The Symbolism of Freemasonry

IH-HO. See Ho-hi.

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. This is one of the two religious dogmas which have always been taught in Speculative Masonry.

It was also taught in all the Rites and Mysteries of antiquity.

The doctrine was taught as an abstract proposition by the ancient priesthood of the Pure or Primitive Freemasonry of antiquity, but was conveyed to the mind of the initiate, and impressed upon him by a scenic representation in the ancient Mysteries, or the Spurious Freemasonry of the ancients.

INCOMMUNICABLE NAME. The tetragrammaton, so called because it was not common to, and could not be bestowed upon, nor shared by, any other being. It was proper to the true God alone. Thus Drusius (Tetragrammaton, sive de Nomine Dei proprio, p. 108) says, "Nomen quatuor literarum proprie et absolute non tribui nisi Deo vero. Unde doctores catholici dicunt incommunicabile [not common] esse creaturae."

INEFFABLE NAME. The tetragrammaton. So called because it is ineffabile, or unpronounceable. See Tetragrammaton.

INTRUSTING, RITE OF. That part of the ceremony of initiation which consists in communicating to the aspirant or candidate the aporrheta, or secrets of the mystery.

INUNCTION. The act of anointing. This was a religious ceremony practised from the earliest times. By the pouring on of oil, persons and things were consecrated to sacred purposes.

INVESTITURE, RITE OF. That part of the ceremony of initiation which consists of clothing the candidate masonically. It is a symbol of purity.

ISH CHOTZEB. Hebrew ??? ???, hewers of stones. The Fellow Crafts at the temple of Solomon. (2 Chron. ii. 2.).

ISH SABAL. Hebrew ??? ???, bearers of burdens. The Apprentices at the temple of Solomon. (2 Chron. ii. 2.).

J

JAH. It is in Hebrew ?? whence Maimonides calls it "the two-lettered name," and derives it from the tetragrammaton, of which it is an abbreviation. Others have denied this, and assert that Jah is a name independent of Jehovah, but expressing the same idea of the divine essenee. See Gataker, De Nom. Tetrag..

JEHOVAH. The incommunicable, ineffable name of God, in Hebrew ????, and called, from the four letters of which it consists, the tetragrammaton, or four-lettered name.

LABOR. Since the article on the Symbolism of Labor was written, I have met with an address delivered in 1868 by brother Troué, before St. Peter's Lodge in Martinico, which contains sentiments on the relation of Masonry to labor which are well worth a translation from the original French. See Bulletin du Grand Orient de France, December, 1868.

"Our name of Mason, and our emblems, distinctly announce that our object is the elevation of labor.

"We do not, as masons, consider labor as a punishment inflicted on man; but on the contrary, we elevate it in our thought to the height of a religious act, which is the most acceptable to God because it is the most useful to man and to society.

"We decorate ourselves with the emblems of labor to affirm that our doctrine is an incessant protest against the stigma branded on the law of labor, and which an error of apprehension, proceeding from the ignorance of men in primitive times has erected into a dogma; an error that has resulted in the production of this anti-social phenomenon which we meet with every day; namely, that the degradation of the workman is the greater as his labor is more severe, and the elevation of the idler is higher as his idleness is more complete. But the study of the laws which maintain order in nature, released from the fetters of preconceived ideas, has led the Freemasons to that doctrine, far more moral than the contrary belief, that labor is not an expiation, but a law of harmony, from the subjection to which man cannot be released without impairing his own happiness, and deranging the order of creation. The design of Freemasons is, then, the rehabilitation of labor, which is indicated by the apron which we wear, and the gavel, the trowel, and the level, which are found among our symbols."

Hence the doctrine of this work is, that Freemasonry teaches not only the necessity, but the nobility, of labor.

And that labor is the proper worship due by man to God.

LADDER. A symbol of progressive advancement from a lower to a higher sphere, which is common to Masonry, and to many, if not all, of the ancient Mysteries.

LADDER, BRAHMINICAL. The symbolic ladder used in the Mysteries of Brahma. It had seven steps, symbolic of the seven worlds of the Indian universe.

LADDER, MITHRAITIC. The symbolic ladder used in the Persian Mysteries of Mithras. It had seven steps, symbolic of the seven planets and the seven metals.

LADDER, SCANDINAVIAN. The symbolic ladder used in the Gothic Mysteries. Dr. Oliver refers it to the Yggrasil, or sacred ash tree. But the symbolism is either very abstruse or very doubtful.

LADDER, THEOLOGICAL. The symbolic ladder of the masonic Mysteries. It refers to the ladder seen by Jacob in his vision, and consists, like all symbolical ladders, of seven rounds, alluding to the four cardinal and the three theological virtues.

LAMB. A symbol of innocence. A very ancient symbol.

LAMB, PASCHAL. See Paschal Lamb.

LAMBSKIN APRON. See Apron.

LAW, ORAL. See Oral Law.

LEGEND. A narrative, whether true or false, that has been traditionally preserved from the time of its first oral communication. Such is the definition of a masonic legend. The authors of the Conversations-Lexicon, referring to the monkish Lives of the Saints which originated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, say that the title legend was given to all fictions which make pretensions to truth. Such a remark, however correct it may be in reference to these monkish narratives, which were often invented as ecclesiastical exercises, is by no means applicable to the legends of Freemasonry. These are not necessarily fictitious, but are either based on actual and historical facts which have been but slightly modificd, or they are the offspring and expansion of some symbolic idea in which latter respect they differ entirely from the monastic legends, which often have only the fertile imagination of some studious monk for the basis of their construction.

LEGEND OF THE ROYAL ARCH DEGREE. Much of this legend is a mythical history; but some portion of it is undoubtedly a philosophical myth. The destruction and the re?dification of the temple, the captivity and the return of the captives, are matters of history; but many of the details have been invented and introduced for the purpose of giving form to a symbolic idea.

LEGEND OF THE THIRD DEGREE. In all probability this legend is a mythical history, in which truth is very largely and preponderatingly mixed with fiction.

It is the most important and significant of the legendary symbols of Freemasonry.

Has descended from age to age by oral tradition, and has been preserved in every masonic rite.

No essential alteration of it has ever been made in any masonic system, but the interpretations of it have been various; the most general one is, that it is a symbol of the resurrection and the immortality of the soul.

Some continental writers have supposed that it was a symbol of the downfall of the Order of Templars, and its hoped-for restoration. In some of the high philosophical degrees it is supposed to be a symbol of the sufferings, death, and resurrection Christ. Hutchinson thought it a symbol of the decadence of the Jewish religion, and the rise of the Christian on its ruins. Oliver says that it symbolically refers to the murder of Abel, the death of our race through Adam, and its restoration through Christ.

Ragon thinks that it is a symbol of the sun shorn of its vigor by the three winter months, and restored to generative power by the spring. And lastly, Des Etangs says that it is a symbol of eternal reason, whose enemies are the vices that deprave and finally destroy humanity.

But none of these interpretations, except the first, can be sustained.

LETTUCE. The sacred plant of the Mysteries of Adonis; a symbol of immortality, and the analogue of the acacia.

LEVEL. One of the working tools of a Fellow Craft. It is a symbol of the equality of station of all men before God.

LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES. In the seventh century, all learning was limited to the seven liberal arts and sciences; their introduction into Freemasonry, referring to this theory, is a symbol of the completion of human learning.

LIGHT. It denotes truth and knowledge, and is so explained in all the ancient systems; in initiation, it is not material but intellectual light that is sought.

It is predominant as a symbol in all the ancient initiations.

There it was revered because it was an emanation trom the sun, the common object of worship; but the theory advanced by some writers, that the veneration of light originally proceeded from its physical qualities, is not correct.

Pythagoras called it the good principle in nature; and the Cabalists taught that eternal light filled all space before the creation, and that after creation it retired to a central spot, and became the instrument of the Divine Mind in creating matter.

It is the symbol of the autopsy, or the full perfection and fruition of initiation.

It is therefore a fundamental symbol in Freemasonry, and contains within itself the very essence of the speculative science.

LINGAM. The phallus was so called by the Indian nations of the East. See Phallus.

LODGE. The place where Freemasons meet, and also the congregation of masons so met. The word is derived from the lodges occupied by the travelling Freemasons of the middle ages.

It is a symbol of the world, or universe.

Its form, an oblong square, is symbolic of the supposed oblong form of the world as known to the ancients.

LOST WORD. There is a masonic myth that there was a certain word which was lost and afterwards recovered.

It is not material what the word was, nor how lost, nor when recovered: the symbolism refers only to the abstract idea of a loss and a recovery.

It is a symbol of divine truth.

The search for it was also made by the philosophers and priests in the Mysteries of the Spurious Freemasonry.

LOTUS. The sacred plant of the Brahminical Mysteries, and the analogue of the acacia.

It was also a sacred plant among the Egyptians.

LUSTRATION. A purification by washing the hands or body in consecrated water, practised in the ancient Mysteries. See Purification.

LUX (light). One of the appellations bestowed upon Freemasonry, to indicate that it is that sublime doctrine of truth by which the pathway of him who has attained it is to be illumined in the pilgrimage of life. Among the Rosicrucians, light was the knowledge of the philosopher's stone; and Mosheim says that in chemical language the cross was an emblem of light, because it contains within its figure the forms of the three figures of which LVX, or light, is composed.

LUX E TENEBRIS (light out of darkness). A motto of the Masonic Order, which is equivalent to "truth out of initiation;" light being the symbol of truth, and darkness the symbol of initiation commenced.

M

MAN. Repeatedly referred to by Christ and the apostles as the symbol of a temple.

MASTER MASON. The third degree of Ancient Craft Masonry, analogous to the epopt of the ancient Mysteries.

MENATZCHIM. Hebrew ?????? superintendents, or overseers. The Master Masons at the temple of Solomon. (2 Chron. ii. 2.)

MENU. In the Indian mythology, Menu is the son of Brahma, and the founder of the Hindoo religion. Thirteen other Menus are said to exist, seven of whom have already reigned on earth. But it is the first one whose instructions constitute the whole civil and religious polity of the Hindoos. The code attributed to him by the Brahmins has been translated by Sir William Jones, with the title of "The Institutes of Menu."

MIDDLE CHAMBER. A part of the Solomonic temple, which was approached by winding stairs, but which was certainly not appropriated to the purpose indicated in the Fellow Craft's degree.

The legend of the Winding Stairs is therefore only a philosophical myth.

It is a symbol of this life and its labors.

MISTLETOE. The sacred plant of Druidism; commemorated also in the Scandinavian rites. It is the analogue of the acacia, and like all the other sacred plants of antiquity, is a symbol of the immortality of the soul. Lest the language of the text should be misunderstood, it may be remarked here that the Druidical and the Scandinavian rites are not identical. The former are Celtic, the latter Gothic. But the fact that in both the mistletoe was a sacred plant affords a violent presumption that there must have been a common point from which both religions started. There was, as I have said, an identity of origin for the same ancient and general symbolic idea.

MITHRAS. He was the god worshipped by the ancient Persians, and celebrated in their Mysteries as the symbol of the sun. In the initiation in these Mysteries, the candidate passed through many terrible trials, and his courage and fortitude were exposed to the most rigorous tests. Among others, after ascending the mystical ladder of seven steps, he passed through a scenic representation of Hades, or the infernal regions; out of this and the surrounding darkness he was admitted into the full light of Elysium, where he was obligated by an oath of secrecy, and invested by the Archimagus, or High Priest, with the secret instructions of the rite, among which was a knowledge of the Ineffable Name.

MOUNT CALVARY. A small hill of Jerusalem, in a westerly direction, and not far from Mount Moriah. In the legends of Freemasonry it is known as "a small hill near Mount Moriah," and is referred to in the third degree. This "small hill" having been determined as the burial-place of Jesus, the symbol has been Christianized by many modern masons.

There are many masonic traditions, principally borrowed from the Talmud, connected with Mount Calvary; such as, that it was the place where Adam was buried, &c.

MOUNT MORIAH. The hill in Jerusalem on which the temple of Solomon was built.

MYRTLE. The sacred plant in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and, as symbolic of a resurrection and immortality, the analogue of the acacia.

MYSTERIES. A secret worship paid by the ancients to several of the pagan gods, to which none were admitted but those who had been solemnly initiated. The object of instruction in these Mysteries was, to teach the unity of God and the immortality of the soul. They were divided into Lesser and Greater Mysteries. The former were merely preparatory. In the latter the whole knowledge was communicated. Speaking of the doctrine that was communicated to the initiates, Philo Judaeus says that "it is an incorruptible treasure, not like gold or silver, but more precious than everything beside; for it is the knowledge of the Great Cause, and of nature, and of that which is born of both." And his subsequent language shows that there was a confraternity existing among the initiates like that of the masonic institution; for he says, with his peculiar mysticism, "If you meet an initiate, besiege him with your prayers that he conceal from you no new mysteries that he may know; and rest not until you have obtained them. For me, although I was initiated into the Great Mysteries by Moses, the friend of God, yet, having seen Jeremiah, I recognized him not only as an Initiate, but as a Hierophant; and I followed his school." So, too, the mason acknowledges every initiate as his brother, and is ever ready and anxious to receive all the light that can be bestowed on the Mysteries in which he has been indoctrinated.

MYSTES. (From the Greek μ?ω, to shut the eyes.) One who had been initiated into the Lesser Mysteries of paganism. He was now blind, but when he was initiated into the Greater Mysteries he was called an Epopt, or one who saw.

MYTH. Grote's definition of the myth, which is cited in the text, may be applied without modification to the myths of Freemasonry, although intended by the author only for the myths of the ancient Greek religion.

The myth, then, is a narrative of remote date, not necessarily true or false, but whose truth can only be certified by internal evidence. The word was first applied to those fables of the pagan gods which have descended from the remotest antiquity, and in all of which there prevails a symbolic idea, not always, however, capable of a positive interpretation. As applied to Freemasonry, the words myth and legend are synonymous.

From this definition it will appear that the myth is really only the interpretation of an idea. But how we are to read these myths will best appear from these noble words of Max Müller: "Everything is true, natural, significant, if we enter with a reverent spirit into the meaning of ancient art and ancient language. Everything becomes false, miraculous, and unmeaning, if we interpret the deep and mighty words of the seers of old in the shallow and feeble sense of modern chroniclers." (Science of Language, 2d Ser. p. 578.).

MYTH, HISTORICAL. An historical myth is a myth that has a known and recognized foundation in historical truth, but with the admixture of a preponderating amount of fiction in the introduction of personages and circumstances. Between the historical myth and the mythical history, the distinction as laid down in the text cannot always be preserved, because we are not always able to determine whether there is a preponderance of truth or of fiction in the legend or narrative under examination.

MYTHICAL HISTORY. A myth or legend in which the historical and truthful greatly preponderate over the inventions of fiction.

MYTHOLOGY. Literally, the science of myths; and this is a very appropriate definition, for mythology is the science which treats of the religion of the ancient pagans, which was almost altogether founded on myths, or popular traditions and legendary tales; and hence Keightly (Mythol. of Ancient Greece and Italy, p. 2) says that "mythology may be regarded as the repository of the early religion of the people." Its interest to a masonic student arises from the constant antagonism that existed between its doctrines and those of the Primitive Freemasonry of antiquity and the light that the mythological Mysteries throw upon the ancient organization of Speculative Masonry.

MYTH, PHILOSOPHICAL. This is a myth or legend that is almost wholly unhistorical, and which has been invented only for the purpose of enunciating and illustrating a particular thought or dogma.

N

NAME. All Hebrew names are significant, and were originally imposed with reference to some fact or feature in the history or character of the persons receiving them. Camden says that the same custom prevailed among all the nations of antiquity. So important has this subject been considered, that "Onomastica," or treatises on the signification of names have been written by Eusebius and St. Jerome, by Simonis and Hillerus, and by several other scholars, of whom Eusebe Salverte is the most recent and the most satisfactory. Shuckford (Connect. ii. 377) says that the Jewish Rabbins thought that the true knowledge of names was a science preferable to the study of the written law.

NAME OF GOD. The true pronunciation, and consequently the signification, of the name of God can only be obtained through a cabalistical interpretation.

It is a symbol of divine truth. None but those who are familiar with the subject can have any notion of the importance bestowed on this symbol by the Orientalists. The Arabians have a science called Ism Allah, or the science of the name of God; and the Talmudists and Rabbins have written copiously on the same subject. The Mussulmans, says Salverte (Essai sur les Noms, ii. 7), have one hundred names of God, which they repeat while counting the beads of a rosary.

NEOPHYTE. (From the Greek ν?ον and φυι?ν, a new plant.) One who has been recently initiated in the Mysteries. St. Paul uses the same word (I Tim. iii. 6) to denote one who had been recently converted to the Christian faith.

NOACHIDAE. The descendants of Noah, and the transmitters of his religious dogmas, which were the unity of God and the immortality of the soul. The name has from the earliest times been bestowed upon the Freemasons, who teach the same doctrines. Thus in the "old charges," as quoted by Anderson (Const. edit. 1738, p. 143), it is said, "A mason is obliged by his tenure to observe the moral law as a true Noachidae."

NOACHITES. The same as Noachidae, which see.

NORTH. That part of the earth which, being most removed from the influence of the sun at his meridian height, is in Freemasonry called "a place of darkness." Hence it is a symbol of the profane world.

NORTH-EAST CORNER. An important ceremony of the first degree, which refers to the north-east corner of the lodge, is explained by the symbolism of the corner-stone.

The corner-stone of a building is always laid in the north-east corner, for symbolic reasons.

The north-east point of the heavens was especially sacred among the Hindoos.

In the symbolism of Freemasonry, the north refers to the outer or profane world, and the east to the inner world of Masonry; and hence the north-east is symbolic of the double position of the neophyte, partly in the darkness of the former, partly in the light of the latter.

NUMBERS. The symbolism of sacred numbers, which prevails very extensively in Freemasonry, was undoubtedly borrowed from the school of Pythagoras; but it is just as likely that he got it from Egypt or Babylon, or from both. The Pythagorean doctrine was, according to Aristotle (Met. xii. 8), that all things proceed from numbers. M. Dacier, however, in his life of the philosopher, denies that the doctrine of numbers was taught by Pythagoras himself, but attributes it to his later disciples. But his arguments are not conclusive or satisfactory.

O

OATH OF SECRECY. It was always administered to the candidate in the ancient Mysteries.

ODD NUMBERS. In the system of Pythagoras, odd numbers were symbols of perfection. Hence the sacred numbers of Freemasonry are all odd. They are 3, 5, 7, 9, 15, 27, 33, and 81.

OIL. An element of masonic consecration, and, as a symbol of prosperity and happiness, is intended, under the name of the "oil of joy," to indicate the expected propitious results of the consecration of any thing or person to a sacred purpose.

OLIVE. In a secondary sense, the symbol of peace and of victory; but in its primary meaning, like all the other Sacred plants of antiquity, a symbol of immortality; and thus in the Mysteries it was the analogue of the acacia of the Freemasons.

OLIVER. The Rev. George Oliver, D.D., of Lincolnshire, England, who died in 1868, is by far the most distinguished and the most voluminous of the English writers on Freemasonry. Looking to his vast labors and researches in the arcana of the science, no student of masonry can speak of his name or his memory without profound reverence for his learning, and deep gratitude for the services that he has accomplished. To the author of this work the recollection will ever be most grateful that he enjoyed the friendship of so good and so great a man; one of whom we may testify, as Johnson said of Goldsmith, that "nihil quod tetigit non ornavit." In his writings he has traversed the whole field of masonic literature and science, and has treated, always with great ability and wonderful research, of its history, its antiquities, its rites and ceremonies, its ethics, and its symbols. Of all his works, his "Historical Landmarks," in two volumes, is the most important, the most useful, and the one which will perhaps the longest perpetuate his memory. In the study of his works, the student must be careful not to follow too implicitly all his conclusions. These were in his own mind controlled by the theory which he had adopted, and which he continuously maintained, that Freemasonry was a Christian institution, and that the connection between it and the Christian religion was absolute and incontrovertible. He followed in the footsteps of Hutchinson, but with a far more expanded view of the masonic system.

OPERATIVE MASONRY. Masonry considered merely as a useful art, intended for the protection and the convenience of man by the erection of edifices which may supply his intellectual, religious, and physical wants.

In contradistinction to Speculative Masonry, therefore, it is said to be engaged in the construction of a material temple.

ORAL LAW. The oral law among the Jews was the commentary on and the interpretation of the written contained in the Pentateuch; and the tradition is, that it was delivered to Moses at the same time, accompanied by the divine command, "Thou shalt not divulge the words which I have said to thee out of my mouth." The oral law was, therefore, never intrusted to books; but being preserved in the memories of the judges, prophets, priests, and wise men, was handed down from one to the other through a long succession of ages. But after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans under Adrian, A.D. 135, and the final dispersion of the Jews, fears being entertained that the oral law would be lost, it was then committed to writing, and now constitutes the text of the Talmud.

ORMUZD. Worshipped by the disciples of Zoroaster as the principle of good, and symbolized by light. See Ahriman.

OSIRIS. The chief god of the ancient Egyptians, and worshipped as a symbol of the sun, and more philosophically as the male or generative principle. Isis, his wife, was the female or prolific principle; and Horus, their child, was matter, or the world-the product of the two principles.

OSIRIS, MYSTERIES OF. The Osirian Mysteries consisted in a scenic representation of the murder of Osiris by Typhon, the subsequent recovery of his mutilated body by Isis, and his deification, or restoration to immortal life.

OVAL TEMPLES. Temples of an oval form were representations of the mundane egg, a symbol of the world.

P

PALM TREE. In its secondary sense the palm tree is a symbol of victory; but in its primary signification it is a symbol of the victory over death, that is, immortality.

PARABLE. A narrative in which one thing is compared with another. It is in principle the same as a symbol or an allegory.

PARALLEL LINES. The lines touching the circle in the symbol of the point within a circle. They are said to represent St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist; but they really refer to the solstitial points Cancer and Capricorn, in the zodiac.

PASTOS. (From the Greek παστ??, a nuptial couch.) The coffin or grave which contained the body of the god or hero whose death was scenically represented in the ancient Mysteries.

It is the analogue of the grave in the third degree of Masonry.

PELASGIAN RELIGION. The Pelasgians were the oldest if not the aboriginal inhabitants of Greece. Their religion differed from that of the Hellenes who succeeded them in being less poetical, less mythical, and more abstract. We know little of their religious worship, except by conjecture; but we may suppose it resembled in some respects the doctrines of the Primitive Freemasonry. Creuzer thinks that the Pelasgians were either a nation of priests or a nation ruled by priests.

PHALLUS. A representation of the virile member, which was venerated as a religious symbol very universally, and without the slightest lasciviousness, by the ancients. It was one of the modifications of sun worship, and was a symbol of the fecundating power of that luminary. The masonic point within a circle is undoubtedly of phallic origin.

PHILOSOPHY OF FREEMASONRY. The dogmas taught in the masonic system constitute its philosophy. These consist in the contemplation of God as one and eternal, and of man as immortal. In other words, the philosophy of Freemasonry inculcates the unity of God and the immortality of the soul.

PLUMB. One of the working tools of a Fellow Craft, and a symbol of rectitude of conduct.

POINT WITHIN A CIRCLE. It is derived from the ancient sun worship, and is in reality of phallic origin. It is a symbol of the universe, the sun being represented by the point, while the circumference is the universe.

PORCH OF THE TEMPLE. A symbol of the entrance into life.

PRIMITIVE FREEMASONRY. The Primitive Freemasonry of the antediluvians is a term for which we are indebted to Oliver, although the theory was broached by earlier writers, and among them by the Chevalier Ramsay. The theory is, that the principles and doctrines of Freemasonry existed in the earliest ages of the world, and were believed and practised by a primitive people, or priesthood, under the name of Pure or Primitive Freemasonry. That this Freemasonry, that is to say, the religious doctrine inculcated by it, was, after the flood, corrupted by the pagan philosophers and priests, and, receiving the title of Spurious Freemasory, was exhibited in the ancient Mysteries. The Noachidae, however, preserved the principles of the Primitive Freemasonry, and transmitted them to succeeding ages, when at length they assumed the name of Speculative Masonry. The Primitive Freemasonry was probably without ritual or symbolism, and consisted only of a series of abstract propositions derived from antediluvian traditions. Its dogmas were the unity of God and the immortality of the soul.

PROFANE. One who has not been initiated as a Freemason. In the technical language of the Order, all who are not Freemasons are profanes. The term is derived from the Latin words pro fano, which literally signify "in front of the temple," because those in the ancient religions who were not initiated in the sacred rites or Mysteries of any deity were not permitted to enter the temple, but were compelled to remain outside, or in front of it. They were kept on the outside. The expression a profane is not recognized as a noun substantive in the general usage of the language; but it has been adopted as a technical term in the dialect of Freemasonry, in the same relative sense in which the word layman is used in the professions of law and divinity.

PURE FREEMASONRY OF ANTIQUITY. The same as Primitive Freemasonry,-which see.

PURIFICATION. A religious rite practised by the ancients, and which was performed before any act of devotion. It consisted in washing the hands, and sometimes the whole body, in lustral or consecrated water. It was intended as a symbol of the internal purification of the heart. It was a ceremony preparatory to initiation in all the ancient Mysteries.

PYTHAGORAS. A Grecian philosopher, supposed to have been born in the island of Samos, about 584 B.C. He travelled extensively for the purpose of acquiring knowledge. In Egypt he was initiated in the Mysteries of that country by the priests. He also repaired to Babylon, where he became acquainted with the mystical learning of the Chaldeans, and had, no doubt, much communication with the Israelitish captives who had been exiled from Jerusalem, and were then dwelling in Babylon. On his return to Europe he established a school, which in its organization, as well as its doctrines, bore considerable resemblance to Speculative Masonry; for which reason he has been claimed as "an ancient friend and brother" by the modern Freemasons.

R

RESURRECTION. This doctrine was taught in the ancient Mysteries, as it is in Freemasonry, by a scenic representation. The initiation was death, the autopsy was resurrection. Freemasonry does not interest itself with the precise mode of the resurrection, or whether the body buried and the body raised are in all their parts identical. Satisfied with the general teaching of St. Paul, concerning the resurrection that "it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body," Freemasonry inculcates by its doctrine of the resurrection the simple fact of a progressive advancement from a lower to a higher sphere, and the raising of the soul from the bondage of death to its inheritance of eternal life.

RITUAL. The forms and ceremonies used in conferring the degrees, or in conducting the labors, of a lodge are called the ritual. There are many rites of Freemasonry, which differ from each other in the number and division of the degrees, and in their rituals, or forms and ceremonies. But the great principles of Freemasonry, its philosophy and its symbolism, are alike in all. It is evident, then, that in an investigation of the symbolism of Freemasonry, we have no concern with its ritual, which is but an outer covering that is intended to conceal the treasure that is within.

ROSICRUCIANS. A sect of hermetical philosophers, founded in the fifteenth century, who were engaged in the study of abstruse sciences. It was a secret society much resembling the masonic in its organization, and in some of the subjects of its investigation; but it was in no other way connected with Freemasonry. It is, however, well worth the study of the masonic student on account of the light that it throws upon many of the masonic symbols.

ROYAL ART. Freemasonry is so called because it is supposed to have been founded by two kings,-the kings of Israel and Tyre,-and because it has been subsequently encouraged and patronized by monarchs in all countries.

S

SABIANISM, or SABAISM. The worship of the sun, moon, and stars, the ??? ????? TSABA Hashmaim, "the host of heaven." It was practised in Persia, Chaldea, India, and other Oriental countries, at an early period of the world's history. Sun-worship has had a powerful influence on subsequent and more rational religions, and relics of it are to be found even in the symbolism of Freemasonry.

SACELLUM. A sacred place consecrated to a god, and containing an altar.

SAINTE CROIX. The work of the Baron de Sainte Croix, in two volumes, entitled, "Recherches Historiques et Critiques sur les Mystères du Paganisme," is one of the most valuable and instructive works that we have in any language on the ancient Mysteries,-those religious associations whose history and design so closely connect them with Freemasonry. To the student of masonic philosophy and symbolism this work of Sainte Croix is absolutely essential.

SALSETTE. An island in the Bay of Bombay, celebrated for stupendous caverns excavated artificially out of the solid rock, and which were appropriated to the initiations in the ancient Mysteries of India.

SENSES, FIVE HUMAN. A symbol of intellectual cultivation.

SETH. It is the masonic theory that the principles of the Pure or Primitive Freemasonry were preserved in the race of Seth, which had always kept separate from that of Cain, but that after the flood they became corrupted, by a secession of a portion of the Sethites, who established the Spurious Freemasonry of the Gentiles.

SEVEN. A sacred number among the Jews and the Gentiles, and called by Pythagoras a "venerable number."

SHEM HAMPHORASH. (?? ?????? the declaratory name.) The tetragrammaton is so called, because, of all the names of God, it alone distinctly declares his nature and essence as self-existent and eternal.

SHOE. See Investiture, Rite of.

SIGNS. There is abundant evidence that they were used in the ancient Mysteries. They are valuable only as modes of recognition. But while they are absolutely conventional, they have, undoubtedly, in Freemasonry, a symbolic reference.

SIVA. One of the manifestations of the supreme deity of the Hindoos, and a symbol of the sun in its meridian.

SONS OF LIGHT. Freemasons are so called because Lux, or Light, is one of the names of Speculative Masonry.

SOLOMON. The king of Israel, and the founder of the temple of Jerusalem and of the temple organization of Freemasonry.

That his mind was eminently symbolic in its propensities, is evident from all the writings that are attributed to him.

SPECULATIVE MASONRY. Freemasonry considered as a science which speculates on the character of God and man, and is engaged in philosophical investigations of the soul and a future existence, for which purpose it uses the terms of an operative art.

It is engaged symbolically in the construction of a spiritual temple.

There is in it always a progress-an advancement from a lower to a higher sphere.

SPIRITUAL TEMPLE. The body of man; that temple alluded to by Christ and St. Paul; the temple, in the construction of which the Speculative Mason is engaged, in contradistinction to that material temple which occupies the labors of the Operative Mason.

SPURIOUS FREEMASONRY OF ANTIQUITY. A term applied to the initiations in the Mysteries of the ancient pagan world, and to the doctrines taught in those Mysteries. See Mysteries.

SQUARE. A geometric figure consisting of four equal sides and equal angles. In Freemasonry it is a symbol of morality, or the strict performance of every duty. The Greeks deemed it a figure of perfection, and the "square man" was a man of unsullied integrity.

SQUARE, TRYING. One of the working-tools of a Fellow Craft, and a symbol of morality.

STONE OF FOUNDATION. A very important symbol in the masonic system. It is like the word, the symbol of divine truth.

STONE WORSHIP. A very early form of fetichism. The Pelasgians are supposed to have given to their statues of the gods the general form of cubical stones, whence in Hellenic times came the Hermae, or images of Hermes.

SUBSTITUTE WORD. A symbol of the unsuccessful search after divine truth, and the discovery in this life of only an approximation to it.

SUN, RISING. In the Sabian worship the rising sun was adored on its resurrection from the apparent death of its evening setting. Hence, in the ancient Mysteries, the rising sun was a symbol of the regeneration of the soul.

SUN-WORSHIP. The most ancient of all superstitions. It prevailed especially in Phoenicia, Chaldea. and Egypt, and traces of it have been discovered in Peru and Mexico. Its influence was felt in the ancient Mysteries, and abundant allusions to it are to be found in the symbolism of Freemasonry.

SWEDENBORG. A Swedish philosopher, and the founder of a religious sect. Clavel, Ragon, and some other writers have sought to make him the founder of a masonic rite also, but without authority. In 1767 Chastanier established the rite of Illuminated Theosophists, whose instructions are derived from the writings of Swedenborg, but the sage himself had nothing to do with it. Yet it cannot be denied that the mind of Swedenborg was eminently symbolic in character, and that the masonic student may derive many valuable ideas from portions of his numerous works, especially from his "Celestial Arcana" and his "Apocalypse Revealed."

SYMBOL. A visible sign with which a spiritual feeling, emotion, or idea is connected.-Müller. Every natural thing which is made the sign or representation of a moral idea is a symbol.

SYMBOL, COMPOUND. A species of symbol not unusual in Freemasonry, where the symbol is to be taken in a double sense, meaning in its general application one thing, and then in a special application another.

SYMBOLISM, SCIENCE OF. To what has been said in the text, may be added the following apposite remarks of Squier: "In the absence of a written language or forms of expression capable of conveying abstract ideas, we can readily comprehend the necessity, among a primitive people, of a symbolic system. That symbolism in a great degree resulted from this necessity, is very obvious; and that, associated with man's primitive religious systems, it was afterwards continued, when in the advanced stage of the human mind, the previous necessity no longer existed, is equally undoubted. It thus came to constitute a kind of sacred language, and became invested with an esoteric significance understood only by the few."-The Serpent Symbol in America, p. 19.

T

TABERNACLE. Erected by Moses in the wilderness as a temporary place for divine worship. It was the antitype of the temple of Jerusalem, and, like it, was a symbol of the universe.

TALISMAN. A figure either carved in metal or stone, or delineated on parchment or paper, made with superstitious ceremonies under what was supposed to be the special influence of the planetary bodies, and believed to possess occult powers of protecting the maker or possessor from danger. The figure in the text is a talisman, and among the Orientals no talisman was more sacred than this one where the nine digits are so disposed as to make 15 each way. The Arabians called it zahal, which was the name of the planet Saturn, because the nine digits added together make 45, and the letters of the word zahal are, according to the numerical powers of the Arabic alphabet, equivalent to 45. The cabalists esteem it because 15 was the numerical power of the letters composing the word JAH, which is one of the names of God.

TALMUD. The mystical philosophy of the Jewish Rabbins is contained in the Talmud, which is a collection of books divided into two parts, the Mishna, which contains the record of the oral law, first committed to writing in the second or third century, and the Gemara, or commentaries on it. In the Talmud much will be found of great interest to the masonic student.

TEMPLE. The importance of the temple in the symbolism of Freemasonry will authorize the following citation from the learned Montfaucon (Ant. ii. 1. ii. ch. ii.): "Concerning the origin of temples, there is a variety of opinions. According to Herodotus, the Egyptians were the first that made altars, statues, and temples. It does not, however, appear that there were any in Egypt in the time of Moses, for he never mentions them, although he had many opportunities for doing so. Lucian says that the Egyptians were the first people who built temples, and that the Assyrians derived the custom from them, all of which is, however, very uncertain. The first allusion to the subject in Scripture is the Tabernacle, which was, in fact, a portable temple, and contained one place within it more holy and secret than the others, called the Holy of Holies, and to which the adytum in the pagan temples corresponded. The first heathen temple mentioned in Scripture is that of Dagon, the god of the Philistines. The Greeks, who were indebted to the Phoenicians for many things, may be supposed to have learned from them the art of building temples; and it is certain that the Romans borrowed from the Greeks both the worship of the gods and the construction of temples."

TEMPLE BUILDER. The title by which Hiram Abif is sometimes designated.

TEMPLE OF SOLOMON. The building erected by King Solomon on Mount Moriah, in Jerusalem, has been often called "the cradle of Freemasonry," because it was there that that union took place between the operative and speculative masons, which continued for centuries afterwards to present the true organization of the masonic system.

As to the size of the temple, the dimensions given in the text may be considered as accurate so far as they agree with the description given in the First Book of Kings. Josephus gives a larger measure, and makes the length 105 feet, the breadth 35 feet, and the height 210 feet; but even these will not invalidate the statement in the text, that in size it was surpassed by many a parish church.

TEMPLE SYMBOLISM. That symbolism which is derived from the temple of Solomon. It is the most fertile of all kinds of symbolism in the production of materials for the masonic science.

TERMINUS. One of the most ancient of the Roman deities. He was the god of boundaries and landmarks, and his statue consisted only of a cubical stone, without arms or legs, to show that he was immovable.

TETRACTYS. A figure used by Pythagoras, consisting of ten points, arranged in a triangular form so as to represent the monad, duad, triad, and quarterniad. It was considered as very sacred by the Pythagoreans, and was to them what the tetragrammaton was to the Jews.

TETRAGRAMMATON. (From the Greek τετρ??, four, and γρ?μμα, a letter). The four-lettered name of God in the Hebrew language, which consisted of four letters, viz. ???? commonly, but incorrectly, pronounced Jehovah. As a symbol it greatly pervaded the rites of antiquity, and was perhaps the earliest symbol corrupted by the Spurious Freemasonry of the pagan Mysteries.

It was held by the Jews in profound veneration, and its origin supposed to have been by divine revelation at the burning bush.

The word was never pronounced, but wherever met with Adonai was substituted for it, which custom was derived from the perverted reading of a, passage in the Pentateuch. The true pronunciation consequently was utterly lost; this is explained by the want of vowels in the Hebrew alphabet, so that the true vocalization of a word cannot be learned from the letters of which it is composed.

The true pronunciation was intrusted to the high priest; but lest the knowledge of it should be lost by his sudden death, it was also communicated to his assistant; it was known also, probably, to the kings of Israel.

The Cabalists and Talmudists enveloped it in a host of superstitions.

It was also used by the Essenes in their sacred rites, and by the Egyptians as a pass-word.

Cabalistically read and pronounced, it means the male and female principle of nature, the generative and prolific energy of creation.

THAMMUZ. A Syrian god, who was worshipped by those women of the Hebrews who had fallen into idolatry. The idol was the same as the Phoenician Adonis, and the Mysteries of the two were identical.

TRAVELLING FREEMASONS. See Freemasons, Travelling.

TRESTLE BOARD. The board or tablet on which the designs of the architect are inscribed. It is a symbol of the moral law as set forth in the revealed will of God.

Every man must have his trestle board, because it is the duty of every man to work out the task which God, the chief Architect, has assigned to him.

TRIANGLE. A symbol of Deity.

This symbolism is found in many of the ancient religions.

Among the Egyptians it was a symbol of universal nature, or of the protection of the world by the male and female energies of creation.

TRIANGLE, RADIATED. A triangle placed within a circle of rays. In Christian art it is a symbol of God; then the rays are called a glory. When they surround the triangle in the form of a circle, the triangle is a symbol of the glory of God. When the rays emanate from the centre of the triangle, it is a symbol of divine light. This is the true form of the masonic radiated triangle.

TRILITERAL NAME. This is the word AUM, which is the ineffable name of God among the Hindoos, and symbolizes the three manifestations of the Brahminical supreme god, Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu. It was never to be pronounced aloud, and was analogous to the sacred tetragrammaton of the Jews.

TROWEL. One of the working tools of a Master Mason. It is a symbol of brotherly love.

TRUTH. It was not always taught publicly by the ancient philosophers to the people.

The search for it is the object of Freemasonry. It is never found on earth, but a substitute for it is provided.

TUAPHOLL. A term used by the Druids to designate an unhallowed circumambulation around the sacred cairn, or altar, the movement being against the sun, that is, from west to east by the north, the cairn being on the left hand of the circumambulator.

TUBAL CAIN. Of the various etymologies of this name, only one is given in the text; but most of the others in some way identify him with Vulcan. Wellsford (Mithridates Minor p. 4) gives a singular etymology, deriving the name of the Hebrew patriarch from the definite article ? converted into ?, or T and Baal, "Lord," with the Arabic kayn, "a blacksmith," so that the word would then signify "the lord of the blacksmiths." Masonic writers have, however, generally adopted the more usual derivation of Cain, from a word signifying possession; and Oliver descants on Tubal Cain as a symbol of worldly possessions. As to the identity of Vulcan with Tubal Cain, we may learn something from the definition of the offices of the former, as given by Diodorus Siculus: "Vulcan was the first founder of works in iron, brass, gold, silver, and all fusible metals; and he taught the uses to which fire can be applied in the arts." See Genesis: "Tubal Cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron."

TWENTY-FOUR INCH GAUGE. A two-foot rule. One of the working-tools of an Entered Apprentice, and a symbol of time well employed.

TYPHON. The brother and slayer of Osiris in the Egyptian mythology. As Osiris was a type or symbol of the sun, Typhon was the symbol of winter, when the vigor, heat, and, as it were, life of the sun are destroyed, and of darkness as opposed to light.

TYRE. A city of Phoenicia, the residence of King Hiram, the friend and ally of Solomon, whom he supplied with men and materials for the construction of the temple.

TYRIAN FREEMASONS. These were the members of the Society of Dionysiac Artificers, who at the time of the building of Solomon's temple flourished at Tyre. Many of them were sent to Jerusalem by Hiram, King of Tyre, to assist King Solomon in the construction of his temple. There, uniting with the Jews, who had only a knowledge of the speculative principles of Freemasonry, which had been transmitted to them from Noah, through the patriarchs, the Tyrian Freemasons organized that combined system of Operative and Speculative Masonry which continued for many centuries, until the beginning of the eighteenth, to characterize the institution. See Dionysiac Artificers.

U

UNION. The union of the operative with the speculative element of Freemasonry took place at the building of King Solomon's temple.

UNITY OF GOD. This, as distinguished from the pagan doctrine of polytheism, or a multitude of gods, is one of the two religious truths taught in Speculative Masonry, the other being the immortality of the soul.

W

WEARY SOJOURNERS. The legend of the "three weary sojourners" in the Royal Arch degree is undoubtedly a philosophical myth, symbolizing the search after truth.

WHITE. A symbol of innocence and purity.

Among the Pythagoreans it was a symbol of the good principle in nature, equivalent to light.

WIDOW'S SON. An epithet bestowed upon the chief architect of the temple, because he was "a widow's son of the tribe of Naphthali." 1 Kings vii. 14.

WINDING STAIRS, LEGEND OF. A legend in the Fellow Craft's degree having no historical truth, but being simply a philosophical myth or legendary symbol intended to communicate a masonic dogma.

It is the symbol of an ascent from a lower to a higher sphere.

It commences at the porch of the temple, which is a symbol of the entrance into life.

The number of steps are always odd, because odd numbers are a symbol of perfection.

But the fifteen steps in the American system are a symbol of the name of God, Jah.

WINE. An element of masonic consecration, and, as a symbol of the inward refreshment of a good conscience, is intended under the name of the "wine of refreshment," to remind us of the eternal refreshments which the good are to receive in the future life for the faithful performance of duty in the present.

WORD. In Freemasonry this is a technical and symbolic term, and signifies divine truth. The search after this word constitutes the whole system of speculative masonry.

WORD, LOST. See Lost Word.

WORD, SUBSTITUTE. See Substitute Word.

WORK. In Freemasonry the initiation of a candidate is called work. It is suggestive of the doctrine that labor is a masonic duty.

Y

YGGDRASIL. The sacred ash tree in the Scandinavian Mysteries. Dr. Oliver propounds the theory that it is the analogue of the theological ladder in the Masonic Mysteries. But it is doubtful whether this theory is tenable.

YOD. A Hebrew letter, in form thus ?, and about equivalent to the English I or Y. It is the initial letter of the tetragrammaton, and is often used, especially enclosed within a triangle, as a substitute for, or an abridgement of, that sacred word.

It is a symbol of the life-giving and sustaining power of God.

YONI. Among the nations and religions of India the yoni was the representation of the female organ of generation, and was the symbol of the prolific power of nature. It is the same as the cteis among the Occidental nations.

Z

ZENNAAR. The sacred girdle of the Hindoos. It is supposed to be the analogue of the masonic apron.

ZOROASTER. A distinguished philosopher and reformer, whose doctrines were professed by the ancient Persians. The religion of Zoroaster was a dualism, in which the two antagonizing principles were Ormuzd and Abriman, symbols of Light and Darkness. It was a modification and purification of the old fire-worship, in which the fire became a symbol of the sun, so that it was really a species of sun-worship. Mithras, representing the sun, becomes the mediator between Ormuzd, or the principle of Darkness, and the world.

Footnotes

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. V?lk.

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 μυστ?ρια τ? πρ? μυστηρ?ων, "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: μετ? δ' ?ρ?ια Μ?σ?αι?, ?. τ. λ., "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"-Διονυσια?οι τεχνιτα?.

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 σωθηματα, 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'ame des assistans d'une sainte horreur, les mêmes moyens qu'à Eleusis. L'apparition de fant?mes 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 παραβαλλω, whence comes the word parable, and the verb συμβαλλω 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 τελετα?, perfections, because they were supposed to induce a perfectness of life. Those who were purified by them were styled τελουμ?νοι, and τετελεσμ?νοι, 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, "Θ?ειν χρ? ?νυπ?δετον, ?αι πρ?? τα ?ερ? προστι?ναι,"-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 α?τοψ?α, signifying a seeing with ones own eyes. The candidate, who had previously been called a mystes, or a blind man, from μ?ω, 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 τετρ??, four, and γρ?μμα, 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 "Κ?ριο?," 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, Γ, or Greek letter G, is said to have been sacred among the Pythagoreans as the initial of Γεωμειρ?α 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 (π?σα? θε?ν τελετ??), 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 ???ενοθηλυ? 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-ma?on, 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 (?λλο?, alius, and ?γορε?ω, 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:-

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 c?tera 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. "?φανισμ??, disappearance, destruction, a perishing, death, from ?φαν?ζω, to remove from one's view, to conceal," &c.-Schrevel. Lex.

165. "Ε?ρεσι?, 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 ma?onniques sont des allegories relatives à l'Eglise, à la Foi, et aux bonnes moeurs."-Origine et Objet de la Franchema?onnerie, 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 Ma?tre va donc nous retracer allegoriquement la mort du dieu-lumière-mourant en hiver pour repara?tre 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, ?uvres Ma?onniques, 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 Linn?us.

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 ?υδ?νιο?, which means a quince, and the participle ?υδ?ων, 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 vctor'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, ?ρ??ω, 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 ?neid." 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 α?τ?ρ?ειαν, 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-ma?onnerie, 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. ?????, 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."