THE BEEHIVE REVISITED - Bro. P.D. Newman, 32°
THE BEEHIVE
REVISITED
Valley
of Corinth, Orient of MS
The [larva] of a bee is scarcely worthy to be
called a life, but after it is transmuted by death, it appears in a more
excellent and glorious condition…[1]
The
beehive, like the honey which it houses, is a fecund symbol, both rich and
enduring. In my previous treatment of this subject[2], I provided a decidedly limited overview of the
symbol of the beehive and its cognates, bees and honey, as they were understood
in the mythologies and folklores of various cultures. In the present treatment,
I will be exploring the possible significance of the symbol as it most readily
relates to the actual arcana of
Freemasonry, i.e., as an emblem of
resurrection and of the immortality of the soul. For this we need but make a
return to the remnants of ancient Greece and the neighboring shores of the
Mediterranean where, according to scholars[3], the symbol of the bee and its correlating hive
were popular objects of worship and veneration, serving as the bridge between
this world and that of the hereafter.
If the reader will recall, in The Beehive: A Migration of Myth I touched upon Ovid’s
account of the youthful shepherd Aristaeus and the tragic loss and miraculous,
resurrection-like restoration of his cherished beehives. However, in Virgil’s
version of the same story, we learn that the initial misfortune which was
visited upon Aristaeus was not simply a random act of fate, but was actually
orchestrated by the hero-poet Orpheus. But, before we get to that, it will be
helpful to first explain a little bit about the colorful figure of Orpheus and,
by extension, some of what it is that his corresponding Mysteries entailed.
According
to Greek myth, Orpheus was the son of Calliope[4], the muse of epic poetry, and Apollo[5], the god of music. As the offspring of these two
deities, Orpheus was destined for a fame and charisma that could charm even the
Lord of the Hades. Indeed, for this is precisely what he did when, armed only
with his voice and his lyre, he descended into the Underworld for the purpose of
persuading the god Pluto, Lord of Hades, to consent to the return of Orpheus’
deceased wife Eurydice to the realm of the living. And it is here that we come
back to our unfortunate beekeeper Aristaeus, whose romantic advances Eurydice
was fleeing when she ran upon the fatal serpent, the sting of which was to
prematurely end her life and land her in the subterranean Hades. It was in
retribution for this fact that Orpheus destroyed Aristaeus’ beloved
hives.
Ill. Bro.
Albert G. Mackey once said that “the intention of the ceremonies of initiation
into [the Mysteries] was, by a scenic representation of death, and subsequent
restoration to life, to impress the great truths of the resurrection of the dead
and the immortality of the soul.” It was with the above narrative of Eurydice’s
death and subsequent resurrection that the Orphic priests indoctrinated the
participants in their Mysteries regarding the truth of the soul’s immortality,
and the possibility of its resurrection into the realm of the living. Both
Aristaeus and Orpheus, the latter for only a short time, were in the end
reunited with that of which they had previously mourned the loss. In Orpheus’
case, it was his beloved wife Eurydice who was restored to life, and in that of
Aristaeus, his cherished beehives.
According
to Apollodorus, Orpheus was also said to have been responsible for creating the
Dionysian Mysteries. As a type of what Sir J.G. Frazer called the dying god, i.e., a deity whose tragic death is
followed by his miraculous resurrection, Dionysus, with his corresponding Mysteries, also taught the truth of the
immortality of the soul. Like his father Zeus, as an infant Dionysus is said to
have been tended by the Meliai, a
sisterhood of bee-like nymphs associated with the ash tree, who fed him on a
diet solely of honey, instead of milk. A god of wine and resurrection, Dionysus
was frequently depicted as a swarm of honey bees. Greek scholar Károly Kerényi postulated that the
association between bees and resurrection in the figure of Dionysus stemmed most
likely from the ancient sacramental use of mead, an alcoholic honey drink that
was fermented in great subterranean vats, whose use as an entheogen preceded the discovery of the
intoxicating potential of the Dionysian vine.
Similarly, Dionysus’ brother and more ‘civilized’ counterpart Apollo who,
if the reader will recall, was also the father of talented Orpheus, too was
frequently associated with the hive. For it is said that Apollo’s prophetic
ability was the gift of the Thiai
who, like the Meliai of Zeus and
Dionysus, were a bee-like sisterhood of goddess-nymphs. Additionally, in his
manifestation as the solar Phoebus, Apollo could also be considered a dying and
resurrecting god, although his myth does not specifically hymn him as such. On
the other hand, according to the Greek epic poet Nonnus of Panopolis, Apollo was
responsible for the resurrection of his close companion Hyacinth, whom Apollo
fatally wounded, though an accident. So, although Apollo himself was not known
to have been venerated as a dying
god, he bears connotations to the motif of resurrection nonetheless. Further
associations of Apollo with the hive could be found at Apollo’s famous Oracle at
Delphi, where the curious Omphalos or
Navel Stone, a beehive-shaped stone
covered with a representation of knotted net-work which is suggestive of
stylized bees, was housed. Leicester Holland associated the Omphalos with the Oracle at Delphi’s
ability to prophecy, proposing that it served to channel the intoxicating, chthonic vapors from the very Underworld
itself which would impel the Oracle to ejaculate the strange utterances for
which she was so famous. Tended to by a wholly masculine priesthood, the
prophetic Oracle at Delphi was regarded as “Queen Bee” in her hive of otherwise
all-male workers – an arrangement
that hearkened back to a time when the people which inhabited what would come to
be known as Greece were still one of matrilineality and goddess worship – which
brings us to our closing discussion regarding the relationship of the beehive to
the motif of resurrection.
Carl A.P.
Ruck, the professor of Classics at Boston University, and Daniel Staples, Ph.D.
observed in their The World of Classical
Myth that at what was once Mycenae in present day Greece can still be seen
standing, for the most part intact, the well-preserved remains of the famous Lion Gate, an arching gateway topped
with a detailed carving of two lions flanking a single pillar, the same of which
serves as the city’s sole entrance. A short distance from this Lion Gate, we are told, can be found the
so-called Grave Circle. According to
the authors:
“Beyond the [Lion] Gate to the right lies the Grave
Circle, a cemetery within the city, where the dead were buried at the bottom of
deep shafts…where the corpses were laid temporarily to rest in state, until they
rotted, on a bier in grand subterranean vaulted chambers within the
characteristic domed shape of a beehive, the…Tholos Tombs. These…tombs imply a
belief in the regenerative transition through death, since they were reused over
and over again for successive burials…[6]”
What Prof. Ruck & Dr. Staples rightly observe
is that the ceremonial removal of the deceased from the womb-like, beehive
structure following the body’s decomposition would naturally lend itself, if
that in fact was not already the idea intended, to the notion of a deathly
transmutation – as well as a seemingly miraculous resurrection, when it was
discovered by the survivors of the deceased that the remains had mysteriously
disappeared from the tomb, perhaps unbeknownst to any but the priests who had
tended them. And even in tombs which are
seemingly in no way associated with this manner of bee worship, there are still
commonly found during archaeological excavations small, golden amulets depicting
the bee-like Thiai sisterhood, whose
task it is thus believed was to transport the souls of the dead to the next
life, implying a direct connection within the minds of the ancient Greeks
between the symbol of the beehive and their belief in the immortality of the
soul.
In
closing, I would like to share with the reader a quote from English cleric and
scholar Samuel Purchas, who noted so perfectly the relationship between the
beehive, deathly transmutation, and miraculous resurrection when he
wrote:
“The [larva of the bee] lies dead and entombed in
the cell wherein it was bred; but wait with patience a score of days, and you
shall see it revive, and appeares a farre more noble creature than it was
before. What is this, but an emblem of the resurrection?”
REFERENCES
Apollodorus. The Library
Bullamore, Geo. W. The Bee and Freemasonry
Frazer,
J.G. The Golden Bough
http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/grandlodge.html (Freemasonry and Bees)
Holland,
Leicester. The Mantic Mechanism at
Delphi
Hunt,
Charles Clyde. Masonic
Symbolism
Kerényi ,
Károly. The Religion of the
Greeks and Romans
Mackey, Albert G. The Symbolism of
Freemasonry
Meyer, Marvin W. The Ancient Mysteries
Ransome, Hilda M. The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and
Folklore
Ruck, Carl A.P. The World of Classical
Myth
The
Homeric Hymn to Apollo
Virgil. Goergics
[1] -- Samuel
Purchas
[2] The Beehive: A Migration of Myth,
originally published in The Working
Tools Magazine, No. 49 (Feb.,
2012)
[3] See The World of Classical Myth by Carl A.P.
Ruck and Danny Staples.
[4] Note that the emblems
associated with Calliope are the stylus and beeswax tablet, the latter of which is
directly suggestive of the bee and its cognates.
[5] Note that Apollo is also said
to have been the deity of colonization, a concept of great
importance where the art of beekeeping is concerned.
[6] Carl A.P. Ruck & Danny
Staples’ The World of Classical Myth,
p. 24-5
This article can be found in the
upcoming, May 2012, issue of "The Working Tools Masonic
Magazine", where this content will be published.
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