Freemasonry

Hiram Abif: the first freemason

Hiram Abif is the legendary chief architect of Solomon's Temple, a widow's son and master bronze worker. According to Masonic tradition, he guarded the Master's Secret Word. Three fellow workers, denied promotion, attacked him to extort the secret. Hiram refused to betray his oath and was killed with a maul. His body was found and buried, and the word was lost. Since then, every Freemason raised to the degree of Master receives a new word and symbolically relives Hiram's death and fidelity. The legend, born not from the Bible but in 18th-century lodges, is not historical fact but a powerful teaching: fidelity to an ideal is worth more than life, and the search for the "lost word" drives the initiatory path.

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