[1] “The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, if it is a real

advantage, follows unavoidably from the idea of God. The _best_ Being, he

must _will_ the best of good things; the _wisest_, he must devise plans

for that effect; the _most powerful_, he must bring it about. None can

deny this.”–THEO. PARKER, _Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion_,

b. ii. ch. viii. p. 205.

[2] “This institution of religion, like society, friendship, and marriage,

comes out of a principle, deep and permanent in the heart: as humble, and

transient, and partial institutions come out of humble, transient, and

partial wants, and are to be traced to the senses and the phenomena of

life, so this sublime, permanent, and useful institution came out from

sublime, permanent, and universal wants, and must be referred to the soul,

and the unchanging realities of life.”–PARKER, _Discourse of Religion_,

b. i. ch. i. p. 14.

[3] “The sages of all nations, ages, and religions had some ideas of these

sublime doctrines, though more or less degraded, adulterated and obscured;

and these scattered hints and vestiges of the most sacred and exalted

truths were originally rays and emanations of ancient and primitive

traditions, handed down from, generation to generation, since the

beginning of the world, or at least since the fall of man, to all

mankind.”–CHEV. RAMSAY, _Philos. Princ. of Nat. and Rev. Relig.,_ vol ii.

p. 8.

[4] “In this form, not only the common objects above enumerated, but gems,

metals, stones that fell from heaven, images, carved bits of wood, stuffed

skins of beasts, like the medicine-bags of the North American Indians, are

reckoned as divinities, and so become objects of adoration. But in this

case, the visible object, is idealized; not worshipped as the brute thing

really is, but as the type and symbol of God.”–PARKER, _Disc. of Relig._

b. i. ch. v. p. 50.

[5] A recent writer thus eloquently refers to the universality, in ancient

times, of sun-worship: “Sabaism, the worship of light, prevailed amongst

all the leading nations of the early world. By the rivers of India, on the

mountains of Persia, in the plains of Assyria, early mankind thus adored,

the higher spirits in each country rising in spiritual thought from the

solar orb up to Him whose vicegerent it seems–to the Sun of all being,

whose divine light irradiates and purifies the world of soul, as the solar

radiance does the world of sense. Egypt, too, though its faith be but

dimly known to us, joined in this worship; Syria raised her grand temples

to the sun; the joyous Greeks sported with the thought while feeling it,

almost hiding it under the mythic individuality which their lively fancy

superimposed upon it. Even prosaic China makes offerings to the yellow orb

of day; the wandering Celts and Teutons held feasts to it, amidst the

primeval forests of Northern Europe; and, with a savagery characteristic

of the American aborigines, the sun temples of Mexico streamed with human

blood in honor of the beneficent orb.”–_The Castes and Creeds of India,_

Blackw. Mag., vol. lxxxi. p. 317.–“There is no people whose religion is

known to us,” says the Abbé Banier, “neither in our own continent nor in

that of America, that has not paid the sun a religious worship, if we

except some inhabitants of the torrid zone, who are continually cursing

the sun for scorching them with his beams.”–_Mythology_, lib. iii. ch.

iii.–Macrobius, in his _Saturnalia,_ undertakes to prove that all the

gods of Paganism may be reduced to the sun.

[6] “Varro de religionibus loquens, evidenter dicit, multa esse vera, quae

vulgo scire non sit utile; multaque, quae tametsi falsa sint, aliter

existimare populum expediat.”–St. AUGUSTINE, _De Civil. Dei._–We must

regret, with the learned Valloisin, that the sixteen books of Varro, on

the religious antiquities of the ancients, have been lost; and the regret

is enhanced by the reflection that they existed until the beginning of the

fourteenth century, and disappeared only when their preservation for less

than two centuries more would, by the discovery of printing, have secured

their perpetuity.

[7] Strabo, Geog., lib. i.

[8] Maurice, Indian Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 297.

[9] Div. Leg., vol. i. b. ii. § iv. p. 193, 10th Lond. edit.

[10] The hidden doctrines of the unity of the Deity and the immortality of

the soul were taught originally in all the Mysteries, even those of Cupid

and Bacchus.–WARBURTON, apud Spence’s _Anecdotes_, p. 309.

[11] Isoc. Paneg., p. 59.

[12] Apud Arrian. Dissert., lib. iii. c. xxi.

[13] Phaedo.

[14] Dissert. on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, in the Pamphleteer,

vol. viii. p. 53.

[15] Symbol. und Mythol. der Alt. Völk.

[16] In these Mysteries, after the people had for a long time bewailed the

loss of a particular person, he was at last supposed to be restored to

life.–BRYANT, _Anal. of Anc. Mythology_, vol. iii. p. 176.

[17] Herod. Hist., lib. iii. c. clxxi.

[18] The legend says it was cut into _fourteen_ pieces. Compare this with

the _fourteen_ days of burial in the masonic legend of the third degree.

Why the particular number in each? It has been thought by some, that in

the latter legend there was a reference to the half of the moon’s age, or

its dark period, symbolic of the darkness of death, followed by the

fourteen days of bright moon, or restoration to life.

[19] Mystères du Paganisme, tom. i. p. 6.

[20] Notes to Rawlinson’s Herodotus, b. ii. ch. clxxi. Mr. Bryant

expresses the same opinion: “The principal rites in Egypt were confessedly

for a person lost and consigned for a time to darkness, who was at last

found. This person I have mentioned to have been described under the

character of Osiris.”–_Analysis of Ancient Mythology_, vol. iii. p. 177.

[21] Spirit of Masonry, p. 100.

[22] Varro, according to St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, vi. 5), says that

among the ancients there were three kinds of theology–a _mythical_, which

was used by the poets; a _physical_, by the philosophers, and a _civil_,

by the people.

[23] “Tous les ans,” says Sainte Croix, “pendant les jours consacrés au

souvenir de sa mort, tout étoit plongé dans la tristesse: on ne cessoit de

pousser des gémissemens; on alloit même jusqu’à se flageller et se donner

des coups. Le dernier jour de ce deuil, on faisoit des sacrifices funèbres

en l’honneur de ce dieu. Le jour suivant, on recevoit la nouvelle

qu’Adonis venoit d’être rappelé à la vie, qui mettoit fin à leur

deuil.”–_Recherches sur les Myst. du Paganisme_, tom. ii. p. 105.

[24] Clement of Alexandria calls them [Greek: mystê/ria ta\ pro\

mystêri/ôn], “the mysteries before the mysteries.”

[25] Les petits mystères ne consistoient qu’en cérémonies

préparatoires.–_Sainte Croix_, i. 297.–As to the oath of secrecy, Bryant

says, “The first thing at these awful meetings was to offer an oath of

secrecy to all who were to be initiated, after which they proceeded to the

ceremonies.”–_Anal. of Anc. Myth._, vol. iii. p. 174.–The Orphic

Argonautics allude to the oath: [Greek: meta\ d’ o(rkia My/si~ais,

k. t. l.], “after the oath was administered to the mystes,” &c.–_Orph.

Argon._, v. 11.

[26] The satirical pen of Aristophanes has not spared the Dionysiac

festivals. But the raillery and sarcasm of a comic writer must always be

received with many grains of allowance. He has, at least, been candid

enough to confess that no one could be initiated who had been guilty of

any crime against his country or the public security.–_Ranae_, v.

360-365.–Euripides makes the chorus in his Bacchae proclaim that the

Mysteries were practised only for virtuous purposes. In Rome, however,

there can be little doubt that the initiations partook at length of a

licentious character. “On ne peut douter,” says Ste. Croix, “que

l’introduction des fêtes de Bacchus en Italie n’ait accéleré les progrès

du libertinage et de la débauche dans cette contrée.”–_Myst. du Pag._,

tom. ii. p. 91.–St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, lib. vii. c. xxi.) inveighs

against the impurity of the ceremonies in Italy of the sacred rites of

Bacchus. But even he does not deny that the motive with which they were

performed was of a religious, or at least superstitious nature–“Sic

videlicet Liber deus placandus fuerat.” The propitiation of a deity was

certainly a religious act.

[27] Hist. Greece, vol. ii. p. 140.

[28] This language is quoted from Robison (_Proofs of a Conspiracy_, p.

20, Lond. edit. 1797), whom none will suspect or accuse of an undue

veneration for the antiquity or the morality of the masonic order.

[29] We must not confound these Asiatic builders with the play-actors, who

were subsequently called by the Greeks, as we learn from Aulus Gellius

(lib. xx. cap. 4), “artificers of Dionysus”–[Greek: Dionysiakoi

technitai\].

[30] There is abundant evidence, among ancient authors, of the existence

of signs and passwords in the Mysteries. Thus Apuleius, in his Apology,

says, “Si qui forte adest eorundem Solemnium mihi particeps, signum dato,”

etc.; that is, “If any one happens to be present who has been initiated

into the same rites as myself, if he will give me the sign, he shall then

be at liberty to hear what it is that I keep with so much care.” Plautus

also alludes to this usage, when, in his “Miles Gloriosus,” act iv. sc. 2,

he makes Milphidippa say to Pyrgopolonices, “Cedo signum, si harunc

Baccharum es;” i.e., “Give the sign if you are one of these Bacchae,” or

initiates into the Mysteries of Bacchus. Clemens Alexandrinus calls these

modes of recognition [Greek: sôthêmata], as if _means of safety_. Apuleius

elsewhere uses _memoracula_, I think to denote passwords, when he says,

“sanctissimè sacrorum signa et memoracula custodire,” which I am inclined

to translate, “most scrupulously to preserve the signs and passwords of

the sacred rites.”

[31] The Baron de Sainte Croix gives this brief view of the ceremonies:

“Dans ces mystères on employoit, pour remplir l’âme des assistans d’une

sainte horreur, les mêmes moyens qu’à Eleusis. L’apparition de fantômes et

de divers objets propres à effrayer, sembloit disposer les esprits à la

crédulité. Ils en avoient sans doute besoin, pour ajouter foi à toutes les

explications des mystagogues: elles rouloient sur le massacre de Bacchus

par les Titans,” &c.–_Recherches sur les Mystères du Paganisme_, tom. ii.

sect. vii. art. iii. p. 89.

[32] Lawrie, Hist. of Freemasonry, p. 27.

[33] Vincentius Lirinensis or Vincent of Lirens, who lived in the fifth

century of the Christian era, wrote a controversial treatise entitled

“Commonitorium,” remarkable for the blind veneration which it pays to the

voice of tradition. The rule which he there lays down, and which is cited

in the text, may be considered, in a modified application, as an axiom by

which we may test the _probability_, at least, of all sorts of traditions.

None out of the pale of Vincent’s church will go so far as he did in

making it the criterion of positive truth.

[34] Prolog. zu einer wissenshaftlich. Mythologie.

[35] In German _hutten_, in English _lodges_, whence the masonic term.

[36] Historical Essay on Architecture, ch. xxi.

[37] Bishop England, in his “Explanation of the Mass,” says that in every

ceremony we must look for three meanings: “the first, the literal,

natural, and, it may be said, the original meaning; the second, the

figurative or emblematic signification; and thirdly, the pious or

religious meaning: frequently the two last will be found the same;

sometimes all three will be found combined.” Here lies the true difference

between the symbolism of the church and that of Masonry. In the former,

the symbolic meaning was an afterthought applied to the original, literal

one; in the latter, the symbolic was always the original signification of

every ceremony.

[38] /P “Was not all the knowledge Of the Egyptians writ in mystic

symbols? Speak not the Scriptures oft in parables? Are not the choicest

fables of the poets, That were the fountains and first springs of wisdom,

Wrapped in perplexed allegories?”

BEN JONSON, _Alchemist_, act ii. sc. i. P/

[39] The distinguished German mythologist Müller defines a symbol to be

“an eternal, visible sign, with which a spiritual feeling, emotion, or

idea is connected.” I am not aware of a more comprehensive, and at the

same time distinctive, definition.

[40] And it may be added, that the word becomes a symbol of an idea; and

hence, Harris, in his “Hermes,” defines language to be “a system of

articulate voices, the symbols of our ideas, but of those principally

which are general or universal.”–_Hermes_, book iii. ch. 3.

[41] “Symbols,” says Müller, “are evidently coeval with the human race;

they result from the union of the soul with the body in man; nature has

implanted the feeling for them in the human heart.”–_Introduction to a

Scientific System of Mythology_, p. 196, Leitch’s translation.–R.W.

Mackay says, “The earliest instruments of education were symbols, the most

universal symbols of the multitudinously present Deity, being earth or

heaven, or some selected object, such as the sun or moon, a tree or a

stone, familiarly seen in either of them.”–_Progress of the Intellect_,

vol. i p. 134.

[42] Between the allegory, or parable, and the symbol, there is, as I have

said, no essential difference. The Greek verb [Greek: paraballô], whence

comes the word _parable_, and the verb [Greek: symballô] in the same

language, which is the root of the word _symbol_, both have the synonymous

meaning “to compare.” A parable is only a spoken symbol. The definition of

a parable given by Adam Clarke is equally applicable to a symbol, viz.: “A

comparison or similitude, in which one thing is compared with another,

especially spiritual things with natural, by which means these spiritual

things are better understood, and make a deeper impression on the

attentive mind.”

[43] North British Review, August, 1851. Faber passes a similar encomium.

“Hence the language of symbolism, being so purely a language of ideas, is,

in one respect, more perfect than any ordinary language can be: it

possesses the variegated elegance of synonymes without any of the

obscurity which arises from the use of ambiguous terms.”–_On the

Prophecies_, ii. p. 63.

[44] “By speculative Masonry we learn to subdue our passions, to act upon

the square, to keep a tongue of good report, to maintain secrecy, and

practise charity.”–_Lect. of Fel. Craft._ But this is a very meagre

definition, unworthy of the place it occupies in the lecture of the second

degree.

[45] “Animal worship among the Egyptians was the natural and unavoidable

consequence of the misconception, by the vulgar, of those emblematical

figures invented by the priests to record their own philosophical

conception of absurd ideas. As the pictures and effigies suspended in

early Christian churches, to commemorate a person or an event, became in

time objects of worship to the vulgar, so, in Egypt, the esoteric or

spiritual meaning of the emblems was lost in the gross materialism of the

beholder. This esoteric and allegorical meaning was, however, preserved by

the priests, and communicated in the mysteries alone to the initiated,

while the uninstructed retained only the grosser conception.”–GLIDDON,

_Otia Aegyptiaca_, p. 94.

[46] “To perpetuate the esoteric signification of these symbols to the

initiated, there were established the Mysteries, of which institution we

have still a trace in Freemasonry.”–GLIDDON, _Otia Aegyp._ p. 95.

[47] Philo Judaeus says, that “Moses had been initiated by the Egyptians

into the philosophy of symbols and hieroglyphics, as well as into the

ritual of the holy animals.” And Hengstenberg, in his learned work on

“Egypt and the Books of Moses,” conclusively shows, by numerous examples,

how direct were the Egyptian references of the Pentateuch; in which fact,

indeed, he recognizes “one of the most powerful arguments for its

credibility and for its composition by Moses.”–HENGSTENBERG, p. 239,

Robbins’s trans.

[48] Josephus, _Antiq._ book iii. ch. 7.

[49] The ark, or sacred boat, of the Egyptians frequently occurs on the

walls of the temples. It was carried in great pomp by the priests on the

occasion of the “procession of the shrines,” by means of staves passed

through metal rings in its side. It was thus conducted into the temple,

and deposited on a stand. The representations we have of it bear a

striking resemblance to the Jewish ark, of which it is now admitted to

have been the prototype.

[50] “The Egyptian reference in the Urim and Thummim is especially

distinct and incontrovertible.”–HENGSTENBERG, p. 158.

[51] According to the estimate of Bishop Cumberland, it was only one

hundred and nine feet in length, thirty-six in breadth, and fifty-four in

height.

[52] “Thus did our wise Grand Master contrive a plan, by mechanical and

practical allusions, to instruct the craftsmen in principles of the most

sublime speculative philosophy, tending to the glory of God, and to secure

to them temporal blessings here and eternal life hereafter, as well as to

unite the speculative and operative Masons, thereby forming a twofold

advantage, from the principles of geometry and architecture on the one

part, and the precepts of wisdom and ethics on the other.”–CALCOTT,

_Candid Disquisition_, p. 31, ed. 1769.

[53] This proposition I ask to be conceded; the evidences of its truth

are, however, abundant, were it necessary to produce them. The craft,

generally, will, I presume, assent to it.

[54]

“The groves were God’s first temples. Ere man learned

To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,

And spread the roof above them–ere he framed

The lofty vault, to gather and roll back

The sound of anthems–in the darkling wood,

Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down,

And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks

And supplication.”–BRYANT.

[55] Theologians have always given a spiritual application to the temple

of Solomon, referring it to the mysteries of the Christian dispensation.

For this, consult all the biblical commentators. But I may particularly

mention, on this subject, Bunyan’s “Solomon’s Temple Spiritualized,” and a

rare work in folio, by Samuel Lee, Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford,

published at London in 1659, and entitled “Orbis Miraculum, or the Temple

of Solomon portrayed by Scripture Light.” A copy of this scarce work,

which treats very learnedly of “the spiritual mysteries of the gospel

veiled under the temple,” I have lately been, by good fortune, enabled to

add to my library.

[56] Veluti pecora, quae natura finxit prona et obedientia

ventri.–SALLUST, _Bell. Catil._ i.

[57] I Kings vi. 7.

[58] In further illustration of the wisdom of these temple contrivances,

it may be mentioned that, by marks placed upon the materials which had

been thus prepared at a distance, the individual production of every

craftsman was easily ascertained, and the means were provided of rewarding

merit and punishing indolence.

[59] “Each of the pagan gods had (besides the _public_ and _open_) a

_secret worship_ paid unto him; to which none were admitted but those who

had been selected by preparatory ceremonies, called Initiation. This

_secret-worship_ was termed the Mysteries.”–WARBURTON, _Div. Leg. I. i.

p. 189_.

[60] It must be remarked, however, that many of the Fellow Crafts were

also stone-cutters in the mountains, _chotzeb bahor_, and, with their

nicer implements, more accurately adjusted the stones which had been

imperfectly prepared by the apprentices. This fact does not at all affect

the character of the symbolism we are describing. The due preparation of

the materials, the symbol of purification, was necessarily continued in

all the degrees. The task of purification never ceases.

[61] The classical reader will here be reminded of that beautiful passage

of Horace, commencing with “Justum et tenacem propositi virum.”–Lib. iii.

od. 3.

[62] “Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque

turres.”–HOR. lib. i. od. 4.

[63] It is worth noticing that the verb _natzach_, from which the title

of the _menatzchim_ (the overseers or Master Masons in the ancient

temple), is derived, signifies also in Hebrew _to be perfected, to be

completed_. The third degree is the perfection of the symbolism of the

temple, and its lessons lead us to the completion of life. In like

manner the Mysteries, says Christie, “were termed [Greek: teletai\],

_perfections_, because they were supposed to induce a perfectness of

life. Those who were purified by them were styled [Greek: teloume/noi],

and [Greek: tetelesme/noi], that is, brought to

perfection.”–_Observations on Ouvaroff’s Essay on the Eleusinian

Mysteries_, p. 183.

[64] Dr. Oliver, in the first or preliminary lecture of his “Historical

Landmarks,” very accurately describes the difference between the pure or

primitive Freemasonry of the Noachites, and the spurious Freemasonry of

the heathens.

[65] The idea of the world, as symbolically representing God’s temple, has

been thus beautifully developed in a hymn by N.P. Willis, written for the

dedication of a church:–

“The perfect world by Adam trod

Was the first temple built by God;

His fiat laid the corner stone,

And heaved its pillars, one by one.

“He hung its starry roof on high–

The broad, illimitable sky;

He spread its pavement, green and bright,

And curtained it with morning light.

“The mountains in their places stood,

The sea, the sky, and ‘all was good;’

And when its first pure praises rang,

The ‘morning stars together sang.’

“Lord, ’tis not ours to make the sea,

And earth, and sky, a house for thee;

But in thy sight our offering stands,

A humbler temple, made with hands.”

[66] “The idea,” says Dudley, “that the earth is a level surface, and of a

square form, is so likely to have been entertained by persons of little

experience and limited observation, that it may be justly supposed to have

prevailed generally in the early ages of the world.”–_Naology_, p. 7.

[67] The quadrangular form of the earth is preserved in almost all the

scriptural allusions that are made to it. Thus Isaiah (xi. 12) says, “The

Lord shall gather together the dispersed of Judah from the _four corners_

of the earth;” and we find in the Apocalypse (xx. 9) the prophetic version

of “four angels standing on the _four corners_ of the earth.”

[68] “The form of the lodge ought to be a double cube, as an expressive

emblem of the powers of darkness and light in the creation.”–OLIVER,

_Landmarks_, i. p. 135, note 37.

[69] Not that whole visible universe, in its modern signification, as

including solar systems upon solar systems, rolling in illimitable space,

but in the more contracted view of the ancients, where the earth formed

the floor, and the sky the ceiling. “To the vulgar and untaught eye,” says

Dudley, “the heaven or sky above the earth appears to be co-extensive with

the earth, and to take the same form, enclosing a cubical space, of which

the earth was the base, the heaven or sky the upper surface.”–_Naology_,

7.–And it is to this notion of the universe that the masonic symbol of

the lodge refers.

[70] “These rocky shrines, the formation of which Mr. Grose supposes to

have been a labor equal to that of erecting the Pyramids of Egypt, are of

various height, extent, and depth. They are partitioned out, by the labor

of the hammer and the chisel, into many separate chambers, and the roof,

which in the pagoda of Elephanta is flat, but in that of Salsette is

arched, is supported by rows of pillars of great thickness, and arranged

with much regularity. The walls are crowded with gigantic figures of men

and women, engaged in various actions, and portrayed in various whimsical

attitudes; and they are adorned with several evident symbols of the

religion now prevailing in India. Above, as in a sky, once probably

adorned with gold and azure, in the same manner as Mr. Savary lately

observed in the ruinous remains of some ancient Egyptian temples, are seen

floating the children of imagination, genii and dewtahs, in multitudes,

and along the cornice, in high relief, are the figures of elephants,

horses, and lions, executed with great accuracy. Two of the principal

figures at Salsette are twenty-seven feet in height, and of proportionate

magnitude; the very bust only of the triple-headed deity in the grand

pagoda of Elephanta measures fifteen feet from the base to the top of the

cap, while the face of another, if Mr. Grose, who measured it, may be

credited, is above five feet in length, and of corresponding

breadth.”–MAURICE, _Ind. Ant._ vol. ii. p. 135.

[71] According to Faber, the egg was a symbol of the world or megacosm,

and also of the ark, or microcosm, as the lunette or crescent was a symbol

of the Great Father, the egg and lunette–which was the hieroglyphic of

the god Lunus, at Heliopolis–was a symbol of the world proceeding from

the Great Father.–_Pagan Idolatry_, vol. i. b. i. ch. iv.

[72] Zoroaster taught that the sun was the most perfect fire of God, the

throne of his glory, and the residence of his divine presence, and he

therefore instructed his disciples “to direct all their worship to God

first towards the sun (which they called Mithras), and next towards their

sacred fires, as being the things in which God chiefly dwelt; and their

ordinary way of worship was to do so towards both. For when they came

before these fires to worship, _they always approached them on the west

side_, that, having their faces towards them and also towards the rising

sun at the same time, they might direct their worship to both. And in this

posture they always performed every act of their worship.”–PRIDEAUX.

_Connection._ i. 216.

[73] “The mysteries of Ceres (or Eleusis) are principally distinguished

from all others as having been the depositories of certain traditions

coeval with the world.”–OUVAROFF, _Essay on the Mysteries of Eleusis_, p.

6.

[74] The dadouchus, or torch-bearer, carried a symbol of the sun.

[75] “Indeed, the most ancient superstition of all nations,” says Maurice,

“has been the worship of the sun, as the lord of heaven and the governor

of the world; and in particular it prevailed in Phoenicia, Chaldaea,

Egypt, and from later information we may add, Peru and Mexico, represented

in a variety of ways, and concealed under a multitude of fanciful names.

Through all the revolutions of time the great luminary of heaven hath

exacted from the generations of men the tribute of devotion.”–_Indian

Antiquities_, vol. ii. p. 91.

[76] Facciolatus thus defines the Phallus: “penis ligneus, vel vitreus,

vel coriaceus, quem in Bacchi festis plaustro impositum per rura et urbes

magno honore circumferebant.”–_Lex. in voc._

[77] The exhibition of these images in a colossal form, before the gates

of ancient temples, was common. Lucian tells us of two colossal Phalli,

each one hundred and eighty feet high, which stood in the fore court of

the temple at Hierapolis. Mailer, in his “Ancient Art and its Remains,”

mentions, on the authority of Leake, the fact that a colossal Phallus,

which once stood on the top of the tomb of the Lydian king Halyattes, is

now lying near the same spot; it is not an entire Phallus, but only the

head of one; it is twelve feet in diameter below and nine feet over the

glands. The Phallus has even been found, so universal was this worship,

among the savages of America. Dr. Arthaut discovered, in the year 1790, a

marble Phallic image in a cave of the island of St. Domingo.–CLAVEL,

_Hist. Pittoresq. des Religions_, p. 9.

[78] Sonnerat (Voyage aux Indes Orient, i. p. 118) observes, that the

professors of this worship were of the purest principles and most

unblemished conduct, and it seems never to have entered into the heads of

the Indian legislator and people that anything natural could be grossly

obscene.–Sir William Jones remarks (Asiatic Researches, i. 254), that

from the earliest periods the women of Asia, Greece, and Italy wore this

symbol as a jewel, and Clavel tells us that a similar usage prevails at

this day among the women in some of the villages of Brittany. Seely tells

us that the Lingam, or Indian Phallus, is an emblem as frequently met with

in Hindostan as the cross is in Catholic countries.–_Wonders of Elora._

p. 278.

[79] Num. xxv. 1-3. See also Psalm cvi. 28: “They joined themselves also

unto Baal-peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead.” This last expression,

according to Russel, has a distinct reference to the physical qualities of

matter, and to the time when death, by the winter absence of the solar

heat, gets, as it were, possession of the earth. Baal-peor was, he says,

the sun exercising his powers of fecundity.–_Connection of Sacred and

Profane History_

[80] Is there not a seeming reference to this thought of divine

hermaphrodism in the well-known passage of Genesis? “So God created man in

his own image, in the image of God created he him: _male and female_

created he them.” And so being created “male and female,” they were “in

the image of God.”

[81] The world being animated by man, says Creuzer, in his learned work on

Symbolism, received from him the two sexes, represented by heaven and the

earth. Heaven, as the fecundating principle, was male, and the source of

fire; the earth, as the fecundated, was female, and the source of

humidity. All things issued from the alliance of these two principles. The

vivifying powers of the heavens are concentrated in the sun, and the

earth, eternally fixed in the place which it occupies, receives the

emanations from the sun, through the medium of the moon, which sheds upon

the earth the germs which the sun had deposited in its fertile bosom. The

Lingam is at once the symbol and the mystery of this religious idea.

[82] Such was the opinion of some of the ancient sun-worshippers, whose

adorations were always performed in the open air, because they thought no

temple was spacious enough to contain the sun; and hence the saying,

“Mundus universus est templum solis”–the universe is the temple of the

sun. Like our ancient brethren, they worshipped only on _the highest

hills_. Another analogy.

[83] _Asgard_, the abode of the gods, is shaded by the ash tree,

_Ydrasil_, where the gods assemble every day to do justice. The branches

of this tree extend themselves over the whole world, and reach above the

heavens. It hath three roots, extremely distant from each other: one of

them is among the gods; the second is among the giants, where the abyss

formerly was; the third covers _Niflheim_, or hell, and under this root is

the fountain _Vergelmer_, whence flow the infernal rivers.–_Edda, Fab._

8.

[84] Exod. iii. 5.

[85] Commentaries _in loco_.

[86] Commentary on Exod. iii. 5.

[87] Iamblichi Vita Pythag. c. 105. In another place he says, “[Greek:

Thy/ein chrê\ a)nypo/deton, kai pro\s ta i(era\ prostie/nai],”–We must

sacrifice and enter temples with the shoes off. Ibid. c. 85.

[88] “Quod etiam nunc apud plerasque Orientis nationes piaculum sit,

calceato pede templorum pavimenta calcasse.”

[89] Beth Habbechirah, cap. vii.

[90] Histor. Landm. vol. ii. p. 481.

[91] “Non datur nobis potestas adeundi templum nisi nudibus pedibus.”

[92] Commentaries, _ut supra_.

[93] See a paper “on the religious ceremonies of the Hindus,” by H.T.

Colebrooke, Esq. in the Asiatic Researches, vol. vi. p. 357.

[94] A Specimen of the Critical History of the Celtic Religion and

Learning. Letter ii. § xvii.

[95] Dr. Oliver, referring to the “twelve grand points in Masonry,” which

formed a part of the old English lectures, says, “When the candidate was

_intrusted_, he represented Asher, for he was then presented with the

glorious fruit of masonic knowledge, as Asher was represented by fatness

and royal dainties.”–_Hist. Landm._, vol. i. lect. xi. p. 313.

[96] From the Greek [Greek: ay)topsi/a], signifying _a seeing with ones

own eyes_. The candidate, who had previously been called a _mystes_, or a

_blind man_, from [Greek: mi/ô], to _shut the eyes_, began at this point

to change his title to that of an _epopt_, or an _eye-witness_.

[97] _Yehi aur va yehi aur._

[98] Robert William Mackay, Progress of the Intellect, vol. i. p. 93.

[99] “And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the

Thummim.”–_Exod._ xxviii. 30.–The Egyptian judges also wore

breastplates, on which was represented the figure of _Ra_, the sun, and

_Thme_, the goddess of Truth, representing, says Gliddon, “_Ra_, or the

sun, in a double capacity–physical and intellectual light; and _Thme_, in

a double capacity–justice and truth.”–_Ancient Egypt_, p. 33.

[100] We owe this interesting discovery to F. Portal, who has given it in

his elaborate work on Egyptian symbols as compared with those of the

Hebrews. To those who cannot consult the original work in French, I can

safely recommend the excellent translation by my esteemed friend, Bro.

John W. Simons, of New York, and which will be found in the thirtieth

volume of the “Universal Masonic Library.”

[101] “The most early defection to Idolatry,” says Bryant, “consisted in

the adoration of the sun and the worship of demons, styled

Baalim.”–_Analysts of Anc. Mythol._ vol. iii. p. 431.

[102] The remarks of Mr. Duncan on this subject are well worth perusal.

“Light has always formed one of the primary objects of heathen adoration.

The glorious spectacle of animated nature would lose all its interest if

man were deprived of vision, and light extinguished; for that which is

unseen and unknown becomes, for all practical purposes, as valueless as if

it were non-existent. Light is a source of positive happiness; without it,

man could barely exist; and since all religious opinion is based on the

ideas of pleasure and pain, and the corresponding sensations of hope and

fear, it is not to be wondered if the heathen reverenced light. Darkness,

on the contrary, by replunging nature, as it were, into a state of

nothingness, and depriving man of the pleasurable emotions conveyed

through the organ of sight, was ever held in abhorrence, as a source of

misery and fear. The two opposite conditions in which man thus found

himself placed, occasioned by the enjoyment or the banishment of light,

induced him to imagine the existence of two antagonist principles in

nature, to whose dominion he was alternately subject. Light multiplied his

enjoyments, and darkness diminished them. The former, accordingly, became

his friend, and the latter his enemy. The words ‘light’ and ‘good,’ and

‘darkness’ and ‘evil,’ conveyed similar ideas, and became, in sacred

language, synonymous terms. But as good and evil were not supposed to flow

from one and the same source, no more than light and darkness were

supposed to have a common origin, two distinct and independent principles

were established, totally different in their nature, of opposite

characters, pursuing a conflicting line of action, and creating

antagonistic effects. Such was the origin of this famous dogma, recognized

by all the heathens, and incorporated with all the sacred fables,

cosmogonies, and mysteries of antiquity.”–_The Religions of Profane

Antiquity_, p. 186.

[103] See the “Bhagvat Geeta,” one of the religious books of Brahminism. A

writer in Blackwood, in an article on the “Castes and Creeds of India,”

vol. lxxxi. p. 316, thus accounts for the adoration of light by the early

nations of the world: “Can we wonder at the worship of light by those

early nations? Carry our thoughts back to their remote times, and our only

wonder would be if they did not so adore it. The sun is life as well as

light to all that is on the earth–as we of the present day know even

better than they of old. Moving in dazzling radiance or brilliant-hued

pageantry through the sky, scanning in calm royalty all that passes below,

it seems the very god of this fair world, which lives and blooms but in

his smile.”

[104] The _Institutes of Menu_, which are the acknowledged code of the

Brahmins, inform us that “the world was all darkness, undiscernible,

undistinguishable altogether, as in a profound sleep, till the

self-existent, invisible God, making it manifest with five elements and

other glorious forms, perfectly dispelled the gloom.”–Sir WILLIAM JONES,

_On the Gods of Greece. Asiatic Researches_, i. 244.

Among the Rosicrucians, who have, by some, been improperly confounded with

the Freemasons, the word _lux_ was used to signify a knowledge of the

philosopher’s stone, or the great desideratum of a universal elixir and a

universal menstruum. This was their _truth_.

[105] On Symbolic Colors, p. 23, Inman’s translation.

[106] Freemasonry having received the name of _lux_, or light, its

disciples have, very appropriately, been called “the Sons of Light.” Thus

Burns, in his celebrated Farewell:–

“Oft have I met your social band,

And spent the cheerful, festive night;

Oft, honored with supreme command,

Presided o’er the _sons of light_.”

[107] Thus defined: “The stone which lies at the corner of two walls, and

unites them; the principal stone, and especially the stone which forms the

corner of the foundation of an edifice.”–Webster.

[108] Among the ancients the corner-stone of important edifices was laid

with impressive ceremonies. These are well described by Tacitus, in his

history of the rebuilding of the Capitol. After detailing the preliminary

ceremonies which consisted in a procession of vestals, who with chaplets

of flowers encompassed the ground and consecrated it by libations of

living water, he adds that, after solemn prayer, Helvidius, to whom the

care of rebuilding the Capitol had been committed, “laid his hand upon the

fillets that adorned the foundation stone, and also the cords by which it

was to be drawn to its place. In that instant the magistrates, the

priests, the senators, the Roman knights, and a number of citizens, all

acting with one effort and general demonstrations of joy, laid hold of the

ropes and dragged the ponderous load to its destined spot. They then threw

in ingots of gold and silver, and other metals, which had never been

melted in the furnace, but still retained, untouched by human art, their

first formation in the bowels of the earth.”–_Tac. Hist._, 1. iv. c. 53,

Murphy’s transl.

[109] As, for instance, in Psalm cxviii. 22, “The stone which the builders

refused is become the head-stone of the corner,” which, Clarke says,

“seems to have been originally spoken of David, who was at first rejected

by the Jewish rulers, but was afterwards chosen by the Lord to be the

great ruler of his people in Israel;” and in Isaiah xxviii. 16, “Behold, I

lay in Zion, for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious

corner-stone, a sure foundation,” which clearly refers to the promised

Messiah.

[110] In the ritual “observed at laying the foundation-stone of public

structures,” it is said, “The principal architect then presents the

working tools to the Grand Master, who applies the plumb, square, and

level to the stone, in their proper positions, and pronounces it to be

_well-formed, true, and trusty_.”–WEBB’S _Monitor_, p. 120.

[111] “The square teaches us to regulate our conduct by the principles of

morality and virtue.”–_Ritual of the E. A. Degree._–The old York

lectures define the square thus: “The square is the theory of universal

duty, and consisteth in two right lines, forming an angle of perfect

sincerity, or ninety degrees; the longest side is the sum of the lengths

of the several duties which we owe to all men. And every man should be

agreeable to this square, when perfectly finished.”

[112] Aristotle.

[113] “The cube is a symbol of truth, of wisdom, and moral perfection. The

new Jerusalem, promised in the Apocalypse, is equal in length, breadth,

and height. The Mystical city ought to be considered as a new church,

where divine wisdom will reign.”–OLIVER’S _Landmarks_, ii. p. 357.–And

he might have added, where eternal truth will be present.

[114] In the most primitive times, all the gods appear to have been

represented by cubical blocks of stone; and Pausanias says that he saw

thirty of these stones in the city of Pharae, which represented as many

deities. The first of the kind, it is probable, were dedicated to Hermes,

whence they derived their name of “Hermae.”

[115] “Give unto Jehovah the glory due unto His name; worship Jehovah in

the beauty of holiness.”–_Psalm_ xxix. 2.

[116] It is at least a singular coincidence that in the Brahminical

religion great respect was paid to the north-east point of the heavens.

Thus it is said in the Institutes of Menu, “If he has any incurable

disease, let him advance in a straight path towards _the invincible

north-east point_, feeding on water and air till his mortal frame totally

decay, and his soul become united with the Supreme.”

[117] This symbolism of the double position of the corner-stone has not

escaped the attention of the religious symbologists. Etsius, an early

commentator, in 1682, referring to the passage in Ephesians ii. 20, says,

“That is called the corner-stone, or chief corner-stone, which is placed

in the extreme angle of a foundation, conjoining and holding together two

walls of the pile, meeting from different quarters. And the apostle not

only would be understood by this metaphor that Christ is the principal

foundation of the whole church, but also that in him, as in a

corner-stone, the two peoples, Jews and Gentiles, are conjoined, and so

conjoined as to rise together into one edifice, and become one church.”

And Julius Firmicius, who wrote in the sixteenth century, says that Christ

is called the corner-stone, because, being placed in the angle of the two

walls, which are the Old and the New Testament, he collects the nations

into one fold. “Lapis sanctus, i.e. Christus, aut fidei fundamenta

sustentat aut in angulo positus duorum parietum membra aequata moderatione

conjungit, i.e., Veteris et Novi Testamenti in unum colligit gentes.”–_De

Errore profan. Religionum_, chap. xxi.

[118] This permanence of position was also attributed to those cubical

stones among the Romans which represented the statues of the god Terminus.

They could never lawfully be removed from the spot which they occupied.

Hence, when Tarquin was about to build the temple of Jupiter, on the

Capitoline Hill, all the shrines and statues of the other gods were

removed from the eminence to make way for the new edifice, except that of

Terminus, represented by a stone. This remained untouched, and was

enclosed within the temple, to show, says Dudley, “that the stone, having

been a personification of the God Supreme, could not be reasonably

required to yield to Jupiter himself in dignity and power.”–DUDLEY’S

_Naology_, p 145.

[119] Dudley’s Naology, p. 476.

[120] Masonic Discourses, Dis. iv. p. 81.

[121] “The act of consecration chiefly consisted in the unction, which was

a ceremony derived from the most primitive antiquity. The sacred

tabernacle, with all the vessels and utensils, as also the altar and the

priests themselves, were consecrated in this manner by Moses, at the

divine command. It is well known that the Jewish kings and prophets were

admitted to their several offices by unction. The patriarch Jacob, by the

same right, consecrated the altars which he made use of; in doing which it

is more probable that he followed the tradition of his forefathers, than

that he was the author of this custom. The same, or something like it, was

also continued down to the times of Christianity.”–POTTER’S

_Archaeologia Graeca_, b. ii. p. 176.

[122] From the Greek [Greek: tetra\s], four, and [Greek: gra/mma], letter,

because it is composed of four Hebrew letters. Brande thus defines it:

“Among several ancient nations, the name of the mystic number _four_,

which was often symbolized to represent the Deity, whose name was

expressed by four letters.” But this definition is incorrect. The

tetragrammaton is not the name of the number _four_, but the word which

expresses the name of God in four letters, and is always applied to the

Hebrew word only.

[123] Exod. iii. 15. In our common version of the Bible, the word “Lord”

is substituted for “Jehovah,” whence the true import of the original is

lost.

[124] Exod. vi. 2. 3.

[125] “The Jews have many superstitious stories and opinions relative to

this name, which, because they were forbidden to mention _in vain_, they

would not mention _at all_. They substituted _Adonai_, &c., in its room,

whenever it occurred to them in reading or speaking, or else simply and

emphatically styled it _the Name_. Some of them attributed to a certain

repetition of this name the virtue of a charm, and others have had the

boldness to assert that our blessed Savior wrought all his miracles (for

they do not deny them to be such) by that mystical use of this venerable

name. See the _Toldoth Jeschu_, an infamously scurrilous life of Jesus,

written by a Jew not later than the thirteenth century. On p. 7, edition

of Wagenseilius, 1681, is a succinct detail of the manner in which our

Savior is said to have entered the temple and obtained possession of the

Holy Name. Leusden says that he had offered to give a sum of money to a

very poor Jew at Amsterdam, if he would only once deliberately pronounce

the name _Jehovah_; but he refused it by saying that he did not

dare.”–_Horae Solitariae_, vol. i. p. 3.–“A Brahmin will not pronounce

the name of the Almighty, without drawing down his sleeve and placing it

on his mouth with fear and trembling.”–MURRAY, _Truth of Revelation_, p.

321.

[126] The same scrupulous avoidance of a strict translation has been

pursued in other versions. For Jehovah, the Septuagint substitutes

“[Greek: Ky/rios],” the Vulgate “Dominus,” and the German “der Herr,” all

equivalent to “the Lord.” The French version uses the title “l’Eternel.”

But, with a better comprehension of the value of the word, Lowth in his

“Isaiah,” the Swedenborgian version of the Psalms, and some other recent

versions, have restored the original name.

[127] In the Talmudical treatise, _Majan Hachochima_, quoted by Stephelin

(Rabbinical Literature, i. p. 131), we are informed that rightly to

understand the shem hamphorash is a key to the unlocking of all mysteries.

“There,” says the treatise, “shalt thou understand the words of men, the

words of cattle, the singing of birds, the language of beasts, the barking

of dogs, the language of devils, the language of ministering angels, the

language of date-trees, the motion of the sea, the unity of hearts, and

the murmuring of the tongue–nay, even the thoughts of the reins.”

[128] The gamma, [Greek: G], or Greek letter G, is said to have been

sacred among the Pythagoreans as the initial of [Greek: Geômeiri/a] or

Geometry.

[129] Vide Oliver, _Hist. Init._ p. 68, note.

[130] Jamblichus says that Pythagoras passed over from Miletus to Sidon,

thinking that he could thence go more easily into Egypt, and that while

there he caused himself to be initiated into all the mysteries of Byblos

and Tyre, and those which were practised in many parts of Syria, not

because he was under the influence of any superstitious motives, but from

the fear that if he were not to avail himself of these opportunities, he

might neglect to acquire some knowledge in those rites which was worthy of

observation. But as these mysteries were originally received by the

Phoenicians from Egypt, he passed over into that country, where he

remained twenty-two years, occupying himself in the study of geometry,

astronomy, and all the initiations of the gods ([Greek: pa/sas theô~n

teleta/s]), until he was carried a captive into Babylon by the soldiers of

Cambyses, and that twelve years afterwards he returned to Samos at the age

of sixty years.–_Vit. Pythag_, cap. iii., iv.

[131] “The sacred words were intrusted to him, of which the Ineffable

Tetractys, or name of God, was the chief.”–OLIVER, _Hist. Init._ p. 109.

[132] “Hu, the mighty, whose history as a patriarch is precisely that of

Noah, was promoted to the rank of the principal demon-god among the

Britons; and, as his chariot was composed of rays of the sun, it may be

presumed that he was worshipped in conjunction with that luminary, and to

the same superstition we may refer what is said of his light and swift

course.”–DAVIES, _Mythol. and Rites of the Brit. Druids_, p. 110.

[133] “All the male gods (of the ancients) may be reduced to one, the

generative energy; and all the female to one, the prolific principle. In

fact, they may all be included in the one great Hermaphrodite, the

[Greek: a)r(r)enothêlys] who combines in his nature all the elements of

production, and who continues to support the vast creation which

originally proceeded from his will.”–RUSSELL’S _Connection_, i. p. 402.

[134] It is a tradition that it was pronounced in the following seven

different ways by the patriarchs, from Methuselah to David, viz.: _Juha,

Jeva, Jova, Jevo, Jeveh, Johe_, and _Jehovah_. In all these words the _j_

is to be pronounced as _y_, the _a_ as _ah_, the _e_ as a, and the _v_ as

_w_.

[135] The _i_ is to be pronounced as _e_, and the whole word as if spelled

in English _ho-he_.

[136] In the apocryphal “Book of the Conversation of God with Moses on

Mount Sinai,” translated by the Rev. W. Cureton from an Arabic MS. of the

fifteenth century, and published by the Philobiblon Society of London, the

idea of the eternal watchfulness of God is thus beautifully allegorized:–

“Then Moses said to the Lord, O Lord, dost thou sleep or not? The Lord

said unto Moses, I never sleep: but take a cup and fill it with water.

Then Moses took a cup and filled it with water, as the Lord commanded him.

Then the Lord cast into the heart of Moses the breath of slumber; so he

slept, and the cup fell from his hand, and the water which was therein was

spilled. Then Moses awoke from his sleep. Then said God to Moses, I

declare by my power, and by my glory, that if I were to withdraw my

providence from the heavens and the earth for no longer a space of time

than thou hast slept, they would at once fall to ruin and confusion, like

as the cup fell from thy hand.”

[137] I have in my possession a rare copy of the Vulgate Bible, in black

letter, printed at Lyons, in 1522. The frontispiece is a coarsely executed

wood cut, divided into six compartments, and representing the six days of

the creation. The Father is, in each compartment, pictured as an aged man

engaged in his creative task.

[138] Christian Iconography, Millington’s trans., vol. i. p. 59.

[139] The triangle, or delta, is the symbol of Deity for this reason. In

geometry a single line cannot represent a perfect figure; neither can two

lines; three lines, however, constitute the triangle or first perfect and

demonstrable figure. Hence this figure symbolizes the Eternal God,

infinitely perfect in his nature. But the triangle properly refers to God

only in his quality as an Eternal Being, its three sides representing the

Past, the Present, and the Future. Some Christian symbologists have made

the three sides represent the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; but they

evidently thereby destroy the divine unity, making a trinity of Gods in

the unity of a Godhead. The Gnostic trinity of Manes consisted of one God

and two principles, one of good and the other of evil. The Indian trinity,

symbolized also by the triangle, consisted of Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu,

the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, represented by Earth, Water, and

Air. This symbolism of the Eternal God by the triangle is the reason why a

trinitarian scheme has been so prevalent in all religions–the three sides

naturally suggesting the three divisions of the Godhead. But in the Pagan

and Oriental religions this trinity was nothing else but a tritheism.

[140] Noachidae, or Noachites, the descendants of Noah. This patriarch

having alone preserved the true name and worship of God amid a race of

impious idolaters, the Freemasons claim to be his descendants, because

they preserve that pure religion which distinguished this second father of

the human race from the rest of the world. (See the author’s _Lexicon of

Freemasonry_.) The Tyrian workmen at the temple of Solomon were the

descendants of that other division of the race who fell off, at Shinar,

from the true worship, and repudiated the principles of Noah. The Tyrians,

however, like many other ancient mystics, had recovered some portion of

the lost light, and the complete repossession was finally achieved by

their union with the Jewish masons, who were Noachidae.

[141] “A mythis omnis priscorum hominum tum historia tum philosophia

procedit.”–_Ad Apollod. Athen. Biblioth. not._ f. p. 3.–And Faber says,

“Allegory and personification were peculiarly agreeable to the genius of

antiquity; and the simplicity of truth was continually sacrificed at the

shrine of poetical decoration.”–_On the Cabiri._

[142] See Grote, History of Greece, vol. i. ch. xvi. p. 479, whence this

definition has been substantially derived. The definitions of Creuzer,

Hermann, Buttmann, Heyne, Welcker, Voss, and Müller are none of them

Better, and some of them not as good.

[143] Hist. of Greece, vol. i. ch. xvi. p. 579. The idea of the existence

of an enlightened people, who lived at a remote era, and came from the

East, was a very prevalent notion among the ancient traditions. It is

corroborative of this that the Hebrew word _kedem_,

signifies, in respect to place, _the east_, and, in respect to time,

_olden time, ancient days_. The phrase in Isaiah xix. 11, which reads, “I

am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings,” might just as well have

been translated “the son of kings of the East.” In a note to the passage

Ezek. xliii. 2, “the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the

East,” Adam Clarke says, “All knowledge, all religion, and all arts and

sciences, have travelled, according to the _course of the sun_, FROM EAST

TO WEST!” Bazot tells us (in his Manuel du Franc-maçon, p. 154) that “the

veneration which masons entertain for the east confirms an opinion

previously announced, that the religious system of Masonry came from the

east, and has reference to the _primitive religion_, whose first

corruption was the worship of the sun.” And lastly, the masonic reader

will recollect the answer given in the Leland MS. to the question

respecting the origin of Masonry, namely, “It did begin” (I modernize the

orthography) “with the first men in the east, which were before the first

men of the west; and coming westerly, it hath brought herewith all

comforts to the wild and comfortless.” Locke’s commentary on this answer

may conclude this note: “It should seem, by this, that masons believe

there were men in the east before Adam, who is called the ‘first man of

the west,’ and that arts and sciences began in the east. Some authors, of

great note for learning, have been of the same opinion; and it is certain

that Europe and Africa (which, in respect to Asia, may be called western

countries) were wild and savage long after arts and politeness of manners

were in great perfection in China and the Indies.” The Talmudists make the

same allusions to the superiority of the east. Thus, Rabbi Bechai says,

“Adam was created with his face towards the east that he might behold the

light and the rising sun, whence the east was to him the anterior part of

the world.”

[144] Strauss makes a division of myths into historical, philosophical,

and poetical.–_Leben Jesu._–His poetical myth agrees with my first

division, his philosophical with my second, and his historical with my

third. But I object to the word _poetical_, as a distinctive term, because

all myths have their foundation in the poetic idea.

[145] Ulmann, for instance, distinguishes between a myth and a legend–the

former containing, to a great degree, fiction combined with history, and

the latter having but a few faint echoes of mythical history.

[146] In his “Prolegomena zu einer wissenshaftlichen Mythologie,” cap. iv.

This valuable work was translated in 1844, by Mr. John Leitch.

[147] Historical Landmarks, i. 53.

[148] See an article, by the author, on “The Unwritten Landmarks of

Freemasonry,” in the first volume of the Masonic Miscellany, in which this

subject is treated at considerable length.

[149] As a matter of some interest to the curious reader, I insert the

legend as published in the Gentleman’s Magazine of June, 1815, from, it is

said, a parchment roll supposed to have been written early in the

seventeenth century, and which, if so, was in all probability copied from

one of an older date:–

“Moreover, when Abraham and Sara his wife went into Egipt, there he taught

the Seaven Scyences to the Egiptians; and he had a worthy Scoller that

height Ewclyde, and he learned right well, and was a master of all the vij

Sciences liberall. And in his dayes it befell that the lord and the

estates of the realme had soe many sonns that they had gotten some by

their wifes and some by other ladyes of the realme; for that land is a

hott land and a plentious of generacion. And they had not competent

livehode to find with their children; wherefor they made much care. And

then the King of the land made a great counsell and a parliament, to witt,

how they might find their children honestly as gentlemen. And they could

find no manner of good way. And then they did crye through all the realme,

if there were any man that could enforme them, that he should come to

them, and he should be soe rewarded for his travail, that he should hold

him pleased.

“After that this cry was made, then came this worthy clarke Ewclyde, and

said to the King and to all his great lords: ‘If yee will, take me your

children to governe, and to teach them one of the Seaven Scyences,

wherewith they may live honestly as gentlemen should, under a condicion

that yee will grant mee and them a commission that I may have power to

rule them after the manner that the science ought to be ruled.’ And that

the Kinge and all his counsell granted to him anone, and sealed their

commission. And then this worthy tooke to him these lords’ sonns, and

taught them the science of Geometric in practice, for to work in stones

all manner of worthy worke that belongeth to buildinge churches, temples,

castells, towres, and mannors, and all other manner of buildings.”

[150] Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs, vol. I p. 393.

[151] 1 Kings vi. 8.

[152] An allusion to this symbolism is retained in one of the well-known

mottoes of the order–“_Lux e tenebris._”

[153] “An allegory is that in which, under borrowed characters and

allusions, is shadowed some real action or moral instruction; or, to keep

more strictly to its derivation ([Greek: a)/llos], _alius_, and [Greek:

a)gorey/ô], _dico_), it is that in which one thing is related and another

thing is understood. Hence it is apparent that an allegory must have two

senses–the literal and mystical; and for that reason it must convey its

instruction under borrowed characters and allusions throughout.”–_The

Antiquity, Evidence, and Certainty of Christianity canvassed, or Dr.

Middleton’s Examination of the Bishop of London’s Discourses on Prophecy.

By Anselm Bayly, LL.B., Minor Canon of St. Paul’s._ Lond, 1751.

[154] The words themselves are purely classical, but the meanings here

given to them are of a mediaeval or corrupt Latinity. Among the old

Romans, a _trivium_ meant a place where three ways met, and a _quadrivium_

where four, or what we now call a _cross-road_. When we speak of the

_paths of learning_, we readily discover the origin of the signification

given by the scholastic philosophers to these terms.

[155] Hist. of Philos. vol. ii. p. 337.

[156] Such a talisman was the following figure:–

———–

| 8 | 1 | 6 |

|—|—|—|

| 3 | 5 | 7 |

|—|—|—|

| 4 | 9 | 2 |

———–

[157] Anderson’s Constitutions, 2d ed. 1738, p. 14.

[158] Anderson’s Constitutions, 3d ed. 1756, p. 24.

[159] “The hidden doctrines of the unity of the Deity and the immortality

of the soul were originally in all the Mysteries, even those of Cupid and

Bacchus.”–WARBURTON, _in Spence’s Anecdotes,_ p. 309.

[160] “The allegorical interpretation of the myths has been, by several

learned investigators, especially by Creuzer, connected with the

hypothesis of an ancient and highly instructed body of priests, having

their origin either in Egypt or in the East, and communicating to the rude

and barbarous Greeks religious, physical, and historical knowledge, under

the veil of symbols.”–GROTE, _Hist. of Greece,_ vol. i. ch. xvi. p.

579.–And the Chevalier Ramsay corroborates this theory: “Vestiges of the

most sublime truths are to be found in the sages of all nations, times,

and religions, both sacred and profane, and these vestiges are emanations

of the antediluvian and noevian tradition, more or less disguised and

adulterated.”–_Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion

unfolded in a Geometrical Order,_ vol. 1, p. iv.

[161] Of this there is abundant evidence in all the ancient and modern

writers on the Mysteries. Apuleius, cautiously describing his initiation

into the Mysteries of Isis, says, “I approached the confines of death, and

having trod on the threshold of Proserpine, I returned therefrom, being

borne through all the elements. At midnight I saw the sun shining with its

brilliant light; and I approached the presence of the gods beneath, and

the gods of heaven, and stood near and worshipped them.”–_Metam._ lib.

vi. The context shows that all this was a scenic representation.

[162] _Aish hakam iodea binah,_ “a cunning man, endued with

understanding,” is the description given by the king of Tyre of Hiram

Abif. See 2 Chron. ii. 13. It is needless to say that “cunning” is a good

old Saxon word meaning _skilful_.

[163]

“Pronaque cum spectent animalia cætera terram;

Os homini sublime dedit: coelumque tueri

Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.”

OVID, _Met._ i. 84.

“Thus, while the mute creation downward bend

Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,

Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes

Beholds his own hereditary skies.”

DRYDEN.

[164] “[Greek: A)phanismo\s], disappearance, destruction, a perishing,

death, from [Greek: a)phani/zô], to remove from one’s view, to conceal,”

&c.–_Schrevel. Lex._

[165] “[Greek: Ey~resis], a finding, invention, discovery.”–_Schrevel.

Lex._

[166] A French writer of the last century, speaking of the degree of “Très

Parfait Maitre,” says, “C’est ici qu’on voit réellement qu’Hiram n’a été

que le type de Jésus Christ, que le temple et les autres symboles

maçonniques sont des allegories relatives à l’Eglise, à la Foi, et aux

bonnes moeurs.”–_Origine et Objet de la Franchemaçonnerie, par le F.B._

Paris, 1774.

[167] “This our order is a positive contradiction to the Judaic blindness

and infidelity, and testifies our faith concerning the resurrection of the

body.”–HUTCHINSON, _Spirit of Masonry,_ lect. ix. p. 101.–The whole

lecture is occupied in advancing and supporting his peculiar theory.

[168] “Thus, then, it appears that the historical reference of the legend

of Speculative Freemasonry, in all ages of the world, was–to our death in

Adam and life in Christ. What, then, was the origin of our tradition? Or,

in other words, to what particular incident did the legend of initiation

refer before the flood? I conceive it to have been the offering and

assassination of Abel by his brother Cain; the escape of the murderer; the

discovery of the body by his disconsolate parents, and its subsequent

interment, under a certain belief of its final resurrection from the dead,

and of the detection and punishment of Cain by divine vengeance.”–OLIVER,

_Historical Landmarks of Freemasonry_, vol. ii. p. 171.

[169] “Le grade de Maître va donc nous retracer allegoriquement la mort du

_dieu-lumière_–mourant en hiver pour reparaître et ressusciter au

printemps.”–RAGON, _Cours Philos. et Interp. des Init._ p. 158.

[170] “Dans l’ordre moral, Hiram n’est autre chose que la raison

éternelle, par qui tout est pondéré, réglé, conservé.”–DES ETANGS,

_Oeuvres Maçonniques_, p. 90.

[171] With the same argument would I meet the hypothesis that Hiram was

the representative of Charles I. of England–an hypothesis now so

generally abandoned, that I have not thought it worth noticing in the

text.

[172] “The initiation into the Mysteries,” he says, “scenically

represented the mythic descent into Hades and the return from thence to

the light of day; by which was meant the entrance into the Ark and the

subsequent liberation from its dark enclosure. Such Mysteries were

established in almost every part of the pagan world; and those of Ceres

were substantially the same as the Orgies of Adonis, Osiris, Hu, Mithras,

and the Cabiri. They all equally related to the allegorical disappearance,

or death, or descent of the great father at their commencement, and to his

invention, or revival, or return from Hades, at their conclusion.”–_Origin

of Pagan Idolatry,_ vol. iv. b. iv. ch. v. p. 384–But this Arkite

theory, as it is called, has not met with the general approbation of

subsequent writers.

[173] Mount Calvary is a small hill or eminence, situated in a westerly

direction from that Mount Moriah on which the temple of Solomon was built.

It was originally a hillock of notable eminence, but has, in modern times,

been greatly reduced by the excavations made in it for the construction of

the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Buckingham, in his Palestine, p. 283,

says, “The present rock, called Calvary, and enclosed within the Church of

the Holy Sepulchre, bears marks, in every part that is naked, of its

having been a round nodule of rock standing above the common level of the

surface.”

[174] Dr. Beard, in the art. “Golgotha,” in Kitto’s Encyc. of Bib. Lit.,

reasons in a similar method as to the place of the crucifixion, and

supposing that the soldiers, from the fear of a popular tumult, would

hurry Jesus to the most convenient spot for execution, says, “Then the

road to Joppa or Damascus would be most convenient, and no spot in the

vicinity would probably be so suitable as the slight rounded elevation

which bore the name of Calvary.”

[175] Some have supposed that it was so called because it was the place of

public execution. _Gulgoleth_ in Hebrew, or _gogultho_ in Syriac, means _a

skull_.

[176] Quoted in Oliver, _Landmarks_, vol. i. p. 587, note.

[177] Oliver’s idea (_Landmarks_, ii. 149) that _cassia_ has, since the

year 1730, been corrupted into _acacia_, is contrary to all etymological

experience. Words are corrupted, not by lengthening, but by abbreviating

them. The uneducated and the careless are always prone to cut off a

syllable, not to add a new one.

[178] And yet I have been surprised by seeing, once or twice, the word

“Cassia” adopted as the name of a lodge. “Cinnamon” or “sandal wood” would

have been as appropriate, for any masonic meaning or symbolism.

[179] Eclog. ii. 49.

“Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens,

Narcissum et florem jungit benè olentis anethi:

Tum casia, atque aliis intexens suavibus herbis,

Mollia luteola pingit vaccinia, caltha.”

[180] Exod. xxx. 24, Ezek. xxvii. 9, and Ps. xlv. 8.

[181] Oliver, it is true, says, that “there is not the smallest trace of

any tree of the kind growing so far north as Jerusalem” (_Landm._ ii.

136); but this statement is refuted by the authority of Lieutenant Lynch,

who saw it growing in great abundance at Jericho, and still farther

north.–_Exped. to the Dead Sea_, p. 262.–The Rabbi Joseph Schwarz, who

is excellent authority, says, “The Acacia (Shittim) Tree, Al Sunt, is

found in Palestine of different varieties; it looks like the Mulberry

tree, attains a great height, and has a hard wood. The gum which is

obtained from it is the gum Arabic.”–_Descriptive Geography and

Historical Sketch of Palestine_, p. 308, Leeser’s translation. Phila.,

1850.–Schwarz was for sixteen years a resident of Palestine, and wrote

from personal observation. The testimony of Lynch and Schwarz should,

therefore, forever settle the question of the existence of the acacia in

Palestine.

[182] Calmet, Parkhurst, Gesenius, Clarke, Shaw, and all the best

authorities, concur in saying that the _otzi shittim_, or shittim wood of

Exodus, was the common acacia or mimosa nilotica of Linnæus.

[183] “This custom among the Hebrews arose from this circumstance.

Agreeably to their laws, no dead bodies were allowed to be interred within

the walls of the city; and as the Cohens, or priests, were prohibited from

crossing a grave, it was necessary to place marks thereon, that they might

avoid them. For this purpose the acacia was used.”–DALCHO, _Oration_, p.

27, note.–I object to the reason assigned by Dalcho; but of the existence

of the custom there can be no question, notwithstanding the denial or

doubt of Dr. Oliver. Blount (_Travels in the Levant_, p. 197) says,

speaking of the Jewish burial customs, “those who bestow a marble stone

over any [grave] have a hole a yard long and a foot broad, in which _they

plant an evergreen_, which seems to grow from the body, and is carefully

watched.” Hasselquist (_Travels_, p. 28) confirms his testimony. I borrow

the citations from Brown (_Antiquities of the Jews_, vol. ii. p. 356), but

have verified the reference to Hasselquist. The work of Blount I have not

been enabled to consult.

[184] Antiquities of Greece, p. 569.

[185] Dr. Crucefix, MS., quoted by Oliver, _Landmarks_, ii. 2.

[186] Spirit of Masonry, lect. ix. p. 99.

[187] The Temple of Solomon, ch. ix. p. 233.

[188] It is probable that the quince derived this symbolism, like the

acacia, from its name; for there seems to be some connection between the

Greek word [Greek: kydô/nios], which means _a quince_, and the participle

[Greek: kydi/ôn], which signifies _rejoicing, exulting_. But this must

have been an afterthought, for the name is derived from Cydon, in Crete,

of which island the quince is a native.

[189] Desprez, speaking of the palm as an emblem of victory, says

(_Comment. in Horat. Od._ I. i. 5), “Palma verò signum victoriae passim

apud omnes statuitur, ex Plutarcho, propterea quod ea est ejus natura

ligni, ut urgentibus opprimentibusque minimè cedat. Unde est illud Alciati

epigramma,–

‘Nititur in pondus palma, et consurgit in altum:

Quoque magis premitur, hoc magè tollit onus.'”

It is in the eighth book of his Symposia that Plutarch states this

peculiar property of the palm to resist the oppression of any

superincumbent weight, and to rise up against it, whence it was adopted as

the symbol of victory. Cowley also alludes to it in his _Davideis_.

“Well did he know how palms by oppression speed

Victorious, and the victor’s sacred meed.”

[190] “Rosemary was anciently supposed to strengthen the memory, and was

not only carried at funerals, but worn at weddings.”–STEEVENS, _Notes on

Hamlet_, a. iv. s. 5.–Douce (_Illustrations of Shakspeare_, i. 345) gives

the following old song in reference to this subject:–

“Rosemarie is for remembrance

Betweene us daie and night,

Wishing that I might always have

You present in my sight.”

[191] Ste. Croix (_Recherches sur les Mystères_, i. 56) says that in the

Samothracian Mysteries it was forbidden to put parsley on the table,

because, according to the mystagogues, it had been produced by the blood

of Cadmillus, slain by his brothers.

[192] “The Hindoos,” says Faber, “represent their mundane lotus, as having

four large leaves and four small leaves placed alternately, while from the

centre of the flower rises a protuberance. Now, the circular cup formed by

the eight leaves they deem a symbol of the earth, floating on the surface

of the ocean, and consisting of four large continents and four

intermediate smaller islands; while the centrical protuberance is viewed

by them as representing their sacred Mount Menu.”–_Communication to Gent.

Mag._ vol. lxxxvi. p. 408.

[193] The _erica arborea_ or tree heath.

[194] Ragon thus alludes to this mystical event: “Isis found the body of

Osiris in the neighborhood of Biblos, and near a tall plant called the

_erica_. Oppressed with grief, she seated herself on the margin of a

fountain, whose waters issued from a rock. This rock is the _small hill

_mentioned in the ritual; the erica has been replaced by the acacia, and

the grief of Isis has been changed for that of the fellow crafts.”–_Cours

des Initiations,_ p. 151.

[195] It is singular, and perhaps significant, that the word _eriko_, in

Greek, [Greek: e)ri/kô], whence _erica_ is probably derived, means _to

break in pieces, to mangle_.

[196] Histoire Pittoresque des Religions, t. i. p. 217.

[197] According to Toland (_Works_, i. 74), the festival of searching,

cutting, and consecrating the mistletoe, took place on the 10th of March,

or New Year’s day. “This,” he says, “is the ceremony to which Virgil

alludes, by his _golden branch,_ in the Sixth Book of the Æneid.” No doubt

of it; for all these sacred plants had a common origin in some ancient and

general symbolic idea.

[198] “Under this branch is figured the wreath of myrtle, with which the

initiated were crowned at the celebration of the Mysteries.”–WARBURTON,

_Divine Legation,_ vol. i. p. 299.

[199] “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” Gen. iii. 19. Bush

interprets the decree to mean that “some species of toilsome occupation is

the appointed lot of all men.”

[200] Aristotle says, “He that cannot contract society with others, or

who, through his own self-sufficiency [Greek: ay)ta/rkeian], does not need

it, forms no part of the community, but is either a wild beast or a god.”

[201] “Der Arbeiter,” says Lenning, “ist der symbolische Name eines

Freimaurers”–the Workman is the symbolic name of a Freemason.–_Encyclop.

der Fraumererei._

[202] John iii. 19-21.

[203] I Corinth, iii. 9.

[204] Orbis Miraculum, or the Temple of Solomon, pourtrayed by Scripture

Light, ch. ix. p. 192. London, 1659.

[205] Swedenborg a Hermetic Philosopher, &c., p. 210. The object of the

author is to show that the Swedish sage was an adept, and that his

writings may be interpreted from the point of view of Hermetic philosophy.

[206] Cours Philosophique et Interprétatif des Initiations Anciennes et

Modernes, p. 99.

[207] Ibid., p. 176.

[208] Histoire Générale de la Franc-maçonnerie, p. 52.

[209] Histoire de la Magie, liv. v. ch. vii. p. 100.

[210] Vorlesung über das Symbol des Tempels, in the “Jarbüchern der Gross.

Loge Roy. York zur Freundschaft,” cited by Lenning, Encyc., voc. _Tempel_.

[211] In an Essay on the Masonic Idea of Man’s Destination, cited by

Lenning, _ut supra_, from the Altenburg _Zeitschift der Freimaurerei_.

[212] Cited by Lenning, _ut sup._

[213] Thus Dr. Oliver, while treating of the relation of the temple to the

lodge, thus briefly alludes to this important symbol: “As our ancient

brethren erected a material temple, without the use of axe, hammer, or

metal tool, so is our moral temple constructed.”–_Historical Landmarks_,

lect. xxxi.

[214] System of Speculative Masonry, ch. vi. p. 63.

[215] On the Speculative Temple–an essay read in 1861 before the Grand

Lodge of Alabama.

[216] A portion of this essay, but in a very abridged form, was used by

the author in his work on “Cryptic Masonry.”

[217] Hist. Landmarks, i. 459, note 52.

[218] See the Gemara and Buxtorf Lex. Talm., p. 2541.

[219] Job xxxviii. 4-7.

[220] A New Translation of the Book of Job, notes, p. 196.

[221] In voc. [Hebrew: shint-tav-yod-yod-heh], where some other curious

extracts from the Talmud and Talmudic writers on the subject of the Stone

of Foundation are given.

[222] Sepher Toldoth Jeshu, p. 6. The abominably scurrilous character of

this work aroused the indignation of the Christians, who, in the fifteenth

century, were not distinguished for a spirit of tolerance, and the Jews,

becoming alarmed, made every effort to suppress it. But, in 1681, it was

republished by Wagenselius in his “Tela Ignea Satanae,” with a Latin

translation.

[223] Comment, on Gen. xxviii. 18.

[224] “Ni fallit fatum, Scoti quocunque locatum Invenient lapidem, regnare

tenentur ibidem.”

[225] Old and New Testament connected, vol. i. p. 148.

[226] The Temple of Solomon, pourtrayed by Scripture Light, ch. ix. p.

194. Of the Mysteries laid up in the Foundation of the Temple.

[227] See Pausanias, lib. iv.

[228] The “Disputationes adversus Gentes” of Arnobius supplies us with a

fund of information on the symbolism of the classic mythology.

[229] Naology, ch. iii. p. 119.

[230] Cornut. de Nat. Deor. c. 16.

[231] Essais sur les Fables, t. i. lett. 2. p. 9.

[232] Bosworth (_Aug. Sax. Dict._) defines _treowth_ to signify “troth,

truth, treaty, league, pledge, covenant.”

The last of the symbols, depending for its existence on its connection with a myth to which I shall invite attention, is the Lost Word, and the search for it. Very appropriately may this symbol terminate our investigations, since it includes within its comprehensive scope all the others, being itself the very essence of the science of masonic symbolism. The other symbols require for their just appreciation a knowledge of the origin of the order, because they owe their birth to its relationship with kindred and anterior institutions. But the symbolism of the Lost Word has reference exclusively to the design and the objects of the institution.

First, let us define the symbol, and then investigate its interpretation.

The mythical history of Freemasonry informs us that there once existed a WORD of surpassing value, and claiming a profound veneration; that this Word was known to but few; that it was at length lost; and that a temporary substitute for it was adopted. But as the very philosophy of Masonry teaches us that there can be no death without a resurrection,–no decay without a subsequent restoration,–on the same principle it follows that the loss of the Word must suppose its eventual recovery.

Now, this it is, precisely, that constitutes the myth of the Lost Word and the search for it. No matter what was the word, no matter how it was lost, nor why a substitute was provided, nor when nor where it was recovered. These are all points of subsidiary importance, necessary, it is true, for knowing the legendary history, but not necessary for understanding the symbolism. The only term of the myth that is to be regarded in the study of its interpretation, is the abstract idea of a word lost and afterwards recovered.

This, then, points us to the goal to which we must direct our steps in the pursuit of the investigation.

But the symbolism, referring in this case, as I have already said, solely to the great design of Freemasonry, the nature of that design at once suggests itself as a preliminary subject of inquiry in the investigation.

What, then, is the design of Freemasonry? A very large majority of its disciples, looking only to its practical results, as seen in the every-day business of life,–to the noble charities which it dispenses, to the tears of widows which it has dried, to the cries of orphans which it has hushed, to the wants of the destitute which it has supplied,–arrive with too much rapidity at the conclusion that Charity, and that, too, in its least exalted sense of eleemosynary aid, is the great design of the institution.

Others, with a still more contracted view, remembering the pleasant reunions at their lodge banquets, the unreserved communications which are thus encouraged, and the solemn obligations of mutual trust and confidence that are continually inculcated, believe that it was intended solely to promote the social sentiments and cement the bonds of friendship.

But, although the modern lectures inform us that Brotherly Love and Relief are two of “the principal tenets of a Mason’s profession,” yet, from the same authority, we learn that Truth is a third and not less important one; and Truth, too, not in its old Anglo-Saxon meaning of fidelity to engagements,[232] but in that more strictly philosophical one in which it is opposed to intellectual and religious error or falsehood.

But I have shown that the Primitive Freemasonry of the ancients was instituted for the purpose of preserving that truth which had been originally communicated to the patriarchs, in all its integrity, and that the Spurious Masonry, or the Mysteries, originated in the earnest need of the sages, and philosophers, and priests, to find again the same truth which had been lost by the surrounding multitudes. I have shown, also, that this same truth continued to be the object of the Temple Masonry, which was formed by a union of the Primitive, or Pure, and the Spurious systems. Lastly, I have endeavored to demonstrate that this truth related to the nature of God and the human soul.

The search, then, after this truth, I suppose to constitute the end and design of Speculative Masonry. From the very commencement of his career, the aspirant is by significant symbols and expressive instructions directed to the acquisition of this divine truth; and the whole lesson, if not completed in its full extent, is at least well developed in the myths and legends of the Master’s degree. God and the soul–the unity of the one and the immortality of the other–are the great truths, the search for which is to constitute the constant occupation of every Mason, and which, when found, are to become the chief corner-stone, or the stone of foundation, of the spiritual temple–“the house not made with hands”–which he is engaged in erecting.

Now, this idea of a search after truth forms so prominent a part of the whole science of Freemasonry, that I conceive no better or more comprehensive answer could be given to the question, What is Freemasonry? than to say that it is a science which is engaged in the search after divine truth.

But Freemasonry is eminently a system of symbolism, and all its instructions are conveyed in symbols. It is, therefore, to be supposed that so prominent and so prevailing an idea as this,–one that constitutes, as I have said, the whole design of the institution, and which may appropriately be adopted as the very definition of its science,–could not with any consistency be left without its particular symbol.

The WORD, therefore, I conceive to be the symbol of Divine Truth; and all its modifications–the loss, the substitution, and the recovery-are but component parts of the mythical symbol which represents a search after truth.

How, then, is this symbolism preserved? How is the whole history of this Word to be interpreted, so as to bear, in all its accidents of time, and place, and circumstance, a patent reference to the substantive idea that has been symbolized?

The answers to these questions embrace what is, perhaps, the most intricate as well as most ingenious and interesting portion of the science of Masonic symbolism.

This symbolism may be interpreted, either in an application to a general or to a special sense.

The general application will embrace the whole history of Freemasonry, from its inception to its consummation. The search after the Word is an epitome of the intellectual and religious progress of the order, from the period when, by the dispersion at Babel, the multitudes were enshrouded in the profundity of a moral darkness where truth was apparently forever extinguished. The true name of God was lost; his true nature was not understood; the divine lessons imparted by our father Noah were no longer remembered; the ancient traditions were now corrupted; the ancient symbols were perverted. Truth was buried beneath the rubbish of Sabaism, and the idolatrous adoration of the sun and stars had taken the place of the olden worship of the true God. A moral darkness was now spread over the face of the earth, as a dense, impenetrable cloud, which obstructed the rays of the spiritual sun, and covered the people as with a gloomy pall of intellectual night.

But this night was not to last forever. A brighter dawn was to arise, and amidst all this gloom and darkness there were still to be found a few sages in whom the religious sentiment, working in them with powerful throes, sent forth manfully to seek after truth. There were, even in those days of intellectual and religious darkness, craftsmen who were willing to search for the Lost Word. And though they were unable to find it, their approximation to truth was so near that the result of their search may well be symbolized by the Substitute Word.

It was among the idolatrous multitudes that the Word had been lost. It was among them that the Builder had been smitten, and that the works of the spiritual temple had been suspended; and so, losing at each successive stage of their decline, more and more of the true knowledge of God and of the pure religion which had originally been imparted by Noah, they finally arrived at gross materialism and idolatry, losing all sight of the divine existence. Thus it was that the truth–the Word–was said to have been lost; or, to apply the language of Hutchinson, modified in its reference to the time, “in this situation, it might well be said that the guide to heaven was lost, and the master of the works of righteousness was smitten. The nations had given themselves up to the grossest idolatry, and the service of the true God was effaced from the memory of those who had yielded themselves to the dominion of sin.”

And now it was among the philosophers and priests in the ancient Mysteries, or the spurious Freemasonry, that an anxiety to discover the truth led to the search for the Lost Word. These were the craftsmen who saw the fatal-blow which had been given, who knew that the Word was now lost, but were willing to go forth, manfully and patiently, to seek its restoration. And there were the craftsmen who, failing to rescue it from the grave of oblivion into which it had fallen, by any efforts of their own incomplete knowledge, fell back upon the dim traditions which had been handed down from primeval times, and through their aid found a substitute for truth in their own philosophical religions.

And hence Schmidtz, speaking of these Mysteries of the pagan world, calls them the remains of the ancient Pelasgian religion, and says that “the associations of persons for the purpose of celebrating them must therefore have been formed at the time when the overwhelming influence of the Hellenic religion began to gain the upper hand in Greece, and when persons who still entertained a reverence for the worship of former times united together, with the intention of preserving and upholding among themselves as much as possible of the religion of their forefathers.”

Applying, then, our interpretation in a general sense, the Word itself being the symbol of Divine Truth, the narrative of its loss and the search for its recovery becomes a mythical symbol of the decay and loss of the true religion among the ancient nations, at and after the dispersion on the plains of Shinar, and of the attempts of the wise men, the philosophers, and priests, to find and retain it in their secret Mysteries and initiations, which have hence been designated as the Spurious Freemasonry of Antiquity.

But I have said that there is a special, or individual, as well as a general interpretation. This compound or double symbolism, if I may so call it, is by no means unusual in Freemasonry. I have already exhibited an illustration of it in the symbolism of Solomon’s temple, where, in a general sense, the temple is viewed as a symbol of that spiritual temple formed by the aggregation of the whole order, and in which each mason is considered as a stone; and, in an individual or special sense, the same temple is considered as a type of that spiritual temple which each mason is directed to erect in his heart.

Now, in this special or individual interpretation, the Word, with its accompanying myth of a loss, a substitute, and a recovery, becomes a symbol of the personal progress of a candidate from his first initiation to the completion of his course, when he receives a full development of the Mysteries.

The aspirant enters on this search after truth, as an Entered Apprentice, in darkness, seeking for light–the light of wisdom, the light of truth, the light symbolized by the Word. For this important task, upon which he starts forth gropingly, falteringly, doubtingly, in want and in weakness, he is prepared by a purification of the heart, and is invested with a first substitute for the true Word, which, like the pillar that went before the Israelites in the wilderness, is to guide him onwards in his weary journey. He is directed to take, as a staff and scrip for his journey, all those virtues which expand the heart and dignify the soul. Secrecy, obedience, humility, trust in God, purity of conscience, economy of time, are all inculcated by impressive types and symbols, which connect the first degree with the period of youth.

And then, next in the degree of Fellow Craft, he fairly enters upon his journey. Youth has now passed, and manhood has come on. New duties and increased obligations press upon the individual. The thinking and working stage of life is here symbolized. Science is to be cultivated; wisdom is to be acquired; the lost Word–divine truth–is still to be sought for. But even yet it is not to be found.

And now the Master Mason comes, with all the symbolism around him of old age–trials, sufferings, death. And here, too, the aspirant, pressing onward, always onward, still cries aloud for “light, more light.” The search is almost over, but the lesson, humiliating to human nature, is to be taught, that in this life–gloomy and dark, earthly and carnal-pure truth has no abiding place; and contented with a substitute, and to that second temple of eternal life, for that true Word, that divine Truth, which will teach us all that we shall ever learn of God and his emanation, the human soul.

So, the Master Mason, receiving this substitute for the lost Word, waits with patience for the time when it shall be found, and perfect wisdom shall be attained.

But, work as we will, this symbolic Word–this knowledge of divine Truth–is never thoroughly attained in this life, or in its symbol, the Master Mason’s lodge. The corruptions of mortality, which encumber and cloud the human intellect, hide it, as with a thick veil, from mortal eyes. It is only, as I have just said, beyond the tomb, and when released from the earthly burden of life, that man is capable of fully receiving and appreciating the revelation. Hence, then, when we speak of the recovery of the Word, in that higher degree which is a supplement to Ancient Craft Masonry, we intimate that that sublime portion of the Masonic system is a symbolic representation of the state after death. For it is only after the decay and fall of this temple of life, which, as masons, we have been building, that from its ruins, deep beneath its foundations, and in the profound abyss of the grave, we find that divine truth, in the search for which life was spent, if not in vain, at least without success, and the mystic key to which death only could supply.

And now we know by this symbolism what is meant by Masonic labor, which, too, is itself but another form of the same symbol. The search for the Word–to find divine Truth–this, and this only, is a mason’s work, and the WORD is his reward.

Labor, said the old monks, is worship–laborare est orare; and thus in our lodges do we worship, working for the Word, working for the Truth, ever looking forward, casting no glance behind, but cheerily hoping for the consummation and the reward of our labor in the knowledge which is promised to him who plays no laggard’s part.

Goethe, himself a mason and a poet, knew and felt all this symbolism of a mason’s life and work, when he wrote that beautiful poem, which Carlyle has thus thrown into his own rough but impulsive language.

“The mason’s ways are

A type of existence,–

And to his persistence

Is as the days are

Of men in this world.

“The future hides in it

Gladness and sorrow;

We press still thorow,

Nought that abides in it

Daunting us–onward.

“And solemn before us

Veiled the dark portal,

Goal of all mortal;

Stars silent rest o’er us

Graves under us silent.

“While earnest thou gazest

Come boding of terror,

Comes phantasm and error,

Perplexing the bravest

With doubt and misgiving.

“But heard are the voices,

Heard are the sages,

The worlds and the ages;

‘Choose well; your choice is

Brief and yet endless.

“‘Here eyes do regard you,

In eternity’s stillness;

Here is all fullness,

Ye, brave to reward you;

Work and despair not.'”

*       *       *       *       *

And now, in concluding this work, so inadequate to the importance of the subjects that have been discussed, one deduction, at least, may be drawn from all that has been said.

In tracing the progress of Freemasonry, and in detailing its system of symbolism, it has been found to be so intimately connected with the history of philosophy, of religion, and of art, in all ages of the world, that the conviction at once forces itself upon the mind, that no mason can expect thoroughly to comprehend its nature, or to appreciate its character as a science, unless he shall devote himself, with some labor and assiduity, to this study of its system. That skill which consists in repeating, with fluency and precision, the ordinary lectures, in complying with all the ceremonial requisitions of the ritual, or the giving, with sufficient accuracy, the appointed modes of recognition, pertains only to the very rudiments of the Masonic science.

But there is a far nobler series of doctrines with which Freemasonry is connected, and which it has been my object, in this work, to present in some imperfect way. It is these which constitute the science and the philosophy of Freemasonry and it is these alone which will return the student who devotes himself to the task, a sevenfold reward for his labor.

Freemasonry, viewed no longer, as too long it has been, as a merely social institution, has now assumed its original and undoubted position as a speculative science. While the mere ritual is still carefully preserved, as the casket should be which contains so bright a jewel; while its charities are still dispensed as the necessary though incidental result of all its moral teachings; while its social tendencies are still cultivated as the tenacious cement which is to unite so fair a fabric in symmetry and strength, the Masonic mind is everywhere beginning to look and ask for something, which, like the manna in the desert, shall feed us, in our pilgrimage, with intellectual food. The universal cry, throughout the Masonic world, is for light; our lodges are henceforth to be schools; our labor is to be study; our wages are to be learning; the types and symbols, the myths and allegories, of the institution are beginning to be investigated with reference to their ultimate meaning; our history is now traced by zealous inquiries as to its connection with antiquity; and Freemasons now thoroughly understand that often quoted definition, that “Masonry is a science of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.”

Thus to learn Masonry is to know our work and to do it well. What true mason would shrink from the task?

Previous – XXXI – The Stone of Foundation

It is one of the most beautiful features of the Masonic Institution, that it teaches not only the necessity, but the nobility, of labor. Among the earliest of the implements in whose emblematic use it instructs its neophytes is the Trestle Board, the acknowledged symbol of the Divine Law, in accordance with whose decree[199] labor was originally instituted as the common lot of all; and therefore the important lesson that is closely connected with this symbol is, that to labor well and truly, to labor honestly and persistently, is the object and the chief end of all humanity.

To work out well the task that is set before us is our highest duty, and should constitute our greatest happiness. All men, then, must have their trestle boards; for the principles that guide us in the discharge of our duty–the schemes that we devise–the plans that we propose–are but the trestle board, whose designs we follow, for good or for evil, in our labor of life.

Earth works with every coming spring and within its prolific bosom designs the bursting seed, the tender plant, and the finished tree, upon its trestle board.

Old ocean works forever–restless and murmuring–but still bravely working; and storms and tempests, the purifiers of stagnant nature, are inscribed upon its trestle board.

And God himself, the Grand Architect, the Master Builder of the world, has labored from eternity; and working by his omnipotent will, he inscribes his plans upon illimitable space, for the universe is his trestle board.

There was a saying of the monks of old which is well worth meditation. They taught that “laborare est orare“–labor is worship. They did not, it is true, always practice the wise precept. They did not always make labor a part of their religion. Like Onuphrius, who lived threescore years and ten in the desert, without human voice or human sympathy to cheer him, because he had not learned that man was made for man, those old ascetics went into the wilderness, and built cells, and occupied themselves in solitary meditation and profitless thought. They prayed much, but they did no work. And thus they passed their lives, giving no pity, aid, or consolation to their fellow-men, adding no mite to the treasury of human knowledge, and leaving the world, when their selfish pilgrimage was finished, without a single contribution, in labor of mind or body, to its welfare.[200]

And men, seeing the uselessness of these ascetic lives, shrink now from their example, and fall back upon that wiser teaching, that he best does God’s will who best does God’s work. The world now knows that heaven is not served by man’s idleness–that the “dolce far niente,” though it might suit an Italian lazzaroni, is not fit for a brave Christian man, and that they who would do rightly, and act well their part, must take this distich for their motto:–

“With this hand work, and with the other pray, And God will bless them both from day to day.”

Now, this doctrine, that labor is worship, is the very doctrine that has been advanced and maintained, from time immemorial, as a leading dogma of the Order of Freemasonry. There is no other human institution under the sun which has set forth this great principle in such bold relief. We hear constantly of Freemasonry as an institution that inculcates morality, that fosters the social feeling, that teaches brotherly love; and all this is well, because it is true; but we must never forget that from its foundation-stone to its pinnacle, all over its vast temple, is inscribed, in symbols of living light, the great truth that labor is worship.

It has been supposed that, because we speak of Freemasonry as a speculative system, it has nothing to do with the practical. But this is a most grievous error. Freemasonry is, it is true, a speculative science, but it is a speculative science based upon an operative art. All its symbols and allegories refer to this connection. Its very language is borrowed from the art, and it is singularly suggestive that the initiation of a candidate into its mysteries is called, in its peculiar phraseology, work.

I repeat that this expression is singularly suggestive. When the lodge is engaged in reading petitions, hearing reports, debating financial matters, it is said to be occupied in business; but when it is engaged in the form and ceremony of initiation into any of the degrees, it is said to be at work. Initiation is Masonic labor. This phraseology at once suggests the connection of our speculative system with an operative art that preceded it, and upon which it has been founded. This operative art must have given it form and features and organization. If the speculative system had been founded solely on philosophical or ethical principles, if it had been derived from some ancient or modern sect of philosophers,–from the Stoics, the Epicureans, or the Platonists of the heathen world, or from any of the many divisions of the scholastics of the middle ages,–this origin would most certainly have affected its interior organization as well as its external form, and we should have seen our modern Masonic reunions assuming the style of academies or schools. Its technical language–for, like every institution isolated from the ordinary and general pursuits of mankind, it would have had its own technical dialect–would have been borrowed from, and would be easily traced to, the peculiar phraseology of the philosophic sects which had given it birth. There would have been the sophists and the philosophers; the grammatists and the grammarians; the scholars, the masters, and the doctors. It would have had its trivial and its quadrivial schools; its occupation would have been research, experiment, or investigation; in a word, its whole features would have been colored by a grammatical, a rhetorical, or a mathematical cast, accordingly as it should have been derived from a sect in which any one of these three characteristics was the predominating influence.

But in the organization of Freemasonry, as it now presents itself to us, we see an entirely different appearance. Its degrees are expressive, not of advancement in philosophic attainments, but of progress in a purely mechanical pursuit. Its highest grade is that of Master of the Work. Its places of meeting are not schools, but lodges, places where the workmen formerly lodged, in the neighborhood of the building on whose construction they were engaged. It does not form theories, but builds temples. It knows nothing of the rules of the dialecticians,–of the syllogism, the dilemma, the enthymeme, or the sorites,–but it recurs to the homely implements of its operative parent for its methods of instruction, and with the plumb-line it inculcates rectitude of conduct, and draws lessons of morality from the workman’s square. It sees in the Supreme God that it worships, not a ” numen divinum ,” a divine power, nor a ” moderator rerum omnium ,” a controller of all things, as the old philosophers designated him, but a Grand Architect of the Universe. The Masonic idea of God refers to Him as the Mighty Builder of this terrestrial globe, and all the countless worlds that surround it. He is not the ens entium, or to theion, or any other of the thousand titles with which ancient and modern speculation has invested him, but simply the Architect,–as the Greeks have it, the [Greek: a)rcho\s], the chief workman,–under whom we are all workmen also;[201] and hence our labor is his worship.

This idea, then, of masonic labor, is closely connected with the history of the organization of the institution. When we say “the lodge is at work,” we recognize that it is in the legitimate practice of that occupation for which it was originally intended. The Masons that are in it are not occupied in thinking, or speculating, or reasoning, but simply and emphatically in working. The duty of a Mason as such, in his lodge, is to work. Thereby he accomplishes the destiny of his Order. Thereby he best fulfils his obligation to the Grand Architect, for with the Mason laborare est orare–labor is worship.

The importance of Masonic labor being thus demonstrated, the question next arises as to the nature of that labor. What is the work that a Mason is called upon to perform?

Temple building was the original occupation of our ancient brethren. Leaving out of view that system of ethics and of religious philosophy, that search after truth, those doctrines of the unity of God and the immortality of the soul, which alike distinguish the ancient Mysteries and the Masonic institution, and which both must have derived from a common origin,–most probably from some priesthood of the olden time,–let our attention be exclusively directed, for the present, to that period, so familiar to every Mason, when, under the supposed Grand Mastership of King Solomon, Freemasonry first assumed “a local habitation and a name” in the holy city of Jerusalem. There the labor of the Israelites and the skill of the Tyrians were occupied in the construction of that noble temple whose splendor and magnificence of decoration made it one of the wonders of the world.

Here, then, we see the two united nations directing their attention, with surprising harmony, to the task of temple building. The Tyrian workmen, coming immediately from the bosom of the mystical society of Dionysian artificers, whose sole employment was the erection of sacred edifices throughout all Asia Minor, indoctrinated the Jews with a part of their architectural skill, and bestowed upon them also a knowledge of those sacred Mysteries which they had practiced at Tyre, and from which the present interior form of Freemasonry is said to be derived.

Now, if there be any so incredulous as to refuse their assent to the universally received Masonic tradition on this subject, if there be any who would deny all connection of King Solomon with the origin of Freemasonry, except it be in a mythical or symbolical sense, such incredulity will, not at all affect the chain of argument which I am disposed to use. For it will not be denied that the corporations of builders in the middle ages, those men who were known as “Travelling Freemasons,” were substantial and corporeal, and that the cathedrals, abbeys, and palaces, whose ruins are still objects of admiration to all observers, bear conclusive testimony that their existence was nothing like a myth, and that their labors were not apocryphal. But these Travelling Freemasons, whether led into the error, if error it be, by a mistaken reading of history, or by a superstitious reverence for tradition, always esteemed King Solomon as the founder of their Order. So that the first absolutely historical details that we have of the Masonic institution, connect it with the idea of a temple. And it is only for this idea that I contend, for it proves that the first Freemasons of whom we have authentic record, whether they were at Jerusalem or in Europe, and whether they flourished a thousand years before or a thousand years after the birth of Christ, always supposed that temple building was the peculiar specialty of their craft, and that their labor was to be the erection of temples in ancient times, and cathedrals and churches in the Christian age.

So that we come back at last to the proposition with which I had commenced, namely: that temple building was the original occupation of our ancient brethren. And to this is added the fact, that after a long lapse of centuries, a body of men is found in the middle ages who were universally recognized as Freemasons, and who directed their attention and their skill to the same pursuit, and were engaged in the construction of cathedrals, abbeys, and other sacred edifices, these being the Christian substitute for the heathen or the Jewish temple.

And therefore, when we view the history of the Order as thus developed in its origin and its design, we are justified in saying that, in all times past, its members have been recognized as men of labor, and that their labor has been temple building.

But our ancient brethren wrought in both operative and speculative Masonry, while we work only in speculative. They worked with the hand; we work with the brain. They dealt in the material; we in the spiritual. They used in their labor wood and stones; we use thoughts, and feelings, and affections. We both devote ourselves to labor, but the object of the labor and the mode of the labor are different.

The French rituals have given us the key-note to the explanation of what is Masonic labor when they say that “Freemasons erect temples for virtue and dungeons for vice.”

The modern Freemasons, like the Masons of old, are engaged in the construction of a temple;–but with this difference: that the temple of the latter was material, that of the former spiritual. When the operative art was the predominant characteristic of the Order, Masons were engaged in the construction of material and earthly temples. But when the operative art ceased, and the speculative science took its place, then the Freemasons symbolized the labors of their predecessors by engaging in the construction of a spiritual temple in their hearts, which was to be made so pure that it might become the dwelling-place of Him who is all purity. It was to be “a house not made with hands,” where the hewn stone was to be a purified heart.

This symbolism, which represents man as a temple, a house, a sacred\ building in which God is to dwell, is not new, nor peculiar to the Masonic science. It was known to the Jewish, and is still recognized by the Christian, system. The Talmudists had a saying that the threefold repetition of the words “Temple of Jehovah,” in the seventh chapter and fourth verse of the book of Jeremiah, was intended to allude to the existence of three temples; and hence in one of their treatises it is said, “Two temples have been destroyed, but the third will endure forever,” in which it is manifest that they referred to the temple of the immortal soul in man.

By a similar allusion, which, however, the Jews chose willfully to misunderstand, Christ declared, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And the beloved disciple, who records the conversation, does not allow us to doubt of the Savior’s meaning.

“Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?

“But he spake of the temple of his body.” [202]

In more than one place the apostle Paul has fondly dwelt upon this metaphor. Thus he tells the Corinthians that they are “God’s building,” and he calls himself the “wise master builder,” who was to lay the foundation in his truthful doctrine, upon which they were to erect the edifice.[203] And he says to them immediately afterwards, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”

In consequence of these teachings of the apostles, the idea that the body was a temple has pervaded, from the earliest times to the present day, the system of Christian or theological symbolism. Indeed, it has sometimes been carried to an almost too fanciful excess. Thus Samuel Lee, in that curious and rare old work, “The Temple of Solomon, portrayed by Scripture Light,” thus dilates on this symbolism of the temple:–

“The foundation of this temple may be laid in humility and contrition of spirit, wherein the inhabiter of eternity delighted to dwell; we may refer the porch to the mouth of a saint, wherein every holy Jacob erects the pillars of God’s praise, calling upon and blessing his name for received mercies; when songs of deliverance are uttered from the doors of his lips. The holy place is the renewed mind, and the windows therein may denote divine illumination from above, cautioning a saint lest they be darkened with the smoke of anger, the mist of grief, the dust of vain-glory, or the filthy mire of worldly cares. The golden candlesticks, the infused habits of divine knowledge resting within the soul. The shew-bread, the word of grace exhibited in the promises for the preservation of a Christian’s life and glory. The golden altar of odors, the breathings, sufferings, and groaning after God, ready to break forth into Abba, Father. The veils, the righteousness of Christ. The holy of holies may relate to the conscience purified from dead works and brought into a heavenly frame.” [204] And thus he proceeds, symbolizing every part and utensil of the temple as alluding to some emotion or affection of man, but in language too tedious for quotation.

In a similar vein has the celebrated John Bunyan, the author of the “Pilgrim’s Progress” proceeded in his “Temple of Solomon Spiritualized” to refer every part of that building to a symbolic meaning, selecting, however, the church, or congregation of good men, rather than the individual man, as the object of the symbolism.

In the middle ages the Hermetic philosophers seem to have given the same interpretation of the temple, and Swedenborg, in his mystical writings, adopts the idea.

Hitchcock, who has written an admirable little work on Swedenborg considered as a Hermetic Philosopher, thus alludes to this subject, and his language, as that of a learned and shrewd investigator, is well worthy of quotation:–

“With, perhaps, the majority of readers, the Tabernacle of Moses and the Temple of Solomon were mere buildings; very magnificent indeed, but still mere buildings for the worship of God. But some are struck with many portions of the account of their erection, admitting a moral interpretation; and while the buildings are allowed to stand (or to have stood once) visible objects, these interpreters are delighted to meet with indications that Moses and Solomon, in building the temples, were wise in the knowledge of God and of man; from which point it is not difficult to pass on to the moral meaning altogether, and to affirm that the building which was erected without ‘the noise of a hammer or axe, or any tool of iron,’ was altogether a moral building–a building of God, not made with hands: in short, many see in the story of Solomon’s temple a symbolical representation of MAN as the temple of God, with its holy of holies deep-seated in the centre of the human heart.” [205]

The French Masons have not been inattentive to this symbolism. Their already quoted expression that the “Freemasons build temples for virtue and dungeons for vice,” has very clearly a reference to it, and their most distinguished writers never lose sight of it.

Thus Ragon, one of the most learned of the French historians of Freemasonry, in his lecture to the Apprentice, says that the founders of our Order “called themselves Masons, and proclaimed that they were building a temple to truth and virtue.” [206] And subsequently he addresses the candidate who has received the Master’s degree in the following language:–

“Profit by all that has been revealed to you. Improve your heart and your mind. Direct your passions to the general good; combat your prejudices; watch over your thoughts and your actions; love, enlighten, and assist your brethren; and you will have perfected that temple of which you are at once the architect, the material, and the workman.” [207]

Rebold, another French historian of great erudition, says, “If Freemasonry has ceased to erect temples, and by the aid of its architectural designs to elevate all hearts to the Deity, and all eyes and hopes to heaven, it has not therefore desisted from its work of moral and intellectual building;” and he thinks that the success of the institution has justified this change of purpose and the disruption of the speculative from the operative character of the Order.[208]

Eliphas Levi, who has written abstrusely and mystically on Freemasonry and its collateral sciences, sees very clearly an allegorical and a real design in the institution, the former being the rebuilding of the temple of Solomon, and the latter the improvement of the human race by a reconstruction of its social and religious elements.[209]

The Masons of Germany have elaborated this idea with all the exhaustiveness that is peculiar to the German mind, and the masonic literature of that country abounds in essays, lectures, and treatises, in which the prominent topic is this building of the Solomonic temple as referring to the construction of a moral temple.

Thus writes Bro. Rhode, of Berlin:–

“So soon as any one has received the consecration of our Order, we say to him that we are building a mystical temple;” and he adds that “this temple which we Masons are building is nothing else than that which will conduce to the greatest possible happiness of mankind.” [210]

And another German brother, Von Wedekind, asserts that “we only labor in our temple when we make man our predominating object, when we unite goodness of heart with polished manners, truth with beauty, virtue with grace.” [211]

Again we have Reinhold telling us, in true Teutonic expansiveness of expression, that “by the mystical Solomonic temple we are to understand the high ideal or archetype of humanity in the best possible condition of social improvement, wherein every evil inclination is overcome, every passion is resolved into the spirit of love, and wherein each for all, and all for each, kindly strive to work.” [212]

And thus the German Masons call this striving for an almost millennial result labor in the temple.

The English Masons, although they have not treated the symbolism of the Order with the same abstruse investigation that has distinguished those of Germany and France, still have not been insensible to this idea that the building of the Solomonic temple is intended to indicate a cultivation of  the human character. Thus Hutchinson, one of the earliest of the symbolic writers of England, shows a very competent conception–for the age in which he lived–of the mystical meaning of the temple; and later writers have improved upon his crude views. It must, however, be acknowledged that neither Hutchinson nor Oliver, nor any other of the distinguished Masonic writers of England, has dwelt on this peculiar symbolism of a moral temple with that earnest appreciation of the idea that is to be found in the works of the French and German Masons. But although the allusions are rather casual and incidental, yet the symbolic theory is evidently recognized.[213]

Our own country has produced many students of Masonic symbolism, who have thoroughly grasped this noble thought, and treated it with eloquence and erudition.

Fifty years ago Salem Towne wrote thus: “Speculative Masonry, according to present acceptation, has an ultimate reference to that spiritual building erected by virtue in the heart, and summarily implies the arrangement and perfection of those holy and sublime principles by which the soul is fitted for a meet temple of God in a world of immortality.” [214]

Charles Scott has devoted one of the lectures in his “Analogy of Ancient Craft Masonry to Natural and Revealed Religion” to a thorough consideration of this subject. The language is too long for quotation, but the symbol has been well interpreted by him.[215]

Still more recently, Bro. John A. Loclor has treated the topic in an essay, which I regret has not had a larger circulation. A single and brief passage may show the spirit of the production, and how completely it sustains the idea of this symbolism.

“We may disguise it as we will,” says Bro. Lodor, “we may evade a scrutiny of it; but our character, as it is, with its faults and blemishes, its weaknesses and infirmities, its vices and its stains, together with its redeeming traits, its better parts, is our speculative temple.” And he goes on to extend the symbolic idea: “Like the exemplar temple on Mount Moriah, it should be preserved as a hallowed shrine, and guarded with the same vigilant care. It should be our pearl of price set round with walls and enclosures, even as was the Jewish temple, and the impure, the vicious, the guilty, and the profane be banished from even its outer courts. A faithful sentinel should be placed at every gate, a watchman on every wall, and the first approach of acowan and eavesdropper be promptly met and resisted.”

Teachings like this are now so common that every American Mason who has studied the symbolism of his Order believes, with Carlyle, that “there is but one temple in the world, and that is the body of man.”

This inquiry into the meaning and object of labor, as a Masonic symbol, brings us to these conclusions:–

1. That our ancient brethren worked as long as the operative art predominated in the institution at material temples, the most prominent of these being the temple of King Solomon.

2. That when the speculative science took the place of the operative art, the modern Masons, working no longer at material temples, but holding still to the sacred thought, the reverential idea, of a holy temple, a Lord’s house to be built, began to labor at living temples, and to make man, the true house of the Lord, the tabernacle for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

And, 3. Therefore to every Freemason who rightly comprehends his art, this construction of a living temple is his labor.

“Labor,” says Gadicke, the German masonic lexicographer, “is an important word in Masonry; indeed, we might say the most important. For this, and this alone, does a man become a Freemason. Every other object is secondary or incidental. Labor is the accustomed design of every lodge meeting. But does such meeting always furnish evidence of industry? The labor of an operative mason will be visible, and he will receive his reward for it, even though the building he has constructed may, in the next hour, be overthrown by a tempest. He knows that he has done his labor. And so must the Freemason labor. His labor must be visible to himself and to his brethren, or, at least, it must conduce to his own internal satisfaction. As we build neither a visible Solomonic temple nor an Egyptian pyramid, our industry must become visible in works that are imperishable, so that when we vanish from the eyes of mortals it may be said of us that our labor was well done.”

And remembering what the apostle has said, that we are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in us, we know that our labor is so to build that temple that it shall become worthy of its divine Dweller.

And thus, too, at last, we can understand the saying of the old monks that “labor is worship;” and as Masons we labor in our lodge, labor to make ourselves a perfect building, without blemish, working hopefully for the consummation, when the house of our earthly tabernacle shall be finished, when the LOST WORD of divine truth shall at last be discovered, and when we shall be found by our own efforts at perfection to have done God service. For so truly is the meaning of those noble words–LABOR IS WORSHIP.

Previous – XXIX – The Sprig of Acacia
Next – XXXI – The Stone of Foundation

The most important and significant of the legendary symbols of Freemasonry is, undoubtedly, that which relates to the fate of Hiram Abif, commonly called, “by way of excellence,” the Legend of the Third Degree.

The first written record that I have been able to find of this legend is contained in the second edition of Anderson’s Constitutions, published in 1738, and is in these words:–

“It (the temple) was finished in the short space of seven years and six months, to the amazement of all the world; when the cape-stone was celebrated by the fraternity with great joy. But their joy was soon interrupted by the sudden death of their dear master, Hiram Abif, whom they decently interred, in the lodge near the temple, according to ancient dusage.” [157]

In the next edition of the same work, published in 1756, a few additional circumstances are related, such as the participation of King Solomon in the general grief, and the fact that the king of Israel “ordered his obsequies to be conducted with great solemnity and decency.” [158] With these exceptions, and the citations of the same passages, made by subsequent authors, the narrative has always remained unwritten, and descended, from age to age, through the means of oral tradition.

The legend has been considered of so much importance that it has been preserved in the symbolism of every masonic rite. No matter what modifications or alterations the general system may have undergone,–no matter how much the ingenuity or the imagination of the founders of rites may have perverted or corrupted other symbols, abolishing the old and substituting new ones,–the legend of the Temple Builder has ever been left untouched, to present itself in all the integrity of its ancient mythical form.

What, then, is the signification of this symbol, so important and so extensively diffused? What interpretation can we give to it that will account for its universal adoption? How is it that it has thus become so intimately interwoven with Freemasonry as to make, to all appearances, a part of its very essence, and to have been always deemed inseparable from it?

To answer these questions, satisfactorily, it is necessary to trace, in a brief investigation, the remote origin of the institution of Freemasonry, and its connection with the ancient systems of initiation.

It was, then, the great object of all the rites and mysteries which constituted the “Spurious Freemasonry” of antiquity to teach the consoling doctrine of the immortality of the soul.[159] This dogma, shining as an almost solitary beacon-light in the surrounding gloom of pagan darkness, had undoubtedly been received from that ancient people or priesthood[160] what has been called the system of “Pure Freemasonry,” and among whom it probably existed only in the form of an abstract proposition or a simple and unembellished tradition. But in the more sensual minds of the pagan philosophers and mystics, the idea, when presented to the initiates in their Mysteries, was always conveyed in the form of a scenic representation.[161] The influence, too, of the early Sabian worship of the sun and heavenly bodies, in which the solar orb was adored, on its resurrection, each morning, from the apparent death of its evening setting, caused this rising sun to be adopted in the more ancient Mysteries as a symbol of the regeneration of the soul.

Thus in the Egyptian Mysteries we find a representation of the death and subsequent regeneration of Osiris; in the Phoenician, of Adonis; in the Syrian, of Dionysus; in all of which the scenic apparatus of initiation was intended to indoctrinate the candidate into the dogma of a future life.

It will be sufficient here to refer simply to the fact, that through the instrumentality of the Tyrian workmen at the temple of King Solomon, the spurious and pure branches of the Masonic system were united at Jerusalem, and that the same method of scenic representation was adopted by the latter from the former, and the narrative of the temple builder substituted for that of Dionysus, which was the myth peculiar to the mysteries practiced by the Tyrian workmen.

The idea, therefore, proposed to be communicated in the myth of the ancient Mysteries was the same as that which is now conveyed in the masonic legend of the Third Degree.

Hence, then, Hiram Abif is, in the masonic system, the symbol of human nature, as developed in the life here and the life to come; and so, while the temple was, as I have heretofore shown, the visible symbol of theworld, its builder became the mythical symbol of man, the dweller and worker in that world.

Now, is not this symbolism evident to every reflective mind?

Man, setting forth on the voyage of life, with faculties and powers fitting him for the due exercise of the high duties to whose performance he has been called, holds, if he be “a curious and cunning workman,” [162] skilled in all moral and intellectual purposes (and it is only of such men that the temple builder can be the symbol), within the grasp of his attainment the knowledge of all that divine truth imparted to him as the heirloom of his race–that race to whom it has been granted to look, with exalted countenance, on high;[163] which divine truth is symbolized by the WORD.

Thus provided with the word of life, he occupies his time in the construction of a spiritual temple, and travels onward in the faithful discharge of all his duties, laying down his designs upon the trestle-board of the future and invoking the assistance and direction of God.

But is his path always over flowery meads and through pleasant groves? Is there no hidden foe to obstruct his progress? Is all before him clear and calm, with joyous sunshine and refreshing zephyrs? Alas! not so. “Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” At every “gate of life”-as the Orientalists have beautifully called the different ages–he is beset by peril. Temptations allure his youth, misfortunes darken the pathway of his manhood, and his old age is encumbered with infirmity and disease. But clothed in the armor of virtue he may resist the temptation; he may cast misfortunes aside, and rise triumphantly above them; but to the last, the direst, the most inexorable foe of his race, he must eventually yield; and stricken down by death, he sinks prostrate into the grave, and is buried in the rubbish of his sin and human frailty.

Here, then, in Masonry, is what was called the aphanism[164] in the ancient Mysteries. The bitter but necessary lesson of death has been imparted. The living soul, with the lifeless body which encased it, has disappeared, and can nowhere be found. All is darkness–confusion–despair. Divine truth–the WORD–for a time is lost, and the Master Mason may now say, in the language of Hutchinson, “I prepare my sepulchre. I make my grave in the pollution of the earth. I am under the shadow of death.”

But if the mythic symbolism ended here, with this lesson of death, then were the lesson incomplete. That teaching would be vain and idle–nay, more, it would be corrupt and pernicious–which should stop short of the conscious and innate instinct for another existence. And hence the succeeding portions of the legend are intended to convey the sublime symbolism of a resurrection from the grave and a new birth into a future life. The discovery of the body, which, in the initiations of the ancient Mysteries, was called the euresis,[165] and its removal, from the polluted grave into which it had been cast, to an honored and sacred place within the precincts of the temple, are all profoundly and beautifully symbolic of that great truth, the discovery of which was the object of all the ancient initiations, as it is almost the whole design of Freemasonry, namely, that when man shall have passed the gates of life and have yielded to the inexorable fiat of death, he shall then (not in the pictured ritual of an earthly lodge, but in the realities of that eternal one, of which the former is but an antitype) be raised, at the omnific word of the Grand Master of the Universe, from time to eternity; from the tomb of corruption to the chambers of hope; from the darkness of death to the celestial beams of life; and that his disembodied spirit shall be conveyed as near to the holy of holies of the divine presence as humanity can ever approach to Deity.

Such I conceive to be the true interpretation of the symbolism of the legend of the Third Degree.

I have said that this mythical history of the temple builder was universal in all nations and all rites, and that in no place and at no time had it, by alteration, diminution, or addition, acquired any essentially new or different form: the myth has always remained the same.

But it is not so with its interpretation. That which I have just given, and which I conceive to be the correct one, has been very generally adopted by the Masons of this country. But elsewhere, and by various writers, other interpretations have been made, very different in their character, although always agreeing in retaining the general idea of a resurrection or regeneration, or a restoration of something from an inferior to a higher sphere or function.

Thus some of the earlier continental writers have supposed the myth to have been a symbol of the destruction of the Order of the Templars, looking upon its restoration to its original wealth and dignities as being prophetically symbolized.

In some of the high philosophical degrees it is taught that the whole legend refers to the sufferings and death, with the subsequent resurrection, of Christ.[166]

Hutchinson, who has the honor of being the earliest philosophical writer on Freemasonry in England, supposes it to have been intended to embody the idea of the decadence of the Jewish religion, and the substitution of the Christian in its place and on its ruins.[167]

Dr. Oliver–“clarum et venerabile nomen”–thinks that it is typical of the murder of Abel by Cain, and that it symbolically refers to the universal death of our race through Adam, and its restoration to life in the Redeemer,[168] according to the expression of the apostle, “As in Adam we all died, so in Christ we all live.”

Ragon makes Hiram a symbol of the sun shorn of its vivifying rays and fructifying power by the three winter months, and its restoration to generative heat by the season of spring.[169]

And, finally, Des Etangs, adopting, in part, the interpretation of Ragon, adds to it another, which he calls the moral symbolism of the legend, and supposes that Hiram is no other than eternal reason, whose enemies are the vices that deprave and destroy humanity.[170]

To each of these interpretations it seems to me that there are important objections, though perhaps to some less so than to others.

As to those who seek for an astronomical interpretation of the legend, in which the annual changes of the sun are symbolized, while the ingenuity with which they press their argument cannot but be admired, it is evident that, by such an interpretation, they yield all that Masonry has gained of religious development in past ages, and fall back upon that corruption and perversion of Sabaism from which it was the object, even of the Spurious Freemasonry of antiquity, to rescue its disciples.

The Templar interpretation of the myth must at once be discarded if we would avoid the difficulties of anachronism, unless we deny that the legend existed before the abolition of the Order of Knights Templar, and such denial would be fatal to the antiquity of Freemasonry.[171]

And as to the adoption of the Christian reference, Hutchinson, and after him Oliver, profoundly philosophical as are the Masonic speculations of both, have, I am constrained to believe, fallen into a great error in calling the Master Mason’s degree a Christian institution. It is true that it embraces within its scheme the great truths of Christianity upon the subject of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body; but this was to be presumed, because Freemasonry is truth, and Christianity is truth, and all truth must be identical. But the origin of each is different; their histories are dissimilar. The institution of Freemasonry preceded the advent of Christianity. Its symbols and its legends are derived from the Solomonic temple, and from the people even anterior to that. Its religion comes from the ancient priesthood. Its faith was that primitive one of Noah and his immediate descendants. If Masonry were simply a Christian institution, the Jew and the Moslem, the Brahmin and the Buddhist, could not conscientiously partake of its illumination; but its universality is its boast. In its language citizens of every nation may converse; at its altar men of all religions may kneel; to its creed disciples of every faith may subscribe.

Yet it cannot be denied, that since the advent of Christianity a Christian element has been almost imperceptibly infused into the Masonic system, at least among Christian Masons. This has been a necessity; for it is the tendency of every predominant religion to pervade with its influences all that surrounds it, or is about it, whether religious, political, or social. This arises from a need of the human heart. To the man deeply imbued with the spirit of his religion there is an almost unconscious desire to accommodate and adapt all the business and the amusements of life, the labors and the employments of his every-day existence, to the indwelling faith of his soul.

The Christian Mason, therefore, while acknowledging and justly appreciating the great doctrines taught in Masonry, and while grateful that these doctrines were preserved in the bosom of his ancient order at a time when they were unknown to the multitudes of the surrounding nations, is still anxious to give to them a Christian character, to invest them, in some measure, with the peculiarities of his own creed, and to bring the interpretation of their symbolism more nearly home to his own religious sentiments.

The feeling is an instinctive one, belonging to the noblest aspirations of our human nature; and hence we find Christian Masonic writers indulging in it almost to an unwarrantable excess, and by the extent of their sectarian interpretations materially affecting the cosmopolitan character of the institution.

This tendency to Christianization has, in some instances, been so universal, and has prevailed for so long a period, that certain symbols and myths have been, in this way, so deeply and thoroughly imbued with the Christian element as to leave those who have not penetrated into the cause of this peculiarity, in doubt whether they should attribute to the symbol an ancient or a modern and Christian origin.

As an illustration of the idea here advanced, and as a remarkable example of the result of a gradually Christianized interpretation of a Masonic symbol, I will refer to the subordinate myth (subordinate, I mean, to the great legend of the Builder), which relates the circumstances connected with the grave upon “the brow of a small hill near Mount Moriah. ”

Now, the myth or legend of a grave is a legitimate deduction from the symbolism of the ancient Spurious Masonry. It is the analogue of the Pastos, Couch, or Coffin, which was to be found in the ritual of all the pagan Mysteries. In all these initiations, the aspirant was placed in a cell or upon a couch, in darkness, and for a period varying, in the different rites, from the three days of the Grecian Mysteries to the fifty of the Persian. This cell or couch, technically called the “pastos,” was adopted as a symbol of the being whose death and resurrection or apotheosis, was represented in the legend.

The learned Faber says that this ceremony was doubtless the same as the descent into Hades,[172] and that, when the aspirant entered into the mystic cell, he was directed to lay himself down upon the bed which shadowed out the tomb of the Great Father, or Noah, to whom, it will be recollected, that Faber refers all the ancient rites. “While stretched upon the holy couch,” he continues to remark, “in imitation of his figurative deceased prototype, he was said to be wrapped in the deep sleep of death. His resurrection from the bed was his restoration to life or his regeneration into a new world.”

Now, it is easy to see how readily such a symbolism would be seized by the Temple Masons, and appropriated at once to the grave at the brow of the hill. At first, the interpretation, like that from which it had been derived, would be cosmopolitan; it would fit exactly to the general dogmas of the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul.

But on the advent of Christianity, the spirit of the new religion being infused into the old masonic system, the whole symbolism of the grave was affected by it. The same interpretation of a resurrection or restoration to life, derived from the ancient “pastos,” was, it is true, preserved; but the facts that Christ himself had come to promulgate to the multitudes the same consoling dogma, and that Mount Calvary, “the place of a skull,” was the spot where the Redeemer, by his own death and resurrection, had testified the truth of the doctrine, at once suggested to the old Christian Masons the idea of Christianizing the ancient symbol.

Let us now examine briefly how that idea has been at length developed.

In the first place, it is necessary to identify the spot where the “newly-made grave” was discovered with Mount Calvary, the place of the sepulchre of Christ. This can easily be done by a very few but striking analogies, which will, I conceive, carry conviction to any thinking mind.

1. Mount Calvary was a small hill.[173]

2. It was situated in a westward direction from the temple, and near Mount Moriah.

3. It was on the direct road from Jerusalem to Joppa, and is thus the very spot where a weary brother, travelling on that road, would find it convenient to sit down to rest and refresh himself.[174]

4. It was outside the gate of the temple.

5. It has at least one cleft in the rock, or cave, which was the place which subsequently became the sepulcher of our Lord. But this coincidence needs scarcely to be insisted on, since the whole neighborhood abounds in rocky clefts, which meet at once the conditions of the Masonic legend.

But to bring this analogical reasoning before the mind in a more expressive mode, it may be observed that if a party of persons were to start forth from the temple at Jerusalem, and travel in a westward direction towards the port of Joppa, Mount Calvary would be the first hill met with; and as it may possibly have been used as a place of sepulture, which its name of Golgotha[175] seems to import, we may suppose it to have been the very spot alluded to in the Third Degree, as the place where the craftsmen, on their way to Joppa, discovered the evergreen acacia.

Having thus traced the analogy, let us look a little to the symbolism.

Mount Calvary has always retained an important place in the legendary history of Freemasonry, and there are many traditions connected with it that are highly interesting in their import.

One of these traditions is, that it was the burial-place of Adam, in order, says the old legend, that where he lay, who effected the ruin of mankind, there also might the Savior of the world suffer, die, and be buried. Sir R. Torkington, who published a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1517, says that “under the Mount of Calvary is another chapel of our Blessed Lady and St. John the Evangelist that was called Golgotha; and there, right under the mortise of the cross, was found the head of our forefather, Adam.” [176] Golgotha, it will be remembered, means, in Hebrew, “the place of a skull;” and there may be some connection between this tradition and the name of Golgotha, by which the Evangelists inform us, that in the time of Christ Mount Calvary was known. Calvary, or Calvaria, has the same signification in Latin.

Another tradition states, that it was in the bowels of Mount Calvary that Enoch erected his nine-arched vault, and deposited on the foundation-stone of Masonry that Ineffable Name, whose investigation, as a symbol of divine truth, is the great object of Speculative Masonry.

A third tradition details the subsequent discovery of Enoch’s deposit by King Solomon, whilst making excavations in Mount Calvary, during the building of the temple.

On this hallowed spot was Christ the Redeemer slain and buried. It was there that, rising on the third day from his sepulcher, he gave, by that act, the demonstrative evidence of the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul.

And it was on this spot that the same great lesson was taught in Masonry–the same sublime truth–the development of which evidently forms the design of the Third or Master Mason’s degree.

There is in these analogies a sublime beauty as well as a wonderful coincidence between the two systems of Masonry and Christianity, that must, at an early period, have attracted the attention of the Christian Masons.

Mount Calvary is consecrated to the Christian as the place where his crucified Lord gave the last great proof of the second life, and fully established the doctrine of the resurrection which he had come to teach. It was the sepulcher of him

“Who captive led captivity,

Who robbed the grave of victory,

And took the sting from death.”

It is consecrated to the Mason, also, as the scene of the euresis, the place of the discovery, where the same consoling doctrines of the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul are shadowed forth in profoundly symbolic forms.

These great truths constitute the very essence of Christianity, in which it differs from and excels all religious systems that preceded it; they constitute, also, the end, aim, and object of all Freemasonry, but more especially that of the Third Degree, whose peculiar legend, symbolically considered, teaches nothing more nor less than that there is an immortal and better part within us, which, as an emanation from that divine spirit which pervades all nature, can never die.

The identification of the spot on which this divine truth was promulgated in both systems–the Christian and the Masonic–affords an admirable illustration of the readiness with which the religious spirit of the former may be infused into the symbolism of the latter. And hence Hutchinson, thoroughly imbued with these Christian views of Masonry, has called the Master Mason’s order a Christian degree, and thus Christianize the whole symbolism of its mythical history.

“The Great Father of all, commiserating the miseries of the world, sent his only Son, who was innocence itself, to teach the doctrine of salvation–by whom man was raised from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness–from the tomb of corruption unto the chamber of hope-from the darkness of despair to the celestial beams of faith; and not only working for us this redemption, but making with us the covenant of regeneration; whence we are become the children of the Divinity, and inheritors of the realms of heaven.

“We, Masons, describing the deplorable estate of religion under the Jewish law, speak in figures: ‘Her tomb was in the rubbish and filth cast forth of the temple, and acacia wove its branches over her monuments;’ akakia being the Greek word for innocence, or being free from sin; implying that the sins and corruptions of the old law, and devotees of the Jewish altar, had hid Religion from those who sought her, and she was only to be found where innocence survived, and under the banner of the Divine Lamb, and, as to ourselves, professing that we were to be distinguished by our Acacy, or as true Acacians in our religious faiths and tenets.

“The acquisition of the doctrine of redemption is expressed in the typical character of Huramen (I have found it.– Greek), and by the applications of that name with Masons, it is implied that we have discovered the knowledge of God and his salvation, and have been redeemed from the death of sin and the sepulcher of pollution and unrighteousness.

“Thus the Master Mason represents a man, under the Christian doctrine, saved from the grave of iniquity and raised to the faith of salvation.”

It is in this way that Masonry has, by a sort of inevitable process (when we look to the religious sentiment of the interpreters), been Christianized by some of the most illustrious and learned writers on Masonic science–by such able men as Hutchinson and Oliver in England, and by Harris, by Scott, by Salem Towne, and by several others in this country.

I do not object to the system when the interpretation is not strained, but is plausible, consistent, and productive of the same results as in the instance of Mount Calvary: all that I contend for is, that such interpretations are modern, and that they do not belong to, although they may often be deduced from, the ancient system.

But the true ancient interpretation of the legend,–the universal Masonic one,–for all countries and all ages, undoubtedly was, that the fate of the temple builder is but figurative of the pilgrimage of man on earth, through trials and temptations, through sin and sorrow, until his eventual fall beneath the blow of death and his final and glorious resurrection to another and an eternal life.

Previous – XXVII – The Legend of the Winding Stairs
Next – XXIX – The Sprig of Acacia

The compound character of a speculative science and an operative art, which the Masonic institution assumed at the building of King Solomon’s temple, in consequence of the union, at that era, of the Pure Freemasonry of the Noachidae[140] with the Spurious Freemasonry of the Tyrian workmen, has supplied it with two distinct kinds of symbols–the mythical, or legendary, and the material; but these are so thoroughly united in object and design, that it is impossible to appreciate the one without an investigation of the other.

Thus, by way of illustration, it may be observed, that the temple itself has been adopted as a material symbol of the world (as I have already shown in former articles), while the legendary history of the fate of its builder is a mythical symbol of man’s destiny in the world. Whatever is visible or tangible to the senses in our types and emblems–such as the implements of operative masonry, the furniture and ornaments of a lodge, or the ladder of seven steps–is a material symbol; while whatever derives its existence from tradition, and presents itself in the form of an allegory or legend, is a mythical symbol. Hiram the Builder, therefore, and all that refers to the legend of his connection with the temple, and his fate,–such as the sprig of acacia, the hill near Mount Moriah, and the lost word,–are to be considered as belonging to the class of mythical or legendary symbols.

And this division is not arbitrary, but depends on the nature of the types and the aspect in which they present themselves to our view.

Thus the sprig of acacia, although it is material, visible, and tangible, is, nevertheless, not to be treated as a material symbol; for, as it derives all its significance from its intimate connection with the legend of Hiram Abif, which is a mythical symbol, it cannot, without a violent and inexpedient disruption, be separated from the same class. For the same reason, the small hill near Mount Moriah, the search of the twelve Fellow Crafts, and the whole train of circumstances connected with the lost word, are to be viewed simply as mythical or legendary, and not as material symbols.

These legends of Freemasonry constitute a considerable and a very important part of its ritual. Without them, the most valuable portions of the Masonic as a scientific system would cease to exist. It is, in fact, in the traditions and legends of Freemasonry, more, even, than in its material symbols, that we are to find the deep religious instruction which the institution is intended to inculcate. It must be remembered that Freemasonry has been defined to be “a system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.” Symbols, then, alone, do not constitute the whole of the system: allegory comes in for its share; and this allegory, which veils the divine truths of masonry, is presented to the neophyte in the various legends which have been traditionally preserved in the order.

The close connection, at least in design and method of execution, between the institution of Freemasonry and the ancient Mysteries, which were largely imbued with the mythical character of the ancient religions, led, undoubtedly, to the introduction of the same mythical character into the Masonic system.

So general, indeed, was the diffusion of the myth or legend among the philosophical, historical, and religious systems of antiquity, that Heyne remarks, on this subject, that all the history and philosophy of the ancients proceeded from myths.[141]

The word myth, from the Greek [Greek: my~thos], a story, in its original acceptation, signified simply a statement or narrative of an event, without any necessary implication of truth or falsehood; but, as the word is now used, it conveys the idea of a personal narrative of remote date, which, although not necessarily untrue, is certified only by the internal evidence of the tradition itself.[142]

Creuzer, in his “Symbolik,” says that myths and symbols were derived, on the one hand, from the helpless condition and the poor and scanty beginnings of religious knowledge among the ancient peoples, and on the other, from the benevolent designs of the priests educated in the East, or of Eastern origin, to form them to a purer and higher knowledge.

But the observations of that profoundly philosophical historian, Mr. Grote, give so correct a view of the probable origin of this universality of the mythical element in all the ancient religions, and are, withal, so appropriate to the subject of Masonic legends which I am now about to discuss, that I cannot justly refrain from a liberal quotation of his remarks.

“The allegorical interpretation of the myths,” he says, “has been, by several learned investigators, especially by Creuzer, connected with the hypothesis of an ancient and highly-instructed body of priests, having their origin either in Egypt or the East, and communicating to the rude and barbarous Greeks religious, physical, and historical knowledge, under the veil of symbols. At a time (we are told) when language was yet in its infancy, visible symbols were the most vivid means of acting upon the minds of ignorant hearers. The next step was to pass to symbolical language and expressions; for a plain and literal exposition, even if understood at all, would at least have been listened to with indifference, as not corresponding with any mental demand. In such allegorizing way, then, the early priests set forth their doctrines respecting God, nature, and humanity,–a refined monotheism and theological philosophy,–and to this purpose the earliest myths were turned. But another class of myths, more popular and more captivating, grew up under the hands of the poets–myths purely epical, and descriptive of real or supposed past events. The allegorical myths, being taken up by the poets, insensibly became confounded in the same category with the purely narrative myths; the matter symbolized was no longer thought of, while the symbolizing words came to be construed in their own literal meaning, and the basis of the early allegory, thus lost among the general public, was only preserved as a secret among various religious fraternities, composed of members allied together by initiation in certain mystical ceremonies, and administered by hereditary families of presiding priests.

“In the Orphic and Bacchic sects, in the Eleusinian and Samothracian Mysteries, was thus treasured up the secret doctrine of the old theological and philosophical myths, which had once constituted the primitive legendary stock of Greece in the hands of the original priesthood and in the ages anterior to Homer. Persons who had gone through the preliminary ceremonies of initiation were permitted at length to hear, though under strict obligation of secrecy, this ancient religion and cosmogony doctrine, revealing the destination of man and the certainty of posthumous rewards and punishments, all disengaged from the corruptions of poets, as well as from the symbols and allegories under which they still remained buried in the eyes of the vulgar. The Mysteries of Greece were thus traced up to the earliest ages, and represented as the only faithful depositaries of that purer theology and physics which had been originally communicated, though under the unavoidable inconvenience of a symbolical expression, by an enlightened priesthood, coming from abroad, to the then rude barbarians of the country.” [143]

In this long but interesting extract we find not only a philosophical account of the origin and design of the ancient myths, but a fair synopsis of all that can be taught in relation to the symbolical construction of Freemasonry, as one of the depositaries of a mythical theology.

The myths of Masonry, at first perhaps nothing more than the simple traditions of the Pure Freemasonry of the antediluvian system, having been corrupted and misunderstood in the separation of the races, were again purified, and adapted to the inculcation of truth, at first by the disciples of the Spurious Freemasonry, and then, more fully and perfectly, in the development of that system which we now practice. And if there be any leaven of error still remaining in the interpretation of our Masonic myths, we must seek to disengage them from the corruptions with which they have been invested by ignorance and by misinterpretation. We must give to them their true significance, and trace them back to those ancient doctrines and faith whence the ideas which they are intended to embody were derived.

The myths or legends which present themselves to our attention in the course of a complete study of the symbolic system of Freemasonry may be considered as divided into three classes:

1. The historical myth.
2. The philosophical myth.
3. The mythical history.

And these three classes may be defined as follows:

1. The myth may be engaged in the transmission of a narrative of early deeds and events, having a foundation in truth, which truth, however, has been greatly distorted and perverted by the omission or introduction of circumstances and personages, and then it constitutes the historical myth.
2. Or it may have been invented and adopted as the medium of enunciating a particular thought, or of inculcating a certain doctrine, when it becomes a philosophical myth.
3. Or, lastly, the truthful elements of actual history may greatly predominate over the fictitious and invented materials of the myth, and the narrative may be, in the main, made up of facts, with a slight coloring of imagination, when it forms a mythical history.[144]

These form the three divisions of the legend or myth (for I am not disposed, on the present occasion, like some of the German mythological writers, to make a distinction between the two words[145]); and to one of these three divisions we must appropriate every legend which belongs to the mythical symbolism of Freemasonry.

These masonic myths partake, in their general character, of the nature of the myths which constituted the foundation of the ancient religions, as they have just been described in the language of Mr. Grote. Of these latter myths, Müller[146] says that “their source is to be found, for the most part, in oral tradition,” and that the real and the ideal–that is to say, the facts of history and the inventions of imagination–concurred, by their union and reciprocal fusion, in producing the myth.

Those are the very principles that govern the construction of the masonic myths or legends. These, too, owe their existence entirely to oral tradition, and are made up, as I have just observed, of a due admixture of the real and the ideal–the true and the false–the facts of history and the inventions of allegory.

Dr. Oliver remarks that “the first series of historical facts, after the fall of man, must necessarily have been traditional, and transmitted from father to son by oral communication.” [147] The same system, adopted in all the Mysteries, has been continued in the masonic institution; and all the esoteric instructions contained in the legends of Freemasonry are forbidden to be written, and can be communicated only in the oral intercourse of Freemasons with each other.[148]

De Wette, in his Criticism on the Mosaic History, lays down the test by which a myth is to be distinguished from a strictly historical narrative, as follows, namely: that the myth must owe its origin to the intention of the inventor not to satisfy the natural thirst for historical truth by a simple narration of facts, but rather to delight or touch the feelings, or to illustrate some philosophical or religious truth.

This definition precisely fits the character of the myths of Masonry. Take, for instance, the legend of the master’s degree, or the myth of Hiram Abif. As “a simple narration of facts,” it is of no great value–certainly not of value commensurate with the labor that has been engaged in its transmission. Its invention–by which is meant, not the invention or imagination of all the incidents of which it is composed, for there are abundant materials of the true and real in its details, but its invention or composition in the form of a myth by the addition of some features, the suppression of others, and the general arrangement of the whole–was not intended to add a single item to the great mass of history, but altogether, as De Wette says, “to illustrate a philosophical or religious truth,” which truth, it is hardly necessary for me to say, is the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

It must be evident, from all that has been said respecting the analogy in origin and design between the masonic and the ancient religious myths, that no one acquainted with the true science of this subject can, for a moment, contend that all the legends and traditions of the order are, to the very letter, historical facts. All that can be claimed for them is, that in some there is simply a substratum of history, the edifice constructed on this foundation being purely inventive, to serve us a medium for inculcating some religious truth; in others, nothing more than an idea to which the legend or myth is indebted for its existence, and of which it is, as a symbol, the exponent; and in others, again, a great deal of truthful narrative, more or less intermixed with fiction, but the historical always predominating.

Thus there is a legend, contained in some of our old records, which states that Euclid was a distinguished Mason, and that he introduced Masonry among the Egyptians.[149] Now, it is not at all necessary to the orthodoxy of a Mason’s creed that he should literally believe that Euclid, the great geometrician, was really a Freemason, and that the ancient Egyptians were indebted to him for the establishment of the institution among them. Indeed, the palpable anachronism in the legend which makes Euclid the contemporary of Abraham necessarily prohibits any such belief, and shows that the whole story is a sheer invention. The intelligent Mason, however, will not wholly reject the legend, as ridiculous or absurd; but, with a due sense of the nature and design of our system of symbolism, will rather accept it as what, in the classification laid down on a preceding page, would be called “a philosophical myth”–an ingenious method of conveying, symbolically, a masonic truth.

Euclid is here very appropriately used as a type of geometry, that science of which he was so eminent a teacher, and the myth or legend then symbolizes the fact that there was in Egypt a close connection between that science and the great moral and religious system, which was among the Egyptians, as well as other ancient nations, what Freemasonry is in the present day–a secret institution, established for the inculcation of the same principles, and inculcating them in the same symbolic manner. So interpreted, this legend corresponds to all the developments of Egyptian history, which teach us how close a connection existed in that country between the religious and scientific systems. Thus Kenrick tells us, that “when we read of foreigners [in Egypt] being obliged to submit to painful and tedious ceremonies of initiation, it was not that they might learn the secret meaning of the rites of Osiris or Isis, but that they might partake of the knowledge of astronomy, physic, geometry, and theology.” [150]

Another illustration will be found in the myth or legend of the Winding Stairs, by which the Fellow Crafts are said to have ascended to the middle chamber to receive their wages. Now, this myth, taken in its literal sense, is, in all its parts, opposed to history and probability. As a myth, it finds its origin in the fact that there was a place in the temple called the “Middle Chamber,” and that there were “winding stairs” by which it was reached; for we read, in the First Book of Kings, that “they went up with winding stairs into the middle chamber.” [151] But we have no historical evidence that the stairs were of the construction, or that the chamber was used for the purpose, indicated in the mythical narrative, as it is set forth in the ritual of the second degree. The whole legend is, in fact, an historical myth, in which the mystic number of the steps, the process of passing to the chamber, and the wages there received, are inventions added to or ingrafted on the fundamental history contained in the sixth chapter of Kings, to inculcate important symbolic instruction relative to the principles of the order. These lessons might, it is true, have been inculcated in a dry, didactic form; but the allegorical and mythical method adopted tends to make a stronger and deeper impression on the mind, and at the same time serves more closely to connect the institution of Masonry with the ancient temple.

Again: the myth which traces the origin of the institution of Freemasonry to the beginning of the world, making its commencement coeval with the creation,–a myth which is, even at this day, ignorantly interpreted, by some, as an historical fact, and the reference to which is still preserved in the date of “anno lucis,” which is affixed to all masonic documents,–is but a philosophical myth, symbolizing the idea which analogically connects the creation of physical light in the universe with the birth of masonic or spiritual and intellectual light in the candidate. The one is the type of the other. When, therefore, Preston says that “from the commencement of the world we may trace the foundation of Masonry,” and when he goes on to assert that “ever since symmetry began, and harmony displayed her charms, our order has had a being,” we are not to suppose that Preston intended to teach that a masonic lodge was held in the Garden of Eden. Such a supposition would justly subject us to the ridicule of every intelligent person. The only idea intended to be conveyed is this: that the principles of Freemasonry, which, indeed, are entirely independent of any special organization which it may have as a society, are coeval with the existence of the world; that when God said, “Let there be light,” the material light thus produced was an antitype of that spiritual light that must burst upon the mind of every candidate when his intellectual world, theretofore “without form and void,” becomes adorned and peopled with the living thoughts and divine principles which constitute the great system of Speculative Masonry, and when the spirit of the institution, brooding over the vast deep of his mental chaos, shall, from intellectual darkness, bring forth intellectual light.[152]

In the legends of the Master’s degree and of the Royal Arch there is a commingling of the historical myth and the mythical history, so that profound judgment is often required to discriminate these differing elements. As, for example, the legend of the third degree is, in some of its details, undoubtedly mythical–in others, just as undoubtedly historical. The difficulty, however, of separating the one from the other, and of distinguishing the fact from the fiction, has necessarily produced a difference of opinion on the subject among masonic writers. Hutchinson, and, after him, Oliver, think the whole legend an allegory or philosophical myth. I am inclined, with Anderson and the earlier writers, to suppose it a mythical history. In the Royal Arch degree, the legend of the rebuilding of the temple is clearly historical; but there are so many accompanying circumstances, which are uncertified, except by oral tradition, as to give to the entire narrative the appearance of a mythical history. The particular legend of the three weary sojourners is undoubtedly a myth, and perhaps merely a philosophical one, or the enunciation of an idea–namely, the reward of successful perseverance, through all dangers, in the search for divine truth.

“To form symbols and to interpret symbols,” says the learned Creuzer, “were the main occupation of the ancient priesthood.” Upon the studious Mason the same task of interpretation devolves. He who desires properly to appreciate the profound wisdom of the institution of which he is the disciple, must not be content, with uninquiring credulity, to accept all the traditions that are imparted to him as veritable histories; nor yet, with unphilosophic incredulity, to reject them in a mass, as fabulous inventions. In these extremes there is equal error. “The myth,” says Hermann, “is the representation of an idea.” It is for that idea that the student must search in the myths of Masonry. Beneath every one of them there is something richer and more spiritual than the mere narrative.[153] This spiritual essence he must learn to extract from the ore in which, like a precious metal, it lies embedded. It is this that constitutes the true value of Freemasonry. Without its symbols, and its myths or legends, and the ideas and conceptions which lie at the bottom of them, the time, the labor, and the expense incurred in perpetuating the institution, would be thrown away. Without them, it would be a “vain and empty show.” Its grips and signs are worth nothing, except for social purposes, as mere means of recognition. So, too, would be its words, were it not that they are, for the most part, symbolic. Its social habits and its charities are but incidental points in its constitution–of themselves good, it is true, but capable of being attained in a simpler way. Its true value, as a science, consists in its symbolism–in the great lessons of divine truth which it teaches, and in the admirable manner in which it accomplishes that teaching. Every one, therefore, who desires to be a skillful Mason, must not suppose that the task is accomplished by a perfect knowledge of the mere phraseology of the ritual, by a readiness in opening and closing a lodge, nor by an off-hand capacity to confer degrees. All these are good in their places, but without the internal meaning they are but mere child’s play. He must study the myths, the traditions, and the symbols of the order, and learn their true interpretation; for this alone constitutes the science and the philosophy–the end, aim, and design of Speculative Masonry.

Previous – XXV – The Ineffable Name
Next – XXVII – The Legend of the Winding Stairs

Another important symbol is the Ineffable Name, with which the series of ritualistic symbols will be concluded.

The Tetragrammaton,[122] or Ineffable Word,–the Incommunicable Name,–is a symbol–for rightly-considered it is nothing more than a symbol-that has more than any other (except, perhaps, the symbols connected with sun-worship), pervaded the rites of antiquity. I know, indeed, of no system of ancient initiation in which it has not some prominent form and place.

But as it was, perhaps, the earliest symbol which was corrupted by the spurious Freemasonry of the pagans, in their secession from the primitive system of the patriarchs and ancient priesthood, it will be most expedient for the thorough discussion of the subject which is proposed in the present paper, that we should begin the investigation with an inquiry into the nature of the symbol among the Israelites.

That name of God, which we, at a venture, pronounce Jehovah,–although whether this is, or is not, the true pronunciation can now never be authoritatively settled,–was ever held by the Jews in the most profound veneration. They derived its origin from the immediate inspiration of the Almighty, who communicated it to Moses as his especial appellation, to be used only by his chosen people; and this communication was made at the Burning Bush, when he said to him, “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this [Jehovah] is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.” [123] And at a subsequent period he still more emphatically declared this to be his peculiar name: “I am  Jehovah ; and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of El Shaddai; but by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them.” [124]

It will be perceived that I have not here followed precisely the somewhat unsatisfactory version of King James’s Bible, which, by translating or anglicizing one name, and not the other, leaves the whole passage less intelligible and impressive than it should be. I have retained the original Hebrew for both names. El Shaddai, “the Almighty One,” was the name by which he had been heretofore known to the preceding patriarchs; in its meaning it was analogous to Elohim, who is described in the first chapter of Genesis as creating the world. But his name of Jehovah was now for the first time to be communicated to his people.

Ushered to their notice with all the solemnity and religious consecration of these scenes and events, this name of God became invested among the Israelites with the profoundest veneration and awe. To add to this mysticism, the Cabalists, by the change of a single letter, read the passage, “This is my name forever,” or, as it is in the original, Zeh shemi l’olam, as if written Zeh shemi l’alam, that is to say, “This is my name to be concealed.”

This interpretation, although founded on a blunder, and in all probability an intentional one, soon became a precept, and has been strictly obeyed to this day.[125] The word Jehovah is never pronounced by a pious Jew, who, whenever he meets with it in Scripture, substitutes for it the word Adonai or Lord–a practice which has been followed by the translators of the common English version of the Bible with almost Jewish scrupulosity, the word “Jehovah” in the original being invariably translated by the word “Lord.” [126] The pronunciation of the word, being thus abandoned, became ultimately lost, as, by the peculiar construction of the Hebrew language, which is entirely without vowels, the letters, being all consonants, can give no possible indication, to one who has not heard it before, of the true pronunciation of any given word.

To make this subject plainer to the reader who is unacquainted with the Hebrew, I will venture to furnish an explanation which will, perhaps, be intelligible.

The Hebrew alphabet consists entirely of consonants, the vowel sounds having always been inserted orally, and never marked in writing until the “vowel points,” as they are called, were invented by the Masorites, some six centuries after the Christian era. As the vowel sounds were originally supplied by the reader, while reading, from a knowledge which he had previously received, by means of oral instruction, of the proper pronunciation of the word, he was necessarily unable to pronounce any word which had never before been uttered in his presence. As we know that Dr. is to be pronounced Doctor, and Mr. Mister, because we have always heard those peculiar combinations of letters thus enunciated, and not because the letters themselves give any such sound; so the Jew knew from instruction and constant practice, and not from the power of the letters, how the consonants in the different words in daily use were to be vocalized. But as the four letters which compose the word Jehovah, as we now call it, were never pronounced in his presence, but were made to represent another word, Adonai, which was substituted for it, and as the combination of these four consonants would give no more indication for any sort of enunciation than the combinations Dr. or Mr. give in our language, the Jew, being ignorant of what vocal sounds were to be supplied, was unable to pronounce the word, so that its true pronunciation was in time lost to the masses of the people.

There was one person, however, who, it is said, was in possession of the proper sound of the letters and the true pronunciation of the word. This was the high priest, who, receiving it from his predecessor, preserved the recollection of the sound by pronouncing it three times, once a year, on the day of the atonement, when he entered the holy of holies of the tabernacle or the temple.

If the traditions of Masonry on this subject are correct, the kings, after the establishment of the monarchy, must have participated in this privilege; for Solomon is said to have been in possession of the word, and to have communicated it to his two colleagues at the building of the temple.

This is the word which, from the number of its letters, was called the “tetragrammaton,” or four-lettered name, and, from its sacred inviolability, the “ineffable” or unutterable name.

The Cabalists and Talmudists have enveloped it in a host of mystical superstitions, most of which are as absurd as they are incredible, but all of them tending to show the great veneration that has always been paid to it.[127] Thus they say that it is possessed of unlimited powers, and that he who pronounces it shakes heaven and earth, and inspires the very angels with terror and astonishment.

The Rabbins called it “shem hamphorash,” that is to say, “the name that is declaratory,” and they say that David found it engraved on a stone while digging into the earth.

The triangle itself being a symbol of Deity.

This symbol of the name of God is peculiarly worthy of our attention, since not only is the triangle to be found in many of the ancient religions occupying the same position, but the whole symbol itself is undoubtedly the origin of that hieroglyphic exhibited in the second degree of Masonry, where, the explanation of the symbolism being the same, the form of it, as far as it respects the letter, has only been anglicized by modern innovators. In my own opinion, the letter G, which is used in the Fellow Craft’s degree, should never have been permitted to intrude into Masonry; it presents an instance of absurd anachronism, which would never have occurred if the original Hebrew symbol had been retained. But being there now, without the possibility of removal, we have only to remember that it is in fact but the symbol of a symbol.[128]

Widely spread, as I have already said, was this reverence for the name of God; and, consequently, its symbolism, in some peculiar form, is to be found in all the ancient rites.

Thus the Ineffable Name itself, of which we have been discoursing, is said to have been preserved in its true pronunciation by the Essenes, who, in their secret rites, communicated it to each other only in a whisper, and in such form, that while its component parts were known, they were so separated as to make the whole word a mystery.

Among the Egyptians, whose connection with the Hebrews was more immediate than that of any other people, and where, consequently, there was a greater similarity of rites, the same sacred name is said to have been used as a password, for the purpose of gaining admission to their Mysteries.

In the Brahminic Mysteries of Hindostan the ceremony of initiation was terminated by intrusting the aspirant with the sacred, triliteral name, which was AUM, the three letters of which were symbolic of the creative, preservative, and destructive principles of the Supreme Deity, personified in the three manifestations of Bramah, Siva, and Vishnu. This word was forbidden to be pronounced aloud. It was to be the subject of silent meditation to the pious Hindoo.

In the rites of Persia an ineffable name was also communicated to the candidate after his initiation.[129] Mithras, the principal divinity in these rites, who took the place of the Hebrew Jehovah, and represented the sun, had this peculiarity in his name–that the numeral value of the letters of which it was composed amounted to precisely 365, the number of days which constitute a revolution of the earth around the sun, or, as they then supposed, of the sun around the earth.

In the Mysteries introduced by Pythagoras into Greece we again find the ineffable name of the Hebrews, obtained doubtless by the Samian Sage during his visit to Babylon.[130] The symbol adopted by him to express it was, however, somewhat different, being ten points distributed in the form of a triangle, each side containing four points, as in the annexed figure.

.
.   .
.   .   .
.   .   .   .

The apex of the triangle was consequently a single point then followed below two others, then three; and lastly, the base consisted of four. These points were, by the number in each rank, intended, according to the Pythagorean system, to denote respectively the monad, or active principle of nature; the duad, or passive principle; the triad, or world emanating from their union; and the quaterniad, or intellectual science; the whole number of points amounting to ten, the symbol of perfection and consummation. This figure was called by Pythagoras the tetractys–a word equivalent in signification to the tetragrammaton; and it was deemed so sacred that on it the oath of secrecy and fidelity was administered to the aspirants in the Pythagorean rites.[131]

Among the Scandinavians, as among the Jewish Cabalists, the Supreme God who was made known in their mysteries had twelve names, of which the principal and most sacred one was Alfader, the Universal Father.

Among the Druids, the sacred name of God was Hu [132]–a name which, although it is supposed, by Bryant, to have been intended by them for Noah, will be recognized as one of the modifications of the Hebrew tetragrammaton. It is, in fact, the masculine pronoun in Hebrew, and may be considered as the symbolization of the male or generative principle in nature–a sort of modification of the system of Phallic worship.

This sacred name among the Druids reminds me of what is the latest, and undoubtedly the most philosophical, speculation on the true meaning, as well as pronunciation, of the ineffable tetragrammaton. It is from the ingenious mind of the celebrated Lanci; and I have already, in another work, given it to the public as I received it from his pupil, and my friend, Mr. Gliddon, the distinguished archaeologist. But the results are too curious to be omitted whenever the tetragrammaton is discussed.

Elsewhere I have very fully alluded to the prevailing sentiment among the ancients, that the Supreme Deity was bisexual, or hermaphrodite, including in the essence of his being the male and female principles, the generative and prolific powers of nature. This was the universal doctrine in all the ancient religions, and was very naturally developed in the symbol of the phallus and cteis among the Greeks, and in the corresponding one of the lingam and yoni among the Orientalists; from which symbols the Masonic point within a circle is a legitimate derivation. They all taught that God, the Creator, was both male and female.

Now, this theory is undoubtedly unobjectionable on the score of orthodoxy, if we view it in the spiritual sense, in which its first propounder must necessarily have intended it to be presented to the mind, and not in the gross, sensual meaning in which it was subsequently received. For, taking the word sex, not in its ordinary and colloquial signification, as denoting the indication of a particular physical organization, but in that purely philosophical one which alone can be used in such a connection, and which simply signifies the mere manifestation of a power, it is not to be denied that the Supreme Being must possess in himself, and in himself alone, both a generative and a prolific power. This idea, which was so extensively prevalent among all the nations of antiquity,[133] has also been traced in the tetragrammaton, or name of Jehovah, with singular ingenuity, by Lanci; and, what is almost equally as interesting, he has, by this discovery, been enabled to demonstrate what was, in all probability, the true pronunciation of the word.

In giving the details of this philological discovery, I will endeavor to make it as comprehensible as it can be made to those who are not critically acquainted with the construction of the Hebrew language; those who are will at once appreciate its peculiar character, and will excuse the explanatory details, of course unnecessary to them.

The ineffable name, the tetragrammaton, the shem hamphorash,–for it is known by all these appellations,–consists of four letters, yod, heh, vau, and heh, forming the word [Hebrew: yod-heh-vau-heh]. This word, of course, in accordance with the genius of the Hebrew language, is read, as we would say, backward, or from right to left, beginning with yod, and ending with heh.

Of these letters, the first, yod, is equivalent to the English i pronounced as e in the word machine.

The second and fourth letter, heh, is an aspirate, and has here the

sound of the English h.

And the third letter, vau, has the sound of open o.

Now, reading these four letters, [Hebrew: yod], or I, [Hebrew: heh], or H, [Hebrew: vau], or O, and [Hebrew: heh], or H, as the Hebrew requires, from right to left, we have the word [Hebrew: yod-heh-vau-heh], equivalent in English to IH-OH, which is really as near to the pronunciation as we can well come, notwithstanding it forms neither of the seven ways in which the word is said to have been pronounced, at different times, by the patriarchs.[134]

But, thus pronounced, the word gives us no meaning, for there is no such word in Hebrew as ihoh; and, as all the Hebrew names were significative of something, it is but fair to conclude that this was not the original pronunciation, and that we must look for another which will give a meaning to the word. Now, Lanci proceeds to the discovery of this true pronunciation, as follows:–

In the Cabala, a hidden meaning is often deduced from a word by transposing or reversing its letters, and it was in this way that the Cabalists concealed many of their mysteries.

Now, to reverse a word in English is to read its letters from right to left, because our normal mode of reading is from left to right. But in Hebrew the contrary rule takes place, for there the normal mode of reading is from right to left; and therefore, to reverse the reading of a word, is to read it from left to right.

Lanci applied this cabalistic mode to the tetragrammaton, when he found that IH-OH, being read reversely, makes the word HO-HI.[135]

But in Hebrew, ho is the masculine pronoun, equivalent to the English he; and hi is the feminine pronoun, equivalent to she; and therefore the word HO-HI, literally translated, is equivalent to the English compound HE-SHE; that is to say, the Ineffable Name of God in Hebrew, being read cabalistically, includes within itself the male and female principle, the generative and prolific energy of creation; and here we have, again, the widely-spread symbolism of the phallus and the cteis, the lingam and the yoni, or their equivalent, the point within a circle, and another pregnant proof of the connection between Freemasonry and the ancient Mysteries.

And here, perhaps, we may begin to find some meaning for the hitherto incomprehensible passage in Genesis (i. 27): “So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” They could not have been “in the image” of IHOH, if they had not been “male and female.”

The Cabalists have exhausted their ingenuity and imagination in speculations on this sacred name, and some of their fancies are really sufficiently interesting to repay an investigation. Sufficient, however, has been here said to account for the important position that it occupies in the Masonic system, and to enable us to appreciate the symbols by which it has been represented.

The great reverence, or indeed the superstitious veneration, entertained by the ancients for the name of the Supreme Being, led them to express it rather in symbols or hieroglyphics than in any word at length.

We know, for instance, from the recent researches of the archaeologists, that in all the documents of the ancient Egyptians, written in the demotic or common character of the country, the names of the gods were invariably denoted by symbols; and I have already alluded to the different modes by which the Jews expressed the tetragrammaton. A similar practice prevailed among the other nations of antiquity. Freemasonry has adopted the same expedient, and the Grand Architect of the Universe, whom it is the usage, even in ordinary writing, to designate by the initials G.A.O.T.U., is accordingly presented to us in a variety of symbols, three of which particularly require attention. These are the letter G, the equilateral triangle, and the All-Seeing Eye.

Of the letter G I have already spoken. A letter of the English alphabet can scarcely be considered an appropriate symbol of an institution which dates its organization and refers its primitive history to a period long anterior to the origin of that language. Such a symbol is deficient in the two elements of antiquity and universality which should characterize every Masonic symbol. There can, therefore, be no doubt that, in its present form, it is a corruption of the old Hebrew symbol, the letter yod, by which the sacred name was often expressed. This letter is the initial of the word Jehovah, or Ihoh, as I have already stated, and is constantly to be met with in Hebrew writings as the symbol or abbreviator of  Jehovah, which word, it will be remembered, is never written at length. But because G is, in like manner, the initial of God, the equivalent of Jehovah, this letter has been incorrectly, and, I cannot refrain from again saying, most injudiciously, selected to supply, in modern lodges, the place of the Hebrew symbol.

Having, then, the same meaning and force as the Hebrew yod, the letter G must be considered, like its prototype, as the symbol of the life-giving and life-sustaining power of God, as manifested in the meaning of the word Jehovah, or Ihoh, the generative and prolific energy of the Creator.

The All-Seeing Eye is another, and a still more important, symbol of the same great Being. Both the Hebrews and the Egyptians appear to have derived its use from that natural inclination of figurative minds to select an organ as the symbol of the function which it is intended peculiarly to discharge. Thus the foot was often adopted as the symbol of swiftness, the arm of strength, and the hand of fidelity. On the same principle, the open eye was selected as the symbol of watchfulness, and the eye of God as the symbol of divine watchfulness and care of the universe. The use of the symbol in this sense is repeatedly to be found in the Hebrew writers. Thus the Psalmist says (Ps. xxxiv. 15), “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry,” which explains a subsequent passage (Ps. cxxi. 4), in which it is said, “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” [136]

On the same principle, the Egyptians represented Osiris, their chief deity, by the symbol of an open eye, and placed this hieroglyphic of him in all their temples. His symbolic name, on the monuments, was represented by the eye accompanying a throne, to which was sometimes added an abbreviated figure of the god, and sometimes what has been called a hatchet, but which, I consider, may as correctly be supposed to be a representation of a square.

The All-Seeing Eye may, then, be considered as a symbol of God manifested in his omnipresence–his guardian and preserving character–to which Solomon alludes in the Book of Proverbs (xv. 3), when he says, “The eyes of Jehovah are in every place, beholding (or as it might be more faithfully translated, watching) the evil and the good.” It is a symbol of the Omnipresent Deity.

The triangle is another symbol which is entitled to our consideration. There is, in fact, no other symbol which is more various in its application or more generally diffused throughout the whole system of both the Spurious and the Pure Freemasonry.

The equilateral triangle appears to have been adopted by nearly all the nations of antiquity as a symbol of the Deity.

Among the Hebrews, it has already been stated that this figure, with a yod in the centre, was used to represent the tetragrammaton, or ineffable name of God.

The Egyptians considered the equilateral triangle as the most perfect of figures, and a representative of the great principle of animated existence, each of its sides referring to one of the three departments of creation–the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral.

The symbol of universal nature among the Egyptians was the right-angled triangle, of which the perpendicular side represented Osiris, or the male principle; the base, Isis, or the female principle; and the hypotenuse, their offspring, Horus, or the world emanating from the union of both principles.

All this, of course, is nothing more nor less than the phallus and cteis, or lingam and yoni, under a different form.

The symbol of the right-angled triangle was afterwards adopted by Pythagoras when he visited the banks of the Nile; and the discovery which he is said to have made in relation to the properties of this figure, but which he really learned from the Egyptian priests, is commemorated in Masonry by the introduction of the forty-seventh problem of Euclid’s First Book among the symbols of the third degree. Here the same mystical application is supplied as in the Egyptian figure, namely, that the union of the male and female, or active and passive principles of nature has produced the world. For the geometrical proposition being that the squares of the perpendicular and base are equal to the square of the hypotenuse, they may be said to produce it in the same way as Osiris and Isis are equal to, or produce, the world.

Thus the perpendicular–Osiris, or the active, male principle-being represented by a line whose measurement is 3; and the base–Isis, or the passive, female principle–by a line whose measurement is 4; then their union, or the addition of the squares of these numbers, will produce a square whose root will be the hypotenuse, or a line whose measurement must be 5. For the square of 3 is 9, and the square of 4 is 16, and the square of 5 is 25; but 9 added to 16 is equal to 25; and thus, out of the addition, or coming together, of the squares of the perpendicular and base, arises the square of the hypotenuse, just as, out of the coming together, in the Egyptian system, of the active and passive principles, arises, or is generated, the world.

In the mediaeval history of the Christian church, the great ignorance of the people, and their inclination to a sort of materialism, led them to abandon the symbolic representations of the Deity, and to depict the Father with the form and lineaments of an aged man, many of which irreverent paintings, as far back as the twelfth century, are to be found in the religious books and edifices of Europe.[137] But, after the period of the renaissance, a better spirit and a purer taste began to pervade the artists of the church, and thenceforth the Supreme Being was represented only by his name–the tetragrammaton–inscribed within an equilateral triangle, and placed within a circle of rays. Didron, in his invaluable work on Christian Iconography, gives one of these symbols, which was carved on wood in the seventeenth century, of which I annex a copy.

But even in the earliest ages, when the Deity was painted or sculptured as a personage, the nimbus, or glory, which surrounded the head of the Father, was often made to assume a triangular form. Didron says on this subject, “A nimbus, of a triangular form, is thus seen to be the exclusive attribute of the Deity, and most frequently restricted to the Father Eternal. The other persons of the trinity sometimes wear the triangle, but only in representations of the trinity, and because the Father is with them. Still, even then, beside the Father, who has a triangle, the Son and the Holy Ghost are often drawn with a circular nimbus only.” [138]

The triangle has, in all ages and in all religions, been deemed a symbol of Deity.

The Egyptians, the Greeks, and the other nations of antiquity, considered this figure, with its three sides, as a symbol of the creative energy displayed in the active and passive, or male and female, principles, and their product, the world; the Christians referred it to their dogma of the trinity as a manifestation of the Supreme God; and the Jews and the primitive masons to the three periods of existence included in the signification of the tetragrammaton–the past, the present, and the future.

In the higher degrees of Masonry, the triangle is the most important of all symbols, and most generally assumes the name of the Delta, in allusion to the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, which is of the same form and bears that appellation.

The Delta, or mystical triangle, is generally surrounded by a circle of rays, called a “glory.” When this glory is distinct from the figure, and surrounds it in the form of a circle (as in the example just given from Didron), it is then an emblem of God’s eternal glory. When, as is most usual in the Masonic symbol, the rays emanate from the centre of the triangle, and, as it were, enshroud it in their brilliancy, it is symbolic of the Divine Light. The perverted ideas of the pagans referred these rays of light to their Sun-god and their Sabian worship.

But the true Masonic idea of this glory is, that it symbolizes that Eternal Light of Wisdom which surrounds the Supreme Architect as with a sea of glory, and from him, as a common centre, emanates to the universe of his creation, and to which the prophet Ezekiel alludes in his eloquent description of Jehovah: “And I saw as the color of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from his loins even downward, I saw, as it were, the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about.” (Chap. 1, ver. 27.)

Dante has also beautifully described this circumfused light of Deity:–

“There is in heaven a light whose goodly shine

Makes the Creator visible to all

Created, that in seeing him, alone

Have peace; and in a circle spreads so far,

That the circumference were too loose a zone

To girdle in the sun.”

On a recapitulation, then, of the views that have been advanced in relation to these three symbols of the Deity which are to be found in the Masonic system, we may say that each one expresses a different attribute.

The letter G is the symbol of the self-existent Jehovah.

The All-Seeing Eye is the symbol of the omnipresent God.

The triangle[139] is the symbol of the Supreme Architect of the Universe–the Creator; and when surrounded by rays of glory, it becomes a symbol of the Architect and Bestower of Light.

And now, after all, is there not in this whole prevalence of the name of God, in so many different symbols, throughout the masonic system, something more than a mere evidence of the religious proclivities of the institution? Is there not behind this a more profound symbolism, which constitutes, in fact, the very essence of Freemasonry? “The names of God,” said a learned theologian at the beginning of this century, “were intended to communicate the knowledge of God himself. By these, men were enabled to receive some scanty ideas of his essential majesty, goodness, and power, and to know both whom we are to believe, and what we are to believe of him.”

And this train of thought is eminently applicable to the admission of the name into the system of Masonry. With us, the name of God, however expressed, is a symbol of DIVINE TRUTH, which it should be the incessant labor of a Mason to seek.

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