EXCERPT from 1932 GRAND ORATION - MASONIC DOCTRINES OF LUNA, DEL PILAR, AND RIZAL

By: MOST WORSHIPFUL TEODORO M.  KALAW, PGM

There is a body of principles, teachings, and practices which Masons respect and obey as their law of laws, known as the Ancient Landmarks.  Not all agree as to their number, because these precepts have been gathered from the oral and written traditions of our Institution, dating back to its infancy, and some authorities on the history of Freemasonry include in them provisions of a secondary nature which others consider improper to be embodied in a fundamental code.  However, all agree with respect to the essential features, the strictly esoteric part, the pure and genuine tradition, which constitute the most characteristic portion of Freemasonry, being its spirit, its vital essence, its basic law.

If we cast a retrospective look over the years when the indigenous brand of our Fraternity was first established here, the resplendent, majestic figures of three eminent Filipinos present themselves to our view, those of the three local founders of our Institution.  They not only introduced Masonic Lodges, which is merely the material and personal part of the work; but they gave us an interpretation of the Masonic doctrine and established the code of precepts of the Freemason in its most genuine purity and splendor.

 Antonio Luna prepared the written code, something like the one still in use in many Grand Lodges and Grand Orients of America and Europe.  It was concise, brief, dogmatic.  Jose Rizal discussed our principles in a remarkable, eloquent lecture which he delivered in Solidaridad Lodge in Madrid.  And Marcelo H. del Pilar, in his speeches, letters, and circulars, gave us a beautiful program of faith and action that could not be surpassed for putting our lofty principles into practice.

These writings of the founders of native Freemasonry constitute, in my opinion, our local supplementary law because they are the most authorized interpretations of our tenets in the light of our education and history.  They form part of the tradition handed down to us by our forebears.  They are the first ray of light which, filtering through the years, illuminates the path on which we are struggling onward, with the same brilliancy as it did in the last century.

I now have set for myself the task of compiling in synthetized form the precepts and thoughts which those three eminent Masons have bequeathed to us, as a contribution to the study and propagation of the teachings of Freemasonry and as a tribute of justice and veneration to three Brethren no longer of this earth.