the Limited (or point of focus) within the Limitless.
This was the first historically recorded non-geocentric view of the world, and Philolaus posited the existence of a central great fire or light around which everything harmonised.