THE WIDOW’S SON:
THE DEAD FATHER IN THE WORK OF FREEMASONRY
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Valley of Corinth, Orient of MS
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Fatherless now, you must deal with the memory of a father.
Often that memory is
more potent than the living presence…
The term Widow’s
Son is one with which every Master Mason should be familiar. Not only has
it been explained to him that Hiram Abiff
was “the son of a widow,”
but insofar as he was made to represent Abiff
in the dramatic portion of the Master’s Degree, so too can the Master Mason rightly
be called a widow’s son. Aside from
the rather obvious fact that in order to be a widow’s son one’s father must
first have (symbolically, at least) died, what is it that is potentially being
implied by this most curious yet unassuming of Masonic terms, one that is as deceptive
as it is revealing? Superficially, it denotes a relationship between a widowed
mother and her male lineal descendent; just below the surface however is the
implication of an invisible third party, whose telling absence has colored both
the surviving mother and child. In Lacanian psychoanalytic terms, this missing
third party is known as the Dead Father.
Otherwise known as the Name of the Father, the Dead
Father is a term used by French psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan to denote the place
which has been reserved within the psyches of both the mother and the son for
the memory and perpetuation of the familial ‘law,’ the same of which the father
instituted and enforced during his lifetime. According to Lacan’s thinking,
while the father is still alive, the son obeys his rules solely out of the fear
that if he does not, the father will punish him. This then leads the son to
view the father as something of a tyrant, oppressing him and restricting his
freedom. Following the father’s death however, far from taking advantage of the
fact that the once-tyrannical father figure is nowhere present to judge or
punish the son’s behavior, the son then begins to follow the father’s rules of his own accord. In the words of
psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek,
“[i]t is not
enough to have the [dead] father return as the agency of symbolic prohibition:
this prohibition, to be effective, must be sustained by a positive act of Will.”
It is not
out of the fear of punishment that the son now complies, but rather out of a)
his love for the father, and b) the guilt of past disobedience and anger which
was harbored during punishment inflicted by the father. In psychoanalytic
terms, this phenomenon is known as deferred
obedience, and it is one of the outcomes of the successful resolution of
what Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, called the Oedipus Complex.
The voluntary acceptance of the
responsibility for one’s own actions, and the possession of the moral
conviction to do that which one knows to be right for its own sake, is considered
by many cultures to be the marks of a mature, masculine adult. In the field of
psychoanalysis, it is understood that this burden of responsibility cannot be
taken on so long as the father [1], and not the child’s conscience, remains as
the sole deciding factor in the latter’s behavior. In one of his commentaries
to his highly illuminating films, Chilean psychoanalyst and avant-garde
filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky once exclaimed: ‘In order for the child to
become a man, he must first castrate his father! [2]’ Jodorowsky’s metaphorical
exclamation is no doubt off-putting to those not already familiar with the concepts
employed within the field of psychoanalysis. However, the notion of paternal
castration, a scenario which actually signifies a psychological transfer of
power and the attainment of individuality, also echoes a motif so often seen in
various mythologies and folklores, where the son himself is forced to castrate
or murder his own father in order to acquire the power of authority which the
latter had formerly exhibited. According to Greek myth, for example, where we
find our literary precedent for this theory, it was not until he castrated his
father Uranus that Cronus was able to become the king of the Titans. Nor was
Zeus able to ascend to the title of lord of the Olympians until he succeeded in
murdering his father, Cronus. As a Jungian analyst might put it, ‘In most
cases, it is not until the passing of the prominent father figure in a man’s own
life that he is able to actively begin the process of incorporating or
reintegrating the paternal archetype which had been projected onto, and up until that point had only
been able to find its expression within
the imago of his own biological or figure
father.’
It is impossible to discuss Lacan’s concept
of the Dead Father without first
mentioning something on Freud’s notion of the Oedipus Complex. Coined after the play Oedipus Rex by Greek poet Sophocles, many assume that the term Oedipus Complex refers to a
psychological disorder wherein a given son harbors an unconscious desire to
murder his father and unite romantically with his mother. However, this
couldn’t be further from the case. For Freud,
the Oedipus Complex was something through which we all must go, and its
successful resolution was believed to have beneficial repercussions on
psychological, as well as sociological levels.
On a psychological level, the successful
resolution of the Oedipus Complex is believed to ensure the son’s
identification with the gender of the father. Before the emergence of the
Oedipus Complex, the child exists in a world that is psychologically indistinguishable
from the mother. She is the source of all of the child’s satisfaction and
pleasure. Upon the emergence of the Oedipus Complex, on the other hand, she
also becomes the source of anxiety for the child. For, when she is not present,
the child is naturally left with a feeling of incompleteness, as though a major
portion of its self is missing. Lacan called this feeling of incompleteness Lack. As he matures, the child begins to
ascertain that the mother’s absence is directly connected with the presence of
the father. “When she is not with me,” he formulates, “she is with Daddy.” Upon
this revelation, the anxiety generated by the mother’s absence is thenceforth
progressively transferred onto the father. The son’s unfulfilled desire to not
only unite with his mother, but also to be that of which she is most desirous,
leads him to develop feelings of anger and resentment toward the father. According
to Freud,
“[i]f a
little boy is allowed to sleep beside his mother when his father is away from
home, but has to go back to the nursery…as soon as his father returns, he may
easily begin to form a wish that his father should always be away, so that he
himself could keep his place beside his dear, lovely Mummy. One obvious way of
attaining this wish would be if his father were dead; for the child has learnt
one thing by experience – namely that ‘dead’ people, such as Granddaddy, are
always away and never come back.”
Freud likened
the separation which the father wedges between the son and his mother, i.e., what in psychoanalysis is referred
to as the son’s Object of Desire, to
a symbolic castration, severing the
pleasure-driven connection which binds them, in favor of a more wholesome,
socially-accepted bond. And, it is upon this symbolic castration that the child
is faced with the crisis of his desire to overcome
the father, i.e., kill him and unite
with the mother, or to actually be
the father and thus to be privilege to that which is presently the father’s, i.e., conform to his ‘law’ and potentially
incur his mercy. If the child chooses the latter, then he will begin the
process of psychologically identifying with the gender of the father, and thus aspiring
toward all things masculine. Conversely, should he opt for the former, he will
be faced with a lifetime of neurosis, perversion, and finally psychosis. For,
it is because of his direct connection to the notion of ‘law’ that the father
was for Lacan representative of what he called the Symbolic Order, i.e., the
entire social paradigm into which one is born, including all of the laws,
language, and cultural expectations. Therefore, to reject one’s own father is
to reject the entire social paradigm as a whole.
“The
Symbolic order is dominated by the repressive figure of the Father. We enter
the Symbolic order by accepting his name and prohibitions…. A symbolic
castration occurs when the Father restores the phallus as the Mother’s primary
desire, no longer the child’s compliment to what is lacking in her. The child
finally overcomes this when it comes to terms with the patriarchal law. The
Father’s prohibition projects the child into a world of differences
(masculine/feminine, father/son, absent/present), allowing it to distinguish
itself from the others and to approach a self of its own. But Lacan goes beyond
Freud’s discussion of the Oedipal complex and transforms it into a linguistic
phenomenon….In learning the inner workings of language, the child apprehends
the grammatical category of the “I” and, in doing so, enters the Symbolic order
of singularities.”
While it is true that the son’s unconscious
desire to remove the father from the familial equation is generated by his Lack for his mother, the desire is also
inclusive of the drive to possess that which allows the father to have access
to the mother, i.e., the Phallus. The Phallus is the symbol of
the generative power par excellence,
and as such it represents the Ideal
in masculinity. It is not the physical genitals to which the Phallus refers, but rather to the very
archetype of Paternalism and Masculinity [3]. In the child’s mind,
possession of the same would not only make of him an Ideal man, but it would also give him uninhibited access to the Object of Desire.
It should be noted here that while Lack emerges along with the absence of
the mother, once Lack has emerged, it
cannot be filled by the mother. It is
the infant’s first formation of the concept of ‘loss’ or ‘incompleteness,’ and
as such it is absolute in itself. It is an inherent notion, the emergence of
which creates a void that no amount of filling can satisfy. Thus, the emergence
of Lack in an infant is believed to
generate its very drive toward pleasure and satisfaction. The Object of Desire is therefore not
limited to the mother alone, as is the case with the infant, but can expand
with maturity to include romance, inebriants, food, shopping, power, or even
travel. Indeed, in his book Freud’s
Self-Analysis, French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu discussed Freud’s
so-called Rome dreams, a series of
dreams wherein Freud found himself viewing the city of Rome under different
scenarios [4]. In the first dream, Freud spies Rome from afar as he feels a
sensation of prohibition and punishment for his longing to arrive there. In
another dream, he passes his father while trying to get to Rome, and revealingly
asks of him (his father) how one might go about arriving at Rome. While it is
insignificant to our purposes whether or not Freud ever arrived at Rome in these
dreams, the fact that it was Freud’s father who knew the way to Rome, i.e., it is the father who possesses
certain privileged knowledge of the Object
of Desire, is highly significant. And, it demonstrates neatly the notion
that Freud’s concept of the Object of
Desire is not fixed to one’s biological mother alone.
Drawing from the recapitulation theory,
Freud postulated that the developmental process of the psychology of the child
was directly reflected in and could be ascertained by the developmental process
of the entire human race. In his presentation of this theory in Moses and Monotheism, Freud touched upon
a factor in the development of both the child and the race that, in the
author’s opinion, is of paramount importance in regards to the reader’s
comprehension of the full relevance of the Oedipal crisis within the Work of
Freemasonry.
“Under the
influence of external factors into which we need not enter here and which are
also in part insufficiently known, it came about that the matriarchal social
order was succeeded by the patriarchal one – which, of course, involved a
revolution in the juridical conditions that had so far prevailed….But this
turning from the mother to the father points in addition to a victory of intellectuality over
sensuality – that is, an advance in civilization, since maternity is proved
by the evidence of the senses while paternity is a hypothesis, based on an
inference and a premise. Taking sides in this way with a thought-process in
preference to a sense perception has proved to be a momentous step.”
What Freud suggests
is that the leap from a matriarchal society to that of a patriarchal one
signifies a veritable progression from an instinct, sense based consciousness
to one of intellect, logic, and rationale. Is this not the same “momentous
step” which every Master Mason takes as his faculty of circumscription,
signified by the compasses, gradually overtakes that of the senses and materiality,
represented by the square, on the altar upon which he was Obligated? Is this
not an example of what we as Masons refer to as passing from the Square to the Compasses? Carl A.P. Ruck, the
professor of Classics at Boston University, also argued for the existence of a
matriarchal society somewhere in the distant past of the human race [5]. Given
certain archaeological evidence provided by Prof. Ruck in support of his
argument, Freud’s theories may not be too far off the mark!
The sociological import of the successful
resolution of the Oedipus Complex is the very perpetuation of our entire social
construct, i.e., the universal taboo
against murder and incest. In illustration of this point, we will need to make
reference to a myth which, while quite dissimilar from the legend of Oedipus,
was nevertheless for Freud analogous to it. In his book Totem and Taboo, Freud discussed the mythos which accompanies the male
initiation rites of the Sambia, a tribal people located in the highlands of
Papau, New Guinea. This myth speaks of a horde of brothers whom are subjected
to the absolute rule of a primordial father. This figure not only dominates all
of the brothers, but he also keeps all of their sisters and mothers as his own,
prohibiting any of them to have a woman for his self. According to Freud, that
which gives a father the power which he holds over his sons is the former’s
possession of what in psychoanalytical and anthropological terms is known as
the symbolic Phallus. In order to
obtain this Phallus, i.e., that which will provide them
access to their Object of Desire, the
horde of brothers conspired to murder the father, and in effect be freed from
his oppression. The plan was that each would then take a wife for himself.
However, immediately following the father’s murder, instead of celebrating
their freedom and taking their women, the brothers instead began to mourn his
death and experience the guilt of having murdered one whom they loved. Not only
that, but for each brother there also was the realization that, in his newfound
position of power, the same fate could just as easily be visited upon him;
that, after taking for himself a woman, one of his brothers or his own son
might just as well aspire to murder him too. To remedy this, the brothers each
took an obligation to not strike or kill another, and to not have sexual
relations with their brothers’ sisters or mothers. The brothers’ new
obligations were commemorated in the erection and consecration of a totem, a veritable ancestral idol which
served as a substitute for the
authority once exhibited by their father. The totem therefore served as a new, substitute Phallus which no individual brother could or would possess, but
which they all of them nonetheless revered equally as the new substitute Phallic signifier.
In this myth, through the phenomenon of deferred obedience, the father has
become more powerful in name than
while living. According to Freud, by entering into this covenant, the brothers
effectively laid the groundwork for our current social paradigm, wherein murder
and incest are unquestionably universal taboos. Referring to Dr. Rosine
Perelberg:
“The killing
of the father brings the realization that this renunciation and sacrifice needs
to take place if society is to survive. It lies at the origins of the social
contract: the unconscious nucleus of all religions becomes the ‘parental
complex’ with the stress on ambivalent feelings of love and hate towards the
father. Freud argues that this is the beginning of society, culture and
religion….The origins of
society, according to Freud, emphasize the control that mankind had to exercise
over its sexuality and desire, excluding force and violence.“
For
psychoanalysts like Maurice Godelier and Rosine Perelberg who have continued
the research initiated by Freud and Lacan, these notions of renunciation and
sacrifice are central to the successful resolution of the Oedipus Complex, and
indeed, to the perpetuation of our entire social order.
“Godelier
perceives the disjunction between desire and reproduction in the development of
human sexuality as a consequence of the loss of the oestrus in the woman that
in turn led to the independence of sexual relations from reproduction. Desire
and the potential for a generalized sexual exchange that from then on became
possible represented a threat to society and the reproduction of social
relationships. There was thus a contradiction between sexuality and society. The
sacrifice of sexuality that then takes
place, Godelier suggests, is a sacrifice of the potential of the generalized
sexual exchange and results from the repression of the asocial character of
sexuality itself. Godelier emphasizes a sociological type of explanation for
the sacrifice of sexuality: society subordinates desire to the social order and
places reproductive sexuality under societal control.”
Freud
likened this notion of the sacrifice of sexuality to the concept of opted
circumcision, a type of symbolic
castration, which many scholars associate with the idea of self regulation and the
subduing of one’s passions. According
to Rabbinical scholar Moses Maimonides, the same of which, as Brn. Rabbi Hirsh
Geffen and Peter Paul Fuchs both demonstrate in their contributions to Philalethes [6], was a potential
influence on the development of the Craft, this interpretation is in perfect
alignment with the function of the rite of circumcision as it is practiced in
the religion of Judaism.
"As regards circumcision, I think that one of its
objects is to limit sexual intercourse…and thus cause man to be moderate….This
commandment has not been enjoined as a complement to a deficient physical
creation, but as a means for perfecting man's moral shortcomings. The bodily
injury caused to that organ is exactly that which is desired; it does not
interrupt any vital function, nor does it destroy the power of
generation....And who was the first to perform this commandment? Abraham, our
father!”
The fact that the Sambian legend described
above accompanies a primitive male rite of passage has led scholars like
Gilbert H. Herdt, an associate editor for Journal of Men and Masculinities, to suspect that male initiation
rites may in some cases function as social catalysts for the successful
resolution of the Oedipus Complex. Not only do they serve to sever the child
from his mother on whom he wholly depends, but they also make of the child a
man by providing him a place within the social order. And, it is no coincidence
that Freemasonry too is considered by many members and outsiders alike to be a rite of passage of sorts for the modern
Western man [7].
It is here that we return to Lacan’s notion
of the Name of the Father as a
representative of the very concept of ‘law,’ i.e., the Symbolic Order. As an
infant, before the emergence of the Oedipus Complex, when the child’s entire
world is inseparable from the mother, the child is immersed in what Lacan
called the Imaginary Order. Upon the
emergence of the Oedipus Complex, he is faced with the dilemma of clinging to either
the Imaginary or the Symbolic Order, the latter of which being representative of
all of law, language, and social order.
“According
to Lacan, individuals enter a preexisting system of signifiers which only
acquire significance within a particular language system. Cultural and linguistic
structures, therefore, precede and shape the subject’s entrance into the
“Symbolic” order. Before that entry the subject, as a child, has been living in
what Lacan calls the world of the “Imaginary.” In this world there is no
difference between subject and object. Since the self is not yet fully formed,
the child cannot distinguish his own form from that of others. Its only
possible identification is with the Mother. To express the strength of this
liaison and dependence Lacan uses another of his trademark ambivalent
expressions: Desir de la mere [8],
implying the desire for the Mother and, at the same time, the desire to be what
the mother desires. The child wants to complete all the Mother lacks – in
psychoanalysis the “phallus.” This identification will be progressively
displaced to the Father as the child enters the world of the Symbolic.”
Should the
infant choose to ascribe to the Imaginary Order, the child’s obedience of the
father, and indeed the man’s compliance to the very social order, once the
child has grown to be an adult, will be purely the result of the fear that if
he does not, the father or figure of authority will punish him. Should he
choose instead to ascribe to the Symbolic Order, on the other hand, through the
phenomenon of deferred obedience, the
individual will begin to follow the rules and regulations of his own accord, accepting responsibility for his own actions. It
is this distinction which designates Lanac’s concept of the Name of the Father, and by association,
Freud’s theories regarding the Oedipus
Complex, as being significant within the Work of Freemasonry.
The instillation of the inherent will within
one to subdue his passions is the
precise work of the Craft. In the author’s estimation, it is this way in which
the Craft accomplishes its claim or realizes the potential it possesses to make
a better man of an already good (enough) one. For, anatomy alone does not designate
one a man in society’s eyes. The concept of manhood
constitutes an entire role which a male must embody if society at large is ever
to accept him as a man. Is this not the work of the male rite of passage in
primitive, tribal societies and Freemasonry alike? As a potential catalyst for
the successful resolution of the Oedipus Complex, the male rite of passage
provides the young man with an opportunity to work through anything which he
may have missed during his own Oedipal cycle. And indeed, for those who never
began the process of separation from their Object
of Desire, Freemasonry may veritably be a worthy substitution for it. We
have already seen that Freemasonry itself has even been frequently referred to
as a rite of passage, and rightly so. For, just as we saw with the native
people of the Sambia tribe, the allegorical mythos central to Freemasonry
exhibits all of the features of Freud’s Oedipus Complex, all the way up to and
including Lacan’s notion of the Name of
the Father.
Before closing, the reader is kindly asked to
reconsider the Masonic legend of Hiram
Abiff in light of the primordial myth of the Dead Father, the same of which is recounted to those pubescent natives
who are passing through the Sambian rite of manhood. This will help to better
illustrate the author’s points for those of his readers who are still asking
themselves what it is that all of this has to do with Freemasonry. Under such
an analysis, Hiram Abiff appears to
be an undoubted analogue to the Sambian primordial Father. Indeed, for Abiff even means Father, and the band of Fellowcrafts who conspire to murder him
signify his very sons. Abiff’s
possession of the Word, i.e., the Phallus, allows him not only uninhibited
access to foreign countries, analogous to the women in the Sambian myth, but it
also allows him to work and receive a Master’s wages. As we saw with Freud’s Rome dreams, the notion of foreign
countries can often represent one’s Object
of Desire; they are thus in this context a type of the mother. This same motif is even repeated when the trio
of murderous Ruffians is refused passage to Ethiopia due to their failure to
produce King Solomon’s passport, the
same being another type of the Phallic
signifier. Possession of the Master’s Word
therefore not only gives one uninhibited access to the Object of Desire, but it also allows for a return of wages, i.e., the very fulfillment of that Desire. However, the Desire
of the Fellowcrafts, in that it is fueled by their very sense of Lack, cannot actually be satisfied any more
than the Phallus, i.e., the masculine Ideal, can by them be forcefully attained. The murder of Abiff is therefore followed not only by
a sense of grief within the Fellowcrafts, but also by their deferred obedience of the primordial
Father’s original law.
“The dead father became stronger than the living
one had been – for events took the course we so often see them follow in human
affairs to this day. What had up to then been prevented by his actual existence
was thenceforward prohibited by the sons themselves, in accordance with the
psychological procedure so familiar to us in psycho-analysis under the name of
‘deferred obedience.’”
Just as the
horde of brothers entered into a covenant wherein each was obligated to a) not
inflict violence upon one another, and b) not have sexual intercourse with
their brothers’ mothers and sisters, so too did the Fellowcrafts appear before
the king wearing white gloves, emblematic of the first oath, and white aprons,
emblematic of the second. But, what of the significance of the Word which was lost along with Abiff’s life, as well as the Substitute Word which was later adopted
in its place? Psychoanalysts Jean-Joseph Goux sums up its implications nicely
in his analysis of the myth of Isis and Osiris, the same of which was published
in Differences: The Phallus Issue.
“The myth of
Isis and Osiris, as retold by Plutarch, presents such a concise scenario that
the most striking aspect of psychoanalytic discourse can be deduced directly
from it….The god Osiris is killed by Typhon who dismembers his corpse into
pieces which he scatters in all directions. Osiris’ faithful companion, Isis,
patiently retrieves the fourteen pieces to reassemble and reanimate them.
However, there is one part of Osiris’ body which she cannot find: his virile
member. To replace this missing piece which is irretrievably lost, Isis erects a simulacrum which she orders
everyone to honor. The myth thus presents itself as the justification of a rite…”
Goux’s
analysis appears all the more meaningful when one considers the fact that
Typhon, the deity who murdered and subsequently dis-membered Osiris, was
frequently depicted by the Egyptians as the composite Horus-Set, the same of which consisted of the aforementioned Typhon
or Set, as well as Isis and Osiris son, Horus. Considered in this context, it
was not simply his brother, but in some mysterious way it was Osiris’ very son Horus
whom was responsible for the former’s castration and murder, not unlike we saw
with the Greek figures of Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus in a previous discussion.
And, just as was the case in the Sambian Initiation myth, a totem has even been chosen and designated
as the substitute Phallic signifier.
In conclusion, the
author would like to reiterate that a similar if not identical covenant to that
made by the primordial brothers in the Sambian male initiation rite is entered
upon by every Master Mason who Obligates himself upon the Volume of the Sacred
Law, the same of which also is a type of the Symbolic Order in that it signifies the Dead Father or Name of the
Father, i.e., the notion that the
Father’s “virtues lay on perpetual record,” as the open book resting atop the
totem-like broken column which stands before the weeping virgin alludes. Additionally,
insofar as he willingly emulates the virtues espoused in that Law, so too can the Master Mason be
said to be a Widow’s Son, i.e., to have subdued his passions, squared
his actions, and circumscribed his
desires of his own accord. It is
potentially the very presence of the concept of the Widow’s Son within the Work of Freemasonry that provides the means
by which the crisis generated by the emergence of the Oedipus Complex is
resolved. Analyzed in this light, it is the author’s opinion that the Work of
Freemasonry would appear to be at once validated for psychologists,
sociologists, and anthropologists alike. As a potential catalyst, or in some
cases even a substitute for the Oedipal cycle, Freemasonry can veritably be
called a rite of passage for the modern Western man, simultaneously offering him
an exposure to the ever elusive masculine
Ideal, while providing him a place within the higher Symbolic Order.
ENDNOTES
1. alive or dead
2. author’s translation
3. See the author’s Phallism in Freemasonry: Fact or Fallacy?,
originally published in Living Stones
Vol. 2, Issue No. 1 (Jan., 2012).
4. See The Interpretation of Dreams.
5. See Prof. Carl A.P. Ruck and Dr.
Danny Staples’ The World of Classical
Myth, pp. 19-48.
6. See Peter Paul Fuch’s Maimonides and Freemasonry, published in
Philalethes Vol. 65, Issue No. 1 (Winter,
2011).
7. See Bro. Frederick A. Shade’s Rites of Passage and Masonic Initiation.
8. Meaning Desire of the mother
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Shade, Frederick A. Rites of Passage and Masonic Initiation
Zizek, Slavoj. Enjoy Your Symptom!
Disclaimer: This paper entitled. "THE WIDOW’S SON: THE DEAD FATHER IN THE WORK OF FREEMASONRY", was submitted to Tupelo Masonic Lodge No. 318 F&AM for publication by the author, P.D. Newman. The printing of this or any other writing does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Tupelo Masonic Lodge No. 318 F&AM or the Grand Lodge of Mississippi. Please read our Terms of Use for full details.
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